Russell T Davies says he has gender critical friends - drama ensues

[fromorbit]

RTD's new drama Tip Toe is about to start. A Guardian article on it has seen online drama.

‘How often I’m called a paedophile online is shocking’: inside Russell T Davies’s horrifying drama about rising hatred
The creator of It’s a Sin is back – and he’s furious. His new series, Tip Toe, explores the rise of homophobia through a feud between two Manchester neighbours. He and stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey talk death, fear and ‘joy as a form of protest’...

Trying to get in as well rounded a view of the issues at stake here is a deliberate choice by Davies. Spit & Polish’s employees are mostly a younger generation of LGBTQ+ people. He sought advice from the writer Juno Dawson, with whom he worked on Doctor Who, about how to portray the trans characters in the show, including the charming and endearing employee Zee (Iz Hesketh). Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington), Leo’s close friend whom we see throughout the series, is gender-critical – believing that biological sex cannot be changed from birth.

“I wanted all sorts of voices in there,” says Davies. “I’ve got friends who are gender-critical. It’s only online you end up screaming and shouting and being attacked by them. In real life, you have a chat, and we all kind of sigh and put up with each other. That’s how the world works. It’s actually how the world is ceasing to work.” As terrifying violence looms towards the end of the series, Stephanie and Zee end up on the same side.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/29/inside-russell-t-davies-tip-top-drama-alan-cumming-david-morrissey

It is now over for RTD he can't have friends who think like that according to the TAs. That makes him "intolerant". On Bluesky there is massive push back. RTD has aroused the hatred of Windy!!! Someone else has threatened to kill RTD over this.

Details and screenshots from James Dreyfus.

James Dreyfus

Russell T Davies says, in an interview, that he has “gender-critical friends”. Bear in mind, that he is extremely vocal in support of the LGBTQIA+, especially the QT. (Although, curiously there were NO trans or non-binary characters in “Queer As Folk”…an odd oversight, considering they apparently “fought for our rights” & were ‘ubiquitous’ in 1999…🤔) Anyway, apparently his support is not meeting the skyscraper-high threshold for their purity test & he’s now being attacked for his choice of friends by the very people he champions. Which seems to me to be a trifle harsh, irrational & certainly predictable.

This outcome probably demonstrates that it’s perhaps unwise to engage in genial horseplay with your pet rattlesnake, unless you’ve a fridge packed with anti venom & are handy with a needle…

James Dreyfus
16h
Re: my earlier post.

It’s odd to be in a position where my instinct is to defend Russell T Davies, when I’m pretty sure the favour wouldn’t be returned, but to see the outpouring of venom directed at him today for daring to have ‘ GC friends’ patently shows how ANY deviation from the approved narrative is as dangerously precarious as stroll across a barbed-wire tightrope…

These reactions are just insane.

https://nitter.net/DreyfusJames/status/2060768949059674466#m

So will RTD experience this backlash and see things from a different point of view?

The other big question is will the Terfy character in the series suddenly convert to thinking biology is not a thing at some point. Presumably a man is going to do some violence at some point. If this prompts any women character to go - "oh no men are being violent - IT MUST BE MY FAULT! Why did I have opinions!" It will be very very dumb.

If on the other hand you have a trans type and a gender crit being jointly horrified by male violence and managing to unite to condemn it you might have something you don't see in any drama so far, but happens IRL a lot. Because men being violent is kind of a thing.

Well what I have learned from that is that spit and polish is a term for oral sex, and there was me thinking it was about having shiny boots.

I seems that no everyday expression is safe from being queered nowadays.

Oh dear. Daleksexual?
And he thinks he has a clitoris? If he thinks that then he clearly has no idea what a clitoris is.
And he's not having female orgasms either. I actually doubt he's having ANY orgasms except in his head.

Lucy Mangan has a largely positive review in the Guardian, though she seems to think it's overly polemical:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/31/tip-toe-review-david-morrissey-russell-t-davies-drama-channel-4

The Telegraph reviewer takes a similar tack.

The series seems to be predicated on the idea that there has been an increase in homophobia, which I'm not sure is true.

No, other younger, more vulnerable gay men have to do that. The middle aged gays trans allies think it’s great, but never do it themselves.

I usually love her reviews, but I thought this one was bizarre. She seemed to find it really overblown and full of grandstanding, but gives it 4 stars anyway coz he's written some good stuff in the past 🤷🏻

Hard agree.

I’m glad the reviewers are picking up on the fact that although RTD has good ideas he is appallingly preachy. I have a low tolerance for that kind of writing and I never understood how it didn’t bother people wrt his previous work.

I think the screaming by GC feminists is just our shrill, hag voices talking normally.

Totally agree.

I've read the reviews and I predict that the GC woman and the trans female will unite against the nasty male character and she'll realise that it's OK for him (trans woman) to use the ladies not the gents.
I can't say this is particularly insightful, I'm guessing nearly everybody here thinks the same.

Cause everybody must get along in his world.
I can't stand men like him.
Not going to happen in reality.
There's no way I'm going to accept this.

I don't hate trans women, but I do think that they are severely deluded and best avoided if possible.

Maybe Davies was in the right place at the right time?
I'm often surprised at how gay men seem to know each other.

He's from a solidly middle class background but not posh.

I still remember LOJs horrified response to the idea of him performing cunnilingus on a transman. Called it homophobic no less. Funny how they get it when it's applied to themselves

I think the first two episodes are out.
Im going to watch when I can.
I know RTD is a TRA so I’m guessing the gender critical character is a cliched middle ages woman who befriends a lovely trans woman and sees the light and repents her sins etc. I might be wrong and I very much hope I am.
(but seriously doubt it. RTD doesn’t seem to
know much about or care much about women)

He writes women very badly, merely as props, e.g. Jill in It's a Sin, about whom we knew nothing bar her relationship to the men. And given she was based on a real woman, who he talked to, that was poor.

The misogyny is strong in that one.

RTD is among an extremely elite tier of TV writer/producers who changed the medium. In his case twice! Once with Queer as Folk and then with Dr Who. Writers should be judged by their strongest works not by their weakest, but unfortunately his weakest works (e.g. the ghastly return to Dr Who) make his weaknesses legible in the his best works. Basically you can't unsee it.

Reddit has been quite slow to load today and I'm assuming it's meltdown over this

This boggled me on reddit.

'RTDs trans rep is fucking garbage. He clearly doesn't understand our issues and is just portraying his best guess at what he thinks we are instead of hiring someone with lived experience to aid in his writing'

Can the poster not see that that is exactly what he is doing when he pretends to be a woman?

Agree about Jill, but Rose and Jackie and a few of the other female characters in the first couple of series of the rebooted Doctor Who were great.

I would put money on him mis-representing gc arguments in this series. I've never met a TRA who understood the gc arguments, even though they're pretty simple. Or possibly they misrepresent them deliberately - who knows?

This programme has massively irritated me as I really like David Morrissey but can’t bring myself to watch him in this.

I watched the first 2 episodes last night. I felt it was fear mongering propaganda.

Another man writing about how tough it is to be a man involving a cast mainly populated by men in a male-dominated industry.

Meanwhile, you go on any news site on any given day and there’s usually a story about how another poor woman or girl has had her life take or destroyed by a man. I wonder when he plans to write about that?

Watched about 30 minutes and it's awful, preachy and just dog shit

I thought modern TV/film was all about banishing stereotypes, bringing nuance etc.
If it is, how come I have a trailer with David Morrissey as wall to wall raging violent homophobe? All I'm seeing is wall to wall stereotype and zero nuance.

Tbh the ledger on Davies and Cummings re women, women and gays calling out trans ideology, their total dismissal of the dangers of TRA to women, youth transitioning, gays convinced by ideologues that they're really trans, and it's clear as day.
Their attitudes have been a clear and present danger.

He's written as the worst kind of 2D monster, certainly if the clip is anything to go by.
I'd hate to watch if if I was a fan of him as well.

My most vocal and fearless gender critical friends are all gay, male and female.

This isn't his first state of the nation /Gays in Peril drama. In Cucumber 🥒 one character got Cruel gossip over moving in with a much younger flat mate who's parents get Deeply suspicious of the age gap, and then there was the one he did for the BBC with Emma Thompson as a fascist in Years and Years