The 81-year-old “Monty Python” star was struck while fighting online with followers offended by his decision to sign a letter of support for Rowling amid the huge reaction over her opinions on transgender issues.
“Deep down, I want to be a Cambodian police woman. Is that allowed, or am I being unrealistic?” he responded to someone who asked why he couldn’t “just let people be who they want to be.”
Questioned whether he accepted that Rowling made “some rather indelicate statements regarding those people who identify differently,” Cleese quipped, “That depends who I identify with today…”
“I’m afraid I’m not that interested in trans folks,” he said when pushed to “be upfront” about his opinions on Rowling’s discussion.
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“I just hope they’re happy and that people treat them kindly,” he wrote.
“Right now I’m more focussed on threats to democracy in America, the rampant corruption in the UK, the appalling British Press, the revelations about police brutality, Covid19, the incompetence of the British government, China’s complete disregard for the necessity to abandon fossil fuels, the developments in France between Macron and Islamicists, diabetes, and the recent deaths of several of my close friends,” he wrote.
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“Does [that] sound hard-hearted?” he asked.
He later grieved that critics revealed a “complete lack of perspective” as well as a “complete lack of a sense of humor,” asking, “Heard a woke joke yet?”
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Cleese later admitted his “understanding is superficial,” yet wrote, “When a woman who was once a man is competing against women who have always been women, I think she has an advantage, because she inherited a man’s body, which is usually bigger and stronger than a woman’s.
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“Does that prove phobia?” he challenged his critics.
The exchanges left Cleese repeatedly blasted as transphobic while trending on Twitter.
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“Damn. Really wasn’t expecting someone as talented and amazing as John Cleese to be anti-trans,” author Adam Tierney tweeted next to a sad-face emoji.
“Dude … John Cleese being Transphobic was not something I saw coming and I am thoroughly disappointed by it,” one follower wrote, while trans author Lilah Sturges said he was “transphobic in a way that attempts and fails to be funny.”
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“This is an ex-comedian,” Sturges wrote.
Cleese then tweeted a list of points he is “more focussed on”, which extended from US President Donald Trump’s efforts to derail democracy, the coronavirus pandemic to the “incompetence of the British government”, because it seems like the erosion of trans rights across some countries and trans homicides reaching the highest pace ever in the US, among others, aren’t matters to focus on.
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