Targeted by the same malevolent clowns
Circular firing squad.
I'm a fan of Janice Turner, and unlike her, both a fan and a friend of @Glinner. These lines are beneath Janice IMO. "Linehan, whose obsessive, narcissistic, often cruel social media presence has done more harm than good to the defence of women’s sex-based rights… 1/5 https://t.co/9UNP0VrYBE
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025
And I can assure you that it is as nasty as it gets. Everyone I know who has suffered at the hands of these lunatics, who have the police in their pocket, has been deeply and personally affected by it. Lucky you if you don't know that from experience. 3/5
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025
I'm not going to add the throat-clearing "however" that people seem to feel necessary when they stand up for Glinner. It's nonsense. He doesn't say things the way I would, and vice versa. We're not the same people. We haven't had the same experiences. That is irrelevant. 5/5
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025
I really don’t understand why people who claim to be on our side like to portray Graham Linehan as some awful person who expresses GC views in an unacceptable – unapproved? – manner. He has had every right to be furious at the use of the police by specific TRAs to target him and others. It’s unconscionable.
Time and again, facts have come to light which have proved people like Glinner, Ophelia, Arty, Helen Joyce and Helen Staniland, utterly correct to be uncompromising when it comes to describing what is happening in the shadows. We need to support all these people, and one another, regardless of whether they may hold other views with which we might disagree, or express their understandable frustration with the situation in terms we might not use ourselves, or via platforms which aren’t politically or philosophically aligned with our views.
I’m reminded of the way that many atheists used to criticise the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens. ‘Well, yes, they’re right in what they say, of course, but why do they have to be so strident?’
“Glinner’s no saint” has the same energy as “he’s no angel” said about any number of people shot dead by the cops in the US. Why is one of these acceptable but the other is not?
tigger_the_wing :
I’m afraid I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you there.
Meghan Murphy, the US gender critical feminist, has said she has voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and doesn’t regret doing so.
https://x.com/MeghanEMurphy/status/1886234253119426902
https://x.com/MeghanEMurphy/status/1945639547167019274
And Murphy was subjected to unfair bullying in the past over her support for general-critical feminism. She has had every right to be furious at that treatment.
But are we supposed to not take issue with Murphy’s current view of supporting the odious, anti-feminist Trump, just because Murphy was bullied by the Gender Stasi in the past? Or because she agrees with many of the B&W posters’ views on the gender issue?
Lots of people got treated unjustly for their gender-critical views. It doesn’t mean that they ended up supporting Donald Trump (or Nigel Farage, or Viktor Orbán) as a result.
To clarify: I believe the UK police were wrong to arrest Graham Linehan because he said that people who were seen repeatedly breaking the law and ignoring warnings should be punched in the groin.
If he’d said that about, say, people who were smoking in the hospital children’s wards, I doubt the Fuzz would have come after him.
Lots of bad things happened to Linehan. He was blacklisted from the comedy industry, his marriage ended (and I believe part of that was due to the TRAs harassing Linehan), many of his former friends abandoned him, he lost most of his money, he had visits from the police, his planned “Father Ted” musical was axed, and he became a public hate figure. That must have taken a terrible toll on him. Again, he has every right to be furious at that treatment.
That doesn’t mean I agree with Graham Linehan’s other views, or the way he puts them across. For instance, Linehan is also another GC activist who supports Donald Trump.
https://x.com/Glinner/status/1897441593445245104#m
I don’t think the fair-minded general public are going to be won over to our side if they see well-known GC activists like Linehan praising Trump.
@Mostly Cloudy #4
Meghan Murphy is Canadian, not USian, so I don’t believe she voted for Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_Murphy#American_and_Canadian_politics
@Colin Day:
Murphy says she has dual Canadian /U.S citizenship here. And that she was able, and intended, to vote for Trump:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/31/us-presidential-election-donald-trump-kamala-harris-clinton/
@ Mostly Cloudy #5
I don’t think Linehan is a general supporter of DJT. I think the remark in question — DJT knows his onions better than the press — is not praise of DJT, but grudging recognition that, on a few points, DJT is actually right. DJT is right on the trans issue, even if for the wrong reasons. That I say that doesn’t mean that I’m a “supporter” of DJT. I most emphatically am not. But my core value of honesty compels me to say that DJT is right on the issue of women’s single sex spaces.
Something to bear in mind is that it’s much harder when you’re the one in the hot seat — when you, personally, are the subject of relentless lies coming from the liberal side of the media. When virtually the entire liberal media establishment sets out to utterly destroy your life, and attempts to stamp out your “side’s” views about a hot-button topic through censorship and propaganda, stepping back to see the wider political terrain becomes nearly impossible. It’s like being in an interrogation room, with a glare narrowing your vision to pain: the media are the interrogators aiming the light at them. They meant to blind them — and to some extent, they did.
(I’ve only had a very small taste of this, and it was torture.)
Glinner has made remarks here and there about Trump that are surprisingly non-hostile. I believe these are more aimed at highlighting the media’s hypocrisy than a full-throated, wholesale endorsement of MAGA.
Murphy, on the other hand… her progression towards right-wing extremism is much further along at this point. I believe she’s fallen in with January 6th types, and their Canadian equivalents, the organizers of the “Trucker Convoy” that blockaded the borders and descended on Ottawa, ostensibly to protest vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers. Some of the leaders of that event made overt calls to overthrow Canadas democratically-elected government with violence. That’s serious-as-fuck extremist territory, and it puts Murphy in a very different sphere. It doesn’t compare to a few offhand remarks about the unreliability of the media when reporting on cultural flashpoints.
That’s how I see it. I gave up on Murphy long ago. Glinner is another matter altogether.
The problem is, the political trajectory is there. It’s well within the possibility that eventually, G will end up aligned with far-right extremists. I want more than ANYONE to believe it won’t happen! He’s my personal friend!! But look at the horrible mess on the left, and look at the history: virtually everyone else who the left puts through this degree of humiliation ends up traumatised by it, and ends up reacting by running to the far right, which is ready and waiting with open arms.
This pattern is so obvious at this point, I’m not afraid to discuss it in public. It’s an open secret. It’s just the state of the GC scene these days.
I know for a fact that far-right factions are very calculatedly strategizing, working to infiltrate the GC movement. Factions like Viktor Orbán’s cabal in Hungary, and Tucker Carlson’s shadow network of quasi-neo-Nazis, and of course the Kremlin, are deeply interested in the Gender-Critical scene. They’re actively strategizing and recruiting behind the scenes (and not-so-behind-the-scenes!), and they’re looking for vulnerable people they can throw money at to curry influence. (Hello, “Billboard Chris”, you fucking gullible pawn! Funny how you went from driving an Uber to flying Business Class once you started denouncing legal gay marriage and parenting protections alongside trans extremism!…)
And so are lesser right-wing and libertarian orgs — your Manhattan Institutes, American Enterprise Insititutes, and what have you. And just, armies of social-conservative small-business owners with money.
It’s a feeding frenzy! And it’s part of the reason I parted ways with LGB Alliance Canada — obvious right-wing influences were horning in on it, as they were doing all across the “scene”, and they started cannibalizing actual gay rights, which were supposed to be the point of the org.
Argh. I’m not up to speed on this. What a nightmare.
If only you knew the shit I’ve been privy to. If only everyone did! It’s not like I’ve signed an NDA or anything… but I know political stuff that is just so awful, it makes me recoil from twitter’s “GC” scene. And if everyone else knew it, they would, too. I grin and bear it, and I push it all down inside. I’ve turned it into an ulcer.
I have special ire for certain so-called GC’s so-called “leaders.” (I don’t mean Graham! As of now he’s a big bear of a wholesome lovable sweetheart! I know this convo started about him, but it’s moved on, and this part has nothing to do with him! Leave him out of it, snoops!)
Arty and Ophelia – this is part of what has made it so difficult for me to write my Substack since Trump was elected. The specific attacks against trans-ID people by the government are sourced in hate and bigotry, such as the move to discharge them without honors and not provide the benefits due. It’s their whole “anti-woke” agenda that drives them, and so even when the WDI celebrates moves by the DoJ that are not the result of recognizing the rights of women, I have a hard time feeling like there was any sort of victory in it. Currently, the Republicans, in the wake of the shooting of children in a Catholic school by a de-trans individual, are planning to enact legislation to ban assault weapon sales to trans ID people. All of the assaults in the past were not horrifying enough, but one by a man who actually knew he wasn’t trans by the time of the shooting, and here we go targeting.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of the ideology, but neither do I hate those who are caught up in it.
The push to the right is something that I was observing when I was in Seattle for the Library Event in 2020. There were several lesbians that I met who were moving from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party for this issue alone. And of course, our Josh is another who went from one extreme to the other (as is his wont.)
This ideology is acidic and poisoning the atmosphere on the lefterly side of politics as much as the war in Gaza and I believe you, Arty in the funding that is going on. Because of all the damage that is being done by the right, I just can’t turn on my heels, but I would love to be able to at least have a discussion with other liberals without them putting up a wall accusing me of bigotry and hate. And these are people that know me and should know better.
The Indivisible movement in Minnesota is resisting the call to a special session to ban the assault weapons used against Melissa Hortman and her husband and in the school shooting because there will also be anti-trans legislation introduced and the Legislature is evenly divided. Protecting trans Id people is more important than getting guns off the street!
I mean, how can I defend the Democratic party as being pro-science when I can’t even explain the difference between VSD’s and trans ideology without being labeled as a bigot by people who call themselves scientists?
Every time I try to write about it, I end up getting frustrated at my inability to cogently relate my thoughts on it. We are in trouble, because it’s an issue that is easily used to deflate our argument that we value science over ideology.
Mike, I would say you definitely wrote cogently about it here. You have done a great job summarizing the problems we are all facing. It was bad enough pre-Trump, but now we are facing a different situation, where the enemies of our enemies are our enemies, and we don’t know who to turn to.
I worry about the people who are seeing Trump as protecting the rights of women. He is doing nothing of the sort. He just wants to have men be men, and women be women, and make sure women know their proper place. He isn’t protecting rights the women want or need; he is protecting the perceived rights of men to the bodies of women. He is the MRA-in-chief. He may talk of protecting women, but it is the sort of protection women should run as far from as they can as fast as they can. We could find ourselves out of the frying pan and into a blazing fire, similar to ones that burned witches in previous eras.
Any way I turn, I see nothing but patriarchy…nothing but misogyny…nothing but a gray, grim future for women. This particular site is a bright spot in the gray, but in the end, it’s gray almost everywhere you look.
Mike Haubrich #15
You are right – the ideology is damaging movements on the progressive side of politics. It seems every month, some feminist /environmentalist /socialist group is racked by another dispute about the “trans issue”. And the “No Debate /You Are Harming Me” rule makes it almost impossible to discuss the issue moderately. And the “trans issue”, as you pointed out, ends up sucking all the oxygen out of the room in regards to other political issues.
It’s not surprising leftist some opponents of trans ideology, encountering such an atmosphere, either eventually move right or withdraw from political activity.
If I were paranoid-minded, I’d wonder if some Karl Rove or Steve Bannon type had devised and secretly disseminated modern trans ideology worldwide around 2009, with the goal of splitting centrist and left-wing movements throughout the West and leaving them unable to combat the political right.