A Plea to Eddie Izzard

Do transvestites still exist? And if so what is the difference with transsexuals?

Beautifully said @Empowermenomore 👏

I may be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think that he’s really a girl.

I think that he’s a middle-aged man who sometimes wears a dress.

Does anyone know what’s happened here to make a man believe (or say) that he’s a woman?

On the face of it I’d worry that he should be getting checked for brain disease, or cancer.

@YouSirNeighMmmmIt's almost like there is an entirely different thing going on in the minds of a cross-dressing man and a pubescent girl.

There is an entirely different thing. You get the middle age man allowed to keep his lady dick and pose to date lesbians while the young girls don’t have man boobs. They get the chop. And then date girls and say they are straight men.

The patriarchy keeps the hierarchy whichever way you present: Trans women win competitions, prizes and places reserved for women; the transmen get pregnant. It’s such a charade!

Women loose no matter what!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to Graham Linehan. You said it so much better than I ever could.
And yes EI should STFU. I'm seriously thinking that I will refrain from voting if El stands in an election. It would be the first time that I have done that and it grieves me to go down that road but I just couldn't vote Labour anymore. I'm being erased as a woman and I am not going to be the turkey voting for Xmas.

That is such an obvious answer I can't believe I didn't think of it! Thank you. Men going furthere and further down a rabbit hole.

I think I have been thinking about trans issues for too long from the pubescent girls point of view which seems to be distress > rejection of womanhood > must be a man. Pubescent girls don't think "hang on, I am going to dress exactly like a boy now" and then 5 years later start saying "hang on, I am a boy!"

It's almost like there is an entirely different thing going on in the minds of a cross-dressing man and a pubescent girl.

What I REALLY don't get is what has gone through his mind over time. Did he used to be a cross-dresser, and now he has realised he is a woman

In some ways isn’t it a very standard trajectory, from occasional crossdressing to believing oneself to be an actual woman?

The main difference is that the crossdressing phase was so public.

I saw that. This was a deliberate public declaration: as soon as he entered in his dress, lipstick and high heels, he formally declared his new status and requirement of female pronouns from then on.* Everyone on the programme treated him with deference, as if he was some special celebrity.

He seems to me an unusual person and there is a feeling of playing, perhaps experimenting and of keeping people guessing and at bay, and underlying that, something deeper going on, trying to figure out or resolve something but not able to decide or not wanting to be boxed in or commit definitively one way or the other.

*Although I think he may have subsequently muddied the waters again, in the way he had always done previously, invoking the shifting 'mode' nuance and saying that he didn't mind if people didn't use the pronouns.

I used to love Eddie Izzard’s comedy. He is clearly very intelligent academically. But his emotional intelligence needs a lot of work. He can’t understand why ‘girl mode’ is so offensive. To me, it seems he wants to switch on the titillation, wanting the unwanted attention that girls and women get so worn out by. But only when it suits. And we have to all go along with Eddie which implies we accept/want the abuse girls and women get too.

The very definition of the paraphilia we must not name.

This is an excellent piece.

I loved when old Eddie said something like "they're not women's clothes their my clothes". That's the kind of simple logical statement that you can arm your non conforming kids with when they get questioned by their peers.

But I was so disappointed to learn about him using the women's loos way back when he first put a dress on. Just another oblivious entitled male all along then. Really love that Graham referenced that incident in this piece.

Same. Just the same old misogynist after all.

100% - that's why the likes of Kate Tempest becoming Kae and opting out of being known as a woman was so bloody annoying. Women who don't conform to gender stereotypes saying they're not women is just confirming gender stereotypes and narrowing the range of different types of self-declared women!

m.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJMU6pnGLE

Brilliant piece Mr Linehan. Legend. Thank you.

Great piece by GL

bellac Jojoanna I very reluctantly most probably agree. It’s such a shame when you have grown up admiring someone and they then disappoint you so much.

I might be an old fogey too because I completely agree with you. In the 80s and 90s, there were female performers who were where they were because of genuine talent. They had character and wit. And there were a range of fashions/styles/presentations, as opposed to the current identikit styling which seems to be focused purely on making girls and young women look sexually ‘available’.

Lennox et al were great role models for ALL sorts of girls, including the shy ones, the gender non-confirming ones, the ones who weren’t neurotypical, the ones who were lesbian. It’s tragic for our current generation of girls that they don’t have these types of role model.

Yep

Possibly, but didnt he turn up for some Women in the War thing at a school recently, AS A WOMAN

It was meant to be a commemoration of what women achieved in the war and he turns up

Has he got such little self awareness that he does something like that?

I think he's intelligent enough to know what he's doing . He thinks he's right and therefore doesn't care about anyone else.

Im going to sound like a right old fogey now, but I also think that the girl groups or girl performers in the last 20 years or so have become so heavily sexualised and semi pornographic in a way that perhaps didnt happen so much in the 70s to 90s.

Madonna stands out as being the exception to the rule, whereas today she would just be one of many

How do you identify with that sort of role model if you're a little shy pre teen girl, its quite frightening for them, what connection would she have to them

I remember the likes of the Belle Stars, bananarama, Sade, Joan Armatrading, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones, Alison Moyet

I know there were 'pretty girl' performers too but they were not so heavily sexualised and more relatable.

Well put

The really telling example is when Izzard wore the same short designer dress as the 49 year old princess of Spain (or something like that), and she looked absolutely amazing and Izzard, well, looked pretty awful. But of course social media and other media fawned over Izzard and was full of "she shouldn't be wearing a short dress at 49" for the female Spanish Royal.

…however I can not help feel for Eddie as I hope he doesn’t mean to be so divisive. I hope it boils down to he really hasn’t put the effort in to understand women’s views, rather than he won’t or dismisses them.