Tom Browns Schooldays was one of my dad's favourite books. He always encouraged me to read it & I will definitely do so. Celebrities make me want to vomit. I've always thoroughly disliked most of them for their insecurities, the desperation need they have for validation & to be liked. I can't relate to that because I absolutely embrace being disliked. I don't give a a hoot whether ppl do or don't that's not for me to worry about. They are very happy to jump on a bandwagon, to conform. This trans ideology is homophobic as you rightly say. Being gay is so passé now & trans is "cool" definitely a social contagion Perfect for those who want to be "right on" & accepted by the ppl we choose to align with
Good one! Don't worry many ppl are always happy to tell me 😁 you're right. It's like a box ticking exercise. Everyone has to stay in their lane. Gay actors have played straight men & vice versa. It's insane.
Your diatribes are the best; they are insightful, funny, eloquent and educational. DT is a great actor but he, along with so many, has fallen victim to the pleas for "compassion" from the idealogues. It is amazing how effective it is to ask: "why can't you be kind?". One would have thought any parent would see through this, but...
Helen Joyce said something very astute about parents who have supported their child's transition, that they will be the most fervent trans advocates. It's a kind of self protective denial and very powerful. You see this in many influential circles, a social contagion ripple effect when the adults so desperately crave the approval of youth, especially their children, they go along with anything. Love can do crazy things.
No parent who consented to sex change medical treatments of their child can possibly change their view. What could be said, "Sorry, honey, that I collaborated in having you castrated and giving you powerful drugs with known crippling side effects"? The mind has powerful "antibodies" against cognitive dissonance that bad. If you did admit to something of that magnitude, there'd be choice but suicide.
I suspect even Andrew Doyle is self censoring here because if he mention Tennant's trans child he will be accused of being a transphobic child abusing monster who attacks trans children. In the same way JKR is accused of transphobia for kicking back against men in women's spaces. The difference is she can say what she likes because she can afford very expensive lawyers.
I have learned that his child claims to be "non-binary". That is a idea, a feeling, like all "gender identities". I reject treating gender identities as "trans". Trans used to support the dimorphic view of sex, but activists like "Stonewall" have created an ever-increasing number of letters to express feelings. We are now supposed to believe that Trans is a "spectrum" with at one end, a person who is so appalled by their body that they will endure years of painful surgeries to alter it such that it resembles the opposite sex. I worked with such a person and his life was a tragedy, mitigated by living as someone else. And at the other end of the spectrum, a person who "right now doesn't want to feel male or female". To conflate the suffering of the former with the narcissistic demand that feelings must be acknowledged as a thing, is grotesque. I had a medical procedure recently. The form I was required to sign asked: Male/Female/non-binary? This is where "be kind to people's feelings" has lead us - a corruption of medical data. As a parent, I think Tenant is causing harm to his child by pandering to make-believe ideas. It is abuse.
Tennant is so over-enthusiastically woke that he seems to be above the modern vogue for sexuality-based casting, but otherwise he’s a perfect spokesperson for a captured industry. The idea that a gay actor has to play a gay character and a trans actor is going to be better at playing a trans character is an extension of cancel culture. It means that only the ideologically captured will get the parts. The truth is that while being recognised might give you an audience, what you say is only of any value to the rest of us if it’s written by someone else - preferably talented with a story worth telling.
Zaphod Beeblebrox had 2 heads but was always a “he”, as far as I’m aware. Douglas Adams would have had a whale of a time making fun of these new pronouns
Thank you once again for the clarity of thought in this article. It has raised all sorts of tangential issues in my mind which is currently undergoing a renovation of sorts having had an overdoze of David Tennant on X since his now ill-thought-out condemnation of Kemi Bandenoch. I'm still a tad angry and I may ramble a bit. I shall crave your indulgence whilst I do so.
I once believed that 'X' was the consummate echo chamber but the entertainment industry (as you highlight) and the literary festival industry are proving to be formidable competitors.
As for who's to blame for the woke mess that is now Dr Who, IMO it's one person: Russell T. Davies. The T is for twat, the one who said of those who disagree with his transvision of the future: 'people full of absolute hate and venom and destruction and violence... and good luck to them in their lonely lives'. Not a hint of irony. There never is with his ilk. But he got cheers and thunderous applause for that from his captured audience. Similarly, David Tennant also got cheers and thunderous applause for his vindictive comments about Kemi Bandenoch.
Had either of them said what they said in a less activist environment, I think the audience response would have been a tad less enthusiastic. Hence my echo chamber analogy. Think about it. Rich white privileged man wants to end black woman for standing up for Women's Rights. I'd hazard a guess that five or more years ago, had he said this, he would have been pilloried for it. Instead, fast forward to the crazy world of 2024, and he's cheered and applauded for it.
But it's not just the entertainment industry that's at stake here. There's something a lot more sinister in play, and the fact that most people don't even realise that it has been in play for more than 50 years, is a huge concern for our collective future. Cut to the chase and the infiltration of our schools, universities, medical institutions and governments with neo-Marxist cultural ideology has engulfed the USA and Europe including this once green and pleasant land of ours. One commentator who has encapsulated and articulated this phenomenon is James Lindsay. This is a link to a speech he gave to the EU Parliament last year - I'm surprised they invited him, but they did, he is, in effect, castigating them in his speech. If you have the time, lend an eye and an ear: it's quite uncanny how clearly he lays out the facts.
Something has to give, and soon. Between the incessant incantations of woke pretenders and islamist extremists masquerading as pro-Palestinian protesters, if the silent majority don't start speaking up soon, there will indeed be some form of civil war. France is almost there, Sweden has effectively capitulated to the demands of its immigrant population, Denmark calls it "the Swedish condition", and people (in the UK) are probably going to vote in a government that will make things worse for everyone and everything. There's no devil and deep blue sea anymore, there's just the devil and the devil. This again is the crazy world of 2024. But IMO, if one wishes to protect Women's Rights, Women's Sports, and Women's Spaces, the devil we know is the lesser devil.
Still can't 'like' comments on my side. I'm not surprised you already know about James Lindsay. I like how he never loses track of his point without the apparent aid of an auto-cue or notes.
I watch Glow Up (channel 4) and for the past few series they've started putting contestants' pronouns in brackets when they're introduced on the screen. I complained, obviously. If they want to be referred to as something other than what they obviously are then the judges can do that without such overt indoctrination. Channel 4 dismissed my complaint, unsurprisingly. Part of my complaint was that the pronouns only applied to the contestants. none of the judges had their pronouns announced, nor were they present in the credits as they rolled at the end. Surely either EVERYONE should have their pronouns or no one should?
A few thoughts: 1) Tennant asked why people should not be allowed to do their own thing so long as they don't hurt anyone else. Talk about a straw man! This is literally what GC activists and Badenoch stand for, too. If anyone is hurting anyone else, of course, its the misogynists and homophobes in the movement that Tennant allies himself with. 2) Tennant has a 'non-binary', primary-aged child. There is no such thing as a vegan cat. If we were living in more enlightened times, the Tennants might be attracting the attention of social services. 3) While I agree with the substance of Badenoch's riposte, I wish she hadn't deployed the race and sex card in her defence. It might be nice to think she did so in an ironic, satirical swipe at woke intersectionality, but I suspect not. Everyone is now weaponising their victimhood identities to try and win arguments: it's so shallow, and I expect better from her.
I agree and it’s a tricky tightwalk as she could be accused of hypocrisy. It does illustrate that all the ideologues who are engaging in cancel culture and offence taking, might find themselves on the receiving end one day. It’s a shame they can’t see that far ahead as it might make them think before screeching abuse 😁
I grew up reading Enid Blyton in the '70s (The Children of Cherry Tree Farm was a fave) even though I lived in tropical Australia. When living in Cambridge in the early 80s I used to ramble out to the nearby countryside, along blackberry sided paths, looking for gypsies and other dark men who I could report to the law for acting suspiciously. Sadly the only gypsies I ever saw were on telly being evicted for illegally invading a farmer's fields.
When is the LGB part of the LGBTQ+ going to split away AND HAVE THEIR OWN CELEBRATION? The new LGB organisation without the T etc part would be far more acceptable to heterosexual folk like myself. My disgust at the T prevents me from supporting same sex rights when included with the LGBTQ FANATICS.
I am aware of the split, however every parade/ celebration includes tran, not just the LGB. This leaves the impression that they support trans and all the other derivatives which is not the case.
Apparently Ancient Egyptian culture is the preserve of the modern Egyptian state which was founded by colonists from distant Saudi Arabia who destroyed the last vestiges of it, and replaced it with the religion and language of the colonist-invaders, wholly imported. But now they are like "hey, you can't use hieroglyphics without my permission bruv. And we want our statues, the ones we didn't destroy, back".
Tennant is not a chameleon-like actor. A bit of himself comes through in everything he does. At times on the screen he comes across as very likeable, in the days when Who wasn't yet a sole Woke project, gruff as in Broadchurch, tortured as in Hamlet, or even evil as in Harry Potter or Secret Smile. He is a good actor who can access different parts of himself to portray these varying types. But I've never seen him play something that is a complete departure from ... himself.
That's why I think he has shot himself massively in the foot here. The TRAs and the chattering classes may currently love him for his stance, but he comes across as thoroughly unlikeable and that may come back to haunt him later on.
Actors sometimes say ill-advised or ill-thought out things. I'm thinking of Helen Mirren, a resident of the US, who didn't rate British TV despite the fact that it offered her one of her greatest roles as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. It was easy to brush that aside, however, upon seeing her put in another fine performance in another film. In her case, it isn't necessary to agree with everything she says because most of us can agree she is very talented, and it's the art and the craft that's the important thing, not throw away views.
If the wind starts to blow in another direction, however, I really think Tennant will regret how he has behaved around this issue. It could cost him work, and as for audiences, they may find it hard to believe him in any other role than that as an intolerant and ill-informed Trans activist.
Wishing someone no longer exists is vicious, sorry. These are not 'kind' people.
It's another way of saying DIE, TERF. Or KILL TERFS.
Like on all the male-sized $20+ transactivist tee shirts flogged online -- I counted over 20 different sellers last time I looked.
He didn't even have the balls to say "die", although it was clear what he meant.
Tom Browns Schooldays was one of my dad's favourite books. He always encouraged me to read it & I will definitely do so. Celebrities make me want to vomit. I've always thoroughly disliked most of them for their insecurities, the desperation need they have for validation & to be liked. I can't relate to that because I absolutely embrace being disliked. I don't give a a hoot whether ppl do or don't that's not for me to worry about. They are very happy to jump on a bandwagon, to conform. This trans ideology is homophobic as you rightly say. Being gay is so passé now & trans is "cool" definitely a social contagion Perfect for those who want to be "right on" & accepted by the ppl we choose to align with
I just liked your comment. Sorry, but there’s no option to say I dislike you.😉
Good one! Don't worry many ppl are always happy to tell me 😁 you're right. It's like a box ticking exercise. Everyone has to stay in their lane. Gay actors have played straight men & vice versa. It's insane.
Your diatribes are the best; they are insightful, funny, eloquent and educational. DT is a great actor but he, along with so many, has fallen victim to the pleas for "compassion" from the idealogues. It is amazing how effective it is to ask: "why can't you be kind?". One would have thought any parent would see through this, but...
Apparently he has a trans identified child himself. That’s why he said his family has skin in the game.
Helen Joyce said something very astute about parents who have supported their child's transition, that they will be the most fervent trans advocates. It's a kind of self protective denial and very powerful. You see this in many influential circles, a social contagion ripple effect when the adults so desperately crave the approval of youth, especially their children, they go along with anything. Love can do crazy things.
No parent who consented to sex change medical treatments of their child can possibly change their view. What could be said, "Sorry, honey, that I collaborated in having you castrated and giving you powerful drugs with known crippling side effects"? The mind has powerful "antibodies" against cognitive dissonance that bad. If you did admit to something of that magnitude, there'd be choice but suicide.
I suspect even Andrew Doyle is self censoring here because if he mention Tennant's trans child he will be accused of being a transphobic child abusing monster who attacks trans children. In the same way JKR is accused of transphobia for kicking back against men in women's spaces. The difference is she can say what she likes because she can afford very expensive lawyers.
I have learned that his child claims to be "non-binary". That is a idea, a feeling, like all "gender identities". I reject treating gender identities as "trans". Trans used to support the dimorphic view of sex, but activists like "Stonewall" have created an ever-increasing number of letters to express feelings. We are now supposed to believe that Trans is a "spectrum" with at one end, a person who is so appalled by their body that they will endure years of painful surgeries to alter it such that it resembles the opposite sex. I worked with such a person and his life was a tragedy, mitigated by living as someone else. And at the other end of the spectrum, a person who "right now doesn't want to feel male or female". To conflate the suffering of the former with the narcissistic demand that feelings must be acknowledged as a thing, is grotesque. I had a medical procedure recently. The form I was required to sign asked: Male/Female/non-binary? This is where "be kind to people's feelings" has lead us - a corruption of medical data. As a parent, I think Tenant is causing harm to his child by pandering to make-believe ideas. It is abuse.
Tennant is so over-enthusiastically woke that he seems to be above the modern vogue for sexuality-based casting, but otherwise he’s a perfect spokesperson for a captured industry. The idea that a gay actor has to play a gay character and a trans actor is going to be better at playing a trans character is an extension of cancel culture. It means that only the ideologically captured will get the parts. The truth is that while being recognised might give you an audience, what you say is only of any value to the rest of us if it’s written by someone else - preferably talented with a story worth telling.
Zaphod Beeblebrox had 2 heads but was always a “he”, as far as I’m aware. Douglas Adams would have had a whale of a time making fun of these new pronouns
I see what you did there.
He might also posit the existence of an F-Ark full of influencers, vegans, pro Palestinian protestors, and trans and queer activists.
Gender ideology is science fiction. Exactly my conclusion. That's all folks.
Bizarre, dystopian science fiction. Why it's so hard to believe all the institutional capture is happening for real.
Never meet your heroes, Loved Tennants acting, and yet I had an acute awareness I should never know anything more off him... I was right....
This is no surprise, unfortunately...
You know Andrew, I'd love to plop someone like Sean Connery in the middle of this today, and just set him loose...
Thank you once again for the clarity of thought in this article. It has raised all sorts of tangential issues in my mind which is currently undergoing a renovation of sorts having had an overdoze of David Tennant on X since his now ill-thought-out condemnation of Kemi Bandenoch. I'm still a tad angry and I may ramble a bit. I shall crave your indulgence whilst I do so.
I once believed that 'X' was the consummate echo chamber but the entertainment industry (as you highlight) and the literary festival industry are proving to be formidable competitors.
As for who's to blame for the woke mess that is now Dr Who, IMO it's one person: Russell T. Davies. The T is for twat, the one who said of those who disagree with his transvision of the future: 'people full of absolute hate and venom and destruction and violence... and good luck to them in their lonely lives'. Not a hint of irony. There never is with his ilk. But he got cheers and thunderous applause for that from his captured audience. Similarly, David Tennant also got cheers and thunderous applause for his vindictive comments about Kemi Bandenoch.
Had either of them said what they said in a less activist environment, I think the audience response would have been a tad less enthusiastic. Hence my echo chamber analogy. Think about it. Rich white privileged man wants to end black woman for standing up for Women's Rights. I'd hazard a guess that five or more years ago, had he said this, he would have been pilloried for it. Instead, fast forward to the crazy world of 2024, and he's cheered and applauded for it.
But it's not just the entertainment industry that's at stake here. There's something a lot more sinister in play, and the fact that most people don't even realise that it has been in play for more than 50 years, is a huge concern for our collective future. Cut to the chase and the infiltration of our schools, universities, medical institutions and governments with neo-Marxist cultural ideology has engulfed the USA and Europe including this once green and pleasant land of ours. One commentator who has encapsulated and articulated this phenomenon is James Lindsay. This is a link to a speech he gave to the EU Parliament last year - I'm surprised they invited him, but they did, he is, in effect, castigating them in his speech. If you have the time, lend an eye and an ear: it's quite uncanny how clearly he lays out the facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVZPYQS1dFA
Something has to give, and soon. Between the incessant incantations of woke pretenders and islamist extremists masquerading as pro-Palestinian protesters, if the silent majority don't start speaking up soon, there will indeed be some form of civil war. France is almost there, Sweden has effectively capitulated to the demands of its immigrant population, Denmark calls it "the Swedish condition", and people (in the UK) are probably going to vote in a government that will make things worse for everyone and everything. There's no devil and deep blue sea anymore, there's just the devil and the devil. This again is the crazy world of 2024. But IMO, if one wishes to protect Women's Rights, Women's Sports, and Women's Spaces, the devil we know is the lesser devil.
Have heard the speech before but will enjoy listening again later, thanks.
Still can't 'like' comments on my side. I'm not surprised you already know about James Lindsay. I like how he never loses track of his point without the apparent aid of an auto-cue or notes.
Indeed, very impressive.
I watch Glow Up (channel 4) and for the past few series they've started putting contestants' pronouns in brackets when they're introduced on the screen. I complained, obviously. If they want to be referred to as something other than what they obviously are then the judges can do that without such overt indoctrination. Channel 4 dismissed my complaint, unsurprisingly. Part of my complaint was that the pronouns only applied to the contestants. none of the judges had their pronouns announced, nor were they present in the credits as they rolled at the end. Surely either EVERYONE should have their pronouns or no one should?
A few thoughts: 1) Tennant asked why people should not be allowed to do their own thing so long as they don't hurt anyone else. Talk about a straw man! This is literally what GC activists and Badenoch stand for, too. If anyone is hurting anyone else, of course, its the misogynists and homophobes in the movement that Tennant allies himself with. 2) Tennant has a 'non-binary', primary-aged child. There is no such thing as a vegan cat. If we were living in more enlightened times, the Tennants might be attracting the attention of social services. 3) While I agree with the substance of Badenoch's riposte, I wish she hadn't deployed the race and sex card in her defence. It might be nice to think she did so in an ironic, satirical swipe at woke intersectionality, but I suspect not. Everyone is now weaponising their victimhood identities to try and win arguments: it's so shallow, and I expect better from her.
I think she’s clever enough to have done it on purpose, to turn the tables and use their weapons against themselves.
You could be right. I have a instinctive distrust of anyone playing that game. :-)
I agree and it’s a tricky tightwalk as she could be accused of hypocrisy. It does illustrate that all the ideologues who are engaging in cancel culture and offence taking, might find themselves on the receiving end one day. It’s a shame they can’t see that far ahead as it might make them think before screeching abuse 😁
I grew up reading Enid Blyton in the '70s (The Children of Cherry Tree Farm was a fave) even though I lived in tropical Australia. When living in Cambridge in the early 80s I used to ramble out to the nearby countryside, along blackberry sided paths, looking for gypsies and other dark men who I could report to the law for acting suspiciously. Sadly the only gypsies I ever saw were on telly being evicted for illegally invading a farmer's fields.
When is the LGB part of the LGBTQ+ going to split away AND HAVE THEIR OWN CELEBRATION? The new LGB organisation without the T etc part would be far more acceptable to heterosexual folk like myself. My disgust at the T prevents me from supporting same sex rights when included with the LGBTQ FANATICS.
The LBG part, as you put it, *has* split away: https://lgballiance.org.uk/
I am aware of the split, however every parade/ celebration includes tran, not just the LGB. This leaves the impression that they support trans and all the other derivatives which is not the case.
Did you catch Ncuti Gatwa referring to the old, Anubis version of Sutekh (definitely not CGI) in Dr Who this week as "cultural appropriation"?
Apparently Ancient Egyptian culture is the preserve of the modern Egyptian state which was founded by colonists from distant Saudi Arabia who destroyed the last vestiges of it, and replaced it with the religion and language of the colonist-invaders, wholly imported. But now they are like "hey, you can't use hieroglyphics without my permission bruv. And we want our statues, the ones we didn't destroy, back".
Tennant is not a chameleon-like actor. A bit of himself comes through in everything he does. At times on the screen he comes across as very likeable, in the days when Who wasn't yet a sole Woke project, gruff as in Broadchurch, tortured as in Hamlet, or even evil as in Harry Potter or Secret Smile. He is a good actor who can access different parts of himself to portray these varying types. But I've never seen him play something that is a complete departure from ... himself.
That's why I think he has shot himself massively in the foot here. The TRAs and the chattering classes may currently love him for his stance, but he comes across as thoroughly unlikeable and that may come back to haunt him later on.
Actors sometimes say ill-advised or ill-thought out things. I'm thinking of Helen Mirren, a resident of the US, who didn't rate British TV despite the fact that it offered her one of her greatest roles as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. It was easy to brush that aside, however, upon seeing her put in another fine performance in another film. In her case, it isn't necessary to agree with everything she says because most of us can agree she is very talented, and it's the art and the craft that's the important thing, not throw away views.
If the wind starts to blow in another direction, however, I really think Tennant will regret how he has behaved around this issue. It could cost him work, and as for audiences, they may find it hard to believe him in any other role than that as an intolerant and ill-informed Trans activist.