A Twitter spokesperson told CNN that Linehan’s account, @glinner, “has been permanently suspended after repeated violations of our rules against hateful behavior and manipulation of the platform.”
CNN’s requests for email comments from Linehan’s representatives were not answered.
Reports from The Guardian and The Irish Post newspapers say his account was closed after the comedian tweeted, “reportedly” men are not women, “in response to a tweet from the Women’s Institute, a women’s organization. Based in the UK, you wish Happy Pride Month for your transgender members.
Linehan has been accused of making transphobic comments in the past.
He previously compared trans activists to Nazis, according to British outlet Metro.
In another incident earlier this year, the BBC received 115 complaints from viewers after Linehan, in an interview on BBC Newsnight, compared children questioning their gender to children experiencing in Nazi Germany.
Shon Faye, a British transgender writer, wrote that she is glad Linehan has left Twitter.
“Like any trans woman with a ‘platform’ here, I was subjected to her creepy obsessive misogyny. But I really wish she now receives the much-needed help. ‘Critical gender’ is a feverish cult that does its advocates no good,” Faye wrote, referring to feminists who deny transgender women the same rights.
Linda Riley, who previously worked at GLAAD, the media monitoring organization founded by LGBT people, also praised Linehan’s removal, calling him “fanatic.”
Linehan is not the only high-profile Briton to be called for statements claiming that transgender women are not women.
Author JK Rowling has expressed similar views, most notably in an extensive 3,600-word essay earlier this month.
The author faced a backlash, including from “Harry Potter” movie star Emma Watson. Watson did not specifically call Rowling, but hours after the essay was published, she wrote on Twitter: “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told that they are not who they say they are. They are.”
Attempts to exclude transgender women from the feminist movement on the grounds that they are not “real” women are not a new phenomenon, even when transgender women face serious and dangerous consequences for their existence.
“When society continually dehumanizes and diminishes the dignity and identities of transgender people, when we have politicians who undermine the lives and rights of transgender people, it sends a dangerous signal to those who would discriminate [against] or even attack the transgender community, “Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, told CNN last year.
That was after a 2019 report from the Human Rights Campaign found that an average of at least 22 transgender and gender-nonconforming people had been victims of fatal violence per year, in the seven years the organization had tracked down the violence against transgender people.
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