Daniel Radcliffe, who continues to be a lovely and decent human being, hosted a roundtable for trans youth so they could speak about their journeys and beliefs without being talked over by bigoted adults.
The Harry Potter star facilitated the chat with six trans and non-binary young people for the first episode of The Trevor Project’s Sharing Space series. Radcliffe has been working with the LGBTQIA+ suicide prevention org for over a decade.
The roundtable discusses “gender euphoria, respecting pronouns, self-discovery, and what genuine allyship looks like”, and the whole thing just looks like such a thoughtful and wholesome space.
He is a goat for this
— Lucas (@Lucaswoodland) March 31, 2023
“We listen to so many people talk about trans youth and hear them talked about so often in the news, but very rarely do we actually hear from these youth directly,” Radcliffe said during the episode.
“At the end of the day, if you’re going to talk about trans kids, it might be useful to actually listen to trans kids.”
Amen, king.
The episode opened up with a general consensus that all of the youth struggled initially to put words to their experience of gender because language at the time was completely lacking in articulating transness.
Dan Rad, bless his soul, basically acted as the straight/cis audience stand in: he discussed how his experience of gender was subconscious and not something he ever needed to articulate because it was the default, and then used his lack of lived experience as a springboard to ask questions.
One of the key questions was that of allyship — a term Radcliffe said he’s always been a little ick about.
“I said this to you all earlier about my weird little problems with the word ‘ally,’ just because anytime you hear somebody self-refer to themself as an ally, I’m always like, ‘I’m suspicious of you,’” he said.
“But there is an original meaning to that word, and there [are] some people who embody that very powerfully.”
The panelists then discussed how some people can brand themselves as an “ally” and then use this as a shield to claim they can never do anything problematic.
“We as people in this community, we have to oftentimes accept that, even with allies, we still have to communicate what makes us feel good and what our boundaries [are],” Deity The Way, one of the young people on the panel, said.
“The first thing that a person that calls [themselves] an ally thinks is that ‘because I believe in you and because I see you the way you want to be seen, I can’t do anything else wrong’.
“It’s not about you respecting me, it’s about you taking accountability, you know? You can’t be an ally to anyone let alone trans or cis, if you cannot sit down and acknowledge when you’ve done something that hurts someone or that can make someone feel less.”
At one point, the group also discusses colonialism and its impact on the way gender was expressed.
Honestly, the whole thing is actually a really beautiful conversation — a genuine dialogue — which feels rare in the hateful climate we see transness talked about.
Just make a tea, curl up on your couch and watch it, please.
ICYMI Daniel Radcliffe has openly advocated for trans people for years and was awarded the Trevor Hero Award in 2011.
In 2020, he was the first star from the Harry Potter franchise to openly acknowledge and condemn She Who Must Not Be Named’s transphobic antics.
“Transgender women are women,” he wrote at the time.
“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.”
He reiterated his stance in 2022 in an interview where he was asked about why he felt the need to speak out against JK Rowling.
“The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that,” Radcliffe said.
“And so seeing them hurt on that day I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.”
Daniel Radcliffe everyone, the king of my heart.
