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Do you remember when bigots were ashamed to be openly bigoted? When racists were too scared to say racist things? When it wasn’t okay to brag about grabbing women by the pussy? I do, and I’d like those days to return. One of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in is that far too… [more]
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The BMA’s annual conference has called on the government to protect the rights of trans and non-binary people both in healthcare and in wider society. Dr Helena McKeown, Chair of the BMA representative body, said: The BMA supports transgender and nonbinary individuals’ equal rights to live their lives with dignity which includes the right to… [more]
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The world’s on fire, everything is awful and it’s not a great time to be LGBT+, so it’s important to celebrate the little pieces of good news among the relentless misery of 2020. The luminous Sarah McBride won the Democratic nomination for a Delaware seat last night, which means she’s on track to be America’s… [more]
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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]
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.
