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The UK Prime Minister, as I’m sure you’ve seen, has promised to ban “heavy-handed measures” that don’t exist: “taxes on eating meat”, “sorting your rubbish into seven different bins”, and so on. He has previously spoken against other things that don’t exist, such as children identifying as cats, once again with the full-throated support of… [more]
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The Huffington Post has an interesting exposé of the people making good money from bad takes and pseudoscience: you can make tens of thousands of dollars presenting pseudoscience in the employ of anti-trans religious extremists. And while the article is mainly about the US, the UK gets a look-in too. You may recognise the names… [more]
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I’ve written many times that because trans people are normal people, they are just as varied as normal people – and that means some of us are idiots. Among the worst are people often described as “pick-mes”, which is a term used to describe members of a marginalised group who’ll happily throw their entire community… [more]
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In 2019, both the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland formally pledged to ban conversion therapy. In 2023, both the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland said that their bans would be introduced this year. This week, both the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland decided they were no… [more]
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I’m technically still a Twitter/X user, because I maintain an account there. But if you want to chat with me on social media, that’s no longer the place to do it. I’ve unfollowed absolutely everybody and deleted all my personalisation data so I’m not tempted to use it. It’s interesting to see what happens to… [more]
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I’d like to introduce you to my friends Laura, Amy and Steven. I don’t understand why Laura loves incredibly derivative and often idiotic punk rock, and she thinks that my beloved REM are one of the worst bands in human history. Other than that, we get on brilliantly. I don’t share Amy’s veganism, and she… [more]
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It’s very hard to write about the grifters, bigots and assorted arseholes waging war on trans people and make it entertaining, let alone funny, but Liz Crash manages it with great aplomb in her piece about the supposed “erasure” of lesbian women by trans women, a claim beloved of far-right goons and their useful idiots.… [more]
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The London Gender Identity Clinic has just updated its waiting list information: as of July 2023 it was making first appointments for people first referred in July/August 2018, five years ago. With 324 new referrals each month and 55 first appointments offered per month, it’s clear that that five year figure is only going to… [more]
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If you’re looking for Carrie Kills A Man on Audible right now, you won’t find it. I’m tempted to pretend that it’s because I’ve been silenced and get myself a few weeks of national newspaper and broadcasting publicity, but I’m too honest to do that. It’s an admin thing and it’ll be back on the… [more]
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In bad movies, villains like to explain in advance what they’re going to do. And in the bad movie we currently appear to be living in, the Christian Right does that too. Often, the most hateful plans and strategies are discussed openly at their conferences or published in their strategy documents. A good example of… [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.
