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This, by Adam Ramsay in Opendemocracy, is magnificent. It’s about toxic masculinity, male depression and the siren call of bad actors, and it’s endlessly quotable: The event was a sort of rally for far Right forces hoping to storm the European elections. But the combination of speakers seemed a bit incongruous: Catholic bishops and alt-Right… [more]
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Nesrine Malik in The Guardian on fearmongering and culture wars: It is about order. The threats to order are always present, and always held at bay, just barely, by conservative leaders valiantly fighting the imminent deluge. This authoritarian populist strategy is founded on an essential fiction: the pretence of powerlessness among politicians, and their voters, who… [more]
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I’ve just finished reading Democracy For Sale by Peter Geoghegan. It’s a fascinating and forensic analysis of the corrupting effect of dark money on British politics, and it left me thoroughly saddened: the toxic combination of big money and big tech is having a ruinous effect, and I don’t see a light at the end… [more]
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Today in the Telegraph, a once serious newspaper: Lots of people on the internet is reading this in Darth Vader’s voice. But while that’s funny, the article isn’t. The right-wing press, when it isn’t telling us that racist murderers love their mum, is increasingly resembling the state media of far-right dictatorships. [more]
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The Times would never write something like this about a murderer if they were Black. “Found purpose as a vigilante” makes him sound like Batman, not a white supremacist with an illegally acquired weapon who murdered two peaceful protestors in cold blood and injured a third. [more]
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Nora Mulready writes in The Independent about her journey from “gender critical” fighter against “a new ‘woke’ orthodoxy” to trans ally. I read everything I could find that validated my instinct that the increase in transgender identity was a millennial fad, mental health issues, trauma, social contagion, fashion, patriarchy, you name it, I clutched at… [more]
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I’ll be joining the line-up of this excellent online music, spoken word and visual arts event on Sunday. I don’t know all the other performers but the ones I do know are brilliant. This Sunday… @LGBTHealthy and @SomewhereEDI present Queer Fringe – Supporting and celebrating LGBTQ+ artists in Scotland in 2020 and beyond. 15 featured… [more]
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This, by Zoe Williams interviewing author Laura Bates, is terrifying: the toxic world of online misogyny. I think many people appreciate that the internet is a toxic swamp, but I don’t think many people appreciate the scale or the danger of it. “I started hearing boys at school who already felt that they’d been poisoned against… [more]
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There’s been a lot of discussion about conversion therapy, the often-illegal and usually deeply damaging attempts to force people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s horrific, of course. But you don’t have to give people electro-shock therapy or send them off to prayer camp to try and talk them out of being… [more]
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Much of the media – and much of the government, including a Prime Minister who didn’t appear to give a shit about the exams catastrophe or anything else that’s actually important – is huffing and puffing about the Wokerati Thought Police Black Lives Matter Political Correctness Cancel Culture Gone Mad “ban” on singing Land of… [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.
