Rosie O’Donnell said she told her daughter that you can be a girl and still “like all the boy stuff” during a chat about gender identity, adding that she was a “tomboy” who “loved being a girl.”
The comedian shared the story with actress Mayim Bialik on the May 9 episode of the “Bialik Breakdown,” Bialik’s podcast about mental health.
O’Donnell said she was responding to her daughter telling her mother that her stuffed animals are “non-binary,” meaning they identify as neither a girl nor a boy.
“I’m like, here we go. Here we go!” O’Donnell said.
Rosie O'Donnell is being canceled by trans rights activists for speaking common sense. pic.twitter.com/YGpqR4hU5P
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) May 24, 2023
“I said, well that’s fantastic,” she said she told her daughter. “You know what’s funny is that I’m a girl who people used to call a tomboy because I liked all the boy stuff when I was little. And you know what’s weird? I still do really like the boy stuff. I like football, I like riding a motorcycle. I like to do a lot of stuff that boys traditionally like to do.”
O’Donnell added that she “never was confused” about whether she was a boy or a girl.
O’Donnell said she also told her daughter, “But you know what else? Never was confused about thinking if I was a boy or a girl. Always knew I was a girl and loved being a girl. So you can be a girl and feel any way you want or you can figure out what it is.”
“I’m like rambling and rambling and she said, ‘Are you done?'” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell is a lesbian who has been married twice to two women.
She is a foster and adoptive mother who has welcomed five adopted children since 1995. Her youngest daughter is nine. She is also a grandmother.
The comedian is also a liberal Democrat who has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates. Some of her donations in 2018 even went over the legal limit.
O’Donnell has had a massively successful career in comedy and television that includes a famous years-long feud with Donald Trump.
Critics of gender ideology worry that girls who would simply have been “tomboys” in previous generations are now assumed to be transgender. Those girls are pushed towards puberty blockers at 10 or 11, then cross-sex hormones when they are teens, and finally genital and chest surgeries, critics say.
Parents of trans-identifying children often cite their children’s preference for the activities of the opposite gender as a reason they knew their child was transgender.
One mother who testified this month against a Louisiana bill that would ban sex change surgeries for minors said she knew her 18-month-old daughter was a boy when she wanted to play with “boy toys.”
That mother said she is discussing puberty blockers for her now 10-year-old daughter.
Hundreds of teen girls in the U.S., some as young as 12, have gotten elective, gender-related double mastectomies to remove their healthy breasts over the last few years.
Meanwhile, it is more popular than ever for youth to adopt new gender identities. An estimated 300,000 minors aged 13 to 17 identified as transgender as of last year.