On December 31st, the last day of 2021, Graham Linehan made an appeal for “unity” in which he noted that while feminists were making “making great strides” in their fight against the nonsense that is Trans Rights Activism there exists, in his words, “another group, much smaller, but louder, and scarier, who are simply sadists.”
Before I go any further I would like to take this opportunity to recognize Graham Linehan’s contributions to this fight we currently find ourselves in as the man has suffered both personally and professionally because of his public Gender Critical views. I can’t think of anyone who more has borne the slings and arrows hurled at him on a daily basis that he has made himself the public face of the GC movement and, given his high profile celebrity status, also a target.
Standing up for women and women’s rights is, in his words (and I agree), the right thing to do. If it weren’t for Graham Linehan I would never have been so inspired to start this newsletter, I would never have found the courage to stand up for women and women’s rights and I would never have been so brave as to put my name and face on all this, to stand up and be counted.
It bears repeating: I will not cower, I will not simp and I will not lie - you cannot change sex. Period. Full stop.
For all this I thank Graham but, having said all that, what comes next is probably the most difficult thing I’ve had to write: a rebuke.
Here it goes:
Graham Linehan’s call for unity is tone deaf - and this is framing it mildly.
Take, for example, Graham’s statement that he understands the “justified anger” a lot of women feel that men are invading their spaces, taking their titles, assuming their roles but then he makes the almost unpardonable admission that it’s time to tone it down or, as he put it, “we need quieter voices”.
My man, you just told women to “wheesht”.
Graham goes on to defend Debbie Hayton, a transwoman, that Hayton is one of the “important voices” in the Gender Critical movement, that Hayton is one of it’s ardent defenders.
Except he’s not and women know this.
The problem with Debbie Hayton is he’s a self-admitted autogynephile.
Autogynephilia is a male sexual fetish of precisely desiring to see oneself as a woman. What makes it a fetish, beyond it being aside the realm of what is a normal sexual desire toward another and its focus on objectification; all of which Hayton admits to.
Hayton holds a desire to “signal sex” in the way “women signal sex” in society. His “being trans” he suggests, is “what he does and not what he is.” The desire to see himself as a woman, he adds, is for himself, not to attract the attention of anyone in particular but wants to be seen as “fuckable”.
Exactly the mindset of an autogynephile.
On August 30, 2020 Graham Linehan conducted an interview with Jenny, a woman who suffered at the hands of an autogynephile that was her ex-husband whose horrid abuse he inflicted on her that I can’t bring myself to reprint or repeat any of it (it’s that horrific) and if you have a stronger stomach than I do, I invite you to click the link and see for yourself.
I’m not going to enumerate all the faults of Debbie Hayton for the sake of brevity but I will say that even the devil can quote scripture and if Debbie Hayton had any moral claim to defending women and women’s rights he would detransition immediately and speak out as a man.
But he doesn’t do this and women see right through him.
This isn’t unlike a worker whose fellow workers have all gone on strike and the worker in particular crosses the picket line, thus earning the label of “scab”.
Such is Debbie Hayton existing as a transwoman. He is that “scab” crossing the picket line.
Hayton also doesn’t consider the costs of his transness - he is still objectifying women. It’s amazing to me that Hayton can say - with a straight face - how much gender ideology is harmful, hurtful and regressive yet he refuses to part with any of it himself.
This is what Graham doesn’t understand when he sees the backlash against Debbie Hayton that he is so moved to turn off the comments in his post calling for “unity”.
Women don’t have to accept The World According To Hayton, nor should they especially until Hayton (and other transwomen like him) are willing to claim their manhood and stop treating women as if they are objects.
Nor should any woman listen to me for that matter and I (at least) am not wearing lipstick, a dress and referring to myself in feminine pronouns.
In conclusion I don’t write this newsletter to condemn Graham Linehan, far from it. I still believe that his heart was (and is) in the right place but if this post of his is any indication he’s far from perfect and that his experiences as a man somewhat obscures his view of the room.
He is still doing (in my opinion) The Lord’s Work and we should still support him - even when he doesn’t always get it right.
Finally, I can’t bring myself to make any distinction between “good trans” and “bad trans” except to say that people like Debbie Hayton, Buck Angel and others aren’t as bad as Trans Rights Activists but if they’re truly going to be allies they need to rid themselves of being “trans” altogether and only then will I specifically (and women in general) think better of them.
Graham Linehan writes The Glinner Update which you should all go check out (if you aren’t already there) and he is absolutely deserving of your support. In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, please consider taking out a subscription to my newsletter.