-
I’ve written before about my admiration for the writer Jenny Boylan, aka Jennifer Finney Boylan: her memoir, She’s Not There, is warm, witty and often desperately sad. I didn’t realise she’d written another memoir, but when I found out about it I suspected it might also be warm, witty and desperately sad. It is. Stuck… [more]
-
I’ve just finished reading The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein. It’s often a very hard read – it’s a biography of someone who cleans up crime scenes and the homes of deeply troubled people, and who’s experienced terrible things in her own life; it goes to some very dark places – but it’s an incredible… [more]
-
There were two trans-related court verdicts yesterday, although only one of them has received significant coverage. In the one you’ve probably read about, Harry Miller had a partial victory in his case against Humberside Police, who turned up at his work to quiz him about his anti-trans tweets. The verdict chimes with what most people… [more]
-
The anti-violence charity GALOP has published its latest online hate report, based on a sample of 700 LGBT+ people. It makes for grim reading, with social networks and newspaper website comment sections leaving even clearly illegal abuse untouched. As you’d expect, almost all of us are used to being insulted online. But the prevalence of… [more]
-
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]
-
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]
-
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]
-
-
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]
-
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]
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.
