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One of the things that really scares me is getting old – not because I’m scared of ageing, but because unless I die first I’ll eventually need to enter the care system. The care system in the UK is horrific for most, and there are extra terrors for LGBTQ+ people – so much so that [more]
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Let’s talk about tits, shall we? Both literally, as in breasts, and metaphorically, as in bigoted men making complete tits of themselves. This weekend, a group of Scots trans women held a topless protest outside Holyrood over the Supreme Court verdict and its aftermath. With some irony, the very newspapers that love to call trans [more]
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I’m absolutely delighted to be featured in The Quietus, courtesy of excellent interviewer Claire Sawers. And so it was that Marshall embarked upon a two and a half year project to research queer music in Scotland. Small Town Joy: From glam rock to hyperpop: how queer music changed the sound of Scotland is her wonderful, [more]
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One of the longest-running assessments of countries’ performance on LGBTQ+ rights and healthcare is the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map and Index. British politicians used to speak proudly of our place in it, because in 2015 we led Europe: the UK was ranked as the best place in Europe for LGBTQ+ people to live, work and love. [more]
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The trans advocacy group TACC has been counting the (overwhelmingly anti-) trans stories published by many UK newspaper websites. Over the last 30 days the Times has run 38 stories; the Daily Express, 91; The Sun, 123; The Daily Telegraph, 147; and the Daily Mail, 228. In the case of the Mail that’s an average [more]
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A new peer review of the Cass report yet again shows that it was a political exercise designed to rubber-stamp the government’s war on trans people and our healthcare. The report’s conclusion is damning: Our critical analysis reveals significant methodological problems in the commissioned systematic reviews and primary research that undermine the validity of the [more]
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Tribune Magazine explains why the supposed “clarity” of the Supreme Court ruling is anything but. This sleight-of-hand has been demonstrated by Keir Starmer himself, who has repeatedly praised the ‘real clarity’ provided by the judgment, but only given one example of that supposed clarity: the idea that the judgment says ‘a woman is an adult [more]
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In Carrie Kills A Man I wrote about meeting Nicola Sturgeon in 2019 as part of a group of trans and non-binary people; I said that my impression of her was of a genuine ally, but that many in her government were not. As The National reports, she’s spoken out about the Supreme Court verdict [more]
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The anti-trans groups have taken what’s left of their masks off: in a joint letter to the head of NHS England and to trans-hating health minister Wes Streeting, Sex Matters, the LGB Alliance, Transgender Trend and Genspect claim that because they’ve achieved a legal victory that will make life much harder and more miserable for [more]
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Juliet Jaques has written a terrific feature detailing exactly how the anti-trans takeover of the press and politics happened in the UK. And it’s been going on longer than you might think: while it really kicked into gear in 2017, the foundations were laid long before. The article details how trans writers were pushed out [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.
