-
Yesterday the Scottish Government published the initial results of its consultation on gender recognition reform. The public, including women’s groups dealing with the most vulnerable women in society, was overwhelmingly in favour of making life a little bit easier and a little more dignified for trans and non-binary people. It’s an interesting contrast to England,… [more]
-
I got a taxi home last night. I think it’s safe to assume that there aren’t many openly trans people getting taxis from that Glasgow suburb: when the driver clocked that my appearance was rather different from my voice he had a lot of questions, all of them deeply personal and inappropriate. I could have… [more]
-
There’s a thing some trans people do on social media to mark “Cake Day”, the anniversary of them starting transition: it’s usually (but not always) the anniversary of them starting HRT. It’s my first Cake Day today. Cake Day is often celebrated by posting before and after photos, usually showing a really miserable person in… [more]
-
One of the more depressing things about the internet is the way that some publications have embraced hate clicks. Hate clicks are when you publish something terrible and then lots of people share it, not because they agree with it but because they’re shocked by how awful it is. The statistics show that lots of… [more]
-
I was reading a lot of blogs over the weekend, and one comment in particular really stood out for me: We don’t choose to be LGBTQ, but we choose whether to be part of the LGBTQ community. I think that’s very true. I didn’t choose to be trans, but I can choose whether to see… [more]
-
I got a letter from the NHS yesterday. I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. I’ve been waiting a long time because while it was dictated on the 9th of July, it wasn’t typed until the 2nd of August and didn’t get here until the 14th of September. It had been sent by… [more]
-
I’m a big fan of the writer Jenny Boylan, and about a month back I posted a link to a Twitter thread where she talked about being a late transitioning trans woman. She’s now turned it into a column for the New York Times. People often ask late transitioners, why now, after all this time?… [more]
-
A tale of two tweets. The first, a news story tweeted by Glasgow Live: A Glasgow bridge has been decked in brightly coloured post-it notes with messages which aim to help bring people back from the brink of suicide. The notes, which appeared this morning (Monday), have been posted on the Squinty Bridge and on… [more]
-
I’ve written once or twice that the world is very different when you walk in women’s shoes: if you’re born and socialised as male you inhabit a completely different planet to women. It’s something many of my women friends find blackly funny when I’m outraged by an experience they have every day. There was a… [more]
-
This is Maddie. She’s 12. She’s “the transgender”, “the thing”, the “lil half baked maggot” that parents of other kids think should be sorted out with “a good sharp knife”. Maddie’s story went viral. I thought it was upsetting enough, but then I watched the Vice News video report. Seeing a wee girl pretending 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.
