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.

Oh dear, that critic isn’t happy that the GC character isn’t nasty enough. Oh mate, haven’t you got the memo? Understanding that sex is not changeable in humans and that in some circumstances matters is not being prejudiced. However deliberately painting GC views as inherently bad and harmful tells me all I need to know about this bloke.

Metro gonna metro. Are they still owned by the Daily Mail?

Because I firmly believe that although we can agree to disagree as friends, there are fundamental principles I would not put up with – and I think this would ring true for Leo and his staff.

I appreciate Stephanie is central to Davies’ message about a world being torn apart by division, but in an otherwise almost perfect television show, the character is where I struggle, and the creator’s context doesn’t make that any better.

I can abide by different opinions; I’m happy to debate politics and disagree with others, but I draw the line at homophobia, racism and transphobia.

Prejudice isn’t an opinion, it is malicious.

No one tell him about the green party campaigning alongside 5pillars who've just produced a guide for how to "Navigate" pride month.

RTD does not have the cultural power he once did so Tip Toe will not remain part of the discourse for long. It is interesting this kind of article exists though shows how hated women with opinions are.

Obviously violent homophobia still exists in the UK the problem is not old white right wing guys who spend a lot of time on the internet organising lynchings.

It is basically the same thing as always. Young men of all backgrounds starting fights with people they perceive as gay in the night time it is way less prevalent than it was though. One key aspect though is that more of it is done by men from an ethnic background now.

Common thing with all this male violence is not inspired by what women are saying it is men targeting other men for being different as always and loving a scrap.

I have a very low opinion of self righteous idiots who think that sending people to Coventry for disagreeing makes you a better person.
As a historian I find it fascinating though, since it’s always been a feature of extreme religious belief.

Windy is around to tell us what a man thinks of the series.

India Willoughby

My only criticism of #Tiptoe is the elephant in the room. The drama is about the sudden rise in homophobia and transphobia. But the cause is never mentioned - the TransGender Critical movement.

"TransGender Critical movement" is a new description. GCs use gender critical or sex realist which obviously is too triggering for TRA's to use. Why didn't windy simply say "transphobic" as per the metro chap to demonstrate how Simply Awful and unspeakable they are?

Rusty has departed the TARDIS and the Xmas special is not happening

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/update-doctor-who-future

Fandom underwhelmed rather than gutted. So far.

No problem at all.
I'll be watching my fave Pertwee and Baker stories instead.

wow! The Reddit Dr Who subs are lit. Makes this thread look like Davies appreciation post. Hell hath no fury like fandom scorned.

He's now claiming that the Christmas Special wasn't even written?

This is making me smile and I'm not even sorry 😁

I follow a former media/creative type, gay, had civil partnership then marriage to partner at the first opportunity, unthinkingly TWAW, all that.

He has posted a very critical review of Tip Toe. I was a tad surprised.

It always goes like this. I'm surprised when women hear there's going to be a gender critical character on one of these shows and say "I'll tune in and see what it's like". At this stage, you know what it's going to be like. Why give them the ratings?

If by some miracle a mainstream drama actually depicts gender critical views accurately, the backlash from the TRAs will be loud enough that we'll all hear about it. These characters are always depicted as cartoon villains, or well-meaning but stupid people who need to be corrected by a tearful Stunning and Brave. It's going to age horribly when we look back in a few decades time.

They already hated RTD whilst barely 5 years ago they were pining for him like some lost Messiah to come back and make everything better again.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DoctorWhumour/comments/1u1ymib/welcome_to_the_wilderness_years_part_2/

It really was only his pulling power that got fricking Children's programme Doctor Who rebooted in the first place in 2005. You'd think they'd thank him

There have been a lot of articles recently in various outlets about this new series and increased focus on Russell Davies generally. They are written to increase interest, and to get audiences more interested in him and in the new drama series. Conflict is exaggerated and hyped, like the “Rumble in the Jungle” if anyone remembers that. Lots of people now talking about Russell. His people are doing a good job.

I think it's both, to be honest. RTD has been living in an ivory tower for decades now. It's all been posh flats in metro gay districts for him, for years and years. He doesn't know what homophobia looks like outside of that bubble anymore. Just look at that speech he gave a few years back, raging against the founding of the LGB Alliance. "When you exclude you kill" and all that. Gay people wanting their own movement separate from the trans one was a crime akin to murder in his eyes. Absolute fucking derangement, of course, but it tells you everything about how disconnected from reality the man has become.

The thing is though, media types like Russell spend a lot of time online, and can't remain completely unaware of the conversations other people are having. They don't want to touch them with a ten foot pole, but they know they're there. So they try to divert the conversation into something else. It's an old tactic. Misrepresent what people actually think, and then you can build a sort of bogeyman out of your opponent and respond to this made-up entity, instead of actually having to engage. Russell has done the same thing here. He hasn't actually interacted with the working class in years, but he has forty year old memories of them being homophobic to him, so he's all too happy to create a caricature of them as fick, Daily Mail-reading gammon who are one beer away from forming a mob and beating the nearest gay man to death.

And then everyone cries on cue and says "oh, isn't it terrible the way society is going?". As if he's some great observational writer of our time. But he isn't accurately observing anything. His scripts aren't reality, they're The World According To Twitter. But if you try to call out that it's all melodrama, misrepresentation and political agenda, people get upset and call you homophobic. You didn't cry at the obvious, cheap bit of emotional manipulation that was killing off a gay character on television, so you must not care about violence against gay men 🤨🤨🤨

It's Adolescence all over again. Online misogyny is a real issue, but it doesn't look like this silly fictional portrayal of it. Homophobia is on the rise - but it doesn't look like the fevered imaginings of Tip Toe.

One of homophobia's most visible recent expressions, actually, has been society funnelling effeminate young gay boys towards transition. But Russell won't say a word about that.

Yes agree. There's a term "anvilicious" which means a drama repeatedly bludgeons viewers with A Very Important Message that he lapsed into

It's always state of the nation stuff

Someone has reminded me of Mark Kermode's description of Oliver Stone's films as like being "locked in a room with someone shouting in your face for an hour".

Yeah, that.

From the article writer who previously loved Boy Meets Boy FtM trans person, but admitted that as a gay man himself he wouldn't go out with a FtM because he's a gay man...

The Transphobic bastard!

TMAM

Excellent post @SnoopyPajamas . You are bang on the money with this:

'One of homophobia's most visible recent expressions, actually, has been society funnelling effeminate young gay boys towards transition. But Russell won't say a word about that.'

Is he still killing off his gay characters?

I haven’t seen his latest drama and probably won’t but I did lurk on the informative tv pace thread in Telly Addicts and some posts on the thread have summed it up by what I can see.

@SnoopyPajamas post was particularly incisive.

Victoria Smith watched it

https://archive.ph/rAz7s

https://thecritic.co.uk/can-russell-t-davies-write-terfs/