Hadley Freeman Article About Graham LInehan

[Igneococcus]

Not actually read it yet but here for anybody who'd like to read:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6f23ce7c-596a-11ee-a62b-d21c2c8f0b9b?shareToken=3adab3e87e06a1d37788d0b2482f02b6

The Passion of Saint Tibulus!

”he had the misfortune of being right too early”

True.

The country where I'm from, some films were banned for many years while they were being shown elsewhere. I think it's one of the reasons I wanted to come and live in England and became so enamoured of cinemas.

As @MouseMinge points out. "The GI medical industrial complex is manipulating and mutilating children and adults using the lie that all of this will make them the opposite sex. It will rob them of fertility and it will rob children of sexual pleasure as adults before they even know what they're giving up. It's Mengele adjacent".

Recognising that this is happening in our sainted NHS and sanctioned / enabled by so many who, until now, I've considered responsible decent people is enough to rock anyone's mental health and belief in society. I often wonder how anyone maintains positive mental health while knowing that our institutions have been corrupted in this way and so many children actively harmed. I'm hugely grateful to Graham for stepping up and saying the unsayable & pointing out the terrible reality of what's happened to our young people who we have collectively failed to safeguard.

Is that right? I remember the Catholic Church in my youth always being in the news, from wanting to ban The Exorcist, Last Tango In Paris and The Life Of Brian, to all their priestly scandals/Sinead O'Connor, and my constant low level distrust of all the pomp, circumstance and judging.

It feels so weird to have shelved all that for a new age of...judging.

A nun punching Graham? Father Ted was really hated by many Catholics.

totally agree with you

They're saying what we only dare to say. In the most brutal public environment since the McCarthy period. Bravery as a word doesn't even start to cover it.

I'll take Hadley in her role as a media savvy GC voice. We need every voice speaking. Some will be quiet and measured. Some will be shouting from the rooftops.

Well no Fr Ted wasn't really hated by lots of Catholics. That was its insane genius level connection with Ireland in the 90s.
I remember seeing the trailers and thinking ' Oh no not another crap Oirish comedy ' I bet they get this totally wrong as per usual. But they just aced it.

Perhaps Graham was a bit spoilt by this win. He toured Ireland with Colm O Gorman - then head of Amnesty Ireland - speaking in favour or abortion rights.

Then to be knifed by the same people. Ireland is a small place. Liberal media Ireland smaller again. It's not going to end up pretty. GL should have left it all to real feminists like Bea or Caitlin Moran.
Yeah. Real journalists like Zoe. We could be tossing it back and forth in 2033.

I agree with this. He reminds me of my Dad. My Dad always used to say, ' You have to stand up to the scummy people, or the scummy people win.' And he lived it. My Dad was tiny and slight of built and he always stood up to thugs and bullies. Normally, this was men attacking women. In his 60s he walked up to a group of young men physically beating a young women and asked them what the hell they thought they were doing and to get off her and leave her alone. He would open our door to take in the mother across the road and her kids when she was fleeing her violent husband. She said he was the only one who ever helped her. When the front door of our single mother neighbour was sledgehammered in, he walked straight in to see if she needed help. GL reminds me of my Dad. GL lives that principle that you have to stand up to the scummy people or they win. GL lives that principle that you stand up for women being attacked by men, even if it puts you at risk. He lives his life with integrity and courage. He doesn't need to always get 'the tone' right or always have the 'right words' that everyone will agree with - is that even possible in this debate? - nor does he need to never be intemperate and angry, those normal human qualities when being pushed the way he is, to be admirable.

He's bloody great and the world would be a better place if most men in it were like him,.

This has been a fascinating thread. The very different response to HF’s article remind me of the very different opinions on "trans rights". Those who empathise most with that "most vulnerable minority" vs those who empathise most with women (particularly vulnerable women). And most of us have a tendency to find the arguments convincing that back up our emotional positions.

When I first read the article, I saw it as sympathetic to Linehan but quite nuanced, in that HF didn’t treat him as some kind of plaster saint. But I can see how he took it as an attack, and how others have seen it that way.

While reading all your very interesting comments, I have found myself once again wondering how I should deal with the dilemmas of my own relationships with transgender people and their allies. My desire is to tell them in no uncertain terms how incoherent their belief system around "gender identity" is; but can I find a way of speaking up without pushing them away? Is keeping some kind of relationship with them, particularly with my son, so important that I should bite my tongue and keep silent, or is it imperative to speak out because my son (among others) is in danger of ruining his own health (and the truth matters)? How do I speak out tactfully, lovingly and respectfully? I’m not sure there is a good path for me to follow, as the strong likelihood is that whatever I do and say will be misunderstood.

My hope with this article and the discussion around it is that it will in the end do some good, as people see and understand different aspects of a difficult and polarising issue.

Hadley is right to compare to JKR - she is still respected - whereas graham largely is not. And it is sad

Yes, but women in this debate, for all they have suffered and they have, have a strong community or other women for psychological and emotional support. As one friend said, who has suffered awfully, ' the sisterhood has really rallied around me.' GL is a man. He is not part of that feminist sisterhood support group. It must be very isolating. Everyone needs a support network.

I don't agree with the Mengele comparisons. The doctors advocating for puberty blockers are not like Mengele. His actions included deliberately injecting people with infectious diseases, amputating healthy body parts and supervising the administration of Zyclon B. His experiments were carried out without any attempts to avoid distress and sometimes without anaesthesia. This is not even a remotely comprehensive list of his crimes. Awful as the advocates of puberty blockers for transgender children are, they are not at this level.

Making comparisons of this kind can unwittingly undestimate the impact of Nazi crimes, even when this is absolutely normal the intention.

You've got to be true to yourself. Now within that, you can be tactful, political, polite, mindful. But you've got to act as you feel. You would not forgive yourself in the long run otherwise.

How you then deal with the nitty gritty day to day, wow, that is a challenge. Not sure I have any solutions. But the moment you relent to TWAW and turn a blind eye to teen transitioning and women's spaces, the gig is up.

I think some people are highly impacted by an injustice they encounter and react strongly. I might be a bit more measured in challenging people about whatever but that doesn't mean the person who challenges with more vigour and frustration is wrong.

It's not an easy path to tread.

There's a balance between being honest and being compassionate, and part of that imo is timing.

This is from the 'samma vaca' - or advice regarding 'right speech' from a Buddhist perspective:

"In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them."

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-vaca/index.html

I've been struggling to get my thoughts together on what I think of this article, but when I read this post I thought, ' yes that is it.'

Hopefully as the lack of evidence, research and ethics become better known & the unhinged nature of so many advocates (especially those influencing healthcare, law and public policy) becomes more evident, policy will become more nuanced? Immediate affirmation for children will be seen as the dangerous practice that it is. Professionals will regain their skills that they were ordered to abandon when working with young people by captured organisations. That will allow for genuine exploration (therapeutic and social) and optimistically enable parents to raise issues as we'll all be allowed to voice them?
Hope that's not over optimistic?

I am glad you said this @Coyoacan, as I also did not understand why wanting to be vindicated and your reputation restored was a bad thing. Its not. And wanting that does not take away from wanting to stand up for women and kids.

It’s just such a random article. Apparently it’s because he wrote a book due to be released soon, yet she says she hasn’t read it, but then tells us what she thinks of him anyway. It lacks a point which is unusual for her.

I like Mr Menno’s take on it, on Twitter.

A very odd article indeed.

«How great that you were ahead of the times and of me Linehan, but you should have gotten better advice from your friends and wound your neck in a little when people were cancelling you like mad. Maybe then you wouldn’t have lost everything including your marbles.»

I’m not on Twitter, so maybe I’m wrong, but I simply cannot imagine him writing anything nearly as threatening and completely crazy as what TRA’s have come out with. Not even close to the Edge of close.

Just the fact they say that men ACTUALLY become women, and vice versa, is a level of utter lunacy that you simply cannot get near even if you try.

I was coming on to say just this, but you are far more eloquent than I could have been.

Google Mengele if you have the stomach, folks - what is happening to trans kids is awful but to compare it with the Nazis is off the chart. I'm no expert in the history of medical scandals but I'm sure you can find a better analogy if you want. Tbh I think the facts of the medicalisation of trans kids speak for themselves and no such hyperbole is needed.

I don't know what to make of the article, having tried to avoid some of the infighting on the GC side. I do have a lot of respect for HF and the crap she has endured (very unfair to say she has been a fence sitter in the trans debate, as someone suggested above) mixed in with the antisemitism which has reared its head quite spectacularly in the UK in recent years.

It is pretty standard to see people trying to link anyone they disagree with to Nazism. It never seems to occur to them that it's marking them as an idiot.

In the case of the doctors prescribing puberty suppressors or performing Frankenstein surgeries, the major point is that they're doing something that the patient very much wants them to do, at the time (maybe not later on). But addressing that aspect of the situation isn't very pleasant, so we get the false comparisons with other horrors instead.

It's an interesting case for medical ethics, what a doctor should do with a patient who begs for treatment that might be harmful, but also has a chance of making the patient happy. How much weight should the doctor give to the patient's wishes, and how does it change if the patient is a juvenile?

Is keeping some kind of relationship with them, particularly with my son, so important that I should bite my tongue and keep silent, or is it imperative to speak out because my son (among others) is in danger of ruining his own health (and the truth matters)? How do I speak out tactfully, lovingly and respectfully? I’m not sure there is a good path for me to follow, as the strong likelihood is that whatever I do and say will be misunderstood.

I share great sympathy with you @Transparent2 For me it really matters that there are other people out there who can bluntly say the things I have to tiptoe around.

I listened to the two podcasts linked from the other thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4903294-glinner where he's interviewed along with Elaine Miller. I was impressed by his calm and self-deprecating account of himself. He came across as pretty sane. Hadley Freeman's preferred approach is measured to the point of self-censorship while Graham Linehan's approach is "might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb". And we need people who can do that.

If you’ve seen any pictures of the “neo-vaginas” and fake penises I can understand why Glinner was making his comparisons. The fact that this has been done to children - eg Jazz Jennings/Susie Green’s son is horrifying in the extreme.

These are no “doctors”

I really respect Glinner and I’ve always loved Hadley’s writing so I don’t understand why she stuck the boot in. Seems so mean and unnecessary