The best thing I saw when I checked Twitter this morning:
We’ve talked about Graham Linehan before. An Irish “comedy” writer who got famous for coasting off the talents of other people on Father Ted, he took criticism to a shitty transphobic joke on The IT Crowd so badly he became a transphobe 24/7. I used to follow him when I first got on Twitter, like I followed a lot of other UK comedy people, but over time his feed became more and more hateful. Just full on hatred for trans people, attempting to sic his followers on anybody who disagreed with him and whinging on how his celebrity friends were deserting him for telling the truth. He lost his friends, his family, his wife and arguably his sanity, but it wasn’t enough to stop his obsession with other people’s genitals. Ultimately he started accusing people of being ‘groomers’ for just talking about trans people. Which was the final straw for Twitter.
A hilarious epilogue followed, as Glinner went crying to Mumsnet, his erstwhile allies in the battle against trans people, only to have the posters there respond like this:
Sorry, who are you and why should I care that you’ve been banned from Twitter? You seem to be a man by the looks of it so why are you posting in the feminism forum? This is a female space.
Never was somebody hoisted on his own petard so beautifully. Thanks, another man. Mumsnet doesn’t need you anymore. On a more serious note, Glinner gone means a huge source of harassment against trans people and their defenders is now gone. There isn’t really anybody with the same sort of reach and audience as him. It once again shows how important no platforming is as a strategy to fight against bigots and nazis.
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