The moral killing of Maisie Gray was a disturbing sight. She committed her heresy on Piers Morgan’s TalkTV show. “Going to change places doesn’t make you a woman,” she said. She made a cutting motion with her hand as she said “switch your parts” which was great. “Do you feel that?” Morgan asked. “I know that for a fact,” Gray replied. Immediately, the forks were sharpened. Torches were lit. A woman said what is a woman? Inadmissible. The abuse came thick and fast. Your career is over, Gray was told. You’re dead to me, cried the sex hysterics. “Fuck you,” armies of white men pretending to be women screamed at her online. Just as women in the pre-modern era who said or did anything “deviant” were taken to the duck’s stool, so Mrs Gray was swept up by the Twitter mobs and the verdict was quickly returned – witch. Remarkably, even Gray’s offer to be nice to the men who think they are women was not enough to quell the mob’s fury. Wait for the witch hunt. “Everybody’s going to hate me,” she told Piers Morgan before committing her crime of expressing biodata. “I’m sorry,” he said after the speech crime. She said she is more than happy to refer to “trans women” as “she” and “her”. But none of that was enough. The problem was Gray’s thoughts, the contents of her soul. Outwardly she may say “she” for a man who identifies as a woman, but inwardly, in her heart and mind, she would still think of that man as a man. And in the eyes of the trans set and its rowdy allies, that’s unacceptable. This is how the cult of gender has become tyrannical: it demands not only linguistic conformity but also complete mental and emotional submission. He wants to change not only how we talk about the world, but also how we see it, how we understand it. Clearly, Mrs. Gray’s mind needed to be cleared, her nerve endings fixed. This was the task set by the mob itself. Using threats and threats – including threatening to destroy her music career – the misogynist mind police set out to fix this mischievous thug. And it looks like they succeeded. Gray disclaimed. We don’t call it “removal” anymore, because we pretend we live in fairer, more tolerant times than our ancestors. We call it “learning”. After days of sexist slurs, a chastened Gray appeared on the US Today show. “I learned a lot,” he said. “Being a woman is an atmosphere,” she continued, no doubt to the delight of her tormentors in the trans lobby who have insisted for years that womanhood is more than a feeling and a feeling that anyone can have, even people with penises I’m guessing that Grey’s innermost thoughts are the same as them – that a man can never become a woman – but it’s highly unlikely that she’ll ever express those thoughts in public again. Because now he knows the consequences. He knows that destruction awaits those who speak this truth. Some of the “woke” set were uncharitable in their response to Gray’s setback. He succumbed, they say. He’s a dude. This is too harsh. It is deeply unpleasant to be the target of the new Witchfinder-Generals. It’s understandable that some people choose the quiet life over the prospect of being murdered and vilified by a hysterical mob every time they say perfectly normal things. Save your criticism for Grey’s pursuers, not Grey. More importantly, in addition to your criticism of the ideologies that led to the moral killing of Macy Gray, the vicious and unforgiving nature of which should now be obvious to all. That is, the ideologies of identitarianism and the close cousin, invalidate culture. Gray’s duck showed how wild identity politics has become. How seamless and hypocritical it is now. The kind of people who usually puff up and say “Let black women speak!” they have done the exact opposite here. Shut up that dangerous bitch – that was the tone of last week’s Grayphobia. These pseudo-virtuous pseudo-leftists have done the same thing they accuse the rightists of: they have silenced a “hilarious” black woman, pushed her back into her box, neutered her tendencies toward “hysteria.” Armies of “transwomen”—let’s call them what they are: dudes in wigs—have spent the last few days demonizing a black woman for speaking her “truth,” which happens to be the truth: namely, cutting your dick off doesn’t it does. it makes you a lady. This confirms how harshly the identity set enforces its moral hierarchy – trans women are clearly superior to real women, even black women – and also that you can get away with anything if you wear a dress. A white man telling a black woman to shut up is a big no, but if said white man wears a skirt first and calls himself Tallulah, then it seems like he can do whatever he wants. Do you guys want to be mean and misogynistic? Just be trans! Then there is cancellation culture. Grey’s saga brilliantly and horrifyingly captures how cancellation culture works. Cancel culture deniers always say that this new form of censorship is clearly a myth because despite their own good efforts, despite their demonization campaigns, they still have to listen to bad people like JK Rowling and Dave Chappelle and Bette Midler . “I tried to morally destroy a heretic and yet the heretic is still alive, so clearly the nullification culture is not true” – this is the surreal, ironic and self-defeating cry of the new censors. However, Gray’s incident shows how destructive cancellation culture can be, how insidious it is, how chilling it is for society at large. Macy Gray’s re-education is bad for Gray herself, of course, but it actually sends a message to society at large, especially to women who think “sex is real.” He tells them to get down, know their place – and that if they fail to do that, they will suffer. If even Macy Gray can be dragged like this, imagine what could be done to a humble people like you? This is the constant, threatening threat that cancellation culture poses to the public. Gray and the others are just the big ostensible targets – the real targets are the rest of us, who are constantly warned to suppress our thoughts or else… This is why Grey’s story matters. It highlights how divisive identity politics has become, how unrelenting the culture of cancellation is, and how prejudice – in this case misogyny – is now hidden under the guise of “progressive politics”. A freer, more rational society would have recognized that Gray was right – that even if you change your parts, you don’t change your sex. The truth matters. And the same goes for freedom of expression. Brendan O’Neill is Spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
