have decided that I am a kangaroo. It was a tough decision and it was long in coming, but I now fully identify as a marsupial. This may be confusing to some of you -- because I also recently came out as transgender -- but I am, in actual fact, a transgender kangaroo, and I wish to be addressed as they, and an animal. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it has been for me, living with this secret for so long. As I child, I watched kangaroos bounding about on ‘nature’ shows. I just knew I wanted to be one, I knew — well -- that was me. So free and without care — so athletic — so wondrously nonchalant! Well, it’s something you can’t explain -- and something you may not understand. So you can imagine how frightened I was to reveal to my parents that inside I knew I was a kangaroo. I only wish I had the support back then that children have now for their inner longings and identifications. I kept my feelings repressed for so long, so now I am telling you, and I hop — excuse me, hope you will respect my decision. I know many of you will be concerned with how this will affect my continuing participation in my series, The Umbrella Academy. Well, rest assured that I will continue to play a cisgender woman on that TV show, even though I now identify as a kangaroo. The producers have been very gracious in respecting my identity. I also wish to address some vile people who may think that my ‘coming out’ as a kangaroo has something to do with my career. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been very happy at The Umbrella Academy, though it was something of a comedown after the academy award winning Inception — also starring the academy award winning Leonardo DiCaprio. Of course I would be pleased to be in a major Hollywood film celebrity again some day, and to act with the likes of Leonardo (a dear, dear friend) -- if of course, the 'powers that be' can see their way to hire a kangaroo. Times are changing, but ever so slowly. It’s important for you to understand that this is not just a personal decision, but a philosophical one. I have put a lot of thought into the implications for environmentalists everywhere. For too long we have privileged the human over the animal, and over non-sentient beings. Shakespeare makes this mistake when he speaks pejoratively of ‘You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” (!!!) As ecological literary critic Mel Y. Chen points out “All Life, we might say, is precarious life.” My identification as a kangaroo is not only my right — my birthright— it is a statement about environmentalism. For too long we have treated human beings as 'special, ' as for some reason better than animals, and we have exploited our entire environment because of it. We are now paying the price. I hope that my identification as a kangaroo will be the metaphorical ‘shot heard round the world’ for radical ecological ideas. Before I go on, I want to anticipate the inevitable questions about ‘bottom surgery.’ On the one hand these are private matters and there is no point in discussing them in the public square. However I realise that I am -- somewhat reluctantly I would add -- considered by some to be a public figure, or a ‘star’ and as such — people feel they have the right to ask me anything. I will therefore speak to this — even though I don’t agree that I am required to, or even that it is appropriate for me to do so. After all, there may be young people out there who are considering identifying as marsupials, and it is to them I speak. No, I am not at this time considering having ‘pocket surgery.’ And it's none of your business — what goes on 'down there' — but no — I am not. I have my own private reasons for not having the surgery at this time. But let me reiterate — or iterate, as I don’t think this has been talked about anywhere before — that my decision about whether or not to have pocket surgery should not reflect on my decision to identify as a kangaroo. I can be a kangaroo if I want to. Anyone who challenges me because I — let’s say — don’t have the necessary ‘kangaroo equipment’ is quite obviously someone who has something against me, or against the environmental rights movement, or someone who hates kangaroos. The other issue I wish to address is related to a recent article in The Spectator which raised the question of the media, especially social media and it’s influence on young people. The article (by James Kirkup) is related to transgender issues, but it has ramifications for my decision, -- which I realize may be considered, by some, to have a certain social influence. James Kirkup mentions a JAMA article that "concedes that social contagion via social media is a possible factor in the rising number of children with gender issues." The Journal of American Medicine -- though a well respected publication -- is way off the mark here, and shockingly insensitive. The suggestion is that children will grow up wanting to have transgender surgery merely because they have read about it on social media. First of all, this article in the JAMA does not take into consideration the fact that children who are denied the right to identify as whatever they wish are at a very high risk of committing suicide. Do you want to send these young people to the gallows -- to the rope? I am thinking now of a young child, sitting all alone in their room, watching nature shows, and innocently identifying with the galloping marsupial they see on the screen, and wishing, longing, nay creating themselves in their minds eye -- as that transcendent being. That child was me. Then you come along and tell them -- 'No — you’re crazy, you don’t have a pocket, and on top of that you were born a girl, not a kangaroo!' Well of course -- the child chooses suicide. You are driving children to suicide by not recognizing their inalienable right to be kangaroos. And what if I identified as a rock? A rock is a part of nature's grand design, and as important a part of the environment as you are. I do hope my ‘coming out’ as a kangaroo will help to ease some of the pain in this topsy-turvy world, and I leave you with my motto -- steal it if you want to: "I am a kangaroo, too!"
