The actor Daniel Radcliffe He said that he is saddened by the writer’s position JK Rowling about the rights of transgender people, and added in an interview that he has not spoken with the author of Harry Potter dwarves.
Radcliffe, who played the unmistakable wizard Harry Potter in the successful film adaptation of Rowling’s super-popular books, differs with the writer on the thorny issue of gender identity. Rowling has publicly repeated that biological sex is immutable, but Radcliffe, who campaigns for LGBTQ groups, defends that trans women have the right to identify as women.
“It makes me very sad,” Radcliffe told The Atlantic, which published his interview this week. “Because I look at this person that I met, and the time we spent, and the books that he wrote, and the world that he created, and all of that is so deeply empathetic to me.”
Gender identity is an issue that polarizes public opinion in many countries, including Scotland, where Rowling is from, and the United States, where Radcliffe is currently working on a Broadway play.
Rowling argues that transgender rights advocates undermine women’s safety. As an example, she has mentioned cases in which transgender women have caused problems in women’s locker rooms, bathrooms or prisons.
In 2020, Radcliffe, who supports the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth, responded to several of Rowling’s comments with a statement stating that “transgender women are women.”
The British press pounced on this public division, especially since the Harry Potter franchise is so successful with children around the world. “A lot of people dealing with oppressed feelings, with rejection from their families, or living with a secret, found solace in those books and those movies,” Radcliffe said.
The British press tried to characterize Radcliffe and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as “spoiled brats,” the actor said. Last month, Rowling appeared to lash out again at the actors when she responded to a comment on social media suggesting that she would forgive the actors if they apologized.
“Celebrities who joined a movement that seeks to undermine the hard-won rights of women, and who used their platforms to applaud the (gender) transition of minors, can save their apologies for the traumatized and vulnerable women who they depend on unisex spaces,” Rowling wrote.
“I will continue to support the rights of the LGBTQ community, and I have no further comment to make,” Radcliffe told The Atlantic. “But that doesn’t mean you owe the things you truly believe in to someone else for your entire life,” she added, acknowledging Rowling’s invaluable impact on her career.
Source: AFP
