A revolution of mediocre men

A boom time for fetishists and misogynists

When we say an institution is ‘captured’, we mean that a silly or dangerous ideology has penetrated it to such an extent that those involved don’t even think of it as an ideology. Channel 4’s promotion of a grotesquely porn-damaged man is a perfect example of how dangerous the phenomenon can be. Jordan Gray is a misogynist and a fetishist. As Stewart Lee would say—this is your God now.

While watching the following, remember that Channel 4 has banned an episode of the IT Crowd—removing from their streaming services two great female comic performances by Katherine Parkinson and Lucy Montgomery. They were instructed to do so by the new sacred class—cross-dressing, porn-addicted men who want to play with their own fake boobs while masturbating.

Just in case you haven’t yet realised that this man is as perfect an example of the narcissist/misogynist AGP you could ever hope to find, he spells it out in the lyrics.

I remember Ben Elton used to go after fellow comedian Benny Hill with some vigour, understandably exhausted with dated jokes and sexist attitudes that had outstayed their welcome. But Elton appeared alongside the author of the preceding lyric, announced his pronouns, and then went on Radio 4’s Today Programme to say that cancel culture wasn’t real. Not very consistent! Especially when you consider that Ben wrote an anti-woke novel where he directly contradicted this view:

And now it suddenly doesn’t exist. Tell that to Rachel Meade, comrade.

This makes Elton simply the latest disingenuous careerist to genuflect to the mob and kiss the ass of the new sacred class of porn-addicted, cross-dressing flashers, which, handily enough, brings me to Jen Ives.

“I’m like any other woman, except I can’t feel empathy.”

Yes, quite. That’s the problem. If he had empathy, he wouldn’t try to impose himself in women-only spaces. Ives is another man who likes to force his nudity on the women he hates, the women he’s “better than”. Here’s the hilarious meme he created when JK Rowling met up with some of her lesbian and feminist supporters.

This is the only joke that occurs to his stunted imagination because, like Gray, his frame of reference is limited to and by pornography.

Ives recently had a terrible Edinburgh run with lackluster audiences and a noncommital three-star review in The Scotsman. But once you see his act, you have to say, he got away lightly.

I’ve never made it to the end. But this time what jumped out at me was the comment about the bus: “I was on the bus…we’re allowed now.”

What? When have white men not been allowed on buses?

Ives responded to his very bad run by blaming it on everything except his shitty act and nonexistent stage presence. He also pinpointed Elaine Miller, a feminist who was having a massively successful Edinburgh run in the same venue, as the source of his woes. When a fellow comedian and ‘trans-ally’ spat at Elaine in the street, and a particularly psychotic trans activist named Joss Prior suggested that it was an act of social justice, Ives retweeted it.

(It wasn’t only abuse from fellow comedians that Elaine was facing. What should have been a joyous experience for her was undermined by hostile staff members at the Gilded Balloon, who harassed her audience as they waited to see her. I don’t believe this atmosphere was the fault of Karen Coren, who runs the Balloon, but a younger and more ideologically captured part of the Coren clan. I would say to Karen, maybe it’s time to start standing up for women, and standing up to your kids. )

But I digress!

Look, I’m not saying that these chancers don’t deserve careers. But stop pretending they’re a massively oppressed class of people who we’ve never known about. These are men, just men, who fell down a rabbit hole of pornography and plastic surgery and ended up hating themselves and women as a result. Indulge them if you must, but don’t mistake them for any group whose members may once have not been able to ride a bus.