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Vogue contributor and trans woman Paris Lees posted something online yesterday that sounded too crazy to be true: More Americans claim to have seen a ghost than to have met a transgender person. But it is true. Huffington Post points out that a 2009 Pew Research Center survey found that 18% of Americans claim to [more]
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This is heartbreaking, powerful and thought-provoking: Buying Myself Back, by Emily Ratajkowski. It’s about photographs and paintings and who can control images of you. And it’ll probably further damage your faith in human nature. Pictures meant only for a person who loved me and with whom I’d felt safe — photos taken out of trust [more]
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I posted yesterday about my experience of being on decapeptyl, which stops my body making testosterone. I get an injection every 12 weeks, and without fail the final week is horrible: I feel stupid, sluggish and sad. By coincidence, a trans person I know was talking online about decapeptyl and the massive mental dip they [more]
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Every twelve weeks, I feel like shit. It coincides with the injection cycle for one of my medications, which stops my body from making testosterone; in the week or so before each injection I feel sluggish and stupid and short-tempered and sad. I don’t know if it’s connected or a coincidence, if it’s a genuine [more]
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There’s a lovely and very sad obituary of the late NME writer Dele Fadele in The Guardian. Fadele was an extraordinary writer and the obituary demonstrates how much of an impact he had on people. He certainly had an impact on me: in the 80s and 90s the music press was a lifeline for me, [more]
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I’ve written once or twice about choosing not to spend money with firms who platform bigots or who donate to bigots’ charities. So here’s a refreshing alternative to that: in the UK, over 130 major companies have come together in a show of support for trans people. Their message is simple and should be uncontroversial: [more]
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JK Rowling, you’ll recall, doesn’t have a problem with trans people. How could she! The very suggestion! Just because her second Strike book portrayed trans characters as unstable and aggressive and threatened them with prison rape – it “won’t be fun for you… not pre-op” – doesn’t mean she has a problem with trans people. [more]
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I’ve written before about the links between the Religious Right and supposedly grass-roots pressure groups with “reasonable concerns” about inclusive education, trans kids and so on. Writing in Byline Times, Sian Norris details some of those links. Groups such as Parent Power, Authentic RSE, 40 Days, and the School Gate Campaign provide a Trojan horse [more]
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I never thought I’d find myself listening to a documentary about syphilis in 1930s America, but that was before I discovered You’re Wrong About. It’s a podcast that challenges the prevailing narrative about significant people and significant events, and the documentary in question is about something I hadn’t heard of before: the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, [more]
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The UK edition of The Guardian hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory with its coverage of trans-related issues – this week marks a year since it last commissioned any UK-based trans writer on the topic despite running many, many pieces by anti-trans writers in the same period. So this, a feature about trans key workers [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.
