This month, a Sunday Times headline dubbed the 34-year-old MP for Weald of Kent, Katie Lam, the ‘Tories’ new hope’. The piece described the new parliamentarian as a ‘shiny presence’ that, in some circles, is already being touted as ‘ potential leader-in-waiting and saviour of conservatism’. But Lam is more than a politician: as the Kent MP discussed with the Spectator’s Tim Shipman on Coffee House Shots, she has written five plays and is currently working on a sixth. ‘None of them are political,’ she assured him – but that hasn’t stopped eyebrows being raised at revelations one of these is a ‘joyful trans story’. How interesting…
Lam has written the script and lyrics for a musical adaptation of The Danish Girl, an award-winning book by David Ebershoff that has also been turned into a film. The story follows a Danish transwoman called Lili Elbe, who was one of the first people in the world to undergo gender reassignment surgery. In Lam’s musical version, trans actress L Morgan Lee was cast as the lead in 2021, when the adaptation was workshopped for the first time. Speaking to LGBT media outlet Pink News at the time, Lam gushed:
Inspired by discussions with our consultants and casts, we are committed to telling a joyful trans story. Lili of course struggled through the traumas inherent in transition and did not survive her final operation. But for decades she was supported, accepted and loved by her wife, siblings, parents, friends and wider community. She found a surgeon who believed and understood her and was able to make her emotional reality a physical reality; and all a hundred years ago.
Her comments have been unearthed and are circulating on social media – prompting scepticism about her current stance on trans rights, single-sex spaces and the findings of the Cass review. Some have questioned whether she remains as liberal on the subject as she was in 2021, while others have suggested – more cynically – that she may try and distance herself from her previous remarks in a bid to appeal to Reform switchers. She has, rather curiously, remained quiet about the trans issue on her social media and in interviews.
For her part, Lam says:
My position on this issue is exactly the same as Kemi Badenoch and as the Conservative party – I agree with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and the findings of the Cass review. A woman is a female adult human being.
Art doesn’t have to make a political point – I find most overtly political art is lecturing and dull. Audiences are smart and you can present them a story – and The Danish Girl tells an interesting story about a real person – and let them make up their own minds.
Indeed!
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