Ian Hislop is disappointing

Well, the incredulous thing certainly applies to me as a man watching all of this.

I remember my early teens, extricating myself from religion, balking at the Catholic Church and their various abuse scandals and exaggerated ceremonies. Exasperated at the resistance to ordination of female clergy in CoE. Irritated by the Moral Majority trying to tell me what lyrics I could read.

And feeling like I was part of the Enlightenment as I connected to comics and scientists and philosophers who really were compelled to challenge orthodoxies, and championed free speech and fighting flim flam, from the Python team to Rowan Atkinson, Dawkins to Pinker to Goldacre to Haidt to Hitchens.

And less than two decades after this golden age of reason and anti pomposity peaked, what are we left with? Individuals with massive social capital, fearless in their criticism of Trump and Boris, MAGA and Brexit, the Tories, the alt Right, Covid and vaxx deniers, pro BLM and racialised politics, weaponised in their support for all things intersectional, anti climate change, seemingly anti flim flam like that older generation of heroes, but in fact nothing of the sort as they nail their colours to the anti science/anti humanist/anti woman cult/neo religion of TRA.

Ask any of the new "heroes" what they think of "men can become women" and the medicalisation of youth, and you'll hear either radio silence, the questioner accused of transphobia, or acceptance of the cult.

Stephen Fry, Dr. Brian Cox, Jonathan Lis, Ben Goldacre, to name but four prominent individuals in the arts, science, journalism, ethics worlds.

And once again, the stress of extricating from a world hamstrung by religion, but crazily one even more hard to believe than the previous one.

And beyond the heroes of the GC feminist world, and individual men like Glinner and Ricky Gervais, criminal silence from so many, including my group, men.

I suspect also that that Hislop finds someone being quite passionate and a bit outspoken to be a tiny bit vulgar.

Had Glinner not being taking up the fight against trans ideology, I suspect PE would have loved to make fun of him for (in their view) going against the grain and saying what he thinks in a direct assertive way. In PE's world view, getting himself into trouble when if only he had kept it as a few satirical remarks in a jovial setting, that is easy to pull back from.

And you only have to watch how Hislop treated Paula Yates ( I was never a fan ) and Paul Merton had to intervene after filming. For me it was a case of when someone tells you who they are listen….

Hislop was never and is highly unlikely to ever truly stand by those who are fighting to protect women and children’s rights. I believe that for many men, women are an irrelevance.

Ian hislop is a condescending, supercilious twat who has an overblown sense of his own importance.

Why would things that worry women trouble him?

I'm not remotely surprised.

As others have said upthread this is about PE being basically a posh boys undergraduate set up. So much of their focus is on the establishment because although they poke fun at it and occassionally expose it, they see this as the "real" world.

This comes over to me as patronising and condescending:

... my suspicion that the Trans/TERF debate is not quite as important as those involved in it believe, I do have people looking at the issues, the areas of impact in the real world, and I will pass on your information to them

ie the concerns of women and an Irish comedy writer just dont match up to my personal priorities. However I have a few underlings who undertake this less important work.

Classic Enlish class privilege brush off.

Hislop’s response is typical of the tier of men who feel this issue is ‘peculiar’ but doesn’t have any influence on their lives. Like it or not Hislop is a product of privilege and the trans issue is by far the easiest way to be cancelled completely and utterly, being clear he is employed by the BBC and it is lucrative. Look at the way he tacitly agreed but ran away from looking into Jack Monroe.

Glinner has been hung out to dry and it is scandalous, I notice none of those who are doing this to him are in any way careful around his mental health. Those who could and can mitigate some of the issues he is facing refuse to and Hislop is part of that cowardly camp.

CorruptedCauldron Yep, indeed he did. That's Boyle for you.

Damien Barr is another one who has reinvented himself as an ally. This despite a past that included a vile tweet saying he was "tittering sickly" at reading the account of a transwoman's suicide attempt.

The other factor is that Hislop makes a pretty penny from his BBC appearances. He plays all edgy and anti establishment. But not to the point of getting the Helen Joyce, Suzanne Moore etcetc treatment.
Cowardly little man.

What do you expect? Private Eye has always been a bunch of public school tw ats. In the 80s they were vicious about anything to do with feminism. There was a column called Wimmin, which was a pseud's corner for lampooning feminists. To be fair, much of it was probably deserved but no more so than the guff that men's rights brigade comes out with now.

Wait… what… did Frankie Boyle really make a joke about being “balls-deep in a dead t#%€y”? OMG! That’s vile.

Sounds like a classic case of apathy from Hislop, another privileged man who hasn’t delved below the surface of the issues. To be fair, the first time I saw Glinner’s Twitter feed, before I joined the terven, I was somewhat baffled. Why is this famous comedy writer banging on about this one subject, and clearly so riled and upset and aggressive in tone, when it’s such a tiny issue, doesn’t really affect anyone, etc. It was only after I started paying attention to the gender wave that I realised there was a grave risk to women’s rights, LGB rights and the health and well-being of gender-confused children. As an intelligent journalist with an inquiring mind, Hislop should be doing more. I wonder if it’s the (incorrect) assumption that this is a left vs right issue.

The Mail is better at this than Private Eye

I think Glinner makes some comedians and journalists feel uncomfortable. They see how his life has changed from someone who was very much comedy and sitcom royalty and it makes them realise that they would not sacrifice so many aspects of their lives in the way Glinner has.

I'd be surprised if Ian Hislop was anything but GC but I think Private Eye prizes itself on not being identified with any 'side' on anything - e.g Rotten Boroughs will criticise Labour councils with as much disapproval as Conservative, Lib Dem or SNP controlled councils.

I haven't read Glinner's Sub Stack link yet. I don't like the word 'unhinged' being used about anyone. That seems needlessly cruel to Glinner whose life has been affected in so many ways.

How long ago was it that Jo Brand was hosting HIGNFY and had to remind Ian Hislop of the pervasiveness of low level but daily misogyny that is grinding and perpetual for women. He didn't get it then and I don't think he gets it now. Unfortunately, that was the point at which I realised whilst I have some values in common with him, he just doesn't get these issues at all. It was disappointing.

PE sees corruption and malfeasance everywhere, so to them this is just another example. It’s very much an “old boys” mag that focuses on the minutiae of national and local politics and the media. ( It’s barely changed since I started reading it in the mid sixties, except that it’s morphed into a pillar of the Establishment, as have many other things that were once part of the “counter culture”.) As others suggest, women’s issues aren’t seen as particularly important. I suspect that gender ideology is dismissed as a rather grotesque absurdity, but from time to time pointed GC observations are made, which is encouraging.

Yet a big part of the problem is people in positions of influence not nailing their colours to the mast.

Remember PE thrives on tackling contentious issues and calling out bullshit and the idea you can change sex is arguably the biggest lie of our ages.

As for Glinner making this public well he kept it hidden for a long bloody time hasn't he.

Just maybe he's getting fed up by people who could have helped turning a Private Blind Eye when it suited whilst he was being publicly hung, drawn and quartered.

Just reads like dfod to me.

Totally agree. They think it doesn't affect them. They don't care about women in general, or about the women in their life to stop and listen.

The men that do listen are incredulous that we are where we are.

I actually think his email is fine and very well thought through.

He's showing support and awareness of the issues whilst not nailing his colours to the mast.

I think that was sensible given that Glinner could then have shared the email publicly - which he now has done.

Agree wholeheartedly.

This was absolutely their turf terf.

It's very disappointing and has me considering my subscription. The point of Private Eye is to dig deep, to go after things that MSM won't touch, and expose corruption. What we've seen with gender ideology is widespread corruption: our institutions have become vehicles for warping data and language, and for punishing people who tell the truth. This was squarely their territory, there were so many angles they could've come at it from. A few GC cartoons don't cut it. It's depressing to think here was another outlet ignoring a great story and helping to let all this happen by staying silent.

That makes it worse, though, doesn't it? Private Eye prides itself on speaking truth to power, deflating cant, and uncovering scandals. Yet Hislop has hidden behind braver women and men, until it was safe to be more GC.

Is this his response from 4 years ago? If so I suspect that his response would be a bit different now

It was under Hislop's editorship that Private Eye published a special edition, dedicated to promoting Andrew Wakefield's fraud.

I think a lot of men think it's a non- issue. On LBC a caller said trans issues only affects a minority, that politicians should concentrate on other issues. No caller, trans issues affects 51% of the population, at least.

I also find this disappointing.

His response suggests being highly dismissive of the impact trans ideology has on women and children.

Which suggests he's either fairly dismissive of what I think will turn out to be a massive medical scandal against children and a major abuse of women's rights or it's a topic he CBA to look into.

I suspect the latter given his response of "other people" looking into it.

Basically it's just not anything remotely important enough to trouble his brain with.

Which frankly is suggestive of underlying misogyny (allegedly) as PE often cite.