Why I'm in the gender fight

by Graham Linehan and Wayne O'Connor

The Irish Independent recently gave me a chance to make my position clear on the gender issue. Journalist Wayne O'Connor, although in agreement with me on the dangers of gender identity ideology and the absurdity of natal males taking over women’s spaces, focussed more on the personal cost to me in the final piece. I thought that was a shame as we had a good chat, so I’m publishing some highlights here.

And can I say how grateful I am to the Independent and Wayne for letting me get this story out. It was refreshing to meet a journalist who sees what’s going on. When he compared the gender movement to Quanon-type crazies, I breathed a sigh of relief. He gets it.

I can’t find where we spoke about the BBC grooming story, where a Cbeebies program called a crossdressing man a ‘lesbian’, but that is one of the things Wayne covered in his piece.

Anyway here are some excerpts from our chat. I’ve left in bits where I accidentally misgendered people because I think it bears out why pronouns are Rohypnol.

ME: ….In other words, people who aren't in the media and people who don't have any use for the attention economy, they don't believe any of this stuff. They believe that women should have sex-segregated spaces for their safety, they believe that women’s sports should be protected. They don't believe these extreme positions that are being put forward by others.

WAYNE O’CONNOR: …because they’re not exposed to them online?

ME: Exactly. And I think the internet is creating a kind of a tiered reality for people.

WAYNE: Could you explain that?

ME: If you look at phenomenons like…. gender identity is one, Qanon in America, is another, that's one on the Right. It's people are able to believe the most insane things because they have the kind of supporting wind of billions of people behind them, you know, a billion voices. And I think that that creates a false sense of security. A false sense of belief in ridiculous things.

WAYNE: The news over here at the moment, not sure you’re aware of it, there was a huge protest a couple of weeks ago. People at that told one of the Sunday Times reporters that they were of the belief that RTE were killing babies to inject their presenters with adrenochrome to make them look younger and the babies were being buried under the new children’s hospital.

ME: And they are just not kind of not engaging with others. I mean, I'm sure those people who believe that RTE presenters are injecting themselves with baby hormones or whatever, I'm sure those people believe that anyone who doesn't believe this is just misinformed or poorly informed, you know, and they point to a million blogs that will tell you the so-called truth of the situation. Similarly, left-wing people have just fallen for this idea that sex doesn't matter, that the basis of oppression is gender, not sex, that everybody has a kind of a soul that we call our gender and that some people's souls can be born into the wrong body. It's just as crazy as the beliefs that you've just described to me, it's just as insane. But again, they get nothing but plaudits on Twitter when they share these opinions.

Let me give you a very good example. Panti Bliss a couple of months ago, I think it was, said something like, “I'd love to see one example of lesbians being coerced to have sex by trans people”. “I'd like to see one example”. Panti Bliss was sent thousands of examples by feminists, by lesbians, by other gay men, just thousands of examples. And he just pretended they didn't happen, you know, and we could see them being sent to him! And I know that he saw them. But he just pretended they didn't happen. And when he was questioned on that, he said, “Oh, and I'm not talking about a 16-year-old on Twitter”, when in fact, he'd been sent stuff by, you know, a lot of high profile people in the trans movement. So, you know, it's just, it's kind of a pick and mix of what reality involves.

And yeah, I think we're in a very dangerous place with it. Because I meant what I said, if saying that men are not women is hate speech, then we are on the brink of chaos. We'll be seeing more things I think, like what happened in Dublin a few weeks ago, that protest. And what we really, really need is we need people to stand up for reality and to say, hang on a second. There are certain things which are true and are certain things that are false. And we can't be claiming that, you know, lesbians can have a penis because it's not true. It's fake. It's false. It's not possible. It's just as crazy as Holocaust denial, well don’t say that because that'll be used against me. But it's just as crazy as climate change denial, or any other kind of historical revisionism or fantastic thinking, you know, it's just the same.

WAYNE: How should we police it? How would you police social media to prevent this escalating?

ME: I have no idea. I mean, the thing is, as we said about Twitter the other day, Twitter is a law unto itself. It’s like, my friend Arty Morty, who’s with the LGB Alliance in Canada, he compares it to TikTok, which is a Chinese social media thing. You can do whatever you want you like on TikTok, except talk about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. You can't talk about that. If you talk about that, you'll be taken down. Similarly, on Twitter, if you say men are not women, you'll be taken down, you know, or if you're Helen Staniland who merely asked the question, should men have the right to be in a space with women and girls when they're undressing? You know, should men have that right? She was banned for asking that question. I mean, that is absolutely at the heart of safeguarding, that question. And so to ban her for asking…

WAYNE: That’s why you got into it, wasn’t it?

ME: Yeah, well, there's so many reasons. Not just that, though, but kids, that's the big worry, you know, puberty blockers…Noah Halpin who is just a complete, you know, rah, rah, everything, everything's great. You know, there's a phrase we have in writing “show, don’t tell”. And Noah Halpin is constantly going on about how transitioning is just great. And it'll just make your life incomparably wonderful. And, and you'll be the real person who you are on the inside. She's never out of the hospital! You know? I'm sorry, don’t say I misgendered her, I'll say ‘they're’ never out of the hospital. Halpin’s either tweeting about going to a hospital or coming back from the hospital, because these procedures are new, they are untested, they are damaging. And they are, you know….puberty blockers, which affects your ability to have children. You know, you're talking about taking gender non-conforming kids who are often gay, and sterilizing them.

WAYNE: Last year, I got a sense that he (Halpin) wants to get out of this gender rights fight or diverse gender rights debate, but he was too involved or too invested to give up now. Is that how it is with you?

ME: Oh, yeah, I mean, this is you see, the thing is, what people don't realize even on my side is that my, my reputation is tied to this. When I did the House of Lords thing. I immediately saw people writing long letters as to why I shouldn't be allowed to speak , you know, what a terrible bigot monster I am. And at the same time, just afterwards, someone in a theatre in the UK, said something along the lines of I can't wait for the Father Ted musical to start so we can boycott it to the ground. So basically, you know, this has always been my position. I'm defending myself as much as I'm defending these women. So it's all kind of tied together. Having said that, I really feel very energized by becoming a journalist. It's very rewarding because I get to get stories by people out there that otherwise possibly wouldn't be amplified.

WAYNE: I think that is at the heart of it. That's why anyone wants to be a journalist because they want to give people a voice and they want to tell stories and it’s kind of like, I didn't get into journalism to do spreadsheets. I want to do something meaningful. Yeah, I can relate to that.

ME: The other aspect to it is for a writer, it's invaluable to be suddenly in contact with so many people. Through this I've met, you know, homicide detectives, social workers, doctors, paediatricians. You know, I've met so many wonderful people who I now have a relationship with that it's just going to power the rest of my life in terms of material.

WAYNE: You’ve lost a lot as well though.

ME: All I've lost are dipshit comedians, who are too frightened to say what's going on, you know. I'll tell you something that the Rubberbandits did. My wife tried to start a children's TV program. She's working on a children's TV program, the Rubberbandits refused to host this animation festival unless it was taken down. I finally had to remove my name from it because I had done some work on it over three years previously. That's what we've got, people who are trying to step on everything that has even a tangential relationship to me. I'm just very disappointed in people. Dara O’Briain, I wrote to Dara and said, you know, would you like to sign the JK Rowling letter to support her? ”Oh, no, to be honest with you, Graham, I find it a bit confusing.” Right. A few weeks later, he's calling Eddie Izzard ‘she’, you know? And it's like, what the fuck is going on? You're so confused, you can't sign a letter defending someone from rape and death threats, but you will go all-in calling a fully intact male wearing a bit of makeup ‘she’….it just…I just have no respect for these people.

WAYNE: Okay. Do you mind me asking about your wife? You said that. I saw your Lords statement on this matter. You said it brought about the end of your marriage, your lack of financial security? Yeah. That must be very hard to cope with. And that must have been really hard, I suppose.

ME: Well, it wasn't a deliberate sacrifice, you know what I mean? Basically, they're sterilizing gay kids. No-one can tell me to stop fighting that. No one can tell me to stop fighting it. So I wouldn't stop fighting it. And eventually, just, you know, the same thing that happened to JK Rowling, the same thing that happened to Martina Navratilova…they just pile on the pressure. And when they can't get to you, they get to your wife. They released my wife's business address online. As I say, they boycotted a children's TV program that she was doing.

One day, we were having a lovely Sunday morning. And the police knocked on the door. And it was because I tweeted a Sky News interview with a trans rights activist, in which he was humiliated. You know, these things eventually added up. And then, when we eventually separated, these same trans rights activists who deliberately set out to create this havoc in my life would make fun of me for being separated. And even now Wikipedia says my wife left me because of my ‘activism against the trans community’.

WAYNE: And you’re saying that's not true.

ME: No, not true. It was financial insecurity. It was the result of, as I say a series of harassment campaigns, you know, that just have not stopped from the moment I got into this. It was just too hard. And she was very, very frightened, very frightened. And, you know, we're still, we're still in touch and stuff like that. I mean, the way I see it is, I certainly wouldn't hold it against her because the forces against us were so extreme and so poisonous that I don't think, you know, it's rare that you could come through it unscathed.

Obviously, she's experiencing a tough time with the layout in terms of the practicalities of bringing up two kids, but, you know, I am around when needed. So what else? What else can we do? We can't go back to it. Because, you know, this fight is….you know, I think it's too important to stop. And she probably thinks it's too frightening to continue with. So, you know, we're in a bind.

WAYNE: did you consider giving in to save the marriage? And maybe try and stabilize your finances a little bit?

ME: No, because, the effects were already being felt and I knew that whatever I did, I would always be the subject of, oh, he's a bigot, you shouldn't work with him, letter writing campaigns, whatever it happens to be. What Helen doesn't understand is there's no forgiveness from these activists. Once you've committed some sin, that’s you done forever. So I just kind of knew that my financial security was kind of dependent on me, you know, just basically proving my point, you know, and I think that, I think that the longer time goes on, the more of my point has been proved. So I do think eventually, we'll come out of this madness, you know.

WAYNE: Okay, so you think eventually, your financial security solidifies essentially, because you will be proven right, and the debate ends?

ME: Well, you see, the thing is, I don't really think in terms of in terms of what happens to me, I think more in terms of the fight itself, you know. The Scottish Government really made women angry last night by saying that there's such a thing as a hate crime against Eddie Izzard, but not against the woman standing next to him. I think that has woken a lot of people in Scotland up. So I just think that you know, there's going to eventually be a critical mass, but it's taking some time, because the terror that people feel about getting involved in this debate is very real, you know, and then we have to figure out a way of dispelling that terror.

There is a terror of engaging with this subject. There is an absolute terror of engaging with the subject because the results of not having the ‘correct’ opinion, are social ostracization, your work, your income can be affected, your reputation can be mangled. So there was a, there was a terror of engaging with the substance of the debate. And, and I do understand that. I completely get that.

Let's say I said, well, we're doing the Father Ted musical as soon as COVID is over. We're doing it with such and such a company. And it'll be at such and such a theatre, that theatre will be inundated with letters…either threats or you know, threats of protests, until the theatre would eventually have to say sorry, we can't do this. You know?

WAYNE: Graham, I'm sorry to cut you short there. You would imagine especially given Ted’s success, and its culture and standing in Ireland, anyway, normally that would sell out within minutes. And surely the theatre would decide it worth it to continue and ignore the online vitriol?

ME: Yeah, but what tends to happen is they scale up the protests depending on the target. So JK Rowling got attacked by people like the ACLU and GLAAD in America. The harassment was scaled up to meet her, you know, hugeness, whatever you would call her position in life, I guess you would say. (NOTE: The word I was looking for was ‘standing’)

Whereas like, you know, ordinary women online, if you're, say a teacher, they'll write to the headmaster and say, this woman is spreading transphobic stuff online. And so the headmaster will get so many letters that they will think “there must be something here”, and they'll fire the teacher, you know? Similarly, with a theatre, they'll just figure out a way of, of getting to them, you know, they'll figure out a threat they can make. They could go after the financiers, that's another thing they could try, you know, so, so what are they all I can hope really is that, you know, the more we go on, the more we prove that this is a tactic and that this is not a human rights movement but an ideological movement. I think once people see that they might become a little bit more immune to these types of campaigns.

I mean, in a way, it's kind of like, bring it on, because I'd love everyone to see how crazy these people are, and how determined they are to just destroy lives and destroy, like…you know, it's not just my musical. Arthur Matthews, who has never said a word about this, this is also his pension, you know. Same thing with Neil Hannon, and all the songs are written, the show is done, the script is really, really good. Only slight adjustments, we're ready to go.

But if that wakes people up to how authoritarian and vicious this movement is, then it'll have a good end effect The Ted musical is important to me, I'm really proud of it. It's great. I think people are gonna love it. But it's more important that we stop the sterilization of gay children (note: I would prefer to say ‘gender nonconforming children’, as giving children adult qualities is one of the brain-rotting aspects of this ideology that I fell into few times on this occcasion.)

WAYNE: Do you feel it's more of an issue in the UK than here?

ME: No, I think it's really bad in Ireland. You've got self ID. That's crazy. The thing about Ireland is that I think people don't realize is that it was kind of sneaked in on the back of marriage equality. There was no debate about it. No one ever got to have a conversation about whether self ID was a good idea or not.

WAYNE: Why is it a bad idea?

ME: Well, look at Limerick prison. You've got women who are housed with sex offenders. Does a woman have to be killed or hurt badly, to show that men are a danger to women and that women need single-sex spaces? Are the people pushing this stuff so immune from reality and ignorant of what goes on in the real world that they need something like that to happen before they'll go “Oh, yeah, maybe women are at a disadvantage to men in those types of spaces”. You know, it's, it's extraordinary to me. And so when the big thing you hear is, well, it's been in place in Ireland for years, and we've not had any problems. Well, you know, you don't know that because you're a very privileged person who has no idea about, say, women in rape crisis shelters. Are they being affected by it? Are women escaping from domestic violence situations affected by it?

WAYNE: Was there anything you simply wanted to bring up?

ME: Well, no, I can talk about this, you know, if my hair's on fire, so, you know, really just anything you want to ask, you know, if there's anything that occurs to you later, I'm happy to pick up the phone and keep going, you know,

WAYNE: Maybe I might get you tomorrow. I'm unsure of putting anything in print that I have an uncertainty towards.

ME: I really appreciate that. Thank you.