#Andrew Doyle

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Oct 14, 2024

It was hardly a plague of locusts, but it was disruptive nonetheless. During the annual LGB Alliance conference at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in Westminster on Friday afternoon, teenage activists unleashed thousands of crickets into the auditorium. The inconvenience was only temporary. The crowd simply relocated to another room and the event went on as before.

As those responsible were apprehended, many people were struck by just how young and posh they were. By this point, it should surprise precisely no-one that anti-gay activism in its current form is a predominately bourgeois pursuit. The symbolism of the crickets was, of course, deliberate. It was an attempt to dehumanise those in attendance, to suggest that they were akin to parasites, vermin, spreaders of disease, a common trope of those who seek to demonise minorities.

The perpetrators were children, and so it would be unwise to speculate too much on their motives. It is likely they were being manipulated by the group that has claimed responsibility, calling itself “Trans Kids Deserve Better”. As Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance said on my show last night:

“Trans kids do deserve better. They deserve better than to be told lies that that they might have been born in the wrong body. They deserve better than to be told that these hormones and surgeries that they are clambering for will somehow solve all their problems. Many are on the autism spectrum. Many are struggling with their sexual orientation. We know that. They deserve better than to be told that we hate them. And they deserve better than to be labelled trans when they’re going through all the turbulence of adolescence, when your feelings about yourself are in constant flux.”

Irrespective of the intentions of the teenagers involved, this was anti-gay activism. To attack a group of lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have assembled to discuss the ongoing threats to their civil rights could hardly be defined in any other way. Likewise, to refer to groups such as LGB Alliance as “anti-trans”, “transphobic” or “hateful” - as activist media outlets such as the Metro and the Guardian have been known to do - is also an anti-gay strategy. In order to address a problem, one needs to label it accurately.

Gender identity ideologues are, by definition, anti-gay. They are campaigning to force their pseudo-religious belief-system onto the rest of society, one that claims that same-sex attraction is a myth, and that a mysterious spiritual sense of “gender” is the defining feature of homosexuality. Even if they have convinced themselves that they are “pro-trans” and “compassionate” and “progressive”, the implementation of their demands would result directly in the demolition of gay rights. And so “anti-gay activism” is not only an accurate description, it also cuts to the heart of what is at stake.

The trans activist movement in its current form is dominated by this belief in a material and stable “gender identity”, what one trans campaigner explained to me as an “essence of male or female”. This is a departure from the theories of Judith Butler, who posits that “gender identity” is an illusion created performatively and repetitively in accordance with societal expectations. For all their deification of Butler, the trans rights movement is insistent that she is wrong on this key point, and that an individual is “born trans” when there is a misalignment of body and “sexed soul” (to borrow Helen Joyce’s phrase).  

This belief is wholly incompatible with the struggle for gay rights, which has always been predicated on the notion that there exist a minority of people who are innately attracted to their own sex. Activist groups such as Stonewall now argue that “homosexuality” is based on gender rather than sex, meaning that it is possible for a man to be a lesbian. He may have been born male (or “assigned male at birth” to borrow the voguish parlance), but his “gender identity” is female and this should be the salient factor when it comes to sexual orientation.

It is no easy feat to explain the contortions of logic on display here. Lesbian dating apps are now replete with men who claim to be women, many fully bearded and bepenised. Likewise, sex clubs for gay men now routinely admit women who have had their breasts removed and believe themselves to be male. The gay male hookup app Grindr even prohibits its users from filtering out women. As the company’s website puts it:

“When designing gender settings on Grindr, it was important to us to not further perpetuate discrimination and harm for the trans and nonbinary community. For this reason, we allow filtering based on gender - you can specify that you want to see men or women - but this will include all men or all women, because trans men are men and trans women are women.”

In other words, a company that has made a fortune from gay men’s sexuality is now shaming its customers for being gay.

The situation is so confusing that we now have mainstream celebrities such as Billy Bragg effectively campaigning against gay rights without realising it. He is not homophobic (as far as I’m aware) and yet he is assiduously promoting a movement whose end goal is the eradication of homosexuality. Bragg’s 1991 song Sexuality included the lyric: “Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away”. Perhaps a more appropriate version would be: “Just because you’re gay, I’ll have you surgically corrected in order to better conform to heterosexual paradigms”, although it wouldn’t scan or rhyme.

This is why to grow up gay in 2024 is considerably more risky than during the time of Section 28 in the 1980s. We have gay conversion therapy being promoted by the NHS in the form of “gender-affirming care”, and children who are gender non-conforming (and therefore statistically far more likely to be homosexual in later life) are being medicalised and shamed for their orientation. Moreover, the very organisations that were originally established to fight for gay rights are now actively working against the interests of gay people.

To release bags of insects into a gathering of homosexuals is the kind of tactic we might once have seen from neo-Nazis and extreme religious fundamentalists. Just because those responsible now claim to be “on the right side of history” does not justify their behaviour or make them any less regressive. These are the new reactionaries, espousing a particularly toxic form of anti-gay ideology because it has the approval of the corporate, media, political and managerial class. Homophobia never went away, it just took on a fresh disguise.

==

[ Source. ]

Gay men are not allowed to filter out women from their dating pool.

[orphanblaque]

we need to stop treating social justice like a religion and start treating it like an action we pursue. you don't have to believe what i believe. but you do have to not cause harm to people who do believe it. today, in a society where we are encouraged by social media to say everything we think, we have to consider what we mean by "harm" though. thoughts are not dangerous, actions are dangerous, as anyone who read 1984 can attest. so we have to consider harm beyond direct physical harm, and consider the larger movement caused by those words that create the harm. in the past, if your crazy cousin said at a family dinner that transpeople weren't real, everyone would roll their eyes and move on because your crazy cousin doesn't have much influence beyond their social circle and they are just gonna talk shit and do jack so it's very easy to manage to not see that cousin again and therefore not hear the talk. but when your crazy cousin starts posting all these things online, they reach a wider audience than just the friends who are all talk, and more importantly, they reach those who don't realize it's supposed to just be talk. and then they start doing shit.

jk rowling saying shit online about trans people is not the same as your crazy cousin rambling about stuff to your family at dinner. she has influence and reach, and people take her words seriously to the point that they go beyond thoughts into actions. and that's when it becomes dangerous. that's not to say talk can't be harmful, but it's not as permanent a harm if one person in your life says it and in order to escape that talk you can move to a more accepting place. if your talk makes everywhere unacceptable to someone because now that talk is everywhere, it's harm.

if you don't believe there is a difference between sex and gender, that's fine, but you have to respect that i believe it and allow me and others to act on our beliefs, so long as they don't hurt you in turn. and if talk about trans and non binary people being real upsets you and you want to walk away from it, feel free to do so, but remember that the stress you are seeking relief from when you want to not hear about trans shit is only a tiny fraction of the stress trans and non binary people are going through considering how your talk spreads and informs people about how to act towards those who are trans and non binary.

now, in considering all of this, social justice cannot be a religion, because it is not about what we believe, it's about how we act. because policing people on what they believe is always and has always been wrong, regardless of how morally right we may feel out beliefs to be. and since social justice is not a religion but an action, touting how much you believe in these things is not a form of activism. it's a form of touting. we're done spreading awareness now. everyone is aware that things are wrong. either doing something to make it right or shut up. and if the only thing you can do to "make it right" is to cause harm to others, then you are not seeking justice, you are seeking vengeance because you are not actually hurt. you are uncomfortable with the feelings that you have and don't know how to deal with them. if that's the case, i refer you back to shut up.

[zmkccommonplace]

Authoritarianism works by stealth.

Andrew Doyle

[krispijnbeek]

Klimaatwetenschap uitgelegd door Jonathan Pie

Klimaatwetenschap is ingewikkeld en de modellen waarmee klimaatwetenschappers werken ook. Ook het taalgebruik van wetenschappers helpt niet altijd mee om het begrijpelijk en behapbaar te maken. Nieuw bericht toevoegen In onderstaande video legt Jonathan Pie (een typetje van de Ierse komiek Andrew Doyle) in normale mensentaal uit wat Joanna Haigh, emeritus Professor atmospheric physics aan het…

[kingsnorthportfolio]

[lifemod17]

Jackboot Jump by Hozier

3Arena, Dublin, night 2 || 12/11/2019

[unapologetiicapathy]

[thepunkmuppet]

yes tara willow and kennedy are amazing barrier-breaking representation and I adore them with my whole entire heart forever and ever, but also here’s just a friendly reminder that:

spike and angel have canonically had sex, as have darla and drusilla

lorne just straight up shamelessly asks angel out that one time (and is. you know. lorne)

I was gonna split it up into like ten different points but honestly just faith and buffy’s entire relationship you know exactly what I mean

also self explanatory, lindsey’s complete and utter obsession with angel that literally ends with his name being his last words. he is not normal about that old man like “it’s not me you wanna screw it’s him” “I wanna know the details, everything he did to you” UM HELLO WHAT

fred canonically has a crush on willow

buffy has a sexual and romantic relationship with a woman in the comics

lorne mentions picking up demon girls in pylea, meanwhile his mother has a whole ass beard and more testosterone than a bodybuilder (also he’s. you know. LORNE)

xander thinks having sex with spike is understandable because he is strong and mysterious and sort of compact but well muscled

illyria exists outside the gender binary

the visions are canonically passed by what is essentially true love’s kiss, and will only transfer if the person romantically loves the other person. in a universe where cordelia didn’t join angel investigations, doyle gave the visions to angel. I am so incredibly normal about this fact

“recently I’ve been wondering what it would be like to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. that doesn’t make me some kind of deviant, does it?”

vampire willow is very intensely bisexual, and angel confirms that vampires hold the same attractions as their human selves

faith “doesn’t take the guys she has a connection with very seriously”

lilah is canonically attracted to cordelia

CANON GAY ANDREW AND HIS DEEP AND HILARIOUS OBSESSION WITH WARREN XANDER AND SPIKE I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

angel has no problem spanking men <3

so yeah basically hey don’t cry all your favs are raging bisexuals :)

[exastria]

on grief.

glennon doyle / andrew garfield / shannon barry / jamie anderson / ocean vuong / dalai lama xiv

[mariwatchesmovies]

重慶森林 | Chungking Express (1994) dir. Wong Kar Wai cine. Christopher Doyle & Andrew Lau Wai-Keung

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Mar 27, 2025

The University of Oxford is at it again. Somehow forgetting that its function is the pursuit and production of knowledge rather than ideological propagandising, its authorities have decided to modify the Latin passages of the degree ceremony to be gender-neutral. Bye bye, magistri (masters) and doctores (doctors); instead, graduates will be referred to as vos (you). One presumes this is to avoid causing offence to ‘non-binary’ students who happen to specialise in the classics.

On a purely theatrical basis, this stripping away of grandeur is disappointing. One of the most enjoyable aspects of matriculating at Oxford was that we had an excuse to dress up in black capes, and when I later graduated I was permitted to wear the flowing bright red garb of the doctor philosophiae. If I had climbed up to the top of the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre on that day, I might have been mistaken for an activist from Fathers for Justice.

These anachronistic touches are surely part of the appeal of studying at Oxford. And although a slight modification to the Latin won’t harm anyone – let’s face it, barely anyone would have noticed – it does point to a deeper societal malaise. Like asking someone for one’s pronouns, it’s a little reminder that we are expected to truckle to this intolerant, regressive and identity-obsessed new state religion.

And let’s not forget that the entire notion of ‘non-binary’ is, for the most part, a status symbol for middle-class narcissists. Why should an 800-year-old ceremony be tweaked to satisfy the demands of these little Veruca Salts who wants the whole world to contort in accordance with their preferences? At the time of my graduation at Oxford I was a huge fan of Madonna, but I didn’t insist that the Vice-Chancellor intone: Modo virginis. Tum primum tactae.

Up until relatively recently, ‘coming out’ as ‘non-binary’ was a means by which uber-privileged celebrities could claim some degree of oppression. It was this generation’s most fashionable label, and was embraced by the likes of Same Smith and Demi Lovato. It was only marginally less ridiculous than Danni Minogue claiming she was ‘queer’ and then later clarifying that she wasn’t interested in women sexually, or Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo – daughter of the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo – announcing that she was ‘demisexual’. This is defined as someone who only feels sexually attracted to someone if they have an emotional bond, which means that Cuomo had effectively ‘come out’ as an old-fashioned heterosexual.

One cannot ‘come out’ as non-binary. The metaphor of ‘coming out’ is specifically related to the revelation of an innate characteristic that one has kept hidden due to societal disapproval. Up until the 1990s, coming out as gay involved a degree of personal risk; gay people were disowned, disinherited, fired, and sometime physically attacked or killed. Coming out as non-binary, a fashionable and celebrated identity, bears no such risks.

Moreover, homosexuality is a verifiably innate characteristic. It is remarkably easy to determine someone’s sexual orientation by scientific means, and to measure degrees of arousal on the basis of erotic stimuli. There is no apparatus in the world that could measure ‘gender identity’ any more than one could hope to measure where someone falls on the spectrum of mods to rockers. And yet we are expected to treat belief in this will-o’-the-wisp as the equivalent of an inherent sexual orientation or racial group. It’s remarkably insulting to minorities who have been persecuted throughout history.

For the sake of the literal-minded, I should point out that when I say that to be non-binary isn’t real, I do not mean to imply that people who call themselves non-binary do not exist. I am pointing out that identity is not the same as material reality; it is all about self-perception. The claim of being non-binary is not even synonymous with ‘intersex’ (not a third sex or evidence of a ‘spectrum’, but rather a developmental condition that results in sexual ambiguity in males and females).

The identity of ‘non-binary’ is based on the notion that one does not feel aligned with stereotypes of male or female. And so it amounts to a reinforcement of traditional ideals of maleness and femaleness. Rather than acknowledging that men and women can behave and dress as they like, to claim to be ‘non-binary’ implies that if men don’t behave like ‘real men’ and women don’t behave like ‘real women’, they are somewhere in between. It’s an oddly conservative form of rebellion.

This is why the Globe Theatre’s 2022 production of I, Joan, based on the life of Joan of Arc, was so reactionary. It presented Joan as ‘non-binary’ because she was powerful, courageous and wore men’s armour. For the woke, female strength and independence is not to be celebrated, but to be explained away. The same goes for the essay on Queen Elizabeth I that appeared around this time on the Globe’s website, referring to the monarch with ‘they/them’ pronouns on the basis that she rhetorically claimed to have ‘the heart and stomach of a king’.

So when former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati last week claimed to be ‘non-binary’, she was not ‘coming out’; she was simply declaring her belief in a quasi-supernatural creed. Of course she is entitled to do that, but that doesn’t magically stop her from being a woman. But just as a friturier may announce his fealty to Ukobach, the demon in charge of frying souls in the underworld, there’s no reason for the rest of us to play along.

--

If this was the 90s, they'd be goths. If this was the 00s, they'd be emos.

I don't believe you're "non-binary" anymore than I believe that Xians are "covered by the blood of Jesus," or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a grotesque mutant donkey.

I don't believe in a biology-independent disembodied sexed essense "gender identity" anymore than I believe in an eternal Xian soul or Xenu and his thetans.

And I don't have to. That's what secularism means.

If your "identity" is invalidated by me not believing in it, then it was never real in the first place.

What I do believe is that nobody believes more strongly in enforcing narrow, rigid sex stereotypes than the people pretending they're breaking them.

[thebajablaster]

someone please lobotomize me

[sergiocanavero]

i'm going insane, andrew minyard is literally felicity worthington

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

Sherlock Holmes randomly retiring because the author got sick of him.

[dirtyriver]

"Dates and Nuts", Archie’s Pal Jughead #38, October 1956, written by Frank Doyle, art by Bill Vigoda

[sergeantjeffersonhammond]

do you think Alex leaving the band could have something related to the rumours of cultural appropriation and bad management flying around hozier

I sincerely hope not and hope that maybe he just had a 10 year contract that expired and that he wants to explore his on music more.

From the outside it has always appeared that Andrew and Alex were close friends who held each other in high regard, that being said, none of use ACTUALLY know these people so there’s no saying what was genuine and what was work.

I do believe they were close in some way, Son of Nyx on his last album is a testament to that in and of itself.

When you look at everything together such as the controversy surrounding Andrew’s partner and the issues some fans had with her appropriation of Native American culture and then the blocking of those upset by both her AND Andrew, Andrew’s manager Caroline unfollowing Alex, Larissa, Melissa, and Joy (which I know could just be people looking into social media too much had this been an isolated event), Kristen hinting at some mental health issues she dealt with before leaving, and Kristen, Melissa, Joy, and Larissa all posting about being unappreciated and about the way Taylor Swift treated her crew and the bonuses she provided it all feels like it points to issues amongst the crew.

Also, Alex appears to be very intentional with comments he has liked on his instagram post by liking ones pointing out how talented he is and how Andrew’s music will not be the same without him while avoiding comments eluding to him rejoining the band at some point in the future.

At the end of the day it’s all speculation and connecting dots where it could just be coincidences but I do think SOMETHING happened. Right now though they all still follow Andrew.