When you are in a hole, it is maybe best to stop digging. That is advice Daniel Radcliffe would have been wise to heed when he responded to JK Rowling’s challenge to apologise to ‘traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces’.
That was 10 April, when Rowling had been commenting on the Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people. Four years after she had first opened her mouth on the egregious impact of gender identity ideology on our society, Rowling expressed her anger about the consequences on vulnerable children who have been ‘irreversibly harmed’.
Make no mistake, Rowling is right. But her willingness to stand up and be counted has cost her dearly. Early on, she returned her Ripple of Hope Award to the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation amid accusations of transphobia. She has been routinely condemned as ‘anti-trans’, a bigot and worse.
In 2020, Radcliffe joined the public critics announcing that ‘trans women are women’. He even had the gall to apologise on behalf of Rowling after she posted social media comments about the importance of biological sex. In a statement that has not aged well, Radcliffe added:
Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.
Daniel Radcliffe
Dr Hilary Cass has expertise – plenty of it. After all, she is a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. If Radcliffe couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had been wrong and apologise to Rowling, then maybe the best he could do was sit at the bottom of the hole that he had already dug.
It would have been a sad ending to a relationship that once mattered to him. Without Rowling’s books there would have been no Harry Potter, and probably no fame or fortune for Radcliffe. Fortune smiled on him when he was cast in the starring role as an 11-year-old boy.
But the digging has recommenced. In a recent interview just published* by The Atlantic, he declined to acknowledge the psychological and physical damage that has been done to children who have been lied to by those peddling this pernicious ideology. Instead, he doubled down, ‘I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.’
Is that what he thinks? That he must choose between supporting ‘LGBTQ people’ and the protection of children from harm? But there again, Radcliffe is an actor who is paid to read the words that someone else has written. That may be what he is used to in his professional life, but if he chooses to apply the same principles in his private life then he needs to be far more careful who writes the scripts.
Radcliffe leans on ‘The Trevor Project’ – an American nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people. British readers might be more familiar with Stonewall but the way of thinking in these activist spaces is much the same. He told The Atlantic
I’d worked with the Trevor Project for 12 years and it would have seemed like, I don’t know, immense cowardice to me to not say something … I wanted to try and help people that had been negatively affected by [Rowling’s] comments.
Daniel Radcliffe
From her first ‘dress however you please’ statement on the matter in December 2019, Rowling has been firm in what she knows to be true – things like biological sex – but she has also been empathetic towards trans people. In June 2020 she wrote, ‘I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection.’
Rowling offers trans people far more to trans people like me than those banging drums and chanting slogans. Radcliffe would be wise to listen to her or he might find himself in what the followers of the ideology worry might be the worst place possible – the wrong side of history.
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.
Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum
* This article was first published by The Spectator on 2 May 2024: Daniel Radcliffe has dug himself a hole on trans rights.
Debbie Hayton 
8 replies on “Daniel Radcliffe has dug himself a hole on trans rights”
Thank you so much for writing about this, Debbie. I have despised Radcliffe since his first public statement on the matter. I even went to his site and sent him a message scolding him for what he’s said. To be honest, I don’t understand why he is so focussed on trans kids, or why he is involved with the Trevor Project. For a while I suspected he was gay, but it seems his partner is a woman. Now I think he just suffers from the common liberal mindset of wanting to support any and all people with any kind of social disadvantage, the stranger the better. I have concerns for disadvantaged people too, but not when they are seeking special rights, which is what trans people are doing (not you, of course). Radcliffe is the kind of man who would be happy to have a trans child so that he can have a special project to work on. You know, the “trans-loving liberal parent” is not so different from stage parents who are trying to raise a little star.
To everybody else, I am reading Debbie’s book Transsexual Apostate and it is a very good read. I recommend it to everyone. (To Debbie, I’m getting through it slowly only because I’ve had a lot on my plate lately. When I finish it, I’ll have some things to say to you.)
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It was all about jumpstarting a flagging career. He doesn’t have a solid, honest belief in his entire body. If it was all completely debunked tomorrow and every govt in the world shut down the trans agenda, he would do a complete turnaround and say he was misquoted. This kind of sleazebag is like soap in the shower. I was going to say slippery as an eel but then I thought again – eels no doubt play an important part in the ecosystem, whereas this nincompoop adds nothing to society.
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Can’t act, can’t sing, can’t dance, hasn’t had a leading role since he was a child actor, and we all know they don’t act – they just play themselves. He hitched his wagon to the trans star to revive a career that never got off the ground after HP came to an end. Now he can’t backtrack out of pride and embarrassment since the Cass report scathingly debunked the trans cult ‘guidance’ for kids. people are not stupid and many parents who had been too scared to speak out no doubt breathed a sigh of relief at the report’s finding. Radcliffe is a silly little twerp that no one can take seriously. He married now so let’s hope his wife has more sense than him when it comes to indoctrinating his kids.
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I agree. we tolerate these over priced over priviledged actors because we find them entertaining. That doesn’t mean we care about their beliefs or opinions. Robert de Niro is another one who may discover this.
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He already has! The National Association of Broadcasters has withdrawn the award they were going to give him because of his political rantings, saying this kind of behaviour reflects badly on them as being non-partisan.
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excellent
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well said Debbie. It is strange how this has crept into institutions without me noticing… until jk spoke up and i thought pardon?! What?! I was gobsmacked is the only word. How can ppl deny biology, what about science in schools… then i found out how Christians had lost their jobs for speaking basic truths, i found out ab the writer of father ted, singers comedians “cancelled”… and like many others, i went out of my way to buy their books in support. I love jks books but bought childtens hardback books purely to show my support, not knowing what they were about!
i then came across you and your transwomen are men statement and realised, like you, that language had changed to confuse us. I remember a man being called a transgender male, not a transwoman. I am really grateful for your knowledge and insight which helps my understanding.
And having read of many women and girls attacked in single sex spaces when men are allowed in them, really grateful to you and jk standing up for single sex spaces.
thanks again Debbie. God bless you
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I should have come back to this page sooner. I didn’t know that so many people had posted.
I don’t know Radcliffe, so I’m not ready to say the he is a hypocrite trying to save his career. If he spent all those years working with the Trevor Project, then it seems to me that he must believe what he believes honestly. Certainly, the people at the Trevor Project have indoctrinated him.
I suspect that Radcliffe simply has the “liberal sickness” of supporting anyone and everyone who is in any way disadvantaged. I am gay and also a liberal, but I can tell the difference between pretense and reality, and I will side with reality every time. Yes, trans people are disadvantaged in many areas of life. I’m sure that plenty of them have been rejected by their families, can’t find jobs, can’t find a place to live — and then we know that a lot of them have been murdered (mostly people who live in gay-hostile cultures). But that doesn’t give them the right to re-write reality for the rest of us, or to set themselves up as experts on gender, or to tell us how to speak, or to tell us how to raise our children, or to influence children in cultish ways, or to force their way into women’s spaces, or to stifle debate, or to use shaming to get people to agree with them. Sheesh. The sins of this group are numerous!
The way these bad ideas have taken over the liberal world has actually lowered my opinion of people.
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