E4 to ban 'Misfits' for 'transphobia'

Ella Witchwood is our first Twitter exile. Welcome Ella!

(We contacted E4 about Ella’s article and a spokesman said to keep maintain consistency after Channel 4 banned a ‘transphobic’ episode of IT Crowd, they will be removing ‘Misfits’ from their channel. Here’s Ella’s piece. )

Not long before I was brutally blasted off Twitter I mentioned that I’d been watching British teen show, Misfits, on Netflix and was surprised to hear a character saying men who wear women’s clothes are “filthy perverts”. That was only filmed in 2009, but look at how much has changed since then.

Isn’t it good we don’t call transvestites filthy perverts anymore? Yes, when you think of gender non-conformity that isn’t sexualised, like Harry Styles in a dress on the cover of Vogue. No, when you think of the many, many men posting pictures of themselves in women’s underwear on social media, sometimes in women’s changing rooms, and often alongside derogatory comments about the women with whom they’re supposedly identifying.

I got to a later episode of Misfits from 2011 that would also be very different if made now. The characters have super-powers, and Curtis’ is the ability to turn in to a woman whenever he wants, though he still considers himself to be a man each time he has a female form. He was a promising runner who got banned from competing professionally after getting a drugs charge. Curtis is bitter and depressed about this, but then sees a poster for the women’s heats and gets an idea. It’s not cheating as such, right?

He has a female body, but it becomes his dirty little secret, something he knows deep down isn’t quite fair, presenting him with a moral quandary that now looks positively antiquated. If this was set in 2020 Curtis wouldn’t even have to keep up the pretence, and anyone who dared complain would be destroyed.

I was deeply chilled as I watched the episode. In just nine years we’ve gone from a fictional character’s shameful bit of cheating to the idea that it’s MEN’S RIGHT to compete against and dominate women in their own sports.

The reality of female biology becomes downright sinister when it turns out the women’s coach (a man) is a sexual predator who molests the athletes. He drugs Curtis in his female form and attempts to rape him. In this way, Curtis finds out that women can’t identify out of their oppression, that their bodies make them deeply vulnerable, even those who are at the top of their athletic game. Whatever this episode was trying to say about material reality for women, and male dominance, it feels like we’ve swiftly regressed.

I’m surprised people haven’t hassled Netflix to take it down.

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Apparently they have! ‘Misfits’ will be removed from E4 on December 16th.

UPDATE: I have been contacted by E4 who say they will NOT be removing the program. Apparently, there was such a wave of despair at the news that they reversed their decision. Well done for standing up to the lunatics, E4.

Hopefully this means Channel 4 will reverse their decision to remove the iconic episode of The IT Crowd, ‘The Speech’.