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Jenny Boylan, novelist, columnist and author of the excellent memoir She’s Not There, posted a really worthwhile thread on Twitter today. I’ll give you a flavour: People often ask late-transitioners, Why now? After all this time? What kind of woman do you think you can be, after missing your girlhood and your adolescence? But those… [more]
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The Times has carried out an investigation into Twitter. References to child sex abuse, taunting of rape victims, disturbing messages from stalkers, homophobia and transphobia all stayed on the site after Twitter reviewed the content and decided that none of it breached its terms. Examples of the hate speech include attempts to link LGBT people… [more]
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There’s an interesting piece in Bella Caledonia by Mike Small about how “overtourism” is doing to Edinburgh what it’s done to so many other places in the world. It’s not just Edinburgh. The “North Coast 500” road route, an invention to draw in tourists, destroyed the road surface and caused chaos on rural roads thanks to… [more]
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This is the penultimate upload from the album we haven’t actually got a title for yet. It’s called Your Love Is Not Enough and it’s a typically bleak slab of minimalist electronic pop. We’re available for children’s parties and other celebratory events. [more]
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No, not its boss, Jack Dorsey. This guy. Twitter doesn’t want to move against hatemongers such as Alex Jones because if they do, it begs the question: why not Trump? The short answer is: $2 billion. That’s how much the Trump account is believed to be worth to Twitter, which is why it hasn’t blocked… [more]
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Fortress Britain doesn’t want foreign musicians. The musician Peter Gabriel has expressed “alarm†over UK foreign policy after a number of international artists were unable to perform at Womad world music festival after visa issues. Or authors. A dozen authors who were planning to attend this year’s Edinburgh international book festival have had their visas… [more]
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Chitra Ramaswamy has a powerful piece in The Guardian about the horrors of LGBT conversion therapy. Conversion therapy – sometimes referred to as “cure†therapy, reparative therapy, ex-gay therapy or sexual-orientation change efforts – refers to any treatment aiming to change a person’s sexual orientation or suppress their gender identity. It is a nebulous term,… [more]
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The Department of Work and Pensions is solving the problem of people being referred to food banks by, er, banning use of the word “referral” and ensuring Jobcentre staff don’t offer anybody food bank vouchers. Instead, they’re to be “signposted” and given “signposting slips” that can be, er, traded for food at food banks. The numbers… [more]
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There’s trolling, and then there’s this. An eight-year-old trans girl, Avery Jackson, has raised enough money to open a “transgender house” – directly across the road from infamous hatemongers the Westboro Baptist Church. It’s next to the rainbow-painted Equality House that’s been annoying them since 2013. If you’re not familiar with the WBC, they’re the… [more]
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Facebook has taken down much of Alex “Infowars” Jones’ content, as have Apple and Spotify. (Update, 7/8/18: Apple was the first to move. The others were clearly waiting for somebody else to lead.) Reuters: The company [Facebook] said it removed the pages “for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language… [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.
