Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

To feel incredibly sorry for Eddie Izzard

559 replies

ColdstreamAnnie · 27/10/2022 20:31

I don't want to pity Eddie but I felt a wave of sadness after reading that Rosie Duffield (MP) said she would rather be arrested than refer to Eddie as a woman.

OP posts:
Mezmer · 28/10/2022 11:33

Just looking at the trans activists outside parliament today. Many are young women. I just keep asking myself why? Exactly how does the trans movement stand to positively influence and enrich their lives? Why do they do it? Out of some misguided sense of sticking up for the underdog? The whole TWAW movement puts them as the underdogs, can’t they see that? I can see why women fall into a state of apathy (don’t want to get involved) But to give up your time to go out and march for the side that is destined in the end to do you most harm is ludicrous.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/10/2022 11:34

What's going on outside Parliament?

3peassuit · 28/10/2022 11:35

I will call Eddie a trans woman but not a woman, there is a difference. I cannot be compelled to call Eddie a woman. As for calling a 60 year old male a girl, just NO!

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 11:39

Where is Sheffield?
FUCK THE FUCK OFF EDDIE

haha - it's my home town. I have a related tattoo which is visible. Pretty much evryone correctly identifies the team. And even if they don't see the tattoo usually they answer with something like "Wednesday?" of "Joe Cocker/Pulp/Arctic Monkeys/Bring me the Horizon" or "Jess Ennis" and of course "Sean Bean". And then "steel" or "Orgreave" comes up

The idea that people round the world have no idea where or what it is, is laughable.

WandaWomblesaurus · 28/10/2022 11:40

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 10:53

You know what I hate about this post? I hate how it's an attack on Rosie Duffield thinly disguised as kindness and empathy.

that's a really good point. I often like to pose the question the other way round to see what i think, and it would be to feel sorry for Rosie Duffield and women like her who are being coerced into saying things they don't believe.

Goady posts like this really don't help MNs reputation in other places.

Maybe we should have a signal that it's a deliberate thing.

Do you know what I love to bake? Berry Buns. Anyone got any recipes they care to share?

TheClogLady · 28/10/2022 11:40

Datun · 28/10/2022 11:15

And just in case anyone is still thinking that Izzard is someone to be pitied, this from a Guardian interview about him wanting to be the MP for Sheffield.

If they do want a supercharged councillor, there are great people there. But the thing that I bring that is different, is their activism has been local and my activism has been national and international ... Because I have a personality, I am a character, and I am known across the UK and across the world, people will be saying: ‘Eddie Izzard, so tell me about Sheffield. Where is Sheffield?

www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/27/eddie-izzard-rules-out-appearing-on-all-women-labour-mp-shortlist

What an absolutely tosser-ish thing to say.

I can feel the good people of Sheffield cringing all the way over here on the other side of the Pennines.

Eddie gets a classic Mumsnet ODFOD for that.

PronounssheRa · 28/10/2022 11:41

If they do want a supercharged councillor, there are great people there. But the thing that I bring that is different, is their activism has been local and my activism has been national and international ... Because I have a personality, I am a character, and I am known across the UK and across the world, people will be saying: ‘Eddie Izzard, so tell me about Sheffield. Where is Sheffield?

Did Eddie really say that 😳

Stand aside provincial plebs I'm just so much more important and fabulous than you are.

ZuttZeVootEeeVo · 28/10/2022 11:48

If they do want a supercharged councillor, there are great people there. But the thing that I bring that is different, is their activism has been local and my activism has been national and international ... Because I have a personality, I am a character, and I am known across the UK and across the world, people will be saying: ‘Eddie Izzard, so tell me about Sheffield. Where is Sheffield?

Eddie has one wish - for sheffield to be as famous as he is.

YouSirNeighMmmm · 28/10/2022 11:48

Datun · 28/10/2022 11:32

In a short telephone interview with the Guardian on Thursday, Izzard said she had suffered a “torrent of transphobic abuse” since announcing her candidacy, including being photographed by a gender-critical feminist using the women’s toilet.

Not using it. Entering it through the door, which looks like it was right next to the stage, and the woman photographed it whilst she was still sitting in her seat.

Eddie views women trying to protect their own boundaries as transphobic abuse.

Top tip - when you see "transphobic abuse" read it as "reality".

Datun · 28/10/2022 11:53

PronounssheRa · 28/10/2022 11:41

If they do want a supercharged councillor, there are great people there. But the thing that I bring that is different, is their activism has been local and my activism has been national and international ... Because I have a personality, I am a character, and I am known across the UK and across the world, people will be saying: ‘Eddie Izzard, so tell me about Sheffield. Where is Sheffield?

Did Eddie really say that 😳

Stand aside provincial plebs I'm just so much more important and fabulous than you are.

He did. All of that and more.

In the interest of strict honesty, the two comments were separated by others in the article, they didn't run together. But he absolutely said those things.

And how he has identified as trans for 37 years. Because, in the interest of strict honesty, that's not bloody honest, is it? He 'identified' as a transvestite, not a woman.

That's what Stonewall have done. They have invented the term transgender to include transvestite, transsexual, cross dressers in general, and drag queens.

oh, and the other invented term, gender fluidity.

tkmethrthis · 28/10/2022 11:57

He, or at least his twitter account, has retweeted a complaint about transphobia, along with racism presumably against Abtisam Mohammed.

It really boils my blood that he is putting people telling. the truth about his sex in the same fucking category as the racist abuse that the woman muslim candidate who actually is active in the area suffers.

I don't have any pity for Eddie Izzard he knows exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it.

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 12:11

I'm confused about Izzard being "a gender-fluid transwoman". If you're gender fluid (or non binary) how can you be a woman? so confused

pattihews · 28/10/2022 12:15

Rosie Duffield was the first Labour woman to speak up about gender ideology and is still, years later and when it's absolutely clear she was right, is still getting bashed for speaking the truth.

EI is a multi-millionaire white male so privileged that he doesn't think he needs to observe women's boundaries.

I know who I feel sympathy for and it's not EI.

Datun · 28/10/2022 12:15

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 12:11

I'm confused about Izzard being "a gender-fluid transwoman". If you're gender fluid (or non binary) how can you be a woman? so confused

I suspect it's so you can take male roles in films.

Not much call for 60-year-old 'girls' in movies. (Well some movies maybe).

Asdavaluesausage · 28/10/2022 12:17

I think EI is claiming to be ‘gender fluid’ as a cop out.

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 12:17

my point being that if you are gender fluid you don't identify as one gender or the other all the time. So being a transwoman contradicts that.

I saw a tweet the other day from someone who also had "non binary transwoman" and it confused me. However there are very few places you can ask without taking a (verbal) bashing and ending up on terf-blocker algorithms. And I don't identify as a terf so I'm against that

AryaStarkWolf · 28/10/2022 12:21

CorporateBull · 27/10/2022 20:36

Eddie says she changes from girl mode to boy mode by taking off their heels. Eddie doesn’t need to engage with any of the problems women have (even those of us who, shocker, never wear heels).

Eddie does all her acting as a middle-aged man in boy mode and then all her stand up and politics in girl mode. Eddie isn’t a performer trying to deal with the lack of roles written for middle-aged women.

So I’m not sure what makes her actually a woman.

Taking "her" heels off?? I must be a man most of the time then

Asdavaluesausage · 28/10/2022 12:22

Me too @AryaStarkWolf if only I knew I was gender fluid all along….

KatMcBundleFace · 28/10/2022 12:24

Lol at Izzard the saviour of Sheffield

AryaStarkWolf · 28/10/2022 12:27

Asdavaluesausage · 28/10/2022 12:22

Me too @AryaStarkWolf if only I knew I was gender fluid all along….

Is quite telling though isn't it? Everybody has to say that they're a woman as much as all the other women except for when they want to use their male advantage to claim their inheritance as a male heir or get the middle aged man acting roles. The US wants all women to push over for all these real transwomen women except for one they could fuck men and the country over by identifying out of signing up for the military draft......

Tell me how women aren't second class citizens again.............

mrshoho · 28/10/2022 12:39

Blatant Hypocrisy and women are supposed to accept it and be nice.

Emotionalsupportviper · 28/10/2022 12:45

WindyHedges · 28/10/2022 02:49

I feel a little sorry for a transsexual person who suffers from dysphoria and spends their whole life knowing they can’t be an actual woman and avoiding female spaces but being very uncomfortable in male ones.

Yes, @Gymrabbit I think gender dysphoria, and even the sexual dysfunction of the condition that Ray Blanchard has identified (but we must not name here) must be very difficult to live with. I cannot imagine how it must feel to have your mind/consciousness so deeply at odds with your physical body that you want to undergo serious, painful, and life-changing surgery to try to alleviate the dysphoria. Or to have a sexual preference which means that neither same-sex or opposite-sex sexual activity is wholly fulfilling.

What these people need is proper therapeutic treatment. And a society that undertands that maybe some men need to cover up their maleness or hide from it. Transsexuals and transgender people should not be discriminated against.

But ....

That does not mean that the rest of us should be forced to deny who & what we are, and exercise constant censorship of our thoughts & words.

The parallel with the gay liberation movement is a false one. To take just one example, the fight by gay men & lesbians for equal (same-sex) marriage wasn't carried out by homosexual people demanding that all heterosexuals renounced their concept of marriage.

Or more fundamentally, homosexual people didn't demand that heterosexual people stopped speaking about or practicing heterosexuality because it wasn't "inclusive."

Hear, hear!

👏👏👏

The only thing I would suggest is that rather than calling it "gender dysphoria", we use the term "body dysmorphia". Gender is a meaningless term. It has no real definition - it is whatever someone decides it is to them, so they can hardly be uncomfortable with it.

Biology, however, is real. Many people are unhappy with their bodies in some way (not necessarily related to their sex). Distress related to body or appearance is better described as body dysmorphia.

Except, I suppose, that many of these activists are very happy with the sex of their bodies - they often don't want to change their genitals - they just want to change how other people regard them and want to force others to perceive them in a particular way and treat them in a way that effectively gives them power.

While they have every right to dress etc however they want, they don't have the right to make the rest of the world go along with their fantasies. And they certainly don't have the right to place others in danger to validate them.

knittingaddict · 28/10/2022 12:51

ColdstreamAnnie · 27/10/2022 20:33

I didn't know that. That seems a shame.

Show quote history

🤔

Datun · 28/10/2022 13:11

Brefugee · 28/10/2022 12:17

my point being that if you are gender fluid you don't identify as one gender or the other all the time. So being a transwoman contradicts that.

I saw a tweet the other day from someone who also had "non binary transwoman" and it confused me. However there are very few places you can ask without taking a (verbal) bashing and ending up on terf-blocker algorithms. And I don't identify as a terf so I'm against that

Ah, that's because you're trying to be logical.

If we all accept that gender is about wearing masculine or feminine clothes, then gender fluidity is all about what outfit you put on that day. Girl mode, boy mode. Taking heels on and off.

And being a transwoman is the same. So a man who wears clothes he thinks are normally worn by women. Girl mode. Heels.

But that doesn't give men access to women's spaces, or an opportunity for them to exceed at women's sport, or go to a female prison, etc. And it doesn't allow for any kind of external validation, either.

So then you will be told that it actually refers to sex, in order for things segregated by sex to be handed over.

And that's when the logic falls apart.