Stephen Fry’s recent comments criticising Stonewall have been seized upon by many as a sign that the vibes have changed on trans issues. If even a “national treasure” like Fry is distancing himself from the LGBTQ+ lobby, the defeat of trans extremism cannot be far away, or so the reasoning runs. 

Dream on. Fry’s criticism is in fact as self-serving as it is disingenuous.

His allegedly heretical comments on the Triggernometry podcast came in response to a question submitted by gay activist Levi Pay. The question did not pull its punches:

“I watched as this organisation, which I used to love, shifted to arguing for the medicalisation of gender non-conforming children.”

If you knew nothing about Fry’s track record you might be tempted to take his response at face value. After all, he sounded unequivocal.

“I agree completely with Levi Pay,” Fry said, “I think it’s shameful and sad … it’s got stuck in a terrible, terrible quagmire, so he is right.”

The problem was that when asked how he could “in all conscience” continue to support Stonewall, Fry challenged the suggestion that he backed the charity.

“Do I? I am not sure I do support them.”

If Fry — who was knighted yesterday — had been honest he would have acknowledged that for years he has been a cheerleader for both Stonewall and the trans extremism it represents. In 2018, for example, he reportedly denounced women who protested at Pride about the erasure of lesbians as “pretty damned sick” and dismissed their claims as “some screwed up contempt for the rights of trans and intersex people.”

Charming.

As for Stonewall itself — as recently as seven months ago Fry headed up a video tribute to mark the organisation’s 35th anniversary.

“Congratulations and thank you”, said the man who now has the audacity to question whether “I do support them.” 

In the video, Fry went on to praise Stonewall “for moving heaven and earth in ways no one thought you would.” 

It’s true no one thought 35 years ago a gay charity would move heaven and earth to help men gain entry to girls’ changing rooms. Nor that it would campaign for the sterilisation of young gays which is effectively what happens if they are prescribed puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones; the “gender affirming healthcare” (sic) which has been a central demand of Stonewall for a decade.

What has happened at Stonewall in the seven months since Fry’s expression of gratitude to make him change his mind? If the podcast’s presenters Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster had been less star-struck they might have bothered to ask. 

Fry’s fans argue that despite his pathetic attempt to ignore his past support for Stonewall we should concentrate on the upside of his pivot. Above all, they say, the fact he now claims to disagree with “the medicalisation of gender non-conforming children” will further undermine the whole scandalous business of “gender affirming healthcare” for children. I’m not so sure.

… if Fry was ever really concerned about Stonewall’s extremism or the dangers of puberty blockers he has left it plenty late to let us know

For one thing, elsewhere in his interview Fry chose, without any prompting, to restate the core claim of transgender ideology — the one from which all the horrors of medicalising children stem: the claim children can be born in the wrong body. Asked about the importance of freedom of expression in comedy Fry used the opportunity to  complain that too many comedians allegedly use their freedom of speech to “punch low”, citing as his sole example … children who believe “they are born into the wrong body”. 

“I mean does no one have sympathy for some poor child who believes they are born into the wrong body? This has happened for thousands of years,” said Fry.

It hardly needs saying that comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, who have lampooned the LGBTQ+ lobby, have never, to my knowledge, ridiculed children. Instead they quite rightly poked fun at adult men who demand access to women’s spaces. 

Fry went on to applaud the “courage” of children who tell their school they are the opposite sex even though the Cass Review concluded social transition like this should be avoided. It risks crystallising in a child’s mind a passing fantasy. 

The truth is, if Fry was ever really concerned about Stonewall’s extremism or the dangers of puberty blockers he has left it plenty late to let us know. People who applaud his supposed courage in doing so now insult the few brave gay celebrities who raised their heads above the parapet years ago, such as tennis legend Martina Navratilova and the actor James Dreyfus. 

What makes Fry’s cowardly contribution now particularly specious is that he’s never been scared to express his opinions in the past, no matter how controversial or unpopular.

Who could forget, for example, that time he saw fit to give us his opinion on the issue of child abuse, arguing that while it was “pretty grotesque to grope, especially an under-age child who doesn’t quite know what’s happening to them….it’s not as grotesque as raping them … suddenly everyone isn’t Jimmy Savile just because they may have patted somebody’s bottom, you know”.

Or the time he said 14-year-olds who had had sex with rock stars shouldn’t automatically be thought of as victims. 

Or that time he told victims of historic child abuse they should stop wallowing in self-pity:

“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.”

All of these comments risked cancellation for Fry as much as any that criticised Stonewall. In fact Fry has over the years positively luxuriated in shocking people. When he presented a BAFTA to Eddie Redmayne he joked that the actor “has been a man trapped in his own body, a woman trapped in a man’s body and, if I had my way, a man trapped in my basement.”

Fry was also happy to offer us the benefits of his great big brain wisdom when he opined that women don’t really like sex. Quite how he knows is unclear.

The idea that Fry felt scared to challenge Stonewall and the medicalization of children is therefore ludicrous. The bigger question is why anyone should take him seriously about the experiences of kids. The uncomfortable truth is he has a long and inglorious record of minimising the seriousness of child sex abuse. 

In 2012, he delivered a limerick on QI about a chaplain’s desire for a choir boy “with a bottom like jelly on springs”. At the 2016 BAFTAS where the harrowing movie Spotlight about a child abuse investigation was nominated, Fry commented, “Love abounds this year in film….the love between two women, love between a young Irish girl and an Italian American, love between Catholic priests and …” The implication there was any sort of love “between Catholic priests and…” their victims disgusted much of the audience.

Fry’s careless attitude was clear at the outset of his career in his play Latin!, which took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm in 1980 despite its non-judgmental portrayal of … paedophilia.

The play, set in a private boys’ school, depicts the “relationship” between Dominic Clarke, a Latin teacher and one of his pupils. That pupil is 13. He is also an orphan. (So not vulnerable at all then.) Nowhere in the play is there even a hint that adult men having sex with children is problematic.

“Pleasure lies between the thighs of a young boy”, declares Clarke unapologetically.

The play ends with Clarke running away with the 13 year old orphan to Morocco. There they live in what is presented as sexual and emotional bliss. Eager to share their joy, they write to their old school to tell them that young boys and men can live together in Morocco as sexual partners. 

Fry may feel able to joke about the abuse of children but the victims of the medical/sexual abuse of “gender affirming healthcare” that Stonewall championed and he enabled by his uncritical support have been left to cope with life-changing consequences they feel unable to so glibly dismiss.

Fry should not be allowed to walk away unscathed from the mess he helped create. If Stonewall is in a quagmire, it was his cowardice and opinions about children and their “sexuality” that helped put it there.