What’s Idle Thoughts?
Idle Thoughts is a newsletter in which I hope to share short personal essays, reflections on culture (including books and films) and political commentary with a degree of spontaneity and autonomy that isn’t so easily afforded to me elsewhere.
I have been a professional writer for eight years and while I have contributed to a range of newspapers and magazines (and still do on occasion) with opinion, features, essays and interviews I have felt increasingly limited by both the slow death of print and online journalism and the lack of left-wing political media in the UK. This landscape has reduced the positive working relationships on offer to me as a writer who is also a socialist, a woman and a transsexual at a time of tedious culture wars.
I also find it cringe that everything I write now needs to have to have a “hook” to an inane news story or to what people I’ve never heard of are discussing on Twitter that day, which is how commissions have been going for a while.
Some themes and topics Idle Thoughts has already covered and which I will no doubt revisit include embodiment and exercise, dating, ageing, sexuality and grief. I tend to prefer a lighthearted approach to things. I am keen to share writing with a community every week in a way that feels sustainable and has integrity.
Who am I?
I’m Shon Faye, and here that means I’m low-key required to say I’m the award winning author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice which was published in the UK in 2021 and North America in 2022 and the forthcoming Love in Exile (scheduled for publication by Penguin Press in 2025). I am a former lawyer, former comic and former train-wreck party girl, among other things.
A few years back I was editor-at large at Dazed and wrote for the Guardian, VICE, Verso, n+1 and others mostly writing about pop culture, gender sexuality and mental health. I used to make video content for Novara Media and I hosted two series of a podcast called Call Me Mother (picked among the best podcasts of 2021 by the Guardian) interviewing LGBTQ+ elders. I still do write the odd feature and interview thought now you can mainly find me at American Vogue where I have an advice column about dating and relationships.
To get more of a sense of my vibe and humour you can read this interview.
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If you like Idle Thoughts please subscribe and also recommend to others! It’s the best way to support me and this newsletter, to have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
I don’t want anyone to feel pressured into a paid subscription and so I want to be transparent. My intention was not to have paid subscriptions at all but I was told that was silly as I am a professional writer and a trans person who can’t really afford to turn down the pledges people were kindly making. The newsletter will mostly be free but hopefully in future I may create a paid subscription for which there will be some paywalled written content, voice-notes and video clips. Whether a paid subscriber or a free one - you’re very welcome.
