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One of the key attack strategies of the anti-trans movement is to attack the idea of trans women participating in sports. It’s quite clever, because elite athletes are very different from us “normal” people: people like Michael Phelps or Sharron Davies are basically freaks of nature. Davies has been (wrongly) tagged on the internet as… [more]
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This week, MP Jess Phillips spent over five minutes in parliament reading the names of women and girls murdered, or believed to have been murdered, by men. One of those girls was trans teen Brianna Ghey, whose alleged killers are awaiting trial. The furious, hateful, inhuman response from the “reasonable concerns”, “protect women” crowd managed… [more]
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Today, The Telegraph and Radio 4 gave extensive coverage to a brand new anti-trans group supported by various famous transphobes. Meanwhile in America, Mother Jones reports on the smoking gun that proves collusion between evangelical Christians, right-wing politicians and supposedly grass-roots lobby groups. Many of the key players are also active in UK anti-trans activism.… [more]
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I’ve seen my name in print quite a lot recently, but it hasn’t all been book-related. I’ve been dragged into the culture war because of a BBC Radio Scotland item I contributed to, and as a result I ended up in publications ranging from PinkNews to The Independent and the LA Times. As a journalist,… [more]
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Writing in The Spectator, Mary Wakefield has a terrible tale to share. “A friend in the education world has told me he knows of several British schools in which children are identifying as animals. There’s a horse child who’s taken out by staff for gallops; a boy dinosaur who is fed on strips of meat.”… [more]
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Last week at the US Republican CPAC conference, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said that “for the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” to loud applause. He now claims that he didn’t mean that trans people should be eradicated; just “transgenderism”. Let’s try that with some other isms, shall we?… [more]
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This graph is astonishing, if unsurprising: the UK press is publishing an average of 38 articles about trans people per day, most of them negative. Writing in advertising industry site Outvertising, Marty Davies makes it clear that brands, via advertising, are funding this – and that online advertising incentivises it. “We’re finding ourselves funding a… [more]
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While the press continue to pretend that people who aren’t trans are being rushed into irreversible medical treatment, trans people continue to die from inadequate healthcare and disgracefully long waiting lists. The coroner’s report into the suicide of 21-year-old Northern Irish trans woman Sophie Williams, a report released this week, found that multiple failings by… [more]
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Private Eye magazine would like you to believe that the magazine is a brave outsider, fearlessly speaking truth to power and exposing media hypocrisy. The reality, of course, is that it’s part of the same incestuous bubble as the media it reports on. Here’s an example. Normally, a high profile left-wing writer leaving a high… [more]
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“Average use of the word ‘trans’ in UK media stories about Brianna Ghey: 0.5 Average use of the word ‘trans’ in UK media stories about Isla Bryson: 16,427.1 The first is a victim of a terrible crime, likely targeted for being trans; the latter a perpetrator of a terrible crime, in which her trans status… [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.
