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My youngest is obsessed with skating right now, and that means I spend a lot of time taking them to skate parks, pump tracks and so on. For a bit of variety yesterday we went to one of the more far-away favourites, a track near the national football stadium in Glasgow’s south side, and that’s… [more]
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Scientific American reports that the Cass Review has led to “a plethora of abuses and humiliations” for young trans people, which for some includes forced detransition. We estimate more than 1,000 trans adolescents in the U.K. now find that their treatment is illegal. Families risk an up to two-year prison sentence for supporting a child’s… [more]
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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: politicians, the BBC and the press are reporting outright bigotry as “concerns” and one side of a “controversy” or “debate”. Not genital-obsessed weirdos this time, at least not today, although I’m sure the Venn diagram of those people and today’s bunch has a lot of overlap: this time… [more]
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I think in years to come the Cass Review, and the media’s complicity, will be viewed in much the same way as Andrew Wakefield’s infamous MMR scare and its promotion by Private Eye and UK newspapers. Unfortunately like Wakefield, it will continue to harm people until and long after it’s been fully discredited and its… [more]
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Update, 26/7: Vivian, Musk’s estranged daughter, has given an interview to NBC: “if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.” Elon Musk has given an appalling interview to the appalling Jordan Peterson in which he demonises and deadnames his trans daughter, claiming… [more]
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There’s a good piece about the puberty blocker ban in The Guardian by Aidan Kelly, a doctor, in which he explains how we’ve ended up in the farcical situation where fashion writers, bigoted journalists and arrogant celebrities are considered experts in trans healthcare but clinicians and prestigious medical organisations are not. In this area of… [more]
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If it weren’t so horrific it’d be funny: to counter whistleblowers’ claims that since the puberty blocker ban more than 16 young people on waiting lists have taken their own lives, the new government hastily commissioned a report to disprove their claims by, er, discounting the deaths of people on waiting lists. The report’s author… [more]
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This has been one of the most dispiriting elections I can remember; rather than voting for anything, a lot of people were voting against the Tories. And it was particularly dispiriting for LGBTQ+ people like me: of the seven candidates on my ballot paper, five of them were from parties who are a danger to… [more]
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There’s a good piece in today’s National by Caitlin Logan on the issues that real feminist groups are campaigning on while faux-feminists have been scaremongering about trans people. Logan identifies key issues including inequality in the social security system – inequality that means by 2027 the average income of women will have dropped by 7%… [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.
