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The Conservative government has been stuffing the EHRC – the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – with anti-equality bigots for some time, which is why it recently and very publicly u-turned on its guidance regarding trans people and the Equality Act. But even knowing that, the latest minutes from the EHRC’s Scotland Committee are absolutely… [more]
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There’s been a very significant uptick in the amount of anti-trans bullshit in the newspapers this month, with papers such as The Express doing exactly what Express editor Gary Jones said in 2018 was “offensive… I wouldn’t want to be party to any newspaper that will publish such material”: running endless fabricated stories about a… [more]
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Two days ago, Police Scotland Greater Glasgow posted an appeal for information about a missing woman, Amy Campbell. She hasn’t been seen since the middle of March and was reported missing on 4 April. As you’d expect from a missing-woman appeal, there are hundreds of comments. But those comments, by and large, aren’t expressing concern… [more]
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This Wired piece by Katherine Alejandra Cross is excellent. IT’S DIFFICULT TO overcome the momentum of algorithmic suppression, but our hearts and minds remain our own. We can defend them against colonization by hate-campaigners, who feed on our despair like some demon in a German fairy tale. What is needed instead of ceaseless portents of doom… [more]
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The New York Times has a revelation: the US Christian Right deliberately targeted trans people as part of its strategy to rally its base in the aftermath of its equal marriage defeat. Or as I put it in my book, published six months ago and written quite a long time before that: …That tipping point… [more]
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The Equalities and Human Rights Commission, EHRC for short, is technically the UK’s equalities watchdog. I say technically because in the last few years the Tories have been stuffing it with stooges who are actively and vocally hostile to minority groups. So it’s not a huge surprise to see it rubber-stamping the Tories’ war on… [more]
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I had the great honour of delivering the closing remarks at this year’s Scottish Youth Publishers conference in Edinburgh, stepping into shoes previously worn by Denise Mina, Douglas Stuart and Nicola Sturgeon. My talk was about what I dubbed the four Ps of publishing: possibility, personality, power and people, and I’d like to share a… [more]
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New research proves something many of us already knew: people who actually know trans people are much more likely to be trans allies. Bigotry thrives in ignorance: as I point out in my book, a survey of Fox News viewers found that they were much more likely to say they have seen a ghost than… [more]
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It’s trans day of visibility today, which means we get to see the rank hypocrisy of politicians tweeting about their supposed support for trans people while openly supporting the removal of trans people’s rights. The latest front in the forever war against trans people is pushing the idea of “parents’ rights”. Based on a report… [more]
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This photo is the front page of the Washington Post, in which it surveyed hundreds of trans people and found that the overwhelming majority of us – nearly 80% – said our lives were happier post-transition. And as any trans person could have predicted, the people who said their lives weren’t happier said it was… [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.
