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A good piece in Salon noting the parallels between the “Satanic panic” of the 80s and the trans panic today: The trans panic currently gripping the Christian right is an extension of the Satanic panic that took hold in the 1980s — a worldview that owes little to reality or to the teachings of Jesus.… [more]
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A new YouGov survey reports that 84% of trans people in the UK feel unsafe. I’m surprised the figure is so low. 24% of respondents said they’d experienced physical abuse in public; 65% have experienced verbal abuse in public. Here’s just one example from this weekend in Glasgow: friends of my eldest, teenagers, having a… [more]
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UK newspapers are sounding the alarm: a US-based evangelical lobby group with deep pockets is trying to influence UK politics and take away marginalised people’s human rights. The group is the Alliance Defending Freedom; the marginalised group are women. The ADF wants to see the UK ban abortion, even though the UK is overwhelmingly against… [more]
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Bella Caledonia have published a lovely, thoughtful review of my book, Small Town Joy. I love reviews like this where I get to know a bit about the reviewer, as well as about the thing being reviewed. Some books you take in with your head. Others you absorb through your skin. Carrie Marshall’s Small Town… [more]
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One of the little joys of technology is that whenever I need to re-order my prescriptions, I can use the Patient Access app. It lists all my prescriptions and I simply tap the ones I need, and a few days later the pharmacy texts me to let me know they’re ready. If I weren’t trans,… [more]
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The anti-trans mob never had “reasonable concerns”; they’re a hate movement. And they’re now so emboldened that they’re not trying to hide that any more. Speaking at yesterday’s Conservative party conference, both Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance made it very clear what they believed, with the latter’s CEO saying that supporting any form of… [more]
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A new peer-reviewed study of the Cass Review, the UK project that was used to stop trans teens’ healthcare, has been published. And like all the other peer-reviewed studies of the Cass Review, it’s absolutely damning. It once again demonstrates that the review was skewed to deliver a pre-determined outcome that flies in the face… [more]
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When I self-referred to Glasgow’s gender clinic in 2016, the waiting list for a first appointment was 11 months. Now, it’s 224 years. That’s not a typo. The Sandyford gender clinic is so hopelessly understaffed that it’s barely seeing any people, so the backlog is ever growing. The national average is bad enough – 25… [more]
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Freedom of Information requests have revealed collusion between the Department of Health and Social Care and anti-trans groups: The correspondence shows Sex Matters, LGB Alliance and Transgender Trend manoeuvring their way into government as so-called “stakeholders” on trans policy, despite lacking any medical expertise and spreading narratives that misrepresent science, misuse human rights law, and… [more]
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The Scottish Government has published new guidance about segregating school toilets, which means trans kids will be prevented from using the toilets appropriate to their gender. Is that enough for the transphobes? Of course it isn’t. The Scotsman quotes Maya Forstater of anti-trans hate group Sex Matters, for whom segregating trans children doesn’t go far… [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.
