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If ever one was to wonder if one was 'on the right side', then read this. For JR to casually ignore the Rivers situation is surely one step way from from painting Rivers as 'the real victim' in all of this. Shameful...

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by mole at the counter

Yup, it certianly points that way without openly saying it. It's what the media do though - they manipulate. An ommision here (a big one in this case), a twist there, leave out the context there...

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It used to be. But I realise now I chose some bad friends

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by Graham Linehan

Aye, we've all made poor choices at some time or another. I used to think highly of Nicola Sturgeon. Huge mistake, she's a wrong 'un.

Really cannot stand her these days.

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That’s how the women in my family feel Rhona. We can hardly believe how wrong we got it.

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Same here - I have to switch off if there's a chance of me hearing her voice.

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People like Ronson should be digging to find out what she's getting out of it.

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Robson will sure find 'plenty on her private life if he chose to investigate, thing is he wouldn't be permitted to publish due to her £200k legal injunction.

She's said she'll step down circa 2025. Probably looking for a very lucrative job on the international stage.

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I was one of her biggest cheerleaders. I cannot fathom her stance on this at all. It’s like the invasion of the body snatchers. Who is she? 🤯

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Human-shaped alien seed pod?

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You can never know what lurks within someone until they show you. As Maya Angelou said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Lord knows, enough people have disappointed me so you're not alone. It must hurt for it all to be done so publicly though.

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Feb 16, 2022·edited Feb 16, 2022Liked by Graham Linehan

Open-hearted, trusting people, people who presume well of others, tend more often to get burned in this way, I think. It's a mark of a decent sort, Graham.

The shame is on their sort for not being worthy of trusting friendship.

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What a lovely way of putting it

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Sorry he turned out to be a bad friend. I know how heartbreaking and insane it feels when a friend sides with bullies to look pure or good or feel bigger. It feels like being stabbed in the heart!

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It may have been the right choice at the time. People develop. Some for the better. Some not. There is no way to predict that 10 or 20 years beforehand.

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I've had a couple of disappointing reactions from friends too. As usual, without their wanting to talk it through. It's not great but, in the end, screw them.

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Me too. One of them criticised Keira Bell. I sat in the High Court and listened to the crap the Tavi legal team were coming out with. There is so much they don't know and don't want to know. Sod 'em. This is a person who works in adolescent mental health, BTW. I thought she was thoughtful but adherence to the Ideology is so powerful.

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"One of them criticised Keira Bell."

What for? For relating honestly her experience?

Or for having the nerve to honestly relate her experience?

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'Criticised' was a little misleading, sorry. She said that Keira is just one person, an outlier in other words. And therefore (my interpretation) - not relevant. This should not have happened to anyone, least of all a woman with the background and lack of support Keira had as a child and adolescent. No recognition, either of the many many detransitioners who never go back and are not followed up by GIDS. She seemed to have bought into the 'only 1% detransition' assumption. I saw this as utterly dismissive. She (friend) wanted me to feel sorry for the Tavistock - seemed to be saying that the evidence wasn't there (Tavi has had DECADES to do proper research, and only released the sorry study they'd conducted, after the case was over). THis person who works, psychosocially with children and adolescents, seemed to be excusing GIDS going ahead with MEDICATION with little evidence for safety, efficacy and ability to consent.

The Tavi, IMO, like lots of prestigious institutions, is a little druck on its own self-importance.

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*drunk

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It's so shocking when a thoughtful, intelligent and logical person falls for a crazy ideology, isn't it. I can't get over people's blindness on this one issue.

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Yep, they won't even tell you why they think you're wrong, you just get ghosted, unfriended, blocked.

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Some people go their entire lives without ever once having their character truly challenged. To be faced with a choice between doing what is right and what is popular, when the former may cost them something, but the latter will cost someone else everything.

Sadly, relatively few people pass that test. But we only really find out about their character when it happens.

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A friend of mine commented on this piece as follows:

"I’ve always found him creepy – I think it’s the voice.

Him and that other posh streak of piss (Louis Theroux) occupy the same conceptual space – pointless media oxygen thieves that got a toehold in the 90s and are somehow still hanging around."

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He's from Cardiff but that's not a Cardiff voice.

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How the fuck is it possible to interpret what happened to Michfest as anything other than men succeeding in making everything about them and breaking down women’s boundaries?

How can that be spun in a positive way? “Those damn bigoted lesbians wanting something for themselves”

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by mole at the counter

Graham your heart must be heavy when you think about these friends who have lost their integrity.

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Maybe they never really had any integrity to begin with. The nebulous world of trans rights and gender theory despotism creates a perfect circumstance for closet misogynists and homophobes. They get to openly express feelings and opinions they had to keep well hidden. Bullying lesbians who refuse to date or have sex with people they don't regard as women; after all, the main organisation that previously represented lesbians does it, so what more of a green light do they need?

Getting off on how disgusted they are are at the way the lives of their trans and non binary siblings are blighted by transphobia. So, 'suck my cock you transphobic cunt' and other suggestions of sexual violence, and threats of physical violence and actual violence, seems not to be a problem for these men. Or sadly, for some women who are just seeing and hearing the 'most marginalised and discriminated against group ever'

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Or they never had any to begin with.

And you never know until the rubber meets the road.

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Why are women and lesbians especially, not allowed to have their own spaces to meet and socialise and celebrate being who they are? Why are these men determined to ruin everything and why is it being applauded? Jon Ronson is a disingenuous misogynist, he had a huge block spree on twitter a few years ago because he came out with all this claptrap and he was astounded that some nasty uppity women disagreed with him. It's fast becoming obvious that this whole thing is just a good ol boys club with wigs on.

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by mole at the counter

Regardless of the ideological poison at play in this case, why oh why COULD any half-decent journalist omit the facts of the whole story? Surely that’s the difference between journalism and PR? What a professional failure.

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He's a bit like a journalist operating under a totalitarian regime. He knows he has to turn a blind eye sometimes if he wants to keep going.

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by mole at the counter

Well said yet again ,Graham . Great that you keep exposing these lies from tras.👍👍👍. Please keep going .Definitely on the right side of history as if there was ever any doubt♥️

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by mole at the counter

After reading that, I'm wondering when he'll release, "The Men Who Stare at Goats Who Identify as Kangaroos."

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Jon Ronson does whatever best serves Jon Ronson. When the Dana River's case finally comes to trial and is widely publicised the myth of transformation of a natal male to "become" a woman will be questioned more critically. The justice system has done everything in its power to delay a trial since 2017 with each date being pushed back 6 months for further medical assessments. In Ireland, Barbie Kardashian aka Alejandro Gentile the 18 yr old brutalised by his father and housed in the female wing of Limerick prison is a very disturbed young man who

hates women and has repeatedly expressed his desires to torture and kill women inc his mother. He attacked his social worker pulling out clumps of her hair and attempted to gouge out her eyes with his fingers. Another trans woman in Limerick female prison was convicted of 10 counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child. It is understood that, as with Barbie, he has not undergone any surgical or hormonal transition but is in possession of a gender recognition certificate saying they are female.

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“My only public contribution to the trans debate other than the story on Things Fell Apart was telling Graham Linehan that I thought he was acting like a bully."

"So many people are defining themselves by that debate."

Is he trying to get woke points by saying that? why did he have to mention that? is it I will publicly knock Graham to define myself in the debate!

Jon if you read this...no one can change sex, men have no place in women's and girls spaces.

You cannot sit on the fence with this one.

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Not hard to pick sides in this case: the man who works hard to support men and women or the man who works hard to support men who think that they're women.

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Feb 16, 2022Liked by Graham Linehan

Graham, thank you for continuing to report on this story. But, you didn't mention one additional, infuriating detail: Rivers has yet to go to trial, and the judicial authorities have claimed that the multiple delays are largely due to a missing psychiatric report on the accused. And, who can blame psychiatrists for not wanting to weigh in on the mental health of Rivers? They'd be damned if they determined him incompetent to stand trial and damned if they determined him competent. But, I do believe one thing: if Rivers does go to trial, and the case beings even 10% of the press attention it deserves, it would blow the intersectionality of the "LGBTQ+" right out of the water.

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'Acting like a bully' is a nice way to avoid the issues raised. 'You know, i would have addressed those matters if you had asked me nicely'.

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How disgraceful. I wonder if interviewed any of the festival attendees at all. Shocking.

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Letter to the Editor with a link to this article?

Interesting that he has shoehorned in a reference to you, @Graham; the author of "So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed" playing tit for tat like a sulky teenager.

People often lash out at people who make them feel guilty. I think he knows full well that he has done wrong, in so many ways, including the Michfest fiasco and treating you, an old friend, so badly. You keep pricking his conscience and he doesn't like that, what with him being so "virtuous" and all.

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