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There’s a good piece in The Conversation by Tey Meadow, assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University, on the hot-button topic of gender non-conforming kids. I know the language around this stuff can be confusing if you’re not steeped in it. By gender non-conforming we mean rejecting stereotypical gendered things, so for example a girl… [more]
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I recently started learning to play the piano. If it’s true that it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, that means my neighbours will stop hating me in the year 2210, or 2114 if I practice a lot more often. Getting good isn’t really the point, though. As TS Eliot rightly put it,… [more]
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Neo-nazi poster boy Milo has posted a big rant to Facebook about how his career has hit the skids. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to read it without laughing. There’s more to this than well-deserved schadenfreude, though. It’s yet more evidence that refusing to give vicious rabble-rousers a platform kills… [more]
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There’s funny, and then there’s the kind of funny where you end up a crying. honking mess. Cris Shapan’s fake posters and book covers leave me helpless with laughter. His Facebook page is a joy. What I love about Shapan’s work isn’t just the jokes, although the fake pulp novel Maelstrom Of Pee made me… [more]
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What would it be like if some of the world’s greatest horror writers got together to pitch each other stories? Mike Rosen of Guttersnipe Comics thinks he knows. I don’t want to spoil any of the jokes by quoting them here. The whole thing made me laugh like a drain (language NSFW). [more]
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I’ve had all three generations of Apple Watch, but it’s time to call time on it. It is an incredibly clever device and it felt very futuristic when it first came out. But it does absolutely nothing to make my life better. That’s not to say it can’t be useful. It can. But it’s not… [more]
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I’ve been locked out of my Twitter account for a terrible, terrible crime. No, not being a big old Nazi. Messing with the year of birth in my profile page. This, apparently, is a really bad thing and I can’t currently read anything on Twitter or see other people’s messages to me. It’s been brilliant. Being… [more]
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I’ve been meaning to share this for aaaaaaages. Harrison Bergeron, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was… [more]
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One of the many joys of being a late transitioning trans woman is that you have a choice: you can be a bearded lady, you can get used to shaving two or three times a day, or you can have facial electrolysis to remove your stubble. If you’re younger or darker-haired there’s another option, laser… [more]
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A US school district has cancelled classes after parents made multiple violent threats against a 12-year-old trans girl. The only thing I find shocking about this is that it’s made headlines. There are plenty of examples of parents bullying young trans people online. This case began with a mum stirring up hatred. If you think… [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.
