Posh young actors

Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore has spoken out before on the trans debate....in the Telegraph. She clearly felt that her robust defence of women's safe spaces against the demands of biological men who say they're women wouldn't have gone down too well at Kings Place. Quite right too. When some weeks later she published something on similar lines in the Guardian, the shock-waves were such that one poor trans worker claimed she was too terrified now to come in, and a large number of Guardian and Observer employees - 338 to be exact - were so horrified that they wrote a letter to Guardian editor Kath Viner, deploring what they saw as the paper’s “pattern of publishing transphobic content”.

So if Moore wants to write something in defence of JK Rowling, she naturally knows to avoid the home crowd, and head once again for the safe space of the Telegraph.

Who decided that letting posh young actors police my womanhood was progress?

In the years of being called a TERF (a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) – which in no way sums me up, my experience or my work – I have not met anyone who is anti-trans. I have met women anxious to protect the sex-based rights of women in law to single sex provision.

This rests on accepting, as science does, that biological sex exists. Self-identification with no meaningful gatekeeping is controversial as it all allows men to call themselves women, hence the tedious battleground of loos and changing rooms and the more significant ones of refuges, prisons and sports. As many transwomen retain male genitalia, the old-style “sex change” can now simply involve mascara.

It's much easier to go along with all this if you want to keep your audience, I guess.

Daniel Radcliffe, without giving respect to the woman who made his career, now gets to mansplain to distressed Harry Potter fans. If you are a privileged actor who went to Eton and Cambridge, you can say “respect for transgender people remains a cultural imperative”, as Eddie Redmayne did. (Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t nab a part playing a non-binary person and wonder if that role shouldn’t have been given to a transgender actor anyway, as he did in The Danish Girl).

If you are Emma Watson, you intone the mantra “trans woman are women”, ignoring how Rowling forensically explained her argument as a survivor of domestic abuse. It’s sad that JK Rowing had to unveil a CV of pain to get heard, but, yes, she has a reason to fear male violence.

Women and trans people suffer terribly, but all the anger is now directed not to male abusers but to feminists. It has now become a permissible form of horrible misogyny that much of the left indulges in.

All over the world, whether it's FGM, foetal sex selection, the enslavement of Yazidi women, the high mortality rates of black women giving birth, our pathetic convictions for rape, female biology remains not just a reality but the locus of oppression that we all have to fight against. There isn’t a choice about who we think we are, women remain defined by others.

Of course I accept trans people exist and need support, but why must my reality be erased to do so?

I am a grown woman – but am I to have posh young actors police my womanhood and be told that this is progress?

I won’t be shut up by those who have never had to fight for a single right they enjoy.

My theory about Daniel Radcliffe is that he secretly resents Rowling's influence on his life. He was heading for a decent career as a chartered accountant or estate agent when he was dragged into the Harry Potter world simply by his looks, with that stupid round face and glasses. Ever since then he's had to struggle as an actor when it's quite obvious to everyone that he's no good at it. As a result his life is a succession of public embarrassments. Without Rowling he would have settled down in Pinner by now to a nice quiet suburban life.

Yesterday I suggested that it would be nice if one of the many luvvies who've accepted highly lucrative parts in the Harry Potter films would step up and offer some support for Rowling.  Well apparently one did - only to withdraw after a barrage of hostile tweets:

An actress who played a leading role in the Harry Potter West End spin-off has rescinded her message of support for JK Rowling, who has been accused of transphobia.

Noma Dumezweni, 50, who played Hermione Granger in the stage production Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, deleted a tweet praising the author, saying that she now believes Rowling is mistaken in her stance, tweeting: “There is magic in listening.”..

Seven actors who appeared in the Harry Potter films have made statements opposing Rowling, including the three principal cast members: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. Eddie Redmayne, who starred in the spin-off Harry Potter films Fantastic Beasts, has also expressed support for the trans community.

The criticism appears to be a generational divide. Apart from Dumezweni, none of the actors who retorted to Rowling’s comments has been over the age of 38.

Agents acting for Emma Thompson, 61, and Robbie Coltrane, 70, who appeared in the Harry Potter films, said they were unavailable. There was no response from the agents of other stars including Maggie Smith, 85, Gary Oldman, 62, and Julie Walters, 70.

Dumezweni initially reacted positively to the author’s impassioned essay “applauding what I saw as openness”. “Then I felt the flood arrive in such quick time that I though, oooh s**t. I need to reread,” she added.

The actress addressed Rowling in a tweet: “As I honour mine, and the trans friends in my life, I’ll defer to their lived experiences, not their erasure,” she wrote. “And these are just the women! There is magic in listening. This [world] has stories for millennia. I know You Know all this.”

I'm sure Rowling appreciated being patronised with this feel-good garbage. But at least Dumezweni has bowed to the correct gods, and has ensured her acting career will in no way be harmed by her unfortunate lapse.

Comments

[Richard Powell]

As an accountant or estate agent Radcliffe would have been free to voice his own opinions, if any. The opening of Redmayne's statement - "Respect for transgender people remains a cultural imperative, and over the years I have been trying to constantly educate myself" - sounds as if it was made under duress, to stave off punishment. Perhaps it was. There will be fewer acting jobs to go round in the future, and every actor is dispensable, so it's especially important to make all the right noises now.

Incidentally I'm pretty certain I've interacted with over 10,000 people over my lifetime. As far as I'm aware, not one was trans. The occasion has simply never arisen. (I'd perfectly comfortable if one did.) I wonder if my (lack of) experience is unusual.

[Dom]

Funny tweet from Konstantin Kisin: “was anybody really that surprised that Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t know what a man is?”

[TDK]

There I am thinking I'm agreeing with the entore Suzanne Moore article and then suddenly..

"...the high mortality rates of black women giving birth, our pathetic convictions for rape, female biology remains not just a reality but the locus of oppression that we all have to fight against. There isn’t a choice about who we think we are, women remain defined by others."

WTF?

Black women are more prone to Preeclampsia, which wasn't caused by by men, black or white.
And what exactly is the correct conviction rate for rape?

It's this kind of of victimhood poker that has f***ed her own career. You would think that a moment of reflection might ensue. Yes, being born a female in a species that suffers highly maternity death rates is unlucky but it can't be blamed on the patriarchy. The fact that modern medicine is striving and largely succeeding in reducing that death rate might be relevant background context, particularly when it was achieved in part by evil white men, who (it needs noting) didn't actively seek to exclude the benefits to BME women, even while conceding that the primary research focused on problems that affected all woman, rather than BME women in particular.

[Recruiting Animal]

Why does everyone say that Rowling made the careers of the Harry Potter actors. She wrote the books, yes, but she didn't make the movies and that's what made them famous.