Feel sad that more people in the media don’t speak up

[FizzyCow]

I know this kind of thing has been posted before but I just need to vent about it.

I just feel so sad when I think about writers and broadcasters who I always respected and I felt challenged the norm and made me think differently about things. In reality they are all just privileged, wealthy people who only look like they are rocking the boat but in reality they just care about virtual signalling to their friends.

Caitlin Moran is a big one for me. I always loved her writing, I know the area she grew up in and saw her as different to the usual champagne socialist types. Now I just see her as over privileged and so out of touch. She wouldn’t understand how today’s accepted transgender views could negatively affect poor women today.

The same for Adam Buxton. I loved that he had a variety of people on his podcast and covered a variety of topics. Now I just think about what he doesn’t talk about and why. I recognise I am being totally naive to think that he would care.

Similar for Jane Garvey, loved her so much but she is depressingly silent on the issue.

I know none of these people have to say anything but it’s depressing that they don’t.

Some great comments in multiple posts above. Too many to pull out and quote.

So I'll just settle with thanking @Thelnebriati for that incredible sleuthing to track down that paragraph.. in a different book from where you thought it was. And yep, I've read that one too... so my obliviousnous from my previous comment still applies.

Also I'm now angry at Tennant again for his awful rant. 🤬 My own fault really, as I think (happy to find out I'm wrong and apologise) I was the first person to mention his name in the thread.

I'm not so much disappointed with WHAT certain celebs say (lets face it, it doesn't take much genuine courage to be a comedian or tv presenter and going along with the trendy narrative means they may get more work) but more HOW they say it. The David Tennant full frontal "they're just a bunch of moaning rat faced wee FUCKERS" type rants are displaying a level of contempt that it's hard to forget.

You just reminded me of Janeane Garofalo. She was once going to be the next big thing, until she wasn't.

I remember an interview - this is when movie magazines did looooong interviews - where she ventured into politics. I don't think anyone would have been surprised by her being a liberal. The trouble was that the interview was full of regular outbursts about all the groups in society she hated, and these were not small groups - men, white people, Republicans, Christians, people who live in the Midwest - so by the end she'd expressed contempt for about 85% of the population.

I'm not saying that interview is to blame, but you don't really see her acting any more. She seems to mostly appear as a talking head on political shows.

Bruce Springsteen doesn't do that. If you know more than a few US Republicans, you know that loads of them are huge Springsteen fans. They know he's left wing and they don't care. He can state his position without expressing contempt for half of his audience.

Who makes up David Tennant's fanbase? Overwhelmingly women. He obviously hasn't thought about whether open misogyny is a good career move.

To add: this quote from The Other Eden (my bold)....

‘They don’t put men in women’s prisons, not even transvestites.’'

... shows the limit of his understanding back then. These two words demonstrate that Elton thinks transvestites would probably have a good argument to be there but aren't. And it also shows both how much and how little people knew about the difference between the two Blanchard classifications of transwomen back then (and still now). Even though the word transvestite is no longer "PC" the ignorance of the difference in motivation between the two Blanchard classifications is just as strong now as it was then. I'm assuming Elton would probably say "I'm proud that I used that word, even if it's no longer politically correct" and think this was him being both edgy and informed.

Edited to add that last sentence.

Who makes up David Tennant's fanbase? Overwhelmingly women. He obviously hasn't thought about whether open misogyny is a good career move.

That's such a good point. I refuse to seek out any of his work anymore.

It's not just her age (I am not much younger and def have interalised misogyny) but that her contracts would dry up if she offended the trans ideologists. Germaine Greer could afford to offend, she is at the end of her life and has the money to pay for her care. JKRowling is so rich it doesn't matter if contracts are cancelled - and she turns out to be uncancellable. But for many others speaking up would mean huge loss of income, speaking dates, contracts, like Glinner etc. I understand where Atwood is. I don't understand David Tennant - but then he always was a bit antsy - except that he actually believes this guff.

Never been a Tennant fan so I can't say I had any expectations of him. I do understand that he's got a confused kid who believes they're the opposite sex, or NB perhaps, and a wife who is full on TRA.
I'm guessing his hostility is partly because he feels his child will have an awful life if he does not fiercely defend them against the big bad world. This implies to me that he knows it's all bullshit and that they will, indeed, at some point not have an easy ride. All parents want to protect their kids. Tennant's problem is that the enemy is already inside his own home. He's focused on the people outside.
I also guess that his hostility to those who disagree that his kid is the opposite sex is at least in part to preserve his testicles from his TRA wife's teeth.

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne is another good book on identity politics and cancel culture. It's very funny too.

Putting this on my list too. Thank you for the recommendation.

I would also like to read his (children's) book My Brother's Name is Jessica, which he wrote in his TRA/Be Kind days. I'll probably read that one first, then the Echo Chamber. It would be interesting to see the difference in how he shapes both his characters and his sentences. In fact that feels like a "book club" thread in its own right, where the "assignment" is to read both books, then discuss this.

Could it possibly be that celebs don’t speak up with GC views because they don’t hold them?!

Of course.

Some celebrities genuinely hold a belief that everyone has a gender identity and that it's possible for this to be misaligned with someone's sex.

That's fine.

The disappointing part is when they openly support this belief being pushed on to others or virtue signal their belief in a way that is clearly an act of "look at me, I'm more intelligent than you".... or worse, do a Tennant and declare that anyone who doesn't want this belief pushed on to them is a "little whingeing fucker".

So JKR should be allowed to share her views, sometimes in pretty offensive ways, because they align with yours?

But any celebs who are not GC should shut up?

Right….

No.

Any celebrity should be allowed to share their views, whether I agree with them or not.

Unless I've missed something JKR's views don't involve her telling those who believe (that we all have a gender identity) that they shouldn't believe it. Instead, she's pointing out the consequences of this belief being pushed, as if it were a truth, at a societal level. I have no doubt that believers will sometimes find this offensive because to many, it's important that others accept their belief as truth e.g. transwomen who identify in to women's sports or into running women's rape crisis centres.

By contrast, celebrities like Tennant get angry when others won't accept the belief being pushed on them.

I would feel exactly the same about any other belief being upheld in law. Yes "gender critical belief" is a phrase that's used to describe someone who recognises that there are two sexes and that there are times when this is important in law. However, this is similar to how "globe earth belief" might be described. IMO it's far better to think of it all as a lack of belief when thinking about beliefs that are in conflict with what can be proven by science. I don't describe my atheism as a belief in the big bang, I describe it as a lack of belief in creationism.

Forstater also won the lawful right to not believe that we all have a gender identity in the appeal judgement. Therefore, it's lawful to push back on it being implemented as a truth in laws, education and healthcare.

I actually think all celebs should shut up. About everything apart from their jobs. Do we know, or need to know, what the manager of our local tesco thinks about GI or anything else? I know I don't. I don't need to know which celebs are vegan, which celebs are church goers, which celebs vote labour. I don't need to know. I also don't need to know what David Tennant think about it. But he shouts about it so we know. If people are quiet, it may well be because they believe one way or another, or it may be because they've no actual opinions. That's the whole thing about being quiet. Nobody knows.

I can’t watch DT anymore- he’s definitely lost a lot of viewers- I’m avoiding a film I would otherwise have gone to see which is a bit annoying.

Disappointing about Marian Keyes.

I understand people keeping their heads down. They will have seen people losing work and friendships for speaking out.

What really makes me angry is when people pretend to try to engage with the idea of why sex-based rights are important and then say they have to give up because either it’s “just too toxic” - looking at you, Jeremy Vine - or the Graham Norton line that there’s no cancel culture, only “accountability culture”.

For example when Lorraine Kelly got Kathleen Stock (it’s on YouTube) on her awful show, just so she could publicly tell her she hadn’t been cancelled (“cos you’re on the tv now”) and wring her hands about why we can’t we “all be nicer to each other”. Before KS had left the building she was on Twitter to say “for the avoidance of doubt, I believe trans women are women”. 😡

DT is a dad standing up for his child, advocating for what he believes will be a better world for that child to grow up in. I imagine he’s made a conscious choice that that is more important to him than whether or not you go and see a film he’s in @BlueLimeRun . All power to him I say.

I think his "conscious choice" is to not piss off his wife, to be honest. All power to him there, too.

Yes I agree in general about celebs , I really want them to weigh in on issues. I find people like Emma Thompson lecturing people on climate change totally cringe. I also don’t care about Emma Watsons feminist views.

My frustration is more with writers, journalists, broadcasters who refuse to think outside their media bubble and contemplate different sides of the debate.

He is lying to his child but I almost see why he now feels unable to change his view.. However, his language and behaviour towards others is inexcusable.
But yes his choice and I and others will
vote with our feet and money.

Yes, writers of non-fiction and journalists etc I get, as it's their job to cover the reality of current affairs, science, medicine, etc. Someone like Graham Norton, who I believe kind of downplayed the whole "cancel culture" thing then promptly experienced it himself probably shows the broadcasters etc can't really win.
I feel the smart ones are the ones who say nothing. One could presume that, for example, Victoria Beckham is 100% aware of the two sexes, being a mother of 4 kids, 3 boys and 1 girl, but I don't have any need for her to say anything about it. The ones that DO say something about it are generally involved in some way, or responding to a situation that require them to toe the line publicly. JKR and Ricky Gervais have "fuck you" money. The others with "fuck you" money that keep quiet, I kind of presume they're simply not interested, that it doesn't affect them, or that they're well aware of the abuse RG and JKR get and wish to protect their kids from that.

I'm interested in reading it, but my reading material this weekend - and I expect it to be pretty grim - is the freshly published The Party Is Always Right by Aidan Beatty. It's the story of the Workers Revolutionary Party and its late leader Gerry Healy.

Nobody much remembers the WRP now, but imagine if you will a fanatical political cult, led by a serial rapist, prone to violence against its opponents and dissenting members, and bankrolled by Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Now consider that in the 1970s and early 80s a large part of the UK's acting profession were members of the WRP.

I long ago stopped believing that left wing activists should be assumed to be nice idealistic people, and I wish society would stop assuming that actors have got anything useful to say about the state of society.

I suppose I can't blame, let's take a random example, Bill Bailey for having joined the WRP as a teenager. Teenagers do stupid things. But it does make me do a double take when Bill decides to lecture us from on high.

He’s not “lying to his child”. He holds a different view to you. I do not get how that is so hard to understand.

I have no problem with people holding different views.

The lies are denying basic biology.

This! No one literally no one other than a handful of very hardline TRA believes it’s either possible to change sex or have no sex at all. No one.

what we have is an awful lot of ppl prepared to lie about it - some out of fear, some because they think it’s no biggie, some to maintain a relationship with those they live, some to keep getting work or stay on a job

Oh, I love you for saying this about P.D. James. I think she is really under-rated as a writer because so many see her as a genre-fiction writer.