Substack's Content Guidelines state "Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that call for violence, exclusion, or segregation based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes serious attacks on people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition." 

Graham Linehan has been using his Substack blog as a platform for his gender critical ideology but has crossed the line into anti-trans rhetoric on several occasions.

Examples:

* A dating app for women and queer people was forced to clarify that trans women were welcome after he set up an account and shared images of user's profiles on his Substack blog whilst repeatedly invalidating/ridiculing their identity as trans people. Pink News article

* He attacks trans women directly using writing such as, "<xxxx> talks a lot about the surgery that lays lifesavingly in his future, but I guarantee you the only time <xxxx> needs a doctor is for an STD. There’s no way a misogynist like this is letting go of any body part that brings him this much sadistic pleasure."

* He ridicules trans women with article titles such as "I Call On You To Sort Out That Wig"

* He publishes photographs of trans women pre-transition, and invalidates their transition or transgender status by ridiculing their appearance, deadnaming them or referring them using incorrect pronouns

* He continually denounces the teaching of transgender issues in schools as being "grooming" - grooming is a term which means befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse.

* Through his writing he indirectly incites his readership to target both trans individuals and organisations/national charities promoting transgender rights.  Reading the comments section of his blog evidences the toxic outcomes of his articles.

There are many, many more examples of his anti-trans ideology contained within his blog which clearly breach Substack's Content Guidelines.

Graham Linehan has previous history in relation to both hateful conduct and contraversial views.

Linehan was banned by Twitter for repeated violations of their rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation. Twitter defines platform manipulation as “using Twitter to engage in bulk, aggressive, or deceptive activity that misleads others and/or disrupts their experience”.  This includes “coordinated activity, that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting”, and “inauthentic engagements, that attempt to make accounts or content appear more popular or active than they are.”

Linehan appeared on BBC television's "Newsnight" program where he compared doctors treating trans youth to Nazis experimenting on children in concentration camps during the Holocaust.  "Children are basically being experimented on with puberty blockers".  When asked if he was "seriously trying to say that children going to the doctor and saying they're worried about their gender is akin to children being experimented on in Nazi concentration camps", he replied "I'm afraid I am."

During his appeance at a UK House of Lords Committee on freedom of expression online, Lord Colville (in response to Graham Linehan's complaining that he had been 'silenced by tech platforms' including Facebook, Twitter, etc.), said "That so many platforms should come to the same conclusion [about you] is extraordinary if you have done nothing to harass anyone,”

We the undersigned...

...ask that Substack exercises a level of corporate social responsibility and removes Graham Linehan from their platform. His anti-trans views (masquerading as gender critical ideology) have no place in a forward thinking and tolerant society.  Whilst we value freedom of speech, there must be consequences for those whose views are both abhorrent and specifically target minority groups.