A plea to Eddie Izzard

Don't be the UK's Rachel Dolezal

Dear Eddie,

I have a small request to make. I hope you don’t mind my using a public forum to do so. I do think these conversations should be had in public, don’t you? After all, if the public is unable to grasp what is being discussed, how are they supposed to make informed, compassionate decisions about matters of great consequence?

So. Eddie. Here is my request.

Please stop asking people to call you by female pronouns.

First of all, it’s silly. It’s a silly thing to do. It puts you, Eddie, one of the finest comedians who has ever lived, on the wrong side of the joke. Wrong wrong wrong. It’s as wrong as you can be. There’s nothing wrong with crossdressing, as such, but there is something deeply wrong with expecting others to participate in your view of yourself. Especially when it’s harming people.

Every time you ask us to use your preferred pronouns, you are participating in a great crime against women and gay people. Your investment in gender identity ideology makes you blind to its casualties. From the families now suing the Tavistock centre, to the detransitioners trying to be heard despite a near-complete media shutdown of their voices; from the lesbians who reported to the BBC that they are being coerced into sex by trans-identified males, to the men and women—including myself—who have lost or almost lost their livelihoods for standing up to it all. Rosie Kay, Rachel Rooney, Gillian Phillips, Birdy Rose, Jess DeWahls, Holly Lawford Smith, Meghan Murphy, Linda Bellos, Helen Steel, Maria MacLachlan..all have suffered because of this ideology. Do you know their names, Eddie? You should. You know JK Rowling at least. Have you ever condemned the abuse that has received, simply because she, a victim of domestic violence, spoke about how important sex-segregated spaces are to vulnerable women? And if not, why not? The Labour Women’s Declaration have been banned from Labour’s conference in Liverpool. Will you speak up for them? I doubt it, because you have already invested so much into a civil rights movement which is nothing of the sort, which is in fact a movement that violently opposes the civil rights of women and gay people.

Eddie, I say this as a huge fan of your comedy, if you ever went into a woman’s space with my daughter in it, you would be out on your ear, beekeeper joke or no beekeeper joke. Those young girls you famously fled from were right to make you feel uncomfortable in the women’s toilets. You should be uncomfortable in women’s toilets. You should not be in women’s toilets.

Stop insulting women, Eddie, don’t invade their spaces. The appropriation of a sex is just as cruel and dehumanising as the appropriation of a race or a class or anything else that is not yours. You are a white man wearing the clothes of those you have historically oppressed. Women fought for the rights that you are so casually stamping over in your kinky boots, which, by the way, a female politician would never be able to get away with.

Eddie I know you’re a fan of Father Ted. But did you know that the musical has been blocked by activists within Hat Trick productions? Will you speak up for me? I wouldn’t risk my musical if the stakes weren’t so high.

Let me list those stakes again.

Children who would grow up gay are being sterilised and mutilated.

Gay elders and lesbians are being beaten up and ejected from Pride.

Prestige gay organisations are targeting lesbians at their places of work.

Trans-identified men are sexually harassing and gaslighting lesbians.

And again, do you know of any of these stories I’ve just listed? I suspect you don’t, at least, I hope you don’t. I can’t imagine you’d be so callous as to deliberately ignore them. I think these people are invisible to you, Eddie, because your reading only consists of The Guardian and fashion magazines, and neither is reporting these stories.

For someone who claims an interest in politics, I find it hard to believe you can’t see how undemocratic it is to expect any level of participation in your fantasy. You are a cross-dresser, Eddie. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you cannot ask society to pretend you’re a woman just because you’re dressed as a man’s idea of one. If you continue down this route, you are in danger of being remembered, not as one of the UK’s finest stand up comics, but as the UK’s Rachel Dolezal. Next time you’re out in your kinky boots, have some compassion for the sex you’re impersonating and use the men’s. Stop asking people to play along in your entitled, white male fantasy.

All the best,

Graham Linehan