Graham Linehan is a hero and Malcolm Gladwell is a coward

Journalists who pushed trans ideology deserve to lose their jobs. Graham Linehan deserves accolades.

On Monday, comedy writer

Graham Linehan

was met by five armed police officers as he walked off the plane in Heathrow airport. He was informed that he was under arrest for the following three tweets:

Now, I don’t believe anyone should be arrested for tweets, unless the tweets involve a direct, specific threat of violence to an individual. But these tweets are particularly innocuous. Implying that people stink is perfectly acceptable, and honestly, he’s probably right. Hating misogynists and homophobes is also completely acceptable, but of course hating anyone should be acceptable. Like, ok, it’s not nice, and sometimes it’s irrational or bigoted, but we are allowed to not like people. Provided we aren’t making laws that discriminate against the people we hate, and aren’t beating up the people we hate, hating is a right we have (or should have, in any case). If hating were illegal boy oh boy would I be in trouble—jailed at least a hundred times over by now.

The third tweet was likely the one considered most egregious under UK hate speech laws, because if you wish to misinterpret it, which anyone defending trans ideology of course does, then you can pretend Linehan is avocating violence against a member of a marginalized group called “trans.”

The truth is that:

1. There is no marginalized group of people called “trans”—there are just males and females who wish or claim to be the opposite sex. Call them deluded, mentally ill, confused, or call them perverted men with a porn-fueled fetish called “autogynephilia,” but they’re still just males or females.

2. If a man is in a female change room or bathroom, for example, he is comitting a crime. Even if he is a delusional pervert. In fact, even moreso does this qualify him as dangerous. Of course a man in a women’s or girls’ changeroom is a dangerous pervert—if he weren’t, he would just be in the men’s changeroom like a normal, non-predatory man. And of course if you are in danger because a man is predating on you, you have the right to defend yourself, and of course that includes punching him in the balls.

The misinterpretation of this particular tweet is so maddeningly stupid because of course everyone knows—at least the did until ten years ago—that men who go into women-only spaces like bathrooms are creeps and predators. Pretending that Linehan is hateful for stating the most obvious thing is an act of dishonesty, either because you are pretending to be stupid and that you don’t understand his obvious point, or because you are pretending that you actually believe men in makeup and dresses are literally women, which of course you don’t you lying liar.

Graham Linehan has gone through hell since he began speaking out in defense of women’s rights and spaces about seven years ago. It all began with a tweet, and tweets have been used in an attempt to destroy him ever since. (He was even banned from Twitter 1.0, like me, for essentially tweeting the same thing I was banned for in 2018: “Men aren’t women.”)

The first time Linehan waded into the trans debate was in March 2018, when he shared an article by Heather Brunskell-Evans describing her persecution for saying that sex is a biological reality and challenging the transitioning of kids. She wrote:

It is becoming clear that sections of liberal society are persuaded by reductive binary logic: either you accept that men who identify as women, including those with unmodified male bodies, are not only transwomen but are women and have been sexed female since birth, or you are a transphobe (and worse).

In conclusion, I utterly disagree that I promote transphobia, and I have found it shocking that the WEP has chosen to adopt this stance. The importance of this debacle goes far beyond the local, internal wrangles of a small Party. The issues upon which these events shed light are societal, and illustrate a deep belief system at the heart of transgender identity politics whose consequences are wide-ranging: Men who identify as women are women and this belief has to be accepted not only as rational and but as the irrefutable truth.

In anchoring transgender identity as inherent, outside of the social forces that have shaped it, and in describing any dissent as illiberal, free thought as well as free speech can be erased. Whilst the WEP and the Labour Party leave unremarked the chilling comments such as the ones made above, they discipline and expel women party members for any dissent from what has become an article of faith.

Linehan responded in support and agreement.

Linehan’s efforts to support women speaking out in defense of biological reality and women’s rights led to loss of friends, colleagues, and work. He was tarred as a bigot and a transphobe and expelled from comedy and comedy writing. His wife divorced him on account of all the stress the family experienced as a result of his being targeted and ostracized.

I have known Graham for many years now, having had him on my podcast twice, and had the pleasure of spending time with him in person while I was in the UK speaking at a number of events. He is a wonderful, brave, brilliant, talented, funny man who deserves none of the punishment he has suffered for doing the right thing. That the men behind these ongoing attempts to have him jailed for speaking the truth and for having integrity and ethics are all evil perverts make the whole thing all the more sick.

That so many in this world hold none of those ethics and not an ounce of integrity, yet receive accolades and enjoy illustrious careers as “journalists” is among the deep ironies I will never accept, forgive, or forget.

A clip of journalist Malcolm Gladwell circulated on social media this week, wherein he tells the hosts of The Real Science of Sport podcast that he feels “ashamed” at his “performance” during a 2022 panel discussing “trans athletes.” Gladwell moderated the panel, allowing two trans activists to argue that men should be allowed to compete and win in women’s sports, failing to challenge them on their unscientific, irrational, and completely unfair views and claims about men’s inherent physical advantages over women, regardless of testosterone levels being reduced through hormone treatments.

Gladwell now admits he shares the position of the podcast hosts, which is that men should not be allowed to compete as women in sport, yet he said nothing in defense of biological reality or of female athletes on the 2022 panel because he was “cowed.”

“I was objective in a dishonest way,” he says.

No. You were just dishonest. You knew you weren’t being honest, and you intentionally chose not to speak the truth because you were afraid, and were protecting your career, money, social status, whatever. I don’t care. I just don’t care. It is your job as a journalist to speak and report the truth, as best you can, and you did not. So not only did you fail to do your job, which means you should lose public trust, but you failed to act as a human with integrity.

Fear is no excuse. We are all afraid. We all were afraid. Do you not think I was afraid to speak up about this issue nearly fifteen years ago now? Do you not think it was scary to think I might be murdered every time I did a public event? Every time I walked out in public? That maybe someone would bomb my apartment? Do you think it felt good to lose friends, any chance at getting a job, to be banned from social media, to lose every single venue we ever booked to speak about women’s sex-based rights? To lose my book deal? To be insulted and libeled and verbally attacked across the internet?

Do you think that I did all this because I wasn’t afraid?? Or do you think I was afraid and did it anyway?

So, no. You will not receive my forgiveness. You will not gain my respect simply because you express regret. You deserve to feel ashamed for being a coward and for allowing the rest of us to take the heat.

I reserve all of my respect and admiration for men like

Graham Linehan

, as well as for all the women who spoke out early on, at their own risk, and with no reward.

The cowards can live with their guilt and they will get nothing from me.

Long live Glinner!

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