Just ask women

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

We’re not the ones unraveling.

Jon Ronson’s The Castle profiles Linehan’s gender-critical stance on men in women’s prisons and sports, plus medical transitions for minors, as part of men’s lives unraveling under online scrutiny. The chapter details how their past friendship soured over transgender disagreements, costing Linehan his TV career and relationships. Supporters like actor James Dreyfus praise Linehan’s tenacity and generosity, while critics call him obsessive; Linehan sees the attacks as efforts to silence debate on protecting women and children.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time.

We are entirely raveled thank you very much.

Comments

24 responses to “Just ask women”

  1. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Linehan sees the attacks as efforts to silence debate on protecting women and children.

    “Protecting women and children”? When poor Renée Good was murdered by a I.C.E. agent, Donald Trump supporter Graham Linehan retweeted posts from far-right accounts mocking her death. One of these said Good was one of the “commie race traitors” (!), while another mocked Good as a “liberal white woman” and called for “outright abolishment of the 19th Amendment”.

    https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5473175-glinner-bullseye-comment-on-x

    (Let’s not even get started on Linehan’s disdain for Palestinian women and children).

    I don’t care if Graham Linehan is right about trans ideology.

    I know some people here have met Linehan and have had positive experiences with him. I know Linehan has suffered harassment and an unfair arrest because his political views. But he’s become a nasty, sexist, hypocritical monomaniac.

    I don’t think the gender-critical movement needs Linehan.

  2. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    P.S. I always thought Arthur Mathews was the real brains in the Graham Linehan-Arthur Mathews writing partnership.

  3. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    One link to one random discussion on mumsnet. I’m not overwhelmed by your source.

    Anyway, I already know that Linehan has many opinions I don’t agree with, but that doesn’t make Jon Ronson right about Linehan’s rejection of trans ideology.

  4. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Here is a Substack post by GC Feminist woman Rachel Hewitt about Graham Linehan’s appalling attitude to Renée Good’s tragic death (complete with a screenshot of Graham Linehan saying “Bullseye to Vance”):

    This week, many women have found themselves disillusioned by seeing men whom they previously considered staunch feminist allies behave in flagrantly anti-feminist ways. Chief among these instances was Graham Linehan’s response of ‘bullseye’ to J.D. Vance’s statement that Renee Nicole Macklin Good’s supposed act of ‘ramming an ICE officer with [her] car…justifies being shot’… there is nothing remotely feminist about the sight of a man demonstrating instant instinctive sympathy with another man in supporting the deployment of armed male aggression against an apparently unarmed woman.

    https://rachelhewitt.substack.com/p/men-in-the-womens-movement-can-they

  5. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    But the screenshot of Linehan saying “Bullseye to Vance” doesn’t mention Renee Good. It shows Vance complaining of dishonest media coverage, with no specifics.

    I already know that I disagree with him on many things.

  6. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    This is an interview with Jon Ronson with the “Sydney Morning Herald”, which has a section where Ronson discusses his Graham Linehan, Linehan’s views, and the end of their friendship.

    https://archive.ph/b2YoG

    It sounds like the issue for Ronson is the obsessive and disinhibited nature of Linehan’s “rejection of trans ideology”, not just the rejection in itself.

    While it’s misleading of Ronson to imply that becoming gender-critical won’t harm a person’s career, other humorists such as Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle have criticized trans ideology, without that criticism taking over their lives like it has with Linehan’s. Also, Gervais and Chappelle haven’t ended up shilling for I.C.E.

    I think that fact, and the fact that Linehan used to be a friend of Ronson’s, is what made Ronson write about Linehan.

  7. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Vance is incorrect, the ICE officer was not “rammed” nor did Good intend to use her car as a weapon, she was trying to flee the scene (video documented). Vance is following some political narrative trying to defend an inhumane policy regarding immigrants, and he’s wrong, and he’s foul for doing so. The officer was in no way justified in shooting and killing the woman. There have been too many shootings and killings by the ICE gang, many of which were US citizens. An undertrained and trigger happy bunch obviously. Comparisons to the Gestapo are merited.

    I don’t know why Linehan would agree with such propaganda. I don’t know of him *at all* outside this blog, but if he’s a Trumpie then that’s problematic.

  8. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Mostly Cloudy:

    And people who have criticized trans ideology with less intensity and active intervention than Linehan have accomplished less in the way of informing and/or inspiring others. What is your point? That if we’re going to dispute trans ideology we should do so seldom and in a very muffled voice?

  9. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Ophelia:

    J.K. Rowling has been as actively critical of trans ideology as Graham Linehan has. Nobody could ever accuse Rowling of only criticising trans ideology ” seldom and in a very muffled voice”.

    Rowling also doesn’t spend morning, noon and night posting on social media, retweeting male supremacists, posting praise for the Israel Defense Forces, and posting more praise for the Trump Administration.

    Rowling still has her family with her, still has her writing career, still has influential people prepared to risk controversy by working on her media projects, still has millions of people who openly say they love her work. The attempt by the TRAs to turn Rowling into a pariah failed, partly because her work is so extraordinarily popular, but also because she didn’t let her opposition to trans ideology consume her like it did with Graham Linehan.

    And “inspiring others”? Ophelia, Graham Linehan is now regarded as a figure of ridicule, pity, or hatred by everyone outside this blog that I’ve ever discussed him with. And, yes, that includes feminists with gender-critical views.

    Linehan’s the man in a bedsit with the dirty clothes tweeting non-stop, who sank his successful career, and lost nearly everyone who used to care about him, because his reasonable criticisms of trans ideology slowly turned into a monomanical obsession. The TRAs couldn’t make a better caricature of the gender-critical activist if they tired.

  10. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    And yet, Linehan’s life is far from “unraveled.” It does start to look like a hit piece judging from the predjudiced position Ronson is coming from. Maybe Linehan has become an easy target. He is outspoken and reportedly well known person (in the UK maybe? I don’t know). He was also on Joe Rogan’s YouTube channel discussing mostly trans issues (not sure, TLDW).

    I remember him doing a few videos with Arty, maybe he can shed some light?

  11. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    “Graham Linehan is now regarded as a figure of ridicule, pity, or hatred by everyone outside this blog that I’ve ever discussed him with.” You do realize that doesn’t actually tell us anything? For all we know that could be one person.

    Anyway I already said I already know that Linehan has many opinions I don’t agree with. What do you want me to do, pronounce an anathema?

  12. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    Graham Linehan is now regarded as a figure of ridicule, pity, or hatred by everyone outside this blog

    Certainly not in my experience.

    That JKR hasn’t been canceled to the extent Linehan has is certainly not for lack of trying on the part of her haters (they’re still at it.) She’s safe only because she’s a billionaire whose creations are beloved and (not coincidentally) make oodles of money for other powerful people. Linehan has orders of magnitude less money and power.

    Meanwhile Linehan is reportedly still writing, and projects he’s attempted to bring to fruition, like the Father Ted musical, have been cancelled.

    I don’t wonder, or care, if Linehan is obsessed. He’s been treated abominably and his obsession is based in fact and reason.

  13. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    Two things can be true at the same time: It can be true that Linehan started out with good intentions, was treated horribly (including by some former friends) and lost everything as a result, that he has every reason to be furiously angry at some of his attackers , that this is a hit-piece and Ron Johnson is a dick etc. etc.

    It can also be true that, whatever good intentions Linehan started out with, there is nothing even remotely good about any of his intentions now (if there were he couldn’t be pro Trump). As I have written many times, if you make people sufficiently pissed off they may eventually decide that “I don’t care who wins, or what else is included in the deal, or who else gets hurt as a result, as long as these assholes lose!”. It sure seems to me like this is what happened to Linehan.

    And just so there’s no confusion, my problem with Linehan isn’t that he’s too hostile to gender ideology. The problem is what he is now in favor of. Also, as I keep saying, reasons matter. I think Linehan started out opposing gender ideology out of a sincere concern for women, homosexuals and vulnerable teenagers, maybe even a principled opposition to the excesses of cancel culture etc, but at some point it became about defeating the other “team” by any means necessary, and suddenly everything that was wrong with gender ideology in the first place (the misogyny, the rapeyness, the post-truth politics, the illiberalism, the censoriousness, the mob justice etc. etc.) was all kosher as long as the people on his own team were doing it.

  14. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    To assume that, because Linehan supports some things Trump has said or done, he thinks “misogyny, the rapeyness, the post-truth politics, the illiberalism, the censoriousness, the mob justice etc. etc.” on the American Right is kosher, is, to paraphrase Victoria Smith, to vastly underestimate how much misogyny, rapeyness, post-truth politics, illiberalism, censoriousness, and mob justice there is.

  15. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    It’s not just a matter of supporting “some things Trump has said or done”, though. I gave up on Linehan after hearing him say (from memory, referring to Trump): “You gotta love the guy”. As I have previously said, there’s a difference between working with enemy A to defeat enemy B (in a “lesser of two evils” kind of way), and actively endorsing enemy A. There are no brownie points for not actually being “pro” misogyny, rapeyness, post-truth politics, illiberalism, censoriousness, and mob justice in the privacy of your own mind as long as you’re prepared to tolerate unlimited amounts of it from the people on your own team and let others pay the price – any price. Your standards are only ever as high as the ones you apply to your own side, and if you support Trump that means all your standards have to be at minus infinity.

    If life has taught me one thing, it’s to only ever get invested in abstract principles (respecting facts and evidence, supporting free speech etc.); never individuals, never “communities”, never organizations, and never movements. Whatever good causes got you into the game in the first place, once it becomes about supporting your team, the cause is lost.

  16. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    It seems possible to me that Linehan (and I don’t know much about him, except what I’ve read here) may be falling victim to the same problem so many people have: the idea that all goodness must be manifest in those you agree with (even on one issue) and all badness must be manifest in those you disagree with (even on one issue). The inability to tolerate the nuances of political and social issues, where someone you disagree with vehemently on many issues may actually have one or more issues where you agree with them, seems to be the order of the day anymore.

    I felt that once, when I found myself agreeing with Dubya on something important. Then I discovered I agreed with Jonah Goldberg on something. It disturbed me, until I realized that there are none of us who are perfect, and no one I am in perfect alignment with on all issues (and that includes everyone here, and I hope you can understand that those places where I disagree do not make you nazis in my mind). I find I don’t even agree with myself all the time; some of my views have changed over time, and I wince at things I have thought, or written, or said, in the past.

    There is a great deal of discussion on whether we should align with our enemies on any issue where we agree, even though we disagree on almost everything else. I think we should; we should keep our opinions nuanced, and able to disagree with those people on everything else, and be willing to be outspoken about that. There are many places where I agree with the left, and several places where I think they are absolutely bonkers (trans, for instance, and many of their more extreme environmental views). That doesn’t prevent me from considering myself leftist, progressive, but not ‘woke’, at least not in so far as it requires adopting the entire package, including the nutty beliefs.

    As for aligning with the right on the trans issues, I think we should be in uneasy alliance with them, accepting that they are our only allies right now on this issue, but recognizing that they have vastly different, and dangerous, reasons for their anti-trans views, and that they are not really being pro-woman. I don’t believe you always get up with fleas if you lie down with dogs, but I do think you need to be assured you have adequate flea medicine handy, because fleas do tend to jump around.

    It is a shame that the ability to work across the aisles on areas of agreement, while maintaining disagreement with all other issues, has given way to purity politics. I retain the right to disagree with anyone about anything, even while agreeing strongly with them about others. This ‘with us or against us’ and ‘purity or death’ mindset is destroying us.

  17. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    I’m not going to comment on the politics stuff — I’ve made my position on that clearly enough — but this:

    P.S. I always thought Arthur Mathews was the real brains in the Graham Linehan-Arthur Mathews writing partnership.

    That’s just tawdry, facile snark. Wholly unsubstantiated, and transparently motivated by your newfound animus towards Graham.

    Here’s a suggestion: if you’re accusing someone of having been steered away from rational shores by the lure of tribal politics, it’s probably a good idea to demonstrate that you yourself are a bigger man — unsusceptible to precisely that kind of influence.

    And yet here you are, your own inflamed political passions leading you to say dumb things on the internet.

    Pot, meet kettle, etc.

  18. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    (sorry, I forgot to add that that was directed at @mostly cloudy)

  19. Artymorty Avatar
    Artymorty

    @Bjarte

    At risk of wading into the politics mere moments after insisting I wouldn’t… all I want to say is, I sympathize with what you’re saying, and I’d add that a certain kind of wholesale fuck-liberalism attitude has taken the forefront not just among individuals, but broadly in certain online GC social domains (eg twitter). And it’s deeply disappointing.

    What people aren’t paying attention to yet, is that the rightward skew is really quite heavily affecting the fragile ecosystem of grassroots GC activism and campaigning orgs that sprung up in the wake of gender nonsense. Right-wing think tanks and other operatives know where to put their money and influence, and that’s where it’s going. They expect a return on investment, and they’re getting it. Distressed and vulnerable big-ticket online personas are in the crosshairs, too. It’s upsetting to see it when it happens. But there are whole, big, structural operations working on this.

    If that sounds too conspiratorial for you, remember that reliable polls showed that the trans issue shifted the US popular vote Trumpward by as much as 2 percent in the last presidential election. Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 percent. That’s literally regime-changing numbers. This is a real battleground in the espionage and influence world. Not paranoia. Just plain facts. If you had seen what I’ve seen… the absolute horrors… I nearly lost my mind, after what I saw…

  20. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Artymorty:

    transparently motivated by your newfound animus towards Graham.

    Here’s a post of mine criticising Graham Linehan for expressing “critical support” for the new-elected Trump Administration, from November 11, 2024. Nothing “newfound” about it.

    https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2024/miscellany-room-12/

  21. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Artymorty,

    I’ve *never* denied that Graham Linehan is a talented comedy writer.

    But I stand by the argument that Arthur Mathews was the more talented member of that writing duo. The Lennon to Linehan’s Paul McCartney, if you will.

    I believe that analysing Mathews’ subsequent body of work, done without Linehan’s involvement, shows that this claim, far from being “wholly unsubstantiated”, holds up.

    Arthur Mathews is:

    * the TV scriptwriter of the Rose D’Or winning comedy, “Toast of Tinseltown”;

    * a successful playwright. Mathews co-wrote a very successful comedy play, “I, Keano”, which was a phenomenon in the Irish Republic – it earned 10 million in ticket sales in a country with 5 million people;

    * an acclaimed non-fiction writer (the history book “Walled In By Hate”, a biography of the controversial Irish politician Kevin O’Higgins). +

    * a cartoonist – he did “Doctor Crawshaft’s World of Pop” for the “New Musical Express” and “The Chairman” for “The Observer Sports Monthly”;

    * and a novelist – he wrote the satirical novel “Well Remembered Days”;

    + https://archive.ph/xMubK

  22. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Where Graham Linehan currently stands on Donald Trump: in an interview with Piers Morgan, Linehan said:

    Someone said to me the other day, ‘Are you worried you’ll be used by the Trump administration, to further their ends?’ And my answer to that is, ‘Use away. Use away.’ I really want to destroy this movement, I want to reveal what the police are doing, and anything that they can do to help would be really appreciated…. when I heard that Trump had won I went into a sort of depression. And then the next time he won I was delighted. Because whatever his flaws and faults are, at least he knows what a woman is. And I think knowing what a woman is, is basic.

    https://www.facebook.com/piersmorganuncensored/videos/graham-linehan-says-he-hopes-to-be-used-by-trump/2556482858046000/

    Real “Christopher Hitchens backs George W. Bush” vibes there.

  23. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    <blockquote!Because whatever his flaws and faults are, at least he knows what a woman is.

    Nope, not even close. Most everyone knows what a woman is, even if they pretend not to. The flaws and faults of Trump overwhelmingly minimize this simple facticity. In Trump’s case you can throw the baby out with the bathwater.

  24. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Because whatever his flaws and faults are, at least he knows what a woman is.

    Nope, not even close. Most everyone knows what a woman is, even if they pretend not to. The flaws and faults of Trump overwhelmingly minimize this simple facticity. In Trump’s case you can throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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