In the news

There is nuance to issues around transgender rights and sometimes clashing interests of different groups, e.g the temporary ban on drag queens in Glasgow Pride a few years back (Trans activists: "Drag queens are transphobic!", gay men: "Important part of cultural history!", some feminists: "Excuse me, we've always had some issues with misogyny in drag acts and nobody listened to us."). But glinner doesn't do nuance, he does shouting crude absolutes at the top of his voice. Doesn't help anybody.

The worst behaviour from all angles of that debate is coming from shouty men. You have glinner, you have the unsurprisingly everything-phobic alt-right, there's a nasty segment of antifa bros who are loving the opportunity for a "woke" excuse to attack some women... bit of a shitshow.

There was a spat recently about George, the tomboy from the Famous Five, being claimed as transgender. It's reasonable for transgender people to look back through literature for evidence of their erasure. It's also reasonable for feminists to say "Hang on, are there no tomboys any more? Aren't you reinforcing gender stereotypes by saying some behaviours aren't natural to girds or women?". It's not reasonable that some of the feminists who said so have aligned themselves with the alt-right, with islamophobes and advocates of conversion therapy. It's also not reasonable that all the feminists who asked that question were labelled as TERFs and had death threats from the antifa bros.

Eric Pickles isn't the good guy in that debate. He doesn't give a shit about transgender issues, which wasn't his concern here. He had a shitty record on gay rights issues when he was in actual power. But he has moderated over time, while glinner seems to have gone right off the charts.