Liam Wignall

YouTube video by Virginia Braun Dr Braun(love) - or: how I learned to stop worrying and love GenAI (yeah nah)

Here's a talk I gave as a keynote for the BPS @qmip.bsky.social conference (July 2025) - the result of @vicclarke.bsky.social & I recognising we needed to "dive in" & grapple with the beast that is GenAI & qualitative/(reflexive) thematic analysis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zFQ...

Mockup drawing of a UK parliament petition where the petitioner has asked for "good thing please" with description "we think the UK needs this". Government responded: "No."

Every UK petition is like this

Post on /r/transgenderUK entitled “Reddit now censors LGBTQ+ content under OFCOM’s new ‘Online Safety Act’”

post text: “I honestly can't even think of words to describe how vile this is. Here's a screenshot of what I now see when I search "lgbt" with my VPN switched off. Occasionally a banner appears at the top of the screen saying something about needing to verify ID to access "mature content" but the button doesn't even work. The fact that we're now considered "mature content" makes me feel sick.”

The screenshot referenced in the previous image, showing the results of a search on Reddit for the term LGBT. No results from LGBT-specific subreddits appear; instead, posts from /r/Conservative, /r/Islam, /r/JustUnsubbed, etc are highlighted.

the UK’s Internet age verification law has led to the effective censorship of all LGBT content on Reddit

what a shocking and unexpected turn of events!

Steam and Itch.io Are Pulling ‘Porn’ Games. Critics Say It's a Slippery Slope to More Censorship A conservative group is targeting payment processors as “a weapon” to get adult games deindexed in storefronts. Even games that have nothing to do with sex or abuse have been caught in the dragnet.

Antiporn groups said they were only going after games with violence against women. But what got censored? Award-winning games about disordered eating, LGBTQ+ games and anything flagged NSFW.

@megannicolett.bsky.social's reporting raises alarms about the real danger of this censorship campaign.

I heard! This extended my gym workout by about 40 minutes as I kept just standing around thinking "that's a great point!" I hope to be publishing on ADHD and kink later this year too 👀

Super interesting to hear more on the overlap on neurodiversity and kink

Is peer-review dead? A scientist’s plea to fix a broken system - Healthy Debate Peer-review may not be over, but the era of exploitative, opaque and corporatized gatekeeping should be.

A fair read:
healthydebate.ca/2025/06/topi...

Germany gave people €1,200/month no strings attached.

They kept working, slept better, switched to better jobs, and even gave more to others.

Turns out, when people aren’t drowning, they swim further.

#UBI doesn’t kill ambition, it frees it.

A third of UK universities have now ceased posting on X.

I've updated my data to see whether they are adopting Threads and/or Bluesky as a microblogging alternative.

The simple answer is that they are, slowly.
1/9

That’s a wrap on 2024–25 for the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender! 💥

Our AGM celebrated our research, shared highlights, welcomed our Paul Cottingham Trust Scholar & our dissertation prize winner!

Huge thanks to all our amazing members & contributors, you make CTSG what it is. 💜

Will anyone review this paper? Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review Scholarly publishing relies on peer review to identify the best science. Yet finding willing and qualified reviewers to evaluate manuscripts has become an increasingly challenging task, possibly even ...

1. Kevin Gross and I just posted a new science-of-science preprint.

This one explores the looming peer review crisis. As many of you know, it's becoming significantly more difficult for journal editors to find scholars willing to serve as peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts.

Logo of the Department of Education. Title: Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education. Subtitle: Statutory guidance for governing bodies, proprietors, head teachers, principals, senior leadership teams, and teachers. Dated July 2025

🆕🚨 New statutory Relationships and Sex Education guidance published today will:

- Restrict schools from using materials that "encourage pupils to question their gender"
- Teaches children the laws about "biological sex"
- Removes all references to the word transgender

What we know so far 🧵

As a gay man, I've got some great ones to add! Let's start with: parliamentarians openly saying, in parliament, that gay people are abhorrent perverts and it being broadcast on national telly!

I was interviewed for this @advocate.com article - a response to the #HHS new guidance on the Teen Pregnancy Program
@kinseyinstitute.bsky.social
@liamwignall.bsky.social

Sounds interesting 👀

Two versions of the same talk. One for an academic confernce, one for a group of kinksters. I hope I have the slides the right way round...

Travelling from Brighton, to Leeds, to London, to Leeds, to London to give talks at conferences, community events, and London Fetish Week is exhausting but so rewarding. Thank god for Greggs coffees and sausage sandwich combo.

Travelling to Leeds for the Qual Methods in Psych conference. The start of a long two weeks of travels and talks, but excited to meet people
@qmip.bsky.social

As somebody with 90% implants since 21, the difference they make is unfathomable. Glad it all worked out! 😬

Member Article: What Is Kink Pride? What exactly do we mean by “Kink Pride”? In his latest article, Dr Liam Wignall kink approaches the discussion kink pride through history, through identity, and through community.

I promise I'll get a new picture. But until then, I wrote an article for Recon on how and why people should feel pride in their kinkiness: What Is Kink Pride? www.recon.com/Blog/Article...

Out of office is on. Let summer begin! (Writing 3 presentations, finishing 3 different papers, co-editing a journal, delivering 4 research talks across the UK, and conducting field research at a festival)

Now published in Contemporary Drug Problems - online first #drugs #queerstudies #criticaldrugstudies

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

You can submit a complaint here.
It’s a quick and easy process, and many of the fields are optional. It’s important to push back on the (further) erosion of BBC standards of practice.

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...

Editing an interview transcript for a book chapter and it's so difficult trying to make it more concise without losing some of the magic of the participants' responses. I'll be sending it to the participant to make sure it still has their voice, but I didn't think it would be so difficult!

And no, I'm not choosing the exercises based on whether or not I can sit down while doing them.

Heading back to the gym on one of the hottest days this year after two weeks off with a sinus infection is certainly a struggle.

Welcome to the Janky Web The AI takeover is changing everything about the internet—and not necessarily for the better.

Generative AI is slowly degrading the internet. More alarming is that before long, the technology’s unreliability may go unnoticed, writes Matteo Wong:

🚨New study alert! If you have 15 mins to spare, PLEASE consider taking part in our study about autistic experiences of online dating. We'd love to hear from you!

There was always a shake up needed of assessments that match up more with the skills required in the work place. This will just mean it happens much, much quicker.