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When people scaremonger about proposed legislation, it’s a safe bet that they are ignorant of the existing legislation and of similar legislation in other countries: if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be scaremongering. The manufactured controversy over Scotland’s proposed hate crime legislation – a controversy largely fuelled by religious groups and the right-wing press – appears… [more]
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I’ve been reading Heather Havrilesky’s writing online pretty much since I first went online. This, on friendship in a time of Covid, is superb. In the past, whenever I met someone I liked a lot and admired, I was often too fearful to stick my neck out and assert my interest in becoming friends. I… [more]
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If it wasn’t for the internet, I don’t think I’d ever have come out. Not because I was somehow talked into being trans; forced feminisation is something that only happens in niche pornography and in the lurid fantasies of anti-trans bigots. The internet helped me come out because it finally let me see that there… [more]
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This, by author Mia Violet, is very true. It’s a shame that the first section should be in any way controversial: being trans is hard in a world that treats trans people so badly. [more]
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Every now and again, someone on the internet will read a few articles about something, decide they’re an expert on the subject and start arguing with others. At its most entertaining, they pick fights with actual experts without realising who they’re talking to and get their arse handed to them on a plate. Sadly it’s… [more]
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Caitlin Logan in The National writes about how the US Christian Right ended up with uncritical coverage in Scottish newspapers. Somewhat unsurprisingly to anyone who has been paying attention to public debates over apparently controversial legislation in Scotland over the past two decades, Free To Disagree is a campaign led by The Christian Institute. The… [more]
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There’s a very good (and very detailed) piece by Nathan J Robinson in Current Affairs about everybody’s favourite litigious author. How did we get from the one place to the other? How did we go from the “beautiful fantasy world†to this exhibition of fear and dehumanization? Was she always like this? Why is she… [more]
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Yesterday, the Scottish Daily Mail ran a front page story damning Scotland’s proposed new anti-hate crime legislation. The source of the story is Lois McLatchie, who the Daily Mail says “works with the UN Human Rights Council”. That’s a very clever way of implying she’s part of the Council. She isn’t; in fact, she is… [more]
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I wrote the other day about how if you’re in a customer-facing role, you’re expected to call male customers “sir” and female customers “madam”. This, from a travel industry talk last year by Billy Kolber, discusses the gendering and inclusivity of the hospitality industry. When travel destinations and brands say they’re LGBTQ+ friendly, what they… [more]
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Journalist Jane Fae has written a heartfelt article to the people who seem to hate trans people so much. It is a letter to friends I once had “that side of the wallâ€. Women, mostly, with whom I broke bread, and shared my house. Women with whom I campaigned, long and hard, against male violence.… [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.
