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The actor Alan Cumming wrote this for the Royal Society of Edinburgh and shared it on his Instagram. I think he’s right. The vast majority of people who fear LGBT+ folks aren’t hateful. The problem is that they are lied to by a small but vocal group of people who are hateful and whose goal… [more]
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Another Angry Woman has an excellent post about the comedian Robert Webb, who’d previously been vocally transphobic. This week he was gently questioned about it in an interview by a presenter who is the parent of a trans child. Faced with someone who actually had some insight into the subject of trans kids, Webb’s response… [more]
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This, by Katie J.M. Baker in Lux magazine, is a good analysis of how an apparently benign website, Mumsnet, became a hotbed of anti-trans radicalism. Baker has previously reported on misogynist men online including incels and self-proclaimed Men’s Rights activists. I think Baker is right in her judgement that women’s genuine anger and trauma –… [more]
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In Texas, bill SB1646 would make it illegal for parents to support their trans children. Merely consenting to a doctor’s prescription of puberty blockers would be child abuse and cause to remove the child from their parents. As writer Cassie Celeste put it on Twitter: We’ve gone from “just asking questions” to this in six… [more]
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Slate explains the role of the Alliance Defending Freedom in US (and UK) anti-trans bills and legal cases. Over the last 28 years, the ADF has defended laws prohibiting same-sex intimacy; opposed marriage, adoption, and surrogacy for same-sex couples; attacked LGBTQ non-discrimination laws, as well as bans on conversion therapy for minors; argued in favor… [more]
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One of the problems with the Christian Right’s claims of trans kids being rushed into surgery is that trans kids aren’t being rushed into surgery. And that’s inconvenient when you’re trying to pass anti-trans legislation on the basis of protecting children from exactly that. What’s a bigot to do? Simple. Redefine the definition of kids… [more]
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The current “debate” over whether trans people should be excluded from a ban on conversion therapy isn’t just bigoted. It’s also ignorant. The medical establishment has known for at least fifty years that you can’t convert a trans person into a cisgender one. As the American Journal of Psychiatry put it in 1969: Traditional psychotherapies… [more]
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A good piece in the WSJ about right-wing professors who claim that deliberately misgendering students is exposing them to challenging ideas. Intentionally demeaning our students will not help untangle knotty concepts. For a professor to gender students as they see fit is about power, not ideas. True academic freedom does not mandate, much less permit,… [more]
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One of the reasons I write so much here is because I wish someone had written for me when I didn’t know who I was. Today I learned the phrase “possibility model”: it’s somebody whose visibility tells you that there are other people like you, that being like you is perfectly normal. This, by Dr… [more]
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It’s Trans Day of Visibility tomorrow, a day to celebrate trans people and raise awareness of the discrimination we face. This year’s TDOV takes place in a terrifying climate. In the US, states have banned trans healthcare for teens and made it legal for healthcare workers to refuse to treat LGBT+ people; there are moves… [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.
