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Jessica Valenti writes about the Aaron Coleman saga in the US. The short version: Coleman, a Democratic candidate, “committed serious harassment and sexual misconduct when he was a teenager: Between the ages of 12 and 14, he bullied one girl so badly that she attempted suicide; extorted another classmate with a nude photo which he… [more]
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I volunteer with SWIM, a charity dedicated to equality in music, and their latest wheeze is called Swimspire: members are asked to share any key lessons they’ve learnt, and I’m one of the members they asked. My four aren’t specifically for music, as I think they apply to work generally: The smartest, most talented people… [more]
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If you don’t want to make yourself thoroughly miserable about the state of the world, don’t read the Reddit group r/QAnonCasualties. It’s a forum for people who’ve lost or are losing friends and family to conspiracy theories. Mum, stepdad and brother have been well down the rabbit hole since about 2013-2014. Started with flat earth,… [more]
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Gemma Stone, writing on Medium: Recently, an anti-trans activist was spoken to by police over a suspected hate crime. Suzy Ireson has been quite prolific in posting anti-trans propaganda around public places, with a direct intention of drumming up hate for trans people and making trans people feel intimidated. She even gleefully admits to doing… [more]
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Sometimes columnists accidentally reveal more about themselves than they perhaps intended. Iain MacWhirter in The Herald: Doing any of those things without consent is sexual harassment, and the Herald’s self-appointed Defender of Women should know that. Emma Rich of Engender Scotland: Sexual harassment is sex discrimination & a human rights violation. For decades, unwanted hair… [more]
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The rather dull headline undersells this sensitive, fascinating and terribly sad piece about the death of Angela Martinez last month in LA: Death of an Indigenous essential worker sparks debate over gender identity. Martinez died of COVID-19, but the manager at the Burger King where she worked claimed she died from a “hormone overdose”. It… [more]
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One of my friends has been watching with horror as a former school friend has plummeted down the rabbit hole of online radicalisation. The former friend is a university educated middle class woman; think stereotypical Waitrose shopper. Six months ago, the friend started posting on Facebook about her doubts over the official COVID death tolls.… [more]
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One of the things that helped keep me sane during lockdown was writing and performing music, and the Songs From Lockdown project was a big part of that: each week, songwriters would give the group a challenge and we’d go and write songs based on that challenge. You can listen to all the tracks here,… [more]
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We’ve known for some time that Donald Trump and the Republican Party intend to demonise trans people and trans allies in their election campaign to distract from that whole “killing 170,000 people and being corrupt on a scale never seen before” thing, and the first shots in that attack have now been fired. With the… [more]
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Writing for Jezebel, Katelyn Burns tells an extraordinary story of medical malpractice, litigious surgeons and people whose lives are changed irrevocably by medical mistakes: When Surgeons Fail Their Trans Patients. Warning, it’s pretty graphic in places. It’s important to note that the vast majority of trans people’s surgeries have positive outcomes: gender reassignment surgery has an… [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.
