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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 9 months

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By: J. Dreyfus, Esq.

Published: Aug 5, 2023

I came out in 1986. Not ideal timing. I started working professionally in 1990 & was open about it. I worked with gay theatre companies doing gay plays. I was told, repeatedly, that being out would damage my career. I was told to keep it quiet. How it would ‘limit my chances’. 1

Don’t forget that back then, in many people’s minds, being gay & AIDS was synonymous. So it was always difficult. But I refused to listen. I know many people to this day who have chosen to remain quiet about their sexuality. Which is entirely their decision. It didn’t work 2.

..for me. Which was fine too. The Equality Shows by the, then, marvellous & supportive Stonewall, promised just that. Equality. Nothing more. Nothing less. I was invited as one of the very few out gay performers to high kick with The Tiller Girls at the Albert Hall. Along …3

..with Gambaccini, Somerville, O’Grady, Fry etc. All there for equality. For gay, lesbian & bi people. People who were persecuted or loathed for SAME SEX ATTRACTION. Fast forward. Equality, in law, achieved. There were & will always be those that actively despise us..4

..and nothing will change their minds. I was led to believe that I’d no longer be referred to “an openly gay actor” . I’d simply be known as “another actor”. Which was exactly what I hoped for. To be treated NO differently than anyone else. No preferential or patronising …5

..treatment. No excuses. No pandering. No special handling. My hope was that this eternal labelling would fade away. That it no longer would be an issue. That we’d get to a place where no one actually cared. Because then, & only then, could we lay claim to true equality…6

Well, I don’t mind admitting how wrong I was to assume that would be the natural outcome. Fast forward. Now, the labelling is out of all control. Kids are taught that perfectly normal oscillating feelings indicate something is wrong. Or that they’re special & unique. ..7.

Of course they’re going to swallow it hook line & sinker! They’re kids! Of course, they’re going to grow up thinking labelling is the way forward. Identifying ‘as’, instead of ‘with’. But it’s ONLY because it’s been force fed to them by adults who, frankly, should know better. 8

By imposing this insistence on distinguishing yourself through labels, you’ve grossly ADDED to the already complex & difficult time of youth & change. You’ve run with a relatively new & spurious ideology & given kids nothing but confusion, difficulties, mental health issues..9

..& hugely increased anxieties, leading to a leap in bullying & self harm. You’ve encouraged school, clubs, camps, universities & institutions to push this onto kids from year dot. And you NOW sit back & say, “What on earth is going on with young people? Why are some …10.

..so aggressive, so lacking in empathy, so narcissistic, so entitled! Whatever happened??” YOU. You happened. You thought you were doing that right thing. You followed the prevailing wind of the day. You bought the Pokémon, the Tamagotchi, the latest fad… As this trend…11.

..fades, & it will, as all trends do, what are you going to say? How will you explain? How will you disentangle yourselves from this man-made storm you participated in spreading? Please don’t let stubborn pride prevent you from attempting to undo the harm that’s been done 12

Don’t double-down when the evidence of your errors is staring you right in the face. You should have simply left the kids OUT OF IT. But that would have been impossible, wouldn’t it? Because without the kids, this ideology is f**ked…. …right?? /

#James Dreyfus #gender ideology #queer theory #identify as

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nomorerww · 9 months

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James Dreyfus is a grating, condescending youth culture hater (you literally spends every day whining about the "TQ" or making some generalization about them).

He's obviously another flavor of Jones, a fatter wheezing chain smoker version. just as annoying and just as much of a fucking try hard. they're both arguably articulate and that's the only thing that you can praise them for, really.

he derides young people in general in this manner but especially anyonewho identifies as part of the alphabet soup mafia as he calls it

one of his favorite words is "licheraleee"

He's got a cult of similarly bitter old British assholes who scramble to defend his honor if you ever question or criticize anything he does. the worst part about it is that it seems that some of them are women. 🫠 One of the replied to me.

how fookin dare u not kiss old grifter man ass?!

The kind of moid that Dreyfus is isn't the one that actually cares about feminist or women, he's a fucking troll who's found a way to get attention and praise. exactly the type that would attract a fanbase of dumb nonfeminists who think that their job in life is to defend some shitty old man's honor.

he literally makes this tweet at least once every couple of days. and he will spam it. He's obviously desperate for attention, He's even written in Spike recently! there's an opportunity for him to exploit social media to make a little money here and he's going to take it. 🙄

today he decided to serial-reply to another dumb troll, because he never engages with anything more serious or does anything besides condemn the most easily condemnable shit in a super performative way. He's the same as the ideologues on the other side, he doesn't engage with anything more nuanced than this bull.

and these are the fucking jokes that this dude makes, I'm not even joking he replies like this to his irl buddies on twatter afaik:

but he understands that there is like a fucking hierarchy in place of people who had some fame and who got lucky and get ass kissed and interaction despite being shitty, annoying grifters and the rest of us peons who "fight in an empty room" and who have no use but to help make his account more popular because he's such an upright old fart! he's s definitely not exploiting anything

#gc moids #james dreyfus

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mgmpluto · 2 years

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Absolutely Fabulous Season 3 Episode 3 Sex

#GIFcreatedbyMGMpluto #animated gif #AbFab #absolutely fabulous #Jennifer Saunders #Edina Monsoon #Edwina Monsoon #Joanna Lumley #Patsy Stone #James Dreyfus #Ian Gelder #Running #british comedy #bbc

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table-top-horror · 1 year

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Posts made by me for me

#Can't remember if mac hating woman is a big part of his character cuz it's been too long #And Tom could probably survive without Linda but he'd be hard done for a companion #it's always sunny in philadelphia #It's always sunny #mac macdonald #rob mcelhenney #Gimmie gimmie gimmie #BBC #Tom carrel #James dreyfus #Ik ggg is a product of the Times and Tom was probably meant to be more mean spirited but he's still my bastard man #Also TV tropes says it was Britain's answer for will and grace which is so funny

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warningsine · 6 months

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#veep #tv #ben cafferty #tom james #Selina Meyer #julia louis dreyfus #//#sine's edits #it's so hard to choose a fave on veep but ben is definitely among them

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coochiequeens · 7 months

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Personally, I don't want to live in a world where little boys playing with dolls and little girls who don't like wearing pink are subjected to lifelong medical intervention because lunatics think these kids are in the wrong body. If that's the right side of history, then history can go f**k itself." - Graham Linehan

Stretched out on a hospital trolley after a surgeon had removed my cancer-riddled testicle, waiting for a doctor to give me the all-clear to go home, I lazily opened Twitter.

This was five years ago and, at this point, I had not quite nailed my colours to the gender-critical mast. I had defended women being smeared with the slur 'Terf' (for 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist') and was being monitored by trans activists as a result. This made me nervous, though I wasn't quite sure why.

I'd had an inkling of what I was up against when my wife Helen and I played a small part in repealing Ireland's draconian abortion laws. Working with Amnesty International, we appeared in a video in which Helen spoke of terminating a pregnancy because the foetus she was carrying had an abnormality which would have resulted in death moments after birth.

We tried to attend every protest and, at one event, I remember some strange person with a bullhorn bellowing out this nonsense: 'We want the state to pay for abortions!' [general cheering] '...and surgeries for trans people' [puzzled mumbling].

I felt uneasy. Sure, let's talk about trans rights, but first things first. We hadn't yet won the fight on abortion.

In retrospect, this was the first sign I had of the sleight of hand that would allow a sinister movement to attach itself to progressive causes and wrap itself in their stolen banners.

Then, when Ireland voted to overturn the abortion ban, Amnesty Ireland tweeted that this was a victory for 'pregnant people'. I was enraged.

My wife wasn't a 'pregnant person'. She was a woman, and a mother.

But these were only the first ripples of a gathering tsunami of madness. Online, people had started to go dangerously insane. It was such a slow process that I didn't notice it at first, but now, as I lay in hospital, I was collecting my thoughts on the subject.

I knew my positions were thought-through and sound, and I was sure that once people saw I was arguing in good faith, they'd see the problems with gender ideology and we could have a sensible, grown-up conversation about it.

I also told myself that, as co-writer of well-loved television sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, I had an audience out there who would listen to me. So I sent a few tweets carefully outlining my argument.

Meanwhile, I was in intense pain from the wound under my bandage and, when I was finally told I could go home, I couldn't stand up. A bed was found for me and I lay there, enjoying a bit of peace until the morphine wore off.

The visitors had gone and all was quiet. I decided to have a look at Twitter (now X).

My careful explanation of my position had certainly had an impact.

A trans activist and journalist called Parker Molloy, who identifies as a woman and is enraged if anyone disagrees, had sent me a number of increasingly frenzied direct messages.

After the third or fourth time telling Molloy I was in hospital, I ended the conversation. Meanwhile, another tweeter hopped into my replies to say, 'I wish the cancer had won'.

My ordeal had begun. Cast adrift, I was about to lose everything — my career, my marriage, my reputation.

A little bit after my brush with cancer, I brushed with something almost worse. A biological male, now going by the name Stephanie Hayden, was determined to wreck the life of anyone who flouted trans dogma.

A woman was arrested at home in front of her two young children and put in a prison cell for seven hours after she referred to Hayden on Twitter as a man.

When I made a public accusation about Hayden on X, Hayden didn't challenge it.

Instead, I was accused of breaking confidentiality by publicising Hayden's former male identities.

Hayden reported me to the police. The Guardian, whose editors seemed to have given up any pretence of being even-handed on this issue, published an article headlined 'Graham Linehan given police warning after complaint by transgender activist'.

It claimed I had been given a 'verbal harassment warning' by police acting on Hayden's complaint. This was untrue. I'd been phoned by a policeman who seemed confused when I told him that I'd blocked Hayden on Twitter months ago, so could hardly be accused of harassment.

The policeman then said something like 'stay away from her, awright?' and rang off.

For a national newspaper to headline this as a 'harassment warning' — a formal document that needs to be delivered in writing — was disgraceful, but typical of how many journalists liked to frame things that involved feminists and their allies.

After seven months of wrangling, the paper eventually removed the word 'harassment', which was too little, too late.

By then, the 'police warning' had morphed on social media into 'police caution' — which is issued where a crime has been committed and requires an admission of guilt, neither of which had happened. The false claim that I received a police caution for transphobia is constantly repeated to friends and colleagues to justify my cancellation. It was even presented to my publisher as a reason not to publish this book from which you are reading an extract. I found it grimly funny that the police and media were acting as reputation managers for a character like Hayden, but my wife Helen was terrified at being targeted in this way.

Hayden and Adrian Harrop, a Liverpool-based GP who was temporarily suspended from practising medicine as punishment for his aggression towards women on Twitter, trolled a Catholic journalist called Caroline Farrow, live-tweeting a visit to her home in a way that seemed designed to frighten and intimidate her.

She was about to travel to the U.S., but her visa was withdrawn. Harrop tweeted that he'd just visited the U.S. embassy in London: 'Consular staff very efficient at dealing with my important diplomatic business,' he wrote, with a wink emoji.

In a tweet, I called Harrop 'Doctor Do-Much-Harm'. The next morning, the police turned up at my door. I told them I wouldn't be changing my online behaviour one iota, and that Harrop bullied women online.

The policeman nodded, said something about free speech, and left. However, that visit wore heavily on my wife.

But the likes of Hayden and Harrop could not have had such success without accomplices in the police and the Press. It was surreal how swiftly they gained such power over society.

As for my career as a successful television scriptwriter, that proved to be over before the stitches from my cancer operation had healed.

Around this time, I received a letter from Sonia Friedman, one of the biggest theatre producers in London's West End, about me writing a new companion piece for the late Peter Shaffer's classic one-act farce Black Comedy.

I was apparently 'top of our dream list' to pen it.

Black Comedy is possibly the most ingenious farce ever written. I'd seen it years before with David Tennant in the lead and it left me giddy and envious. Now, going from lowly sitcom writer to being considered worthy of pairing with Shaffer had me floating.

Not for long, though. Only a few days later, Shaffer's estate decided on the late playwright's behalf that they 'didn't want to get involved' by 'taking one side or the other'.

More jobs began to fall away. A tour to Australia to teach comedy was cancelled because the company claimed it 'wouldn't be able to afford the security'. I discovered later this was a standard excuse given to those of us declared unclean by the new sacred class.

I'm also the person who worked with comedians Steve Martin and Martin Short for the shortest period of time. Five minutes, I think it was. A producer invited me to develop a comedy-drama TV series in which both would star. I had a flat-out offer and then, within minutes, an email from the same producer rescinding it, I suspect after a Twitter user in his office told him I was a bigot.

Even what I thought would be my pension was taken away from me. There were plans to make a musical of Father Ted, written and directed by me, which I was certain would be a huge hit, perhaps even make my fortune if I could get it right.

I hadn't reckoned how resolute the forces against me actually were, and how quiet my colleagues would be in the face of their onslaught. Sonia Friedman, the producer, told me I was 'on the wrong side of history' and advised me to 'stop talking'.

I suddenly found myself in a raging argument with this powerful woman who held my musical in her hands. But hearing one of these copy-and-pasted, thought-terminating clichés from the mouth of a colleague was more than I could bear.

The meeting ended with each of us trying not to catch the other's eye in case it kicked off again.

I thought at least that Jimmy Mulville, the head of Hat Trick Productions, was on my side.

As the original producer of Father Ted, the company had a big stake in this new venture. But now the Hat Trick people began to go the other way.

I had another meeting around the supposed problem of my defending women and girls, in which, as always, no one could locate the flaw in my analysis as I explained over and over again: 'Children are being hurt. Women are losing their sports, their language, their privacy.'

Finally, I referred to the violent, terroristic nature of trans rights activism. Casually, off-handedly, Jimmy said: 'Well, there's bad behaviour on both sides.'

'Both sides' is a poisonous smear. No one on my side of the argument insists that people should be shunned by polite society. No one on our side wears T-shirts with slogans such as 'Kill all Terfs' and 'Die Terf Scum'.

I was told by one acquaintance: 'Some of the things you've done have been questionable.' 'Give me an example,' I replied. Long pause. 'All right, well maybe not.'

The final act was a meeting in the Hat Trick offices in which Jimmy told me I was to remove my name from Father Ted The Musical or he would not make the show — my show, which I had been tending, rewriting and refining for the best part of half a decade.

Once again, I asked what I was being accused of.

Jimmy rolled his eyes, as if it was self- evident. Desperately, I tried to explain what was happening to women's rights, and to the young girls mutilating themselves because of — 'I DON'T CARE!' Jimmy shouted. I left.

Later, I heard from my agent that in return for declaring me an unperson, Hat Trick was suggesting an up-front payment of £200,000 as an advance on my royalties. Initially, I agreed to go along with it, because I needed the money. But then I changed my mind.

I saw an interview with the mother of one of the women competitors who found themselves up against the trans swimmer Lia Thomas.

Lia was still physically intact and all the girls worked out how many towels to take into the locker room to cover themselves up completely as they changed.

'I asked my daughter what she would do if Lia was changing in there,' said the mother. 'And she said resignedly, 'I'm not sure I'd have a choice.' I still can't believe I had to tell my adult-age daughter that you always have a choice about whether you undress in front of a man.'

What messages have these girls been receiving?

My heart was ripped apart. I closed the door for ever on making any kind of deal with Hat Trick. I was prepared to betray myself for £200,000, but I couldn't abandon my daughter.

BEFORE the gender hoopla, I only knew people in the media. Now I had been so effectively cancelled that virtually no one in the media would return my calls. But I began to count as friends social workers, police officers, solicitors, barristers, doctors, nurses and academics who sided with me or shared my experience.

One of the few people I still know in the creative arts is the choreographer Rosie Kay.

At a party at her home in Birmingham for her company of young dancers — some of whom went by 'preferred' pronouns — the conversation turned to her plan for an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending Orlando.

The discussion turned heated as she explained that she strongly believed in the reality of sex because she and her son had both almost died while she was in labour.

During that ordeal, her womanhood was literally a matter of life and death for her.

Her husband would never know that experience, and that difference between them meant something.

To the little sparrows of the Church of Gender, this was all high heresy, and could not be tolerated. The dancers harangued Rosie to such an extent that she hid in her own bathroom, then they formally complained about her to the company chiefs.

'They cancelled Orlando and then were making efforts to re-educate me, to stop me from centring women's rights in my future work,' Rosie told me. 'I had to resign from the company I founded.'

Then there's the children's author Rachel Rooney, who wrote a picture book called My Body Is Me. Its message was that children should be happy with their body.

But trans rights activists dislike any mention of being happy with your body as it undermines their message that being trans is a thrilling and transformative lifestyle choice.

Tweets called the book terrorist propaganda and likened Rachel to a white supremacist.

The author's 'trade union', the Society of Authors, declined to offer support. So devastating was the experience that Rachel stopped writing books for children and has now taken on a part-time care job.

But what did Rachel do to deserve cancellation? She wrote a beautiful, kind, responsible book for children, and she got the same treatment I received: they tried to destroy her life. Trans activists mostly target women for disagreeing with them, but I'm not the only man to have suffered. Some 30 years after we'd first worked together, I crossed paths once more with the comic actor James Dreyfus (Constable Kevin in The Thin Blue Line).

I persuaded him to sign a letter asking Stonewall, the former lesbian and gay rights charity which has altered its remit and done more than any other institution in the UK to promote extreme gender ideology, to reconsider its stance.

James agreed without hesitation. The letter argued that Stonewall was 'seeking to prevent public debate of these issues by branding as transphobic anyone who questions [its] current trans policies'. It asked the charity to 'commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate'.

Stonewall refused. Even asking the question was painted as a moral failing. Five years later, James is still being hounded by trans rights activists and he has had difficulty finding work.

In 2021, the company Big Finish released Masterful, a celebration of 50 years of Doctor Who's arch-enemy, The Master, who James had played on its audio productions.

The credits featured every living actor who had taken the iconic role… except James. When the history of these years is written, it's not only the extremist activists who will be recalled with revulsion, but also the spineless corporate figures who never made an attempt to resist them. Their inaction contributed to the ruin of James's livelihood.

A brilliant comic actor, a gay man, was abandoned by the very people who should have had his back, because the celebrity class is more interested in looking like they're doing the right thing than actually doing it.

Meanwhile, a chasm was opening up between me and my wife as she watched me lose jobs and opportunities.

Helen was looking for normality, and I was perpetually dismayed and angry. She asked me to cease operations, which she was perfectly within her rights to do to protect our family.

But I couldn't do it. I knew what everyone who's in this fight knows — the Gender Stasi never forgive.

I could never be confident of a having a job again until the entire gender ideology movement, which has caused so much misery, was burnt to ashes.

Even if I had been prepared to recant or keep my mouth shut, it wouldn't do any good because my heresy was out there and would never be forgiven.

I could never be confident of a having a job again until the entire gender ideology movement, which has caused so much misery, was burnt to ashes.

Even if I had been prepared to recant or keep my mouth shut, it wouldn't do any good because my heresy was out there and would never be forgiven.

I was fighting for women and children, sure, but also for my reputation and my ability to make a living.

With my marriage now over, I left the family home and moved into a modest flat. It had a nursing home for old people to one side and an overgrown, neglected graveyard behind it — which is a little too symbolic of my situation for comfort.

Adapted from Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan (Eye Books, £19.99) to be published October 12. © Graham Linehan 2023. To order a copy for £17.99 (offer valid to 15/10/2023; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

#Graham Linehan #TRAs attaching themselves to other causes #TRAs wanting free stuff #Only women can get pregnant #Father Ted #The IT Crowd #how many identities did Hayden have before transitioning?#The Guardian and poor journalism #A TRA got a women’s visa withdrawn and we are supposed to believe the man in a dress is oppressed?#Sonia Friedman is a TRA handmade #Jimmy Mulville is a coward #The Society of Authors abandoned Rachel Rooney #James Dreyfus may have portrayed a villian but he has more integrity than the producers of Big Finish

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vonlipvig · 10 months

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to congress we go.

inspired by and referenced from this leyendecker artwork below the cut

#veep #veep hbo #selina meyer #tom james #julia louis dreyfus #hugh laurie #my art #IM DONE see you next month BYE #i'm really happy with how it came out aaa #i hope it's apparent enough that it's NOT romantic #it's about the rivalry. it's about having to fake politeness in public. about wanting to strangle each other. yknow.#also sorry leyendecker im not doing all that lighting stuff. oops. lol.

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movie-pirate · 4 months

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haveyouseenthisromcom · 2 months

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#movies #polls #enough said #julia louis dreyfus #james gandolfini #nicole holofcener #drama #ended #result: unheard of

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gingerylangylang1979 · 1 year

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Any recommendations for Soft Romantic stories (books or movies) featuring Black Women?

I hope I don’t offend anyone and this is not meant to be a rant against all white women or anything. I also don’t expect every creator to create specifically for me, how can they if they don’t all get my experience? I’m just tired, y’all.

I recently finished the Normal People limited series. I liked it at first but towards the middle I was really unimpressed and the end left me cold. No, I will not read the book. I think the thing that struck me most is how much I just don’t want to engage in any more romantic story lines that involve privileged white ingenues. I just can’t for the love of humanity watch a self absorbed girl rocking the nonchalant French girl aesthetic and strain to find her relatable. I live in Brooklyn. I know these girls. I just can’t relate. But they are not someone who’s inner life I need to get to know better. Maybe this is why I had no desire to ever watch Girls. I have a few white girl friends, they are not like these girls, like. at. all. I also recently watched The Boy Downstairs and The Worst Person in the World. See a theme here? Basically, I have Hulu and was struggling with finding modern romance to watch, thus this losing streak of irritating protagonists. I think Rory Gilmore is perhaps the archetype of this girl? I didn’t make it through the first season of that show. I just didn’t get the hype.

Anyways, this got me thinking that I really, really, really would love to have some GOOD romantic entertainment that features someone that looks like me. But what I don’t want is a soap opera or a typical romance novel formula. ( I can get down with a good telenovela style epic drama, but I want a different flavor here). I think the appeal of genre of films I mentioned is that they try to go deeper, they try to be smarter, nuanced, layered. I get the draw. It’s just none of these characters are that interesting to me and people seem to fall at their feet for no discernible reason. But I want the fluff, the softness, the allusions to great literature and art, the camisoles worn ever so gracefully, travel, and promise. I just don’t want the sense that no matter what these girls are going to be ok and land on their feet. Maybe they have some trauma, but honestly I have trauma, too and I still have to be a Black woman that is still struggling to be valued in relationships, in the work place, in society at large. So no, one shitty parent and sibling is not the totality of my lived experience and the extent of my angst. There is a whole lot of other shit going on. I don’t have a trust fund to fall back on that can also finance all the self care, elite higher education, and travel I desire. I also still live with roommates. See what I’m saying? If you get it, you get it, if you don’t, you don’t.

I’ve been writing a fanfic based on Carmy and Sydney from The Bear. It is so fluffy, but also deep, sensual, witty (at least I think so). Sydney is coming into her full womanhood, defining her career, loving a man who is wounded, and guess what, she’s broke ass fuck but still looks cute and has fun. I need that, but someone else to write it so I can enjoy. Props to all the other fanfic writers! Can we get something like this published or on the screen? FYI, I do not care if the romantic interest is Black, white, Asian, whatever. It does not matter to me. I want intelligent writing and a protagonist who is not aloof, who is vulnerable, delicate, actually works a challenging job, and inspires adoration not just because, but because she is seen. I swear if I have to sit through one more scene of a boring white girl in a perfect messy bun take a half bite of a pastry in slow motion I’m going to scream. Or watch a racially ambiguous girl get fawned over because of course she would because she’s slightly exotic and safe. AKA, she cannot be light skinned or mixed for the love of God!

Side note: I do recommend Good Luck to You Leo Grande (the ending was a bit meh, but the rest excellent and my goodness Emma Thompson always makes me cry) and Enough Said (who knew James Gandolfini was a great romantic lead). Maybe middle aged and older white women are better viewing than millennials and Gen Z?

Anyways, who has recs for my rant?

Edit: I think I found the vibe of what I’m looking for. Imagine all of the love songs from The Sea and the self titled albums from Corinne Bailey Rae. That’s it.

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