A rather vicious little hit piece on Graham Linehan in the 'Evening Standard' at the weekend:
Oh how things have changed: now, he’s double billed as an Irish comedy writer “and anti-transgender activist.” Not only has his career has collapsed, but his marriage has failed — outcomes which Linehan himself has admitted were due to his obsessive anti-trans activism.
It start in this 'more in sorrow than in anger' vein, but you can almost feel the disbelief that someone wouldn't be only too happy to swallow the trans cult kool aid practically radiating off the page...
And yet, he persists. This Tuesday, Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence against the trans community through his posts on X. One of his posts from April of this year claimed that trans women who choose to use women-only facilities are violent criminals. He also advocated punching them “in the balls” if calling police failed to stop them from using such facilities.
In a post to his Substack, Linehan defended these posts, saying: “I explained that the 'punch' tweet was a serious point made with a joke”, and that it was about “the height difference between men and women... and certainly not a call to violence.”
The violence is never far away from one side of this though...
Linehan plans to sue the Met over his arrest, with the writer claiming he was “treated like a terrorist for speaking his mind on social media”. His arrest has been criticised by J. K. Rowling, Elon Musk and British politicians such as Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Hinder.
If you separate Linehan, Musk and Rowling from their more recent decisions and ideologies, one thing is clear. They are all very smart individuals. Certain segments of the population might even call them geniuses. So why do they seem so obsessed with being anti-trans?
Maybe because being geniuses, they don’t take kindly to being told that hulking stevedore-framed gentleman over there in the dress is a woman. Maybe they know full well that he isn’t, and never will be? After all, surely only dumb people would ever believe that?
Let’s add some context: Trans people make up around 0.55 per cent of England’s population.
Then why are they always on BBC tv shows, no matter how unwholesome the subject, and forever in the pages of the progressive press ? Why are your fellow journalists writing stuff that makes no sense?
Don’t you find it as strange as we all do?
His only supporters are anti-trans campaigners, who recently raised £100,000 for his defamation case against actor and LGBT campaigner David Paisley. But wouldn’t his life have been much easier, much more successful, had he not chosen to die on this very particular hill?
No doubt it would. I’m sure Rosa Parks would have had an easier life if she’d just given up her seat too..
These are people whose creativity was so expansive, whose humour was so infectious, that they became not only famous, but respected, adored cultural figures. How can a mind so open swing shut with such force and speed?
A much better question would surely be ‘How can this insane cult have captured so many institutions so very quickly?’ but that’s a question that won’t advance a journalist’s career these days…
2 comments:
I'm supporting him in the only way I can by buying his book - it is an excellent read!
If only we had two separate terms, one for the extremely small minority who, through a prenatal hormonal or developmental anomaly, really do have gender dysmorphia - or ‘hardware/software incompatibility’ as one trans person of my acquaintance describes it* - and one for ‘performative trans’ people who provide a kind of inverted iceberg effect: nine-tenths above the surface.
The former would like nothing better than to go about their daily business with their new identities for the rest of their lives without ever being noticed or remarked on as unusual. The more hostility activists stir is up, largely as a result of the ‘activism’ which requires transgender status to be recognised (and, implicitly, lauded), the harder they make it for the ‘quiet’ ones who just want to slip under the radar.
I can’t imagine anyone making a scene at finding themselves sharing the ladies’ loo washbasins of a changing room with travel writer Jan Morris or former TdF cyclist Pippa Yorke (although I might be tempted to ask for an autograph) or, for that matter, the manager of my local bank, a very pleasant woman I’ve known for decades in both identities but, sadly for all concerned, the kind of encounter and which provoked Linehan to his unfortunate attempt at a trenchant joke is potentially a very different kettle of fish indeed.
*Not a randomly chosen analogy; the geek world is no stranger to those with ‘male’ brains enhanced with some ‘female’ skills or vice versa.
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