Have not found a thread on this interview by Rachel Wearmouth. One has rather a lot to say about oneself and plenty of other things but not much that makes sense: “I consider myself a trans woman, I’m gender fluid”.
[In part]:
"Izzard came out as trans in 1985 and said two years ago that she preferred the pronouns she/her. She has been surprised by the reaction. “I consider myself a trans woman, I’m gender fluid,” she says. “I’ve been out for 37 years. I don’t know what everyone wants. Do they want more notice? 38 years? No one should be surprised.”
She wastes no time fretting about abuse – “37 years of transphobic bullying and it’s water off a duck’s back” – but nor does she want to be “the poster child” for the trans rights movement. “It’s not an overt thing. Obama wasn’t overtly going in to become the black president or a black senator,” she argues.
Starmer, she says, should avoid Tory culture wars on this and other subjects. “I would just say, don’t take the bait on that.”
If selected Izzard could become Labour’s first trans MP and debate about reforms to gender self-identification are splitting all political parties. Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP sceptical about self-ID, has said she’d rather be arrested than refer to Izzard as a woman when asked whether misgendering someone should be a hate crime; Starmer, however, has backed tougher laws.
Izzard has a stock answer: “Other people have to join the 21st century. I’m already in the 21st century. It’s 2022, so everyone else should just get on board.”
When we move on to discuss how self-ID reforms would affect women-only spaces she becomes impatient at being seen as the spokesperson for the trans movement. “I don’t have all the answers,” she says. “I happen to be trans. All I can do is say how it is for me. I can’t come in and wave a magic wand and solve all the problems, because some people are very entrenched.”
And some people strike me as being very entitled.
www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2022/11/eddie-izzard-interview-sheffield-labour-trans-rights