What has Stewart Lee done?

I’ve not heard a single funny JKR joke on this subject. I think there’s definite potential there and JKR has a sense of humour so she might even laugh at it, but I’m still waiting.

The Jk Rowling joke is that she is a hypocrite because she writes some of her books using a male pen name.

That's a bit feeble, isn't it? I've seen many trans activists make the same point, so it's not even original, let alone logical.

Hey, if you just take it as a joke, and not a serious point, it may work.

(Ps you can use that in your set if you're reading this Stewart😉)

What was the Mumsnet joke please?
I love(d) Stewart Lee, but opted out of going to this show with DH as I was worried I'd leave more angry than amused, and it would be a bit awkward with friends. He's (DH) on orders to report back, but my curiosity is peaked now!
Sounds like I might have made the right choice tbh.

I saw him a couple of weeks ago. Not as good as other times I've seen him and I think he has lost it TBH. I didn't think the JKR/Mumsnet but worked well at all.

I saw him last night. The Jk Rowling joke is that she is a hypocrite because she writes some of her books using a male pen name. There is no mention that Rowling isn’t trying to invade male spaces or remove anyone’s rights. The joke is very surface level and not relevant to the point he is trying to make. sadly lots of people laughed.

It's been interesting to see how differently Ricky Gervais and Graham Linehan have been treated in all this.

I think it's a lot of factors:

• Graham was the first remotely big name, he got the full force of the response. It's very different for anyone comming out as GC post Rowling.

• Gervais is almost so successful you can't cancel him, though I think he'd have had a much harder time 3+ years earlier.

• Gervais is clearly telling jokes so it's very hard to make the case he's being hateful and certainly you can't instigate police harassment, which is a favourite tactic. Graham has campaigned and put firm statements of his views in the public domain.

• They move in very different circles. Graham is a UK comedy writer and director inexorably linked with the BBC, RTE and C4; that circle are very woke and very incestuous. Gervais has a variety of contacts in writing, directing, acting, movies, TV, netflix in the UK and the US. He has enough money to fund his own productions if need be.

• Bullying Graham works. He's not given up but he's clearly been very upset and his career harmed. Gervais responds by laughing at them from a throne of cash so the bullying has never ratcheted up. They enjoy causing pain.

He's an intelligent bloke, so is his wife

😂
Are we going the whole hog now and just saying women are men? 😂

There's a lot of feminist books written by celebs. They don't have to be particularly insightful or have a ring of truth about them to be published.

Ive just had a look at Glinners wiki page. My god, someones written a long, long breakdown of his 'Anti trans activism'. Apparently, "Linehan has been noted internationally for his anti-transgender activism" 😱

Yes, she even wrote a book about feminism. Can't remember if it mentioned genderism but her feminist stance is certainly at odds with her behaviour. IIRC she also had it in for JKR on a R4 show they were on together. She's nailed her colours to the mast almost as repeatedly as her husband.

Too long in the bourgeois spheres, possibly. Pure speculation but when you're that adamant about twisting reality, I think part of it must come down to a loved one being afflicted with the gender bug. So they see the logic of GC as an attack on the person instead of the concept -- and so they lash out at everyone else instead.

I really feel for Graham. He's lost so much because he saw this all for what it was and wasn't prepared to back down - which would obviously have been the easier option, especially as a bloke without much skin in the game.

Interestingly, both he and Jerry Sadowitz appeared on that recent "celebs you've met" thread in chat. Linehan was apparently lovely when someone crashed his van, and was only concerned that she was OK.
Sadowitz was allegedly very, very creepy with the teenage girls when he was returning his mucky films to the video rental shop.

Spot on @RoyalCorgi . If you watch the Mess a few times it's really obvious that Linehan is not a performer or an actor. He gets emotionally involved and is also easily distracted. In a debate with the likes of Lee he would be wound up in no time. At his best in interviews with ppl like Kiera Bell , Ben gnc and the American trans widow whose name eludes me - Jennifer?

As for his lack of recent success ...not much of a mystery really. He has been blackballed since about 2016/7 afaik. He had cancer as well - much to the delight of the Be Kind contingent.

I’m a bit worried about how many men are talking about this compared to women.

as usual, our voices are drowned out.

I don't think Gervais has talked about childhood transition and safeguarding, has he? Thats what usually does it.

Plus Gervais is currently successful with sitcoms and his stand up, its been a while since Linehan had a big sitcom. Also, linehan has pissed a lot of people off on the way up, so I think some are delighted to see him fall, unrelated to their feelings tra.

It's been interesting to see how differently Ricky Gervais and Graham Linehan have been treated in all this. Gervais is still a big star with huge audiences. He finds the humour in all the trans lunacy and pokes fun at it. His audiences (probably mostly people who aren't very political) obviously enjoy it.

Linehan on the other hand has had a much harder time of it, to the extent of losing work, being booted off Twitter and generally being on the receiving end of targeted hate. Perhaps that's because he's a writer rather than a performer, and therefore more vulnerable to cancellation, but it's also because he is so angry about what he sees (and I think we all see) as a moral issue of enormous significance. It's really upsetting for him to see the betrayal and cowardice of people who ought to be on the right side of this. Whereas for people like Gervais (and also Chappelle) it doesn't matter in the same way. Or at least they can behave as if it doesn't matter in the same way.

Pretty much.

and in the same way that you and I are transphobe for having Mumsnet accounts.

Graham was simply one of the first (mildly) famous people to say ‘hold on a minute, this new trans stuff looks a bit weird and not very good for women’.

Unlike most of the others, when challenged on his terrible transphobia, Graham went off further down the rabbit hole (rather than just coming back up and pretending he hadn’t seen all the weird shit down there out of self preservation).

Graham was early enough into this that normie just nodded along with the accusations, whereas JK was slightly later and more people had already started thinking a bit more skeptically (plus Joanne’s enormous wealth and generous charity donations for children in shitty situations all over the globe makes it very hard to smear her as a bigot. Most of us don’t have millions of pounds of charity work on the resume to point at in our own defence)

He does make me laugh. Usually a long way into the routine, but then I laugh a lot. Looking forward to watching Snowflake. I'm not a comedy expert, it's just funny to me.

With Jerry Sadowitz - I do think getting your cock out on stage as part of an adult show expressing self loathing or whatever isn't the same as flashing but it is a bit difficult to defend. I think SL would defend anything verbal.

he doesn’t make you laugh because he’s not funny, not because he’s oh so much smarter than you

Any chance of rephrasing that without the double negatives? My head hurts.

I genuinely think people who say they like SL need to work on their self esteem

he doesn’t make you laugh because he’s not funny, not because he’s oh so much smarter than you

I don't know anything about the Graham Linehan situation, but did he say anything actually problematic or is he a 'transphobe' in the way that JKR is a 'transphobe'? 🙄

It's clear that a lot of you don't get SL and a lot of the quotes from shows are taken out of context.

Agreed. I have always liked him with his cheeky boy grin and sparkling eyes. Much of what he says goes over my head and i dont get all this woke stuff. But i've seen him live a few times and always enjoy his gigs

Poor old Stew.

His Gervais speaking the unspeakable had me laughing for a while and then uncomfortable because it almost mimicked a disabled mute person trying to express themselves. Well, it did in my mind maybe that was the point... he seems to punching all over the place these days rather than just up.