The Saga of Róisín Murphy

And the insane world in which we live

September 3, 2023

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I had never heard of Irish pop star Róisín Murphy before about a week and a half ago. In my defense, though, I have never heard of most American pop stars either. I now know that she is an accomplished singer song-writer and a 50-year-old mother. Her YouTube channel is here - give her a listen (and a follow on Twitter/X (I’m still not used to that) if you’d like)! Her eighth album, Hit Parade is due to be released later this month. Her recording company is Ninja Tune.

Murphy is the latest example of what can happen to anyone who has the gall to say something true in the current cultural climate.

Here’s what happened, in sum. About a week and a half ago, she posted a (private) Facebook comment on a post about Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan that said this:

For anyone who doesn’t know, puberty blockers are sometimes prescribed for kids who show signs of entering puberty at an earlier stage than normal, before their peers (this is known as precocious puberty). It’s confusing and challenging, psychologically and emotionally, for a kid to enter puberty at, say, seven or eight. Doctors prescribe them and kids take them for a short period of time, then go off them at an age that is more typical for the onset of puberty.

There are arguments for and against that medical practice, but the point that Murphy was getting at is that these days, they are prescribed for kids who are not diagnosed with precocious puberty too. These are typical pre-pubescent kids who, for whatever reason, believe they’re the opposite sex. Maybe they were taught this by teachers, or perhaps by their parents. It happens frequently these days; there are thousands of kids in the US alone who are on either puberty blockers or wrong-sex hormones. It’s terrible and I’m 100% on Murphy’s side in opposing it. And Big Pharma is laughing all the way to the bank.

A few days after she made this comment, she posted an apology of sorts.

Pretty much no one was happy with her apology. People who call themselves “gender critical” criticized her for apologizing at all. People on the side of mutilating kids called it an “apology non-apology.” Here is an article called “Roisin Murphy, and Why You Should Never, Ever Apologise to the Mob.” It states:

First, apologies to mobs never appease the mob. They do two things instead: First, they cut you off from all the very many people who supported you against the mob in the first place: Roisin Murphy now has no allies, because she cannot be seen to accept support from the very many people who agreed with her in the first place that “puberty blockers are fucked”. An apology for holding that view could hardly be considered genuine if she were to continue accepting support from other people who hold it.

The second thing it does is to place you in the hands of the mob, and hand over total power to them: You have done the equivalent of pleading guilty in a court of law and asked for mercy. Courts, at least, customarily dole out mercy. Mobs never do.

I agree 100%.

Notwithstanding her apology, Ninja Tune announced that it would not be promoting her upcoming album and that it would donate revenue from record sales to “trans charities,” putting Murphy in an impossible position - if records don’t sell, she loses money but if they do sell, proceeds will fund puberty blockers, which she was opposing in the first place. Two London venues cancelled gigs.

Even though I agree it’s always a bad idea to apologize to the mob, I (like most “gender criticals” and radical feminists) have a tremendous amount of sympathy for her. Yesterday I put out a tweet thread directed at her, where I said:

That thread got some really nice engagement from across the pond:

After this person said something nice to me I followed her and she replied with this, which made me laugh so hard I spit out whatever I was drinking:

So, Róisín Murphy became the latest celebrity to find out what happens when you challenge the orthodoxy of “gender identity,” especially if you’re a woman.

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But here is a lesser-known aspect of the story.

Most people credit a man named Aidan Comerford for getting Murphy cancelled by screenshotting and tweeting Murphy’s (private) Facebook comment. I don’t know too much about Comerford, other than he’s pretty well known for hating women on Twitter, the author of the above piece about why you should never apologize to the mob calls him an “entirely demented trans rights campaigner,” and he has spent years harassing Magdalen Berns, a British lesbian YouTuber who tragically died of a brain tumor at the age of 36.

Comerford did indeed tweet a screenshot of Murphy’s (private) Facebook comment on August 23. But if you look carefully at the timestamps, you can see that someone else, a man who calls himself Joanna Cuddle, tweeted it about four hours before Comerford did.

By “vile transphobe Glinner,” he means Graham Linehan, who has spent years defending the rights of women, including lesbians, gay men, and children. “Cuddle” followed up that tweet with a screed of 40-something tweets criticizing Murphy.

This is “Joanna Cuddle” on Twitter:

Here he is on Instagram:

Comerford has a much larger following than this guy, so it probably was Comerford’s tweet that ended up getting Murphy cancelled, not “Cuddle’s.” But I do want to make this point: we live in a world in which an accomplished woman can be cancelled because men like “Joanna Cuddle” don’t like what she has to say when it comes to protecting children. And men like Aidan Comerford are perfectly fine with that.

This is “trans.” This is “gender identity.” Happy Sunday.