Tip Toe: A Miserable Transgender Bitch Speaks

Russell T. Davies' new queer drama is ridiculous

The new queer drama ‘Tip Toe’ by Russell T. Davies is getting glowing reviews from the likes of The Guardian, The Metro, The Independent, The Times and… even The Telegraph - one of the single most transphobic news outlets the UK has to offer. The Guardian and The Times alike don’t have the best record on LGBT reportage either, so I have to wonder: What exactly is it they like so much about it?

There’s no doubt it’s stylishly put together. Alan Cumming is, as always, incredible - playing an older gay man, dealing with a variety of passive aggressive micro aggressions (and some macro) from his homophobic next door neighbour. The cast is diverse, starring real, actual trans people (like the wonderfully talented ‘Zee’ played by Iz Hesketh), and the show does, at the very least, make an effort to show some of the struggles trans people are living through in the UK - from precarious living conditions, threat to life & the erosion of healthcare (all covered quickly in the first episode). The show’s heart is clearly in the right place, and Russell T. Davies, as always, is full of good intentions. So, with that, let’s venture into Hell…

Before I start moaning about all the things I dislike about this show, I need you to keep in mind that I am a miserable bitch. Especially these days, and especially as it pertains to trans representation on British TV. I’m a hard nut to please, there’s no question. To say I have a chip on my shoulder would be a grave understatement, and you may well disagree with a lot of what I have to say on this. You might argue that I’m being over-reactive, or presumptuous, or unfair - and that all attempts to reach a ‘middle ground’ should be welcomed with open arms. But I’m not just trying to ‘pick holes’ in something well-intentioned. I’m just trying to communicate to you how this series made me feel, with my frame of references. I’m going to try my best to be as fair as I can - but seeing as how everyone and their secretly gay dad is praising Tip Toe to high-heaven, it’s only right that I should be allowed, being the grumpy trans bitch that I am, to wade in and pour some scorn all over everything. To rain on your parade. A lot of the themes in this programme directly relate to my life in the UK - I do, in part, have a stake in it - and I happen to think representation, and the societal repercussions of it, are important.

The first 2 episodes of this 5 episode mini series were released in tandem, and I watched them on 40D (or whatever it identifies as these days). The archetypes are laid out early - Cumming’s older gay man, trying to run his Manchester bar, with a staff of scrappy, young queers who keep him in check on pronoun use. The trans and non-binary staff, themselves each encountering their own intersectional struggles. The ex-drag queen, jaded and alcoholic - waxing lyrical about the UK’s sink into fascism, but then espousing anti-trans sentiment, with the idea that gender politics is the probable reason why. We have a close female friend of the protagonist too, who appears to also hold ‘gender critical’ beliefs. And then there are the neighbours - David Morrissey’s Clive as the homophobic handyman, edging his way towards a separation with his wife, and unaware that his 16 year old son is gay.

The series opens with a shocking image - Alan Cumming as Leo - hanging, apparently dead from a lamppost outside his house. There’s screaming, and confusion, and a clear allusion to the disturbing history of lynching - in which predominantly black people were subject to horrific ‘mob justice’ (see: racial terror) at the hands of racist, white communities in the wake of the Reconstruction era. Russell T Davies has never been one for subtlety in his writing, but you have to admire the tasteless brazenness of it all. It’s crystal clear what he’s trying to say here - that we’re on our way towards something terrible as a society (and I don’t disagree), but I do wonder whether Davies really thinks this is what we’re just around the corner of, or if he just wanted some disturbing dizzying spectacle to open the show with.

But tonally, things are all over the place. In one bizarre scene, after discovering that trans woman Zee is secretly living at the bar to escape abuse from her thuggish housemates, Leo and the team of employees jump into a car and go over there to pick up her stuff. When confronted by the housemates, who we’re informed are Polish, bar manager Judy brandishes (and fires) a shot at them with her actual real rifle. This kind of ungrounded sequence is familiar in Russel T Davies’ work, perhaps an attempt to insert some fun levity into things - but it always sits wrong for me, juxtaposed with what he’s apparently trying to do - which is ground us in the ‘realities’ of the world we supposedly live in. For that reason, it’s difficult to always completely understand where Davies is coming from. The casual, and mostly unquestioned references to Zee’s attackers as being Polish or ‘gypsies’ as Leo calls them, are left completely up in the air, leaving us to wonder if they are clever allusions to the prejudices that queer people themselves hold - to be addressed more deeply later, or if they are just racist stereotypes. For now, we’re left to decide for ourselves - which would be fine in the hands of a more nuanced script. But there is very little nuanced about Tip Toe. (spolier: he never comes back to this)

There is a scene in which Leo and his homophobic neighbour Clive discuss identity politics in his kitchen. In the scene, Clive tries to make a jibe at Leo about trans-indoctrination, however Leo turns it back on him. Essentially, he tells him that all this ‘he/she/they/them’ stuff is the fault of the straights. He explains how, growing up, it was always the straight bullies in the playground who insisted you identify yourself. Are you a boy? Are you a girl? What are you? The implication here, is that if only straight culture were’t so obsessed with identity, perhaps people could just live their lives without labels. An idealistic vision, sure. But, in the context of this conversation in this programme, I’m sorry to say it reads a lot more like trans-erasure. Intentional or not, it feeds into the pernicious ‘gender critical’ narrative that trans people simply don’t really exist. It posits that, if only effeminate little boys, say, were left to their own devices, that there’d be no call for self-identification. It celebrates the ‘utopian vision’ of a future devoid of the trans experience.

The lynching of Leo, which teases the beginning of each episode, comes to its climax at the end of episode 5. After a fraught encounter in Clive’s living room, where both of his sons are outed - one for being gay, and the other an online OnlyFans creator - Clive, and his mob of football fan pals drag Leo out of the house. Clive accuses him of grooming, then orders his goons to ‘string him up’ and then, as we’ve been perversely promised, they do so… in the middle of a suburban street… by his neck… and hang him from the lamppost until he’s dead. It’s, honestly, fucking ridiculous. Not because such a thing could never conceivably come to fruition - but because Davies hasn’t managed to successfully tee-up a convincing set of circumstances to make it remotely believable.

Look, the imagery of lynching is big. It carries with it weight that needs to be sensitively handled. Somebody like Shane Meadows might have been able to make it work somehow, but in the hands of Davies it just feels absurd. It undermines everything, reading less like ‘mob justice’ and more like a whimsical thing that football fans just love to do.

After finishing the series, I was left bereft - wondering what the point of it all was. Tip Toe positions itself as a timely warning against a descent into homophobia, but it leaves the stage with seemingly no practical answers whatsoever. Leo, when confronted with homophobia, tries his best to relate-to, and find middle-ground with Clive, and it still ends with him being murdered. Tip Toe wants us to know we’re heading backwards as a society, and it isn’t wrong, but it’s a shame that also means a step back into melodramatic Hallmark channel style ‘representation’. Tip Toe feels more Boys Don’t Cry than Pose.

Which leads me to my main problem with Tip Toe… surprise, surprise… the ‘trans representation’. Zee, the primary trans character (the others largely silent, reserved for diversifying the set-dressing) is shown to have challenges, but is also portrayed as strong-willed and self confident, and on the whole I would say is a positive representation. I like her character. But, in a show that is pitching itself as a timely meditation on the state of the culture, Davies has neglected to include a massively important aspect of trans life right now…

In Davies’ recent promotional interview for The Guardian, he tells us:

Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington), Leo’s close friend whom we see throughout the series, is gender-critical – believing that biological sex cannot be changed from birth.

“I wanted all sorts of voices in there,” says Davies. “I’ve got friends who are gender-critical. It’s only online you end up screaming and shouting and being attacked by them. In real life, you have a chat, and we all kind of sigh and put up with each other. That’s how the world works. It’s actually how the world is ceasing to work.” As terrifying violence looms towards the end of the series, Stephanie and Zee end up on the same side.

Davies is very much giving himself a pat on the back at the moment for his inclusion of these challenging themes - opting to have a character who we’re supposed to believe is ‘gender critical’. The character in question, who is Leo’s best girl-friend, makes the occasional snarky comment here and there about pronouns or, when talking to Zee, will make a jab about her being on too many hormones. But, if Russell T Davies’ interest is in portraying a convincing landscape of transphobia, he’s really missed the flipping mark here.

When Davies says he has ‘gender critical friends’, as concerning as that is, I do have to wonder if what he really means is - he’s got a few pals who struggle with getting pronouns right. Because any trans person alive right now will tell you that the character of Stephanie is NOT representative of the gender critical movement. Stephanie enjoys the proximity of trans characters. She hangs out in the queer bars and makes jokes about how men love to cum. She and Leo ‘agree to disagree’ because, really, there’s not all that much at stake. I don’t know if there were scenes left out of the final edit which show a more pernicious nature to her, but as it stands - if she is supposed to be the representation of ‘the debate’, then we’ve been robbed of a potentially really interesting possibility for character development. If your every day, uninformed straight viewer comes away from Tip Toe thinking that Stephanie is ‘gender critical’, then Davies has only served to make it look as benign as possible.

People who identify as ‘gender critical’ are not misunderstood. They are not a part of ‘the community’. They are an orchestrated, well-funded, deeply ideological anti-trans propaganda organisation. Their gradual creep into public acceptability has resulted in many, many instances of trans people’s rights being eroded. They have contributed more to the perception of queer people as ‘groomers’ than Clive ever could, so excuse me for feeling uncomfortable with their whitewashing in Tip Toe.

The Guardian article says: ‘As terrifying violence looms towards the end of the series, Stephanie and Zee end up on the same side’. But, do they? What actually happens is, they end up in Leo’s house together, and as the lynching football hooligans try and force their way through the door to get to them, Zee hides on the stairs while Stephanie tries to hold the door shut. They don’t talk to each other, or have any sort of epiphany about the nature of their shared struggles.

And I get what Davies is trying to say. He’s telling us that, when it all comes down to it, they’ll come for all of us. Okay, but what does that do for me now? What should we do about the very real, tangible transphobia that is ravaging trans people’s lives in this moment? Does Davies even know what the gender critical movement is? Because it doesn’t feel like he does. It doesn’t feel as though he has any actual fucking idea how up against it we really are - and his attempt to portray some sanitised version of it is, to be honest, more than unhelpful.

I think more than anything, after finishing Tip Toe I just felt sad. Not because Leo got lynched, but because Tip Toe is considered by many to be a groundbreaking work of queer drama. It bums me out, because there are so many queer writers out there doing truly challenging, nuanced, experimental work - and meanwhile, Channel 4 is throwing money at Russell T. Davies to put out trite nonsense like this, where once again he’s given free reign to paint his sheltered view of the world. To lay out queer culture as he sees it, while hundreds of hopeful trans writers have their manuscripts tossed into the dustbin.

I know I’m a miserable bitch. I already disclosed that to you at the start. But I won’t stop complaining about the shocking lack of trans-lead writing on British television. If TV is important, then it should too be important that it’s written by those who have some skin in the game. If you want to improve the trans situation, then let some trans people express how they feel about it, in a way which is true to their vision.

At the end of the day though, Davies is a safe pair of hands for Channel 4. They know that his work prioritises flashy editing, clippable monologuing and hot button issues that act as ‘conversation starters’ but nothing beyond that. And that’s where the British public feels safest - at the start of the conversation. Heaven forbid they actually be put in the middle of it all. That they actually get to see what is really going on.

Angels in America this ain’t. But 35 years on, it really fucking ought to be.

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Thank you for reading this piece. Writing & animations by Jen Ives. There will be a new long form article, like this, every Sunday. If you enjoyed it, and would like to look into more of my writing/work, you can do so here: www.jenives.net - where there are links to everything. You can also email me at jeniveswriter@gmail.com if you fancy giving me some paid work or publishing my novel. No pressure, though.

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