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Hate crimes against trans people in Scotland have doubled since 2015, the Daily Record reports. It’s almost as if having almost all of your country’s newspapers and high-profile social media users constantly portraying you as perverts, paedophiles and rapists has an effect. I’ve written before about the false claim that the rise in numbers is [more]
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Dr Rebecca Crowther writes in the Scottish Review about Scotland’s women’s movement and the vocal attempts by a tiny minority to turn back the clock. Opposition to trans people is voiced almost daily in many newspapers and online. It is frequently featured on the radio and on television. It is an illusion that there are [more]
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My excellent and incredibly talented friend Becca Starr invited my band to play her new night at The Bungalow in Paisley last night, and she also made this video of our performance. It’s a currently unreleased song called Zodiak, and I’m trying very hard not to laugh as my microphone stand gets shorter and shorter [more]
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From the Sunday Times: [more]
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The reaction to 57-year-old TV presenter Philip Schofield coming out as gay has been interesting. Interesting because it’s been a very different and much more positive reaction than the reaction to Jameela Jamil coming out as queer the day before, which says a lot about the racism, misogyny and intolerance queer women of colour have [more]
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There’s an interesting piece in The Guardian by Andrew Marantz about trolls, technology companies and how both have helped to fuel the resurgence of the far right. He argues that part of the rise is because journalism and traditional media was spectacularly unequipped to deal with it: the desire to remain neutral that’s appropriate for [more]
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Journalist Pete Paphides asked his followers: Is there an aspect of your work that involves dealing with the public? Is there a particular thing that people say to you all the time whilst thinking they’re the first person to have said it? And oh my God, the replies. You’ll recognise yourself, and you’ll cringe. [more]
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It’s #timetotalk day today, a day when people are encouraged to open up and talk about mental health. I’m not going to be negative about it – the organisations involved are good ones and I’ve written a lot here and in my songs about the importance of opening up about sadness, anxiety and other mental [more]
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I’ve written before about dubious “the sinister trans cult stole my children” articles: all too often they turn out to demonstrate that some parents find it easier to blame sinister, shadowy forces than their own shortcomings when their grown-up children cut all contact. But I’ve rarely seen an example as downright awful as this one. [more]
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Starbucks’ lovely and groundbreaking advert, which features a young trans man summoning up the courage to ask for his new name on his coffee cup, is important: as I’ve written before, representation matters. Seeing someone like you in mainstream media, in this case on a major TV channel, can help you feel that you’re not [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.
