Every day I am further disappointment by the plethora of celebrities who have defended JK Rowling‘s rampant and aggressive transphobia, and today is no different. Helena Bonham Carter is the latest to do so, and of course she defended Johnny Depp in the same breath. How in-character of her. Is this method acting?
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Bonham Carter said Rowling has been “hounded” for her transphobic opinions, as if that is a bad thing.
“It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks. I think she has been hounded,” she said.
“It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain.”
I’m not really sure what suffering abuse has to do with being allowed to spread hateful opinions that invalidate the experiences of a minority group, especially when trans people experience abuse of every kind at much higher rates than cis people, but go off I guess.
Remember when Kathy Burke obliterated Helena Bonham Carter’s in the letters page of Time Out Magazine? https://t.co/4GjrFYUNCf pic.twitter.com/cEQQxOGPKJ
— nemanja (@nemanjaYVR) November 28, 2022
“You don’t all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring,” Bonham Carter continued.
“She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”
Love calling people who support trans people’s rights “insane” and “boring”! Love framing transphobia as if it is a harmless opinion as like hating pineapple on pizza!
It’s wild to me that anyone can view actively spreading transphobic arguments as anything but aggressive, especially when it would cost Rowling approximately zero dollars to just shut the fuck up and mind her own damn business. But no, she decided she wanted to die on this transphobic hill, and when she was rightly called out for it, she somehow became the victim? I really do not fkn think so.
One of Rowling’s transphobic friends was recently arrested for allegedly doxxing a trans activist to her transphobic followers, which I would argue is pretty fkn aggressive, as is any attempt at undermining a historically marginalised group.
But alas, Bonham Carter’s fuckery does not end there.
She also dissed her fellow Harry Potter stars Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe for being decent and actually standing up against JK Rowling’s bigotry, which she said went against the “etiquette” of fame.
“Personally I feel they should let her have her opinions, but I think they’re very aware of protecting their own fanbase and their generation,” she said.
If by “protecting their own fanbases”, you mean protecting the thousands of trans children and adults who look to them for guidance, then yes. They are protecting them.
Helena Bonham Carter says her ‘Harry Potter’ co-stars like Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson should let J.K. Rowling have her opinions:
“One thing with the fame game is that there’s an etiquette that comes with it; I don’t agree with talking about other famous people.” pic.twitter.com/lnZtIO9f8J
— Pop Base (@PopBase) November 28, 2022
Helena Bonham Carter also claimed Johnny Depp was “completely vindicated” and “totally fine” after his victory in his defamation trial against Amber Heard. FYI, Depp is the godfather of her two children and the two have starred in multiple movies together.
“That’s the problem with these things — that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it,” she said, which was in reference to Heard’s article about experiencing abuse during the rise of the #MeToo movement.
The context here, BTW, is that Heard wrote an article where she mentioned she was a survivor of abuse, though never named her abuser. Johnny Depp said that because the two were together people could assume it was him. He sued her on those grounds.
But even without that context, Bonham Carter trivialising the #MeToo movement as just a “trend” when it was a movement of women speaking out against sexual abuse is pretty fkn shitty, hey?
Also Helena Bonham Carter, #metoo was not a trend, it was is a significant cultural movement where women spoke out about being raped and abused by powerful men with absolute impunity. Instead, the victims were silenced with NDAs.
— Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) November 28, 2022
And of course, there’s also the fact that the Depp/Heard defamation trial was not a criminal trial that sought to prove Depp’s innocence. It was a trial that was historic in the precedence it would set regarding admissions of abuse in the media. With Depp’s win, now any woman in the US who speaks of abuse in an article, even if she never names her abuser, could be sued for defamation.
Bonham Carter then posed the question: “Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices?”
Uh, yes, if those sexual practices involve abuse!
However, Bonham Carter has previously worked with Roman Polanski and Woody Allen so maybe that take isn’t so surprising.
“There would be millions of people who if you looked closely enough at their personal life you would disqualify them,” she continued, unwittingly proving #MeToo right.
“You can’t ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has become quite hysterical and there’s a kind of witch-hunt and a lack of understanding.”
Pretty sure Helena Bonham Carter is the one with the lack of understanding on a) what a witch-hunt is and b) what cancel culture is. Celebrities don’t discuss shit you clearly cannot fathom challenge.
