Stephen Fry - What a repulsive, condescending misogynistic turd

[Absentmindedsmile]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14820209/Harry-Potter-narrator-Stephen-Fry-turns-JK-Rowling-TERFs.html

Yuk.

I haven't seen them anywhere for years, they are certainly outdated. Cartoonists were a strange bunch back in the day. There was also a huge amount of violence to animals, which is why I never liked Tom and Jerry...although strangely, I was fine with Wile E Coyote and the Roadrunner.

What would be relevant these days, I think, is Bugs Bunny who wore drag all the time and often fooled men into thinking he wasn't just female, but human too. But the point was, despite the costume and the acting and the successful hoodwinking, he was neither...

Bugs Bunny drag is excellent; particularly “What’s Opera Doc”

Pepe Le Pew always annoyed me and no one else seemed to see it! You gave me an opportunity to vent. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Thank you! 😊

They literally see us as some sort of intelligent but lesser being, like a dog or a child.

For a man like this, if a woman says something he disagrees with, he'll patronise her rather than address the points she made as an equal.

If a woman says something he think is clever, he'll explain to her why it's clever because he'll assume it was an unintentional aspect of her more trivial thought that his greater insight uncovered in her words.

But really half the time if a woman says anything it all he'll filter it out as trivial without giving it any thought at the conscious level, the content will get filed unattributed in his mind under "stuff", and at some point he may well make the same point himself and genuinely believe it was his original thought.

Yes, this happens to me a lot, and yes after 50+ years of this crap I'm salty about it.

but in the end didn't Pepe pretty much always lose out and find out that the lady cat (let's not forget that he was looking for a skunk girlfriend/wife) that accidentally got a white stripe painted on it, wasn't a skunk?

As for Bugs Bunny persuading human men that he wasn't even a boy rabbit, what do you think idiotic cartoons are supposed to show? it's a stupid cartoon about a rabbit usually getting one over on the (male) hunter who is trying to kill him. The underdog winning. Why is that an issue?

I have no issue with it. I love the fact that Bugs Bunny can dress up in drag that's so clearly drag yet fools some people into thinking he's a sexy human woman... with the clear point being that even if he somehow managed to fool Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam, he still actually is, in fact, a male rabbit and that's going to become relevant at some point.

Also, he got me into opera.

I was thinking along the same lines recently (1) and ended up on this very intersting even though totally the other side of the mirror to me thought piece about it. lwlies.com/why-i-love/why-i-love-the-queerness-of-bugs-bunny

There are so many thoughtful people on the Genderist side but they have got so turned around by this stupid purity test that trans women have to be actual women, and in the patronising assumption that everyone who doesn't meet their frankly quite narrow and confirmist picture of non-confirming is an interchangeable grey blob happy to trundle along their presecribed lane with no inner life, that they can't see the "GCs" they demonise are not behind them on this journey but ahead of them.

(1) although not so much about what a woman is to a man as about how women's bodies are used as a cultural shorthand for male sexuality and sexual response. Sexy Bugs Bunny is male characters' reaction to the female body object, the female herself is not a character with motivation and in the case of SBB, not even really there (2)

(2) While I'm stream-of-consciousnessing, this "not even really there" also really pisses me off about the BBC/Russell T Davies brand of "progressive" where a gay man/trans woman/drag queen is rolled in to fill the "female" side of a traditional male/female pairing and everyone slaps themselves on the back about how progressive and edgy they are, when all they have really done is pushed women out of the roles and gone back to the age old sausage-fest.

I would not be at all surprised to find that Fry was harmed as a young adolescent by teachers or authority figure(s), and/or by the mass publication at that time of books indulgent toward abuse by late colonial men in North Africa. It was the era of PIE, after all. When Fry was a teenager sex between men under the age of 21 was still illegal - that, and the ubiquitous exploitation of the young, male and female in the early70s (Wyman, Savile, Harris etc etc etc) could warp anyone.

What I find disturbing is that he has never given any indication of thinking about how bad things were then and considering that maybe some women may have things to say about exploitation and harm that are worth listening to.

I also find it a bit sad that on the basis of his accent, dress choices, and ability to take direction he seems to be regarded by some people, notably himself, as intelligent.

’notably himself’

😂😂

I think the problem is that he formed his opinions during that era when the whole gay man thing was just getting going and there was probably a temptation for him to be seen to be ' cool ' about it. Sort of ' superior' . I'm a cool intellectual gay man sort of thing, not one of these silly airhead women.

Have just seen an interview SF did in 2015 where he refers to the victims of the Rotherham grooming & abuse scandal as modern child prostitutes. It can be found on https://x.com/jonnywsbell?s=21 19/06/2025.
It seems it is SF who has been radicalised to support perverts, paedophiles and rapists.

That is absolutely wonderful

Omg I missed this.

Priceless!

It is worth noting that this is not a new idea. Vulnerable young girls being procured for local business men and social undesirables has gone on since forever. And historically, until a few decades ago, the courts did indeed regard the girls as the cause of the problem rather than the victims, and were extremely lenient with the men involved, if they were ever prosecuted at all. The justifiable moral panic over Pakistani gangs did indeed change this situation and now it is realised that the girls are the victims. But it is notable that 80% of the men prosecuted for these offences are white, because this certainly didn't start with Pakistanis.

That has taken me all morning to understand. 😁

I’m hugely relieved to find my FB feed nicely populated with posts agreeing with Fry, criticising JKR… and all covered in laugh reactions and comments about JKR being right. Barely a comment in agreement. Such a relief from the first impression of the post.

Sorry Mr Mainwaring!

I missed this in 2015. Stephen Fry describing victims of rape and the Pakistani grooming gangs in Rochdale, as ‘child prostitutes’. No Stephen, you don’t get away with it by using historical instances of Victorian horrors.

Stephen Fry you justified child rape by saying the children were prostitutes.

😑 This just gets worse.

The Victorians thought they had a problem with child prostitutes because their misogynist society did not accept that they actually had a problem with men paying to rape children. Just like now.

Actually I think I'm starting to go off SF

Helen Joyce earlier today.

It is one of the immensely valuable things about Mumsnet that concepts like 'child prostitute' and 'child pornography' are not tolerated. I naively used the latter term soon after I joined the site, and had the difference between adults, even abused adults, and children, pointed out to me.

That made me much clearer when describing abuse. It also made me look back at a few incidents from my own childhood and think 'that was wrong'.

Poor Fry is still mentally locked in 1970s land.

One of the abuse survivors in Ireland who works to protect children has said that he thinks he was particularly vulnerable as a teenager because he was gay, and craving male affection, even male sexual attention, but that he was also a child, owed protection by adults, including protection from his own self-destructive impulses. The duty that goes with being a adult gets overlooked by some commentators. As I said in another post, lazy thinking.

Oh no! Why?

That's a clear way of putting it

I’m massively uneasy about the male gay scene. The idea I’ve seen presented that cottaging, drag, drugs and twinks are seen as key parts of the culture and must not be criticised appalls me. I’m pleased my sons are not gay and exposed to it. If they were I’d feel obliged to pipe up. As it is I’ll leave it to those with proper knowledge, as I’d be unqualified to comment. Like Stephen Fry appears to be.