Silencing the truth tribe

The latest in the long list of people to be silenced for pointing out the obvious (e.g. a woman is an adult female human) is Irish writer and director Graham Linehan (writer for The IT Crowd). His Twitter account, under the handle @glinner, was permanently suspended this weekend. Linehan had been locked out of Twitter before but was allowed back in after deleting tweets. This weekend’s suspension followed this tweet: “men aren’t women tho.” In a statement published by Linehan he says that Twitter has provided no reason for the ban from this social media platform. Given that the same thing happened to me ten days ago—I still have not received an explanation for being locked out of my account and it became restricted within days of my being locked out—this is easy to believe.

Before Linehan many, many feminists had been deplatformed. In 2019 British feminist activist Kelly-Jay Keen (a.k.a. Posie Parker) was banned from Twitter and her Facebook account was disabled without her consent. Keen stands for women and girls and fights the erosion of their rights—as does Linehan. Her views, which would have been considered innocuous a few years ago—she believes that, for example, rapists don’t belong in women’s prisons and men don’t belong in women’s changing rooms—are now considered controversial, in this age when quoting the dictionary definition of the word woman leads to accusations of being transphobic and bigoted.

Also in 2019 Canadian feminist and editor of Feminist Current, Meghan Murphy, was banned from Twitter. In a BBC article about her she is quoted as saying, “Women’s rights exist because women are born female, not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear makeup. There is an understanding in law that women face oppression and discrimination because they are born female.”[1]

Keen and Murphy are far from isolated cases. Many women who are now active on Spinster were banned from Twitter for expressing feminist views.

Linehan stated this weekend: “For many people social media is their only way of getting their message to the public. Twitter should make clear to its users how it applies its rules. Because certain rights do not go away simply because Twitter refuses to respect them. I have the right to say that a biological man is not a woman. I have the right to express views on this subject that I share with JK Rowling and 95% of the world's population. We can and should respect people with body dysphoria, and support their rights as equal members of society, while opposing the harmful reality-denying ideology and actions of many trans rights activists. Feminists have the right to draw attention to the relentless harassment women are receiving online from these same activists. This includes telling JK Rowling to die in extremely graphic and sexual detail underneath Twitter posts where she’s praising children's artwork. Lesbians have the right to say that biological men are not lesbians, and that they don’t want to have sex with men who say they are lesbians. The coercion and gaslighting young lesbians are suffering at the moment is one of the scandals of our age.”

I highly recommend reading Linehan’s full statement, which can be found here:

https://glinner.co.uk/statement-from-graham-linehan/ 

It shouldn’t be controversial to quote the dictionary. It shouldn’t be considered hateful to say that women and girls have the right to complain about men in their spaces. Linehan, Keen, Murphy and countless others should not be silenced for telling the truth. The insanity must stop. 


[1] BBC New, Twitter-ban feminist defends transgender views ahead of Holyrood meeting, May 22, 2019  

​© 2020 Alline Cormier

Graham Linehan Photo credit: The Guardian