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I’ll be doing not one but two events at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival on the 10th and 11th of August. First of all there’s 1995: Grrrls Aloud where I’ll be joining Emma Pollock, Cora Bissett and Chitra Ramaswamy, with a soundtrack by Hen Hoose’s Cariss Crosbie. We’re going to be talking about the other 1995:… [more]
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The Guardian reports* that Akua Reindorf, the Equalities Commissioner, has claimed that trans people “must accept a reduction in their rights” because we “have been lied to over many years” about what our human rights are. The Equality Act and the EHRC’s guidance on it, Reindorf essentially argues, were really a bathroom ban that nobody… [more]
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Multiple Scots LGBTQ+ organisations have published a joint statement about responding to the EHRC consultation regarding its Equality Act guidance, and having read the consultation documents in detail I think they’re right: the proposed guidance is focused exclusively on segregating trans people, makes no attempt to protect their human rights or dignity, provides no useful… [more]
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A new report in the International Journal for Equity in Health says that transphobia in the UK is causing a public health crisis. The paper identifies multiple issues: limited or non-existent access to appropriate healthcare; social exclusion; policy-driven discrimination; and “minority stress”, which leads to adverse health outcomes including cardiovascular disease and risk behaviours such… [more]
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It’s hard to imagine now, but the Daily Telegraph was once envied for its news reporting. Now it’s a comic for angry old people who want to be lied to – and it can’t even be bothered to do that very well. Today’s front page trails a big news report on the revelation that the… [more]
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One of the hallmarks of the genital-obsessed weirdo movement is to claim that there’s not enough research about trans healthcare, and to then ignore any research about trans healthcare because it doesn’t support their lurid claims. And there’s a great example of that in Utah where the Republicans commissioned a Cass-style report to justify their… [more]
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I do like it when people get righteously angry, and Sean Morley is righteously angry about “Britain’s Grotesque Obsession” with trans people. You will recall that the presence of trans people in the public eye was a non-issue until the mid-2010s, when suddenly it became the cause de jour for every entertainer, journalist or social… [more]
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The EHRC draft guidance has been published and as expected, it’s an incoherent and in many places illegal shitshow that appears to have been written by the same anti-trans groups the EHRC chair and commissioner are close friends of. But it’s achieving its goal, which is to get the newspapers to tell their readers that… [more]
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One of the things that really scares me is getting old – not because I’m scared of ageing, but because unless I die first I’ll eventually need to enter the care system. The care system in the UK is horrific for most, and there are extra terrors for LGBTQ+ people – so much so that… [more]
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Let’s talk about tits, shall we? Both literally, as in breasts, and metaphorically, as in bigoted men making complete tits of themselves. This weekend, a group of Scots trans women held a topless protest outside Holyrood over the Supreme Court verdict and its aftermath. With some irony, the very newspapers that love to call trans… [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.
