The Shameful Secrets of Stephen Fry.
Stephen Fry refuses to acknowledge his role in enabling Stonewall's extremism. Worse still he continues to promote the same disturbing attitude to child sexuality that animates the LGBTQ+ lobby.
Stephen Fry’s recent comments criticising Stonewall have been seized upon by many as a welcome sign the mood has changed on trans issues. The reasoning goes that if even a “national treasure” like Fry is distancing himself from the LGBTQ+ lobby the defeat of trans extremism cannot be far away.
Dream on.
The temptation to celebrate is understandable. The failure of gay celebrities to take a stand against the criminally insane demands of the trans lobby has been one of the most shameful aspects of this whole debacle. You can count on one hand the number of lesbian or gay houshold names who have dared to stand up for women’s single sex spaces and against the scandal of puberty blockers. In fact …on a three fingered hand. Other than tennis legend Martina Navratilova, actor James Dreyfus and news presenter Andrew Doyle I can’t think of any others.
From Elton John’s financing of the Netflix movie about Peter Tatchell to the self-satisfied bloviating of Sam Smith, Sandi Toksvig, Graham Norton, Alan Cumming and a rogue’s gallery of other cowards, gay celebrities have exhibited the kind of acumen normally associated with a certain type of over-fed fowl who make complacent gurgling noises as Christmas looms into view.
Fry’s criticism of Stonewall is though not the turning point it may seem. His allegedly heretical comments on the Triggernometry Podcast came in response to a question submitted by gay activist Levi Pay. The question did not pull its punches.
“I watched as this organisation, which I used to love, shifted to arguing for the medicalisation of gender non-conforming children. It now portrays lesbians who wish to exclude male people from their dating pool as being equivalent to racists.”
Fry’s answer certainly left the impression he supported this characterisation.
“I agree completely with Levi Pay,” Fry said
'I think it's shameful and sad...it's got stuck in a terrible, terrible quagmire, so he is right.'
Yet the impression Fry agreed with Pay was undermined by his response to the opening line of the question. Asked how he could “in all conscience” continue to support Stonewall and “its divisive stance on trans rights” Fry began by challenging the assumption he did back the charity.
“Do I? I am not sure I do support them.'
This was so disingenuous as to be deceptive. For years Fry has offered uncritical backing to both Stonewall and to trans extremism. In 2018 he denounced women who protested at Pride about lesbian erasure as “pretty damned sick” and dismissed their defence of lesbian identity as “some screwed up contempt for the rights of trans and intersex people.”
Charming.
I’m hoping a much shorter version of this article will appear in The Critic. They won’t however take the…err…more controversial aspects. Particularly the….P word. Only my subscribers get the full shocking story.
If you are a free subscriber and can see your way to become a paid one I’ll be really grateful. Paid subscriptions are what allow me to spend time doing this research.
In 2015 Fry also joined Graham Norton in funding a deluded woman’s double mastectomy. What are the chances that the same Stephen Fry who expressed his contempt for the sickness of protesting lesbians also helped pay Lois Hancox (a daft lesbian) to have her breasts surgically removed? It’s almost as if there’s a theme emerging here.
As for Stonewall itself as recently as seven months ago Fry headed up a video tribute to mark the organisation’s 35th anniversary.
“Congratulations and thank you”, said the man who now has the audacity to question whether “I do support them.”
In the video Fry goes on to praise Stonewall “for moving heaven and earth in ways no one thought you would.”
It’s true no one thought 35 years ago a gay charity would move heaven and earth to help men gain entry to girls changing rooms. Nor that it would campaign for the sterilisation of young gays which is effectively what happens if they are prescribed puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones; the “gender affirming healthcare” (sic) which has been a central demand of Stonewall for a decade.
What has happened at Stonewall in the seven months since Fry’s oleaginous expression of gratitude to make him change his mind? If the podcast’s presenters Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster had been less star-struck they might have bothered to ask. Had they done so they could have pointed out that, if anything, Stonewall has recently reined in its extremism.
Earlier this year it expressed support for the Cass Review’s conclusions and hasn’t denounced the indefinite ban on puberty blockers despite it noisily advocating for the drugs in the past. It’s a long time since Stonewall tweeted about two year olds being trans. The rumour is it has been told to keep its nose clean by its friends in the new government.
Some of Fry’s fans argue that despite his pathetic failure to acknowledge his past support for Stonewall we should concentrate on the upside. Above all, they say, the fact he appeared to agree with Levi Pay’s criticism of “the medicalisation of gender non-conforming children” proves Fry now disavows the whole scandalous business of “gender affirming healthcare” for children. I’m not so sure.
For one thing, elsewhere in his interview Fry chose, without any prompting, to restate the core claim of transgender ideology. The one from which all the horrors of medicalising children stem: the claim children can be born in the wrong body.
Fry’s comments about this were overshadowed by the fuss about his relationship or non-relationship to Stonewall but they deserve closer examination. That’s because they may help shed light on the allure of the “born in the wrong body” narrative to so many prominent gay men.
That fascination, it turns out, may be linked to the darkest secret of what was the gay movement and is now the LGBTQ+ menagerie: the unhealthy interest of too many of its activists in children and their sexuality.
If you want to understand the connection between that obsession and the notion of a child being born in the wrong body a good place to start is a stage-play. One that celebrates paedophilia.
One that was written by ….Stephen Fry.