Una Mullally: It’s not just Graham Linehan who needs to engage in some soul-searching

One of the great mysteries of Twitter “discourse” (read: arguing) is why the television writer Graham Linehan tweets obsessively about trans issues. If you’ve missed this, lucky you. For some reason, Linehan has made this his issue, and has fallen down a rabbit hole with all the predictable tropes of a moral panic.

It’s been a long, hard slog avoiding and ignoring Linehan’s head-shaking points of view on this topic, but the coalescence of a debate in the UK as part of their gender recognition Act reform has given it legs. In Ireland, we have a gender recognition Act. Any person over 18 can self-determine their gender without medical intervention. A review of the Act recommends that a system of gender recognition be introduced for children with parental consent, and that gender recognition be introduced for people who identify as non-binary (meaning genders that fall outside the male/female binary.) Most people have probably not spent a lot of time thinking about this because they or their family members are not trans or gender-questioning. We have not experienced a divisive debate in Ireland on trans issues. This is not an oversight. On gender, we are culturally different to the UK, and have embarked upon a more sophisticated, democratic and empathic conversation about all things LGBT in recent years. Go us.

I know Linehan speaking on behalf of lesbians isn't the main issue, but as a lesbian myself, it's beyond irritating

Mean-spirited debate

But hark. If there's a mean-spirited debate about this in England, shouldn't we have one, too? Well, no, obviously, but nevertheless, Prime Time interviewed Linehan and others critical of the direction in which trans rights is going for a programme that did just that. Framing the issue in this way is a combination of importing a British spat, and retrospectively manufacturing a debate.

Linehan might think someone like me is too woke to function, or that I just don’t get it. That often seems to be his response to those who challenge his snide remarks and outbursts. But of course, I understand the issues far better than he does. Unlike Linehan, I will not speak for trans people, but the welfare of trans people is of a central concern to me and to my community. I spent the guts of two years working with young people, including trans and non-binary people, LGBT organisations, several government departments and ancillary agencies, developing the National LGBTI+ Youth Strategy. I’ve travelled to North Carolina to discuss with experts and activists one of the lightening rods of trans “debate”, the use of bathrooms by multiple genders, a concept that anyone who has a toilet in their house may be familiar with.

Venezuela will not be easy win for Donald Trump

---

An unquiet life – Erich Maria Remarque and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

---

Martin Turner

---

Cliff Taylor: Ireland could face choice of backstop concessions or no-deal Brexit

---

Funhouse mirror

I reject Linehan’s rhetoric, but I understand how it can happen. Social media holds up a funhouse mirror to society, and if you stare at it long enough, you lose sight of reality. Linehan, nose to the funhouse mirror, has become what he claims to oppose. In claiming to stand up for women, he is in fact shoving women aside. In claiming to speak as an ally, he is in fact shouting women down. This must be disorientating. But all is not lost.

We all make mistakes. We can be influenced by strange things and form weird opinions. We also all have the capacity to change. I know Linehan speaking on behalf of lesbians isn’t the main issue, but as a lesbian myself, it’s beyond irritating. It’s also revealing. Linehan frames us lesbians as a homogenous group, which is very obviously reductive, generalising, othering and demeaning, and exhibits the classic self-righteous supremacist mistake of denying diversity while attempting to acknowledge a minority.

With regards to the safety of women, which is often cited as a part of this “debate”, well, women are always at risk from predatory men, but it just goes to show how incapable we are of having an honest and frank conversation about male violence against women, that people will drag trans people into it as a diversionary proxy.

Train wreck defence

The Prime Time episode might have been forgotten had the programme editor, Donogh Diamond, not turned up on Eoghan McDermott's RTÉ radio programme in a train wreck defence of the show. Diamond spoke confidently to the point that he did not appear to be aware he was undermining himself or the programme.

Current affairs programming does not need to be a battle, with warring sides tumbling into the breach

This dissonance is unfortunately common in media organisations that think they’re catching a mood when really they’re taking the temperature from inside. This is the primary existential flaw with current affairs programming across the broadcaster, and is often at the core of poor editorial choices. Like most media organisations, RTÉ’s defence of itself is rooted in misplaced patronising superiority, as if the audience needs to be taught, the assumption being that they themselves do not already know.

Troubling

"We only have two choices," Diamond said, "either we raise these issues or we don't." For that to be the fundamental binary for Prime Time, and what sounds like an attempt at exonerating the programme from nuance, is troubling. Current affairs programming does not need to be a battle, with warring sides tumbling into the breach. In a sophisticated media landscape, where any amount of "content" is available to viewers in Ireland, this black and white approach is primitive, especially as audiences are increasingly seeking out complex, diverse and smart programming.

Diamond said Linehan spoke “directly to the issue”, which is a TV producer euphemism for a talker who will bypass expertise and batter a topic with the blunt instrument of overblown scaremongering. That’s not what we need. Clearly it’s not just Linehan who needs to engage in some soul-searching. Take a breath, everyone.