-
Last year, trans people wryly joked that it was just a matter of time before some anti-trans dolt praised the Taliban because “at least they know what a woman is”. That dolt turned out to be Julia Hartley-Brewer, who tweeted on 29 August: “At least the Taliban know what a woman is” in response to… [more]
-
I joined the photo sharing site Flickr in the early 2000s and closed my account this week, nearly two decades later. I’d have closed it a couple of years ago but I’d forgotten all about it: the only reason I still had an account was to share photos with my mum, who at the time… [more]
-
In the last few weeks, two stories have stood out to me among the usual avalanche of anti-trans content. The first story is the introduction of a new open category in the swimming World Cup for “all sex and gender identities”. And the second is the story of a trans woman who was turned away… [more]
-
If you thought The Sun newspaper had changed its spots since the days of demonising AIDS sufferers and pissing on the Hillsborough dead, it would like to show you otherwise. Here’s its Sun Says column: Yes, it’s using dead babies as cannon fodder in its war on LGBTQ people. Those babies were not murdered by… [more]
-
Thank you so much to Alex Hyde, Kirsty Logan, Szilvia Molnar and everybody who helped make our chat at the Edinburgh International Book Festival so much fun. This was my first time at the festival and if you haven’t been, I’d really recommend you go next year. It’s a huge event featuring lots of amazing… [more]
-
This superb piece by Niko Stratis is a must-read about the no-point-in-reading news stories telling you that some old rich guy or other thinks trans women are icky and probably murderous. We are trickster gods, barbed and poisonous, waiting to rip the seams of the tender fabric of this gentle world. But we are never… [more]
-
One of the more irritating barks of the anti-trans sealions is “what rights don’t trans people have, exactly?” It’s irritating because it’s deliberately obtuse: many of the rights we have on paper are rights that are not enforced, which means they might as well not exist. And the sealions know that but pretend not to.… [more]
-
I’ve written many times about the entirely fictional phenomenon of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” which, despite not existing, is being used by right-wing politicians to justify their hateful assaults on trans healthcare as well as by UK culture warriors online and in newspaper columns and comments sections. This, in Scientific American, is yet more evidence… [more]
-
It’s nearly six years since I started transitioning, and my relationship to my body has changed quite significantly since I began. As I wrote in my book, I never had the severe body dysphoria that many trans people experience, the discomfort, unhappiness or even horror that comes from your body and mind not matching up.… [more]
-
Following in the ridiculous footsteps of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is the latest publication to get in on the manufactured outrage over the supposed censorship of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls. According to the article by noted thought leader Richard Madeley, what we’re seeing is “neopuritanical cultural censorship”. For the benefit 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.
