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Have you ever wondered why so much news output is junk? It’s because of the big board. As journalist Mic Wright explains, the big board was popularised by Nick Denton of Gawker media. It’s a big screen that everybody in the newsroom can see, and it shows you in real time which stories are getting [more]
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The UK government’s plans to roll back trans rights suffered a setback this week when tens of thousands of cisgender women emailed the Prime Minister to say “not in my name”. I don’t believe for a moment that the plans have been dropped – as today’s Guardian notes, Dominic Cummings was focus-grouping trans rights in [more]
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Something happened in Glasgow’s George Square last night. Tale #1: two rival groups of protesters clashed. One group was there to “protect statues” from vandalism. Tale #2: more than 200 far-right loyalist goons set out to attack a peaceful pro-immigration protest, assaulting protesters, passers-by and the police. Both tales are true, but they’re framed very [more]
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Alex Hern explores the tragic and frightening tale of one man’s descent into psychosis, a descent that was speeded up by online radicalisation. There is no doubt that people have been radicalised by the internet, and by this particularly horrible corner of it. There are just too many cases like Slyman’s, where we can see, [more]
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It’s been interesting to compare the US and UK press reaction to JK Rowling’s blog post about trans people: in the US it’s been met with widespread revulsion, with many opinion pieces by cisgender women outraged by her claims to speak on their behalf. It’s also led many publishers to commission trans women to talk [more]
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I know I’ve posted a lot of long pieces about trans-related issues lately, but if you only read one of them then perhaps it should be this one by Laurie Penny: TERF Wars: Why Transphobia Has no Place in Feminism. It’s an attempt to explain why the UK is unusually intolerant of trans people right now, [more]
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I was looking forward to Jenny Boylan’s take on the US Supreme Court ruling, and here it is. “I used to think people like you should be, you know, exterminated,†the nice young man said to me. “But after listening to you speak, I’ve really changed my mind!†This was after a lecture I’d given [more]
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Jane Fae in the Independent: I spoke to a few trans folk: ordinary people trying to go about their daily routines as well as community leaders advocating on their behalf. The result was unanimous and shocking, and not just for the general level of abuse reported back. For this, in the end, is not so [more]
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There’s a lengthy, well-informed and balanced piece in Vice about how anti-trans attitudes came to dominate the UK press. Often writers centre experiences such as abuse or rape and then set these up as distinct and separate from the experiences of trans people. As Alison Phipps writes in her book Me, Not You: The Problem [more]
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A surprising, very welcome and very important decision by the US Supreme Court says that anti-LGBT+ discrimination is sex discrimination and therefore LGBT+ people are protected in employment law. Some states already include LGBT+ people in their anti-discrimination protections, but this brings such protection to the states that do not. As justice Neil Gorsuch, a [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.
