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On Thursday, I was verbally abused in the street for being trans. I wonder, what kind of person do you imagine doing that, and where? Are you thinking lower working class, poorly educated, teenage, rolling down Sauchiehall Street after a night of promotional jaegerbombs? Or maybe a shaven-headed neanderthal, drunk, in a pub I should [more]
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The UK government publishes its new LGBT strategy today. Part of the strategy includes publishing the findings of a survey that show – surprise! – life is often really shit for LGBT people. The plans include improved hate crime protection, a ban on dangerous quackery such as conversion therapy (aka “pray the gay away” cures [more]
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I liked this photo: it shows members of the Scots parliament wearing rainbow-coloured ties to mark their support for the TIE campaign. The TIE Campaign only three years old but is doing great things in Scottish schools. It aims to reduce bullying and ignorance by encouraging LGBT-inclusive education in schools, and it works. The Sunday Herald: [more]
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Morrissey has cancelled his UK and Ireland tour citing “logistical problems”. Various well-informed sources say those problems are of the “persuading people to buy tickets” variety. Â In one Scots venue with a capacity of 2,900, I’m told, he barely sold 400 tickets after weeks on sale. In the last six years, Morrissey has cancelled 134 [more]
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Another day, another mass killing in America by a man who – surprise! – has a history of troubling behaviour towards women. The target, the Capital Gazette newspaper, had previously reported the shooter’s online harassment of a woman; he tried and failed to sue them. So three years later, he picked up a gun instead. [more]
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This is from the New York Times in 1934. There are quite a few of these things being shared on social media at the moment, including old articles urging black people to be civil to people who want to keep them segregated, and more recent articles urging LGBT people to be nice to howling bigots. [more]
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Imagine I started a petition claiming that the government was going to ban bees and demanding that it didn’t. “We’re not going to ban bees,” the government would respond. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” How would you report that? Would you: (a) Conclude that ‘arseholes create petition about imaginary problem’ wasn’t newsworthy in [more]
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Same Star is another of David’s compositions and another vocal where I appear to be channelling E from Eels, which of course is never a bad thing. It’s a musical version of the Scots phrase “we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns”: we have much more in common than what divides us, and we’re all busking it. [more]
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A Hollow Victory was one of the first songs David and I wrote for the current crop of music, but it took a while to get right: the superbly retro electro stomp was there from the outset but it took a bit of fiddling to find a version we both liked. It’s a companion piece [more]
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This is Pushing Air, a song about sound and fury signifying nothing. Ironically, it started off as sound and fury: I love noisy guitar rock and that tends to be my go-to for songwriting, but sometimes you need a stiletto, not a blunderbuss. This is a stiletto, written during a time when I really needed [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.
