Graham Lineham: The respectable Bigot

How does one respond to a commentary that literally excuses violence against the trans community?

Clambering for some of that negative attention J. K Rowling's been getting lately, Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted ( a show that I still happen to enjoy, sadly enough) gave up his successful career to focus telling the rest of us how much he hates Trans women, With such a marvelous waste of his time on his hands, what did happen to this one time titan of Channel 4 comedy? Where did he come from? And why the fuck are we giving such an obvious waste of space the time and energy to talk about.

Obviously he feels he's missing out. Rowling's got the main spotlight, everyone is talking about Gia Carano now she's decided to show how much against cancel culture she is by joining forces with the very man who wants to cancel the trans Community, Ben Shapario. Including my youngest brother who recently added her as his latest follow on Twitter only adding to my opinion that he is not only totally uneducated in the science of gender but also completely unaware of my transition. So Hi Ben. Thanks for showing me it wasn't a mistake for your eldest sister to walk away from the family. It's nice to know where you stand. I can at least find solace in the reality that you''re so against witchcraft and Halloween that at least your not giving Rowling your money to read her books or watch her films. I mean it's almost laughable to know your Transphobia has standards.

Huh, the “Respectable Bigot”. Sounds like a comedy series I should write. Thanks for the inspiration, bro. I'm trademarking that Graham.

So in an ironic twist of fate, to make a point that trans people for the most part of predatory men dressing as women to prey on women, Graham once again made the news by joining the female dating app, Her, presenting himself as a woman. Thus proving the point that yes, cis men can predatory enough to identify as women to prey on women. Of course that's all he's proven, something everybody, even the trans community knew about already. In fact the one time a man was arrested for assaulting anyone in a toilet after dressing as a woman was in fact a cis man trying to prove a point to something that on the whole doesn't happen in the Trans community to cis women. I'm not sure that these people fully understand the point that they are actually making. That cis men are more of a threat to cis women than actual trans women are. Not sure that's the angle you want to go for, is it Graham?

“Prior to complaining about Graham Linehan setting up a profile on the Her App, did you complain about other Males placing Profiles on the App, as well?”

Hmm, it's interesting you should bring that up. The the problem with your argument is that most predatory men who use fake lesbianism to bait lesbian women would not reveal their identity in such a way that Graham did who, as we have already established did so to prove a point. However his point was more or less made moot by this self avowed ally of feminism posting 20 images of accounts of women and non-binary people that according to his standards, which ironically are made normative by a largely patriarchal system, declaring that by their look alone they should not be considered “lesbian”. It's easier to call out an account that literally pulled a publicity stunt especially if that same person is constantly posting on his blog how he keeps getting back on to the Her app. The fact that his ban should have told him and his supporters something about his behavior says more about his hypocrisy on “invading women's spaces” when that's exactly what he's admitting to doing himself. You can't attack a community of people for calling out a person who literally pulled a stunt designed to draw attention. That's not the defense you think it is.

Also then there is Graham's assertions that trans activism, or to be more fair to him, hormone and testosterone blockers on children who identify as transgender is tantamount to Nazi experimentation whilst at the same time compiling a list of names and photographs of profiles on a Lesbian dating app that recognizes that trans-women are indeed women then posting them on his blog for his TERF echo chamber to see, strikes to me as the most heinous hypocrisy at best, the most dangerous activity for a high profile writer to engage in at worse. Wait, you think I'm exaggerating that point? I mean it's only words and pictures, right? He's not putting anyone it real danger is he? What about his freedom of speech? Well to emphasize my point let's take a look at one of the people Graham is very vocal about defending, Linda Bellos. Linda Bellos, A radical labor activist, radical-feminist and anti-racist (which to me should be a better focus of her time and energy) at one event was quoted as to saying.

“But I play football and I box, and if any one of those bastards comes near me I will take off my glasses and thump them… I am quite prepared to threaten violence because it seems to me politically what they are seeking to do is piss on women.” Now she claims she was referring to an event in Hyde Park where a Trans Woman did attack an anti-trans feminist but she didn't put that into context at the time. I'm not going to debate the merits of such a claim, except to say that if you are making a statement it helps to back it up with context at the time. It also doesn't help that Linda Bellos is sadly also a well known spokes person at events ran and supported by groups that advocate violence against transwoman. Also it doesn't help that though she claims in context that it was about self defense that she literally said, and yes I will emphasize this as the video progresses, she would be prepared to “Threaten violence”. Which kinda puts the opening clip I posted on Graham's excuse for such violence doesn't it? He's literally claiming that the very response to his transphobia and bigotry is what's making the violence worse. The more people like him are silenced, the more violent people who support his views become. I'm not saying he thinks that's a good thing, but his excuses for it deserve valid criticism, especially when put into context with his recent outing of people 20 who he as a man ironically pretending to be a lesbian claims not to have a right to be considered lesbian.

“But hey, Graham is only concerned about the peer pressure and experimentation on children. What's so bad about that?”

So here we are on the first problem with that claim, and with apologies to Lindsey Ellis, who used this with better effect than I ever could, the tiresome “Will someone think of the children” argument. Now here's something I'm going to admit that Graham probably would but won't admit is his greatest weakness. I'm no child psychologist, and being transgender myself does not make me an expert on the topic despite the fact that since coming out I have have found myself taking on the role as an educator to those who want to know more. Unlike Graham, I won't pretend to have all the answers to the transgender condition. I can only comment insofar as it has effected me both now and in the past. I won't come on here and pretend that all children know what they want at a young age or that there isn't an element of peer pressure from time to time to be something they are not. But I can say, from experience and seeing it first hand, that there is very little peer pressure in school from fellow students for a boy to dress as a girl. When I was called a girl, believe me it wasn't some championship of my gender identity. It was designed as an insult to push me away from the gender deviancy they perceived in me. But here's the other thing Graham and his supporters don't take into account. I'm not an expert, but I do have a habit of listening to the experts and therefore taking their word for it. It may have escaped your notice but in the last year, we have seen the dangerous consequences of people in power publicly stating they won't listen to the experts and it's terrible effect on human life. And those are examples not even focusing on the trans issue. But it's easy to make it a trans issue.

You see here's the problem, Graham is so concerned about the impressionability of young children but he is very much an advocate for the voices who support trans conversion therapy, which whilst illegal in the UK, is not illegal in Ireland. He's literally advocating for people who not only abuse children but according to several peer view reports “therapy” that is directly responsible for the suicidal tendencies of many who have gone through it. He's so concerned about the impressionable nature of children that he's all about enforcing his beliefs that children can't self identify by literally supporting an aggressive, abusive and oft times violent form of impression on said children. Make no mistake, Graham is not an advocate of free speech, children or even women at this point. He is literally a bigoted, and self confessed religious fascist attempting to paint the fetid and decomposed corpse of system designed to wipe the trans community out of existence through violent means, both figuratively and literally. And he's targeting the most vulnerable members of society to achieve that aim.

And apparently we're the Nazis?

You see here is my problem with TERFs and those who support them. Especially TERFS who support this kind of torture. On the one hand, the patriarchal system we have had to endure for centuries has defined what is and is not feminine and feminism, as a whole and rightfully so gone out of it's way to fight against that enforcement of gender roles in society. And yet TERFs, who claim to be feminists are okay with the systematic abuse and torture of children who identify as transgender in order to get them to accept their cis-gender normative roles in society. It's a philosophy that's not only disturbing by it's violent hypocrisy, but also by the fact that the outcome of such treatment goes against everything feminism has fought for over the decades. Last I checked, “accept your place in society” was not a feminist mantra.

“But Jocelyn, it doesn't change the core of his point. That Cis men can claim to be women and still rape other women.”

Oh boy here we go. Yes men who claim to be women can be rapists. Transgender people as a whole can be rapists. Cis-Gender people as a whole can be rapists. This is a fact. Not one transgender will deny that, but trangenderism is not the prerequisite for rape as much as being a man is the prerequisite for rape. I was raped, at 7, by a cis-woman. So I can appreciate it when J.K. Rowling mentions her attack at the hands of a man... who she has not claimed to be transgender. What I don't appreciate is how she equates her abuse to transgender-women. It would be as crazy as me equating my trauma to trans-men or to women as a whole. That some women rape or one woman raped me as a child does not mean I don't trust women. I'm not even wary of other women, even though I have experienced very real and physical abuse at the hands of one not 12 years ago. I'm not saying that people who suffer abuse shouldn't be wary. We deal with trauma in our own way and defense mechanism work. But just because you can find cases of cis and trans people who are abusive does not mean that every member of that community is abusive or a rapist. That's an unfair equivocation. The problem with their argument is not that people in general were predisposed to be rapists or pedophiles already, either by their history or track record, but their claim on whether or not these people were trans or pretending to be women just for the sake of being predatory. It is their narrative that just because some trans-people, no matter how few, were predatory that therefore no trans-woman can ever be trusted.

And we're the Nazi's here.

So three weeks ago I found out I have an uterus. I was at one time in with the promise of being able to have children of my own, but that right was denied me. I was in fact born intersex, and I had the misfortune of finding this out 6 weeks after coming out as transgender. Can you imagine the emotional impact that had on me. Finding out that I wasn't just born into the wrong body, but actually I was born into both and my identity was not based on some internal emotional development but on the ideals of what my parents defined for me as a man with external genitals that defined me in their eyes. I'm literally only now just developing breast tissue since coming out and I haven't even started HRT yet. And ever since coming out I am a better person for it. Less depressed, happier and more myself than I have ever been before. Why do I bring this up? Well Graham is so set on his transphobia that he literally supports the Utah Conservative bill that defines a woman as, and I quote.

“an individual with ovaries who is confirmed before or at birth to have external anatomical characteristics that appear to have the purpose of performing the natural reproductive function of providing eggs and receiving sperm from a male donor.”

That's right. According this bill my womanhood is only defined by my lack of a penis. In order to be a woman I have be little more than than the capability to be a baby incubator for nine months. And guess what, this would horrify Graham. Apparently up until recently, I could have been the very incubator that defines me as a woman. That's right folks, not only is the bill Graham supports, transphobic, homophobic and sexist. But it's also the very bill that threatens to take away my right to chose who and what I am as an intersex person. My right to choose to have children of my own was literally torn from me thanks to the “religious objections” Graham has to the existence of trans-people.

So damn right. I take Graham Linehan personally. Not only has he done to my enjoyment of Father Ted that J.K. Rowling has done to Harry Potter fans. But also his very philosophy has denied me the right to be a woman and a mother based on the genitals I was born with. So yeah I take his stunt to be tasteless and only emphasizes not only how ignorant he is, but how hateful and dangerous he is, especially after said stunt put 20 innocent people at risk.

The only thing going for him right now is the fact that he hasn't called for a registry of Trans-people yet. But if he has since my posting this video, and I missed it somehow, it would not surprise me in the slightest.