Why am I risking everything to fight the madness of trans activists? What is my end game? It’s easy. I worry about women losing their words, safe spaces and sports to bigots who denounce the idea of femininity. I want to expose the devastating impact of gender identity on society, expose those who enabled it, and contribute to its end.
I flew into this battle full of energy. The other side’s beliefs were so crazy that I thought my friends would quickly realize how crazy it all was and start helping out. I believed it was only a matter of time before they would come to my rescue, the satirists, the stars, the progressives, the feminists… the ones I made famous with the TV sitcoms I wrote and who had made me somewhat of something – famous in return. I thought they would come at any moment.
But to my surprise, no one showed up. I asked friends to say something about how children should not be subjected to experimental treatments for which there is no evidence, and about the crime against humanity that is telling gay and autistic young women that they are happy , if only they would remove their breasts. But most remained silent.
Instead, I was canceled. Friends annoyed and tuned me out, didn’t answer calls, gave my wife grief on the phone, wrote nasty letters about the importance of kindness, and perhaps worst of all, nodded sympathetically while telling me why they couldn’t get involved .
From the start, I was exposed to a wave of activists on Twitter. First came the anonymous violent threats, then they were followed by the “trans ally” celebrities who didn’t understand the problem beyond the opportunity to parade their virtue and harass me.
From the start, I was exposed to a wave of activists on Twitter. First came the anonymous violent threats, then came the “trans ally” celebrities who didn’t understand the problem beyond the opportunity to parade their virtue and harass me, writes GRAHAM LINEHAN
One of the cast of the teen comedy series Derry Girls (a product of Hat Trick, the same production company as Father Ted) began lobbying for my removal from Twitter. Pretty soon the public perceived me as toxic and ignored me as well. I was also targeted by media outlets that were just out to find dirt on me. Gender-bending newspapers like The Guardian and The Independent interviewed my colleagues to get them to condemn me, which many were happy to do.
The LGBTQ+ website Pink News – which covers few gay and even fewer lesbian topics and exists primarily to spread trans propaganda – has written more than 75 top stories about me to date, all designed to present my completely everyday beliefs as To represent evidence of bigotry and madness. There is no doubt about the sheer size of the media machine that makes this possible. If someone changes my Wikipedia page to say “women’s rights activist” (which I am) rather than “anti-transgender activist” (which I definitely am not), the change will be reverted within 15 minutes.
The media’s ideological capture means that when a celebrity comes out as trans or non-binary, they rush to use their new pronouns. Requiring the use of “they” to refer to a single person will result in an article becoming unreadable. It’s even worse when people who identify as transgender are featured in the news – especially in the crime pages.
The Most Filmed Independent published an article headlined “Armed and Dangerous” about a woman wanted for allegedly killing her boyfriend and brother.
It took some puzzling research before figuring out that the “wife” was a man and the “boyfriend” was a woman. By a gentle movement of an invisible hand, the meaning of essential words had been changed, and journalists used this planted evidence to blame women for a horrific episode of male violence.
Many people who try to silence me will say, “Why do you care so much?” The implication is that concern for women’s rights (normal, explainable) is actually an obsession with trans rights and is bigoted and is crazy.
But trans rights only become a problem when they negatively impact women’s rights. There aren’t too many areas where these conflicts play a role. However, when they do, it is devastating. Across the world, male prisoners are sent to women’s prisons for claiming to be transgender, and female prisoners risk having their sentences extended for “misrepresenting” these opportunists. “Misgendering” became a taboo practice due to the concerted efforts of trans activists and the privileged members of the laptop class to enforce the new orthodoxies, but it is a taboo that was enforced without debate or consent.
That’s why, according to our new ethical overlords, an Oscar-nominated actress has resurfaced as a man named Elliot Page, and activists and “progressives” consider it a hate crime to even mention Elliot’s former name.
But these taboos, supposedly based on “kindness,” empower society’s most dangerous men. If we redesign our brains to the point where we see men as women, it will be easier for opportunistic predators like Adam Graham – the double rapist who was almost sent to a Scottish women’s prison by Nicola Sturgeon’s government – to access same-sex spaces on the other side enter society, not just in prison.
The young actors in the Harry Potter film series immediately betrayed JK Rowling. If I were a star who had never demonstrated the ability to act beyond the preadolescent level that got me into the business, I would keep my head down and not sign statements suggesting my old mentor was a bigot
No matter how many times I explained all this, the same question came up over and over again. ‘Why do you care so much?’ All I could say was, “Why don’t you do that?”
For me, the world’s most famous children’s author’s intervention in the transgender debate was a moment when I thought the debate was shifting decisively in my direction. So popular were the Harry Potter books, so flawless were JK Rowling’s socialist credentials, so convincing was her backstory that people listened to her.
But no, not a bit of it. The HMS Rowling – which had brought generations of children aboard and taught them to read for their pleasure and then for their children’s pleasure – was abandoned faster than a plague ship, so the author’s completely everyday views on women’s rights were taboo.
The young actors from the Harry Potter film series immediately betrayed them. If I were a star who had never demonstrated the ability to act beyond the preadolescent level that got me into the business, I would keep my head down and not sign statements suggesting my old mentor was a bigot.
These actors – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – deserve to be remembered as symbols of the most remarkable arrogance, cowardice and ingratitude. But asking what Rowling actually said that was so terrible doesn’t help. You’ve never seen a transphobic statement from JK Rowling because there aren’t any.
Another time I thought that my side must surely win the argument when Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, publicly addressed the problem of male cheaters in women’s sports. I thought, well, Martina is spot on; She’s a lesbian icon, she even had a trans coach, so they had nothing against her.
I was counting on Anthony Watson, a gay British businessman who sits on the board of a leading American LGBT group. He told Martina that she should be ashamed. Watson champions the most homophobic movement in history, telling children who would otherwise likely grow up lesbian or gay that they were born in the wrong body and need lifelong medical care. He’s hardly a public figure, and there are few more iconic gay figures than Navratilova. It was a big shock to me that such an insignificant character could talk to a lesbian heroine like that.
There is a crucial question in the trans debate that we rarely hear asked, let alone answered.
Quite simply: What does “trans” mean? Does somebody know? I’ve never heard the same definition twice.
I used to think it meant transsexuals – those who suffered terribly from the discrepancy between their self-image and the world’s image of them, and it was impossible not to sympathize.
Her heart goes out to anyone whose illness is so debilitating that they take drastic measures – often life-limiting, always irreversible – through surgery and medication to reconcile reality with a vision of themselves that they cannot shake.
Society treated them with an appropriate level of respect. The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 enshrined their self-perception in law and the Equality Act of 2010 protected them from discrimination by adding gender reassignment to the list of protected characteristics.
All of this seemed admirable as society did its best to help those in need. What is crucial is that these laws only served a tiny subset.
But one day, early in my struggle, a comedian friend complained that “terfs” (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”) had “hurt my trans friends.” I was confused. Trans friends? How many did she collect? How could she constantly stumble upon something that we were always told was only a tiny part of society?
It occurred to me that maybe “trans” didn’t refer to trans people. This was confirmed by looking at the glossary from Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ lobby group.
TRANS: An umbrella term used to describe people whose gender does not match or is inconsistent with the gender they were assigned at birth.
The HMS Rowling – which had brought generations of children aboard and taught them to read for their pleasure and then for their children’s pleasure – was abandoned faster than a plague ship, so the author’s completely everyday views on women’s rights were taboo
These actors – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – deserve to be remembered as symbols of the most remarkable arrogance, cowardice and ingratitude
There are a few problems here. First, gender is not “assigned” at birth. it is often observed and recorded before birth.
And what exactly is “gender”? GENDER: Gender is often expressed as masculinity and femininity and is largely cultural and derived from the sex assigned at birth.
Stonewall’s website lists all people who supposedly fall into these categories: transgender; Transsexual; gender-queer (GQ); Sex-specific; non-binary; gender variant; crossdressers; Sexless; agender; Non-sexual; Third Gender; bi-gender; trans man; trans woman; transmasculine; transfeminine; Neutrois.
Note that transsexuals are second on the list.
The same Wikipedia that has been calling me a bigot for years lists a few more, which I include here primarily for their comic value: Omnigender; Gray gender; Eunuch Pangender; neurogender; Man with trans experience.
I didn’t make any of this up. No wonder my comedian friend suddenly reveled in “trans” people, if anyone could even describe themselves as such.
This was around the same time that Stonewall began pushing for so-called self-identification. This would mean that if you were a man who wanted to legally change your gender, you would simply have to declare yourself a woman. If this idea were enshrined in law, any female candidate could apply purple lipstick and invade women’s spaces like locker rooms, restrooms, and rape crisis centers. Self-ID didn’t just open up the chicken coop to passing predators; It handed out a buffet of goodies to lead them to the door.
The more I looked into the topic, the more I realized that “trans people” covers too many different experiences to be a useful term. It described young women succumbing to a new, more viral form of anorexia that led them to remove their breasts and take medications that gave them the dubious gift of male pattern baldness.
It also described middle-aged men who decided to leave their families to live as clownish visions of the women they had fallen in love with online. And it included young men who were disgusted by their own toxic masculinity and young men who enjoyed nothing more than indulging in it. These groups had little in common with each other. “Trans” was not a stable category.
While there is no precise data on the “transgender” population in the UK, estimates put it at around one percent, or around 670,000 people. Other information suggests that the majority of trans-identified men kept their penises.
They weren’t transsexuals. These were simply men who acted from different motives, some benevolent and others far less benevolent. Crucially, self-identified women had no way of telling the difference.
This led me to examine some of the people protected by this uniquely violent form of discourse. I’ll give just one example, but a significant one: Aimee Challenor. This person began wearing girls’ clothes and using the name “Aimee,” and immediately gained a significant improvement in her social status, suddenly being classified as a “transgender teenager.” . In Aimee’s hometown of Coventry, local LGBT groups and progressive political organizations became “allies.”
Over the next few years, Aimee’s political career and online profile couldn’t have been hotter: Aimee joined the Green Party and within two years became its national spokesperson for equality. At the age of 20, Aimee ran for deputy leader and was given a sycophantic profile in the Guardian.
As a member of Stonewall’s Trans Advisory Group, Aimee has also worked as a consultant on safeguarding in institutions such as Girlguiding, MI5 and the NHS.
Footage of Aimee at an Oxford Union debate shows an awkward young person with no charisma, skills or insight, an unremarkable speaker and thinker, repeating the arguments of trans activists to yet another compliant audience too intimidated to ask questions.
This rapid rise came under the close supervision of Aimee’s father David, who also joined the Green Party. Although David was accused of raping, kidnapping and torturing a ten-year-old girl, Aimee appointed him as an election agent.
David Challenor is now serving a 22-year prison sentence for tying the girl to a beam in the attic of the family home where Aimee also lived, raping her and torturing her with electric shocks. The Green Party launched an investigation, but long before it was reported, Aimee was shouting “transphobia” and found herself in the welcoming arms of a larger party equally eager to get on the trans bandwagon: the Liberal Democrats.
They dumped Aimee less than a year later when it emerged that the activist was engaged to an American named Nathaniel Knight, who openly bragged on social media that he had written pornographic stories about child abuse.
After traveling to the US, Aimee became an influential presenter on social media giant Reddit. With a much older, cross-dressing boyfriend, Peter “Katrina” Swales, the couple used their control of LGBT social media to silence critics who raised protective issues related to trans activism, such as the fact that that vulnerable minors are targeted and groomed by adult men with fetishes.
Aimee was put on Reddit’s payroll after she became so powerful within the company, but was then dropped when Reddit users started asking questions. It is widely believed that Challenor continues to moderate some of the Reddit forums.
Another time I thought that my side must surely win the argument when Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, publicly addressed the problem of male cheaters in women’s sports
I have some sympathy for Challenor. But I have nothing but contempt for politicians, charity bosses and journalists who shined a spotlight on Aimee, abandoned all critical thinking when they heard the word “trans” and silenced whistleblowers who tried to raise the alarm.
Challenor is an example of what I called a “central outlier,” someone who supposedly does not represent the “trans community” but who has been praised and promoted within it.
There are others. The ambiguity of the word “trans” empowers opportunistic men while simultaneously disempowering children and women.
When the internet turns on you, as it did the moment I entered the debate about women’s rights vs. trans rights, it’s not nice. What particularly annoys me is remembering how excited I was when the Internet came into our lives. The future was bright. We had an instant ability to communicate with virtually anyone. In this new world of transparency and connection, I simply could not imagine how an epoch-making darkness like the Holocaust could ever arise again.
If we all kept an eye on each other, everything would be fine, right? We now know something else – that it is possible for a group like transgender activists to poison the nervous system of the internet and use it to inundate society with so much misinformation that reality itself becomes distorted and distorted.
It is too easy for the most extreme voices to influence others who are less sure of their opinions and who want to be told what is right so they can do it too.
Not bad people. Busy people who still mean well.
But if we trust the cradle of the tenuous connections we have made online and fail to check the reliability of primary sources, we are at risk of our society being hacked by a conspiracy of online weirdos who know which ones Buttons they have to push to make them The vending machine of life gives them what they want.
© Graham Linehan, 2023
- Adapted from Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan (Eye Books, £19.99), published on October 12th. To order a copy for £17.99 (offer valid until 10/15/2023; free UK delivery on orders over £25), go to Mailshop. co.uk/books or call 020 31