The cover of Carrie's book, Small Town Joy, and two review extracts. 

"An absolute treat of a read... a mixtape lovingly assembled by a friend's cool, knowledgeable older sister." - Gutter Magazine
"Her exploration of queer music's escapist, visionary powers brings joy, not in small neasures." - The Wire
  • There were some beautiful scenes in London yesterday when an estimated 22,000 people marched for Trans Pride. That number is absolutely astonishing: the crowd easily filled Trafalgar Square, and I saw lots of Pride veterans posting that the first London Prides – which were attended by people from the entire LGBT+ community, not just the… [more]

  • With Twitter doing its best impression of the Titan submersible, the race is on to find the next big social network. Previous contender Mastodon missed its opportunity the last time there was a Twitter exodus (I saw it described today as puritan, inward-looking and Protestant, which I think is very accurate), so the current favourite… [more]

  • I’ve been a regular on BBC Radio Scotland for three decades now: I first went on Good Morning Scotland in 2001, and by the time I moved to the suburbs in 2005 I was a weekly guest on MacAulay & Co; I think I started regularly appearing there in 2003. To give you an idea… [more]

  • I do love a good, righteously angry column. This, by Patrick Lennon in The Shot, gives anti-trans bigots both barrels: The toilet police are here and they want you to know they are very serious. They want you to think they’re asking important questions about women’s rights (despite overwhelming evidence that most cis women support… [more]

  • Jill Foster, a Daily Mail journalist, confirms on Twitter what we already surmised: UK anti-trans journalists collude in secret WhatsApp groups. This isn’t limited to the UK. In the US, anti-trans writers including one of the most prominent “just asking questions” jerk-off, Jesse Singal, demonised trans women in a private discussion forum that had been… [more]

  • The UK cat panic continues, with journalists who absolutely know better now offering cash for people to tell lies. This was posted, widely mocked and deleted earlier today. Offering money for stories is considered a bad thing in journalism, because as columnists’ drivel endlessly demonstrates, people will say any old shit for money. As a… [more]

  • Earlier today I wrote a post about the newspapers claiming that trans kids are identifying as cats, horses and the moon, a classic piece of demonisation straight out of the classic text Folk Devils and Moral Panics. This morning, Elon Musk – whose trans daughter has cut all ties with him, and whose wife apparently… [more]

  • We’ve been in the “making shit up” stage of the anti-trans culture war for a while now, but this story takes the biscuit: the completely invented tale of a school pupil identifying as a cat has moved from the Telegraph and the Independent into Radio 4, because our media is hopelessly broken. Imagine calling yourself… [more]

  • There’s an important new report by TGEU in which it asked for official data around gender recognition self-determination – aka Self-ID – in Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland. The focus was very much on finding evidence of gender self-determination not working, with requests including: Have there been cases of “regret”?… [more]

  • On a morning where the Prime Minister of Great Britain is caught on video making shit jokes about trans women to chortling MPs, and the government publishes guidance for schools urging teachers to out trans kids to their parents, something that can’t possibly have any negative results, it’s important to take your wins where you… [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.

A photo of the book Carrie Kills A Man.