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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   998 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 4, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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You may be familiar with Graham Linehan, an Irish TV writer best known for co-creating Ireland's single most beloved sitcom Father Ted and also for creating two other well-regarded sitcoms, Black Books and The IT Crowd. In recent years he's pivoted away from TV towards political activism and has become well-known for his aggressive opposition to transactivism, about which his ceaseless pontifications on Twitter earned him a ban (which was reversed following the Musk buyout). By his own admission his obsessive dedication to this cause has cost him professional opportunities, his marriage, and left him financially destitute. I believe his gender-critical Substack is now his primary source of income.

On Monday he returned to the UK from the states to find five armed police officers waiting for him over three tweets he'd posted to X in April. He understandably found the experience so stressful that he was taken to hospital because of his elevated blood pressure. Certain of the officers who interviewed him alluded to the ongoing Sandie Peggie* case in what struck him as sympathetic terms, suggesting they thought they were wasting their time by arresting him.

For two of the offending tweets, no reasonable person could argue that any kind of criminal offense had been committed: the first depicts a photo of a trans protest which he describes as "a photo you can smell", while the second consists of Linehan asserting he hates trans activists because they're homophobic and misogynistic. For the third, one could in theory argue that it constitutes incitement to violence:

If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.

But let's be honest: trans activists using Twitter to urge their allies to assault TERFs (however broadly defined) is as common as dirt. Have any of them been arrested for so doing? Have they fuck. Funnily enough, even various Labour figures (such as health secretary Wes Streeting) are acknowledging they went too far in this instance, as has the Met Police chief.

From the Irish perspective, I find the hypocrisy appalling. The Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap were charged in the UK for, among other things, urging attendees to their gigs to go out and "murder their local MP". Just about everyone I've spoke to thinks this was an outrageous infringement on their freedom of expression and a sign of how hostile the UK has become to same: after all, no reasonable person could interpret their statement as intended literally. But all of the people who were up in arms about Kneecap's being charged with a criminal offense are crowing over Linehan's arrest and calling him a "drama queen" for complaining about his elevated blood pressure. Look at this thread over on /r/ireland, for which the comments were initially set to "approved users only" owing to "far-right brigading" (read: don't interrupt the circlejerk) and have since been locked.

I'm reminded of something I saw in response to the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes ad. If people keep abusing the "Nazi" epithet to the point that being attracted to slim, pretty blondes with big tits makes one a "Nazi", eventually people are just going to shrug their shoulders and say "guess I'm a Nazi so". By the same token, if objecting to the presence of male sex pests** in women's changing rooms, or thinking that someone shouldn't be arrested for expressing gender-critical opinions makes one "far-right" - eventually I'll simply have no choice but to say that's what I am.

*A nurse in Scotland nurse who objected to the presence of a trans-identified male doctor in the female changing rooms of the hospital where she worked, for which she was subjected to an 18-month internal investigation.

**I'm emphatically not asserting that all trans women/trans-identified males are sex pests, but I don't think it's open to debate anymore that short-sighted self-ID legislation enables sex pests.

one could in theory argue that it constitutes incitement to violence

Not in the US, it has to be imminent specific threat. "If X does Y, then you have to do Z, and if that fails, punch him" is not a specific imminent threat. Now, by UK laws, anything goes, whatever they want to het you for they can get you for, they don't have a robust concept of freedom of speech left, so there's nothing do discuss on principle here - they'll arrest you for whatever they want to arrest you for. But in the country where the concept is still alive - US - it is not illegal.

Watching Ken White/Popehat's descent into TDS has been sad, but his complete derangement on this topic is really extremely disappointing to me, as someone who once admired him for his free speech stance. White used to be a very strong and principled First Amendment warrior and frequently mocked the UK's much weaker free speech protections. Now he's saying this is "within shouting distance of prosecution" (another way to say "not prosecutable") and heavily implying that even though he's well aware this would not fly in US courts, he thinks it should.

The slippery slope is real and slippery. You start with light TDS - which is only understandable, I mean look at him, he's a baboon! - and then you go on justifying worse and worse things in service of the "right side" because if you don't, the baboon wins! And you end up defending things that some time ago would horrify you. And each step had been so small you hardly noticed it. I stopped reading Popehat when it started because I knew how it's going to end up, and it did. Happened to many other people too (and organizations, look at ACLU for example).

It's a simple problem to reconcile if you condemn both Kneecap and Mr Linehan. Mr Linehan's first two posts are rather cruel, but ought not to be illegal. His third SHOULD be, but so should anyone calling for TERFs to be killed.

I find Linehan rather odious and dislike his views, but most of them ought not to be illegal.

I'm curious as to what firsthand experience convinced him this was what to spend the rest of his life on this topic; what X-pilled him?

Like JKR, did he brush up against the trans activist complex? They do seem to have this effect on people.

Yeah, I'm curious about that myself. The impression I get is that his TV career had been circling the drain for many years, to which he'd responded by becoming a sort of all-purpose keyboard warrior, taking to Twitter to attack all manner of people (including Kanye West, of all people) as "Gamergaters". At some point he fell down the gender-critical rabbit hole and here we are.

Perhaps the spiciest take I've seen on the whole matter came from Scott, in which he admitted that the spike in trans identification is probably a bad thing and it's worth trying to determine the underlying cause thereof - but then said that no one should bother trying to answer these questions because they'll end up ruining their lives in the process, like Linehan did. (Of course, a major contributing factor to Linehan's life being ruined was trans activists doing everything in their power to ruin it - Linehan claims that the police knocking on his door over tweets he'd posted was the catalyst that caused his wife to leave him. Regardless of whether that was the catalyst, it's undeniably true that the police did knock on his door because trans activists sicced them on him.)

To my mind, "this is a question worth investigating, but you shouldn't try to investigate it because bad actors will try to destroy you if you do" is a sensible position to take, if and only if you include an explicit condemnation of the bad actors trying to destroy people, which Scott doesn't.

The trans people went after him hard for making a very funny episode about an MtF trans person before such things were sensitive. It's both very unkind and rather touching, but in any case the trans complex went after it hard.

At the risk of impromptu psychoanalysing, Graham Linehan has always been on the winning side of the culture wars before: Father Ted affectionately but firmly took the piss out of the Catholic Church just as it was dying out in Ireland and while neither Black Books nor the IT Crowd are exactly politically correct, everyone was in no doubt that their author was basically sound politically.

Then suddenly that got turned around on him and I think it was a big shock. All that time being a feminist and so on and suddenly the winds change and he goes from being universally feted to standing with the baddies. I can imagine that being pretty shattering.

For the third, one could in theory argue that it constitutes incitement to violence

Volokh Conspiracy on this topic

I don't know whether this is indeed punishable under English law; I have a hard enough time keeping track of the law of one country. But someone asked me whether this would be punishable even under US law, so I thought I'd post about it.

The incitement exception to the First Amendment wouldn't apply here. Consider Hess v. Indiana. The Tweet likewise appears to be, "at worst, nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time", and it wasn't "intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent disorder".

US law has also, since Brandenburg and Hess, recognized a solicitation exception. (The leading cases are US v. Williams and US v. Hansen.) I think that, under that exception, a Tweet saying "You should punch trans activist Pat Jones in the balls if you ever come across him" would likely be solicitation even in the absence of imminence (at least so long as Tweet is reasonably understood as serious rather than a joke or hyperbole). But here the advocacy appears not to target any particular person.

I also don't think this would be punishable under the "true threats" exception to the First Amendment. See Counterman v. Colorado and US v. Bagdasarian.

Ken White says that the Tweet is "within shouting distance of prosecutable in the US". Maybe; it's hard to know for sure. But if the question is whether, under modern First Amendment precedents, the Tweet would have been constitutionally protected in US courts, I think the answer is yes.

Ken White says that the Tweet is "within shouting distance of prosecutable in the US". Maybe

Yes, please tell me how all the talk of "punching nazis" was fine, but a joke about kicking trans women in the balls is dangerously close to prosecutable.

That's easy. When those bad people do it, it's bad, when our good people do it, it's not bad. Nazis are bad, so punching them is laudable. Trans people in women's bathrooms are good, so punching them is genocide. It's easy!

something something protected characteristic

There's so many of these news nowadays that I would have seen as prime CWR material a few years ago, things that half of our subreddit swore up and down would never happen, happening, but honestly it hardly raises an eyebrow at this point. What can even be said about this?

One encouraging thing is that this seems to have backfired badly. The tide has turned on the trans issue, arresting people for tweets is retarded, and they picked a target with a lot of media connections, so it's literal frontpage news in British media. I honestly want to send a thank you note to the genious in the Police that gave the order.

I honestly want to send a thank you note to the genious in the Police that gave the order.

The way that the head of the Metropolitan Police asked for the govt to 'review and clarify' the hatespeech laws makes me think the arrest has the whiff of malicious compliance.

The tide has turned on the trans issue

Do you mean in the US or in the UK? Because I don't see any tide turning anywhere in the UK. Maybe I'm ignorant but I see they are merrily arresting people for tweets as they did before, and show no signs of wanting to stop. Yes, media talks about it, so what. Media talks about a lot of things. Is something actually changing?

I agree with SSCReader. You had the Cass Review, the puberty blocker ban, and the "trans women aren't women" ruling. Sure, the British police is committed to be a dystopian nightmare no matter the subject, but the UK has outright led the way worldwide in poring a bucket of cold water on the trans thing. Plus like I said, in this case, I'm pretty sure the overreach is going to cost them.

Is something actually changing?

The UK Supreme Court ruling and the NHS roll back of gender identity treatment are concrete changes.

"NHS England no longer routinely prescribes puberty blockers for people under 18 and has halted access to them outside of specific clinical trials, following a review by Dr. Hilary Cass, due to a lack of evidence for their safety and efficacy in this age group"

"In an “interim update” on how the ruling should be interpreted, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said on Friday that in workplaces and services open to the public, such as hospitals or cafes, “trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities.”"

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/12040/13358660/gender-policy-in-sport-what-are-the-rules-in-football-cricket-boxing-netball-and-others-after-supreme-court-ruling

The current position is basically that trans-women are not women with all that entails for sports, bathrooms and laws, but also don't be a dick about it, because that is not the done thing and they're still a protected group.

OK, I see your point. I guess there is some turning afoot. Makes me feel doubly weird though - first time because I'm not used to UK policies being less insane than US ones, usually it goes the other way in my experience. The second time because the stance of "trans women are men, but you go to jail if you say it without government approval" is still completely insane, just in a different way - now we have a choice between the clown would where a man can become a woman just by saying it, and the clown world where a man can force you to say he's a woman, under the threat of government prosecution, even though the same government does not think it's true - so you are officially forced to lie.

Generally only if you do it in a way which contravenes another law. To demonstrate, If you stand outside a convicted rapists house and yell over and over Bob Smith is a rapist for days on end you might be charged with harrassment. The truth value of your statement isn't what the law is taking issue with. They agree with you hes a rapist, but how, when and how often you say it is the issue.

The trans part isn't really the issue, its just the UK in general is less bothered about restrictions of free speech than the US, especially when it comes to maintaining the peace (charitably put, not rocking the boat if less so) so our harrassment and other speech statutes are fairly broad.

As an anecdote I was back home recently and at a public event a man was (as my mum put it) carrying on about the Good Friday Agreement. He wasn't being threatening, but the police rolled up and hauled him away anyway, with the assistance and full support of the public. Were his free speech rights abrogated? Probably. But it made the event a lot more enjoyable.

If you stand outside a convicted rapists house and yell over and over Bob Smith is a rapist for days on end

But that's not what is happening. I mean yes, if you stand near someone house and yell anything for days on end, that'd be harassment, even if you yell the multiplication table. But nobody camps under trans people homes and yells for days. At least not any of the prominent prosecuted cases did that. The prosecution clearly is done for the contents of the message, not for the form it's expressed in. People get arrested for tweets, and not even for directed tweets. That's about the easiest form of speech to ignore of all possible forms. You can't say it's about "how" - it's all about precluding the possibility of discussing certain topics.

I, of course, exaggerated a bit when I pretended it makes no sense. It makes a lot of sense, if only you let go of the premise that the government is the representative of the people and wants to do what's best for them (or at least wants to align in the general direction of interests of the people). If you face the reality - that the government is a parasite which seeks control over the population and is hostile to anything that threatens this control - then it all makes perfect sense. It doesn't matter whether the government agrees with you or not on the truth value - the mere fact that it told you not to speak that and you did is what must be shut down (you rocked the boat!). That's why in Russia people who say Putin goes too easy on Ukrainians can get jailed as much as people who oppose the war - the problem with both is that they allow themselves to think something Putin didn't think first. That's the offense. UK is not there yet, but they are already on the rails that lead there.

the UK in general is less bothered about restrictions of free speech than the US

I know. UK never had freedom of speech, not even before the Great Awokening, though the abuses usually concentrated along the lines of sleazy lawyers exploiting the system, not governmental censorship per se. Now the government is leading it, hard. Of course they claim it's for "maintaining the peace", though how it makes more peaceful to allow Hamas banners but jail people for English banners, it's a bit hard to understand, unless in the terms of most base cowardice. It's not that rocking the boat is not allowed, it's that some people are allowed to rock the boat, and some aren't.

The current position is basically that trans-women are not women with all that entails for sports, bathrooms and laws, but also don't be a dick about it, because that is not the done thing and they're still a protected group.

"... oh, and don't forget that we'll arrest you for mean-posting about them on Twitter..."

Seems like a bit of a mixed bag tbh

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