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Trans Health UK has posted an update on the few services gender clinics are currently providing. It’s summarised in this image: Look at that bottom row: that’s the current waiting time for a first appointment. Not a prescription or a referral to anything; just a first assessment. The trend was obvious long before COVID-19 came… [more]
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Nesrine Malik in The Guardian writes about manufacturing dissent for ratings and clicks: The forums in which we find ourselves debating issues – Brexit, immigration or “identity politics†– are structurally designed to exacerbate, rather than resolve or even explore, differences. Conflict is favoured over conversation, animosity over inquiry. Usually, disagreements that happen on social media… [more]
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Last year, Ofcom found that 49% of the UK population used social media to access news reporting; the Pew Research Center reported a similar figure, 55%, in the US. Much of the news people see and share on social media is highly partisan, and it’s often highly inaccurate too. Right-wing bullshit factories have come to… [more]
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Many people have rightly celebrated the life and mourned the death of John Lewis, the US civil rights leader and staunch LGBT ally. Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who refused to accept racial segregation and who engaged in very public protest. The Freedom Riders were very brave and very… [more]
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Over the last couple of weeks, anti-trans activists have been targeting and bullying the women who work in various rape crisis centres. The Survivors’ Network, the rape crisis centre for Sussex, is having none of it. predatory men are already able to enact their abuse with few repercussions, including entering changing rooms and public toilets –… [more]
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I’m currently reading Transgender History by Susan Stryker, and one of the saddening things about it is how little the arguments of anti-trans people have changed – not least the tendency to accuse us of believing things we don’t believe. This is doing the rounds on Twitter at the moment. If a vagina doesn’t make… [more]
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When you move home, you probably arrange to have your postal mail forwarded. It’s worth doing the same if you change your name and your email address. For a while, you’ll arrange for messages sent to your old address to be redirected to your correct one. How long is a while? For me, three years:… [more]
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This is lovely, and hit me hard. Mae Dean, a webcomic author, comes out as trans and has a conversation with herself. [more]
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The UK Government has produced a very long briefing document on the Gender Recognition Act, the Equality Act, official guidance and the debates around gender recognition. The document was published two days ago, on the 15th of July. It seemed to give undue prominence to the views of anti-trans groups but it did accurately report… [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.
