Glinner

[pugggle]

🤢

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/16/graham-linehan-jk-rowling-never-defended-me-trans-mob/

I can see his point tbf. I am sure she had her reasons for not voicing support, as she has done for other men such as James D or John Boyle, and he was certainly obsessive about losing the Father Ted show when Sonia whatsit saw no problem continuing with Cursed Child. I imagine the constant tagging got wearing. But the fact she hasn't certainly does add to the impression he's done something very wrong beyond what we can all see online.
She was never under am obligation to support him of course, but I think his point, that her lack of support adds to the sense he's toxic, is a valid one.
I hope things work out for him in the States.

So JK is somewhat to blame for the fact that he is viewed as toxic by many?

Yes I have mixed feelings too. He's written the best comedies of the last 30 years so I really admired him before I knew anything about transactivism and he was one of the first people who alerted me to the dangers of it when he was arrested after a vexatious complaint.

I've defended him numerous times on twitter against tra but stopped following after his shocking tweets about Gaza, surprisingly for such a gifted writer he seems to have no concept of choosing his words carefully. JKR comes across as far more classy and, ironically, much funnier.

He's suffered a lot of losses so I'm not surprised he's bitter but he also does himself no favours with personal attacks that only leave him more isolated. JKR has made it obvious by her silence that she's not interested in defending him - perhaps there's some ancient history there or she suspects that he'll want financial support from her? - whatever her reasons he should know enough to respect them, his constant harping about it is coming across as stalking behaviour.

I might be wrong but I don't think she's actively stood up for anyone other than ordinary people and orgs like FWS. I can't remember her singling out anyone else in the entertainment industry to support them.
Maybe she had her fingers burned when she said a gracious Thank You to Marilyn Manson. Not that GL is like MM.

Whatever JKR does or says, it draws massive amounts of flack towards her. I don't blame her for being circumspect with any kind of public support, for anyone. It's not her job.

No I don't think she's to blame 😀 Because it wasn't her job to step up so she cant be "blamed" for not doing so.
I do think the fact she hasn't (when she has for other men) has added to (a) his perception he's viewed as toxic and increasing desperation, and (b) the gleefulness of the TRA that he MUST be a wrong"un (and thereby so is everyone who supports him/thinks the same as him on any subject).
I am tolerably sure he went too far trying to get her support re his musical, and he knows it, so all this latest is no doubt somewhat manipulative. He's flawed, so are we all. I still feel sorry for him and I still dont think we'd have made the advances we have in turning this tanker around if he hadn't stepped in so publicly and at such great cost to himself.

Glinner has lost everything which I think makes him come across (at the very least) as unhinged a lot of the time. I’ve met him and he’s a lovely man in person but a bit of a lost soul. He’s certainly said and posted some things I don’t agree with and I never followed him on X. But he’s also said a lot of things I do agree with.

Yeah, cos all us Terfs are so stupid that a pic of Glinner having a laugh will make us say we were wrong all along so now we can welcome all the sex offenders, fantasists and fetishists into our ladies toilets with open arms. At least the other TRAs try harder.

Is this like the time people tried to convince us he was sending dick pics on mumsnet?

Imperfect person's doing Imperfect things is not news

Oh no, man who has some views I agree with also has some views I don't agree with.

So what?

I doubt there are any two people on the planet who's views align 100%. Hell, if I met myself from a year ago, we'd probably find points of disagreement.

Take JKR, I tend to think she's bloody marvellous when it comes to women's rights. Quite a lot of my own thoughts about the trans issue exist because she highlighted the issue. But if it suddenly turned out that the reason her books sell so successfully was because she sacrifices babies to the old gods, I'm perfectly capable of denouncing her for that while not changing my opinion on women's rights.

Because I don't hold those opinions because she told me to. I hold them because I heard them from her and thought "That's a bloody good point". They're mine, divorced from the person who initially held them.

@VimesandhisCardboardBoots

You're on a feminist board chastising women for pointing out that porn is dangerous and derogatory towards us.

Unbelievable.

Eh?

No I'm not, I'm just saying that his views about porn don't make any difference to my views about women's rights.

I didn't chastise anyone for anything in my post. It's just a common TRA gotcha, ooh, Sandie Peggie is a racist, JK rowling is an antisemite, Graham Lineham posted about porn a couple of times. Doesn't make their thoughts on single sex spaces any less valid in my opinion.

I'll admit that I assumed that OP was one of the regular poppers, as it's hard to tell intent when the only comment on what they've posted is an emoji

After someone here mentioned his twitter I ventured over there to take a look and my goodness he's unravelled. It's full of dehumanising slurs and very strange viewpoints beyond the GC world. I'm not sure he adds anything to the debate when he conducts himself like that online.

I used to listen to him out of curiosity as I wanted to learn as much as possible about both sides of the argument, but now he seems unable to communicate in a respectful and decent way. It's all a bit embarrassing really, I wonder if that's why JKR doesn't acknowledge him.

thats not remotely surprising though is it?

he was on this issue way before most people even knew it was a thing & it's clear from what he's said that he honestly thought that once it was pointed out what the obvious problems & consequences of men self ID as women was pointed out, ppl would go "oh god yes we hadn't thought it through properly, obvs we'll put safeguards in". Instead in a truly kafkaesque manner, ppl he regarded as friends and colleagues doubled & them trebled down. He was ostracised completely from his professional & social circles, he couldn't work, his marriage fell apart, he had cancer, the musical he was relying on to keep him solvent was cancelled

all because he refused to say men can be women and refused to be polite about, because he pointed out the absolute insanity of saying a middle aged man in a dress is somehow not only no longer a risk to women but is now more vulnerable than actual women. All while everyone at the time was saying "no no you're a hideous bigot for believing this"

most ppl would have caved, many did but he never did

I'm frankly amazed he has any sanity left

Glinner.is, despite protestations to the contrary, earning a significant income and has a large platform. So what if he's divorced? It's not exactly uncommon. And this narrative of "TRAs stole my family" is a huge red flag: people are not possessions and, whatever the story, there's no indication that he thinks he's contributed to any of it. The constant victim narrative when he's very comfortably off and can still make something of himself is a slap in the face to women who have lost a great deal but have no recognition at all. They are the quiet, unspoken, victims. Not a man who drinks and tweets 24/7 and now thinks he deserves refugee status in the U.S.

It's an utter joke.

I lost my academic career, my wife suddenly died, and I faced similar ostracisation. Yes, I said some silly things along the way but the world doesn't owe me. Objectively, I have it pretty good with no worries about the roof over my head.

Graham is owed nothing by women and has in fact harmed some of us, including certain of my friends. I consider him an abusive drunk who is largely the author of any subjectively perceived misfortune.

Yes we know. You pop onto every thread that mentions him to say the same thing.

The tweets screenshotted are stupid and puerile. They're also from over ten years ago. It seems bizarre to drag them out now.

Glinner is a very mixed bag. I used to defend him because I was very grateful for the fact he spoke out when it was difficult to do so. But he is not a good spokesperson on this issue, always going for shocks and attacking people rather than giving the kind of clear articulate arguments made by Helen Joyce or Kathleen Stock. Once someone criticises him, he is liable to start relentlessly badmouthing them and misrepresenting them - eg Helen Lewis, who he makes out is some kind of TRA despite the fact she was publicly questioning trans ideology and being abused for it years before he said anything. The good work Jesse Signal has done (and been punished for) counts for nothing because he criticised Glinner. He will wangle the names of his "enemies" into unrelated things all the time, over years, just so he can get some kind of revenge.

None of this means that Glinner himself hasn't been badly bullied himself, or that he has no good traits. But for his own and everyone else's sake I wish he could let some things go, and also that he could sometimes recognise and acknowledge how horribly he can behave.

I keep seeing people say that Rowling has nothing to do with him because she focuses only on women or doesn't support men. This is not true. She has offered to pay legal fees for James Dreyfus and John Boyne. Nobody can know why she has nothing to do with Glinner, but it's his own silly fault if it does make him look bad because he's the one who keeps drawing attention to the fact.

I think everyone who knows Glinner has some kind of love-hate relationship with him. He can be lovely, we know that he can be brave and principled, and sometimes he's just a bit of a cunt.

And yes, because he was prepared to be brave and principled on this one thing, he lost his marriage, was blacklisted from the work that he loved, and most of the people he thought were his friends publicly betrayed him. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he were drinking too much. It's what Irish depressives do when they're under stress.

I also feel that he's often his worst enemy, not just in how he expresses himself but also in not picking his fights cleverly. I unfollowed him when he decided that Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal were the biggest enemies of the people - and I could understand why he felt aggrieved at them, but he insisted on going on and on and on about it until he'd proved their point.

He might be in a healthier place if he realised that everyone else has their own shit going on, and nobody is under any obligation to elevate him.

I don't know what his beef is with JKR (who I also don't always agree with!) I assume that, because he's been so heavily ostracised in the entertainment industry, he feels a kinship with the most famous person who's taken a similar stance and he can't understand why she seems to be studiously ignoring him.

I doubt if it's animosity on JKR's part. She picks her fights as carefully as she chooses her words, and she's probably concluded with Glinner that he's a loose cannon who brings an entire side order of his personal drama whenever you engage with him. We've all got our own shit and we don't necessarily have the bandwidth to prioritise Graham's shit.

I used to have a friend who I loved dearly, and gradually drifted away from because she was constantly embroiled in some online drama. As much as I liked her, I didn't feel obliged to have exactly the same list of friends and enemies as she did, and eventually I got tired of being berated for not showing up to defend her when she was attacked in some 900-comment thread below a blogpost I hadn't read. Sometimes life's just too short.

The thing is that it doesn't really work for TRAs to hold up less than perfect examples from the GC side and say "see, we told you so". It's just another misappropriation of GC arguments that is nonsensical.

It doesn't matter if Glinner watches porn - men still cannot become women. But when a trans identifying male does one of those "things that never happen" whilst in a place we believe they shouldn't be in their behaviour is very relevant.

And why is a bloke posting about porn, especially with literally NO contextualising explanation from the OP for the choice to post it on this particular board, a "feminist" issue in ANY way?

This isn't a free-for-all dumping ground; read the Talk Guidelines, OP.

It’s a real shame you didn’t bother to read the rest of my post where I said this -

‘Btw, JKR isn’t obliged to stand up for anyone’. 🙄

I did indeed read it all. But the apologist nature of “simply” rather stood out. It comes off that he hasn’t “simply” said what he’s said. It comes off as him publicly trying to force a woman to perform a service - or explain her thinking. It’s just not on.

He did'nt "lose his marriage" through being principled, his marriage broke down because he prioritised arguing with people online, about a subject he was obsessed with, over spending time with his wife and kids. If anyone posted about their husband being the same - regardless of what the subject actually was, even if it's a subject one fully agrees with- they'd be being told to LTB.

Now he's terminally online stalking JK Rowling.