A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - J.K. Rowling’s Spiral into Madness (with ContraPoints)

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

From “sex is real” to Holocaust denial — if it happened to the wizard lady, it can happen to you. Support me on Patreon! Watch more from the brilliant Natalie Wynn a.k.a. ContraPoints. Find more of A Bit Fruity. Find more of Matt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruitie, the show where we think that you should never live in the closet, Harry, even if the woman who created you changes her mind. If you would like to support the show or perhaps want a little bit more of the show, we are on Patreon. And by the time this episode is up, it'll be around the same time that I upload March's deep dive on Patreon, which I do every month. And this month, it is on the wokeness of Sydney Sweeney. The Wright just figured out who Sidney is because they saw her on SNL and they never watched Euphoria. And her being hot is causing a freak out of epic proportions. So we're going to do a little analysis of a woman's body, which is something that I'm fairly new to. So, you know, wish me luck.

Today, we are joined once again by someone who I'm honored to call a friend of the show. So Natalie Wynne, or as you may know her online, ContraPoints, is an ex-philosopher. She is a YouTuber, but I think calling her a YouTuber is kind of diminutive to her craft. She puts out a couple feature film length videos a year that you've probably watched, but if you haven't, you really should go check those out. She talks about philosophy and sex and gender and capitalism and twilight. Natalie Wynne, welcome back to A BitFruity. Thank you so much for having me back on.

I am excited to be here again. I'm honored to be a friend of the show. I'm honored to have you as a friend of the show. So a couple weeks ago, J.K. Rowling, she got caught up in a little Holocaust denial. She does a little Holocaust denial. She's from time to time. Yeah.

It wasn't always this way. J.K. Rowling wasn't always on Twitter denying that queer people were persecuted in the Holocaust. Until 2019, J.K. Rowling was, a universally beloved children's author who taught every kid that there was magic inside of them, no matter how cast out they may feel. Today, though, how would you characterize her position in the culture today? Well, her position in the culture is kind of weirdly split, right?

Because on the one hand, there's her continuing legacy as the author of the wizard books. And on the other hand, there's like almost her entire public persona that would be mostly experienced through Twitter, which is basically obsessive bigotry towards trans people. That's become sort of her definitive thing, right? I think that people who don't follow this kind of don't understand the extent of it because, you know, I don't know, people throw around all kinds of accusations on Twitter. So it's easy to think that this is some kind of like internet drama blown out of proportion.

But what you're missing is that if you have not been paying attention to J.K. Rillings' Twitter for the last, at this point, we're talking about four or five years, which is a long time. Like she's basically used her platform more often than not to do trans bashing. There's a reason why this gets talked about so much because, I mean, she's one of the most famous authors in the world with an enormous platform. And she's just using it constantly to target this small and like already besieged minority of people who are facing like all kinds of like legislative and cultural backlash in the U.S. in the UK. So it's like really devastating that an author like that that's this influential

is also like this obsessively devoted to persecut, you know, to contributing to the persecution of this group of people who's already so harassed. But it's also, I don't know, it's also kind of kind of a bizarre spectacle. Like in its own right, it's kind of like another reason I feel like we're drawn to this maybe is that it's kind of like darkly fascinating. How does this happen? Like how do we go from like the griffindore common room and you know severus snape to like these unhinged rants about the transsexuals it's weird it is weird and i think also i mean yeah if you go to jk rowling's twitter right now and scroll through her feed it is literal years of talking every single day almost exclusively about transgender people for years which i think is the

type of behavior we associate with like boomer Facebook moms. And then I guess in a sense, she kind of would have been that if she hadn't become a billionaire and one of the most famous and beloved children's authors of all time. But she is those things. And the idea of her behaving the way that like our homophobic aunt does or whatever, but like from some castle in the UK is just like a very jarring image. I think that summarizes it really well, right? Like it is, it is like your bigoted ants deranged Facebook posts, except on a platform with millions of people as the audience. I feel like we as a society have yet to know how to deal with this type of thing.

Because, I mean, Jake Rowell is not the only case of it. I mean, like Elon Musk has dabbled a little bit in some similar forms of bigotry with a comparable or even larger platform. But I feel like what's unique about JK Rowling is that she's like single-mindedly focused on trans people as this one issue. So, so she wasn't always this way, though. And what we're going to do today is use J.K. Rowling as what I think is a valuable case study in the wormhole that transphobia is, the way that it can serve as it has for J.K. Rowling and so many millions of other people, as a portal into the broader world of right-wing ideology that gets pretty scary pretty quickly.

We're going to try to understand why transphobia, and I think especially when it's cloaked, no pun intended, as a progressive feminist cause is an especially effective gateway into the alt-right. One day you're reminding people that you'd just like to be referred to as a woman and that you are a woman, and then, you know, the next day you're participating in Holocaust denial. It can happen to you. Many such cases. Many such cases. And so to begin this story, I want to go back to 2019 to the first tweet that I remember seeing of J.K. Rowlings, her foray into the anti-trans movement, which at the beginning was very tepid. I am going to send you the tweet. Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like.

Sleep with any consenting adult, who will have you? your best life in peace and security, but force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? Hashtag, I Stand with Maya. Hashtag, this is not a drill. So what was the context of this one? So the context is that there was a English consultant named Maya Forstetter, who, I guess she wasn't fired, but her contract was not renewed because she had, like, refused to use the correct pronouns for a trans co-worker or something along those lines. And a lot of so-called gender-critical, that is transphobic, people in the UK decided to turn this into celebrated cause. They, you know, rallied behind this hashtag, I stand with Maya, the idea of being like, oh, like, we shouldn't have to submit to gender ideology by, you know, using the correct pronouns for trans people in the workplace or whatever.

This is where J.K. Rowling decided to join this discourse officially. she decided to jump in on the side of people who think that it's terribly oppressive to have to use the correct pronouns for a trans person. And I guess at first, you know, there was some ambiguity because you could be like, well, she's not transphobic. Maybe she just believes in free speech and she thinks that, you know, the people shouldn't be fired for having different opinions. And like, okay, like, at first you could sort of plausibly think that maybe giving the benefit of the doubt, that's why she was getting involved in this. But like to people who kind of know the pattern that transphobia takes, we all pretty much knew that, oh, okay, she's really transphobic behind the scenes. Like there's no way that you would go, that you decide to die on this hill unless you already were, at least that's what I think now. I mean, I think J.K. Rowling was at her most dangerous in 2019 and in 2020 because the stuff she was saying seems kind of plausible and reasonable to the average person, you know?

And so there's this kind of clever selection of which topics to get behind, right? instead of just, I don't know, calling trans women men and dresses or whatever, it's like she's, she's defending the right of people to not use the correct pronouns if they don't agree. And they, right, these people kind of hedge in this way, like when they have a kind of bigoted opinion, instead of just stating it outright, they sort of defend their right to have that opinion. So that's very much what this thing with Maya Forstetter is, right? It's like she's not saying something sort of directly transphobic, but she's like, kind of indirectly getting there by being like, I'm going to publicly champion Maya's right

to be transphobic. I feel like in the early days, she did so much of this plausible deniability stuff where it's like, you know, I'm just saying sex is real. And right, and like the average person who isn't like a terminally online queer is going to be like, yeah, sex is real, whatever. Like, who cares? You know, that's not a big deal. Yeah, she was very effective early on at kind of like deciding what it was that she thought people were mad about, right? And so she framed the conversation like, oh, here's why I'm getting backlash. I'm getting backlash because I said, quote unquote, sex is real. And so it kind of seems like if you believe her account of what people are mad about,

then it sounds like everyone who's mad is unreasonable because they're mad at her taking this kind of, taking what, an abstract philosophical position about the metaphysics of biological sex. Like, is that what people are mad about? No, right. Of course it's not that. It's because she's intervening in this social and political debate, right, on the side that wants trans people functionally not to exist in public life and not to be acknowledged in public life. So that's what people are mad about, right? But early on, I think she was able to kind of frame her position as being this like, I don't know, almost philosophical position about the reality of sex or something.

You know, that's what she wanted to make it sound like instead of a political position about the place of trans. gender people in society. When you first saw that tweet, were you, were like alarm bells ringing? Oh, absolutely. I mean, at that point, I was like, yeah, I basically internally thought there was like a 99,9-100% chance that it's, as people say, over, right? It's so over, right? Like, I basically already kind of knew that, but I also kind of knew that, like, well,

most people aren't going to notice that it's over until she gets, she says something more explicit. Until she's doing Holocaust denial. Yeah, until she's doing Holocaust denial. Exactly. But, of course, I've seen enough people who kind of start this way with this like flirtation with bigotry, where stage one is usually like, well, I support the right for people to be bigots.

Like I don't like that there's this like cancel culture, whatever politically correct. You can't say anything anymore. Like it's kind of, that's usually like the prelude to a bunch of bigoted stuff. It's kind of like a softer way of getting a foot in the door. Like you're not necessarily. committing yourself to saying anything bigoted, but you'll stand up for the right of people to say that. And you don't like how, you know, vicious people are being towards people who are getting criticized for saying more bigoted things. In retrospect, but it's clear that she's preparing the way to be the one saying those bigoted things herself.

For a while longer, well into 2020, she like continues this road of like, sex is real. And so I'm going to send you another thread. it's funny how I know all of these it's like by heart practically it's like song lyrics right I'm like a scholar I'm like a scholar of the things that Jake Elling has set out of trans people right

like oh yes tweet tweet tweet seven verse three like I know because we've read these fucking tweets so many times I know it's been like the last four years has been dominated by having to read these terrible opinions again and again

this is but honestly no one should be allowed to get this famous It's too dangerous. Okay, but for the normal people listening who aren't, who aren't so online, do you want to read what she tweeted on June 6th, I believe, 2020? Dear normal people, this is me reading from the Book of Rolling chapter 6. Quote, if sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth. Tweet too, the idea that women like me

who've been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they're vulnerable in the same way as women, that is to male violence, hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences. It is a nonsense. I can't say, I can't, I feel like I cannot say, I can't, I feel like I can't say it's a nonsense without doing it in an English accent. I'm going to switch to doing an English accent for the last one because I feel like it, I just feel like, I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female.

I do not believe it is hateful to say so. I'd march with you if you were being discriminated against. Yeah, that's a big, big red flag, right? And this was like the same month that, like, in the U.S., like Donald Trump had, like, announced, like, an intention to, like, ban trans health care. the notion that like discrimination against trans people is this like hypothetical thing that might occur in the future right if ever there was a trans person who faced bigotry on the basis of their identity I would stand up for them but that hasn't happened yet so I'm just not I'm not standing up yeah right no one's ever been discriminated against her being trans but like if it does happen I'll march with you but okay first of all by the way these tweets got hundreds of thousands of likes and people were like yes you're a warrior but it's like again a normal person who isn't super online. And I mean, you know, from the queer and pro trans end, but also from like the super like turfy anti-trans end. Like if you aren't part of either of those groups, you're reading this and you're like, what the fuck is she talking about? Like what is this, what is this sex

is real thing? Like what is she talking about? It's a weird argument, right? Because it seems on the surface like it's like a linguistic point that she's trying to make. Right. There's this idea like she says, quote, if we do get rid of the concept of sex that removes the ability. of many to discuss their lives. Okay, this is what I think the assumption is. It's like if we acknowledge that trans people are who they say they are, then that means that none of the rest of us can talk about how gender has impacted our lives, right? In other words, like if a trans woman is a woman, then I guess, you know, I,

J.K. Rowling, can never talk about the way that I have been discriminated against for being a woman. I mean, it's a little bit of an oppression Olympics almost kind of argument where it's like there can only be one oppressed group, right? and if we talk about how, you know, there's no way to include trans people, you know, as a valid concept without sort of somehow like deleting or erasing the entire concept of women, which, I mean, it doesn't, it just, that doesn't make any sense, right? In fact, Jake Ehrling will later use as an example. Okay, what does it mean to erase women? I mean, well, okay, so she'll use the example of like, okay, some hospital somewhere on a piece of paperwork says, uses the term pregnant person instead of pregnant women. Why? Because, there is transgender men who can and have gotten pregnant. And so saying pregnant people is a more like, even if you find that to be an awkward phrase, like it's still a more inclusive phrase that is going to help trans men

who need reproductive health care that, you know, conventionally would be women's health, right? I just don't understand why making it inclusive to transgender men somehow like deletes the concept of women from existence. Which, like, like, what? It just doesn't make any sense to me. I feel like it's like a weird pretext for being prejudicial. Well, and it's just such a lie.

I mean, you see this a lot with turf's, trans exclusionary radical feminists. It's like the arm of quote unquote feminism that is basically just defined by transphobia, especially towards trans women. Yeah, I don't even know if I would say that it's especially towards trans women. I would say that they're especially vitriolic towards trans women and they kind of vilify. trans women are sort of cast as like dangerous predators, but trans men, I feel like the way that a lot of like, including J.K. Rowling, like talk about trans men is like quite reverensible, I think too. Like usually the idea is like trans men are like confused girls who've been like tricked by like the medical

establishment, like the evil cabal of endocrinologists who have like somehow like hoodwinked vulnerable girls into thinking that they're men, which of course is like not how the healthcare system works at all. Like, you really have to, you really have to scream and cry to get hormones. Like, no one is persuading you to do this. In fact, quite the opposite. Everyone is telling you not to. So the idea that trans men or that any kind of assigned female at birth trans person is this sort of confused, vulnerable baby child, like, it's not vilification to the extent that they vilify trans women as dangerous predators, but it's infantilizing in a way that I think can be just as harmful in its consequences, right? When someone says, oh, you can't make decisions about your own body

because you're too confused and childish. Like, you know, that's that has devastating consequences, which we see. And, and, you know, any feminist should be aware of how this works, because this is what they say about abortion. It's what they say about contraceptions. It's what they say about women's health in general. Shut up, little girl, right? You can't make decisions about your body. We'll do it for you. And that's exactly the same thing, J.K. Rowling, is essentially saying to trans men. TURFs, especially towards trans men, do this, like, we're losing our lesbians. They're all becoming trans men thing, which that as a refrain, I just don't understand at all. Because statistically, when you look at like the number of Gen Z people who are coming out as queer under every single one of the letters, it's higher in all of them.

Like there are more out lesbians today that there have ever been. Yeah. Yeah, yes. Right. There's never been more lesbians. There's never. Yeah. And to be clear, I love that.

Yes. It's good. It's good, actually. Yeah. No, I mean, I feel like it comes from, it's like a very, like, selfish, like, childish perspective. It's almost like, no, don't transition. You're so sexy.

Uh-huh. You know, like, like, I feel like that's kind of like what, like, and like some gay women do say this about trans men. Like, no, like the, all the, all the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, butch women are transitioning. Like, it's, it's like, fuck. I wanted to fuck them before. No.

And it's like, okay. Well, too bad. Like, other people don't have to live their lives in accordance with what you find sexually attractive. Like, again, as a woman, you should be, you should know this, right? You should know that what you're, the way you're speaking about someone, as if your sexual attraction to them entitles you to their living a certain way, you should know why that's bad and why that feels violating and why that robs someone of autonomy, right?

And with TERFs and this whole thing of like, they're erasing the linguistic concept of a woman, it's like, what world do you have to live in for that to feel like the truth? And look, I'm not a woman. And so sometimes with these conversations, I'm very careful about, like, even J.K. Rowling, a woman who I disagree with entirely on so many of these issues, it's like, I don't want to police her understanding of her own trauma as it pretends to, like, being a woman. However, I still, like, we all live in the same society. And it's like, I'm just very hard pressed to think that the word woman is going anywhere. It's like, I don't, I don't think that because on some, like, in some, some medical papers that are being published, that they're using the terms, people who get pregnant, people who have periods. I don't think that that means that, like, they're going to start calling you in casual conversation a person who menstruates. No, and no one talks like that way. I've never heard a trans person casually refer to cis women as people who menstruate. Because the

entire point of that term is that it doesn't just refer to cis women. That people have sort of a visceral reaction to it, which I guess I can kind of understand. Like, I think if you're to make, like an intelligible, like understandable argument out of what J.K. Ruling seems to be saying in these tweets. I mean, I think you could put it like this. Like for most women, the way that they are oppressed in society is in fact intertwined with biology, right, with the women's reproductive role as most women are capable of getting pregnant.

And that becomes a area where women's lives are policed, right? And it's interesting how J.K. Rowling never talks about this, right? Not a word, not a word about Rovey Wade being overturned in the United States. For most women, biology and misogyny are, they certainly are intertwined. And there's a case to be made that anyone who's assigned female at birth does sort of belong to a oppressed class by virtue of their reproductive capability. Especially like, you know, the sensitivity around like, you know, saying people who menstruate or people who give birth. I feel like if you just hear those phrases in isolation, they kind of like can be abrasive sounding because there's like a lot of shame and stigma. there have for thousands of years around menstruation and, you know, women often are kind of reduced

by patriarchy to like birthing people in a sense, right? So I feel like that there's like some like grain of something I can sympathize with there in terms of having a visceral negative reaction to these phrases. But I feel like anyone who takes a second to cool down understand the context of the phrase will see that that's like clearly not the intention. They know that it has going to have an emotional effect for a lot of women to see those phrases. And so they kind of decontextualize it and like blast it onto Twitter with like a kind of vague implication that oh this is what they are going to reduce you to and like they is who they is quote unquote trans ideology which is sort of vaguely implied to be this like powerful cabal right which which is also

incredible because in real life it's like people with a hundred followers on Twitter yes right it's like you're being yelled at by like random like furries She does fixate heavily on her own perceived persecution by trans people on Twitter. J.K. Rowling often gets into these, like, feuds, like, very public feuds that she, actually, I want to Google how many followers she has on Twitter. J.K. Rowling, do you know the number by heart? I mean, I think it used to be like 14 million. Oh, it's 14 million. I hate that I know this.

Me too. I don't want these facts in my head. J.K. Rowling, to her 14 million followers, she, like, regularly puts these random ass people on blast. And it's like, I don't know, I have, what? I have 400,000 Twitter followers, which is, by the way, too many for a twink. But nonetheless, it's like lots of horrible people say horrible things to me on the internet. You have to be aware of the power dynamic of, like, when you have 14 million followers. I feel like I was missing from J.K. Rowling's discussion of how she's, like, victimized by social. media is any understanding of power. And I think that a key thing that is going on with JK Rowling is that she doesn't conceptualize herself as a powerful person. I mean, and this is common, right? Because, you know, most people kind of think of themselves as like heroic underdogs, I feel, because I don't know, you got bullied as a child. You got, you know, right? Like, and JK Rowling's case, like she used to live in relative poverty. She was a single mom. She fled a,

you know, abusive relationship. And so I still think in a way she kind of thinks of herself as this like small, like scared person, like on the run. I mean, she's had like 25 years to like catch up to the new reality. But I feel like internally she still hasn't, right? I think it's hard for a lot of people to make this switch where you realize like, oh, I am the big fish now, right? Like, I am the one who has power. And I think that, I mean, a lot of what privilege is is a kind of blindness to your own power. She hasn't noticed that she's extremely powerful and influential. So it hasn't occurred to her that, like, I don't know, going after some, like, random

YouTuber with 100, you know, 100,000 subscribers is, like, weird behavior for a celebrity of her size. And not even a YouTuber with 100,000 subscriber. Random-ass people. I was I was just scrolling through her Twitter the other day, getting ready for this episode. And like she was sending multiple tweets, like screenshoting this man's tweets and then sending out her responses to her 14 million followers. This guy named Rajan who wrote, I am a cis male and an ally of the LGBTQ community. All of my life, I have fought for diversity and equality. I advise two attorney generals on race and equality issues and prosecuted on behalf of victims of crime.

I know who I am and I am proud of what I stand for. And then she responded with her own tweet, which she was pretending to speak in his voice, in Rajan's voice, where she wrote, I am a man who wants to see girls and women stripped of their rights and protections for the benefit of my fellow men. And it's like, okay, obviously that's not what Rajan was saying. But then I was like, who the hell is Rajan? He has 453 followers. The tweet which she sent out to her 14 million followers, Rajan's original tweet, had 25 likes. Yeah, it's like literally just some guy and she's just like there's no sense of the influence that she wields. I mean, in a way, it's like she does think that she's just someone's like Facebook aunt.

She's behaving in a way indistinguishable from the way. She's not acting like a public figure. I just can't understand how JK Rowling has spent. And this is what she does every day, by the way. Listener, feel free to go to her Twitter. She's beefing with someone who lives in like fucking Iowa. And it's like I just can't conceptualize, especially if I had a billion. I don't know. I would be on like a yacht probably and not arguing with fucking Rajan 4353 followers.

Rajan, if you're out there, shout out, you seem like a great guy. Yeah, we love Rajan on this podcast. I just can't make sense of her spending. I imagine her rocking back and forth in the corner of like her 11th living room and her sixth castle just like on Twitter sweating. I think we like to imagine that when people get, you know, really rich and famous, then there's a sense of like peace or happiness or tranquility that are companies that, but that it seems not to be the case, right? I mean, I'm trying to imagine being in that situation. I feel that, like, once you've achieved a certain level of, like, you know, success beyond

most people's wildest dreams, it must be hard to know what to do with that feeling of discontentment that's, like, still inside of you. And I think that sometimes people, like, you know, while these successful people, like J.K. ruling or Elon Musk, they sort of get addicted to Twitter as this, like, source of conflict almost. It's almost like once you don't have to worry about money, once you, you know, you're free of your, you know, past abusive relationship, once you've, you know, accomplish all the things you previously wanted to accomplish.

It's like, it's almost like you need to, you can't just be happy with that. You need to like find a new, like, fight almost. And so people go looking on Twitter, you can always find a fight on Twitter. I think there's something very unhealthy about the way that a lot of people relate to using the internet as a source of conflict. and then once your ego gets, ego gets invested, and I think that's, you know, part of what's going on with JK Rowling, of course, is that because she's positioned herself so firmly on the anti-trans side,

she now feels like she has to defend it viciously, because otherwise that would mean admitting that she was wrong, admitting that she's caused a massive amount of damage. Yes, and you know what? It is really hard to, like, profess your beliefs in front of a long, of people. Like I have basically done that as part of my job of making like social and political content and commentary online for the last few years. Like one of the things that took me too long to come to grips with is that like sometimes you need to know when you're wrong. And like take the

L as the kids say. And I've had I've had to take L's online and it's embarrassing and it makes you feel small. I mean, Natalie, I know that's happened to you where you've had to come to the mic and be like, yeah, I was wrong about this thing, even if it takes a while to do that. That is also one of the greatest, like, personal lessons that I've taken away from, like, being online politically is that being wrong is actually like, I mean, it's so fucking corny, but it's like, it's an opportunity. I think it's like genuinely, like spiritually good for you to be able to accept that. It's been helpful to me over time to learn to get a lot of criticism and to kind of be at peace

with it and to not feel like I need to constantly be like a vigilant defender of my own ego. People are going to say things about me. They're going to misrepresent me and they're going to criticize me. And some of it will be true and a lot of it will be false. And like you just kind of have to learn to find peace with with that. Otherwise you'll go crazy. But yeah, what we have on our hands here with Ms. Rowling is a case of someone who is

pathologically incapable of ever letting anything go ever, right? Like I don't think she's ever once admitted to being wrong about a single thing. No, and that includes the Holocaust denial arc, which I'm teasing the listener with because we're not quite there yet. I want to return to the role of language and all of this and like semantics, right? We're going to be talking about the transphobia serving as a gateway into further right wing, you know, broader right wing ideology. But then I also think that taking it back a step, I think some people's entry into transphobia are these like, frankly, like silly semantic word arguments. Yeah. they're erasing the word women.

And so as another example, what I think is a powerful example of that, Anna Kasparian. So Anna Kasparian, she's one of the political commentators on the Young Turks, which is one of the bigger and one of the earlier left-wing political YouTube shows. You know, she had her viral, I don't care what the Bible says. I don't like, I don't care if you're Christian. In fact, I will fight for you to have your religious liberty and practice your Christianity. I believe in that. I don't believe in Christianity, which means that you do not get to dictate the way I live my life based on your religion.

I don't care what the Bible says. You have every right in the world. All those women who identify with your religion have every right in the world to not get an abortion, to not take birth control. But they do not have the right to dictate my life. what I decide to do with my body. I don't care about your goddamn religion. I think she's like had some really great things to say over the years. And none of that, none of the education and none of, none of anything, stopped her from falling into the transphobic semantic rabbit hole

last May. Like all horrible things, this took place on Twitter. So I'm going to send you the tweets. Okay, so this first tweet is, I'm a woman. Please don't ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person or person who menstruates. How do people not realize how degrading this is? You can support the transgender community without doing this shit. If you just take this tweet at face value, I don't even disagree with it. I think, like, yeah, right, don't, you shouldn't refer to an individual person as a birthing person. That's weird.

I agree. I feel like where I disagree is in the subtext, right? The first question I have is, in what context did someone refer to Anna in this way? Did this happen? Did someone call her a person who menstruates? Like, in what context? Was the context on a piece of medical paperwork? Should phrases such as a person who menstruates replace the phrase women in everyday English? No, of course not. Who is suggesting that? Is anyone suggesting that? I've never once heard a trans person suggest that. So it's like we're arguing against this position that like, like who are we arguing against? I don't know. It feels like it feels like we're, for some reason there's this need to argue against this like straw man version of a trans activist. who insists that we stop using the word woman. I've never heard someone claim that. I also think, like, even the extent to which this is used in medical context is overstated. Like, I don't know.

I'm thinking of, like, recent times I've interacted with the medical system. I feel like I'm often, you know, when you select your gender on medical paperwork, it's usually like male, female, or like, other. Or, like, and it will ask you to explain. So I will usually, like, add, you know, as a context note that I'm a transgender woman, so that insofar as that's medically relevant, it's noted. I have not given birth, nor have I been to the hospital with someone giving birth recently.

So I cannot say what the experience is like. But I guess I'd be curious to know, like, how often, I don't know, if someone's listening to this, you know, if you had a baby at a hospital recently, like, how frequently were phrases like birthing person used? My guess is not very frequently. So I'm not sure what, like, it just feels like a sort of an emotional. imaginary argument they were having. Totally. Totally. I'm like lacking context for like, like, where is this, where is this occurring? I spend a lot of time around women actually. And I don't, I feel like I don't see

the word, I don't see these phrases being thrown around very often these days. And I'm in a very trans inclusive, you know, kind of social environment. So you think if, if, if lots of people were, had replaced the word woman with a person with a uterus, I think I would have heard that, but I haven't. So she's starting to get kind of dogged online. And she, you know, responds with tweet number two. Please hold. Did you receive? Hold on, not yet.

Oh, wait. Did it not send you? I don't see it. Oh, weird. Okay, wait, let me try again. Maybe I just sent it to the wrong person. And then out of nowhere you received it. And Anna Gisbury is sweet from a year ago.

You might want to figure out who you just sent that to because it could be kind of weird with no context. Okay, tweet two. LOL. The meltdowns ever wanting to be referred to as a woman rather than a birthing person is pretty wild. I'll never apologize for that, especially as biological woman who has had a fucking lifetime of being told I'm less than. I'm a woman, no apologies. So again, it's like, I don't know, a lot of, like, a lot of this type of, like, transphobic stuff comes from a kind of, like, misdirected frustration with misogyny. Anna reacts as if, oh, people are sort of forcing me to be called a birthing person,

and then that's sort of somehow erasing the lifetime of misogyny that I've had to experience as a woman. I mean, I think it's like a kind of scapegoating rate. I feel that like a lot of times, like people who get into the sort of gender critical talking points, it's often a kind of like displaced rage and frustration at experiences of misogyny, often in like leftist spaces, right? Because that's a real thing. Misogyny is pretty rampant on the left as it is everywhere. and I think that a lot of women find that hard to complain about.

And it's difficult in part because men usually are in power. I don't know, as a woman, you kind of have to like pander to men to get through the day to some extent. So it's like frightening to take a stand against men. But trans people are this kind of like hated minority that it's sort of easy to like, it's kind of easy to like dump all of your like frustrations and rage onto trans people because there's a social momentum behind that in a way that. in a way that there sort of isn't against like, I don't know, frustration with misogyny and leftist spaces, for example.

I honestly kind of feel bad for Anna reading these tweets because obviously like there's some there's some massive life, as she says, a lifetime of like, of difficult experiences that's behind this and it's blowing up now, but as choosing as its target, this very weird thing that seems to me to be slightly off topic. So these tweets are in March. And then in July, she is still. kind of stuck on this transgender issue. In a discussion about various social justice movements and their methods for accomplishing their goals, she tweets what I have selected as tweet number three,

which I will send to you now. Oh, this one. Yeah, this is, okay, see, and this is, this is, okay, this tweet, I know I'm talking about the tweet before I've read it, but I do feel that this tweet that I'm about to read, it really kind of does showcase the way that transphobia is kind of a It's kind of a red flag, and it's often like the prelude to a whole bunch of nonsense. Okay. Anna Kasparian, quote, The civil rights movement did not use the same strategies as the trans movement. They didn't barricade speakers they disagreed with in a classroom for three hours.

They persuaded through nonviolence and showing America their humanity. So this is basically the entire thing that the podcast called The Witch Trials of Jacob, K. Rolling was about. This was the podcast with Megan Phelps Roper of Westrow Baptist Church fame and J.K. Rowling. A lot of the argument was like, oh, what we really hate about the trans movement is they use like illiberal methods. And it's so unlike all past movements. Like gay rights wasn't like this and women's rights wasn't like this. And the civil rights movement, they never did anything violent. And they were always polite. And they never raised their voices. And they never called people names. And it's just like, well, I'm sorry that.

historically is not true. And it's so jarring to see someone like Anna Kasparian who knows all of that. She knows all of that. I mean, all of these movements had, you think, you think about that one famous clip of Angela Davis talking about like whether or not she endorses violence. And she's just like, well, whether or not I endorse it is besides the point, violence is the only thing I've ever known as a black person in America. Have these people heard of Malcolm X? Have they heard of like, have that, like, Stonewall. Like, come on. What do these people think the civil rights movement was?

Like, I mean, I mean, and it's literally every one of these movements, too. Like, I mean, again, people, people think of women's suffrage. And that's just as to be like, you know, you think of the women marching with their banners. And it's like, oh, they just had to show people their humanity by being peaceful. And it's like churches were firebombed by suffragettes in the UK. People were physically, there were people murdered for women's suffrage, which is not to say that. And I'm endorsing these violent methods, but it's like, I'm about to get so monetized.

Okay, well, hold on. Hold on. I can, let me rephrase that. People were unalived. People were unalived in the name of women's suffrage, right? Right. Churches became more on fire than they previously had been in the name of women's suffrage. Right.

Like, these are, like, this is the historical reality that people forget because it's, because it's sort of more comfortable, I guess, to assume that like, oh, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just had to get up on the podium and say, I have a dream. Look, I'm human. And then all the way people clap. and said, yes, let's have, let's have rights for all. And it's like, no, that's not what happened. To desegregate schools in Alabama,

like President Eisenhower had to send in the army. De-segregation happened at gunpoint. It was not a peaceful process. I hope that trans rights can be accomplished with less violence than that. And I think, in fact, there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case. But to suggest that, like, the trans rights movement is this, like, uniquely violent? Like, it just isn't. It just isn't.

It just false. me up. We've arrived at Holocaust denialism. We sure have. Two weeks ago, J.K. Rowling saw a tweet. Someone had written to her, The Nazis burnt books on trans health care and research. Why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender? And this obviously pissed her off a lot because she screenshotsed it and tweeted it out to her own audience with the additional caption where she wrote, I just, how? How did you type this out and press send without thinking, I should maybe check my source for this? Because it might have been a fever dream. And I just want to add, before we get into any of this, my favorite thing about this exchange is that the tweet, which J.K. Rowling took,

which accused her of sharing the Nazi's ideology on trans health care, the tweet has five views, not likes. Wow. It has five views. That is zero likes. That is like, you get five views on a tweet just by it existing in the ether. Yeah, that is a, I mean, I've almost never seen a tweet with that few views. She went out of her way to find a tweet that would allow her to participate in Holocaust denial. It was like she had to chase this one. Yeah, that makes it all the more baffling because it's like, okay, I understand why you would say, why you would start doing a little casual Holocaust denial in the heat of the moment because, like,

I don't know. Like you were on the spot and like, I don't know. Someone was, someone had you backed into a corner and you were just like said whatever you thought you needed to say to win the argument. Right. It's like, this is just like, this is just like free form like completely like out of the blue. You know what? I've been searching around the dark corners of Twitter lately and I feel like today is the day I shall begin denying the Holocaust. Like what like? Like, like, you need to.

buy a yacht and just go on it. So she tweets this, right? And so the person accuses, the person's claim is that Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research. And J.K. Rowling says that they must be experiencing a fever dream to have claimed that. That is absolutely true. The Nazis did ban hordes of books of some of the earliest and most important at the time

books on trans health care and research. Specifically what this person is referencing is the burning of the library of the Institute for Sexual Research. So just a little bit of quick history. There was this young doctor, young gay doctor in Germany. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1919, he opened the, I'm going to do my German voice, the Institute for Sexual Wiesenschaft, which translates roughly to the Institute for Sexual Research. It was the first sexology research center in the world. You know, Hershfeld was gay. He had grown up in a deeply homophobic era of Germany. He was super traumatized not only by being gay, but witnessing homophobia against other queer people. He would later go on to talk about having witnessed in medical

school watching a fellow gay student who was trotted out naked in front of a class to be humiliated by the rest of the class for being a quote unquote degenerate. So at this Institute of Sexual Research, which he opened, he basically had all of these gay and trans patients who, he would treat for various needs. There were anti-crossdressing laws in Germany at the time, and he would get his trans patients, this special transgender ID card that, like, by today's standards would be, you know, strange and demoralizing.

But at the time, it actually legally protected them from being prosecuted under these cross-dressing laws. If the cops came up to you, you were like, here's my trans ID. See, I'm a certified transgender. And they'd be like, okay, you're, you know, Magnus Hirschfeld was, this was like gay trans, like cis gay to trans allyship. Also in the Institute of Sexual Research, there was among the first libraries about sexuality and gender.

And this guy was collecting research 100 years ago on these topics that would be considered progressive today. There was some of the earliest literature on various gender affirming surgeries. And by 1930, the Institute was performing some of the first. you know, what we think of today as modern gender-affirming surgeries in the world. And who was one of his patients? Lily Elba. Lily Elba was... The Danish girl.

The Danish girl. Who was one of his patients? You know, so the Nazi party comes to rise and Hitler wanted to cleanse society of, you know, what he deemed lives unworthy of living. On May 6, 1933, the Nazis raided the Institute of Sexual Research and burned 20,000 of its books on the street. and this was like very famously like one of the first Nazi book burnings. Like there are photos of it.

This isn't like deep burying. No, it's not obscure. It's not obscure stuff. Like it's like one of the most famous photos of Nazi book burning, which I guarantee most people have seen. And so this initial tweet that J.K. Rowling called this person basically insane for writing was the Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research.

Why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender? And so this is just factually true, right? Yeah. Like whatever you think of J.K. Rowling, like, the Nazis did do that. And she does share their view on trans health care and gender. Like, that's just, that's just what's happening. And so people start to point out that like, babe, you know, you're doing a little bit of Holocaust denial by saying that this didn't happen. Alejandro Carbio, who is a notable trans person on Twitter, she responded writing, you're engaging in Holocaust denial. J.K. Rowling responds. neither of your articles support the contention that trans people were the first victims of the Nazis

or that all research on trans health care was burned in 1930s Germany. You are engaging in lying, Alejandra. So she responds by being pedantic. I don't know, it's hard to take this. It's hard to respect to this. It's not engaging at all with like the spirit of what anyone is saying. I mean, so first of all, like we can get, I mean, we can. And it is interesting like to dive into the actual like historical record of this.

And the way that some of the, you know, first like Nazi book burning. were in fact targeting an early library of books about gay rights and about transgender, you know, medicine. But it also, you know, like, like, even without talking about the factual record, like, like, let's think big picture here. Do we really think that the National Socialist Party was, what, they were they would have just been fine with trans people. Like, right? Like, oh, no, they're against the gays and they're against the Jews and they're against the Romani. but the transvestites, yeah, we love them. Like, what? I mean, and of course, like, we can verify historically that, yes, trans people are persecuted.

I've seen a lot of that I consider extremely bad faith discourse about this controversy with people saying, like, well, the Nazis didn't have the category transgender, which is a more reasoned invention. And yes, that's true. But, like, okay, the Nazis didn't officially persecute lesbians either because I don't think that, because, I mean, if you look at the history of, like, lesbophobia, often the form that lesbophobia takes is that lesbians are just not seen as real, right? It's sort of not acknowledged even as a valid phenomenon where male homosexuality is seen as degeneracy and then tell us something to be persecuted. Oftentimes, like, it's just kind of flatly denied that lesbians exist.

Now, does that say that no lesbians were persecuted in the Holocaust? Almost certainly not. But I know, like, the Nazis had this category of, like, a social. Correct. Like, it's like a black triangle with, like, the badge. And I think, that a lot of queer women were sort of killed on the, on the basis of being asocial, quote, unquote. So this kind of pedantry of being like, well, technically the Nazis didn't use the word. Like, okay, but they still killed queer women and they still killed trans people. So like, why are you playing this pedantic game to, well, because they're engaging in the denial of transphobia, right? Well, and it's so exhausting to you because she writes, the contention that trans people were the first victims of

the Nazis or that all or that all research on trans health care was burned in the 19th 30rd. And it's like she's arguing against the point that nobody made. Yeah, she didn't say, did Alhander say that? No, she said that every single piece of research was destroyed. No, Alejandro didn't say that. And the original tweet that J.K. Rowling said was insane. Once again, just said the Nazis burnt books on trans health care and research. That was the claim.

Yeah, so she's consistently like arguing against physicians that no one has taken. Correct. And it's like instead of ever admitting fault and right, and she just shifts the goalpost over and over. And then that leads you really with transphobia or with anything. Like if you refuse to admit fault in anything that you say, you will keep shifting the goalpost because that will be the only way that in your head you can maintain the upper hand in an argument. This refusal to admit being wrong ever leads you to some fucking wacky places. It led her to Holocaust denialism. And it led Annexie. Casparian to saying that the civil rights movement was entirely peaceful, which she knows that that's not true. Well, it's like if you can never admit that you're wrong about anything, if you make one wrong turn, you'll never get on the right path again. Right. Because if you don't admit that you made a wrong turn, then you can't correct it.

So I feel like that is part of the fallacy that's going on here where like, okay, Jake K. and can't admit that she was ever wrong about anything. And so she has no choice but to double down and triple down and quadruple down and just keep walking in this terrible direction, basically, right, to completely mix my metaphors. That's why she has and will continue to say more absurd and dangerous things, because that is the only option that she has if she can't admit that she made a wrong turn somewhere. I want to talk a little bit about this, like, transphobia to like general right-wing.

madness pipeline a little bit. Media Matters conducted this study where they made a TikTok account, and in that TikTok account, they only liked exclusively anti-trans content to see what the for you page algorithm would then feed the account. Very quickly, the videos, and they did an analysis of like 400 videos that TikTok then fed into their fur you page, did not just keep feeding them transphobic videos, but racist videos, misogynistic videos. anti-vax and kind of other right-wing conspiracy theories, a lot of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory type content. I think that's interesting because I think it reflects what we see when people engage with transphobia in real life. And so what do you think, first of all, what do you think

makes transphobia, including this like turfy transphobic feminism thing? Like, what do you think makes it a fundamentally right-wing ideology? And that one that is so effective and sucks. people in that way. Well, I think, yeah, I definitely think it's true that transphobia is a gateway bigotry. Like, it's, it's often, will be like the prelude to a bunch more other forms of bigotry that people, I feel like feel, I think transphobia is sort of a little bit more socially acceptable still than a lot of other forms of bigotry. So that will often be the one that people decide to publicly declare. But I also think that what is it about transphobia that makes it distinctively right wing? And I feel like it has to do with the kind of structural.

of basically scapegoating a vulnerable minority and then blaming them for various social problems. So I feel that prejudice usually sort of operates that way. It's one common type of prejudice, right? And the case of someone like JK Rowling, it seems like trans people are kind of functionally taking the place of patriarchy, right, in her arguments. So like whereas a left-wing person would notice the kind of structures of power and the kind of broader inequality, that are the reason why women are oppressed. Instead of doing that, you take the kind of way that right-wing women go, which is you almost sort of accept the patriarchy as natural and inevitable,

and you instead displace that frustration onto immigrants, onto, you know, instead of complaining about, you know, men, men who are your brothers or you know, you complain about, I don't know, Muslim men, right? Or you complain about the Jews, or you complain about, in this case, trans people. You know, for in the 70s, for Anita Bryant, it was it was gay people, right? It's this kind of sort of shifting scapegoat and trans people are the current scapegoat choice for a lot of people. But the structure of argument and the psychology behind it, I think, is very similar to like many, many other, you know, sort of bigoted movements. I mean, I think also like there's this element of amnesia where people sort of forget how similar this current moral panic is to like homophobia.

from the Bush era. Totally. Including things like, like the linguistic obsession. Like, why does it ever, does, does no one remember the arguments that people used to have back then? I guess I'm just old. But like, people used to, like, I don't know. I remember the 2000s.

I mean, I remember people having sort of a similar kind of semantic hang up on the word marriage where like, I don't know, like, like the phrase like her wife, right, was seen by a lot of people as like, not just like sacrilegious, as blasphemy, right? as a kind of like sin, but also as a kind of like an attack on like meaning itself, an attack on the English language, like her wife being being this just this total nonsense, right? In the same way that I think like his uterus or whatever seems to greet on certain people today.

Right. So, so again, like, and there was always, oh, they're redefining marriage. That was such like such like a slogan in those days. It sort of avoids taking a political. stance. Like really what they're mad about is the social equality of gay people, right? But the way that they present their argument is as if they're like, I don't know, pedants about grammar or something. And what there was really concerns them is words being redefined, which I don't know, it doesn't make sense for that to be something that you feel so passionate about, in my opinion.

But it's because that's not what they're really passionate about, right? The semantic thing is a cover for a social and political thing. So I don't know. I see it. I see like trans. phobia in the 2020 is as like sort of almost like functionally identical to homophobia in the 2000s in terms of like the role that it plays in politics and in terms of the types of arguments that people make in its favor. And speaking about gay, something that J.K. Rowling does a lot is like speak on behalf of concerned lesbians. She does a lot of this posting, which I don't know if you have feelings about this, but she does a lot of this posting about like, you know, all of the work that gays fought for bravely is being undone by radical transactivists. And it's like,

jk rolling first of all you are not gay yeah so take a take a seat but it's also like it pisses me off too because she does this she has more of a reach than like almost any gay person in the world and she does this thing where she'll speak on behalf of gay people being like gays don't want that you know she echoes the like gays want to divorce from the trans and queer people you know a political divorce like she she does that rhetoric a lot and i'm like you're not gay you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And also, like, the majority of cis gay people are entirely cool with trans people and down with the cause. So what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, it's one of the most disgusting, honestly, things that she does, I think, is the way that she constantly, instead

of, like, speaking for herself and the first person, she constantly speaks, particularly she uses as, like, lesbians as, like, the kind of, like, banner for whatever she wants to say. And she, and, as if she's kind of, like, charitably or, like, chivalrously almost, like, defending the lesbians. totally again and as if that's the reason that she's involved in this and again it just their claims again don't make any sense right like oh we're we're eroding all the rights that gay activists fought for okay which rights are those did gay activists fight for the rights not to use trans people's pronouns like like what do you like which part of the gay rights struggle did that occur in and the same is true with like when like oh like women's rights are

being eroded the rights that we fought so hard for and it's like well but but which rights this is just not a thing in the history of feminists Women never had to fight for the right to like bathrooms segregated by chromosomes. That was never a thing. I feel like patriarchy never had a problem with there being separate bathrooms, right? That was never a thing that women had to fight for. In fact, if anything, it was sort of the opposite. The threat of unisex bathrooms was used by Phyllis Schlafly in the 70s as a kind of,

ooh, like this is what's going to happen if you pass an equal rights amendment. It was like a scare thing in order to like to stifle feminism. Separate sex segregated bathrooms Has never been a thing that feminists needed to fight for Yeah, wow, that is such a, Phyllish Laughley did say that With the Equal Rights Amendment, she was like, There are going to be no more women's rooms.

You know, if equal rights passes and men and women are considered equal in the eyes of the law, then all bathrooms are going to be unisex. And it's literally like the same stupid, Like they're erasing the word women. It's the same shit over and over. It's like this fearmongering about things that even they know are not going to happen.

It's the same kind of slippery slope argument where it's like, okay, but if men and women have equal rights, then there will be no basis on which women aren't self-sent to war, and there will be no basis on which, you know, we shouldn't just have only one bathroom. And it's the same kind of thing. It's like, oh, if you sort of legally and socially recognize trans people, then they just list off all the exact same things that Phyllis Schlafly said were going to happen if there was an equal rights amendment. It's again, if we allow gay people to get married, then what's next? dogs like like again these like like where where's the line well the line is is somewhere right we're not

talking about whether there should be a line at all but for them it's like moving the line or slightly altering are you semantic usage is tantamount to like total destruction of the entire system of meaning right so that the word woman will mean nothing now and the word marriage will mean nothing now and like you know chaos will break out and there'll be fornication in the streets and they'll be in it like no there won't be no there won't be j k rolling it has literally become one of these people who 15 years ago was like the gays are tearing at the social fabric of society like she's literally just what she's doing but replaced gay with trans the social the social fabric of society the social fabric of society that's what they would always say right and then they put like a sort of pseudo feminist twist

on it where it's like oh you will destroy the ability to talk about being a woman because if we say the phrase trans women are women that suddenly women can no longer talk about all those struggles that JK Rowling interestingly already never talks about. Right. That's the other thing is that she claims that her whole thing is feminism. But the only thing she ever talks about is, you know, disparaging trans people. Well, like, think about this way. Like, JK Rowling is a victim of domestic violence.

And, like, think about how powerful a thing it could have been if she decided to speak about that in some context where the focus was on domestic violence and stopping domestic violence. But she never said a word about it. and never has sense, except when she was kind of inserting it into the middle of a multi-paragraph tirade against trans people. There's so much potential here for her to be a powerful spokesperson for an actually good and worthy cause, but instead it's like she only brings it up for the point of like oppressing trans people. Like it's just, it's like this piece and this terrible game of chess that she's playing and

that she never sort of, she never sort of brings up women's rights in any other context. So where does this leave us today? well, I wrote down, J.K. Rowling has kind of like a cult-like status in the anti-trans community. Like, she's kind of their queen. Well, of course, of course. I mean, she's in a way the best thing that ever happened to them, right? I mean, if you were a kind of like sort of fringe bigot movement, in a way, the best thing they could possibly happen to you is someone as famous and as loved as J.K. Rowling was and to a large extent still is to kind of become the champion of your cause. right so it is good for them i think but i also think that for jk rolling like she is now like wedded to this and this is kind of like this is now like half of her legacy and it's certainly the part

of her legacy i think at this point that she cares the most about because she sees herself as a warrior standing up for women's rights and you know what as as many people as there are like you and i who are willing to like get into the weeds of how dangerous all of this shit is like she has millions of people online who worship the ground she walks on, not in spite of the turf ship, but because of it. There are a lot of people who sincerely view her as like the feminist of our time, which sucks. Yeah, it does.

Well, especially when like when it was coming at the expense of a lot of attention that could be going towards feminist issues that matter. Like again, I live in a country where we just overturned the right to abortion. And instead of talking about that, the most famous. author in the world has decided to lead a crusade against transgender people. She's currently, she and Elon Musk, which like, I don't know, like, does she ever, did she ever see the people who she's aligning herself with? Like, does she ever see the people who are

defending her? Fucking Putin defended her. Yeah. Did you see that? Oh my god, I did. Yeah. I'm going to insert the clip of Putin defending her. They canceled John Rowling recently, the child, the children's author. Her books published all over the world, even just because she didn't satisfy the demands of gender rights. Like, I don't know. Do you ever just stop and sit down and be like, wow, my comrades are Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin.

And Vlad Putin, yeah. Wait, right. And it's like, I must be on the good side. Cancel culture is coming for everyone now. Russia. J.K. Rowling. Like, what, like, I'm sorry. What?

Like, just a. What the fuck is going? on. So, yeah, so she and Elon Musk are like kind of outspokenly campaigning against this new hate crime law in Scotland that would make it illegal to quote, stir up hatred against protected characteristics. So, you know, of course, Joanne Rowling is fighting against this because that's all she does now. And that's all she's done for the last five years is stir up hatred against protected characteristics being trans people. And it's just, I don't know, it's like one of those things too, where it's like, do you ever find yourself campaigning against a hate crime law and wonder, like, it's me?

Like, I'm the problem. Well, I think that's the problem is that there's nothing that could. At this point, I don't think there's any moment that could cause her to have the realization that I'm the problem, right? It's like that part of her brain has shut down. It's scary to think how far that she could go with this because I don't think there, I don't think there is a limit. I don't think there is a limit. And speaking of where this leads, like, obviously it leads to so many dark places and damaging and harmful places.

But every now and then, transphobia and just like kind of the brainworms that come with it can lead to some truly spectacular results. And so I want to end. We're going to revisit actually the woman who kind of kicked this all off, which is Maya forced daughter. My favorite. her feud with Tala. So.

God damn Tala. Tala, the most sinister figure ever to. In 2022, a chain of libraries in the United Kingdom updated their mascot from... I need to pull it together. I need to pull it together. A chain of libraries in the UK updated their mascot from what was a mama bear reading to its like little child bear to Tala, a cartoon like baby alien looking thing.

Very adorable, big eyes, little pink nose, just like green skin, just adorable little baby alien Tala. Tala's gender was not specified and the library referred to the updated mascot using day them pronouns. Maya Forrest daughter, I'm going to send you. you the tweet. You have to read them. Can you, can you do the voice? I got it. I got it. Yeah.

I've, I've been training for years for this moment. Also, Tala, yes, Tala looks gender neutral because Tala looks like a toddler. That's what toddlers look like. Right. Tadlers don't, they don't have secondary sex character. Like, what are we, like, what are we doing here? Like, all right. Here's my foresatter. Some more thoughts about Bukestadr and Tala, because no, I don't by the sneering argument that this is not important. Stuff about young children and mothers is not beneath consideration. That's feminism. And then below, there's a picture of two alternate logos for the Hertfordshire County libraries,

one of whom is the bookstore bear and the other of whom is Tala the alien. I don't buy the sneering argument that this is not important. This turns into kind of like a multi-day tirade for her. And the library ultimately responds. The library addresses the issue. And so I'm going to send you that. A mother with her baby daughter at Hitchin Library at Hertz Library's Rhyme Time aimed at zero to five-year-olds, messaged me, quote,

Bookstart Bear has been retired and replaced with Talia, a trans bear with they-them pronouns. I cannot express how upset I feel. Why do children need this? And then the library responds to this tweet saying, just to confirm, Tala isn't trans. They are an alien. So obviously,

my own was not, like, done at that. I think she did, like, what, it must have been 30 tweets. Oh, yeah, she has. And I have a couple more if you want to, like, round it out. Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's go in. Tala is an otherworldly creature. The publicity doesn't even say alien.

But one thing that is clear is it is an infant, big eyes, big head, and to emphasize its toddler's clothing. So where does this infant, who takes they, them pronouns, parents are told, come from? Where are its parents? Did it hatch from an egg, or was it born from a mama? Who looks after its interests? Ask these questions, and you get the usual. You are obsessing about genitals.

So there are like a hundred more tweets that she writes about. Yeah, there's so many tweets. There's so many tweets. And it's like so fixated on like the biological reproductive origins. of this like what about the three-eyed alien from toy story like was that hatched from an egg like did tolla come out of a vagina did talla we need to know which vagina talla came out of if any and if so how like like i mean this is an interesting because you know how like i don't know anything like gay people done is seen by homophobes as like inherently sexual i feel like like the second

you like just like simply using they them pronouns for a cartoon character is enough to to send these people spiraling into like a like crisis about like the nature of life on earth. Like where they're like, they're like, okay, well, like they just need to like, why do you need to know how a cartoon character was spawned? I feel like we don't do this with like the Berenstein Bears. Like we, I guess they're bears. So presumably like mammalian reproduction. But like I don't know. I feel like it's pretty common like for cartoon characters for children not to going to intricate detail about the precise nature of like how they were biologically conceived. It's just like a weird, I don't know, this is a weird thing to spiral about.

She's just tweeting over and over again about like, was a dick inserted into a vagina to reproduce this? And then it's a picture of little green tell. I'm just, I just don't see this and think about its immaculate conception. And I think to see a cartoon character, of this nature and for that to be the thing that you fix it on for multiple days. That's the brain rot, right? It's this and Holocaust denial. Right. There's real things going on in the world, and this is what they're talking about.

I feel like it's, you know, we've kind of gone over a bunch of people who get upset about essentially nothing, whether it's Tala or whether it's, I don't know, the hypothetical use of the phrase person with a uterus or it's like totally like crazy idea that like somehow trans people are going to destroy the concept of woman itself. Like, all of this is like nonsense and it's very funny to laugh at. But at the end of the day, like, it's being said in a context where like trans people's right to health care is being legislated away. And that's the kind of sad other side to this coin, which is that like as silly as all

these arguments are, they ultimately are being made in the service of something that's going to hurt a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And so what I wanted to end on is just like the rabbit hole to go down. whether it's through anger about Tala or anger about, you know, this fear based on nothing that, like, your identity as a cis woman is going to be a rate. Like, what do you see as an effective way to stop it before it starts for people?

Is it, is it just being aware of dog whistles? Yeah, it's being aware of the dog whistles. And it's also, like, trying to, like, redirect conversations back to the things that, like, really matter. It's so hard to avoid getting completely derailed by these kind of, like, pseudo debates about semantics, right? like the sex is real stuff. There's some part of me that thinks like, oh, we shouldn't be too mean to people when they start with those dog whistles because I feel, I fear that that kind of like pushes them further into this spiral.

But also I feel like not calling out the dog whistles is bad because we, those of us who've been doing this long enough, like, we know what they are and we have experience with this. It's hard to suppress your own pattern recognition at a certain point. Trans people are losing their health care and we're talking about like we're fussing over like the, exact terminology used on medical paperwork and stuff. And it's like, I don't know, is this a good priority? Is this really the most pressing thing affecting women or affecting trans people today? Like, no. Like, not even close. You know, this is like a circus side show that somehow manages to absorb so much of people's energy. It's really frustrated to me when it's public figures who should know that, like, you know, don't get like lead into like little traps like this, right?

don't get baited into like opening like the funnel of bigotry because I feel like that's what a lot of these people do like if even if they don't don't say outright like oh I hate trans people you know we trans people should be persecuted legally like they kind of like they sort of drop you off in front of the door to those to that those types of position where like you know someone who actually does think that like Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump or whoever it is it's it's kind of priming people for receptivity to those more sinister arguments. I mean, it sounds like with JK Rowling, she's already at the most sinister end, where, you know, denial is a fundamental part of bigotry and denying that trans people

were persecuted by the Third Reich is pretty heinous. Oh, one other thing I want to say is that I know, like, some pedantic people are going to be like, technically, she's not denying the Holocaust because she accepts the Holocaust happened. She just doesn't think that people were persecuted because they were trans. And it's like, okay, well, that's still a form of denial because even if the category transgender was not something that was used by the Nazis, like the category degenerate existed, the category homosexual existed, and a category asocial existed. And trans people absolutely were persecuted under those labels. And also, there were transsexual people.

That was the word they used. I think, I believe that they were transsexual was actually coined by Magnus Hirschfeld. And so they're absolutely, yes, were people who were killed. and their ideas burned for being trans in that sense. So, yeah, she's also just wrong. She's also just wrong. And you know what? We didn't make this for J.K. Rowling.

She's too far gone. But you're not. No. No, no, no, no. Your mom's not. Your sister's not. So send this to someone who is just saying, well, sex is real, right? Sex is real.

And you can dress however you please and sleep with any consenting adult who will have you. I'm so sorry. She really did get off to like a rocky start with that one, though. Consenting adult that will have you. Like, yeah, fucking obviously. It's all like the implication, right? Well, okay, wait, but this is actually one last question that I want to ask you before we go. I know, I keep saying, we're going to end on this.

We are going to end on this. Because there's a lot of people who buy into these sort of more tentative transphobic things like, well, yeah, sex is real or, you know, but I just don't know if they're two gender or whatever. In the case of JK Rowling, do you think that? that she has been ideologically in private where she is now the entire time and that she was just better at hiding it in those early years, whereas now the mask is quote unquote fully off? Or do you think she descended into madness in the way that she's presented it? Well, I kind of think both.

I think in a sense, she has always been transphobic. And as evidence, I will point to the first time that JK Rowling and transphobia appeared together in public discourse was actually 2018. Oh. Before. It was before the Sex is Real tweet. Yeah. It was before the Sex Is Real tweet.

Actually, it was a Sean Faye, who, Sean Faye author of the book, the transgender issue. She says, transculture is seeing the beloved author of your generation like a transphobic tweet from a troll account, which has repeatedly called you a man. This is March 2018. And the tweet that J.K. Rowling liked says, I was shouted out by men at my first Labor Party meeting aged 18 because I asked them to remove a page three calendar. I've been told to toughen up, be louder, stronger, independent.

I've often not felt supported. Men in dresses, men in dresses get brochureless solidarity I never had. That's misogyny. Wait, so in March 2018, she liked a tweet referring to trans women as men in dresses. Yeah, in March 2018, she liked to tweet referring to trans women as men in dresses. And then when she got backlash for it, she initially claimed that she liked the tweet accidentally in a quote middle-aged moment. Okay, Joanne.

She's a middle-aged moment. I mean, I have middle-aged moments too, but I don't like deranged transphobic tweets. I mean, and she also later admitted that that was a lie. Like her, I guess publicists, like, told her to say that it was an accident. But in her essay called Turf Wars, she admits that she did like it on purpose. So I don't know.

I think that in a sense, like, yeah, she's been on the like trans women or men and dresses or whatever thing since since like before this was even a while they discussed public issue but I also find it unlikely that she was this obsessed with it until more recently like I think it was probably kind of a background bigotry and then by sort of receiving a lot of public backlash I feel like the need to defend her bigotry like like led her into this spiral where it became like the defining issue that she talks about Yeah, there's something to be said for the feedback loop. And we've all, I mean, anyone, we're all Facebook moms in a way because, you know, when someone kind of beats you into arguing with them in the comment section of something online, you want to argue back because you want to be right. We're all Facebook moms. We are all Facebook moms. And something that sucks about JK Rowling is that having millions of dollars and being a beloved childhood icon did not prevent her from becoming the worst type of Facebook mom. Well, unfortunately, the fame and wealth is, if anything, like, insulation against the need to take a step back.

Like, no one can tell her what to do. No one can tell her what to do. No one can take her phone away. No one can tell her to step away and maybe you think about this a little bit. She has too much power. She can't be stopped. That, in a way, is bad for her because sometimes you need someone to tell you these things, right? Sometimes you need someone to tell you maybe put down Twitter for a while or maybe you should rethink this.

right i think that it's kind of important to have someone in your life who is tell you that you might have messed up a little bit and i think that the sense i get with jk rolling is that there's like just no one there's just no one who's saying those things um so there's just it's all all gas and no breaks she can't she can't she can't seem to stop natalie wait okay let me think about we've reached the conclusion we've reached the conclusion oh i need to get up from this fucking chair okay That was not graceful. That was not a graceful transition. It's perfect.

Well, I feel like it captures the fatigue of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, Roling. Yeah, and, and fixating on her for five years to the point where you've memorized the lyrics to her tweets. We've been, we've been, we've been broken, broken by this woman. Natalie, thank you so much for, for coming here once again and spending a couple hours talking about this woman. whom we are tired of discussing.

But you know what? I really do think there is something to learn from her situation. I think she's too far gone, but like I said, like I think like most normal people aren't. I really do think learning from her wrong turns can hopefully help other people make the right turn.

And so I'm grateful that someone who's smarter about this than I am was here to explain it. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me on. It was a nice talking to you again. Where can people, I mean, whatever. I'm saying like where can people find you as if you're not more famous than me? But in case someone listening to this doesn't know, where can people find you and support your work and hear more of you?

Well, my YouTube channel is called ContraPoints. And that is, I also am on Twitter, but don't bother. Just follow me on YouTube. That's where I put in the, that's where I actually devote work. And I have a couple of videos about JK Rowling. if you're just dying for more of this topic. But I also talk about, you know, other things. I don't know.

There's probably some people. I mean, those videos have a lot of views. There's obviously people out there who cannot get enough of the rolling discourse. Thank you so much for having me. And I, yeah, anytime. Especially if we want to do another, we should do a whole Tala episode. Next time, yeah, as a redemption for both of our mental health, next time we're just going to talk for an hour about Tala and worship them.

Yeah, that's a good. Tala, our new God. I love you all so, so much. Thank you for being here. And until next time, stay foodie. We did it. We did it. We did it.

We did it. We are.