Claire Stephens
speaker
6,733 appearances
38 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 21 Sep
Claire Stephens’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 38 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.
Appearances
She was an AIDS activist when that was still taboo, and she has funded documentaries and public awareness campaigns.
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She was always incredibly inclusive of the LGBT community, and she spoke up about inclusion at a time when that was also somewhat controversial.
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She was even asked, how are you able to maintain a fan base with both the religious right and the gay community?
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This was back in 1997.
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And she responded that they're two different worlds, but she loves them both and she understands and accepts both of them.
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So that's what she put out there as this is what I believe in.
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Inclusion, tolerance, the importance of early childhood, literacy, scientific research.
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But here are all the things she didn't say.
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She didn't call herself a feminist.
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She said she was reluctant with that label.
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Her own sister said she was ashamed that Dolly hadn't spoken up more about the Me Too movement.
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And she never, ever spoke about electoral politics, even when in the US in particular,
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Things reached fever pitch around 2016 when Donald Trump was elected.
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One example of that is she was very good friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and they also starred in a movie together.
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They appeared in an award show in 2017 at the height of Me Too, at the height of anger around Donald Trump's election.
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And Jane and Lily flanked Dolly on stage, both made speeches, impassioned speeches about the importance of standing up to the person they called a bigot in the White House.
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Dolly stood there smiling, and then she pivoted to a joke about her breasts.
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And that's her
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nutshell.
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I think it's really interesting what you mentioned about her husband and how he didn't want to be Mrs. Dolly Parton because it speaks again to this idea that she sat at the juncture of so many culture wars, but she was never dragged into them.
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Showing 941–960 of 6,733 · page 48 of 337
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