We saw unprecedented media cut through on the Graham Linehan story this week.

He was in court on Thursday and Friday on charges of harassment and criminal damage, which he denies. These are unrelated to his arrest by armed police at Heathrow yesterday over three tweets

Today there were around two dozen journalists in court, including two from the BBC, and multiple camera crews deployed. Along with UK broadcasters, Agence France Press sent a crew, while Associated Press and Reuters along have joined outlets in the US, Australia and Europe in their coverage.There’s no doubt they were not diaried to be to do this because of today’s case. The explosion of interest since his Heathrow arrest has given it hyper-focus.

Moreover the global media interest is not largely in the alleged (and denied) crimes of the writer of Father Ted. It’s in the erosion of free speech which his arrest and part of this prosecution may be considered to represent, and in the conduct of the police.

This is most assuredly not what would have been expected by the complainant.

Gender identity complaints activism has run riot through the sex and gender debate for around a decade. The aim is to silence conversation, limit reporting and intimidate campaigners. As soon as gender identity activists came out from ‘under the radar’ in about 2012, complaints activism ground into gear.

We’ve seen it across the media, to both outlets and regulators, but where the police are concerned it was rocket-fuelled by early and sustained institutional capture. Violent threats towards women were not investigated, insults or so called misgendering of men were pursued with vigour. Even if the police decided not to pursue transactivist complaints, some grievance enthusiasts went to court to sue the forces involved.

Any journalist working in this field will know how often the violent abuse and harassment directed at women is raised as a story, and rejected. It goes way back to the late 20-teens and before, when the ideas first started being pitched to legacy outlets. Meanwhile the story about trans-led police capture has never been properly investigated despite the Harry Miller case.

The activists involved in getting Glinner arrested at Heathrow have quite unintentionally achieved what none of us could. They have propelled police bias and the restrictions on women’s speech onto the front pages.

Yesterday’s solid efforts to frame the issue as an ‘online harm’ problem rather than a problem of capture and transactivism were moderately successful. But more than one outlet is now running with the story of police capture and it could become unignorable.

There’s been saturation Glinner coverage in the UK for three days, and there’s an expose of one of the regular complainants, Lynsay Watson (he’s in the BBC piece linked) on the front page of the Telegraph, with concerns that the police had been ‘weaponised’ by transactivists. Meanwhile news magazines are overflowing with comment.

It’s the second time this week that an identity activist tactic has backfired spectacularly. In the first, Dr Beth/Theodore Upton’s lawyer requested and was granted that his given name - Theodore - was redacted from a submission by Sandie Peggie’s lawyer.

The consequence - it immediate trended for a day and a half, so there can no longer be an X user in the UK that doesn’t know he’s a guy called Theodore, who was once a bearded rugby player, and that he’s ‘what that nurse case in Scotland’ is all about.

There’ve been many announcements, over years, that the ‘tide has turned’ on sex and gender. But when all your gender identity campaign tactics start to backfire, you should really be worried. It’s been a week of Streisand effect for identity activists, and the current level of cut through looks like a groundshift.

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