A Plea to Eddie Izzard

I think the problem is that Eddie has painted Elself into a corner. Eddie can't very well come out with Eddie's usual patter for decades that clothes don't maketh a woman because it goes against the gender ideologists that see sex as unimportant and 'gender expression' as the means of performing 'true' identity.

👏🏻👏🏻BRAVO Mr Linehan, absolutely spot on!

I agree he should STFU and FTFOAWHGTFOSM.

^Wholeheartedly agree with this.

An umbrella term was useful, if not actually designed, to allow the public to make the assumption that everybody stepping under the umbrella were motivated by just the one thing that got the most sympathetic attention.

When those terms were in more common use in the 80s/90s, I always assumed that a transvestite was a type of cross-dresser. ie, it was an occasional or part time thing (cross-dressing more likely to be done in private, while transvestism was more of a public display); while a transsexual dressed and ‘performed’ that way all the time and hoped to be ’read’ as the opposite sex (often would also be intending or hoping to eventually have surgery). I could well be wrong, but that was my impression at the time, and still is now in retrospect.

Damn I actually like that granny chic look. Maybe I am in fact a trans woman?

I don't like Grayson Perry either, but he is a good example of how men can wear women's clothing without actually being a woman.

I used to like Grayson Perry until I saw a programme hosted by a comedian who was doing cycle rides with friends/other celebs, it was only a series of 4 rides and he said that Grayson Perry was his hero but he had never met him

I have to say that during the programme I thought that Perry was incredibly aggressive and hostile and it really put me off. I think the comedian either didnt feel this or certainly didnt want to comment. I wondered afterwards whether it was a case of never meeting your heroes because they let you down

Has Grayson Perry dialled down the cross dressing recently? I wonder whether he’s realised it might not be a good look going forward.

Glinner is so right, I wish the main stream media especially the Gaurdian would employ Graham Lineham. That would make for some thoughtful journalism.

Well there's Grayson Perry. He wears odd women's clothes (sometimes) but is very much a he and is married to a real woman.

Can I go further?

"You are a cross-dresser, Eddie. I am prepared to say "there’s nothing wrong with that" if you can use logic and reason to say why white men parodying black me is wrong, but men pardying women is OK. And you cannot ask society to pretend you’re a woman just because you’re dressed as a cross-dressing man’s idea of one”

Actually I'd add a word in that sentence -
"You are a cross-dresser, Eddie. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you cannot ask society to pretend you’re a woman just because you’re dressed as a cross-dressing man’s idea of one”

Good question, I dont know. I didnt know any women who looked like that though as my mum or mums friends, they were all jeans and t shirts (Im talking 70 and 80s). My nan might have looked a bit like that though so perhaps

Obviously the ones I saw growing up would have been in their 30s and 40s Im guessing so perhaps born around the 40s?

Although some trans these days are certainly not dressing like any mum or nan I know!

Were they dressing like their mums?

I'd be a terrible model if I had a transvestite son, he'd be in jeans, plimsolls and t shirts all the time.

You sound like you were ahead of me in your analysis, I just thought it was a huge coincidence that all transexuals had absolutely terrible taste in clothing!!!

Twin sets - yes I'd forgotten the name of those!!!

bellac I remember feeling that too - I was a tomboy with short hair and big boots and it always made me feel uncomfortable that a man deciding to “be” a woman meant ridicously unstylish twin sets, skirts, heels and “girly” hair, all the things I’d rejected as restrictive and stereotypes I wanted to leave behind. Of course it’s because that’s their sexist idea of a woman, and also because they’re trying to signal femininity as blatantly as possible to counteract male features and bodies, so that people read the signals and know to “be polite”. I always felt pissed off about it but put up and shut up because I didn’t want to be mean and/or put myself in danger. 9Classic actual female behaviour)
’

creepy and/ or disrespectful. Either women your age are still children (waay too common an attitude) or we're roleplaying that we're a female child rather than an old man.

So no, not admirable behaviour in my book.

I do remember as a child/teen wondering why 'transexuals' as they were in those days, always wore what I thought was quite old fashioned frumpy looking clothing, so skirts and dresses and court shoes.

Whereas me and my friends were wearing funky brogues, doc martins, jeans, cropped hair, boxy jackets, that sort of thing

I see now that they were wearing 'womens' clothing in their eyes. So this has always happened it seems.

I think he gets off on it, no more no less. Likes to make people uncomfortable for his personal sexual gratification.

I don't know, I'm waiting for a man to tell me. (And in time one will probably mansplain)

Glinner is very astute - this is real nail on head stuff. It’s always a poignant pleasure seeing him craft a letter to someone he knows and/or used to admire. Glinner really picks up and examines the sadness of it all, the broken relationships and the disappointments that lie at the foot of the ideology scrap heap, while at the same time laying out the madness of it all really clearly.

Love this -

“You are a cross-dresser, Eddie. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you cannot ask society to pretend you’re a woman just because you’re dressed as a man’s idea of one”