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

Not just calling a spade a spade? Why is speaking the truth ‘shaming’ these days?

I used to watch Eddie Izzard regularly when he was the compere at Screaming Blue Murder in Hampton Wick. He was brilliant. But then he grabbed a woman’s handbag and started to empty the contents out whilst giving a cutting commentary about them. She grabbed the handbag back and left the room and Eddie said “I can hear it buzzing” aka she had a vibrator ha ha ha

Ha ha.

"Ah yes, I read that earlier. Eleven grand - and that's just the hair transplants."
Total tangent here, but I do seem to notice a lot of the AGPs are balding. It has made me wonder if the desire to have hair again dovetails in some way with the desire to see themselves as female. Long hair seems like some sort of marker of femininity to them, and contrasts somewhat with their disappearing hairline. What comes first, the desire to be a long-haired woman or the desire to not be a balding bloke?

I saw Izzard in London in 1995 and even then he was making jokes about being a ‘lesbian trapped in a man’s body’

When I was in my late teens I used to imagine that if I were a man I would be gay......But i'm not a man, and I'm not gay - itv was simply an expression of different aspects of myself.

It's very good - Love Michael Conroy - he really is brilliant. We don't have enough of the Michael Conroy-love on here.

It's also thanks to him that we have the Mermaids training recording with the jelly-baby-genders presented as fact.

Yeah, teen year old girls aren't going to follow a weird old man home/around the streets? Maybe some projection?
Are tiny, roving gangs of teen girls a problem for grown men in the UK?

He's just taken the underground wearing make up and a dress, no problems at all apparently? No mention of issues whilst out to lunch either. The only villains in his story are literally the children pointing out that the emperor looks weird...

Thanks for the medium link op, that was fun to read.
I think Eddie told everyone much more than he intended.

He's just taken the underground wearing make up and a dress, no problems at all apparently? No mention of issues whilst out to lunch either. The only villains in his story are literally the children pointing out that the emperor looks weird...

It's odd isn't it?

I'm going to see Grayson in December and I'm going to compose a question to ask. Along the lines of is 'Clare' really necessary. Why not 'dress Grayson?'

I know a lot of Claire's/ Clares/ Clairs and no one dresses like that.

Brilliant article by Michael.

Yes it was Grayson Perry and yes he is very clear he is a man but I did read the below. He doesn’t think he is a woman see below
Grayson Perry has been cross-dressing since he was a child, using it to step into a fantasy world where he felt safer. He describes himself as a transvestite and for him cross-dressing has an exciting, sexual aspect but he has no desire to become a female, nor to dress as a woman full-time.

After many years of experimenting with cross-dressing and wearing conventional female clothes, Grayson became dissatisfied with the lack of reaction he provoked. In response, he developed the persona known as Claire. Claire appears in public and in Grayson’s art in a number of different guises, ranging from a little girl in a frilly dress to an adult woman. As Claire, he can dress in an outrageously flamboyant way and enjoy the reaction she causes.

Grayson has designed many of Claire’s outfits himself, but every year the fashion students at London’s Central St Martin’s take part in a competition to design new dresses for her and Grayson encourages them to make the dresses as bizarre and exciting as they can.

Every year, since 2004. Why?
That's an awful lot of dresses for one bloke.

Well he said it himself. Nobody notice him when he was wearing women’s clothes.
So he needed the attention so the biazzare women’s dresess seemed to do it for him he got the attention he wanted

But, I do wonder why he is applauded for this. And why he inflicts his fetish on others. Male socialisation bestows such a sense of entitlement over the expression of male sexuality and patriarchal society reinforces it.

I think some people think he's subverting the conventions of masculinity - so instead of looking butch, he's adopted an extreme version of stereotypical femininity. But I agree with you. To me, it doesn't feel as if he's subverting masculinity, it feels like he's mocking femininity. And, like you, I feel like I'm being compelled to be complicit in his sexual fetish. I don't like it.

I have Grayson Perry's book Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Girl and will dig it out tomorrow to remind myself and post here what he writes on the subject. I do recall reading that he gets hard when dressed like that (not necessarily in the caricaturish manner of Claire nowadays) and it made me feel uncomfortable knowing that about him, he is making others complicit in it as PPs have said.

As Claire, he can dress in an outrageously flamboyant way and enjoy the reaction she causes.

So it's just attention seeking and enjoying a frisson or causing shock? I suppose those frilly pink dresses generate much more shock than a flashers mac?

I suppose those frilly pink dresses generate much more shock than a flashers mac?
It's the same thing isn't it? They get off on the look of fear and confusion.
Even the wokest of the woke give six foot transwomen in PVC or leopard print a double take.
Homosexual transsexuals might be dressing for the male gaze, but autogynephiles dress to provoke a reaction. I have read so much about married AGP men either trying to "outdo" their wives or trying to dress exactly like them. I'm sure Yaniv's mobility scooter falls in the same category, it's about getting a reaction. They want to be noticed.
On the other side, young women who identify as trans or non-binary seem to want to stop being seen. They want the freedom to walk around in the world as "default human" i.e.not female, not for show.

In a way Grayson admitting that he gets hard while wearing the most absurdly cartoonish version of ladyface just makes it worse. There are so many levels of fetish to that and most of them directly involve making other people uncomfortable.

Yeah. I find him very creepy. He knows exactly what he is doing

He gets off on it and says it.

Yuck
And he gets money for doing it
Yuck