Eddie Izzard’s delusions of gender

Let’s start with an introduction to our dramatis personae. Kathleen Stock is a brilliant lesbian philosopher recognised for her contributions to aesthetics, the philosophy of fiction and imagination, and feminist philosophy. Eddie Izzard is a silly old luvvie who dresses as a woman.

Eddie has been bamboozled by a mass delusion that has taken over the world. In the process, his cross-dressing hobby has conveniently elevated him to sacred-caste status. Conveniently, because he believes he fully deserves this elevation, as evidenced by his hilariously unsuccessful runs for political power in constituencies miles from each other – first Sheffield Central in 2022, then Brighton Pavilion in 2023.

When Eddie first began indulging his transvestite urges in public, it all seemed harmless enough, just a new part of his act. And for those of us who loved his comedy, he was good enough that his habit of dressing like a prostitute in toytown didn’t distract from the jokes.

But then, Eddie’s hobby became his identity, and he became so lost in his own reflection that he refused to see – or pretended not to see – the harm that trans ideology is causing in wider society. Eddie’s hobby is harmless when he does it for fun, in private, but in public, he’s legitimising a society where NHS doctors (doctors!) think nothing of threatening a nurse because she asked a man to leave a women’s changing room while she had her period.

Eddie has an ego the size of a planet. He could not be contained by comedy, at which he was a master. He shouldered his way into acting, at which he was merely adequate. He tried politics, where he was a complete failure. One of his recent gambits for Person of the Year was to claim he would have been murdered in Nazi Germany for wearing a dress.

It would be as difficult for Eddie to refuse any honour for his services to humanity as it would be if some lunatic offered him the role of Evita. And Sussex University, in its infinite cynicism, knew all this and thought: ‘Yeah, let’s chuck him an award.’ So earlier this week, it gave him an honorary doctorate.

Not Stock, whose academic career Sussex let fall apart. Not Stock, who spoke clearly and reasonably about women’s rights and was mobbed for it by the university’s students and academics. Stock’s bravery in the face of this open homophobia and misogyny will perhaps never even be acknowledged by her former employer. Meanwhile, Eddie gets the degree, the applause and the pedestal for his decision to spend the rest of his life looking like Pat Butcher.

Long gone are the days when universities encouraged you to think. Now they’re where you learn how to conform, how to bully and how to control. In elevating Eddie, while the wound of Kathleen Stock’s treatment is still fresh, Sussex is playing a childish game with real consequences. It is not just indulging a celebrity’s fantasy – going along with Eddie’s new name, ‘Suzy’, and she / her pronouns – it is signalling that this fantasy must be accepted as truth, and anyone who objects will be punished, too.

Eddie’s cross-dressing hobby – what once marked him out as a charming eccentric in a crowded field of male comics – has now become part of a machinery that’s actively harming people. Sussex knows this. Its leaders have surely seen what has happened in women’s prisons, in changing rooms, in sport. They know. They just don’t care.

So yes, there are two victims here. One of them knew what she was talking about and paid the price. The other doesn’t know what he’s doing at all – and got a doctorate.

I do think that Eddie Izzard deserves an honorary degree for his contributions, certainly to comedy. But from Sussex? This is a provocation, this is goading, and if we can’t trust the people who staff our universities to act like adults, we can’t trust them with our children.

Graham Linehan is a former TV comedy writer best known for sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. Follow him on Substack.