Joan Smith says goodbye Eddie Izzard:

Eddie Izzard likes pink. Pink coats, pink jackets — they’re all over the website promoting his failed bid to stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election. Labour’s colour is traditionally red but pink is for girls, and Izzard has been campaigning in what he coyly calls ‘girl mode’ for months now.

Triply insulting, isn’t it – the fetish for pink, the pretending to be a woman, the coyly calling it girl mode. Ugh. Imagine a grown woman doing that; now imagine a grown woman doing that in campaigning for public office. Making a game and a joke and an embarrassment of being a female person when you are in fact a man.

There was no pink in sight when Izzard posted a picture of himself with Abtisam Mohamed after she was selected as Labour’s candidate for Sheffield Central. For once Izzard was all in black but still in ‘girl mode’, judging by his high-heeled boots and the quilted bag slung over one shoulder. Other defeated hopefuls might have contented themselves with congratulating the winner but Izzard had to put himself front and centre. Towering over the diminutive Abtisam, he announced that he looked forward to “campaigning with her in the months and years to come”.

Well she’s not a slebrity, is she, and he is.

He towers over her, but to be fair, that’s a glorious photo of her, so props to him for that. He towers but it’s her face that grabs the attention.

It’s just possible that Labour members were put off by Izzard’s shameless self-promotion, which included a claim that he’s done more campaigning than anyone else in the Labour Party: ‘There isn’t a Labour activist who has done more,’ his campaign literature announced. More even than Margaret Beckett or Harriet Harman, who have been MPs for a total of almost 80 years between them? And they’ve done it without making performative gestures about being in ‘girl mode’. 

He identifies as having done more.

It may be that this craven response from the media misled Izzard into over-estimating his popularity. But while people are ready to applaud an actor and comedian who challenges gender stereotypes, they may not be so keen on a man making demands that defy the evidence of their senses. Izzard’s claim to be trans highlights the problem at the heart of self-identification, which is that it requires so little of the individual — but so much of everyone else. 

Let me repeat that, because it’s a gem: the problem at the heart of self-identification, which is that it requires so little of the individual — but so much of everyone else. 

I wish I’d thought of that.