Irish comedian kicked off Twitter for saying 'men aren't women'
Twitter has shut down the account of Irish comedian Graham Linehan for stating that men are not women, words the social media company considers "hateful conduct" toward transgender-identifying people.
According to The Guardian, the social media giant reportedly barred the "Father Ted" sitcom creator from the platform for "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation" after he tweeted "men are not women tho" when replying to the Women's Institute wishing transgender members a Happy Pride.
Linehan, who is also known as Glinner, appeared to post on the popular U.K. parenting website Mumsnet about the suspension.
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“I’m really sorry to barge in on you Mumsnettters with my problems, but I’ve been finally suspended from Twitter and I have a feeling they’re either going to ban me or just take my verified tick,” the Saturday post read.
“I’ve submitted an appeal with Twitter and the Better Business Bureau but I thought I’d post here too so people knew what was going on.”
The Irish comedian has in recent years used the platform to criticize transgenderism, frequently noting its harms to gays and lesbians. In a BBC Newsnight interview in February, Linehan expressed his alarm regarding the medicalization of gender, particularly insider joking at the London-based Tavistock clinic where staff would reportedly jest among themselves about the experimental hormonal and surgical gender-transitioning of all the homosexuals in Britain.
Linehan, who reportedly had hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, is not the first left-leaning voice to be struck from the website for stating that "men are not women," a phrase now seen by Twitter as hateful toward transgender-identified people.
In November 2018, Canadian feminist journalist Meghan Murphy was permanently booted from Twitter after she referred to Jessica Yaniv — a male trans activist who infamously alleged that several aestheticians discriminated against him for declining to wax his genitals — as "him." The aestheticians, some of whom worked out of their homes and were ethnic and religious minorities, reportedly told Yaniv they were not trained to wax male genitals and did not offer such services. Murphy had previously tweeted "men aren't women tho" exactly as Linehan had.
Murphy has not been allowed back on the platform and even filed a lawsuit against the company. Twitter's ban of Murphy occurred before the social media company revised its user rules, which forbade "misgendering" as part of its hateful conduct policy that could warrant suspension. The new user rules policy was applied to Murphy retroactively.
In 2018, Linehan received a warning from West Yorkshire police after a Twitter scuffle with the transgender activist Stephanie Hayden, where Hayden accused him of dead-naming — referring to a transgender-identifying person by the name they used before undergoing gender transition.
