Eddie Izzard...

[Mrsmorton]

Has announced new pronouns.

Again, apologies if this is being discussed already.

"They're not women's clothes, they're my clothes" seems to have been lost in the mists of time.

She totally bodged with his post and I bet they is feeling a right plum.

@AnyFucker

Twitter is not "the wider world"

It's a self- selecting echo chamber

You mean Twitter-itter-itter-itter?

@HagenDaz

Thanks for the additional info *@ThinkWittyThoughts*, TBH I watched 20 minutes then fast forwarded to the end as I couldn’t bear Eddie’s Smuggy McSmugface.

I knew Eddie when Eddie was a compère at Screaming Blue Murder comedy club in Hampton Wick. Eddie of the past was a legend when he was comfortable in his own clothes.

I wonder what Dennis Pennis would say to Eddie Izzard?

"Don;t stand up, I'm only here for a minute."

I strongly suspect that in the real world beyond twitter no-one will think he is anything else than Eddie Izzard, crossdresser. There will be rolling of eyes, a shrug at the pronoun nonsense. But no one will think he is now a woman because he wears make up and dresses.

It increasingly feels like this whole thing is just an exercise is gaslighting and wielding power. It must feel good to declare something and then have people falling over themselves to ensure that they do your bidding - it must give a lovely little frisson of power mustn't it?

How people cannot see the regressiveness of calling a man 'she' based on the fact that he likes lipsticks and dresses is beyond me. Are people just really dim or what?

Actually I really hope he does try and get on an all women's shortlist, it would give sunlight to the issue for sure, bring it on!

@Passmeabottlemrjones

It increasingly feels like this whole thing is just an exercise is gaslighting and wielding power. It must feel good to declare something and then have people falling over themselves to ensure that they do your bidding - it must give a lovely little frisson of power mustn't it?

How people cannot see the regressiveness of calling a man 'she' based on the fact that he likes lipsticks and dresses is beyond me. Are people just really dim or what?

Actually I really hope he does try and get on an all women's shortlist, it would give sunlight to the issue for sure, bring it on!

Exactly! Brilliant post

@Passmeabottlemrjones

It increasingly feels like this whole thing is just an exercise is gaslighting and wielding power. It must feel good to declare something and then have people falling over themselves to ensure that they do your bidding - it must give a lovely little frisson of power mustn't it?

How people cannot see the regressiveness of calling a man 'she' based on the fact that he likes lipsticks and dresses is beyond me. Are people just really dim or what?

Actually I really hope he does try and get on an all women's shortlist, it would give sunlight to the issue for sure, bring it on!

Totally agree.

I'm finding this one really difficult to comply with.

It's not just that I feel like I've been aware of Eddie by one particular set of pronouns since 1995, and I have to retrain my brain to use different words. It's that I'm being told on social media to rewrite my own memories of Eddie's career. Part of Eddie's stage performance was Eddie calling Eddie's own self a transvestite. If Eddie was always a woman, wearing women's clothes, why was Eddie an "action transvestite"?

Why did we have a woman appearing on the TV whose USP was wearing women's clothes while telling jokes?

I think I'd have less trouble referring to Billy Connelly or Lenny Henry as she.

Yes MrJones!

We may not have to wait for Eddie to inveigle Eddieself onto an all women shortlist. You can see it peaking people in real time in responses to the online articles shared on Twitter. They're not all credulous, sycophantic muppets by any stretch of the imagination.

I suspect it might be useful if he did though.

@MichelleofzeResistance

This is the expansion of language, the invention of new ways of talking about things that were always there but which there were no words for.

You what?

The word in question is 'she'. Yes shes have definitely always been there, and yes there have been words for them. Really. Even when they were just washing your socks and making your sandwiches, they were a thing, with words for them. You definitely came out of one.

Ha! Best thing I've read today

@Lisz

Interesting people bring up ‘1984’; ‘newspeak’ was an attempt to reduce language, literally to destroy words; “the destruction of language is beautiful” etc. This is the expansion of language, the invention of new ways of talking about things that were always there but which there were no words for. Now there are more words there are more ways to express things. It feels freeing to me; it’s doing what language should do.

Anyway it’s overwhelmingly going down very well in the wider world. It’s always good to pop by Mumsnet though, to read what the naysayers think about it.

It was either here or the comments under the article over at the Daily Express.

This is t expanding language this is appropriating language. If it was expanding language Izzard wouldn't be using 'she/her' Izzard would be using a whole new term to describe themselves.

Thanks for popping along now off you pop to the far side of fuck off.

@MichelleofzeResistance

This is the expansion of language, the invention of new ways of talking about things that were always there but which there were no words for.

You what?

The word in question is 'she'. Yes shes have definitely always been there, and yes there have been words for them. Really. Even when they were just washing your socks and making your sandwiches, they were a thing, with words for them. You definitely came out of one.

Well, see, these days that last sentence makes an assumption for which you have no evidence.

Remember Macduff, who was "not of woman born".

It's possible that no woman has given birth in the Izzard fomily for a dozen generations.

...if you believe that guff.

Macduff came out of a woman too.

No caesarean has ever been performed on a male!

To be honest, I always thought that the Macduff plot twist was really weak.

Someone should write the trans version of Macbeth in which Macduff is the child of Freddie seahorse. And then Macbeth wins because Macduff was blatantly still born of a fucking woman.

@AnotherLass

To be honest, I always thought that the Macduff plot twist was really weak.

Someone should write the trans version of Macbeth in which Macduff is the child of Freddie seahorse. And then Macbeth wins because Macduff was blatantly still born of a fucking woman.

"MacDuff: Despair thy charm, And let the Angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripp’d.

The girls looked puzzled. There was a momentary silence, and then a chorus of voices round the room:

‘Please, Miss, what does that mean?’

Dorothy explained. She explained haltingly and incompletely, with a sudden horrid misgiving—a premonition that this was going to lead to trouble—but still, she did explain. And after that, of course, the fun began.

....‘But the children wouldn’t have understood the play if I hadn’t explained!’ protested Dorothy for the third or fourth time.

‘Of course they wouldn’t! You don’t seem to get my point, Miss Millborough! We don’t want them to understand."

(George Orwell. A Clergyman's Daughter).

Can we say that things have changed since then?

Girl mode? Nob off, Eddie.

Agreed. He'd still be a colonising tosser if he claimed to be in Crone mode, but girl mode is a thousand times creepier.

He wants to be in "girl-mode" now.

I must be "girling" all wrong. AF cramps I'm feeling right now must be just a menstruator problem, nothing to do with being a girl.

No. I will not.

We're supposed to "believe what people tell us" about their identity but what if they tell us two contradictory stories? Page did this and now Izzard. I think it makes the public LESS likely to believe or take seriously trans people.

If wearing women's clothes makes you a woman, how come Eddie is only now a woman (according to him)? Why was he not a woman for first the 30 years he was wearing women's clothes?

I see NBC are all up for it. Maybe someone is eying you a career in the US?

I see NBC are all up for it. Maybe someone is eying you a career in the US?

Unfortunately there aren't that many acting roles for women of 58, and their presenting roles tend to be cut short. But he probably doesn't identify as that kind of woman.

Sorry, 'she'.

I thought they were supposed to be a comedian...

It is not just pronouns - Izzard is now described as an "actress" in the Wikipedia article about Izzard.