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I don’t usually post content warnings but be aware that this story is really horrific. I’m writing it on the basis of information collated by Eden’s friends and by journalist Erin Reed. If more details emerge to confirm or contradict the details here, I’ll update the post. Her name was Eden Knight. “Eden was funny,… [more]
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The Sandyford clinic is where Glasgow’s gender clinic is based, alongside various sexual health and victim counselling services. I’ve been attending it since 2017, and I’ve been meaning to write a proper piece about it for some time: visiting in person, even before COVID, was like playing the abandoned-hospital level of a horror video game.… [more]
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The Times has posted its latest culture war piece, in which parents are “shocked” by “graphic sex education in school”. Apparently “one mother says her son has ‘gone from finding out Santa Claus doesn’t exist to being told about anal sex’’, which is definitely a thing that actually happened. It’s a good piece to study… [more]
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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]
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.
