Father Ted writer Graham Linehan has been suspended from Twitter for saying that men are not women. 

The Guardian reports that the sitcom writer's account - @glinner - was closed down for "repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation" after he tweeted "men are not women tho" in response to a Happy Pride message from the Women's Institute.

Glinner had appealed to Mumsnet users for support after learning of his suspension. 

"I'm really sorry to barge in on you Mumsnettters with my problems, but I've been finally suspended from Twitter and I have a feeling they're either going to ban me or just take my verified tick," he wrote on Saturday 

"I've submitted an appeal with Twitter and the Better Business Bureau but I thought I'd post here too so people knew what was going on."

He continued: "Recently, I keep being locked out of my account and forced to delete tweets to get back in. The latest tactic by trans rights activists is to run a search for any time I've used the word 'groomer', a phrase Twitter recently decided was Not Allowed.

"This was not a violation of Twitter's ToS at the time I used the phrase, and I have been careful to avoid it since. I still use the word 'grooming' in various permutations because I believe that gender ideology is a form of societal grooming.

"It is a very real threat to the wellbeing of women and children and if our ability to name a threat is removed, it is even more difficult to fight that threat." 

Linehan's suspension comes after years of speaking out against transgender ideology on Twitter. 

Mumsnet users criticised the suspension. 

"The vitriol directed at someone for expressing views outside the increasingly rigid orthodoxy is something else. It's like Lord of the Flies," said one user. 

Another wrote: "Thanks Graham. There will be fall out from this. The wall is coming down and you toppled a good few of them. Someday people will look back at this and wonder why the world lost its mind." 

A message on Linehan's account now reads: "Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter rules." 

Twitter's "hateful conduct" policy bans the incitement of hate towards people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

It also bans "slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category", including the "targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals".

Linehan's suspension follows that of Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy last year, after she referred to trans activist Jessica Yaniv as 'him'.