Eddie Izzard on Being Transgender | Joe Rogan

Yeah, it's tragic, the things the wars are getting into. I was going to be in the military when I was a kid. That was one of my, I wanted to be in special forces. And you look at me now being a transgender guy with that, but yeah, that was where I was. I know Trump wouldn't have let me in the forces right now if I applied right this second. But yeah, so I follow everything. I kind of run my life on the military. That sounds a bit weird. I run my career on a military thing because it's quite difficult. Any career putting it together is kind of weird. What's your next move? How so? You look strategized? Oh yeah, strategy at the wazoo. I plan 50 years ahead. Really? Oh yeah. Well if you think about it, I came out as transgender 34 years ago. That's not the first good thing that an agent wants to hear. You're transgender? That's 85! This is such a hard thing. Even now they would say, okay, well it's got a little better than it was for about 10 millennia. It's a little better now, but it's still not the hardest ticket that everyone's. We want transgender guys in here. For this, that, the other. It's not the top of the list. And I've also got boy mode and girl mode. And I do dramatic films in boy mode. And then I'm touring in girl mode and doing stand-up. And I campaign for politics in girl mode. How do you do that? You just switch, change, you know, take off heels, flat shoes. Yeah, because if you were just talking, like if you didn't have makeup on and you didn't have the heels and the nails, you just seem male. Yeah. Well, I think it's genetically inbuilt. You know, there's some, I think there's quite a lot of people maybe who were, the way they live their lives, they live their own personality. They're not particularly male or female. I feel. But I've always felt since I was four or five, I wanted to express this side of myself and it's built in. I think it's genetic. And if you analyze masculine and feminine, if you really get down to it, I find it impossible to come up with anything that was particularly masculine, particularly feminine, except for the ability to build muscle mass is easier for men in a very commerce. That's it. But, you know, great footballers, soccer players, men and women, athletics runners, men and women, strong character, men's, weak character, men and women, mathematicians, whatever, whatever it is, there's nothing that you can really say, ah, that is only good shot with a gun. No, anyone could do that. It's, we're all humans. And so, and we get fixated by the masculine family. Where it's a tiger, if a tiger's attacking you and trying to kill you, you don't go, now, is this a girl tiger or a boy tiger? We don't care about it. And they don't care either, the tigers. So you've always felt like you gravitated towards feminine things towards... No, gravitated towards both. I had, I gravitated towards playing soccer. I was in the first team for two years when I was a kid, was planning to do officer training corps and then go Marines or Paris and then go into special forces, RSAS, which would be the equivalent of your Delta force. Um, and that was a distinct plan. I knew a lot about that. And I thought, which war are they going to send me to? Which one they send me to? And it could be the idiots that I'm at school with will send me to the wrong war. Cause World War II is very clear. And then after that, every other war is kind of hazy. But there's all this feminine side, girl side. I'm not sure how to do it. The, the, the, uh, articulate, even after 34 years, it's difficult to articulate, but I wanted to express that. Um, and if I look more like a woman, then I, you know, it, it would be much easier. But, um, yeah, so I decided to do that in 85 when it wasn't cool. And I got, I've had a lot of fights in the street, a lot of people screaming abuse at me. Um, taking a couple of people to court or just reporting police and then we went to court. And, uh, yeah, and you fight, you fight, you fight. So instead of going to do a military fighting thing, I've, I've done, I, I said, this might be wrong for me to say this, but I say I've done special forces, civilian division, you know, fighting people's streets, and now performing for languages. I've run over 80 marathons. I'm going into politics next year and, uh, and yeah, and I came, and the transgender thing is, it's in a better place than it was back in 85. Well, it's certainly now, I think because of probably Caitlyn Jenner and the, the movement that you're, you're seeing for, to accept people that want to do whatever and anything they want to do. Yeah, it is just more accepting of each other. We do see to be more, um, what's the word, uh, begins with a T, more, uh, open, more allowing. There's a word for it, which just walked out of my head, but anyway, that word. Um, but, uh, yeah, and at the same time, people going around doing more killings and stuff at the same time. Well, there's more people. Yeah, there is more. There's just sheer volume of humans. And the, and the population growth is insane. It's took us like 200,000 years to get to 1 billion. Yeah. And then it's taken us, I don't know, six, 50 years to get to 7 and a half billion, which is scary. Yeah. When I was a kid, I think the United States population was less than 200 million. Now it's 300 million and global was whatever it was. Now it's seven plus, but bordering at eight. Yeah. Seven and a half million. Six and a half million. When I came out, I think it was 6.5 and I think that's just running away. And one of the weird things is if, if we are having less wars, if we're getting better health to people, then more kids are around. And some people in, in, in, I suppose lower income backgrounds in, around the world, they will say, well, we need to have six kids. Cause that's what, you know, from a, you don't have much money. Yeah. That's what we do. But as economics go better, people have less kids and that hopefully that should calm down. There should be a botting. I mean, I think they feel there will be a leveling off of the population. Yeah. I've read that theory that they believe that industrialized nations and the Westernized society, when people start having two careers, you know, and then two career households, people are less likely to have a bunch of kids. Yeah. So as people do better, they have less kids. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm a, I'm a glasses two thirds full person. That's what I feel. Instead of a glasses half full, half empty person. So you're optimistic. I'm a big, I couldn't be here. Yeah. In the hills with the nails. I'm planning to do this. I've got a film coming out and I'm touring the country and then I'm going to politics as well. When you first started wearing women's clothes and dresses and makeup on stage, did people think it was a gimmick? Yeah. I think they did. I don't, I decided not to call them women's clothes. I just say they're my clothes. Feminine. I would just wear dresses. Right. You know, like women can wear trousers or pants. And we used to call it men's pants and I said, oh, they're pants. Fuck it. So, but yeah, they, I first started talking about it and not wearing anything. Again, look kind of boy-like and male-like and. Then you were talking about it like. I had the first joke. This is my first ever joke. I had this about two years before I did it. I said, look, you're doing stand up. So if you're from a minority, it's kind of a good thing. So if you in stand up terms, so if you're from a lower ink come back around, you say rich people. God, so easy for them. A woman, you say men, men from ethnic background, you say white people. Oh, that's white people. So if you're a white male, middle class stand up, it's useless. So thank God, I'm a transvestite. That was my first laugh. And everyone thought he's making jokes about something that he's not, you know, and they wouldn't believe me. And journalists were going, I don't know why he's doing this because he's doing pretty well now, but this is I don't know. Is this a joke? So I thought I better wear a dress. You know, put some makeup on and then they said, okay, he's doing this. He is serious, but he looks a mess. It's kind of baby elephant thing I was doing. Okay. You're going to get your weight on a controller. You've got a better haircut than that. And you just got to fail a lot. And there's a humiliation period. I mean, this is the weird thing about coming out that it's kind of humiliating. People say you look at people say horrible thing. What they say, what the fuck is that? Somebody said to my face right there as I was walking out of a restaurant. So I thought that's not very nice. And you have to be able to deflect it and go, well, you're obviously a scumbag. So fuck you, man. So I am mostly men. Yes. And occasionally women, occasionally women. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's low. People have low, lower character there or lesser character. If you're a strong character in yourself, you don't care. Live and that live. What the hell? You know, people, okay, it doesn't look quite like together, but, you know, life's tough enough. But if you want to put someone down, you raise your own status by doing it. And they will do that. And so I have stood in the street and people have unloaded, you know, swear words, effective to me. And I've just, I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you and I fuck you. And it's literally, you know, two or three of them or one of me just screaming at each other. And I just won't back down now. This happened recently. It was nine months ago, someone outside my house in London just having a go at me. They knew who you were as well. Yeah, they did. They knew exactly where I live. We said, we're going to do your house. Isard. I thought, who the hell is this asshole? Just because of the way you dress? Well, it was, he added that into it. There was an altercation over, I was just packing my car up because I was just driving home to see my dad. And somebody said, you've got to give me a ride in your car. And I said, someone heckles me like that in the street. I just come back with the, you will never have a ride in my car. I have to give you whatever I give you. So that happened. And then this guy went off and the end of this and that and the other and on it. And he's just screaming at me and so on, shouting back at him, giving him word for word. And then I went, I said, who is that idiot? And they said, oh, that's this guy. He's a known, he's a nutter. You know, he's just, he does this. I went, all right, maybe I should mention it. Because he said he's going to do my, I'll mention it to the police. No, it don't matter. Two weeks later, same thing. Who's shouting at me? Oh, it's the same dickhead. So I thought, right, next time I go across police station. So now he knows where you live. Well, he always did. He was right in front of the house. That's always fun, isn't it? Yeah. Well, and he said, we're going to do your house when you're away. You know, so this was the, that was his opening gambit. We're going to do your house when you're away. Yeah. So letting, letting you know they're a coward. Yeah. Well, it was, it was not very positive. He didn't run a PR company, I don't think. That's kind of terrorism, right? They're trying to strike terror in you when you're away. Well, yeah. Well, that is, yes. That is the hatred thing is the. Did you think about just going out there and fucking them up? I don't think I'm quite that, I would have liked to, if I'd gone through the military thing, if I'd gone through it, I would learn how to do that, you know? And I've never have craved my guard myself up to the thing. I do need to craft my guard myself up, but I haven't got there. Yeah.