Men in Comedy and Transgender People

[TroglodytesTroglodytes]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66534454

Just been reading about Graham Linehan getting cancelled due to his opinions in the trans debate. At work, I listen to podcasts everyday day and a lot of these are UK or USA comedy podcast. It strikes me that so many of these comedians have an almost obsessive interest in the subject and bring it into every interview. I enjoy listening to these and I love GL’s work like Father Ted. I just don’t understand why these (mostly men) see it as such a main issue and keep going on about it. IRL I see the odd trans person and there are a couple of non-binary students that are at my children’s school. I may have had a discussion with people about trans a few times in the past five years. In my experience people have a passing interest but the experience of the people on these podcasts suggests that it is the most important issue. AIBU to think that most people are not bothered if a man wants to be known as she/her and transition? I just wonder why people like GL want to hold this particular issue up as a beacon for free speech.

Oh shut up. It's women's rights. It's the same old 'waaah transphobia!' air blowing but never any examples of actual transphobic. It's BORING.

Longagonow96 · Today 12:17
Witness the idea that trans rights are as bad as cancer waiting times. How utterly offensive and irrational 😡

Witness the idea that twisting what's actually been said, creates fact. 😂

You can simultaneously want trans rights, women's rights, free speech, and cancer diagnosis waiting times reduced.

It’s an easy target to get people angry about instead of focusing on actually important issues like cancer waiting times.

Firstly, you aren't the arbiter of what is or isn't 'actually important'. Secondly, unless one has a brain the size of a peanut, it's not difficult to find many things important at the same time.

Who is trying to take rights from trans people, and what rights are we talking about specifically?

I'm a bloke and very involved in the running of my local sports club of which over half the members are women. The trans issue rocked up to my doorstep whether I liked it or not as I have a huge responsibility down the club around areas of welfare/safeguarding of juniors, women and girls and that is before we even discuss the issues of fairness in sports. I used to be very much of the 'be kind' brigade until I started to do a bit more research, starting listening to Stock, Joyce, Moore, Bindel etc and basically became horrified at what was going on under the banner of gender ideology. My gay mates started to distance themselves from the alphabet soup mob and basically I wanted no part in enabling what I see increasingly as a dangerous cult.

Nice for you, OP.

I stress and worry every day about being accused of wrong think for defending women's sport and spaces and calling caution over affirmation-only approaches.

Nice to live in your world.

Comedians often focus on one or two topics. Michael McIntyre on absurdities of family life, the late Dave Allen on religion, to give two examples.

He’s standing up for women’s rights, he’s lost a lot due to it. I admire him. And I will never call a man “she/her”, absolute utter nonsense. I’m glad we have people like Graham standing up to this lunacy and utter lack of common sense.

OP, I really don't understand why this isn't one of the top 5 issues for everyone in the country - womens rights and safety are being destroyed before our very eyes.

I'm guessing you definitely don't have a daughter. I have a huge amount of respect for Graham Linehan.

it remains libelous even when true!

that is not correct, a libel requires to be untrue

Look at this, what a disingenuous little post, full of wide eyed false naivety, who could possibly have an issue with men wanting to be recognised as women?!? Unless you've not read a newspaper or a single online discussion in recent years you know exactly what the issue is. And it's nothing to do with transphobia, more the safeguarding of the right of women and children to protect themselves against rapists and pedophiles who are hiding in plain sight, making use of laws that were intended to protect the vulnerable

You’ve missed the point. The issue isn’t trans people, never was. Almost no one has any issue with trans people existing and going about their business.

The issues are things like:

… The sacking of teachers for saying that biological sex exists.

… The public humiliation, defamation of, hate campaigns against, and sackings of female writers, female academics and think-tank women for their refusal to say exactly what they are told to say by male-bodied activists.

… Forcing vulnerable women like prisoners and hospital patients to accept male-bodied people into shared sleeping areas and to accept that sexual assault and rape then occurs and to accept that they are not allowed to call their rapist a man and to accept that if they want to seek support from a rape centre there will be male-bodied people in their support group staring at them while feeling entitled to listen to details of the rape.

…. Public sector staff denying that a hospital patient had been raped on her ward by a transwomen because “there are no men here so you cannot have been raped.” Shame the CCTV was there really.

… Forcing employees, particularly public sector and media employees, to state on every email and on their badges that they have a ‘gender identity’ ie that they are ‘allies’ who will do as they are told by trans activists and not have any opinions of their own.

… Encouraging children who haven’t even gone through puberty to give themselves a sexuality and ‘gender identity’ labels and allow adult strangers to talk to them about sex eg the family sex show, toddler drag shows etc etc

… A child being thrown out of his own classroom because he did not agree that there are 73 genders, despite the fact that (1) this is clearly true and (2) gender critical speech is legally protected.

…Eleven year olds being taught that anal sex and fisting and sex change operations are part of normal life and somehow superior and cool.

The death of free speech and the sexualisation of children are massive issues for society and comedians are rightly always at the forefront of calling out this stuff.

I’m with you OP, I see a few irl, they get on with their day, I get on with mine. I think MN is a beacon for these views and to tar every individual as possible rapists/paedophiles etc is no different to when people automatically thought of gay men as paedophiles. Bigotry in its purist form flying the flag of ‘women’s rights’.

There are obviously some depraved trans people, as there are depraved people in all walks of life, but the rabid hostility is distasteful and seeing it seething on MN (often from people who have suffered bigotry themselves) is a poor show on MN part.

You'll only see rabid obsession with the subject here on Mumsnet rather than in real life.
Graham linehan is a transphobe who is obsessed with calling trans people paedophiles.

I feel sorry for Lineham. But also feel sorry for the venue who have been (through no fault of his) put in a bad position. Fringe shows tend to be for an hour a day for a month.

If the venue thinks the LGBTplus community and friends is going to boycott it for the other 8729 hours a year then that’s obviously going to affect their takings. They don’t want to go bust.

The problem lies with the crazed TRAs who are trying to silence anyone they don’t like. Lineham’s comedy afaik isn’t even about Trans rights, etc. though I admit I have no idea what he was planning to talk about at fringe. But even if it was on the trans topic he doesn’t spread hate, he isn’t being nasty, he’s speaking biological facts.

If some of you could be bothered to hop onto the feminism sex and gender threads you would see why believing men are women is such an issue

I'm trying to make sense of this response, but why would an author/comedy writer/comedian from another country attempt to distract the British public from NHS waiting times and education funding in the UK? What would be his motivation? Why would he think "I need to take the Great British public's mind off serious political issues, even though I have nothing to gain, as I am neither British nor a politician". I can't see the logic.
I think it far more likely that he cares about women's rights, and can see the conflict.

I think you'll find it is the facts that

• men make up high nineties percentage of sex offenders
• you can't tell by looking which men are the problem

that makes posters in FWR want to keep all male bodied people out of women's single sex spaces. You don't know which of the group is the risk, so you exclude all the group.

As soon as you let one TW into a female single sex space, it becomes mixed sex.

OP are you happy with this that happened a few days ago?

‘Transgender’ Male Sets Women’s Powerlifting Record (townhall.com)

This person smashed the women's powerlifting record by 200kg. Holds many more wome's records. And has derided biological women - those with xx chromosomes - for being so weedy that they are so far behind him?

But that's fine for you, yes? No-one should speak out about this and so many many more intrusions of biological males into woemen's spaces?

TooOldForThisNonsense · Today 12:49
it remains libelous even when true!

that is not correct, a libel requires to be untrue

You'd think, but I'm not a lawyer. I had something strongly pointed out to me, that does actually make sense, so corrected my original statement so others don't unknowingly place themselves in the same position I apparently have.

Apparently a statement can be libelous even when true, because it is a (written) defamation of character, and that in itself is libelous.

The defense to the charge is it isn't libelous because it is true.

If you've made a statement about a person under their new gender and name and a court didn't allow evidence about their conduct under their natal gender and name to be presented, then a successful defense would not have been mounted, and the claim of libel against the new name of the new gendered person would be found in favor of.

Allegedly there's an additional argument about if crimes committed under an old gender can have anything to do with the character of the 'authentic' new genders character, and the change of gender to female specifically, means what they did as a male to a boy is now irrelevant as they are now female, therefore it's a defamation of the new female character. It does feel like mental gymnastics to me, but law sometimes is, and as I've said I'm not a lawyer.

The trouble is that too many trans activists DO turn out to be pedophiles then rather than the trans community saying this is awful or not in their name, they blame people like Glinner for pointing it out.

Classic DARVO.

Women have every right to be 'rabid' in wanting to protect other women and children from all males in female only spaces.

And to protect children from a pathway which will lead to life altering drugs and surgeries.

In my Real Life I know 3 women who have been sacked / withdrawn from freelance arts projects and /or guest lecturing in higher education because the young participants were ‘triggered’ by language in historical texts and it was deemed transphobic to have introduced these texts.

None of these women are seen to ‘obsess’ about this in public because already knocked and having lost income, they are reluctant to be the target of rape and death threats on SM. All 3 have been active in fighting prejudice and discrimination and would call out any words or actions targeting Trans people for being trans.

If this issue doesn’t affect you, if you are not an athlete, a rape survivor seeking women only spaces for certain purposes, enjoy the luxury, sit back, but please do not criticise those who engage because they have no choice.

Of course it’s fine, look at their pink shoes….obviously a woman. 🧐😩