Katie's jibe about Graham's ex-wife is really nasty and shouldn't have been said.
I agree that Graham is obsessive (I also wouldn't be surprised if he was neurodivergent), he burns relationships with people who could be allies with him and relentlessly attacks them for years after he falls out with them. I could live without seeing another "Well, Jon Ronson!!? What do you have to say about THIS?' post from him.
HOWEVER, I believe the rapid destruction of his career/marriage and the years-long weaponisation of the police and justice system by trans activists that he's endured, has deeply traumatised him and he behaves in the messy, angry way of people with deep trauma. He made a mistake early on of believing that if he explained himself, activists would hear him out and his media friends would say, "No, no, Graham's not a bigot, he's just got some concerns." It didn't happen because his friends understood what he didn't - that no debate would be tolerated and their careers would be destroyed if they tried to support him. I don't believe he's ever recovered from that.
As a comedy nerd, I have huge admiration for Graham's TV work. He's also done some good journalism with his substack. His work on Aimee Challenor was excellent - to the point Katie and Jesse used it, originally without crediting him. Hadley Freeman, Helen Lewis and others have also attacked Graham, albeit in a more middle-class, media professional manner. This isn't entirely a one-way street.
Do I wish he had the near-perfect online calm of Kathleen Stock? Absolutely. But none of us can know how we would behave if trans activists sent police to our doors, we became immediately unemployable and our marriages suddenly ended. I don't think even the worst of his behaviour, makes all that okay.
J+K seem to especially dislike Linehan because he has called them and people like Helen Lewis out many times, and not without reason it has to be said. J+K have always walked a fine line on trans issues (pronouns etc) and honestly I think it's some of their weakest arguments and makes them look a little silly. Linehan doesn't mince his words or kowtow for the sake of "kindness".
Agree completely. If you're just going to go ahead and use the pronouns because it's polite, then you may as well go the rest of the way. Because what's the problem, then? Using the pronouns signals you’ve already bought into the framework. So why carve out exceptions around kids or activism?
J&K are still trying to play by “civilized” rules of debate, lining up in neat formation and announcing their fire while activists use guerrilla tactics, ambushes, and no-quarters harassment. They keep holding themselves to this weird code of decorum even though the other side is NEVER going to do the same.
I hate that they're the best/most educated on this topic tbh.
Setting aside the substance of the pronouns debate, as a matter of tactics J&K's approach seems wise, particularly for Jesse. He's an influential voice in the debate about youth gender medicine. Major outlets run his articles. Him refusing to use preferred pronouns would turn off some people who might otherwise be sympathetic to his arguments, and open up an easy line of attack for opponents who would like to avoid engaging with his arguments directly.
I disagree in this case. Lionel Shriver already demonstrates that you don’t need to play along with pronouns to stay in print. She still gets published in major outlets, and her arguments are clearer for not having the hedging/reading difficulty that the pronoun gymnastics force. It knocks people out of play pretend.
Every time someone like Jesse reinforces the ritual politeness, it extends the life of the dogma. The more prominent voices who drop it, the faster the spell breaks. Otherwise we’re all stuck living under this stupid secular religion because polite liberals are too worried about optics.
This is also a case of never buying in vs. excommunication. I think outright refusal lands better than nuanced liberal concern/half measures.
Jesse's position seems to be that he uses preferred pronouns by default, but will switch or emphasize "this person is trans" when he feels it's relevant. There is a large segment of the population who object to gender trumping sex when relevant (e.g. athletics, prisons, dating apps, support groups), but who otherwise are happy to call people what they want to be called. And Jesse seems to genuinely be one of them. But even if he wasn't, there is value in not needlessly alienating the people one is trying to persuade.
Fair enough on your point that Lionel Shriver still gets published. I'm not very familiar with her work. I'm familiar with Jesse's, and I know that he's made great efforts to connect with persuadable people in the "nice liberal" (for lack of a better term) camp who are predisposed to support trans rights in general, and probably don't know a whole lot of detail about the contours of public policy debates around gender-affirming care and single-sex spaces. Nice liberals will stop reading if you call trans women "he" just as a matter of course - even if they're the sorts of people who would themselves call a violent psychopath in a wig "he", or the sorts of people who would be horrified to read about masectomies for male-identifying 14 year olds.
If pronoun politeness worked, Jesse wouldn’t still be treated like a pariah. And “nice liberals” who tune out over pronouns but are horrified at kids’ surgeries were never really persuadable in the first place.
Those “nice liberals” will be the ones watching HBO docs with the rest of us in 10 years, saying “no one knew how bad this was,” while Jesse and Katie got dragged for saying it out loud... even politely and with measured, calm intent.
The climate seems to be shifting, though! This will be interesting to look back on in 1, 5, and 10 years' time to see how many people are still pronouning away, even in podcasts run by people who are perverts for nuance.
Shriver is interesting, definitely recommend her pieces on the subject. If you've been under the boot of this under fear of job loss or being ostracized, it's just refreshing to see someone just SAY things that are self-evident once you pull back the activist curtain.
Yes, agree. I know a lot of people say pronouns don't matter and maybe a few years ago I would have agreed. But I'm afraid they do matter now. If you are using preferred pronouns for some trans identified people are you saying you think those people have become the other sex? I doubt very much J+K think that, so they're just entertaining a polite fiction...for what? To help the other person pretend they've changed sex? Everyone knows they haven't, including the trans identified person. It just compounds the madness of it all.
Exactly. The sooner people stop playing pretend who are in higher positions, the sooner the rest of us can also quit this bullshit. It's gone on too long, the fatigue is real, can we please just stop.
It's like how with stalkers, every time you communicate with one, you've bought yourself six more weeks of obsession. Every time someone she/hers a dude in print, particularly after a horrible crime, we collectively have to keep playing the game for another block of time while gritting our teeth.
This is nonsense. Jesse and Katie respect preferred pronouns because they genuinely believe that psychiatrically gender dysphoric people have a right to be able to socially transition, so they respect pronouns as a matter of course. They don’t secretly agree with you that it’s all delusions or perverts, they aren’t going along with the pronouns just to look good; that’s a frankly ridiculous cope to avoid accepting they aren’t gender-critical hardliners.
Didn’t say they secretly agree with me. Just that their in-between stance leaves them catching fire from both sides, which is pretty obvious at this point.
> If you're just going to go ahead and use the pronouns because it's polite, then you may as well go the rest of the way. Because what's the problem, then? Using the pronouns signals you’ve already bought into the framework. So why carve out exceptions around kids or activism?
Which is classic activist ‘destroy the middle ground’ tactics. You don’t allow for the possibility that someone might hold moderate views based on strong principles, you have to ‘buy into the framework’ of either side’s hardliners. Do you accept that someone can sincerely want to respect pronouns without also believing in unchecked youth transition and crazy activist woo, without just being cowards or ‘conflict avoidant’?
Motivations matter less than actions and their consequences. You cannot “be kind” your way out of antisocial behavior. Nothing changes that way. There is a liberal belief that modeling kindness will encourage pro-social behavior, but that assumes the other side is acting in good faith. I do not believe that applies here.
Someone can sincerely want to respect pronouns, but doing so reinforces a social contagion that has grown into a secular belief system embedded in institutions. Accepting play pretend as reality concedes that it is at least real to some degree.
I cannot read minds or know what is in someone’s heart. I can only observe outcomes, and those outcomes are what matter.
I can also understand not wanting to be harassed or mobbed or fired. No one is obligated to be a martyr, and I understand being held hostage by these beliefs in your family or workplace if you think no one is coming to help you. Which is why it will take people and institutions who do have more power to lead the way towards breaking the coercive and controlling movement.
Or enough dorky middle-aged they/thems to make younger generations reject it entirely and it becomes utterly uncool. That's more likely at this point.
I just try to treat others with the same amount of respect with which they would treat me. That sometimes includes using their preferred pronouns if they are trans, I think.
I hear this one a lot, usually from people who really are kind (and conflict-avoidant, wanting everyone to get along).
But “treat others how they treat me” doesn’t hold up here. People pushing pronoun use rarely return respect... they smear, harass, and try to get people fired. Reciprocity isn’t happening. It’s one-way compliance, and it sets the rules for how everyone else has to live.
Most of the time what’s really being said is, “I don’t want to deal with blowback, so I’ll comply and call it kindness.” That’s understandable as self-protection. It’s also why I’d rather see these groups lose the power to force compliance in the first place.
In the end, the principle sounds gentle, but to anyone who’s lived under a high control belief system before, it lands as “keep sweet.”
For what it’s worth, I refuse to do certain things but reserve the right to do others. I don’t do the pronoun game where we all announce our pronouns when introducing ourselves. I’ve had occasion to say, “no thank you” or just refuse or ignore the prompt. I try to draw a line somewhere. And of course, if too many people have weird pronouns in a group, I end up not using pronouns at all! But individuals I like or love, that I interact with on a more personal level, I refer to them as they wish.
Totally fair. You don’t have to prove anything to me, and I don’t have to live your life. My only point is that reinforcing the framework keeps it in place for everyone else. With kids especially, the data shows that when they aren’t socially transitioned, most of them eventually desist. So the more the language gets normalized in daily life, the harder it is to break that cycle.
How many trans people are out there smearing and harassing and trying to get people fired?
I'll cop to being conflict-avoidant. I guess I'd distinguish between backing down from conflict and choosing not to instigate it. In political and policy debates, I can see how going along with demands regarding pronouns feels like backing down. For people who have family or friends or co-workers who are trans, "going along" feels much more like basic decency.
“Just going along” does not stop with the kindness mandating conflict avoider. It extends the burden to everyone else who never consented. Family and friends make it tricky, but that has been true of every high-control group from Scientology to Amway. It does not take millions to cause harm. A small faction with institutional backing can ruin careers and set norms, and this podcast often covers how small groups hijack spaces and hollow them out.
I work in an environment where this has reshaped the company and turned the office into a crybully hostage situation. I just use people’s names when addressing them, but I have still been warned my management for not “affirming.” It feels like Simon Says where one wrong word gets you in trouble.
And the kicker? If I pretended to be religious, I would basically get an unofficial exemption because HR does not want to gamble on legal cases in the current political climate.
I don’t go looking for conflict. I’ve just seen how this plays out in real workplaces, and it stops being about politeness really fast. I understand that people want to be decent. It just doesn't seem to be reciprocal.
Civility doesn’t make someone the best or most educated. J&K have done real research and kept updating their views over time. That’s what makes them credible.
A better way of putting it may be- the same character traits that make them treat their opponents respectfully also make them take their arguments seriously rather than just dismissing them. What makes them civil and liberal-minded is what makes them careful researchers.
Payback for what though? It's so churlish. J+K are very successful, made a ton of money, loved by many. Sticking the knife into Linehan because he got divorced and having a whole "rant" section about him because he calls them out for entertaining pronouns is just a bit...pathetic tbh.
Then why are trans identified people so obsessed with pronouns? To the point of throwing massive hissy fits. Some of us prefer not to lie or force ourselves to correct our speech to endorse someone else's fantasy of reality. J+K only do it for trans people they like, which is completely incoherent.
Because it feels like the Trojan Horse of radical trans ideology. If you use the preferred pronouns of someone who hasn’t even made a cursory attempt at passing, the next logical step is…. Well, what we had for a short, weird time.
Except the posters in this thread don't want to use those pronouns for literally anyone. They're not making the self-ID argument, they're making the argument they should never have to change pronouns even for transgender people with medically diagnosed dysphoria who have obviously transitioned and made an effort.
Yes, being targeted by Stephanie Hayden (legitimately a BAD EGG) in particular must have been stressful af for Linehan. According to reduxx:
"Hayden has initiated legal action against more than two dozen individuals over the years, often in an apparent effort to prevent them from referring to him as a “man,” or quashing speculations regarding his past criminal history. In total, Hayden had filed approximately 40 complaints altogether, and multiple individuals have been arrested for “hate speech” after he complained to police."
On Glinner’s twitter, it’s also a constant refrain from TRAs, and others who tell him to shut up, so she it aligns her with them, in a way. I mean, ok, it’s probably meant ironically, but if you don’t see how many times he gets tweets about, you might not get it.
I feel you left some important context out of your description of the IT Crowd episode that caused Lineham to be excommunicated from his career.
I think it's important to note that the character who exhibits the transphobic behaviour is the most *morally reprehensible* character on an entire show filled with flawed people. It's not like it's Chandler or Monica being intolerant towards a trans person, it's more like it's Eric Cartman.
The show is so over the top that the character rejecting his trans lover and the rejected person get into a fistfight so extreme that one of them is punched *though* a wall.
At the time, people were complaining about "the violence against transwomen" in the episode at least as much as the transphobic rejection of her character, even though the trans woman was shown to be able to kick the ass of the transphobic guy who rejected her.
An american version of the cancelling of Graham Linehan over this episode would resemble people dog-piling on Glenn Howerton because he wrote a tv episode where Dennis Reynolds becomes upset that he's been unknowingly dating a guy, then gets beaten up by that guy.
(to dennis obviously - the person is a guy to dennis. i hate that i have to add this)
If I recall correctly, the joke was that the trans character says "I was born a man" and Douglas hears "I was born in Iran".
And was somewhat the B plot of the episode.
I have the episode - The Internet in A Box - on DVD. It was taken off Channel 4's free UK streaming service years later, but at least at one point I think was still on Netflix UK.
That was a great episode of IT crowd. And yes, he was supposed to be an absolutely terrible person.
Graham Linehan may be right or wrong. He is definitely an asshole, but he shouldn’t be arrested for that. The fact that he was arrested by armed police is a bit shocking. British police are not usually armed; firearms trained officers are a minority and are meant for potentially violent situations - not a doughy middle aged man without a history of violence. Based on the press, this might be a good development. It’s clear the police are embarrassed, as is the government. Hopefully this will lead to some change.
In terms or resource misallocation, solve rates for the actual crimes - violence, rapes, knife assaults - are abysmal in the UK.
Yes the airport police are always armed, but that's because airports are high risk for terrorism, which is a reason not to take five armed officers off their normal duties of finding terrorists, in order to arrest a man for tweeting
That seems like the obvious reason, and give of them would have been there because it had the potential to be a high profile arrest of a known antagonistic individual. You've got five different speakers to cycle through, and hopefully he'll take a shine to one of them.
But if anyone questions the necessity for police to have firearms at an airport, it's most certainly vital, as can be seen in the documentary "Die Hard 2".
...and of course when Douglas Reynholm realises that April (a trans woman journalist he's shagging) HAD told him she 'had been born as a man'... And that he had misheard her as 'had been born in Iran'. I mean... It's so daft but it's hilarious which is like the entire series which is commonly comic genius.
There is plenty that could be considered a transphobic trope. Once we know April is a trans woman, we see that she can drink the men under the table, play pub games (i.e. darts) better than men, etc. The joke is accentuated because April is played by a slender attractive biological female, so her 'manly' abilities look even more incongruous. I mean, it's low hanging fruit, comedy-wise but very very funny nonetheless.
I've now finished listening to the episode and would like to say to Katie - I lost track of Linehan after his initial cancelling and was unaware he has become an asshat.
I still love the "IT Crowd" and will continue recommend it to friends, just like I still love the "Thriller" album by MJ or "The Sandman" comics by Gaiman, despite the cancellations of their creators.
PS - If you haven't seen the Peter File episode of the IT Crowd you're missing out on great comedy.
Right, except Michael Jackson was a paedophile and Gaiman has been credibly accused of multiple rapes and Linehan is... mean about people online quite often and possibly broke a mobile phone.
Interestingly, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who have been pretty consistent in their negative portrayals of gender ideology on South Park, have not been dogpiled and witch-hunted to the same extent. I imagine it's because almost every single group who's gone after South Park has made a fool of themselves in doing so. Also, for whatever reason, anyone who disagrees with South Park always assumes that Matt and Trey are on the opposite side of the aisle to them; liberals call them conservative, conservatives call them liberal. Not unlike Jesse and Katie, actually.
Yeah I thought this episode of the pod was pretty good but I do think the background of the character - a macho misogynist pig who finally meets his perfect woman and it turns out to be a man reacts like a reprehensible jerk makes sense in context.
Katie has said on episodes they don't generally read comments but do read emails so might be worth sending the note to her that way.
I love you guys, and I know this is the “public” episode for this week, but I just finished Taylor Lorenz part 1, and I want all production to cease until you drop the remaining Taylor Lorenz parts 2-19. And it needs to happen immediately. I cannot stand her and I cannot stand waiting. I’m dyin’ over here! 😭
You, Frithiof Nilsson of Piratetown, are not nearly online enough. Touching grass is overrated. You can get ticks and eventually someone will ask you to mow it.
This episode made me angry. Not because it was bad--I really liked it!--but because it really frosts my cookies when gay and lesbian organizations abandon gays and lesbians in order to serve the agenda of the gender jihadists.
Helen Joyce once said something that has stayed with me for years. Gender ideology doesn't just infect the organizations that espouse it; it turns them into the opposite of what they were. The ACLU now opposes free expression. Stonewall now works against LGB people. NOW wants to put men in women's sports. Once gender woo-woo gets in, the original mission goes out, and now the Polari Prize has flipped.
I don't give to any gay or lesbian organization anymore, not untill I know exactly where that org stands on trans issues. I can't stop these people from selling out homosexuals to the creepy gender cult, but I can make sure I'm not paying the thirty pieces of silver.
The bit where someone compared Boyd's presence on the list to a white supremacist being listed among black people was so transparent. They think they can revoke his gayness for wrongthink. It really gives the whole game away; to them, actual same-sex attraction is secondary to aesthetics and political posturing. A spicy straight they/them female who's never touched another woman's vagina in her life is an honorary kweer, while an actual gay man who experienced real oppression for his sexuality is not.
Guys like Boyd, Sullivan, and Sargeant have done more for gay rights than any of these simpering TRAs ever have (if anything TRAs have actually done damage to gay rights), yet they are subject to obsessive smear campaigns because they prioritize the needs of actual same-sex-attracted individuals over following the commandments of the Church of Gender. It infuriates me that gay people are now being blamed for radical positions pushed by a bunch of heterosexual males who like jerking off in women's clothing. Gay men and lesbians are not the ones demanding that males be in women's sports, but because everyone is lumped together in the LGBT, normies feel justified in being more homophobic again.
The forced teaming is horrifying and depressing. How often do we hear that there is an attack on LGBalphabetsoup rights and it turns out to be somebody setting boundaries with self identified trans folk?
Also the original reasons for cancelling him were insane. How do the TQ+ think this is going to end?
Since transitioners must be considered always to have been that gender and we can't mention their previous identity, doesn't that mean Eliot Page is a privileged white male that was stealing roles from women for years?
I usually agree with J+K on most things, but this episode made me a bit sad. Increasingly I think Linehan is the person who will be viewed most kindly in history. He has been thoroughly and despicably monstered for saying what 99% of people think.
I'm a lesbian, I live in the UK. I am so so so so sick to the back teeth of TRAs and gender ideology, and the utter fucking madness that stems from it. We have elected politicians who think a man can "grow a cervix". People lose their jobs because they don't believe men magically tranform into women simply by declaring it so. Thousands of most likely gay kids have been severely harmed.
And yet so many cowards have stood by and let it happen, all to protect their status as good progressives.
Yeah I'm a little bummed about it. They really seem to hate Linehan, and fine, that's their perogative. But the amount of grief Linehan gets is so over the top. The jibe about his wife was very unnecessary, especially as Katie said she thinks Graham will listen to the episode. Weird behaviour.
I found it somewhat freeing. If I'd ever felt uncomfortable to hear Graham Linehan cast aspersions on Katie Herzog, I'm not anymore.
Herzog talked more trash, and in a more vindictive tone, about Linehan in ten minutes than Linehan has about Herzog in five years. Honestly, her gleeful cruelty was so disgraceful, it's as if Katie Herzog shat her pants in public.
A wild thing to say about someone who has been a supreme asshole to everybody! There are plenty of people with similar beliefs who have not gone off the deep end. Him being an asshole is a choice at this point, anyone who supports him does so precisely because he's not kind.
Yeah, history will not look on him "most kindly" because we have enough non-trans related stuff to think he sucks. He is in court for knocking a phone out of a teenager's hand. He goes on crazy obsessive rants after anyone mildly criticizes him. J+K and JK rowling will be looked on more kindly in history than GL ever will.
Have you looked at this teenager whose phone he apparently knocked? Strongly advise you do. He (because of course it's a male pretending to be female) is most certainly not a vulnerable precious teenage girl as is being made out by J+K and anyone else with Linehan Derangement Syndrome. The kid is a threatening menace and I'd knock his phone out of my face too.
Dude, said teenager is a hulking great big man who has been bullying women and is hanging about with a convicted sex offender. I mean, I'm not here to judge who you extend your sympathies to.....but I am....
Mate you only think he has been a supreme asshole to everybody because you disagree with him. You really think everyone who supports him is just doing it because he isn't "kind"? Come on now, this is a very silly line of argument.
I don't even disagree with Linehan on most things I reckon. It's just that it's perfectly possible to advance gender critical views without being a giant asshole about it and there are heaps of people who prove that fact.
There is this thing where TRAs behave worse and worse, with total impunity, then when finally a Sex Realist succumbs to provocation, everybody stands around tutting while the UK police move in.
I feel like Linehan’s approach is counterproductive, he definitely alienates many people who would agree with him in principle, or who would agree to disagree and be friends- were that something he was capable of. I think circumstances have bought out the worst in him, and his abrasiveness has worsened in response to others response to him. He was hospitalised at his arrest with high blood pressure, and doesn’t look healthy, constant stress is not good for anyone.
I like and respect the opinions of some people who say he’s a bellend, and other people who count him as a friend, and I don’t know him IRL to judge, but I have empathy for him as someone who has imploded his life standing up for what he thinks is right, and nothing but contempt for those who people who say they agree with him behind closed doors but won’t have the courage of their convictions in public.
I find myself mostly agreeing with this take on Graham. He’s been pushed to the edge on the question of sex versus gender in a way few others have. Yes, I know many journalists have lost their jobs for questioning gender orthodoxy—but the scale of Graham’s losses as an artist and entertainer feels uniquely devastating. His career has been gutted. His marriage, too. The backlash has been extreme, not only in the vile threats and harassment from trans activists, but also in the pile-on from academics and politicians. And, yes, just as extreme has been his own reaction to those attacks.
Looking back at older interviews with him on YouTube, before this subject consumed so much of his life, he seemed cogent, witty, and naturally good-natured—universally respected by his peers and beloved by actors he worked with. Recently, though, when I watched him on Triggernometry and Joe Rogan (yes, what I do for you), he seemed stressed, overstimulated, and scattered. His hands shake as he tries to explain himself and what his perception of the issues are all about. It makes me sad to see.
I don’t think Graham deserves a dogpile. I’ll admit I canceled my subscription to his Substack at one point, but I’m considering re-subscribing because there’s something bigger at stake here than his tone on Twitter. My sense is that something in him has cracked under the weight of this issue. I don’t see it as narcissism—this is someone who has been a brilliant communicator throughout his career.
And that’s why I keep wishing he, along with people like Katie, Jesse, Hadley, Helen, and Janice, could find some common ground about how to discuss all this. Beneath the frustration and anger he openly acknowledges, his views are fairly standard gender-critical positions. What gets lost in the noise is that he’s still the same person whose shows I loved long before any of this, and whose recent book (which is more about showrunning than the sex vs gender wars) is genuinely an excellent read. In the end, someone is going to have to steer this whole subject back to saner ground. It will likely not be politicians who gain by the infernal divisions this causes (though surely many Democrats are listening to their constituents who agree with a lot of what GC people have to say in terms of female-only spaces and broadly, unproven medicalization of kids and youth. As they say in Blighty: Best of British luck with that).
Graham might be an obsessive rude arsehole, but he's not caused anyone even a fraction of the actual harm others have done to him (what happened to his musical is particularly egregious).
I saw the Rogan interview too, he seems broken. I don’t think Grahams has the kind of resilience you need to deal with the situation he is in, and honestly it’s an extremely rare person who would be robust enough. Some people don’t care what others think of them or even relish conflict and being hated, that is not the case for Graham.
I get the impression he’s an ordinary person who thinks something nearly everyone in the real world agrees with, whose experience online has broken him.
Completely agree that this whole situation seems to have done some pretty deep psychological damage to him, which is sad. I feel like the biggest problem is that he's convinced himself that he's absolutely essential to the cause, and that the cause is massively more important than his own wellbeing. Nobody (or at least nobody worth listening to) would have blamed him if he'd said he needed a break from activism for his health, or to work on his marriage, but he just didn't let up and it's led him to what looks like a pretty miserable place.
I don’t think Katie and Jesse understand just how influential and famous Graham Linneham is in the UK. He wrote or co-wrote practically every award winning comedy show in the 90’s, 2000’s and onwards. I guess the American equivalent would be someone like Larry Charles plus Larry David. He was THE comedy guy who also did a lot to help out other wannabe/up and coming comics and comedy writers. He was on top of the world.
Because we don’t have a written constitution in this country, we have no genuine freedom of speech, but rather freedom of expression which is open to huge interpretation and leaves a person with no defined legal recourse if they don’t Stay On The Right Side Of History. It feels like Katie and Jesse don’t really understand the difference between the USA and the UK in this regard- in the USA you could (can) be cancelled which would naturally be horrible and probably lead to loss of work etc, but you can still publish, do media and legally speak your mind even if people don’t want to hear it. In the UK you run the risk of arrest and imprisonment AS WELL AS social and professional cancellation. Linneham really has lost everything through this campaign- his wife, his kids, his home, his friends, his career. People were afraid to be associated with him- he’s been alone on this one for years.
I think he looks at people like Jesse and Katie and thinks ‘you didn’t lose everything like I did, therefore my sacrifice is more significant and the way I express myself is more genuine’. If that is what he thinks, I don’t agree with it, but I absolutely understand why the man is hugely bitter. Perhaps he deserves less snark and more respect?
However, one small comment about the trans activist whose phone Linehan allegedly grabbed and threw. I wasn't there, don't know what happened so no comment on that. I have been to a number of events where the accuser just kept following around the more well-known feminists like Aja (@AjaTheEmpress) and her partner Lippy the entire time in spite of being asked to stop following. Other feminists such as Youtuber Maria MacLachlan (@MPMacLachlan and Peak Trans YT channel) have been harangued. SB (the TRA) seems to be at every event somehow.
It's pretty disconcerting at best and scary at worst experiencing it in person.
Yeah, Katie’s insistence on the ‘teenage girl’ thing was weird. This is a big, 6 foot + person, who gets right up in peoples faces holding up their phone while grinning insanely. They refuse to back off, move even a little out of the way and they do it again and again and again. It’s designed to intimidate. Katie mischaracterised the whole thing and it’s annoying. She’s meant to be a journalist.
Not sure about that. For instance, Linehan is constantly and continually harangued by the unhinged, but Katie doesn't afford him any charity at all. In fact, she's positively cruel about him.
Maybe he should have been less of a dick to potential allies? I didn't know him from Gus but instead assumed he was on drugs or having a manic episode. Now I know he's just a fuckface.
The issue with the book "the boy in the striped pajamas" isn't that it shouldn't have been written. It's that it should NEVER be used in holocaust education, or mistakes for anything but a work of pure fiction.
I know that Katie experienced flooding. It would be as if someone wrote a book about how a little boy and his sister, who lived in that town, gathered all the toys from their yard and used them to block the flooding. And it was through the sacrifice of this little boy's toys that the town was saved. It might be a lovely story, but if you wanted to talk about the actual, real life tragedy experienced by people, that book would not be appropriate at all. As was pointed out, children come out of reading this book with a worse understanding of the Holocaust, so JUST DON'T USE IT FOR EDUCATION!
Some have said that Django Unchained would be too garish and exploitative to properly represent slavery. But one reviewer pointed out that you needed a filmmaker like Tarantino who is willing to “get down in the muck” to show how uniquely horrible it was. Any other director would only go as far as depicting a slave shedding a single, silent tear as he stood strapped to the whipping post, and recycling imagery from Roots gets stale after a while.
So the boy sacrifices all that is dear to him to stop an overwhelming bad thing? Seems a great way to talk about sacrifice and evil.
Lyotard talked about the holocaust as the incommsurable - something whose evil can’t be accurately represented in one single form - data, images, personal narrative etc. it takes a totality of representation in multiple forms to even attempt to communicate the thing. Fiction has just as much a role to play in that journey. I’ve not read TBiTSP but your. Flood tale is a nice representation to convey a small element of what the holocaust was.
Yes, it might be a good story. But it didn't happen, the bad thing still occurred, and people lost everything.
The boy in the striped pajamas is a story about a German boy who is (apparently, but not treated as such in text) mentally retarded (his speech and understanding is about 5 years younger than his written age). It paints an inaccurate picture of what the camps were actually like, as well as what family life would be for high ranking Nazi officials. It also makes the Holocaust a tragedy for said Nazi the climax of the book.
But above and beyond all that, it empirically teaches children falsehood about the Holocaust. So, again, not saying it shouldn't have been written (although I do think it's yet another cheap attempt at turning the Holocaust into a universal story), but it should definitely never be included in any classroom syllabus (unless it's specifically about books of fiction).
Can you just give me some actual facts about the Holocaust that that book gets wrong. Not 'this character perpetuates the myth that Germans didn't know' because that's reading politics into the character not facts about the Holocaust. A slanted reading is of no interest to me, what facts does it get wrong?
There being a young child in Auschwitz at all is close to impossible, let alone him being able to wander freely and hang out by the fence all day. Most children were killed on arrival at the camps as they couldn't be used as forced labour; a few at some camps were used in medical experiments but they would have been confined for that purpose.
You should read the link, but fine a fact. There was not, and could not be a boy like Shmuel wandering around Auschitch. He would have been killed upon arrival, and even if not, he wouldn't have been free to wander.
1. One of the authors who *did not* withdraw was a trans man, who was then hounded by his own community (“trans men really are the men of trans people” was the funniest comment I read about that), and
2. One of the other authors on the longlist who also didn’t withdraw from the prize was a Deixis Press author, William Parker, whose autofictional memoir The Last Doorbell tells his story as a young male escort who ends up in a lifelong relationship with an aristocrat. A little plug there.
(Hint hint, US and UK readers can buy his wonderful book at a significant discount directly from our website.)
Katie and Jesse, you guys are too hard on Graham Linehan - yeah he's full of rage now and he tweets too much, but he's also right about all the gender stuff and it's probably uniquely deranging to be cancelled for things everyone/all normies agree on.
Linehan has his faults, no question, and has profound issues with anger management.
But most people who've been in the gender critical camp for the long haul feel a huge debt of gratitude to him. He was brave, put his head above the parapet, and, yes, focused incessantly on this one subject, at a time when no well-known person was willing to mention it publicly.
I mean, I don't want to marry the guy. But Katie comes across as bitchy and sanctimonious when she talks about him - painful to listen to. Talk about nurturing grievances!
I'd argue that the gratitude is misplaced. I think that at best he has only ever preached to the choir on the subject. Public support for the positions that he holds increasing happened in spite of him, not because of him. I agree that it took bravery to plant his flag so firmly when he did, but it also accomplished nothing.
Linehan's contribution wasn't swaying public support towards the positions he holds. Rather, he provided an example of a well-known person calling out the lunacy of extreme trans ideology, standing up to trans activists, and not folding. He made it (very slightly) easier for those who came after him.
Of course, people in Britain on 'X' are pointing out that the cops do not apply such zealousness in and attention to other areas of the law, like break and enter and theft, often not showing up to calls. The police, they claim, do have discretion in filing any charge and question how they are interpreting Linehan's tweets. And are very curious as to why they are so keen to put tweeters behind bars.
Examples:
boswelltoday
@boswelltoday
·4h
If the police can decline to investigate house breaking and assault they can decline to investigate tweets. Let them go on embarrassing themselves until they have to admit it for themselves.
Skinny Pete
@TWrodbrochen
·1h
There will never be a better response:
"I have read your thoughtful and illuminating statement on the arrest of comedy writer, Graham Linchan, by five armed officers on the grounds that his tweets
might incite violence.
I abhor the attempt to scapegoat Parliament for the witless actions of your officers. I fear no amount of legislation could compensate for their apparent inability to exercise intelligent judgment. You say officers have "no choice but to record such incidents as crimes when they're reported. Then they are obliged to follow all lines
of enquiry and take action as appropriate.". Regrettably, Sir Mark, that is
One of the cited tweets ended with "Punch them in the balls." Another ended with "Fuck em." Are they both to be taken literally as incitements to violence? Do you or your officers sincerely contend that "Fuck em" might be meant to cause anyone to engage in sexual intercourse (whether or not consensually)? Do your colleagues require Parliament to legislate on the meaning of "Fuck em" and whether or not it should be taken literally? In the meantime, must all reported incidents be recorded as a crime before anyone engages their adult brain? I would hope your answer is "Obviously not," but I cannot be confident. If your officers can identify one phrase as not meant literally, surely they ought to be able to do that with the other and dismiss the complaint.
On this occasion the incidents were reported by former police constable Lynsay Watson; a transgender male dismissed for gross misconduct by Leicestershire Police as he waged a campaign of harassment against people with the legally protected belief that human beings cannot change sex. Your colleagues have allowed themselves to be exploited as tools in that continuing and orchestrated
campaign.
Watson has form. He has taken legal action against three police forces, the British Transport Police Federation, the Police Appeals Tribunal, the Ministry of Defence and sundry individuals who do not comply with his demands. Were your colleagues wary of being added to the list? Were they simply ignorant? Or are they, as you assert, mere automatons impelled to act unthinkingly once their buttons are pushed? Whatever the case, no depth of detail in a Policing with Common Sense Bill will solve the problem. Instead of blaming Parliament for the inability of your officers to think for themselves intelligently, perhaps you might firmly tell them, please, to stop being stupid.
Yours sincerely,
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
{Emma Nicholson sits in the UK's House of Lord's and has been a
NEWS FLASH: Linehan is back on Twitter. His legal team and the Free Speech Union have got his bail requirements thrown out.
Look, if you care about free speech in the UK you should be loudly agreeing with the police here, because protection of speech through legislation is far more valuable than protection through police discretion. The people trying to shift blame back onto the police rather than parliament either think tweets *they* don’t like *should* be illegal, or they’re morons.
I don't endorse the current white house, or their ideas about trans people and guns, but you said you don't understand what they are saying so I thought I'd lay it out for you as I understand it:
according to the white house
1) if gender dysphoria is a mental illness
and
2) if people with mental illnesses are to be prevented from buying/having guns
then
3) people with gender dysphoria should be prevented from buying/having guns.
---
obviously if you don't think that every trans person has gender dysphoria or that everyone with with a mental illness should be denied a gun, this logic fails.
The status quo is not "people with mental illnesses are to be prevented from buying/having guns". The wording on ATF Form 4473 is considerably narrower:
"21 g. Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?"
Just being diagnosed with a mental condition, or taking psych medication, or being in therapy does not remove your 2nd amendment rights. I don't know if changing this would require an act of Congress or could be done administratively through the ATF. However, applying such a higher standard ONLY to the condition of gender dysphoria is obviously discriminatory.
Frankly I suspect it is a majority opinion. If you are detached from reality enough to think you are the wrong sex, you should not have a gun. Plus as we are reminded all trans people are one mis-pronouning from suicide, and guns are most often used to kill their owners not others. So really we are protecting them.
But they can have the condition of gender dysphoria while not believing they are literally the opposite sex, in which case I don't see why they shouldn't pack heat.
Even if they do, supposedly, believe they are the opposite sex I feel like they at least understand that someone could take a different view. It's really a cultural belief that they hold. With schizophrenia it is different. They might believe the CIA talks to them through their teeth, and they won't hear a word in opposition.
It's interesting to think of what the difference is. There definitely is one.
It's notoriously difficult to formally define the difference between "delusional" and "has odd beliefs". In any case, being trans is obviously completely different to psychosis, despite that both are indeed mental health conditions. Both may even involve believing things that aren't true, but then if believing things that aren't true disqualified Americans from owning guns, there would not be many gun owners in America.
I joked in an earlier thread that the “piss off everyone” response to the church shooting would be “make tougher red flag laws, but add ‘gender dysphoria’ to the list of red flags”, and this appears to be coming true. Yay me?
There is an awful lot of overlap between “people who want to ban guns” and “people who get really pissed off at any suggestion that transgenderism is a mental illness (but also all transgender people are on a suicidal hair-trigger if not affirmed)”
Honestly I bet the number of people who want guns banned is shockingly small. A lot of people who will quibble over trans shit, if pushed, would probably say we just need “more regulations” because they are probably the type of people who think they will need guns to protect their bespoke identity.
Well said. It's obvious culture war trolling. If Trump wants the Supreme Court to establish more precedent recognizing the rights of trans people, he should go through with this bullshit. I wouldn't be surprised to see this court strike it down 9-0.
Katie's jibe about Graham's ex-wife is really nasty and shouldn't have been said.
I agree that Graham is obsessive (I also wouldn't be surprised if he was neurodivergent), he burns relationships with people who could be allies with him and relentlessly attacks them for years after he falls out with them. I could live without seeing another "Well, Jon Ronson!!? What do you have to say about THIS?' post from him.
HOWEVER, I believe the rapid destruction of his career/marriage and the years-long weaponisation of the police and justice system by trans activists that he's endured, has deeply traumatised him and he behaves in the messy, angry way of people with deep trauma. He made a mistake early on of believing that if he explained himself, activists would hear him out and his media friends would say, "No, no, Graham's not a bigot, he's just got some concerns." It didn't happen because his friends understood what he didn't - that no debate would be tolerated and their careers would be destroyed if they tried to support him. I don't believe he's ever recovered from that.
As a comedy nerd, I have huge admiration for Graham's TV work. He's also done some good journalism with his substack. His work on Aimee Challenor was excellent - to the point Katie and Jesse used it, originally without crediting him. Hadley Freeman, Helen Lewis and others have also attacked Graham, albeit in a more middle-class, media professional manner. This isn't entirely a one-way street.
Do I wish he had the near-perfect online calm of Kathleen Stock? Absolutely. But none of us can know how we would behave if trans activists sent police to our doors, we became immediately unemployable and our marriages suddenly ended. I don't think even the worst of his behaviour, makes all that okay.
J+K seem to especially dislike Linehan because he has called them and people like Helen Lewis out many times, and not without reason it has to be said. J+K have always walked a fine line on trans issues (pronouns etc) and honestly I think it's some of their weakest arguments and makes them look a little silly. Linehan doesn't mince his words or kowtow for the sake of "kindness".
Agree completely. If you're just going to go ahead and use the pronouns because it's polite, then you may as well go the rest of the way. Because what's the problem, then? Using the pronouns signals you’ve already bought into the framework. So why carve out exceptions around kids or activism?
J&K are still trying to play by “civilized” rules of debate, lining up in neat formation and announcing their fire while activists use guerrilla tactics, ambushes, and no-quarters harassment. They keep holding themselves to this weird code of decorum even though the other side is NEVER going to do the same.
I hate that they're the best/most educated on this topic tbh.
Setting aside the substance of the pronouns debate, as a matter of tactics J&K's approach seems wise, particularly for Jesse. He's an influential voice in the debate about youth gender medicine. Major outlets run his articles. Him refusing to use preferred pronouns would turn off some people who might otherwise be sympathetic to his arguments, and open up an easy line of attack for opponents who would like to avoid engaging with his arguments directly.
I disagree in this case. Lionel Shriver already demonstrates that you don’t need to play along with pronouns to stay in print. She still gets published in major outlets, and her arguments are clearer for not having the hedging/reading difficulty that the pronoun gymnastics force. It knocks people out of play pretend.
Every time someone like Jesse reinforces the ritual politeness, it extends the life of the dogma. The more prominent voices who drop it, the faster the spell breaks. Otherwise we’re all stuck living under this stupid secular religion because polite liberals are too worried about optics.
This is also a case of never buying in vs. excommunication. I think outright refusal lands better than nuanced liberal concern/half measures.
Jesse's position seems to be that he uses preferred pronouns by default, but will switch or emphasize "this person is trans" when he feels it's relevant. There is a large segment of the population who object to gender trumping sex when relevant (e.g. athletics, prisons, dating apps, support groups), but who otherwise are happy to call people what they want to be called. And Jesse seems to genuinely be one of them. But even if he wasn't, there is value in not needlessly alienating the people one is trying to persuade.
Fair enough on your point that Lionel Shriver still gets published. I'm not very familiar with her work. I'm familiar with Jesse's, and I know that he's made great efforts to connect with persuadable people in the "nice liberal" (for lack of a better term) camp who are predisposed to support trans rights in general, and probably don't know a whole lot of detail about the contours of public policy debates around gender-affirming care and single-sex spaces. Nice liberals will stop reading if you call trans women "he" just as a matter of course - even if they're the sorts of people who would themselves call a violent psychopath in a wig "he", or the sorts of people who would be horrified to read about masectomies for male-identifying 14 year olds.
If pronoun politeness worked, Jesse wouldn’t still be treated like a pariah. And “nice liberals” who tune out over pronouns but are horrified at kids’ surgeries were never really persuadable in the first place.
Those “nice liberals” will be the ones watching HBO docs with the rest of us in 10 years, saying “no one knew how bad this was,” while Jesse and Katie got dragged for saying it out loud... even politely and with measured, calm intent.
The climate seems to be shifting, though! This will be interesting to look back on in 1, 5, and 10 years' time to see how many people are still pronouning away, even in podcasts run by people who are perverts for nuance.
Shriver is interesting, definitely recommend her pieces on the subject. If you've been under the boot of this under fear of job loss or being ostracized, it's just refreshing to see someone just SAY things that are self-evident once you pull back the activist curtain.
Yes, agree. I know a lot of people say pronouns don't matter and maybe a few years ago I would have agreed. But I'm afraid they do matter now. If you are using preferred pronouns for some trans identified people are you saying you think those people have become the other sex? I doubt very much J+K think that, so they're just entertaining a polite fiction...for what? To help the other person pretend they've changed sex? Everyone knows they haven't, including the trans identified person. It just compounds the madness of it all.
Exactly. The sooner people stop playing pretend who are in higher positions, the sooner the rest of us can also quit this bullshit. It's gone on too long, the fatigue is real, can we please just stop.
It's like how with stalkers, every time you communicate with one, you've bought yourself six more weeks of obsession. Every time someone she/hers a dude in print, particularly after a horrible crime, we collectively have to keep playing the game for another block of time while gritting our teeth.
This is nonsense. Jesse and Katie respect preferred pronouns because they genuinely believe that psychiatrically gender dysphoric people have a right to be able to socially transition, so they respect pronouns as a matter of course. They don’t secretly agree with you that it’s all delusions or perverts, they aren’t going along with the pronouns just to look good; that’s a frankly ridiculous cope to avoid accepting they aren’t gender-critical hardliners.
Didn’t say they secretly agree with me. Just that their in-between stance leaves them catching fire from both sides, which is pretty obvious at this point.
You actually said:
> If you're just going to go ahead and use the pronouns because it's polite, then you may as well go the rest of the way. Because what's the problem, then? Using the pronouns signals you’ve already bought into the framework. So why carve out exceptions around kids or activism?
Which is classic activist ‘destroy the middle ground’ tactics. You don’t allow for the possibility that someone might hold moderate views based on strong principles, you have to ‘buy into the framework’ of either side’s hardliners. Do you accept that someone can sincerely want to respect pronouns without also believing in unchecked youth transition and crazy activist woo, without just being cowards or ‘conflict avoidant’?
Motivations matter less than actions and their consequences. You cannot “be kind” your way out of antisocial behavior. Nothing changes that way. There is a liberal belief that modeling kindness will encourage pro-social behavior, but that assumes the other side is acting in good faith. I do not believe that applies here.
Someone can sincerely want to respect pronouns, but doing so reinforces a social contagion that has grown into a secular belief system embedded in institutions. Accepting play pretend as reality concedes that it is at least real to some degree.
I cannot read minds or know what is in someone’s heart. I can only observe outcomes, and those outcomes are what matter.
I can also understand not wanting to be harassed or mobbed or fired. No one is obligated to be a martyr, and I understand being held hostage by these beliefs in your family or workplace if you think no one is coming to help you. Which is why it will take people and institutions who do have more power to lead the way towards breaking the coercive and controlling movement.
Or enough dorky middle-aged they/thems to make younger generations reject it entirely and it becomes utterly uncool. That's more likely at this point.
I just try to treat others with the same amount of respect with which they would treat me. That sometimes includes using their preferred pronouns if they are trans, I think.
You only use those pronouns when they aren’t around you , so what difference does it make to not use them?
Exactly!
It’s not true that you only use third person pronouns when the person you’re talking about is not around you
I hear this one a lot, usually from people who really are kind (and conflict-avoidant, wanting everyone to get along).
But “treat others how they treat me” doesn’t hold up here. People pushing pronoun use rarely return respect... they smear, harass, and try to get people fired. Reciprocity isn’t happening. It’s one-way compliance, and it sets the rules for how everyone else has to live.
Most of the time what’s really being said is, “I don’t want to deal with blowback, so I’ll comply and call it kindness.” That’s understandable as self-protection. It’s also why I’d rather see these groups lose the power to force compliance in the first place.
In the end, the principle sounds gentle, but to anyone who’s lived under a high control belief system before, it lands as “keep sweet.”
Or worse, "Now was that so hard?"
For what it’s worth, I refuse to do certain things but reserve the right to do others. I don’t do the pronoun game where we all announce our pronouns when introducing ourselves. I’ve had occasion to say, “no thank you” or just refuse or ignore the prompt. I try to draw a line somewhere. And of course, if too many people have weird pronouns in a group, I end up not using pronouns at all! But individuals I like or love, that I interact with on a more personal level, I refer to them as they wish.
Totally fair. You don’t have to prove anything to me, and I don’t have to live your life. My only point is that reinforcing the framework keeps it in place for everyone else. With kids especially, the data shows that when they aren’t socially transitioned, most of them eventually desist. So the more the language gets normalized in daily life, the harder it is to break that cycle.
How many trans people are out there smearing and harassing and trying to get people fired?
I'll cop to being conflict-avoidant. I guess I'd distinguish between backing down from conflict and choosing not to instigate it. In political and policy debates, I can see how going along with demands regarding pronouns feels like backing down. For people who have family or friends or co-workers who are trans, "going along" feels much more like basic decency.
“Just going along” does not stop with the kindness mandating conflict avoider. It extends the burden to everyone else who never consented. Family and friends make it tricky, but that has been true of every high-control group from Scientology to Amway. It does not take millions to cause harm. A small faction with institutional backing can ruin careers and set norms, and this podcast often covers how small groups hijack spaces and hollow them out.
I work in an environment where this has reshaped the company and turned the office into a crybully hostage situation. I just use people’s names when addressing them, but I have still been warned my management for not “affirming.” It feels like Simon Says where one wrong word gets you in trouble.
And the kicker? If I pretended to be religious, I would basically get an unofficial exemption because HR does not want to gamble on legal cases in the current political climate.
I don’t go looking for conflict. I’ve just seen how this plays out in real workplaces, and it stops being about politeness really fast. I understand that people want to be decent. It just doesn't seem to be reciprocal.
Maybe they’re the best/most educated on the topic precisely because they hold themselves to a high standard of civility
Civility doesn’t make someone the best or most educated. J&K have done real research and kept updating their views over time. That’s what makes them credible.
A better way of putting it may be- the same character traits that make them treat their opponents respectfully also make them take their arguments seriously rather than just dismissing them. What makes them civil and liberal-minded is what makes them careful researchers.
Absolutely. It wasn't Graham who got us into this mess, it was cowards flying the "kindness" flag of convenience.
Also, what's with being so concerned about protecting teenage dicks and their phones? Can we have the old Katie back, please?
It seems there's increasing amounts of pronoun-weanking in the pod. Makes we wanna gag tbh.
Calling people out is usually not a good thing. The umpires of life.
Yes, that comment was completely below the belt.
Yes, I winced.
Seemed obvious Katie was engaging in payback. I was entertained.
Payback for what though? It's so churlish. J+K are very successful, made a ton of money, loved by many. Sticking the knife into Linehan because he got divorced and having a whole "rant" section about him because he calls them out for entertaining pronouns is just a bit...pathetic tbh.
Being so obsessive about the pronoun thing is extremely weird my dude
Then why are trans identified people so obsessed with pronouns? To the point of throwing massive hissy fits. Some of us prefer not to lie or force ourselves to correct our speech to endorse someone else's fantasy of reality. J+K only do it for trans people they like, which is completely incoherent.
Being obsessive about pronouns is extremely weird no matter who does it
Disagree. It’s about mind control. It’s about making us say something we KNOW isn’t true. Why is it weird to care about that?
Being polite to people you like is completely incoherent...
I think you know exactly what I mean and you're wilfully misunderstanding my point, but crack on.
Because it feels like the Trojan Horse of radical trans ideology. If you use the preferred pronouns of someone who hasn’t even made a cursory attempt at passing, the next logical step is…. Well, what we had for a short, weird time.
Except the posters in this thread don't want to use those pronouns for literally anyone. They're not making the self-ID argument, they're making the argument they should never have to change pronouns even for transgender people with medically diagnosed dysphoria who have obviously transitioned and made an effort.
Yeah, that was really bitchy and needless. The comment was below her. Made me lose a tiny bit of respect for her there.
Agree, I found that comment pretty nasty.
Yes, being targeted by Stephanie Hayden (legitimately a BAD EGG) in particular must have been stressful af for Linehan. According to reduxx:
"Hayden has initiated legal action against more than two dozen individuals over the years, often in an apparent effort to prevent them from referring to him as a “man,” or quashing speculations regarding his past criminal history. In total, Hayden had filed approximately 40 complaints altogether, and multiple individuals have been arrested for “hate speech” after he complained to police."
https://reduxx.info/uk-prominent-trans-activist-known-for-having-opponents-arrested-has-history-of-indecent-assault-on-14-year-old-boy/
I agree. Distasteful doesn't even come close to describing. Very poor form.
I read this comment before hearing the episode and while I know little of the guy outside what has been mentioned, I agree that was harsh.
Well said!
100% agree. J and K are much too harsh about Graham. And can they drop the pronoun crap, maybe?
>he burns relationships with people who could be allies with him and relentlessly attacks them for years after he falls out with them
So exactly the type of person Jesse and Katie have always made fun of on this show
On Glinner’s twitter, it’s also a constant refrain from TRAs, and others who tell him to shut up, so she it aligns her with them, in a way. I mean, ok, it’s probably meant ironically, but if you don’t see how many times he gets tweets about, you might not get it.
Katie:
I feel you left some important context out of your description of the IT Crowd episode that caused Lineham to be excommunicated from his career.
I think it's important to note that the character who exhibits the transphobic behaviour is the most *morally reprehensible* character on an entire show filled with flawed people. It's not like it's Chandler or Monica being intolerant towards a trans person, it's more like it's Eric Cartman.
The show is so over the top that the character rejecting his trans lover and the rejected person get into a fistfight so extreme that one of them is punched *though* a wall.
At the time, people were complaining about "the violence against transwomen" in the episode at least as much as the transphobic rejection of her character, even though the trans woman was shown to be able to kick the ass of the transphobic guy who rejected her.
An american version of the cancelling of Graham Linehan over this episode would resemble people dog-piling on Glenn Howerton because he wrote a tv episode where Dennis Reynolds becomes upset that he's been unknowingly dating a guy, then gets beaten up by that guy.
(to dennis obviously - the person is a guy to dennis. i hate that i have to add this)
The joke, too, is that the relationship with the trans woman is the best relationship Douglas has ever had
yes, and she's portrayed (by a cis woman) as a very sympathetic person
If I recall correctly, the joke was that the trans character says "I was born a man" and Douglas hears "I was born in Iran".
And was somewhat the B plot of the episode.
I have the episode - The Internet in A Box - on DVD. It was taken off Channel 4's free UK streaming service years later, but at least at one point I think was still on Netflix UK.
That was a great episode of IT crowd. And yes, he was supposed to be an absolutely terrible person.
Graham Linehan may be right or wrong. He is definitely an asshole, but he shouldn’t be arrested for that. The fact that he was arrested by armed police is a bit shocking. British police are not usually armed; firearms trained officers are a minority and are meant for potentially violent situations - not a doughy middle aged man without a history of violence. Based on the press, this might be a good development. It’s clear the police are embarrassed, as is the government. Hopefully this will lead to some change.
In terms or resource misallocation, solve rates for the actual crimes - violence, rapes, knife assaults - are abysmal in the UK.
I would guess the police were armed because they are stationed in an airport, not because of GL
Yes the airport police are always armed, but that's because airports are high risk for terrorism, which is a reason not to take five armed officers off their normal duties of finding terrorists, in order to arrest a man for tweeting
That seems like the obvious reason, and give of them would have been there because it had the potential to be a high profile arrest of a known antagonistic individual. You've got five different speakers to cycle through, and hopefully he'll take a shine to one of them.
But if anyone questions the necessity for police to have firearms at an airport, it's most certainly vital, as can be seen in the documentary "Die Hard 2".
Guns are fine, but no match for a good icicle at your side.
...and of course when Douglas Reynholm realises that April (a trans woman journalist he's shagging) HAD told him she 'had been born as a man'... And that he had misheard her as 'had been born in Iran'. I mean... It's so daft but it's hilarious which is like the entire series which is commonly comic genius.
There is plenty that could be considered a transphobic trope. Once we know April is a trans woman, we see that she can drink the men under the table, play pub games (i.e. darts) better than men, etc. The joke is accentuated because April is played by a slender attractive biological female, so her 'manly' abilities look even more incongruous. I mean, it's low hanging fruit, comedy-wise but very very funny nonetheless.
I've now finished listening to the episode and would like to say to Katie - I lost track of Linehan after his initial cancelling and was unaware he has become an asshat.
I still love the "IT Crowd" and will continue recommend it to friends, just like I still love the "Thriller" album by MJ or "The Sandman" comics by Gaiman, despite the cancellations of their creators.
PS - If you haven't seen the Peter File episode of the IT Crowd you're missing out on great comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5MI5MI9ok
Right, except Michael Jackson was a paedophile and Gaiman has been credibly accused of multiple rapes and Linehan is... mean about people online quite often and possibly broke a mobile phone.
#PhoneLivesMatter
I love the dinner party episode; I’ve watched it so many times.
Oh my god when Jen tells them to act normal and they all start posing
'TAXI!'
“He should move to America.”
Which Graham also might want to do know. Life imitating art.
Interestingly, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who have been pretty consistent in their negative portrayals of gender ideology on South Park, have not been dogpiled and witch-hunted to the same extent. I imagine it's because almost every single group who's gone after South Park has made a fool of themselves in doing so. Also, for whatever reason, anyone who disagrees with South Park always assumes that Matt and Trey are on the opposite side of the aisle to them; liberals call them conservative, conservatives call them liberal. Not unlike Jesse and Katie, actually.
Yeah I thought this episode of the pod was pretty good but I do think the background of the character - a macho misogynist pig who finally meets his perfect woman and it turns out to be a man reacts like a reprehensible jerk makes sense in context.
Katie has said on episodes they don't generally read comments but do read emails so might be worth sending the note to her that way.
The Work Outing, is still the funniest single episodic tv show ever made, despite the hate directed towards the disabled and the Irish!
...and of course the gays! "A musical called... gay? Aren't ALL musicals gay?"
Is this the one where Moss ends up behind the bar and Roy in the disabled bathroom? That's one of the ones that makes me laugh until I cry.
Mewing “but I’m disaaaaabled” as he is wheeled into the handi-van…
Yes!!!
Love that one--though maybe just as much as the one where they go on a Shark Tank style show. So many good episodes...
"My tits! There's on FIRE!"
Exactly, if you’re going to pin everything on this one episode of The IT Crowd, then at least watch the episode.
Wait....Dennis isn't the good guy? I'm not supposed to model his behavior?
Fuck.
It really was sympathetic to the trans character!
I love you guys, and I know this is the “public” episode for this week, but I just finished Taylor Lorenz part 1, and I want all production to cease until you drop the remaining Taylor Lorenz parts 2-19. And it needs to happen immediately. I cannot stand her and I cannot stand waiting. I’m dyin’ over here! 😭
Found the Taylor Lorenz episode extremely boring but in a good way. I can use it as my personal sleeping pill. 👍
You, Frithiof Nilsson of Piratetown, are not nearly online enough. Touching grass is overrated. You can get ticks and eventually someone will ask you to mow it.
😂 Touching grass right now. Out in the garden reading a good book! 👍
You could be in the garden reading about internet drama
Based lol
Dull as hell to be honest. Very niche. In the UK no one’s ever heard of her, and she’s not interesting enough to research….
This episode made me angry. Not because it was bad--I really liked it!--but because it really frosts my cookies when gay and lesbian organizations abandon gays and lesbians in order to serve the agenda of the gender jihadists.
Helen Joyce once said something that has stayed with me for years. Gender ideology doesn't just infect the organizations that espouse it; it turns them into the opposite of what they were. The ACLU now opposes free expression. Stonewall now works against LGB people. NOW wants to put men in women's sports. Once gender woo-woo gets in, the original mission goes out, and now the Polari Prize has flipped.
I don't give to any gay or lesbian organization anymore, not untill I know exactly where that org stands on trans issues. I can't stop these people from selling out homosexuals to the creepy gender cult, but I can make sure I'm not paying the thirty pieces of silver.
The bit where someone compared Boyd's presence on the list to a white supremacist being listed among black people was so transparent. They think they can revoke his gayness for wrongthink. It really gives the whole game away; to them, actual same-sex attraction is secondary to aesthetics and political posturing. A spicy straight they/them female who's never touched another woman's vagina in her life is an honorary kweer, while an actual gay man who experienced real oppression for his sexuality is not.
Guys like Boyd, Sullivan, and Sargeant have done more for gay rights than any of these simpering TRAs ever have (if anything TRAs have actually done damage to gay rights), yet they are subject to obsessive smear campaigns because they prioritize the needs of actual same-sex-attracted individuals over following the commandments of the Church of Gender. It infuriates me that gay people are now being blamed for radical positions pushed by a bunch of heterosexual males who like jerking off in women's clothing. Gay men and lesbians are not the ones demanding that males be in women's sports, but because everyone is lumped together in the LGBT, normies feel justified in being more homophobic again.
The forced teaming is horrifying and depressing. How often do we hear that there is an attack on LGBalphabetsoup rights and it turns out to be somebody setting boundaries with self identified trans folk?
Also the original reasons for cancelling him were insane. How do the TQ+ think this is going to end?
I somehow missed Helen j saying that and it’s so true nd brilliant
Also destroys Green parties, undermines faith in scientists, turns schools into weird places…
Since transitioners must be considered always to have been that gender and we can't mention their previous identity, doesn't that mean Eliot Page is a privileged white male that was stealing roles from women for years?
I usually agree with J+K on most things, but this episode made me a bit sad. Increasingly I think Linehan is the person who will be viewed most kindly in history. He has been thoroughly and despicably monstered for saying what 99% of people think.
I'm a lesbian, I live in the UK. I am so so so so sick to the back teeth of TRAs and gender ideology, and the utter fucking madness that stems from it. We have elected politicians who think a man can "grow a cervix". People lose their jobs because they don't believe men magically tranform into women simply by declaring it so. Thousands of most likely gay kids have been severely harmed.
And yet so many cowards have stood by and let it happen, all to protect their status as good progressives.
So yeah, Team Linehan I guess.
I agree. A little disenchanted but Katie and Jesse after this episode tbh. A whole heap of pretty shitty stuff to my mind.
Yeah I'm a little bummed about it. They really seem to hate Linehan, and fine, that's their perogative. But the amount of grief Linehan gets is so over the top. The jibe about his wife was very unnecessary, especially as Katie said she thinks Graham will listen to the episode. Weird behaviour.
I found it somewhat freeing. If I'd ever felt uncomfortable to hear Graham Linehan cast aspersions on Katie Herzog, I'm not anymore.
Herzog talked more trash, and in a more vindictive tone, about Linehan in ten minutes than Linehan has about Herzog in five years. Honestly, her gleeful cruelty was so disgraceful, it's as if Katie Herzog shat her pants in public.
Unfortunately I'm inclined to agree. The glee and smug self-satisfaction expressed was disgusting.
It was a childish, nasty thing to say
What was the quote? I must have missed it.
A wild thing to say about someone who has been a supreme asshole to everybody! There are plenty of people with similar beliefs who have not gone off the deep end. Him being an asshole is a choice at this point, anyone who supports him does so precisely because he's not kind.
Yeah, history will not look on him "most kindly" because we have enough non-trans related stuff to think he sucks. He is in court for knocking a phone out of a teenager's hand. He goes on crazy obsessive rants after anyone mildly criticizes him. J+K and JK rowling will be looked on more kindly in history than GL ever will.
Have you looked at this teenager whose phone he apparently knocked? Strongly advise you do. He (because of course it's a male pretending to be female) is most certainly not a vulnerable precious teenage girl as is being made out by J+K and anyone else with Linehan Derangement Syndrome. The kid is a threatening menace and I'd knock his phone out of my face too.
Bingo. Kid - ie, big man - is a fucking menace.
Dude, said teenager is a hulking great big man who has been bullying women and is hanging about with a convicted sex offender. I mean, I'm not here to judge who you extend your sympathies to.....but I am....
Mate you only think he has been a supreme asshole to everybody because you disagree with him. You really think everyone who supports him is just doing it because he isn't "kind"? Come on now, this is a very silly line of argument.
I don't even disagree with Linehan on most things I reckon. It's just that it's perfectly possible to advance gender critical views without being a giant asshole about it and there are heaps of people who prove that fact.
There is this thing where TRAs behave worse and worse, with total impunity, then when finally a Sex Realist succumbs to provocation, everybody stands around tutting while the UK police move in.
I feel like Linehan’s approach is counterproductive, he definitely alienates many people who would agree with him in principle, or who would agree to disagree and be friends- were that something he was capable of. I think circumstances have bought out the worst in him, and his abrasiveness has worsened in response to others response to him. He was hospitalised at his arrest with high blood pressure, and doesn’t look healthy, constant stress is not good for anyone.
I like and respect the opinions of some people who say he’s a bellend, and other people who count him as a friend, and I don’t know him IRL to judge, but I have empathy for him as someone who has imploded his life standing up for what he thinks is right, and nothing but contempt for those who people who say they agree with him behind closed doors but won’t have the courage of their convictions in public.
I find myself mostly agreeing with this take on Graham. He’s been pushed to the edge on the question of sex versus gender in a way few others have. Yes, I know many journalists have lost their jobs for questioning gender orthodoxy—but the scale of Graham’s losses as an artist and entertainer feels uniquely devastating. His career has been gutted. His marriage, too. The backlash has been extreme, not only in the vile threats and harassment from trans activists, but also in the pile-on from academics and politicians. And, yes, just as extreme has been his own reaction to those attacks.
Looking back at older interviews with him on YouTube, before this subject consumed so much of his life, he seemed cogent, witty, and naturally good-natured—universally respected by his peers and beloved by actors he worked with. Recently, though, when I watched him on Triggernometry and Joe Rogan (yes, what I do for you), he seemed stressed, overstimulated, and scattered. His hands shake as he tries to explain himself and what his perception of the issues are all about. It makes me sad to see.
I don’t think Graham deserves a dogpile. I’ll admit I canceled my subscription to his Substack at one point, but I’m considering re-subscribing because there’s something bigger at stake here than his tone on Twitter. My sense is that something in him has cracked under the weight of this issue. I don’t see it as narcissism—this is someone who has been a brilliant communicator throughout his career.
And that’s why I keep wishing he, along with people like Katie, Jesse, Hadley, Helen, and Janice, could find some common ground about how to discuss all this. Beneath the frustration and anger he openly acknowledges, his views are fairly standard gender-critical positions. What gets lost in the noise is that he’s still the same person whose shows I loved long before any of this, and whose recent book (which is more about showrunning than the sex vs gender wars) is genuinely an excellent read. In the end, someone is going to have to steer this whole subject back to saner ground. It will likely not be politicians who gain by the infernal divisions this causes (though surely many Democrats are listening to their constituents who agree with a lot of what GC people have to say in terms of female-only spaces and broadly, unproven medicalization of kids and youth. As they say in Blighty: Best of British luck with that).
Graham might be an obsessive rude arsehole, but he's not caused anyone even a fraction of the actual harm others have done to him (what happened to his musical is particularly egregious).
Also, bang on.
I saw the Rogan interview too, he seems broken. I don’t think Grahams has the kind of resilience you need to deal with the situation he is in, and honestly it’s an extremely rare person who would be robust enough. Some people don’t care what others think of them or even relish conflict and being hated, that is not the case for Graham.
I get the impression he’s an ordinary person who thinks something nearly everyone in the real world agrees with, whose experience online has broken him.
Bang on.
Completely agree that this whole situation seems to have done some pretty deep psychological damage to him, which is sad. I feel like the biggest problem is that he's convinced himself that he's absolutely essential to the cause, and that the cause is massively more important than his own wellbeing. Nobody (or at least nobody worth listening to) would have blamed him if he'd said he needed a break from activism for his health, or to work on his marriage, but he just didn't let up and it's led him to what looks like a pretty miserable place.
I don’t think Katie and Jesse understand just how influential and famous Graham Linneham is in the UK. He wrote or co-wrote practically every award winning comedy show in the 90’s, 2000’s and onwards. I guess the American equivalent would be someone like Larry Charles plus Larry David. He was THE comedy guy who also did a lot to help out other wannabe/up and coming comics and comedy writers. He was on top of the world.
Because we don’t have a written constitution in this country, we have no genuine freedom of speech, but rather freedom of expression which is open to huge interpretation and leaves a person with no defined legal recourse if they don’t Stay On The Right Side Of History. It feels like Katie and Jesse don’t really understand the difference between the USA and the UK in this regard- in the USA you could (can) be cancelled which would naturally be horrible and probably lead to loss of work etc, but you can still publish, do media and legally speak your mind even if people don’t want to hear it. In the UK you run the risk of arrest and imprisonment AS WELL AS social and professional cancellation. Linneham really has lost everything through this campaign- his wife, his kids, his home, his friends, his career. People were afraid to be associated with him- he’s been alone on this one for years.
I think he looks at people like Jesse and Katie and thinks ‘you didn’t lose everything like I did, therefore my sacrifice is more significant and the way I express myself is more genuine’. If that is what he thinks, I don’t agree with it, but I absolutely understand why the man is hugely bitter. Perhaps he deserves less snark and more respect?
I'm by no means here to comment on or defend GL.
However, one small comment about the trans activist whose phone Linehan allegedly grabbed and threw. I wasn't there, don't know what happened so no comment on that. I have been to a number of events where the accuser just kept following around the more well-known feminists like Aja (@AjaTheEmpress) and her partner Lippy the entire time in spite of being asked to stop following. Other feminists such as Youtuber Maria MacLachlan (@MPMacLachlan and Peak Trans YT channel) have been harangued. SB (the TRA) seems to be at every event somehow.
It's pretty disconcerting at best and scary at worst experiencing it in person.
Just my two pennies.
Yet that activist in this episode is painted as just a wittle teenage "girl".
Katie seems extemely rattled by Linehan, kind of weird. Even though she's trying to hide it here behind the usual sarcasm and sardonic delivery.
Yeah, Katie’s insistence on the ‘teenage girl’ thing was weird. This is a big, 6 foot + person, who gets right up in peoples faces holding up their phone while grinning insanely. They refuse to back off, move even a little out of the way and they do it again and again and again. It’s designed to intimidate. Katie mischaracterised the whole thing and it’s annoying. She’s meant to be a journalist.
Yeah. Here is the "teenage girl" at a different event.
https://x.com/latsot/status/1921806422813167872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1921806422813167872%7Ctwgr%5Ec00ebb7b5d4eb82a17e43b4356b19e315a83f7f8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.primetimer.com%2Fnews%2Fwho-is-sophia-brooks-graham-linehan-pled-not-guilty-to-harassing-transgender-woman-months-before-arrest-over-tweets
The activist is a hulking great collosal prick of a man who gets a hard on harassing women.
If you've ever been haranged by the unhinged, especially those who randomly threaten legal action, Katie's reticence makes sense.
Homeslice does not appear to be well, mentally.
Not sure about that. For instance, Linehan is constantly and continually harangued by the unhinged, but Katie doesn't afford him any charity at all. In fact, she's positively cruel about him.
Maybe he should have been less of a dick to potential allies? I didn't know him from Gus but instead assumed he was on drugs or having a manic episode. Now I know he's just a fuckface.
Perhaps he’s constantly on edge from being attacked for years and years. That does something to a person.
Would you accept that line of reasoning if it was some wokie?
Lots of people have problems they don't make into problems for others.
He's not really tbh.
She doesn't seem rattled by him, she just seems to really dislike him.
Video: https://youtu.be/53wADo4QL4M
The issue with the book "the boy in the striped pajamas" isn't that it shouldn't have been written. It's that it should NEVER be used in holocaust education, or mistakes for anything but a work of pure fiction.
I know that Katie experienced flooding. It would be as if someone wrote a book about how a little boy and his sister, who lived in that town, gathered all the toys from their yard and used them to block the flooding. And it was through the sacrifice of this little boy's toys that the town was saved. It might be a lovely story, but if you wanted to talk about the actual, real life tragedy experienced by people, that book would not be appropriate at all. As was pointed out, children come out of reading this book with a worse understanding of the Holocaust, so JUST DON'T USE IT FOR EDUCATION!
How about a book about a benevolent slave owner and his happy slaves used to teach about pre civil war USA.
Some have said that Django Unchained would be too garish and exploitative to properly represent slavery. But one reviewer pointed out that you needed a filmmaker like Tarantino who is willing to “get down in the muck” to show how uniquely horrible it was. Any other director would only go as far as depicting a slave shedding a single, silent tear as he stood strapped to the whipping post, and recycling imagery from Roots gets stale after a while.
So the boy sacrifices all that is dear to him to stop an overwhelming bad thing? Seems a great way to talk about sacrifice and evil.
Lyotard talked about the holocaust as the incommsurable - something whose evil can’t be accurately represented in one single form - data, images, personal narrative etc. it takes a totality of representation in multiple forms to even attempt to communicate the thing. Fiction has just as much a role to play in that journey. I’ve not read TBiTSP but your. Flood tale is a nice representation to convey a small element of what the holocaust was.
Yes, it might be a good story. But it didn't happen, the bad thing still occurred, and people lost everything.
The boy in the striped pajamas is a story about a German boy who is (apparently, but not treated as such in text) mentally retarded (his speech and understanding is about 5 years younger than his written age). It paints an inaccurate picture of what the camps were actually like, as well as what family life would be for high ranking Nazi officials. It also makes the Holocaust a tragedy for said Nazi the climax of the book.
But above and beyond all that, it empirically teaches children falsehood about the Holocaust. So, again, not saying it shouldn't have been written (although I do think it's yet another cheap attempt at turning the Holocaust into a universal story), but it should definitely never be included in any classroom syllabus (unless it's specifically about books of fiction).
What specific falsehoods about the Holocaust?
Too many for a short form comment, but here is a link detailing many:
https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/
Can you just give me some actual facts about the Holocaust that that book gets wrong. Not 'this character perpetuates the myth that Germans didn't know' because that's reading politics into the character not facts about the Holocaust. A slanted reading is of no interest to me, what facts does it get wrong?
There being a young child in Auschwitz at all is close to impossible, let alone him being able to wander freely and hang out by the fence all day. Most children were killed on arrival at the camps as they couldn't be used as forced labour; a few at some camps were used in medical experiments but they would have been confined for that purpose.
You should read the link, but fine a fact. There was not, and could not be a boy like Shmuel wandering around Auschitch. He would have been killed upon arrival, and even if not, he wouldn't have been free to wander.
Two fun facts about the Polari Prize:
1. One of the authors who *did not* withdraw was a trans man, who was then hounded by his own community (“trans men really are the men of trans people” was the funniest comment I read about that), and
2. One of the other authors on the longlist who also didn’t withdraw from the prize was a Deixis Press author, William Parker, whose autofictional memoir The Last Doorbell tells his story as a young male escort who ends up in a lifelong relationship with an aristocrat. A little plug there.
(Hint hint, US and UK readers can buy his wonderful book at a significant discount directly from our website.)
Katie and Jesse, you guys are too hard on Graham Linehan - yeah he's full of rage now and he tweets too much, but he's also right about all the gender stuff and it's probably uniquely deranging to be cancelled for things everyone/all normies agree on.
Linehan has his faults, no question, and has profound issues with anger management.
But most people who've been in the gender critical camp for the long haul feel a huge debt of gratitude to him. He was brave, put his head above the parapet, and, yes, focused incessantly on this one subject, at a time when no well-known person was willing to mention it publicly.
I mean, I don't want to marry the guy. But Katie comes across as bitchy and sanctimonious when she talks about him - painful to listen to. Talk about nurturing grievances!
I'd argue that the gratitude is misplaced. I think that at best he has only ever preached to the choir on the subject. Public support for the positions that he holds increasing happened in spite of him, not because of him. I agree that it took bravery to plant his flag so firmly when he did, but it also accomplished nothing.
Linehan's contribution wasn't swaying public support towards the positions he holds. Rather, he provided an example of a well-known person calling out the lunacy of extreme trans ideology, standing up to trans activists, and not folding. He made it (very slightly) easier for those who came after him.
Update on Graham Linehan case: the Met Police Chief claims that Parliament must change their laws on tweeting and intends to asks them to do so. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/0bbafe3af50507af
Of course, people in Britain on 'X' are pointing out that the cops do not apply such zealousness in and attention to other areas of the law, like break and enter and theft, often not showing up to calls. The police, they claim, do have discretion in filing any charge and question how they are interpreting Linehan's tweets. And are very curious as to why they are so keen to put tweeters behind bars.
Examples:
boswelltoday
@boswelltoday
·4h
If the police can decline to investigate house breaking and assault they can decline to investigate tweets. Let them go on embarrassing themselves until they have to admit it for themselves.
Skinny Pete
@TWrodbrochen
·1h
There will never be a better response:
"I have read your thoughtful and illuminating statement on the arrest of comedy writer, Graham Linchan, by five armed officers on the grounds that his tweets
might incite violence.
I abhor the attempt to scapegoat Parliament for the witless actions of your officers. I fear no amount of legislation could compensate for their apparent inability to exercise intelligent judgment. You say officers have "no choice but to record such incidents as crimes when they're reported. Then they are obliged to follow all lines
of enquiry and take action as appropriate.". Regrettably, Sir Mark, that is
One of the cited tweets ended with "Punch them in the balls." Another ended with "Fuck em." Are they both to be taken literally as incitements to violence? Do you or your officers sincerely contend that "Fuck em" might be meant to cause anyone to engage in sexual intercourse (whether or not consensually)? Do your colleagues require Parliament to legislate on the meaning of "Fuck em" and whether or not it should be taken literally? In the meantime, must all reported incidents be recorded as a crime before anyone engages their adult brain? I would hope your answer is "Obviously not," but I cannot be confident. If your officers can identify one phrase as not meant literally, surely they ought to be able to do that with the other and dismiss the complaint.
On this occasion the incidents were reported by former police constable Lynsay Watson; a transgender male dismissed for gross misconduct by Leicestershire Police as he waged a campaign of harassment against people with the legally protected belief that human beings cannot change sex. Your colleagues have allowed themselves to be exploited as tools in that continuing and orchestrated
campaign.
Watson has form. He has taken legal action against three police forces, the British Transport Police Federation, the Police Appeals Tribunal, the Ministry of Defence and sundry individuals who do not comply with his demands. Were your colleagues wary of being added to the list? Were they simply ignorant? Or are they, as you assert, mere automatons impelled to act unthinkingly once their buttons are pushed? Whatever the case, no depth of detail in a Policing with Common Sense Bill will solve the problem. Instead of blaming Parliament for the inability of your officers to think for themselves intelligently, perhaps you might firmly tell them, please, to stop being stupid.
Yours sincerely,
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
{Emma Nicholson sits in the UK's House of Lord's and has been a
NEWS FLASH: Linehan is back on Twitter. His legal team and the Free Speech Union have got his bail requirements thrown out.
Look, if you care about free speech in the UK you should be loudly agreeing with the police here, because protection of speech through legislation is far more valuable than protection through police discretion. The people trying to shift blame back onto the police rather than parliament either think tweets *they* don’t like *should* be illegal, or they’re morons.
Jesse:
I don't endorse the current white house, or their ideas about trans people and guns, but you said you don't understand what they are saying so I thought I'd lay it out for you as I understand it:
according to the white house
1) if gender dysphoria is a mental illness
and
2) if people with mental illnesses are to be prevented from buying/having guns
then
3) people with gender dysphoria should be prevented from buying/having guns.
---
obviously if you don't think that every trans person has gender dysphoria or that everyone with with a mental illness should be denied a gun, this logic fails.
The status quo is not "people with mental illnesses are to be prevented from buying/having guns". The wording on ATF Form 4473 is considerably narrower:
"21 g. Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?"
Just being diagnosed with a mental condition, or taking psych medication, or being in therapy does not remove your 2nd amendment rights. I don't know if changing this would require an act of Congress or could be done administratively through the ATF. However, applying such a higher standard ONLY to the condition of gender dysphoria is obviously discriminatory.
you are absolutely correct.
my syllogism was intentionally simplistic because i wanted to present a perspective as plainly as possible.
Perfect. Exactly.
Frankly I suspect it is a majority opinion. If you are detached from reality enough to think you are the wrong sex, you should not have a gun. Plus as we are reminded all trans people are one mis-pronouning from suicide, and guns are most often used to kill their owners not others. So really we are protecting them.
i don't think it's that simple.
if you are detached enough from reality to believe you have a soul, should you be allowed to have a gun?
most americans would say yes - people who believe they have souls should be allowed to purchase and own firearms.
what if someone says they are a male but their "soul" is female? are they *now* suddenly too detached for gun ownership?
why or why not?
---
many trans activists i've interacted with online make arguments that are the logical equivalent of "my body is male but my soul is a woman".
If you are detached from reality enough to believe that Biden stole the 2020 election, you should not have a gun.
I’m sold; happy to slide down this slope…
But they can have the condition of gender dysphoria while not believing they are literally the opposite sex, in which case I don't see why they shouldn't pack heat.
Even if they do, supposedly, believe they are the opposite sex I feel like they at least understand that someone could take a different view. It's really a cultural belief that they hold. With schizophrenia it is different. They might believe the CIA talks to them through their teeth, and they won't hear a word in opposition.
It's interesting to think of what the difference is. There definitely is one.
Yeah those ones seem a lot less crazy.
But I am not sure "It's really a cultural belief that they hold. " makes it that different. Cultural beliefs can be pathological.
It's notoriously difficult to formally define the difference between "delusional" and "has odd beliefs". In any case, being trans is obviously completely different to psychosis, despite that both are indeed mental health conditions. Both may even involve believing things that aren't true, but then if believing things that aren't true disqualified Americans from owning guns, there would not be many gun owners in America.
I joked in an earlier thread that the “piss off everyone” response to the church shooting would be “make tougher red flag laws, but add ‘gender dysphoria’ to the list of red flags”, and this appears to be coming true. Yay me?
Well people who hate guns will be fine with this, anything that weakens gun laws is fine.
You’d think but…
There is an awful lot of overlap between “people who want to ban guns” and “people who get really pissed off at any suggestion that transgenderism is a mental illness (but also all transgender people are on a suicidal hair-trigger if not affirmed)”
Honestly I bet the number of people who want guns banned is shockingly small. A lot of people who will quibble over trans shit, if pushed, would probably say we just need “more regulations” because they are probably the type of people who think they will need guns to protect their bespoke identity.
Honestly that seems fair enough to me but I'm British, so the notion everyone is entitled to have a gun is more alien.
Well said. It's obvious culture war trolling. If Trump wants the Supreme Court to establish more precedent recognizing the rights of trans people, he should go through with this bullshit. I wouldn't be surprised to see this court strike it down 9-0.
Haven't listened to the episode yet obviously, but that title pun is amazing if intentional.
Wasn’t it also the name of a magic and illusion related periodical in Arrested Development?
“*I* should be in this Poof!”
I would be disappointed if it wasn't.