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The TIE Campaign is a wonderful organisation that campaigns for more inclusive education. The TIE Campaign posted this yesterday: We are a charity which works with schools, teachers, and educators to tackle prejudice-based bullying. We provide anti-bullying sessions and gender stereotypes/equalities workshops to schools, and produce resources to include LGBT people and history in the… [more]
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Former comedy writer Graham Linehan’s Twitter account was finally closed this weekend. The move came a week after another nasty troll, Katie Hopkins, lost her account for the same reason: repeated violations of Twitter’s hateful conduct policy. The stories are almost identical, but the reporting isn’t. And the best way to demonstrate that is to… [more]
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This is the trailer for Disclosure, a new documentary on Netflix helmed by the incredible Laverne Cox. It’s ostensibly about the way trans people have been represented (or in the case of trans men, not represented) in film and TV, but it’s really about what it’s like to live in a world that constantly tells… [more]
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It’s the sensation that’s sweeping the nation: posting puerile Photoshops of Brendan O’Neill’s big stupid head every time Spiked runs one of his big stupid articles. Tom Whyman explains. The Brendan O’Neill forehead meme is perfect – one of the few perfect memes this year has produced (as er, Esquire of all places has correctly… [more]
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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]
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.
