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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]
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Jessica Valenti, writing on Medium: Not All Opinions Matter. while police across the country are violently attacking peaceful protesters — actual state suppression of speech— powerful people are working hard to characterize disinterest or criticism as some kind of horrific rights violation. …It is not a coincidence that powerful white people are painting themselves as… [more]
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The thing about bored celebrities taking pops at trans people isn’t so much what they say: we have heard it all before. It’s that their celebrity means we hear it again and again and again. I don’t follow JK Rowling, whose opinions on trans people are well known (and no longer explained away as “middle-aged… [more]
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Here’s an interesting thought, which someone (I’ve lost the link, sorry) posted on social media earlier. What if 2020 isn’t the most awful year we’ve experienced, but the most important? That’s not to say it isn’t awful. Of course it is. But history is full of awful times that, with the benefit of hindsight, turned… [more]
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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.
