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This is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever read. Gillian Frank and Lauren Gutterman, for Jezebel: How the ‘Girl Watching’ Fad of the 1960s Taught Men to Harass Women. In the spring of 1968, 21-year-old Francine Gottfried began working as an IBM machine operator at a data processing plant in lower Manhattan. Gottfried… [more]
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The anti-trans mob and their evangelical Christian pals are behind a judicial review that could have chilling effects on young women’s access to contraception. That’s not a potential unintended consequence. It’s the whole point. Stonewall’s Nancy Kelley, writing in the i Paper: If [we] chip away at the idea that children and young people are… [more]
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This week, the BBC and The Times both went after the private GP service GenderGP, an ongoing target of the anti-trans mob. I’ve written about GenderGP before: it’s a practice that enables trans people to access healthcare privately when the NHS expects them to wait for many years for an initial assessment. I’m a former… [more]
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Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A bigot does bigoted things that reflect badly on their employer, they get the boot, and the Christian Legal Centre tries to make them a free speech hero. Said centre is then handed its arse on a plate by a tribunal judge who points out the bleeding obvious:… [more]
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I was interviewed on camera for a BBC thing today, and it was filmed on an outdoor bit near my flat. As we filmed the interview we had to stop because a small dog was yapping. We looked up to see its owner, a really unpleasant old woman who’s previously yelled at my kids for… [more]
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One of the reasons so many left-leaning people were shocked by the election of Donald Trump was because to much of the left-leaning media, Trump was simply a figure of fun; not somebody worth taking seriously, let alone doing anything to try and stop. I think they’re taking him a lot more seriously now. But… [more]
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The photo above is of Petra De Sutter, the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium. She’s also Minister for Public Enterprises. Oh, and she’s transgender. As the Brussels Time notes, that bit “went almost unremarked upon by Belgian media… [other than] when remarking on the diverse make up of the new government – which… [more]
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Katelyn Burns has written an excellent piece for Vox: 9 questions about trans issues you were too embarrassed to ask. The questions are: What does it mean to be trans? Why should I care about trans issues? What about the pronouns thing? What issues are trans people fighting for? Why are we always talking about… [more]
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This, from Gogglebox, is lovely: it’s people watching an episode of First Dates featuring a trans man. “a little bit different but it don’t matter does it” adored this: GoggleBox at its best last night, celebrating a trans storyline on FirstDates and (obviously) ecstatic that it works out for them. not being a dick isn’t… [more]
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This, by MM Carrigan in Eater, is a great bit of writing. It’s about the semi-mythical fast food buffets that are unimaginable now, “an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.” In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder… [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.
