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We’ve heard a lot about radicalisation in recent years. Radicalisation is the process of causing somebody to adopt radical – that is, extremist – positions on political or social issues. As The Guardian reported back in 2014: people’s beliefs are rarely determined by good evidence and sound reasoning alone. There are all sorts of psychological biases… [more]
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I was in the pub the other night, and two men were talking loudly about feminism. They were early thirties, clearly well educated – one was a teacher – and both parents of young girls. And they felt that feminism in general and the #metoo movement in particular had gone too far. People like Harvey… [more]
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Incredibly, you can still buy these from the Trump campaign’s online shop. I have some other suggestions. Turkeys for Christmas, perhaps. Women For Weinstein. Gypsies for Hitler. [more]
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I’ve posted this before, but Scientific American reposted it today in light of the Trump memo. Determination of biological sex is staggeringly complex, involving not only anatomy but an intricate choreography of genetic and chemical factors that unfolds over time. Intersex individuals—those for whom sexual development follows an atypical trajectory—are characterized by a diverse range… [more]
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The Gender Recognition Act consultation is now closed, thank God. In the short months since it began it’s been used by conservatives to mount a shockingly vicious campaign against trans people. Some 53,000 responses had been received by Friday. That isn’t a consultation. It’s a pile-on. It’s yet more evidence that human rights shouldn’t be… [more]
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Many trans people don’t come out until later in life. We have partners, sometimes children. Revealing our secret is devastating. I’ve been asked the same question many times: Why didn’t you tell them? And sometimes the subtext to that is: Why did you lie for so long? The honest answer is that I didn’t lie.… [more]
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Stephen Paton writes in The National about the mischaracterisation of gender reform as a “trans vs feminists” debate. With the debate so heavily influenced by these groups, it’s no wonder that a narrative proclaiming trans rights must come at the cost of women’s has found mainstream attention, while sneaky facts that contradict it have been… [more]
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One big upside of being part of a demonised minority: it saves you a fortune. I cancelled my decades-long subscription to Private Eye yesterday: the current issue has three news stories about trans things in which it unquestioningly parroted anti-trans bullshit, picked on a trans charity and an LGBT charity and vilified a young trans… [more]
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Dawn Foster has written a brave, gut-wrenching, important piece about online misogyny and abuse. The majority of men are not like this, but unbidden, I find myself more on guard than I ever was before. Too many men have proudly sent lengthy pen portraits of my imagined rape, murder or maiming, glutted with detail, and… [more]
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My previous post about How To Write Good included some really inelegant pronoun use: I wrote about “she/he” in connection with an unnamed, entirely imaginary writer. That looked and read awfully, so I changed it to “s/he”. Which made it worse. It turns out that it’s better to avoid gendering things that don’t need to… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
