Graham Linehan interview

I found the interview frustrating. Graham was making useful and interesting points, but Jarleth Regan is so bloody woke he must be insomniac. I think that Graham is doing good work and taking an amount flack online to understand how women are being hounded and harassed. I'm very glad he got good news on his prognosis.

Graham, such good news to hear. Not just because of your tweets, but you do seem a top bloke. All the best. ISP.

Quentin Crisp wasn’t a transsexual. He was an effeminate gay man. He wasn’t even a transvestite, he wore men’s suits, just in unconventional colours, and he wore makeup.

Materialist thanks for this reminder. My older lesbian friends were very involved in activism around AIDS and personally nursed gay male friends when their community was being devastated in the 80s and 90s. It's sad to see how quickly this has been forgotten.

Thank goodness for Graham. I wish more men would speak out. This is one of those issues where it really becomes clear who's on your side and who doesn't give a damn.

I'm glad to hear that Lineham had good news about his health.

Perhaps one of the things to link gay male friends to is one of the multitude of articles where trans men bemoan the fact that gay men arent usually keen, or straight male friend to one of the men articles suggesting they should sleep with trans women...

Thanks, Graham Linehan. I've suggested that one of my neighbours, who's a Labour-voting woke type but has talked to me about his concerns for his daughters, checks GL out. This is the way we can do it, one father of daughters at a time. So many oblivious dads who would be horrified to think of men in women's loos and changing rooms changing beside their girls or wives.

I really respect Graham Linehan for speaking out on this. I feel very grateful to him. We need more male voices.

I have a lot of respect for Graham over this. He's upset a hell of a lot of 'woke' people but he's committed to his beliefs.

Jarlath Regan asked Graham to take down the link for the podcast that he put on his twitter feed because of the negative reaction from ? who knows. Graham didn't say anything transphobic and was only mindful of women and girls.

As far as I can see, for every man like Graham that gets it, there are a whole load more who want the conversation stopped.

'we have just been conditioned to see all social causes of those discriminated against as something we should support.''

This. I'm on the left and remember disagreeing with a friends years ago who supported the LTTE and Tamil Tigers. I pointed out that they were anti-democratic ethno-nationalists, but the response was "but they are an oppressed people". Yes they are, but it's not always simple! The gender critical side can easily and lazily be made out to look like harpies being horrible to kind, gentle Quentin Crisp-type transsexuals, rather than women rightly recognising the risk of Jess Bradley and his ilk waiving their willy around at bus stops.

I think a lot of men will just look at GLs tweets and think "why do you care?"

They do - recently someone who seemed to know him was trying to get him to back off - basically asking him why he cared, it wasn't his fight. Mr. Linehan (sorry, I just can't use first names, formal childhood) was clear that he has daughters (and a brain in his head), and so it was his fight and no, he wouldn't back down.

As to how to get men engaged, I think that ManFriday at the Hampstead ponds demonstrated that men value their privacy as much as women - I think that this kind of direct action is the best way to get it across to reasonable people (Whereas the angle that it's letting AGPs in to change with your girl children just brings out the vigilante sort of man I would suspect)

Oh good news re GL

Great podcast. Glad to hear GL has the all clear. Thank you Graham for using your platform for this.

Sorry. Read all the comments now.

Great to hear all is well with GL.

Haven't read all of the comments yet, but an argument I think I am going to try with one of my gay male friends is:

How would you feel if you fell in love with a guy and then discovered that he'd had his genitals removed and wore a binder to hide his hormonally grown breasts from a period when he had been confused in his life and had transed? Would it bother you? Would you be angry at the surgeons and doctors that mutilated him? Would you wish that he'd been more cautious?

I think this might make them contemplate the enormity of it all. Especially the horror of a dickless man.

That's brilliant news, thanks for sharing SimonBridges.

Oh, he got the all clear after a check up following his operation to remove a testicle.
He was expecting a load of chemotherapy but none was needed.

Thanks, OP, for sharing this.

I noticed that at the end of the interview the presenter mentioned links were provided for anyone affected by issues raised in the podcast. The points raised so well by Graham Linehan are apparently being covered by Transgender Equality Network Ireland! Em, no!

If this was in the UK, I'd be getting in touch and suggesting that, in the interests of balance, a link be provided to Women's Place UK, but I don't know if there is an Irish equivalent. Graham made a great many excellent points in the interview, but anyone looking for more information from a gender critical perspective is given nothing.

(Oh, and when I had a look at the TENI website, and clicked a couple of times, I found that I am banned from a trans woman's twitter feed. Someone I've never heard of before, far less interacted with. And I'm rarely on twitter.)

Very well said Graham.

chambeni raises a pertinent point;
''we have just been conditioned to see all social causes of those discriminated against as something we should support.''

and;
''When talking with my male friends I now just try and raise points quietly and without seeming like I've researched anything.''

That's the problem right there. Our problems are invisible to most men.
We can't just state our case, because people don't listen. They dismiss our problems, they don't carry equal weight.
We have to spell everything out and try to put the listener in our position.

I love Graham Linehan and I've followed him on Twitter for a long time.
He talks with a great deal of sense and knowledge.

Plenty of men/people care deeply about things that don't directly affect them. Palestine would be an example. But one of the problems of living in a patriarchy and that being completely normal and all anybody has any experience of is that men (and some women!) can be blind to the struggles women actually face. I didn't report any of the sex crimes against me because it was usual in our culture at the time to see what happened as my fault. I think the current Liberal ideology my peers are swept up in can be similarly hard to step back from and critically examine.

I may be completely wrong, but wonder if the fact gay men have often been on the receiving end of prejudice themselves makes some of them reluctant to examine when they might have been misogynistic? I grew up poor and white. I had some much wealthier non white friends. It certainly took me a long time to understand their particular struggles with racism; I couldn't get past my envy at their relative wealth.