There was always a contingent in the gay male world of what we might call the ‘uh-oh’ men. These were self-dramatising, hysterical Western gay men who, like loosed battery hens who run back into their batteries, found their new-found freedoms very difficult to live with. And so they took it upon themselves to dole out summary justice on the rest of us, and the world in general.
We see them depicted in gay male culture before the advent of trans ideology. David Sedaris captured a perfect example in his satirical piece, ‘Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol 3, No 2’, collected in Barrel Fever (1994). Glen is an utterly selfish, narcissistic nightmare who uses the language of gay rights and the shield of his ‘identity’ to cover – badly – for his terrible personality and actions. Another example was the character of Dafydd, the ‘only gay in the village’ in mid-Noughties BBC comedy Little Britain. Like many of the jokes in that series (now widely disowned by the creators for whom it made millions of pounds), the humour came from pointing out that society had moved on. Dafydd was an exhibitionist neurotic stuck in the Eighties, a self-saboteur living in a culture in which nobody else much noticed or cared about his sexuality. Nobody knew then that Dafydd was not the past, but the future.
The cause of trans rights and gender ideology – or genderism – gave these ‘uh-oh’ gay men new purpose and drive, and it brought out hidden ‘uh-oh’ tendencies in others. Suddenly there was something shiny and new to fulminate and froth about, something fresh on which to pin their awful anger and their need to punish and control. And Twitter, now known as X, was the perfect arena in which to do it.
Hellbound and Down 