I’m back in Scotland this month, for my first trip home since Christmas. Coming home is always incredible — a constant onslaught of the long-lost familiar — but being back also reminds me of some of the reasons I left in the first place. I could give you a few of those, but lurking behind […] More »

You’ve probably noticed by now, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or just standing endlessly in line to offload your garbage, that Pride is in full swing. I have to admit I find Toronto Pride kind of overwhelming. This is largely because I come from Scotland, where Pride is shared by two cities who […] More »

Has a transsexual ruined your life lately? Because if you believe what you see on TV, trans people are lurking everywhere, just waiting to pounce on unassuming heterosexuals. Trans characters on TV are like those early depictions of gay men, before they started cropping up as every woman’s best-friend-slash-fashion-adviser. It’s depressing to argue that the […] More »

We’re less than a month away from Pride Week in Toronto, which kicks off with the Dyke March — also known as the Saturday when thousands of half-naked queer women take to the streets between Church and Yonge. Lately, I’ve been wondering if this mass shedding of clothes isn’t really about celebrating our sexuality and […] More »

Coming out is a near-universal queer experience. The coming-out story recurs again and again in queer cinema: it’s our version of the coming-of-age tale. But where the traditional narrative and reality diverge is at the assumption that coming out is something that only happens once in a lifetime. In the movies, the quiet boy starts […] More »

It occurred to me this week that if you’re reading this, whether you’re queer or not, chances are you have at least some interest in, you know, gay stuff. So, this column being but a tiny drop in the queer blogging ocean, I thought I’d round up some other sites that deserve a spot in […] More »

If you’re looking for some unconventional reading material this week, this list of the Canada Border Service Agency’s Prohibited Titles from October to December of last year is a fairly interesting browse. The list is linked from a recent article in Xtra last week about gay porn studio Lucas Entertainment’s battles with CBSA over their […] More »

“Sometimes men like women, and sometimes men like men. And then there are bisexuals but some say they’re just kidding themselves.” A line from one of Phoebe’s famously quirky songs in Friends, this actually doesn’t strike far from the mark in terms of how bisexuality is viewed both inside and outside of queer communities. People […] More »

Showtime’s lesbian serial drama The L Word returns this week for its sixth and final season. Set in L.A., the series follows a group of women through their hook-ups and break-ups, generally providing a rough sketch of what being a lesbian is like if you’re wealthy and live in Los Angeles. The show hasn’t garnered […] More »

Pope Benedict made some waves last month with his Christmas address for saying, amongst other things, that homosexuality and transsexuality were liable to cause the “self-destruction” of the human race. It hasn’t so far, but perhaps he means sometime in the future we’ll reach a sort of trans critical mass and one Friday night at […] More »

I am writing this on a crowded flight from my adopted home of Toronto to my former home of Edinburgh, where I am trying to ignore the brainwashing effect of Fred Claus on ten tiny screens in front of me. Like countless others, I am heading home for Christmas. So far though, I’m having a […] More »