Sir Ian McKellen urges gay people to be better allies to the transgender community.
The legendary actor and Stonewall co-founder joined It’s a Sin star Olly Alexander for a special LGBT+ History Month talk on TikTok on February 25, Pink News reports.
Sir Ian said:
“I do hear people – gay people – talk about transgender people in very much the same terms as people used to talk about your common or garden gay.
“The connection between us all is we come under the queer umbrella – we are queer. I quite like being queer actually.
“The problems that transgender people have with the law are not dissimilar from what used to be the case for us, so I think we should all be allies really.“
This is not the first time the actor has stood up to transphobes.
Speaking to lifestyle magazine Attitude, the veteran star talked about how happy he was about Elliot Page coming out as transgender.
He felt “so disappointed” with himself for not recognizing the struggles that the then-teenage actor could have been facing when they worked together.
The actor talked about why it is important to be honest with oneself.
Top photo from The Talks.
[image ID:
First image is a black and white photo of Ian McKellen looking into the camera with his hand on his head, fingers splayed across his forehead.
Second photo is a side-by-side with Elliot Page on the left, wearing a black shirt and black baseball cap. On the right is Ian McKellen in a blue shirt and brown plaid suit coat.
Seeing ppl say they want “intersex features” (meaning. A working penis and vagina) is so fucking insulting because that’s not even an intersex thing! Intersex people aren’t a monolith, and also that’s not a thing we have. Those surgeries exist but that doesn’t make you intersex. You CANNOT transition to being intersex no matter what surgeries you have, it’s something you’re born as. “I want this feature which means I feel empathetic to intersex folks” I am beating you with a stick
The tags too, because I feel they’re important
[ID: a series of tags that read, “I’m looking directly at perisex trans folks with this one. Your dysphoria/euphoria is not an excuse to be intersexist. Check your intersexism and learn the correct language to describe what you want. As an intersex trans person I am tired of this bullshit. It’s so hurtful and isolating when I see trans communities having convos about how they want intersex bodies, or wish they were intersex`, or specifically want intersex genitalia. Like fuck off. We’re more than our bodies. End ID]
