Is Richard Ayoade a TERF?

I quite like Richard Ayoade. I’ve never been much of a fan of The IT Crowd, and that has nothing to do with ol’ angry twitter man ‘Glinner’, I just don’t find it especially funny. But Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, that shit had me howling, and the character the comedian portrays, Dean Lerner, is a highlight. Whatsmore, if Ayoade is on a panel show, I know it’ll probably be pretty entertaining. I find his brand of socially awkward, half pretentious, half self-depricating humour works for me. And he seems to show a genuine love of film, something that I can get behind fully. I’ve never seen Submarine — it looks like a Wes Anderson wannabe, and I’ve grown out of Wes Anderson, let alone his imitators — but I did quite like The Double, even if I had forgot it existed until a couple of hours ago while researching for this piece. But is Richard Ayoade anti-trans? Well… I dunno. But at the point of writing, he’s more anti-trans than not.

For those of you who don’t know, Graham Linehan — also known as ‘Glinner’ — used to be a successful comedy writer, he was the man behind Father Ted, one of the co-writers on Black Books, and he created the aforementioned The IT Crowd, which starred Ayoade. But in more recent years, ‘Glinner’ has chosen to pack in his career as a comedy writer and instead become a loud, angry man on twitter, who verbally abuses people and encourages his supporters to pile on anyone who dares disagree with him and his anti-trans campaign. In fact, so aggressive is his approach here that even other anti-trans campaigners have attempted to distance themselves from him. More recently still, he appeared on Talk TV’s Piers Morgan Uncensored, where he had to be cut off by the presenter — Rosanna Lockwood — because he was going off on one and was in danger of actually harming his own defence in an upcoming court case. At this point, if you’re not aware of ‘Glinner’ and his rabid obsession with all things trans people, you’re probably just one of those people who’s not especially interested in the news in general. And good on ya! Lucky you.

But if there’s one person who I can be absolutely, 100% certain is aware of the ongoing clusterfuck that is all things ‘Glinner’, well… it’s Richard Ayoade. And not just because I don’t really see how you can run in those circles and not be aware of it, but because, well… he endorsed Linehan’s upcoming memoir, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy, in which, according the book’s blurb, “he explains why he chose the hill of women and girls’ rights to die on — and why, despite the hardship of cancellation, he’s not coming down from it any time soon”.

Now putting aside the fact that framing what ‘Glinner’ does as dying on the hill of women and girls’ rights is just absolute claptrap, and putting aside the hilarity of the fact that the title of the book itself acts as a sort of weird self admission (How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy… yes, Graham. You did do those things), let’s assume for a moment that — regardless of where you sit on the ‘trans debate’ — you’re capable enough to acknowledge that there are indeed two sides here, and that by endorsing a work that not only comes from one of the most vocal of one side, but is also specifically about their experiences being on that side, that you’re kinda endorsing a specific side, well… yeah. For all the ‘what has Ayoade said that’s transphobic’ people out there, the answer is nadda. He’s said nothing transphobic. He’s just lent his name and praise to a person who has said overtly, openly, horribly transphobic things — repeatedly — and more specifically, has lent that praise to that person’s own biased version of events, one that frames posting pictures of people to your rabid army of fans, calling people peadophiles and groomers, and being so disgustingly horrible that you were outright banned from twitter as simply choosing the hill of women and girls’ rights to die on.

So, okay. Let’s be fair and reasonable about this. Let’s take a look at what Ayoade actually said about the book, shall we?

“Graham Linehan has long been one of my favourite writers — and this book shows that his brilliance in prose is the equal to his brilliance as a screenwriter. It unfolds with the urgency of a Sam Fuller film: that of a man who has been through something that few have experienced but has managed to return, undaunted, to tell us the tale.”

That’s the quote, in full, that appears in the review section of the book on Amazon. That’s the quote that has the twittersphere up in arms, some declairing Ayoade a TERF, others arguing that he’s not actually done anything even remotely wrong, and then using that as yet another example of cancel culture gone mad and whatever. And look, you might very well be going, ‘ah, but it’s possible to acknowledge the talent in the prose, or the storytelling skills, without actually endorsing the writer and their views’ and, well… yeah! You’re absolutely right. It is totally possible to do that, and it’s also something that I personally don’t necessarily have a problem with. One of my fav films is Rosemary’s Baby, but Roman Polanski is a peadophile rapist, and I in absolutely no way shape or form endorse him. It is, indeed, very much possible to praise someone’s work while not agreeing with, endorsing, or supporting their views.

But, er… you kinda gotta make that clear, yeah? Like, you have to actually say that’s what you’re doing. Because if you don’t, well… how is anyone gonna know? The assumption is gonna be that, actually, you support both the work and the creator of the work, and this is where Ayoade now finds himself. Because while you’re right, he hasn’t actually said or done anything transphobic, he has lent his name and praise to an open transphobe, and has done so in a way that a) is being used to push the rhetoric espoused by said transphobe, and b) is being co-opted as an endorsement of that rhetoric. Ayoade may not have picked a side in the sense that he’s openly picked a side, but he has in the sense that he’s lent his voice to one and not to the other. Now, tarring someone as guilty by association is never a great look, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happens. And it also doesn’t change the fact that for everyone who tars him as ‘guilty’ by association, there’s a whole other group that tars him as ‘innocent’ by the same. And this does matter, as much as anyone likes to play dumb and pretend like it doesn’t. And, of course, this is made all the worse by the fact that, well… the specific work in question is about the transphobia.

The simple fact is that Ayoade’s name is now positively linked to a work that claims Linehan’s propensity for lashing out at people with often false and baseless claims — including celebrities like David Tennant, whom he accused of being a ‘groomer’ for wearing a T-shirt that read “Leave Trans Kids Alone You Absolute Freaks’ — that very much does often lead to people finding themselves in dangerous situations, as little more than standing up for the rights of women and girls. And, like, er… that’s a problem, because it will be used as validation and support for that rhetoric and that behaviour, and it doesn’t matter how much people try to downplay it, it just will. We all know that, and pretending like you don’t doesn’t change that fact.

And herein lay the real problem here. It’s not that Ayoade himself has said something openly transphobic, it’s that he’s allowing his name to be added to the list of people who are transphobic, by those on both sides. When you enter the conversation, even tangentially, there are gonna be people who take it as an endorsement of one side or the other. And if I were Ayoade right now, I’d be looking at this and thinking, either way, that it’s probably a good idea to make clear what I actually think about this whole thing. Because as it currently stands, either he’s being labelled a transphobe when he isn’t, or he’s confusing the situation over whether or not he has lent his name to a cause he supports. And whether you believe trans people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, or you believe that they don’t, that should bother you because, look, at least when people are open about their views you know one way or the other where they stand.