-
Whatever you think of the SNP/Green Party deal, it’s significant that 94.9% of the SNP membership voted in favour of a deal whose key points included GRA reform. Once again it demonstrates that the spittle-flecked anti-trans fury you see online isn’t representative of reality. But it is representative of what gets printed in the papers.… [more]
-
This interview with Shon Faye is a must-read. You can’t be fired or denied a service for being trans, you can legally change your gender, we have technically free healthcare… [but] because these rights exist, it gives people license to assume that everything’s fine when, actually, it’s far from fine. It doesn’t matter if gender… [more]
-
It’s ironic that The Guardian, a newspaper that – alongside its Sunday sibling, The Observer – has helped normalise transphobia in the UK, has published one of the best pieces I’ve read on the effects of transphobia in the UK. It’s an extract from Shon Faye’s forthcoming book, The Trans Issue, and I can think… [more]
-
Talia Lavin is one of the best writers on white supremacy and online/offline radicalisation, and this piece is very good: Why Transphobia Is at the Heart of the White Power Movement. gender nonconformity threatens a worldview that is fixated on immutable, straitened, and antiquated gender roles. In this violent milieu, white women are designated as… [more]
-
This is beautiful. The anti-trans group Speak Up For Women sent many submissions to the New Zealand Human Rights Council, but while they posted their submissions publicly they didn’t post the response – even though the letter explicitly asked them to. The reason? The HRC handed them their bigoted arses on a plate. https://twitter.com/postingdad/status/1427860575292256259 https://twitter.com/postingdad/status/1427864576377294854 [more]
-
Here’s a perfectly sane and normal response to Nicola Sturgeon’s post about the terrible events in Afghanistan. There are many more like it, as the anti-trans crowd hail the Taliban because they are apparently Gender Critical. These people have lost their minds. [more]
-
A blistering article by Dunja Mijatovic, the CoE commissioner for Human Rights. In addition to mobilising certain categories of voters, the exploitation of societal homo/transphobia has proven a convenient way to divert public attention away from government failure to address pressing social issues and rising inequalities and broader attacks under way on human rights and… [more]
-
I’ve been looking forward to reading The Appendix, by Liam Konemann: it’s one of 404 Ink’s “Inklings”, pocket-friendly books by interesting voices. Konemann’s book is beautifully written, fascinating, joyful and sad. It left me reeling. Here’s the blurb: In 2019, Liam Konemann began collating what he called ‘The Appendix’, a simple record of ongoing transphobia… [more]
-
Following on from my last post about “disruptive” tech firms, this excellent Jen Sorensen cartoon was published on The Nib (click <– for full strip). [more]
-
I’m deeply cynical about so-called disruptive businesses: the AirBnbs, the Deliveroos, the Ubers. I don’t think there’s anything particularly admirable about using VC money to undercut and destroy the competition or trying to evade the regulations designed to protect the people who use the service or the people who do the work. But I 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.
