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30 years ago today, Section 28 (Section 2A in Scotland) was introduced to ban the “promotion” of gay and lesbian “lifestyles” in schools to protect children from the entirely invented dangers of gay and lesbian people. It wasn’t repealed until 2003 in England and Wales, although Scotland canned it in 2001. I was 15 when [more]
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James Kirkup of The Spectator has written many articles that unquestionably parrot the propaganda of anti-trans bigots, but he reached a new low this week with the story of sniggering arsehole David Lewis. Lewis is – or rather, was; Labour suspended him for, well, being a sniggering arsehole – standing for election as a women’s [more]
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My friends at Fashion Fix Daily asked me to write a piece on something I’ve touched on a few times in this blog: the US money that’s attempting to influence laws in other countries, most notably the campaign to repeal the anti-abortion Eighth Amendment in Ireland. Ireland votes this Friday. What used to be an [more]
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A few weeks back I posted a link to a superb literary kicking of right-wing charlatan Jordan Peterson. Here’s another, this time via the writer Daniel Karasik. Karasik wrote a column defending Peterson’s views on trans people’s pronouns, which is what made Peterson infamous in the first place, and Alexander Offord has written a glorious [more]
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I got a message from my lawyer today: my divorce paperwork has been curtly rejected by the relevant court because the introductory page uses the pronoun “she” to describe me; the court wants it to be “he”. This is despite the accompanying evidence of my name change in the form of my amended birth certificate, [more]
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I blogged a few days ago about the problem with mental health services: it’s all very well to urge people to get help, but the help needs to be there for them. This excellent piece by Vic Parsons explains how the system is failing many LGBT people. People are still being left in limbo, on [more]
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When I came out as trans, I joked that I did it because I wanted to get yelled at in the street by people in vans. But until last night on the way to the pub, it had never actually happened to me. [more]
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The Onion has had to publish its article again: This week’s school shooting is in Texas where – surprise! – the shooter is a straight white man who hates women. The Texas school shooter killed a girl who turned down his advances and rejected him in front of class before massacring seven more classmates and [more]
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Brian Beacom caused online outrage recently when he wrote a column in the (Glasgow) Herald dismissing Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer win in the music category. To paraphrase: black people’s music isn’t proper music. Today, he’s marking mental health awareness week by saying that the cure for mental illness is to “grow a pair”. If you need [more]
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The writer Tess Stenson posted something to Twitter earlier that really resonated with me. When I first joined Twitter, many moons ago, I pointedly decided not to turn my feed into a trans feed. I joined so I could promote my upcoming book, and franky, I didn’t want to bore people with those issues. As [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.
