Times columnist Rod Liddle ‘identifies as young, black, trans chihuahua’
A black chihuahua and Rod Liddle (right), who has hit out at transgender people (bbcquestiontime/twitter and Sarah Wood/flickr)
Rod Liddle has written that he is now “identifying as a young, black, trans chihuahua, and the truth can go whistle,” in an article attacking transgender people.
In his piece in The Sunday Times on November 11, Liddle lashed out at Rachel McKinnon, who made history last month by becoming the first transgender woman to win a world championship in cycling.
The writer, who in 2016 accused transgender people of “pretending to be something you aren’t,” wrote that McKinnon was “a man who decided to become a woman at the age of 29.”
Rod Liddle’s column about transgender people (The Times)
He added that she was “winning women’s cycling races across America and Canada looking like Mr T from The A-Team (except not black).”
According to the columnist—who has also said that gay men’s use of lube during sex was “God’s way of telling you that what you’re about to do is unnatural and perverse”—McKinnon’s ability to become an elite athlete “presages an end to women’s sport.
“When you abolish truth and reality, as a consequence of wanting everybody to be happy, the whole shebang begins to unravel, the whole confected, deluded edifice,” continued Liddle, who also had a piece published in The Spectator on November 11 called “Why I’ve changed my name,” by Rod Mbunga Liddle.
McKinnon has already had to defend herself
McKinnon, a Canadian cyclist who is also an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at South Carolina’s College of Charleston, defended herself after her world championship win, writing: “I train 15-20hrs/week, twice/day 5-6 days/week.
Rachel McKinnon is a transgender, record-breaking cyclist (Rachel V McKinnon/Facebook)
“Yeah… I just jumped off the couch and won. Transphobic bigots, y’all.”
“There’s Rachel McKinnon, a man who decided to become a woman at the age of 29” – Rod Liddle
She also pointed out that transgender people were “disproportionately NOT GREAT at sport. We’re grossly underrepresented in elite sport.”
Liddle also took aim in his column at Tony Bark, a 30-year-old transgender man who hit the headlines last month for pretending to be a dog with his husband Andrew.
Rod Liddle said he was a black transgender chihuahua (Flickr/Will Keightley)
He wrote that Tony’s harmless fondness for animal roleplay was “reasonably strong evidence of mental illness,” but added that it was “arguably less of an impingement than pretending he is a lady (or a man — I haven’t quite got to the bottom of Tony’s psychosis).”
Rod Liddle has made anti-transgender comments before
Liddle was slammed by the Independent Press Standards Organisation in 2015 for a column about the Labour Party’s first ever transgender candidate Emily Brothers in which he “belittled Ms Brothers, her gender identity and her disability.”
The columnist had asked: “Being blind, how did she know she was the wrong sex?”
He followed this up by mocking the idea of “a transgendered guide dog” before mentioning a prospective transgender parent, then saying that the Norse god Odin would one day “cleanse our nation of all purulence and disease.”
Rod Liddle isn’t the first to mock self-identifying people
Many detractors have previously taunted transgender people and the concept of self-identification by saying that they see themselves as creatures—which of course dehumanises trans people—or as part of a different race.
Piers Morgan has made numerous disparaging comments about transgender people (Good Morning Britain/YouTube)
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan said on his show last year: “You can identify as a giraffe if you want,” and has also asked transgender guests whether he could identify as a black woman or an elephant.
In July this year, Monty Python star Terry Gilliam hit out at efforts to increase diversity, renouncing his status as a white man to become “a black lesbian in transition.”
Christian parents Nigel and Sally Rowe went on ITV show This Morning last year to ask: “How far is it going to go? “Are we going to allow children then to come dressed as animals?
“I mean this is extreme, I agree, but, for example, species dysphoria. Do we allow children to then come in [as animals] because they believe they’re an animal?”
