Lucy Bannerman at The Times on Daniel Radcliffe’s confidence in the wisdom of children:
Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter actor, has said that children should be trusted to transition from one gender to another if they wish.
The actor said that it was “condescending” for adults to question whether such a life-changing decision was in a child’s best interests.
Radcliffe appeared to support gender transition for young people of any age, while hosting a group discussion for an American LGBT charity, the Trevor Project.
Hosting it quite badly, I would add. I watched the brief clip where he says that fatuous thing, and discovered that he’s remarkably clumsy and inarticulate for a professional actor.
In the half-hour conversation, which has been viewed almost 100,000 times on YouTube, Radcliffe asked six young people about their experiences of identifying as transgender and non-binary.
When Daley, a participant who was born male but identifies as female, insisted that it was possible for an 11-year-old to decide to change gender, Radcliffe said: “But there are also people who do have a slightly condescending but well-meaning attitude of like, ‘Well, people are young and like . . . you know, that is a huge decision’. I’d love to hear from all of you about, like, why we can trust kids to tell us who they are.”
He’s like down with the kids but like he can’t like form a complete sentence, especially not a complete sentence without the word “like” appearing several times.
Daley replied: “I don’t understand why I can’t just decide that I’m a girl. You don’t have to be 18 to decide, ‘oh I am who I am’.”
Another participant, who transitioned from male to female, added: “I don’t think we give children enough credit for coming into the world and having a sense of purity and understanding for themselves.”
When that participant, Deity, revealed how she started hormone treatment at an undisclosed age, a week after deciding she was transgender, the actor replied: “Wow, that’s amazing.”
Yes, it is.
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8 responses to “Trust the children”
Hardly a surprise. He is not unintelligent, but he has no post-secondary education, and most of his secondary education was by way of tutors. He has spent virtually his entire life receiving unqualified affirmation of his ideas and whims, on the basis of his ability to repeat lines written for him. Someone like that wanders through life looking for the right lines to repeat.
Changing “genders.” What does that mean? Does “gender” mean “sex”? If so, then, no. No you can’t change genders/sex.
Does “gender” mean a culture’s hegemonic opinions about masculine and feminine behaviour? If so, go nuts. Act that way.
Does “gender” mean a magic, secret ingredient, soul-type thing in your head that makes you genuinely male or female “on the inside” despite what your body tells you? Well, I’m afraid that medical science has no evidence for such a thing. There’s no scan of a brain that can find this out. There are no tests. It’s most likely all a bunch of hooey.
And Radcliffe and everybody else have swallowed this magical thinking hook, line and sinker and they look like absolute idiots and there are going to be legions of ruined young people in coming years and right-wing imbeciles will be justified for deriding the left and for ruefully shaking their heads.
The Times article on the link is paywalled, but I got its gist:
When I was a 10-year-old kid, I wanted to be an engine driver; in charge of a steam train. Diesels were just on the way in. But I never was so set on that career so much that I would have accepted genital mutilation if that was part of the deal. And by the time I reached the age at which I could apply to become a trainee engine driver, I no longer wanted to be one.
Life’s funny that way.
If you can’t trust “Deity”, who can you trust?
(But seriously, did his parents name him thus? Or did he choose it himself? Either way, that’s fucked up.)
Now there’s damning with faint praise. For most people, without that clarifying phrase, the response would be “Daniel who?” However galling and embarrassing that association may be to his current woke self, if he’s not careful he might become better known as “Daniel Radcliffe, child mutilation apologist.” “In for a penny, in for a pound” is just a prelude to the discovery of the First Law of Holes.
Re “Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter actor”:
There is a new Harry Potter television series, slated to run for seven seasons, to re-do the main story in a new format. (I think that’s wonderful, it gets away from the need to squash the story of a book into a two-hour movie, but I digress.) They make the point that there will be an entirely new cast. As if somehow any rational person might expect a 33-year-old man to portray an eleven-year-old boy.
Me:
I think you can get a little more persnickety.
The craziest thing to me is that these are all uses I’ve actually encountered. I’m sure there are more that I’m forgetting.
Just remembered another one: gender as an “internal map of how to move in and interact with the world”.
Wat.