Posh boy bites the hand that made him
Julie Burchill is enjoyably unimpressed by Daniel Radcliffe.
Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe has opined – more in sorrow than in anger, no doubt, with a caring, sharing smile on those sensitive lips – that adults concerned about children changing gender are ‘condescending’. More specifically, he ‘affirmed’ the beliefs of six trans and nonbinary children at a discussion organised by LGBTQ charity The Trevor Project this week, saying: ‘There are people who also have a slightly condescending, but well-meaning attitude of “People are young… and it is a huge decision”.’ According to Radcliffe, ‘We can trust kids to tell us who they are’.
Can we? Then why can’t they vote or join the military or marry that nice rapist they met online?
No, we can’t automatically “trust” what kids tell us, because kids are vulnerable and also because kids can get things wrong. Certainly parents should pay attention to what their kids tell them, but that’s quite different from a blanket assertion that children never make mistakes about “who they are.”
Half of the 5,000 children referred to the NHS’ Tavistock clinic from 2020 to 2022 were under 15 – and over a dozen were under four years old. This is despite the fact that teenagers’ brains are still growing. Unless they swallow gender ideology, of course – then the brain growth stops and they stay stupid.
Funny but also tragically accurate.
One of the handy effects of wokeism is that it conveniently ignores class as a form of privilege. So if you went to a fee-paying school, but then identify as ‘queer’ or an ‘ally’, you can then behave as if you had a tougher start than, say, JK Rowling. As a child, Rowling was told that, due to her social class, the nearest she could ever get to her dream of being a writer was being a teacher.
But now the born to class privilege Daniel Radcliffe gets to lecture Rowling from a very great height, thanks to darling gender ideology, which insists (loudly) that being trans is by far the worst oppression there is.
He’s an ungrateful plonker.
When I look back at my childhood, and think of all the things I thought I was…well, I don’t cringe with embarrassment for things I thought when I was seven, but I cringe to think I would hold those ideas now, when I am 62. Nearly everything I once thought about who I was has disappeared, burned away in the fire of a lifetime of discoveries about myself – and the world in general.
With that said, I wouldn’t eve state with confidence that I know who I am now. I know what I feel like, what I like, and so forth, but who I am is a complex thing, and the answer isn’t the same everywhere.
At the age of three, I believed my scrotum was my bladder.
At ten I was going to be Prime Minister.
At 14, was going to join the Air Force and be a fighter pilot.
At 17 I was a pacifist and joined protests against the Vietnam Invasion and conscription for same.
At 18 I was going to be an actor.
At 19 I discovered the precarious employment of acting and went into the reliable work of Stage Management.
At 23, theatre’s wages could not sustain a family so off to selling I went.
That’s a lot of change over the space of 20 years, and 70-year-old me barely recognises the youthful me, but I am what I am because of all those changes. The youth becacme the man, but did not define the future man.
Utterly agree iknklast, although I suffer from a strong streak of often needless self criticism, so I cringe quite often. Less than I used to but still. I think when I was in my early 20’s I had a strong idea of who I was. As you say life burned that away like an early morning mist. Now I have a strong idea of what I am. I can list all sorts of verifiable characteristics both good and bad. As to who I am? That’s very complex and subject to whether I’m viewed from the outside, or by me with knowledge of my own thoughts and feelings, with what weighting’s and against what frame(s) of reference. It’s why we can never truely know another and why acceptance of that person on the basis of their own self-ID is ridiculous.
I made a number of very poor decisions as a youth of 18-25, even having grown up in a relatively privileged and sheltered lifestyle, so I had no excuse other than immature whims. Fortunately, none of them altered my life permanently–partly due to having parents who were involved in my life. Radcliffe is one of those types who would let children “decide for themselves” to make massively life-altering decisions. There are many of those same types here in Washington state: a bill just passed our state house that will allow children to seek “gender affirming care” without anyone having to inform the parents. It’s widely expected to be signed into law because it’s a senate bill that already passed there, and the governor is supportive.
https://senatedemocrats.wa.gov/liias/2023/04/13/legislation-to-protect-trans-youth-seeking-lifesaving-care-passes-the-house/
Note the (as always) manipulative wording – “protect” & “trans youth” & “lifesaving care.”