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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]
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Like most bloggers, I write in character: the character is a version of me, but it’s not the me that’s sometimes too sad to get out of bed or so angry I could twat somebody in the face with a shovel. So forgive me if I break character for a moment. I am so, so… [more]
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One of the key tenets of anti-trans activism is that you cannot deny biological reality. Many of the people who say this have a very shaky grasp of human biology. I don’t even mean their knowledge of endocrinology, cytogenics or other sciencey stuff that demonstrates humans are much more varied than you might have learnt… [more]
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A popular anti-trans “gotcha” is to ask, “what rights don’t trans people have?” The question is never asked in good faith, so trans people generally ignore it: it’s the same assholes with the same bullshit all over again shouting “debate me, cowards!” But by not answering it, it enables the bad faith poster to claim… [more]
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Two unrelated but connected pieces today: first, Paul Mason in the New Statesman about QAnon. In the past seven days we’ve seen such a “lying world of consistency†inspire mass actions by far-right movements, from the far-right invasion of Portland, to the storming of the Reichstag by anti-lockdown protesters, to the Trafalgar Square demonstration, also… [more]
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Genderkit has collated the latest waiting list information for UK trans healthcare and it’s the grimmest read yet: there isn’t a single gender clinic for adults that has a waiting list of less than two years, and those waiting lists are growing ever longer. This image is telling: the only clinics without years-long waiting lists… [more]
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I’ve always considered myself to be terribly shy. That probably seems weird given that for most of my adult life I’ve been the singer in bands, but performing in front of people was always something I felt forced to do, not something I wanted to do. That’s because I had terrible stage fright, stage fright… [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.
