Writer sued for ‘deadnaming’ trans lawyer
THE writer of Father Ted has been given a verbal harassment warning by police after a complaint by a transgender activist.
Stephanie Hayden has launched Britain’s first “deadnaming” case in the High Court against Graham Linehan, after he referred to her using her birth name.
She is suing Mr Linehan for defamation and harassment after he allegedly published tweets “deliberately misgendering” her, by using her previous male name. The practice of using a transgender person’s birth name instead of their chosen name is known as “deadnaming”. Mr Linehan, a vocal critic of transgenderism, was given a verbal harassment warning by West Yorkshire Police following the incident and has since locked his Twitter account due to “abuse and harassment”.
The writer was accused of “abusing his high profile” by Ms Hayden, who said she had been “mocked and ridiculed” online.
Ms Hayden, who is legally female, said Mr Linehan “caused her distress” and that his actions constituted harass- ment, a misuse of private information, and were a “gross affront to her dignity as a woman”.
Ms Hayden, a lawyer and current affairs commentator, was born Anthony Halliday and began her medical transition to a woman in 2007. She was awarded her Gender Recognition Certificate in May 2018.
In the court papers, filed on Oct 1, Ms Hayden alleged that Mr Linehan retweeted material from another account that included photographs of her former male self, her family and friends, as well as suggestions that she was a criminal. She is also accusing him of sharing defamatory remarks against her reputation, including a tweet Mr Linehan is alleged to have directed at Ms Hayden from Sept 26, in which he wrote: “I don’t respect the pronouns of misogynists, stalkers or harassers.”
According to the court papers, another tweet by Mr Linehan from a similar date is alleged to have said: “Yes, we must always be nice to con men, sexual predators and misogynists hijacking a noble movement for their own ends.”
The documents also cited an interview Mr Linehan gave to The Times in September in which Ms Hayden alleges he called her “a dangerous troll”. Commenting on Mr Linehan’s alleged revelation of her former male self before her gender transition, Ms Hayden told The Daily Telegraph: “It was a gross violation of my privacy and who gets to know this information about me.”
David Banks, a media and defamation law expert, said: “If the court decides that personal information that was once public now becomes private information, then that sets an interesting precedent. Deadnaming someone will be something that is actionable if the case succeeds in court.” Mr Linehan was approached for comment.