Daniel Radcliffe hopes JK Rowling's comments about gender will not "taint" the Harry Potter series for fans.
In a statement posted on an LGBT suicide prevention charity website, the actor said: "Transgender women are women.
"Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people."
Says a chap who makes his living pretending to be someone else. Maybe that gives him an enhanced insight or maybe he is merely following a political fashion. I don’t know but suspect the latter. What follows is merely anecdote but I think it makes a point.
Some time ago we saw two chaps dressed as women wandering around an antiques centre. There was nothing dignified about them because how could there be? Nobody else knew them and dignity cannot be conferred in a vacuum, cannot be handed over to people we do not know and with whom we have no social interaction.
We may use preferred trans pronouns if common politeness demands it in social situations, but that is all. Common politeness does not compel us to deny the facts of reproductive biology. In certain circumstances we may politely avoid those facts as a subject for social discussion but in wider and impersonal discussion there is also some dignity to be found in sticking to reality. Not so much in promoting political fantasies. As for enforced acceptance – there isn’t much dignity in that at all.
We may use preferred trans pronouns if common politeness demands it in social situations, but that is all. Common politeness does not compel us to deny the facts of reproductive biology. In certain circumstances we may politely avoid those facts as a subject for social discussion but in wider and impersonal discussion there is also some dignity to be found in sticking to reality. Not so much in promoting political fantasies. As for enforced acceptance – there isn’t much dignity in that at all.
3 comments:
Good post which simplifies a topic people want to make complicated and obscure.
I occasionally visit a friend in a nearby town and we often go to a second-hand bookshop there. The bloke that runs it has taken to wearing a dress and makeup. He's just a big hairy ugly old bloke in a dress and makeup, with the same booming voice and blokey mannerisms as before. Customers are unfailingly polite to him (this is a Southern English Cathedral town). But you can see couples exchanging quick glances, and often the most polite people exhale a massive held-in belly laugh when they leave.
Daniel Radcliffe is, of course, a wizard, and so I defer to his superior wisdom.
Daniel Ratcliffe is, of course, an actor so we should afford his opinions the respect we give to the opinions of others who do what they're told for a living. Bus drivers, shop assistants and bin men come readily to mind.
Sam - thanks - I wonder if your big hairy bookshop chap is partly after word of mouth publicity. Some big hairy blokes seem to like dressing up like that - where we used to live we saw it every New Year.
Jannie - good point and bus drivers, shop assistants and bin men will have interesting perspectives on real life. I know bus drivers certainly have.
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