Rocky Horror star Richard O’Brien: Trans women can’t be women
Rocky Horror creator Richard O’Brien caused controversy by speaking out against transgender women.
The veteran actor is best known as the presenter of gameshow The Crystal Maze, and for creating The Rocky Horror Picture Show – as well as originating the role of Riff-Raff.
O’Brien has previously spoken about his own fluid gender identity, labelling himself the “third sex” and explaining: “I believe myself probably to be about 70% male, 30% female”, adding he “ticks the ‘M’ box” for gender but “would quite like to have Other to tick.”
However, speaking to the Metro, O’Brien weighed in on controversy surrounding feminist author Germaine Greer’s anti-trans comments.
Greer claimed: “Just because you lop off your d**k and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a f***ing woman.”
Speaking to the Metro, O’Brien weighed in on “feminists [who] say that because someone has surgery that doesn’t make them a woman”
He added: “I think I agree with that. I agree with Germaine Greer and Barry Humphries. You can’t be a woman. You can be an idea of a woman.
“You’re in the middle and there’s nothing wrong with that. I certainly wouldn’t have the wedding tackle taken off.
“That is a huge jump and I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone who does it but you aren’t a woman.”
He adds: “I think of myself as Richard. I think of myself as a third sex and it makes things easier. I’m somewhere in the middle. My wife and children love me and celebrate me for who I am.
“I wish we would see ourselves as members of a sentient race of beings and be nice to each other as human beings as opposed to male or female.”
Greer said previously: “I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a f***ing cocker spaniel.
“A man who gets his d**k chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.”
Dame Edna star Barry Humphries also claimed in an interview that gender surgery is “mutilation”.
He said: “I agree with Germaine! You’re a mutilated man, that’s all. Self-mutilation, what’s all this carry on? Caitlyn Jenner – what a publicity-seeking ratbag.
“It’s all given the stamp – not of respectability, but authenticity or something. If you criticise anything you’re racist or sexist or homophobic.”
