Michael Conroy exposes the DARVO in Izzard's teenage girl trauma

[OrchidInTheSun]

I'm sure we've all read this passage where Izzard bravely takes on teenage girls who challenge him for being in the women's toilets hundreds of times before but Michael's take down is spot on. And funny

medium.com/@MichaelConroy68/my-first-day-out-by-eddie-izzard-c8ff9bcae245

I just assumed Eddie had made the entire thing up.

I like him. Conroy, not Izzard, who's thoroughly destroyed whatever goodwill he built up during the period where he was at least attempting to keep his malignant narcissism on the down low.

That's brilliant. Well done Conroy.

"SURROUNDED BY THE 3 WITCHES. SMOKING! WHISPERING! NOT AT SCHOOL!"

Fantastic
Eddie Izzard is a massive creep and those three teenage girls are Sheroes.

Brilliant.

The entitlement of Izzard in that story! Girls in the women's loos in the afternoon, what an outrage! Conroy calls it out beautifully.

He certainly exaggerated it Joyce. Whether it's true or not, he doesn't come out of it well. And yet this scene has been published over and over again as evidence of the terrible trauma of the cross dresser

I just used to love him in the 90s. Made a special trip to see him live in London and he was properly funny.
But once a narcissist starts to age they just can’t help themselves. They can’t be arsed to hide the unpleasant part of their personality anymore. Sad.

I like him. Conroy, not Izzard

Me too. Unlike 99% of our supposed "allies", he takes his campaigning to the men to get them to change and doesn't spend most of his time teaching us to suck eggs.

The article is very funny!

I used to really like Eddie Izzard. When he used to be unashamedly male and brave enough to say "it's not a woman's dress it's my dress, I am wearing it". I have a box set of his shows. Now Eddie is just one more case of AGP narcissism. It's sad.

And an excellent illustration of the way AGP and its associated bad behavior escalates in middle age.

I miss the days when the male midlife crisis involved buying a sport car and getting hair plugs.

It was listening to Izzard read this out on Book of the Week on R4 a few years ago that peaked me. I was listening because I liked him - funny gender-bending comedian, charity marathon hero etc etc - but I sat there listening to this and thinking... W.T.F.??

And I thought it over and over afterwards, trying to work out if I was being homophobic or something (I think in those innocent days I was still a stranger to the all-encompassing concept of transphobia) and I just got more and more fucking angry. At the entitlement and the utter ignorance of the experience of women and girls. The blatant disregard of them, and his unapologetic, unashamed willingness to dismiss their needs, their rights, their perspective as insignificant. Misogyny unmasked.

Me too Absinthe. Or it pushed me over the edge. I listened to it slack-jawed.

Yea Conroy! I really find Izzard creepy now.

Michael is great

Jeez izzard. Ffs he was in the ladies toilets and he frightened 3 girls

All these dudes pretending they have fememine feelings but they don’t have clue not a clue

Actual adult women are normally quite protective of adolescent girls.

I used to really like Eddie Izzard. When he used to be unashamedly male and brave enough to say "it's not a woman's dress it's my dress, I am wearing it
Same here, I admired his refusal to allow clothing to define his sex.
Now all I see is an egotistical old man getting his kicks out of intimidating young girls- in the bogs of all places 😱. Just another AGP as far as I’m concerned.

JoyceJeffries
I just assumed Eddie had made the entire thing up.

I think something happened OK, but he's edited it to make himself look better. The girls may have been lurking out on the street watching out for him when he came out, and screamed and ran when they saw him. That's not very hero-like, though, that's just 'frightening little girls', and might possibly make him look a bit pervy, so needs to be improved on.

I think something happened OK, but he's edited it to make himself look better.

Or edited it so that his narcissistic self thinks it makes him look better, while actually ramming home that he's a narc shitgibbon who thinks that it's perfectly fine to take his fetish into women's private spaces and transgress the boundaries of teenage girls.

True!

Brilliant, Conroy.

Izzard comes out of that story looking like an utterly unaware creep, at best. Doesn't really matter if its a true story or not.

And the three (possibly fictional) girls have my sympathy. I can see it very clearly from their point of view - an older male (who is, afair, fairly stocky/well built) comes into the toilets in make-up/wig/heels etc and then proceeds to dash furtively in and out of toilets. I'd have been 1. immediately on guard, alarm bells ringing, and 2. not as brave as they (allegedly) were in confronting him.

Eddie doesn't seem to understand the fear that women have of 'strange men', especially older, bigger, stronger 'strange men', in women's single sex spaces, especially older, bigger, stronger 'strange men' invading women's single sex spaces and acting really oddly and unpredictably.

I can't imagine anyone female reading this passage and sympathising with Izzard.

If it had been a younger girl on her own in there? Or a woman on her own?

As this is, as has been spelled out, this is Izzard's 'sexuality', a fetish, a fantasy. So any women (potential, imagined or otherwise) in the toilet expressing alarm or fear were presumably spoiling his thrill. Poor Eddie. Could it be spelled out any clearer that it's all about getting off? Women are inconveniences in this fantasy, nothing more.

I think that was the first time I was overtly intimidated because of my sexuality [DON’T NOTE THAT I SAID ‘SEXUALITY’ AND PRETEND I SAID ‘GENDER IDENTITY’, AS MY ‘SEXUALITY’ BEING FACILITATED BY USING LADIES’ PUBLIC LOOS MIGHT NOT PLAY PERFECTLY TO ALL AUDIENCES]

your slip's showing Eddie. and has been perfectly highlighted by Conroy

A great takedown of a really shocking piece of writing.

and this regarding Izzard from a previous poster is so true

an excellent illustration of the way AGP and its associated bad behavior escalates in middle age

The lack of awareness (on Izzard's part). 3 young girls and a bloke turns up in the ladies toilets. What the actual fuck did he expect them to do? That he can try and present that scenario with him centred as victim is just mind-boggling.

Nicely called out by Conroy.

The whole story is bizarre. If he was switching clothes, why would he need to go in to the women’s at all? The very fact that he was going to be 50:50 in “male” and “female” attire, means he had a 50:50 choice (I’m being generous, you understand).

So given that he is a man, why choose the women’s? And even if he had it in mind to choose the women’s, when he arrived and found it wasn’t empty, why continue?

I suspect an ulterior motive. I think using the women’s was meant to be arousing. And perhaps, hopefully, those young women spoiled it for him. Because that would be a far more satisfactory story.

Very good!!