Graham Linehan has admitted to throwing the phone of a young trans protestor across the road (criminal damage), and is now relentlessly stalking her online.

If you still call him a friend, an ally, or even say "he's not a transphobe," you're essentially cheering on a bully. 1/ While most in the "gender critical" movement cheer Graham on, I am sure there are prominent people who view his actions with, at the very least, some queasiness, but I would suspect that they would be terrified to speak up. 2/

They never wanted "debate," they just wanted a world that was snide and cruel to trans people, that mocked trans people because they are trans people. I would recommend watching Season 3 of Heartstopper, filled with empathy and understanding and kindness as an antidote to this. Think about how mean you have to be as, as a literal billionaire, to find a tweet by a non-binary person celebrating being non-binary, which has NO EFFECT on your life whatsoever, and using your power and privilege to direct other people to pour scorn on all non-binary people?

"Gender-critical views" is a nonsense term that transphobes came up with, so they could get the UK legal system to legally codify transphobia as "a protected belief." All you have to do is ask GC people to say how GCism is different from transphobia, in practice. Examples? 1/ Transphobes misgender trans people as a matter of course.

GC people misgender trans people as a matter of course.

Transphohes don't accept the validity of trans people.

GC people don't accept the validity of trans people.

There are 1000s of "gender critical" accounts with their "Shero" Magdalen Berns' image in their headers.

And yet, if you consistently criticise them for their adoration of a dead transphobe - who lived to abuse trans people online - they accuse you of being obsessed with her. They say ridiculous things like 'she's not alive to defend herself.' Imagine Tommy Robinson died tomorrow, and 1000s of people put his image in their headers, and when you criticised them for their adoration they said, 'he's not alive to defend himself.'

In 2020, @jk_rowling wrote an essay which ended with an appeal to stop abusing women online for "having concerns," and by 2024 she's tweeting "fuck off, Nadia" about a woman who has concerns about the dehumanisation of trans people, which is who she always was all along.

The "gender critical" movement and Rowling were never actually against online abuse. In the same essay, Rowling expressed huge admiration for a dead GC woman who regularly abused people in that way, whose beloved catchphrase was "fuck off, you wanker."

Kellie Harrington is an excellent boxer who did Ireland proud. She also once retweeted an anti-immigrant tweet, and a transphobic tweet, and offered a half-apology for the former, but not the latter. Obviously, that tempers celebrating her success in the ring for many people. 1/

It is also going to make a lot of people upset to see other people celebrating her success, when her words have hurt them and their community, and her "apology" was the classic non-apology that doesn't actually address exactly what she did and why she did it. 2/

Last year, Posie Parker, a leader in @jk_rowling 's "gender critical" movement, knowingly did an interview with YouTuber Avi Yemini, a man convicted of assaulting his ex-wife, and weeks later Rowling referred to Parker as a genius, so please spare me this empty-worded guff. 1/ There are a few women in the "gender critical" movement, who still are still desperately clinging to their original feminist principles while trying to stay "GC," who objected to Parker allying with a convicted domestic abuser.

Rowling was not one of them.

Why not? 2/

This is gaslighting. In her 2020 essay on trans rights, @jk_rowling euologised a transphobic YouTuber, who infamously referred to trans people as "fucking blackface actors" and perverts, as an inspiration.

That's the way that people who want trans people dead speak. 1/ It's not a matter of "disagreement."

Imagine Rowling was speaking about young gay people here, after writing an essay where she spoke in glowing terms about someone who spent the waning years of her life calling gay people deviants. Do you see how this is gaslighting now? 2/

A medical treatment for kids, administered for decades, that has a 99% success rate is not 'the greatest medical scandal since lobotomies,' or criminal, or immoral, or evil etc.

The people who support banning puberty blockers have lost their damn minds to transphobia. 1/ If you look at the social media output of any of these people, I guarantee that you will find them misgendering trans adults, regularly, because 'I'm protecting kids from a medical scandal' is a ruse invented by transphobes who don't think ANY trans person is really trans. 2/

.@RichardAyoade, star of The IT Crowd, has described the writer of The IT Crowd as "a man of great principle," when, in reality, Graham has abandoned every principle he (supposedly) had to get back at the people who said a transphobic episode of The IT Crowd was transphobic. 1/ What principles? Women's rights?

Graham supported the Irish pro-choice movement in the 2018 referendum. Today he refers to the women who achieved that victory as "ball-cradling handmaidens," while sharing articles by the anti-choice Irish Religious Right on his feed. 2/

Keira was the infamous 'detransitioner' who initially won a case against Tavistock on puberty blockers, a decision which was overturned on appeal.

Keira was always just a Right Wing stooge, and conspiracy theorist, so these days she tweets in support of Trump like this. 1/ It's worth bearing in mind how completely and utterly broken the UK legal system is on trans issues that they were initially going to ban puberty blockers on the basis of this singular conspiracy theorist's objections. That speaks to a deep bias inbthe judiciary. 2/

Paula Radcliffe has, in the past, said that restrictions on Olympic trans women athletes should be stronger to "avoid manipulation," while yesterday she said that it was "a dangerous line to go down" to restrict a child rapist from competing, and wished him the best of luck. 1/ She pointed out that people who have cheated in the past are also allowed to be Olympic athletes.

Take into account that in the decades since trans women have been allowed to compete in the Olympics, there has been one trans woman athlete who came last in her sport. 2/

If you see that video where Elon Musk vows to "destroy the woke mind virus" because he has a trans daughter who he regards as "dead" to him, you'll understand why so many good people were against schools in the UK being forced to out trans kids to their parents. 1/ Some parents have a vehement, visceral reaction to their kids being trans, because something is broken inside those parents, and their kids need protection from them. That isn't a "woke mind virus," that is basic human rights for children. 2/

One thing you have to understand about high-profile, well-heeled campaigning transphobes is that, for them, this is a tedious dinner party argument that got out of hand - ergo, their constant talk about "winning" - whereas for trans people, it's their lives, their survival. Notice, for example, how most of Graham Linehan's focus, his energy, goes into dissing former friends of his, people who were very likely once sitting down for dinner in his house. How he often speaks of a day when they will line up to apologise to him etc.

Puberty blockers don't make kids infertile. Cis kids take them, often for far longer than trans kids, for precocious puberty.

How about we leave trans healthcare to educated professionals, and informed trans people, and not ignorant, blowhard billionaires? Also, the "identity crisis" for trans people often begins a long time before puberty. That's why trans kids will often socially transition long before puberty. Puberty can cause profound distress, and in some cases that distress is too much for a trans kid to bear.

We don't call transphobes 'transphobes' to 'scare them out' of being transphobic. E.g. saying 'Anita Bryant is a homophobe' doesn't stop Anita Bryant being homophobic. We're identifying a bigotry, and asking society to stand up to it.

Everything isn't about you, Joanne. 1/ This is a common misconception that prominent public people who consistently spout out bigoted rhetoric seem to have, that the aim of public criticism is stop them doing that, and is based on some personal animus, jealousy at their success etc. 2/

If you see a child with a Pride flag, or a Pride Progress Flag, and you think 'that child shouldn't be holding that flag,' it's because you're a person who automatically thinks of sexual acts with you think of LGBT+ people, in way that you don't when think of cishet people. 1/ In 2015, during the Irish referendum, I had a lot of chats with older people who were thinking of voting no, trying to change their minds, and a lot of their objections came down to a single statement: 'I just don't like what they do.' 2/

I started college in 1993, and throughout school "gay" had been used as a synonym for "bad." No-one was out. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Ireland that year, and the Irish people who were campaigning against decriminalisation, then, are today's campaigning transphobes. 1/

https://twitter.com/Matthew_Hodson/status/1813102229882302598

This is thing: those bigots were never convinced they were wrong about LGBT+ people, they were defeated by the wall of love and support that society built around LGBT+ people in Ireland.

The problem is that a lot of people seemed to think the fight was over in 2015....2/

Anyone who says that puberty blockers are damaging kids, doesn't know what they are talking about. Cis kids can still get puberty blockers for precocious puberty under the UK's "ban."

How can it be damaging for trans kids but absolutely fine for cis kids?

It's transphobia. Oh, and this idea that gay kids are being "transed" is horseshit based on absolutely nothing. One of the strands of "evidence" for this offered by the BBC years ago was an anonymous source repeating what an anonymous therapist said an anonymous kid said that their mother said...

@lwhb__ @sally_hines If you had legitimate concerns your movement would have nothing to do with the likes of Berns. Instead, she was and is an integral part.

What am I supposed to make of her words? What are trans people supposed to make of your movement adoring her? Are they supposed to ignore it? @lwhb__ @sally_hines All you seem to want to do is insult me, and you seem completely unprepared to talk about what GCism actually is.

Is it Posie Parker standing in a park demanding that Debbie Hayton detransition and stop using the name Debbie?

Just one of the major thought leaders in the "gender critical" movement, saying that women's, black and gay rights were all contrived as part of "the progress narrative" where "they always needs a new battle to fight," and trans rights is just the latest contrivance.

https://twitter.com/AndrewGold_ok/status/1743996133506969780

Or perhaps women, black, gay and trans people are demographics that are traditionally subjected to bigotry, abuse and violence, and the human race evolved to the point where a lot of people went "hey how about we stop being shitbags to other people because of who they are?"