Pretending To Be a Lesbian On A Dating App to Own The Trans.
If you thought Graham Linehan would calm down and maybe do some self-reflection as to what he is doing is wrong after his Twitter ban in last June, you were mistaken. He’s went from whining about trans people to pretending to be one in a failed attempt to gain attention.
Graham Linehan, or Glinner as he often goes by online, was well-known as an Irish TV creator who had written or co-written several sitcoms and there wasn’t much buzz around him. In 2008, one of his shows released an episode that centers around a transgender woman. The plotline was a classic case of “trans panic.” A man finds out his date is a transgender woman and is not so pleased about it. Several people criticized the episode, but Glinner saw it as harmless. He claimed that the inclusion of a transphobic character did not necessarily meant his show or himself were transphobic. Fair enough. I’ve seen plenty of LGBT media which includes a homophobic or transphobic character and this does not warrant an immediate call to bigotry towards the author. I myself have written stories where a homophobic character caused a conflict with a gay character.
But it’s when he began his anti-transgender activism in the 2010s which truly solidified the theory that Glinner is not so keen on trans people. He’s found himself a comfortable seat within the community of “gender critical” feminism, which opposes intersectional feminism, from which it inherently excludes trans women and bases societal oppression on biological sex while ignoring gender identity in every aspect. It’s a type of feminism which leaves no room for transgender women to voice concerns about the misogynistic experiences they’ve experienced. Over the years he’s dug his heals deeper into the gender critical movement.
Over the years he has voiced support for the LGB Alliance, a UK lobby group whose sole focus is on kicking trans and queer people out of the LGBTQ+ acronym. He has claimed that trans rights movements provide cover for “fetishists” and misogynists. He has even compared trans minors being put on hormone blockers or transitioning as being akin to Nazi eugenics and experiments on children during WWII.
All of this rhetoric lead Glinner to be forever banned from Twitter on June 27th, 2020, for repeated violations of their Terms of Service. Months later in December he created a fake Twitter account as a trans man to insult Colm O’Gorman which was promptly banned. He’s claimed to have made more undiscovered fake Twitter accounts to bypass his permanent suspension. It’s needless to say that Glinner can’t take the loss.
His Twitter ban did not stop him, in fact, it only seemed to have made things worse. On his blog, The Glinner Update, he continued to write about his opposition to the trans movement, but in February of 2021, he seems to have taken his mockery of transgender people to a whole new level.
If you’ve never heard of the app called Her, it’s basically a dating app for women who love women that’s been around since 2013. Glinner, a 52 year old married man, created an account on there. Now, was it to be adulterous? To cheat on his wife? Do we have a Glinner scandal coming up, juicy enough to distract from his transphobia in the Irish tabloids? Nope. It was to pretend to be a transgender person and to make some sort of point against self-identification of transgender people.
On February 18th, Glinner published a post on his blog called “These are not lesbians.” First he chastises Her for DARING to allow transgender people on the app. He then proceeds to shares screenshots of these women’s profiles on the app that he assumed to be transgender because they don’t pass as cisgender. The first seven show the person’s age and their identity of “lesbian” along with a photo. There are with red scribbles to cover any identifying information. As if putting these people’s pictures up wasn’t an enough of invasion of their privacy, after the first seven verified profiles he then shows eleven unverified profiles with people’s NAMES, AGES, and their FULL BIOGRAPHIES on them.
I feel like I don’t even need to explain why this is dangerous. I wouldn’t put it past his large gender critical-obsessed audience to find these people and harass them. With their names, I doubt it’s hard to find a lesbian trans woman of these people’s ages, names, and a photo to go off of in the area near where he lives. One commenter even baselessly claims “I think some of them are trans age as well.” another commenter replying with an LOL. Trans age being an extremely small pedophile movement for adults to claim they identify as children.
It still astounds me how anti-trans people always assume the worst of transgender people as there is no evidence in these profiles that any of the trans women whose profiles he published are “trans age” pedophiles, but that’s the point of gender critical ideology. They claim they just want biological sex to be recognized, but when you see their actions, in reality they baselessly accuse trans women of being creeps and predators and assume the absolute worse of them.
The absurdity of Glinner knows no bounds. He’s now cosplaying as a trans person. I remember a while back, Glinner changed his profile picture to a cartoon version of himself holding a trans flag for some reason, so him pretending to come out as trans to attempt to own the trans community is nothing new.
After the “These are not lesbians” post, he started making his own accounts to troll on Her and made a blog post about it. He posts odd photos of himself with photoshopped fake makeup, dyed hair, and fake pins such as “I ❤ Lesbian Tongues.” He made two updates to his Her profile and his blog before the company shut down his account, to which he whined about being invalidated. Her recognized his real motives: to portray trans people as creepy, predatory, and as weird as possible. Afterwards he ended back up on the app and created two more blog posts about his new accounts. Imagine having the time for this. Do you have nothing better to do?
What’s odd about Glinner’s actions is that he has become who he claims to hate. He doesn’t want “men” to pretend to be a woman on a dating app to be predatory. But then… he does that exact thing anyway? Throughout all of his Her posts, he continually says that he is the same as the trans women on the app. One line reads “Can ANYONE tell me what the difference is between me and these guys?” So if Glinner truly sees these trans women as predatory men, and says over and over again that they’re no different from him… Then he’s as well a predatory man. He says it himself. “There is NO difference between me and the other men on this site.”
This may be a case of The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Or, should I say even lady? Is that invalidating Graham’s Maverique/Neutrois identity and his beep/bop/boop pronouns? (see photo below)
It’s true that maybe some of them could be faking a trans identity to get closer to women. Catfish exist. They’ve existed ever since the Internet was invented. It’s ridiculous to think that catfishing is only done by trans people (or people who claim to be trans) because there always will be people who catfish; regardless of gender identity. Creeps will pretend to be people they aren’t. It’s ridiculous and extreme to imply all trans women shouldn’t be allowed on dating apps for the small chance they could be catfishing.
But the thing is — those people, for the most part, will utilize conventionally attractive photos of cis women they find online to attract their victims because they will attract more people that way. Why on EARTH would a guy pretend to be trans to get more women? It’s a terrible plan. Being trans doesn’t make it any easier to find someone. It’s common for people to say they would never date a trans person under any circumstances, regardless of how they look or where they’re at in their transition. So when people raise concerns that the trans lesbians are secretly predatory men, I just don’t see it. The logic and the motive just don’t make sense.
And if someone sees a trans person on an app and doesn’t want to be with them, the best part of dating apps is that you can reject them and block them!
So Graham, to answer your question: The true difference between the trans people you make fun of on this app and yourself is that they’re probably way less insufferable than you. They haven’t made hating trans people their only personality trait, unlike you.
This whole debacle goes to show how far transphobes are willing to go. It’s one thing to for you to just not like them, to say you think trans people are wrong or to be ignorant. But photoshopping pictures of yourself for a whole account to mock trans folk, creating accounts over and over again after being banned, and to make a new blog post every time you update your account or create a new one? This has probably taken up hours of his time. He’s obsessed.
We get your point dude, it’s the same point made by the anti-trans folk for forever. “If I can identify as a woman, I can identify as a toaster!” And it’s not as hilarious as you think it is, especially when you do it over and over again. I hope he finds a real hobby to fill his time instead of obsession of trans people. But in the meantime I look forward to “I updated my Her account! (Part 782)” coming out in 2026.
