Jeremy Clarkson may have been removed from Top Gear hosting duties last March, but the outspoken British personality is still making waves.
Clarkson, 55, is under attack by trans activists after his column in the U.K.’s Sunday Times criticized the need for trans rights. His column headline is “Transgender issues are driving me nuts. I need surgery on my tick boxes.”
The former host states his position bluntly in his column, saying parents “must not be allowed to poison the mind of a child.”
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He recounts a story told to him about an eight-year-old child: “She had been born a boy, but had insisted from the age of three that she had a girl’s name and wore girls’ clothes and, later, that she went to a girls’ school. Her parents had simply indulged this whim.”
Clarkson goes on to say that transgender issues get far too much attention in the media, and suggests that transgender numbers in the population (of the U.K. for his example) are inflated.
“As far as I was concerned, men who want to be women were only really to be found on the internet or in the seedier bits of Bangkok,” he continued. “They were called ladyboys, and in my mind they were nothing more than the punchline in a stag-night anecdote.”
READ MORE: Transgender athletes can take part in Olympics without surgery, IOC ruling
Little Britain star Matt Lucas expressed his disgust with Clarkson’s article on Twitter.
Actor Eddie Marsan, who’s appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows including Sherlock Holmes and Ray Donovan, agreed.
They weren’t the only ones.
Some did support Clarkson, however.
The former Top Gear presenter, who was fired by the BBC last year for punching a producer, is filming a new car TV show for Amazon.
Radio DJ Chris Evans has taken over from Clarkson on Top Gear, which will air new episodes starting in May.
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