Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Barry Humphries and the transgender thought police

The purge continues. The latest victim is Barry Humphries. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is renaming its Barry Award after Humphries was accused of expressing transphobic views. And so-called transphobia, as we know, is the deadliest sin in the PC era. No one may deny the truth of transgenderism. No one may blaspheme against the gospel of genderfluidity. Just as those who questioned the truth of Christ were once cast out, now those who question the truth of trans will have their names erased from comedy awards and their reputations, if not their bodies, burnt at the stake.

Mr Humphries’ crime was to be insufficiently obsequious towards the ideology of transgenderism. He once said transgender is a ‘fashion’. He described gender-reassignment surgery as ‘self-mutilation’. He said Caitlyn Jenner is a ‘publicity-seeking rat-bag’. Dissing Jenner is to the 21st-century what mocking the Virgin Mary was to the 15th. She is the transgender religion’s icon — in the true meaning of that word — and thus must be venerated by all.

Brendan O’Neill
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Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

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