2022 Transphobic Celebrity Round Up

I hate giving daylight to any bigot, but I thought it might be a good idea to do what I’m calling the “2022 Transphobic Celebrity Round Up”.  Maybe we’ll make this an annual thing until transphobic celebrities start keeping their bullshit to themselves, I don’t know.  My criteria for the top three are well known celebrities who have actively and unapologetically worked against trans rights.

Top 3 Transphobic Celebrities

"J.K. Rowlings ' Cheers to me ' From National press club November 1 1999 Washington D.C." by John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

J.K. Rowling 

Definitely the most Tweeted about anti-trans celebrity.  The controversy started when Rowling publically supported Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job for stating that people cannot change their biological sex while also implying no difference between biology and gender.  Rowling wrote a lengthy and somewhat sympathetic explanation of her feelings, which relate to trauma from abuse she has received from men and a correlated fear of men posing as women in women’s spaces.

However, after claims that she received death threats and that her publically available residence was “doxxed”, she has doubled down and shared her own transphobic views as well as those of other anti-trans celebrities and organizations like LGB.  Most recently, she has founded a rape crisis support center called “Beira’s Place” in Edinburgh, Scotland that is exclusive to biological women, which appears to be a direct response to Edinburgh’s existing rape crisis center that is run by a trans woman.

She has been condemned for her words by the lead cast of Harry Potter. Also, she has come out publicly in support of every other celebrity on this list.

"File:Dave Chappelle (42791297960) (cropped).jpg" by John Bauld from Toronto, Canada is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Dave Chappelle

Another celebrity that said some transphobic shit, got publicly ridiculed for it, and then doubled down so he could pack arenas with like-minded bigots.  We are by no means comedians but we like to think of this as a comedy-ish podcast and we believe in the comedy mantra of punching up instead of punching down, which means we don’t exploit disenfranchised and threatened people for the sake of a laugh.  Chappelle has taken the opposite approach, calling feminists “frumpy dykes”, saying rapper DaBaby’s tirade about HIV positive people being nasty and junkies “punched the LGBTQ community right in the AIDS”, and of course in his Netflix special “The Closer” he compared trans genitals to plant-based meat substitutes, said he would murder someone and claim to be a woman for a soft sentence, and in another show called college students criticizing his transphonic speech as “instruments of oppression”. By the way, after a number of Netflix employees boycotted or quit because of the special, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said “Trans people will simply have to deal with the special being on the platform.”

"Piers Morgan" by iDominick is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Piers Morgan

I could go on and on about Morgan, but I am going to be brief.  He won Celebrity Apprentice in 2008 and was described by Donald Trump as “ruthless, arrogant, evil, and obnoxious.”  He has been a mainstay in British media since 1994 and currently has a show called Piers Morgan Uncensored, where is has asked a trans guest about their genitals, said “human beings are male or female, not whatever they fancy being”, said he identifies as “tran-slender” so people can’t fat shame him for identifying as skinny, and tweeted ““Speaking as a two-spirit penguin, I find it absolutely disgraceful that you have a assigned a gender-neutral identity to a penguin chick when it may wish to identify itself as male or female…”

Honorable Mentions

There are a couple celebrities that have a long history of support for the LGBTQ community that said some transphobic shit this year and, after being publicly called out, walked their statements back a little.  

"Bette Midler concert - Chicago" by Alan Light is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Bette Midler

Oof… now this one might “punch you right in the LGBTQ” as Chappelle said.  Bette Midler is gay icon, pride.com even did a 2016 piece called “11 Reasons Better Midler is a Gay Icon”.  However, evidently because trans people exist, she recently tweeted “they don’t call us women anymore.  They call us birthing people, menstruators, or people with vaginas. Don’t let them erase you!”  In a statement, Midler later said “There was no intention of anything exclusionary or transphobic in what I said, it wasn’t about that.”

"Macy Gray" by kingArthur_aus is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Macy Gray

We already talked about Piers Morgan, so when I say “In an interview with Piers Morgan, she said…” you can imagine it’s nothing positive.  What Gray said in that interview is “I will say this, and everyone’s going to hate me, but as a woman, just because you go change your parts, doesn’t make you a woman.  Sorry.”  I don’t think she really is sorry, but she did say “I have nothing but love for the LGBTQ+ and transgender community and have been a supporter since day one. My statement on Piers Morgan was grossly misunderstood. I don’t hate anyone. I respect everyone’s right to feel comfortable in their bodies and live their own truth.”