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.

Thanks for this! Love Victoria Smith - she always manages to name that thing that has been bothering me about something:

“…it is a lazy reinforcement of the trans activist position that “terfs” are jealously restricting access to the Barbie Dream House experience that is being a woman. We’re allowed — in Tip Toe, as in Adolescence — to contemplate how hard male conditioning is, and how it distorts the mind. Female conditioning? Not so much. Do that, and you take the Dream House refuge away.”

RTD is now a folk villain to the Who spods. Also they're still thrashing him for fraternising with The Terf Enemy

If he lets Juno Dawson advise, the gender critical person will either repent with much sorrow and wailing about how awful they had been, or be horribly murdered by the more enlightened souls.

Of course he brought in another gay man to advise. What he presumably didn’t do was speak to any women who don’t share the belief that Juno Dawson is, in any way, a woman.

There was a time when RTD didn't just do dramas about the LGBTQ community or magic space aliens. The Grand from what I remember of it was proper watchable

He's a secret Terf. It's the only explanation for the ridiculous dialogue where a trans identified young man scolded the Doctor for failing to ask an alien's gender.

Great article, the two linked mantrums in the metro and independent are hilarious. And Victoria rightly points out that violence and threats don’t only come from cliched beered up football fans, she mentions the jailing of Darren Rigby (the BBC article has already had to be corrected for leaving out “key facts” 🙄:

”…We have updated the article to explain that his threats were directed at three all-girls schools, related to the “misgendering” of trans girls and that Darren Rigby identified in one threat as a trans woman.

We have also included further details from these communications which referred to TERFs, targeting female pupils and staff and included threats to use bladed weapons (my note: one of these schools was in Southport 😡) a crossbow, a revolver, and poison.

Separately, we have also added reaction from senior leaders at all three schools, in which they explain the fear, disruption and upset caused by these threats to pupils, parents and staff. (continues)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0e20ll9gz2o

Well, I suppose the BBC has made it clear to all exactly what it left out in its first report.

Drawing more attention to those facets of the case than if it had included them in the first place.

And raising, in at least some readers' minds, the question "Why did it leave those details out? What possible reason could there be?"