Annette Bening slams conservatives for demagoguing the LGBTQ+ community, including her trans son

Annette Bening says that right-wing efforts to stoke anti-transgender bigotry for political gain are “heartbreaking.”

“They are trying to stir up all this fear in people about trans kids and parents, and they are trying to legislate that,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in the magazine’s August 16 cover story. “This should not be scary to anybody else. This is a private, legitimate, complex, deep, spiritual, physical, psychological experience that has to be respected and honored.”

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“At the bottom line, life is about love.”

The attacks on trans people are personal for Bening, whose son, writer Stephen Ira, is trans. The four-time Academy Award nominee and recently appointed chair of the board of the Entertainment Community Fund admitted to a certain hesitation in talking about her son publicly. “I’m a private person and my son is private. He has a right to talk about his own life,” she explained.  

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But, she said, the increasingly vile anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from Republican politicians and far-right activists has inspired her to speak out recently.

“For me, the real transition has happened as the right wing in the country has become more and more mobilized on misinforming people about the LGBTQ community,” she said. “They have been vilifying our community and creating problems that do not exist and creating and sowing hate and fear as a way of rallying their base. That’s obviously not new, and it’s happened in the campaigns of the past, especially against gay people. But now it’s transphobia, and it’s just rampant.”

“They’re doing it at a time when there are more and more trans people who are living openly and who are our teachers, our writers, and our doctors,” she continued. “One of my most favorite doctors is a trans woman. What I would wish is for every person to have someone who is trans in their family because once somebody you love is trans, then you get it.

“Certainly, what’s happening in the political world with trans people is so concerning and so dire. It’s only going to get worse as we go into the election cycle.”

She went on to describe Ira as “an inspiration” while admitting to experiencing a bit of a learning curve when he came out as trans in his teens.

“I am incredibly proud of him, and he has carved his own way. He’s someone I do admire, and I’ve learned a lot from when he first came out,” Bening said. “I was very ignorant about what that meant to be a trans kid. I, like every other parent, want to protect my kids and make sure they’re OK, and I had a lot of learning to do. I didn’t always know what to do, and I didn’t always make the right choices because of my own ignorance, but we got through it.”

A longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood, Bening also described the connection between reproductive rights and the right to access gender-affirming healthcare at a time when both are under attack. “I was just at a wonderful event that the ACLU sponsored about bodily autonomy. It was about issues around abortion rights and trans rights,” she recalled. “We were all there to talk about both, and it was awesome. We all want to be able to make the decisions about our bodies without the government interfering. Isn’t that a basic human right?”

She also vowed to continue to use here platform to advocate for trans people. “We all have a responsibility to protect and defend the rights of trans folks in our world,” Bening said. “They’re precious parts of our community.”