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Nancy Kelly of Stonewall brings data to the human rights party. …younger people, non-religious people and people with higher level educational qualifications are all more likely to have positive views of trans people. Oh, and women. Yes, women are more likely to have positive views of trans people… The current narrative of ‘women feel threatened by… [more]
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As predicted, the UK government has abandoned its plans for gender recognition reform. Not only that, but instead of making life marginally better for trans people it has decided to make life much, much worse. GRA reform isn’t the story here, although it’s worth noting in passing that, as in Scotland, around 70% of respondents… [more]
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The Guardian on the Polish presidential election: [The party] has often hit out at gay rights and what it calls “LGBT ideologyâ€, in rhetoric that is popular with parts of its base and the Catholic church. Among other things, Duda’s new charter pledges no support for gay marriage or adoption by gay couples, with Duda describing… [more]
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Gabrielle Bellot on how it feels to be a trans person who loved the Harry Potter books, and how it feels to be a trans person more generally. It’s emotionally and spiritually exhausting to debate your identity; sometimes, you just want to log off social media and take a walk or hug someone you love… [more]
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[I’d originally posted about the “don’t mention the war†episode of Fawlty Towers and said John Cleese approved the 2013 edit that removed the racial slurs. Cleese has since given an interview to The Age expressing his anger at UKTV for removing the unedited episode, so it seems he didn’t approve of the edit after… [more]
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June Tuesday, writing on Medium: JK Rowling and the Reasonable Bigotry. The UK’s transphobia is many-pronged — our conservatives, religious fundamentalists, alt-right, ‘rational men’, and so all exist here, too. But virulent and aggressive anti-trans feminists have a culture and history specific to Britain, and their views trickle down into the respectable views of those with… [more]
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It seemed a good time to repost this, by Gray Crosbie. We are your neighbours, siblings, sons and daughters. #TransDayOfVisibility pic.twitter.com/ybG7uclKRt — BBC The Social (@bbcthesocial) March 31, 2019 [more]
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Micha Frazer-Carroll wrote this for Gal-Dem last year: Everyone loves a laugh – but at whose expense? …post-watershed blackface, that operates under the guise of the comedy sketch show, found its own, horrid golden age in the early 00s. For many marginalised people, it was a truly cursed era of TV that not only mocked blackness,… [more]
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It took me a very long time to realise how good Bruce Springsteen is: like many people, I misinterpreted Born in the USA as a tub-thumping, chest-beating, USA! USA! USA! anthem and didn’t investigate further. I’m a lot older and a little bit wiser now, and while I wouldn’t call myself a fan – I… [more]
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The Guardian: Little Britain has been removed from all UK streaming platforms due to concerns about the use of blackface by its two stars, David Walliams and Matt Lucas. The comedy sketch show, which first aired in 2003 on BBC Three, has been removed from Netflix, BritBox and BBC iPlayer – with the pair’s follow… [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.
