By David Futrelle
Graham Linehan — the onetime comedy writer turned full-time anti-trans activist — has finally been booted from Twitter for good due to what site administrators call his “repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation.”
He will largely not be missed, particularly among those who were the targets of his harassment and smears; he was well-known for siccing his army of followers on trans activists and journalists, smearing them as “groomers” and “child abusers.” (He was also reportedly a regular user of sockpuppet accounts; that’s what Twitter calls “platform manipulation.”)
After his suspension, Linehan retreated to Mumsnet, the UK social networking site for, er, mums that has become a central hangout for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and other transphobes. But more than a few Mumsnet users decided they weren’t having it, responding to his posts with withering criticism. Here’s a sampling:
Ice cold!
NOTE: I removed the section on comments made under Linehan’s name on the right-wing-dominated “free speech” platform Parler because it appears that account was run by someone pretending to be him. (I originally reported the comments as coming from him “or someone pretending to be him.”)
H/T — Thanks to @Now_Adrianne and @mimmymum, from whom I borrowed the screenshots above.
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Oh Vicky P, I am so so sorry for you. I can’t even begin to imagine what you must be going through.
(Tuscarora saying)
I’m so sorry, @VP
@Naglfar
Indeed, heck; it’s actually quite common fact that the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies actually engage in similar de-platforming tactics on Middle Eastern terrorist groups or even hate groups for much the same reason, and it does do considerable damage to those terrorist groups to keep them from proliferating, recruiting and spreading further than they currently are now; especially given the policies of criteria where they meet those definitions of being “terrorist groups” to actually warrant being treated as such and having such tactics implemented against them.
It has been noted that many western, Conservative groups, much less outright Conservative Neo-Reactionary groups would practically and on paper would frankly meet the definition and should be identified under being “terrorist groups” or even just hate groups; but strangely do not seem to be officially identified or treated as such, and in some cases actively try to avoid such an identifier.
The suspicion is that if many of these groups, personalities and other ilk were identified as hate groups; that would also mean de-platforming a lot of mainstream Conservative political pundits and
Conservative “new’s sources”.
I have bad news for horror fans: Stephen King just retweeted one of JK Rowling’s tweets doubling down. It’s possible he doesn’t realize the dogwhistle intent of the tweet, but it is worrying.
So… Alex Jones from Infowars was going on about some kind of child abduction ring on Mars. Accusing Democrats, of course, since it’s always projection. Is it possible he knew about this and changed “Marshall Islands” to “Mars”? The Mars angle was really weird at the time. Weirder than Infowars normally is.
@VP
I am so sorry for your loss.
Update on Steven King: He officially stated that trans* women are women. This might just be performative, but it’s better than nothing. And JK deleted her tweet thanking him for his support.
@Naglfar
Good. I hope JK Rowling falls into complete obscurity and shame.
Thank you, everyone.
@Ooglyboggles
They say you either die a hero or live to see yourself become the villain. JK appears to have opted for the latter. What she is doing is bad, but she is losing followers at a much greater rate than Graham ever was, which shows that people are rejecting her transphobia. In a way, what she has done is aired out the typical TERF talking points where lots of people would notice, prompting condemnations and lots of debunking.
@Naglfar
And I only hope that trend continues because I really do not want her around spreading terf views to young audiences.
@VP – I’m so sorry about that. I hope you have supportive family and friends to help you through this time.
@Naglfar – She deleted her tweet thanking him?? That’s so petty.
A lot of TERFs, like this Graham Lineham character (I don’t know much about him other than what I’ve read on WHTM), seem to be petty and annoying as well as evil.
OT, but I also saw on Twitter that Sacha Baron Cohen “trolled” a pro-Trump event by booking a slot on the stage and performing an over-the-top song, saying e.g. that Trump’s opponents should be injected with the “Wuhan flu” which he also said was simultaneously a) not real and b) created by the Chinese govt. And getting the people there to sing along.
Funny, IMO, but someone on my timeline said it could inadvertently stoke anti-Asian racism. True, he made the whole thing deliberately illogical – and mixed up China and Japan in pretty obvious ways (sushi invented in China? America nuked China??) – but still the song could send the wrong message to someone…I don’t know. It’s not the most important thing to worry about. I’m just curious what others think.
@Ooglyboggles
It looks like the trend will continue, she’s lost over 19,000 followers in the last 2 days and 150,000 in the past month. It took Graham 2 years to lose that many.
@epitome
Yup. TERFs love tiny acts of pettiness.
As for Sasha Baron Cohen, at least he’s not his cousin Simon “extreme male brain” Baron Cohen.
I’m so sorry, VP. I hope you have a strong support system to help you through this.
@Victorious Parasol: 2020 keeps digging new levels of hell, doesn’t it—snatching away precisely whom you’d rely upon for support!
@Vicky P
I am so very sorry to hear of your loss. My your brother rest among the ancestors and find peace.
O/T: TERFs are now buying concealed carry weapons and sound basically like any other gun fetishizing conservatives when they talk about them. It also shows how much they are projecting when they accuse trans* women of violence.
I’m sorry to hear about your brother, VP.
@Naflgar – I’ve actually heard of him. I did a sociolinguistics class this past spring and the topic of my final essay was the language used to talk about autistic & ADHD folks. He was mentioned by someone else, but not positively – gender stereotypes, putting ASD into a narrow mold. The researcher also said that he conflated autism with a lack of empathy (it wasn’t 100% apparent from what she quoted from him, but it wouldn’t surprise me).
Anyway, I looked at the last name and thought, Hm, is he related to the comedian? and he was.
@Epitome
Somewhat relevant to the topic of Graham Linehan is how TERFs have used Simon’s work. They use his conclusion to attack all kinds of autistic trans* people, because they argue that AMAB autistic trans* people must be men because “extreme male brain” and that AFAB autistic trans* people only think they’re not women because of their “extreme male brains” (all while simultaneously insisting that there is no such thing as a “male brain” elsewhere, because bigots don’t generally care much for consistency). Or how they insist we should be denied transition because we can’t truly know our genders (like JK Rowling said). And then there’s how autism is vastly under diagnosed in women because of people like Simon, because it can present differently and is often misdiagnosed because of the prevailing idea that it’s a male thing. So yeah, not a fan.