GB News Interviews Graham Linehan

As I’ve said before, I’ve mixed feelings about the imminent demise of GB News. It is a right-wing news network, deliberately founded to provide an ‘objective’ alternative to the ‘wet, woke’, BBC with Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunset Times, Economist and head of the board that runs the increasingly far-right Spectator, as its main man. Well, the channel has failed to attract viewers, advertisers have been put off by what they see as its racist bias, and its main broadcaster now is former chief of the Brexit party, Nigel Farage. Neil has jumped ship like the proverbial rats and it’s highly debatable how long the channel’s investors will put up with it before they finally pull the plug. Plus Rupert Murdoch is planning his own rival in the shape of TVTalk. This won’t have the financial problems of GB News, because it’s going to be financed through subsidies from the other parts of Murdoch’s empire of filth. Which means that Britain could be getting a version of Fox News, a channel so untrustworthy and which tells so many lies that researchers found that people who took no news at all were better informed that viewers of Fox. Salvador Dali once said that he was intent on cretinizing the public. Dali was immensely talented, but greedy, treacherous, perverted and a supporter of General Franco. He died some time in the late ’70s or ’80s. But his mission to turn the west into a region of dribbling morons is being carried on by Dirty Rupe.

On the other hand, GB News does provide a valuable service by inviting guests to speak, who have been blogged or silenced by the other channels and media for their controversial views. These include critics of postmodernism, including Critical Race Theory and the transgender ideology like Helen Pluckrose. Another critic of the transgender ideology is Graham Linehan, the writer of such comedy greats as Father Ted, the IT Crowd, Big Train and co-creator of Black Books. In this interview with Andrew Doyle on GB News’ Free Speech Nation, Linehan talks about his activism challenging the transgender movement. He’s motivated by fear and outrage at the way he feels vulnerable people, especially girls and young women, are being misled into believing themselves to be transgender and the immense harm that such needless transitioning is doing to their bodies and minds. The puberty blockers not only halt the transition to physical adolescence but there is also evidence that it stops the crucial brain development that comes with it. The people given these drugs therefore stay locked in an emotional childhood. The double mastectomies performed on transitioning women leave the patient with no sensation in their chests. The use of male sex hormones causes the womb to atrophy and adhere to other organs, so that the transmen given these hormones often have to have hysterectomies in their 20s. He argues that there is no respectable science backing up the claims of the transgender movement, and that what science there that supports some of their claims comes from very small studies, and so is scientifically highly debatable.

Linehan is also concerned about the way sexually predatory men may claim to be transwomen in order to get into a position to abuse women. One example of this is the recent Wi spa incident, where a Black woman complained about a naked man in the women’s area. Although this was dismissed by pro-transgender activists as a hoax, further witnesses have come forward. And the perpetrator himself had multiple convictions for indecent exposure as well as burglary. He also talks about the way the Girl Guides have extensive, rigorous rules protecting girls and women if men go away with them, but these rules are somehow relaxed with transwomen, as if all such people were equally safe and nice. He draws a comparison between the paedophile scandal in the Roman Catholic church in Ireland. For nearly a century, the priesthood were a protected caste. As a result, paedophiles could join the Roman Catholic clergy confident that they would be protect from prosecution. Transwomen in his view now form a similarly protected class who are somehow held to be immune from any wrongdoing.

Linehan has, unsurprisingly, been accused of transphobia, which he denies. He states that there are transpeople who support him, and says he has met more transpeople through his activism than possibly his critics. He certainly does have his supporters in the trans community, several of whom have appeared on his YouTube channel, The Mess We’re In. As for the position that transwomen aren’t women, he points out that there are transwomen like Debbie Hayden and Blair White who don’t describe themselves as women. He believes that in the coming years we will see a growth in the number of detransitioners, former transpeople who have found that transitioning has not cured their problems with gender identity and expression.

Linehan also views the trans movement as acting against gay people, particularly lesbians. He has spoken about Pride rallies, where much has been said about trans people, but lesbian women aren’t mentioned. He views the trans ideology as a new kind of conversion therapy designed to stop children from being gay. In his view, homophobic parents are putting gender non-conforming children – kids who play or adopt the dress of the opposite sex – forward as transgender out of the fear that they may be gay. They can’t handle that, and it’s easier for them to accept that they are really people of the opposite sex stuck in the wrong body. He’s particularly convinced of this since he heard a joke going round the Tavistock clinic, one of the main transgender clinic, that if they continue transitioning people, soon there won’t be any lesbians left. He also talks about how many gay people are worried about the way the main gay organisations, such as Stonewall, have thrown all their weight behind the trans ideology. They are afraid that when the transgender craze finally breaks and the bankruptcy of the ideology is finally revealed, then ordinary gay people will suffer because of the strong support organisations like Stonewall gave it.

He also talks about the attempts trans rights activists make to silence their opponents. He describes the abuse gender critical feminists receive and the refusal of TRAs to engage in any kind of dialogue with them. He states that a group of gender critical peeps wrote a letter to one of the papers requesting their opponents to tone the abuse down a bit. Not only was this polite request refused, but one of the signatories, a gay man, suffered attempts to wreck his career simply for signing the letter. James Dreyfus, a gay actor, who has appeared in the comedy programmes The Thin Blue Line and Gimme, Gimme, has also suffered from this. Dreyfus has played the Master in one of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays. Yet his gender critical stance has resulted him being airbrushed out of a list of actors who have played the Doctor’s arch-enemy. Trans Rights Activists refuse to appear on programmes or platforms with people like Linehan, stating that they will only debate the issue with trans people. But there’s silence from them when transpeople come forward, who oppose the ideology. They don’t want to debate them either. Linehan has said that the reason one very prominent feminist academic has refused to debate the issue on television is because this woman would be unable to credibly explain how Eddie Izzard is a woman in the same way as people’s mothers.

And Linehan has also suffered for his gender critical feminist views. His own career is comparatively safe, though he mentions that there is one episode of the IT Crowd that the broadcasters tried to censor. This was about one of the characters falling in love with a transwoman. It’s held to be transphobic, but he points out that the joke is actually that the transwoman, although identifying as female, still behaves like a man. Which makes her the ideal partner for the other character, who is quite blokey. His wife, however, suffered far more from attempts to wreck her career, simply because she was married to him.

I realise that this is a very, very, emotive and controversial position, but I strongly believe critics of the transgender movement like Linehan, Kellie-Jay Minshull and others, absolutely deserve to be heard. What should matter in a debate like this is reasoned debate, backed by scientific fact. But I don’t see this coming from the Trans Rights Activists, many of whom, Linehan alleges, really aren’t transgender. Instead I just see abuse, including horrific death threats and violence. For examples of this, go to the Women Are Human site.

I am aware that there are supporters of the new transgender ideology who read this site. I appreciate their fears and their views, and really don’t want them to feel excluded or vulnerable. I repeat: I don’t want to see anyone persecuted, discriminated against or victimised because of their sexuality or sexual orientation. I appreciate that there are people for whom transitioning to the opposite sex may be the best treatment for their condition. The statistics for the number of transpeople murdered in Britain is actually very low – perhaps about three in the last decade or so. It’s far lower than the murders of other demographic groups. But I do understand transpeople’s fears of violence against them. Way back in the 1990s there was a small press magazine for transpeople, Aeon: The Magazine of Transkind. This covered issues such as anti-trans violence. I definitely do not, in any way, support such violence against anyone because of their gender presentation or identification. I am also acutely aware that transgender people are definitely not all paedophiles, rapists or sexual predators, and don’t want to see them tarred as such because of those that are.

But there are real issues surrounding women’s safety, their ability to participate in women’s sports against transwomen, who may have a physical advantage from their former male physique and development. I think there is a problem with psychologically vulnerable young people, particularly girls, being misdiagnosed and put on the track for transition when it is medically inappropriate. One of the other issues Linehan and the gender critical feminists raise is that there are all kinds of medical complications with gender reassignment. It is difficult, painful and expensive, and can lead to poor health for the rest of the life of the transman or -woman. They feel that people with gender dysphoria – the medical term for dissatisfaction with one’s gender identity – are being miss-sold gender reassignment surgery as a cure for this problem when it may not. There are problems with the TRA claim that without surgery, trans-identified people will commit surgery. However, some transpeople have committed surgery, possibly because they have found out that it is not a cure for their problems.

This has certainly happened. Years ago there was a report in the papers about the discovery of the body, police had initially believed, of a young woman. Forensic investigation, however, revealed that this individual was a transwoman. From what I remember of the case, she had drowned herself, leaving a suicide note that read that she now regretted transitioning and wished she could turn back. It’s a tragic case, and I hope whatever side of the debate you’re on, we all agree that everything should be done to stop transpeople, or anyone else, taking their life for whatever reason.

These are vital issues, but any criticism of the trans ideology is being blocked and silenced. North of the border the Maria Miller, a gender critical feminist, is being prosecuted for hate speech because she put up stickers saying ‘Scottish women won’t wheesht’ – a Scots term meaning ‘shut up’ or ‘be silent’ – and a looped ribbon which her opponents claim is a noose. The SNP have also gone further and banned demonstrations outside the Scots parliament after the mass demonstration by Scots women and their male supporters a week or so ago. Every attempt is being made to silence gender critical people through the accusations that they are hateful and transphobic. The LGB Alliance, which believes trans is a separate issue and the gay organisations should return to fighting for gay rights, has been accused of being a hate group.

Horrendous as GB News is, I believe it is performing a vital service by allowing people like Helen Pluckrose and Graham Linehan to speak. This is a service that should be done by the BBC as the country’s public service broadcaster. But it isn’t. Linehan has pointed out that the Corporation backs the trans ideology to the extent that one of its children’s programmes presented a White, heterosexual couple as a pair of lesbians on the grounds that the male partner was trans-identified. He has become so disgusted with the Beeb that he has joined the right-wingers demanding the cancellation of the license fee. As for himself, he and Doyle have crossed swords in the past, though the discussion on here is entirely amicable. Linehan states that the debate is tribal, and that before he got involved in it he believed that everyone on the right really was evil. But after coming into contact with them, he finds that they are not. It’s just a different view of the world. Well, in the case of some Tories, that’s definitely the case. But I still believe that Therese Coffey, Esther McVey, Iain Duncan Smith and their ilk, who have been persecuting the disabled, the unemployed and the poor are genuinely evil, and don’t simply have a different opinion. Not with the number of people their policies have killed.

Controversial as they are, programmes and videos like this are an argument in favour of GB News. I’ve no time for the standard media rhetoric about how neoliberalism is absolutely correct and anyone challenging it, like Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, are evil Trotskyites and communists. That’s all over the media, including supposedly left-wing papers like the Groan and the Mirror. But the culture war issues cut across political boundaries and are the best argument for the channel’s continuation. But it’s these issues that are alienating the younger staff and causing them to leave.

I’m no fan of GB News nor the horrendous Farage and Brillo. I don’t think it’s remotely a loss to British broadcasting that the man who has no problems with Taki writing horrendous anti-Semitic screeds and praises the neo-Nazi Greek Golden Dawn in the pages of the Spectator. But I am afraid that dissenting voices that genuinely need to be heard will be left without a platform when it goes.

And I am very much afraid of Dirty Rupe’s planned replacement.

Helen Pluckrose on Combating Postmodernism and Critical Race Theory on GB News

As Zelo Street and others have pointed out, GB News appears to be heading down the tubes fast. Andrew Neil has departed and viewing figures continue to be dire, despite the broadcaster taking on Nigel Farage. They have tried and failed to entice Piers Morgan to join them, and are considering taking on Ann Widdecombe and Martin Daubney, both from the Brexit party, and the Conservative blogger Mahyar Tousi. The Street points out this is hardly likely to inspire more people to start watching, as Widdecombe is a joke and Daubney ‘a dishonest whacko’. The channel also seems to be losing younger staff, who wanted it to be a mainstream channel with a right-wing slant not the British equivalent of Faux News. These employees are particularly upset that GB News has been discussing culture war topics. I have to say that I’m in two minds about the channel’s demise. I’m not particularly unhappy that the right-wing alternative to the ‘woke, wet’ BBC looks like it’s in terminal decline. On the other hand, it is providing a valuable service by tackling the culture war and issues like Critical Race Theory and the trans ideology. At the moment its one of the very few people willing to broadcast interviews with Graham Linehan, the writer of Father Ted, the IT Crowd, Big Train and co-creator of Black Books, and allow him to explain why the trans ideology is so dangerous and harmful. Much of the media is determined to deny him and other gender critical activists space, or smear them as ‘TERFS’ and transphobes. It similarly appears to be one of the few British broadcasters willing to interview Helen Pluckrose, a feminist scholar who is a bitter critic of Postmodern ideologies like Queer Theory, which underpins the trans movement, and Critical Race Theory. Yesterday I found this video of an interview of Pluckrose by presenter Andrew Doyle.

Pluckrose’s background is in medieval literature. She first became alerted to the damage Postmodernism was doing to genuine academic research and scholarship when she was studying 14th century women’s religious writing. She was interested in how medieval women used the Christian narrative to empower themselves. However, her approach conflicted with that of her supervisors, who wished to see her pursue a postmodern approach to the topic. She also encountered the same opposition when trying to study Shakespeare. There is considerable interest amongst some academics in searching the Bard for racism. But she points out that the 17th century was the period when colour racism was only just emerging. Shakespeare, whom she considers to have been a Humanist with Roman Catholic elements, was behind the times. He belonged to an age when religion was still more important than race. She got into particular trouble when discussing why Desdemona was attracted to Othello. She believes it was because the Moor was a hero. She was, however, told that she couldn’t say that, because it would offend certain Black religious communities in America. So much for trying to see the past on its own terms.

As Pluckrose describes it, Postmodernism is a form of philosophy which rejects empirical science and debate in favour of viewing the world through the use of language. There is no objective truth, and what is considered knowledge is socially constructed, expressing and maintaining power relationships. Hence western science is fundamentally about maintaining the social status of elite White men. It’s based on the philosophy of Foucault, although she states that Foucault would not have been a fan of what his successors have made of his theories. She discusses intersectionality, and how it sees power in terms of the privileged relationships between distinct groups. Intersectional postmodernists, for example, would see her as possessing heterosexual privilege against Doyle, who I presume is gay. At the same Doyle has male privilege over her. Critical Race Theory developed from legal scholarship and sees race relations through the same lens. As I understand it, it sees White people as privileged and racist, without exception. These new forms of Postmodernism emerged with a new generation of activist scholars in the 1980s.

She describes the real intolerance at the heart of Critical Race Theorists like Robin di Angelo and Ibrahim X. Kehindi. These two see the world purely in black and white terms. You’re either racist or anti-racist. Anti-racist means you agree with them. If you’re race neutral, you’re still racist. You’re also racist if you disagree with them. And from what I heard here, some of their doctrines seem designed to cause racism rather than cure it. In one of her wretched books, for example, di Angelo claims that White people being nice to Blacks is also a form of racism. Doyle looks astonished and says, ‘She can’t mean we must be…’ He is met with a silent, rueful nod from Pluckrose. Pluckrose goes on to describe how, when she was reading the book in which di Angelo argues this nonsense, she found herself checking herself when she met a Black woman and her little girl out walking. The little girl was lovely, and so Pluckrose smiled at her. She then started worrying about that simple gesture of ordinary humanity in case she was perpetuating racism. I realise Black people have complained about being patronised by Whites expressing friendship, but attitudes like di Angelo’s make genuine good relations between people of different races extremely difficult.

At the same time, the Postmodernists’ concern with language also causes difficulty. They don’t regard something as existing before a word was invented to describe it. Thus, despite the existence of bisexuality in ancient Greece, they don’t believe homosexuals existed until the word was coined sometime in the 19th or 20th centuries. They are also extremely fragile and do everything they can to silence their critics rather than engage with them, and react with extreme rage to any criticism. Pluckrose states that it is because they really do believe that counterarguments are a form of violence comparable to physical attack. Doyle states that he has had personal experience of this. When he was debating someone from one of the Postmodernist groups they burst into tears, complaining that by advancing his arguments Doyle somehow wished to harm them.

Pluckrose herself has founded an organisation to help people, who have become victims of this nonsense, and describes how it can be combated. She describes herself as a liberal, who wishes issues to be settled by the Enlightenment methods of science and rational debate. She wants Postmodernists to engage with liberals, who believe in individualism, science and universalism, as well as Marxists. But they won’t. She’d like there to be a conversation between trans activists and gender critical feminists, but this isn’t happening. While she’s not aligned with the extremists on either side, she is more worried about the gender critical feminists as they are being denied their right to speak. She also talks about the fundamental disagreement between the two groups. Gender critical feminists see everything as determined by biological sex. The trans activists stress gender, socially constructed sexual identity. Thus the two aren’t talking about the same thing when it comes to debate, hence part of the failure to find a common ground for agreement. When it comes to racism, she advises her viewers on the way to reply to any communications from HR departments about being put on anti-racist courses. She believes that one of the reasons Critical Race Theory has made such deep inroads is because most people genuinely don’t want to be, or to be seen to be, racist. At the same time, anti-racist activists have become more intolerant because the legislation designed to combat racism is unable to remove other forms of racism. She genuinely wants to see racism and other forms of bigotry fought, and objects to Critical Race Theory and Postmodernism because it is actually extremely poor at doing so. She advises her viewers that if they get any messages about anti-racism training from their employer, they are to reply congratulating them about doing something to tackle racism. However, they are to follow this up with other messages asking for assurances that this training will not require Whites and Blacks to feel a particularly way. In the case of Whites, this is guilt for their institutional privilege and racism, and in the case of Blacks, to feel they are victims of White privilege and racism.

This is important, as the BBC, NHS, Oxfam and various big companies have all bought into Critical Race Theory, while it also seems supported by left-wing newspapers like the Guardian. Oxfam and the NHS have demanded their workers fill questionnaires about how they see White privilege, for example. And some of those promoting Critical Race Theory could themselves be seen as racist. They discuss Priyamvada Gopal, a professor of colonial and post-colonial literature at Oxbridge. Gopal talks much about ‘Whiteness’, but its clear that sometimes she’s not talking about ‘Whiteness’ but about White people. A few months ago she tweeted that ‘White lives have no value’ adding underneath ‘as White lives’. They state that she maintains she wasn’t being racist, but she would have been well aware how her comments would have been interpreted. At one level, Critical Race Theory’s assumption that all Whites are racist is nothing new. My mother was told she had to be racist back in the 1980s by a group of anti-racism activists sent in to her school. She must be racist, she was told, because she was White and middle class. This says volumes about the unacknowledged racism of these activists.

Postmodern doctrines like Critical Race Theory are seriously damaging real scholarship while at the same time propagating their own forms of racism and intolerance. Pluckrose and her fellows are to be applauded for doing what they can to combat them. And while GB News really is a terrible right-wing broadcaster, it is actually doing immense good by providing an opportunity for the critics of such irrationality and intolerance to speak.