British television host and entertainment personality Jonathan Ross has expressed his support for well known transphobe Graham Linehan.
Linehan, who is best know for creating the comedy shows Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd, has become a big name in British transphobia over the last few years. His public attack against trans people began in December 2016, when he argued about a trans person being featured on the cover of National Geographic.
Since then Linehan has continued a campaign against the trans community, claiming that he believes gender dysphoria exists, but that he doesn't believe that people can change gender, and that it is 'dangerous' for people to transition.
In 2018 Linehan received a police warning from West Yorkshire Police for harassing a trans woman on Twitter, and was banned from contacting her in the future. Despite this, Linehan released her private details, including photographs of her before she transitioned.
Linehan changed his target to trans children, and in 2019 tried to have Lottery funding taken away from the children's charity Mermaids. When Linehan's followers bombarded the National Lottery with complaints they removed funding from Mermaids. Thankfully, a YouTube streamer, HBomberGuy, raised £265,000 for Mermaids in response to this action. Following this, Linehan was condemned in the Scottish Parliament for his actions.
Recently, Linehan has begun to compile a database of 'gender critical' Irish therapists who are willing to perform dangerous and harmful conversion therapy on transgender children, an action that is illegal in Ireland.
Linehan also appeared on the BBC programme Newsnight, where he publicly compared allowing transgender children to receive hormone blockers is comparable to Nazi's experimenting on people.
Whenever he's called out for his actions online Linehan is quick to respond by getting his followers to attack people. He also frequently gets into arguments with women, shutting down any of their complains, which has led to frequent complaints about misogyny.
Despite this very long and public display of open hate towards a vulnerable minority group, Jonathan Ross has come out in support of him.
Following a tweet from Linehan complaining that some people were trying to encourage him to stop harassing trans people, Jonathan Ross replied 'I struggle to understand the opinions of intelligent men I previously admired - Jon Ronson and Billy Bragg - that strike me as tragically ill informed and depressingly self-aggrandising. I know you are paying a heavy price for this G, but I admire and applaud you.'
It's not clear whether the 'celebrity mate' Linehan referred to is either of the people named by Ross, but both Jon Ronson and Billy Bragg have previously expressed support for trans people.
Many have already come out against Ross and his comments, complaining that his support for Linehan and his views is an approval of transphobia.
his dangerous conversion therapy consists of talking
ReplyDeleteyrs chops off tits and penises ( rightly called genital mutilation when practised in 3rd world )
Hmm, you seem to be writing about a science topic you don't understand. Perhaps a quote from the Bible would help?
Delete