A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - LGBT Conservatives

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

LGBT conservatives: Why? How? Where did they come from? What can we learn from them, and how can we dismantle the LGBT conservative that lives within all of us? Natalie Wynn (aka Contrapoints) helps us psychoanalyze one of the more confusing political positions of our time. Jeffree Star makes an appearance, for better or for worse. Indulge in Natalie’s work Find more of A Bit Fruity Find more of Matt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's like the leopards are going to eat your face. They are eating your face. Why are you acting surprised after you voted for the leopards eating people's faces party? Hello, hello. I'm Matt Bernstein and welcome to A BitFruity, the show where we try to have some self-respect, even if having none might get us a show on Fox News. I am so happy and grateful to have you listening today.

If you like this podcast, feel free to follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So you'll be notified when we'll be notified. we release new episodes. You can also find us on Instagram at A BitFruity Pod and on YouTube. All of those links will be in the episode description. So a while ago, when I was way earlier in the journey of making content and commentary for the internet, I would have these really all-consuming panic attacks where I would stay in bed for like a day or two at a time because I was really anxious about what people on the internet thought of me in this very debilitating way. And one time about two years ago, my good friend gave me this piece of advice, which I returned to all the time, which is that instead of caring all the time what everyone thinks, make this imaginary table in your head of like, you know, 10 specific people or less and value what they think.

Today, I am so honored that we're joined by someone who is truly at that table for me. You might know Natalie Wynn by her online handle ContraPoints. She dropped out of her PhD program and philosophy. in the 2010s and started creating video essays on YouTube about gender, capitalism, feminism, and philosophy. In 2017, she transitioned publicly through her content, and I have recommended her videos to truly everyone in my life. And every time I recommend one of her video essays to someone, I always tell them, I promise I would not recommend a two-hour-long YouTube video to you unless I thought it was 100% worth your time. And they are. She's amassed over 1.7 million subscribers on YouTube.

She is, in my opinion, one of the smartest people online posting, one of the smartest posters. And I'm going to stop being a deranged fan. But Natalie, welcome to A BitFruity. Thank you. And thank you for your very generous intro. So I wanted to start today by showing you a video by one, Jeffrey. Star. So Jeffrey Star, how would you describe Jeffrey Star visually?

Visually, Jeffrey Star is a femme queen. Like, what are we like? There's not, there's not really any ambiguity about the gender presentation of someone who's in a full face of makeup, fake lashes, long nails, often like some kind of like Gucci track suit. Like his visual aesthetic does in no way shy away from signifiers of queerness. It's, it's loud. It's very loud. A hundred yards. Right. It's, I feel like he was one of the first people to really do the like non-binary alien thing. Yeah. That's how I think about how Jeffrey Starr presents. And so Jeffrey Starr was on a podcast a few months ago. And he was asked about his feelings about pronouns. And so I'm going to show you, a quick, like, 30-second clip.

And let's watch it. I'm not into all the other bullshit. I think... What other bullshit? The they and them. Yeah. And all that extra shit that we added during the pandemic

because everyone was so bored on their fucking houses. They just started to make up more shit and more shit. More stuff, more stuff. Yeah. That's where the conservatives like me because I'm just real.

Yeah, you have a conservative vibe to you. You're not they and them. You're trans, your male or you're female. And you're standing on that. And people get so mad when I say that. How are you a they? What the fuck does that mean?

As stupid is what it is. But you need someone like me that looks like me to say it. Because if you say it, it turns into you're homophobic. You hate trans people. You hate gays. And it's just how you feel. You don't hate anyone. You just think it's stupid. So what do you make of that? Well, I just know for a fact that he doesn't believe the things that he's saying.

Because I remember 2018 or so, Jeffrey Starr was saying that they were any pronouns. Like, there was an era of, like, basically non-binary Jeffrey Star. I think I made a video in 2019 that referenced Jeffrey Star and I referred to him as a man,

but a bunch of people in the audience correct to me. They're like, oh, no, Jeffrey's non-binary. You shouldn't say that he's a man. And so I think it's a pivot. So the idea that all this new stuff,

quote unquote, the pronouns and the they-them's was invented during the pandemic. I know that he knows that that's not true. But he must feel that saying it that the audience will believe that is true. Or the audience at least, even if they don't believe it's true, will still like hearing it. Right.

And I mean, this is not going to be an episode about Jeffrey Starr, but it is worth noting he's had this like kind of conservative nose dive rebrand thing where I feel like less about the makeup now and more about like he has a lot of guns. and lives in Wyoming and, like, farms, yeah. I saw the pink, the pink burrata. What is I, what is that gun called? Sorry, I don't know guns. I think it's a barretta. I'm going to Google it. Yeah, you should back check that one.

But it was so fascinating about that, too. So the pink barretta, is that the name? Yes, I'm correct. Yeah. Jeffrey Starr, when he shared that he got this customized gun, which I guess in the gun world is like a big deal that like this gun company made him a hot pink handgun. The gun company posted it to their Instagram. And there were thousands of comments being like,

the gun world has gone to shit. You know, we're like caving to the woke mob and the fags and the this and the that. And it's like, wow, like Jeffrey Starr, as much as you're trying to appeal to these people, this is their reaction. Guns have gone woke. Sad. The wokeest of assault weapons. So today, as you, the listener, may be able to tell from the title,

we're going to be talking about queer conservatives. And that may sound incredibly niche. And a lot of times when I bring this up, this topic up to people who are not as online, as you or I probably are, they often are like queer, like, you know, gay Republicans, trans Republicans, that's, that doesn't make any sense. And I agree, but they do exist. And we're in a moment in time where I do feel like there is a genuine fracture among different political groups of queer people that is worth talking about. You know, we have these hashtags that are popping up lately,

hashtag gay not queer hashtag LGBT without the T I almost said LGBT LGBT LGBT without the T this group called gays against groomers which is which are which are just gay people whose entire political identity is furthering the kind of like groomer libel against us and I do think it's worth talking about um not only because I like you know disagree with who these people might vote for come election time but I think the idea of a conservative queer person. Like, there's a lot to learn there. What can I say? I love that you say that when you bring up the topic of LGBT conservatives,

people scoff at it. Like, that makes no sense. Yeah, it makes no sense because people don't make sense. Like, when has people's political behavior ever been universally rational? Like, never. I don't know. I really think awareness should be raised that this is a thing because, It's actually not a niche thing.

Like, people think that it's a niche thing, but it's a lot of people. It's a sign, I mean, if you add up, it's probably a significant percentage of LGBT people are conservative. And, I mean, there's a long history of it. They used to be called log cabin Republicans. We're going to get into the log cabin. Okay. You're not escaping this hour. But, yeah, it's very common.

And like you say, it kind of, there's a million versions of it. it kind of exists at every level. And it does seem to overlap with this desire many queer people have to create a new dichotomy between the normals and the freaks. And so these days it's a lot of LGBT without the T or drop the T, a lot of cis gay people trying to throw trans people under the bus. But the distinction gets like way more fine than that. like I mean if just like within the lesbian community you have like femms trying to throw

butches under the bus you have like any version of this you can imagine exists yeah and I feel like if you're a queer person listening to this you've probably witnessed it in some level like I know within the gay male community like the mask the quote unquote like masculine gays do it to the feminine gaze where they're like yeah well if you just try to fit in a little harder maybe you wouldn't be gay bash so the problem is actually you and Yeah, and gay is doing it to trans people, trans people who pass doing it to trans people who don't pass, trans people doing it to non-binary people. And, you know, it's not everyone within any of these groups who does this. But like you said, it's a lot of people.

And the reason to me that this is worth talking about is I think we can learn about why people don't behave in ways that are like politically rational. I think we can learn a lot about shame, scapegoating, the need for validation from people who want to. never give it to us. So I did want to lay just like a teeny tiny bit of historical groundwork because I was doing some research for this episode and I learned that the basic thing that we're going to be talking about today has gone back to like pre-stonewall. And that is that there have been in the gay movement, you know, now we call it kind of LGBTQ movement, but it was originally just the gay movement or like the homophile movement. There were two basic strategies for how gay people thought that we should

become accepted in society. One is assimilationist and the other is liberationist. So assimilationists are people who want to integrate into social structures that already exist. And their main tactics for doing that are things like lobbying with politicians, working within the law, litigation, and whatnot. Liberationists want to expand the social structures

to include them. And those are involved more in protesting and demonstrations. And the tensions between these two basic ideas goes back to like the 50s and before Stonewall when people tended to be more assimilationists. People wanted to be like, we are going to find a way to fit into society. And then Stonewall marked this paradigm shift because Stonewall was a very liberationist act. It was, we're never going to fit in. We're never going to fit in and we're fighting back against that, so you're going to make room for us no matter what.

You can kind of draw this through line from that very divide to what we have now, which are people who I think hold the beliefs of, you know, Natalie and myself and many other people, which are that we should be fighting for greater acceptance of all people. We should be learning more about identities, expanding our ideas, being open to learning new things versus these kind of, conservative gay groups that are arguing, you know, well, maybe if we were just a little more normal than we could fit in and then society would accept us. And really, it's the crazy gays and activists and the people who wear, you know, long nails and 37 pronouns. And it's their fault that we don't fit in. Well, it's always a back and forth, right, when you look at the history of these things. Because pure assimilation can't work. Because if you try to make yourself smaller and smaller and smaller until you fit into a society that's basically against

you existing, you're going to shrink to the point of annihilation, right? And some people do try to do that. They think that if they can just try to be normal enough and just try to keep their gayness in the bedroom and if they can just, you know, try to repeat the other conservative of talking points and join in with other forms of bigotry, then they'll be one of the good ones and they'll be accepted. And I've watched multiple people over the last five years very publicly attempt and fail to do this by becoming gay Republicans or God help them trans Republicans. And that doesn't work. There's another extreme, right, where, like, you know, you can get so disillusioned with the homophobia or the transphobia of society that.

that you almost kind of give up and you become, like, I would say, a separatist. And so I've met queer people like this. They think, look, there's no place for us in this society. So we need to go our own way and we need to become separatists. And they often think of this as a very radical position. But in my opinion, it isn't because separatism isn't going to change society. You're just leaving, right? And I mean, it's like, it's like that type of radical feminism that's like,

okay, all the women are going to go out into the wilderness and have a radical feminist commune. It's like, well, is that a challenge to patriarchy or have you simply created a convent? Well, is there a world in which that happens? I personally have never thought that it's an effective way of doing anything because you sort of need to balance the two approaches. You need someone needs to assimilate a little bit

in order to get the power to change society. So, you know, you're going to need someone like Harvey Milk to get elected, and then from that position can start making these changes that need to be made. If you're so against dissimulation that you won't even engage with, you know, government or with, you know, any kind of existing power structures, then you were never going to have enough power to affect the change that you're trying to affect. So that's the way that I see the history of this is sometimes like assimilation goes too far. Then you have to do something like Stonewall.

But, you know, there has to be a follow-up to a riot, right? Like a riot ignites a new era of activism, but that activism then has to get organized. It can't just be an ongoing riot because a riot is too chaotic to, you know, change a riot on its own that is, you know, it can ignite a movement that will affect. change, but a riot on its own is too destructive to really change anything. Speaking of trans- Republicans, one of the most popular trans-influencers, at least trans-political influencers, is a Republican. I know, you're probably tired of this, but we're... I have no idea what you mean.

Me neither. Let's go on to the next topic. Yeah. So Blair White is a trans-conservative influencer, and I know you've both had a lot to say about each other over the years. And she is just, to me, a fascinating case study. I'm going to show you another small video clip of this was from a vice debate, where it was conservative queer people debating progressive queer people. And this is what Blair White had to say at one point about non-binary people. I think that a large reason why a lot of people do not understand trans people is because of non-binary and because of all these other identities that we've all talked about are constantly tacked onto the acronym that always works.

She says that non-binary people are the reason people don't understand trans people and all of these other identities that have been tacked onto the acronym that before, this always worked. There's a lot there. Is there any validity to that? And, you know, what would lead someone in her position as a trans woman to feel that way? Is there any validity to it? No. Right. What would lead someone to feel that way? Well, I think it's a combination of incentives to think this way. I think that in a way, it's a way of, like, defending yourself psychologically, because at the moment there's a massive amount of animosity being directed at LGBT people and at trans people in particular. And when you have, you know, very prominent political figures, Ron DeSantis, you know, Christopher Rufo, etc., saying loudly and publicly that trans people are groomers or pedophiles, the shame and the stigma of that is a lot to deal with psychologically. So I think one thing that people do is that it's almost like trying to reassure yourself,

oh, they're not really talking about me. Of course, I'm not really the object of this scorn. It's because of the non-binary people. That's why they're confused. It's them. And then you can sort of reposition yourself where you're on the side of the accuser instead of the side of the accused. And I think that sort of helps with the anxiety of, you know, this environment of bigotry.

So that's one psychological factor. Another, I think, is more material. I think that when you're talking about commentators and influencers, it sounds like kind of a cheap accusation to be like, oh, they're just doing it for money. But also, like, I don't know, influencers are often motivated by what is a financially a viable position to advocate for. And there's always going to be a job opening for a queer person who wants to talk about

how homophobia is gay people. people's fault, right? Totally. Like, there's always going to be people who are going to pay to hear you say that. And so there's, you know, there's always going to be some cynical person who's going to come along and be willing to perform that part. Well, and I feel like at this point, Blair White has helped carve out this, like, actual field in a certain part of conservative media that, like, you see more and more queer people occupying, which is the conservative queer influencer. which is, I mean, there's Blair White, there's Ariel Scarcella, there's Christian Walker, this boy on TikTok, this like, insufferable twink Clarkson Lawson, who just, they all make the same videos, which is that they just go on and they're like, well, maybe if trans activists and non-binary pronoun people, blue hair, yada, yada, weren't so crazy, they'd finally start accepting us, you guys. And it's like, they, they, amassed these really big audiences immediately. And also they immediately get put on like newsmax. And they get these like prime time specials where they're like, so it's true. Like homophobia doesn't really exist in 2023. And they're like, yes, Tucker, that's true. And that's why I made the joke at

the beginning where it's like, I don't actually think for these people, for these specific like commentators and influencers, it is cheap to be like, well, they're just doing it for money. I think there's a, I think like you said, there's a number of psychological reasons why you might want to believe that because, like you said in one of your videos, you know, pointing the finger away from yourself and at like the weird or queer people, it, you know, it takes the blame off you. It's like the witch trials. You just pass along the blame and the shame and the accusation. But also, there's like a pretty well-defined route to like having a primetime right-wing media show at this point as a queer person. Yeah. Caitlin Jenner did it. That's a stone that, you know, we're not going to

leave unturned in this episode either. But the other thing I wanted to bring up with Blair White was her, Blair White's pinned tweet right now that's pinned to her profile for the last several months is a selfie of her looking hot, she looks great, she's wearing a bikini, she's serving and the replies, there are 5,000 replies, mostly from conservative men who are arguing with each other about whether or not it is gay that they find her hot. I don't want to get into that conversation, but the conversation that I do find fascinating is like, Blair, like beyond money, what is in this for you? Because isn't that humiliating? Well, it's being a pick me girl up here and simple. Like, there's, there's, there's any number of cis women that do an equivalent thing, right? And

there's, again, incentives to do this. If you, if you're willing to sacrifice a certain level of self-respect, if you're willing to make yourself a little bit smaller and put up with more humiliation, there's also a kind of reward that comes with it. I think that, you know, just to talk about, you know, women as an analogous case, I, I think that a large percentage of women go through some stage in their life of enthusiastically endorsing the male point of view. Because it's easy, right? We're all kind of raised in, you know, you go to school and you read a bunch of books by men that show the male perspective and men have generally more power than women. and there's a huge historical precedent for that.

So I think, and, you know, men praise you and men like it when you validate their way of seeing and you don't challenge them and you don't make demands and you don't stand up for yourself and you don't be difficult, right? So much of this has to do with whether it's difficult, right? It is difficult for white people to hear that racism is real and an ongoing problem and something that they might have to deal with and something that they might themselves be participating in. It's difficult for men to hear that misogyny exists

and that some of their additors towards women are actually really toxic and damaging and bigoted. It's difficult for straight people or resist people to hear that they have, you know, that their point of view is homophobic. So if you can kind of flatter these kind of basic, prejudices, people find that comforting, I think. Right. So, you know, if you can be a woman, whether you're, whether you're, whether you're pandering to the male gaze and to, you look the way that men want you to look and you are, you're not challenging any of the things that they're

saying about you, whether it's objectifying or degrading or in the case of a trans woman, whether they're, you know, doing this thing that straight men do to trans women, where they kind of are simultaneously expressing sexual attraction to you while also kind of invalidating that. They're saying, I mean, it's this like set of contradictory things that they say to you, right? One, you'll never be a woman, you're a man, two, but you're hot. Three, it's gay to be attracted to trans women, but I'm not gay, but I am attracted to you. And, you know, it doesn't make sense.

Of course, it doesn't make sense. They joke about it because they're uncomfortable, right? They make those jokes about, you know, trans and trapping them or whatever because they sort of conceptually don't know how to deal with the nuances of gender and sexuality. And that's what trans people do is they sort of force people to confront those nuances. Trans people blur the lines of the most fundamental human distinction. And that's something that people find threatening to their own identity. So if you can find a way to be a trans person that is minimally threatening, then you'll be given more accommodation.

So there's a kind of short-term self-interest, I think that comes with debasing yourself in this way. Yeah, I read the replies. I was reading them last night, and I'm not going to read them here. But I was reading the replies to her to that thirst trap. And I was like, God, you know, I feel badly for her. in some moments. And then I see what she says about other queer people and then my sympathy runs dry pretty quickly. Yeah.

But it, I mean, it's gosh, just debasing yourself, your identity. You know, there's, I know people say this and I know it's like probably cheesy. But when I see queer Republicans, the queer conservatives, whatever, pandering to these swaths of, you know, white cishead men or the Republican Party, or the RNC or Fox News. And they're just like chipping away at everything that makes them special as queer people just for like a fraction of attention or congratulations or pats on the back or validation from these people who will never really see them as like fully human. It's upsetting to me.

But it is complicated like you said because I think to just write this off as like, oh, well, they hate themselves and they'll do anything. anything for attention. It's like, I mean, like you said, there's more, it's more psychologically complicated. There is something to be said about that validation. And also in the case of Blair White money. Yeah. I mean, once you commit to this as a career path, then it sort of, it sort of becomes less interesting to me to analyze it in terms of like, what is this person getting out of this? And it becomes, okay, well, this is this person's, this person is doing, you know, I mean, there's always been people from marginalized groups who engage in, you know, a debasing form of

entertainment because it's financially remunerative. And it comes at, I'm sure, a certain cost in terms of your own self-worth and self-respect. But, you know, everyone's got to pay rent. Everyone does have to pay rent. Even Blair White. I was listening to a podcast a while ago, and there was a black woman who was talking about Candace Owens. I was wondering when Candice Owens was going to come up. Yeah, Candice Owens does come up. And because there are parallels here with her being like the face of black woman conservatives. And this woman on this podcast who I believe her name was Africa Brooke,

she had a really interesting point of view which was not she she didn't agree with Candice Owen's politics and she made this point which I did find compelling which is that you know for white cisgender heterosexual men there is not a political position that they could take where anyone would ever accuse them of being politically at odds with who they are as you know in their identity and it is something that is afforded to like like specifically that group of people that women don't get. And then as you get into the intersections that people of color don't get, that queer people don't get. And so that was like one of the most compelling arguments that I've ever heard to be like, yes,

queer people should be allowed to be conservative and still be queer. And I'm not going to like strip them of that, but also I'm still going to unfortunately think less of them. Like I'm not going to put it. Well, I think that you can't even understand what they're doing without reference to their queerness, right? Like the fact that they're saying these things and the reason that they're saying these things is inextricably tied up with their queerness, right? So, no, it doesn't mean like, oh, you're not gay if you're a Republican.

It just means that you're a sort of self-annulating gay person. Yeah. That's too conti of a description, honestly. These people don't deserve that. self-enihilating gay person is kind of something that I would like to be. Well, there's different, there's many methods of self-annihilation. So I want to talk about Ron DeSantis and specifically an ad that he put out recently. Oh, God.

And some reactions to it. I know. Okay. So we're not going to play the ad. But basically, Ron DeSantis, who, anyone who's listening to this from outside of the United States. Ron DeSantis is bad. Yeah.

And he is also running for president. And he's also not going to win, but that's none of our business right now. Ron DeSantis, his campaign, like one of the pillars of his campaign is transphobia in a way that is so extreme. And homophobia. In a way that's so extreme that like it is even alienating most conservatives at this point, I think, which is part of the reason I don't think he's going to get ahead of Trump at all. because he's just leaning to into this like chronically online anti-gay shit, which doesn't actually resonate, I think, with the majority of even Republicans.

But he, you know, lending itself to that image, he just put out a campaign video where he essentially just brags about how homophobic and transphobic he is. And he positions himself as opposite to Trump, who this ad claims is gay friendly and trans-friendly and he's like, you know, I would never see a trans woman as a woman. I would never let them talk about sexuality and to little kids. You know, Trump is so gay friendly, but I'm a real fighter against this cause. And it was like, Trump isn't exactly like a crusader for gay rights. But he put out this video, and there are a couple responses from gay conservatives,

from prominent gay conservatives on Twitter that I would like to read off to you and to get your thoughts on. So first, Caitlin Jenner, who we could do a six-part series just about her if we wanted to, which I don't. No, I prefer not to. She said, hey, Governor Ron DeSantis, watching your interview right now, you're still defending your bizarre anti-gay ad. Which bathroom should I use? And it's like, Caitlin, you know which bathroom he thinks you should use. I mean, the thing is that they've gotten so phobic that it's not even that they think that Kay and Jenner should use the men's bathroom. They just think that if you're trans, you just shouldn't exist.

Like, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't use any bathroom. You shouldn't be in society. And the bathroom thing is just a kind of easier way for them to say that. I feel like what we're watching is the collapse of euphemism, right? Where bigotry in politics has traditionally relied on a kind of ambiguity that, I guess it is usually called dog whistling, where the right-wing politician will say something that they know that bigots will hear as in support of them, but that sort of centrists and moderates will think is maybe something softer than it is. So instead of saying, you know, we hate gay people,

you say, well, we want to, you know, protect the innocence of children from indoctrination in schools. you know, you say that, oh, you think that kindergartners should learn about gay sex. And a lot of, you know, centrists will hear that and they'll be like, oh, now I don't think that kindergartners should learn about gay sex. Because the centrists are missing that that's not really what he's talking about. This is like a front for homophobia. But, you know, so Trump has done that. Although Trump, I think, is more of a sincere racist and more of a passionate racist than he is a homophobe. I honestly think that Trump in his heart of heartist doesn't really care one way or another about gay people.

And I think that's what DeSantis is trying to exploit. But DeSantis's recent ads are kind of, it's not a dog whistle anymore. It's a foghorn. He's not saying, of course we support gay people. It's just that we don't want these children to learn about sexual. He's not saying that. He's saying, oh, we don't like gay people and we don't want them in society. The problem with Trump is he's too pro-gay, right?

That is the problem with Trump, is he's too pro-gay. I was thinking he was in that. Yeah, yeah, famously. All he ever does is, you know, he's just constantly passing legislation that helps the homosexuals. That was his entire presidency, right? So this tweet is also in response to the DeSantis homophobic video. It's from David Leatherwood, who is another one of these kind of Republican, gay influencers. He wrote, I spent the last seven years of my life working with Trump to make the

GOP a more welcoming place for gays while also being anti-groomer, anti-woke, and pro-religious liberty. I've even worked with DeSantis on this agenda. This ad is a slap in the face and makes any LGBT person supporting DeSantis look like an absolute idiot. Yeah, this one's my absolute favorite. You're making pro-Dusantis gay people look like absolute idiots. Girl, I don't think that's the ads. I don't think the ad was making you look like an idiot. Like, it's very funny to me.

But I also think that, like, that's the tweet does a great example of showing, like, the difference between the euphemism and the reality. So what are the euphemisms? It's anti-groomer. It's pro-religious liberty. it's anti-woke. Anti-woke. Oh, woke is there like, catch-all

euphemism. It means everything. And so, I mean, it sounds like this person, I mean, he's like latched on to the euphemisms as, again, the way to sort of separate himself from the accusation. He wants to believe in the dog whistles. He wants to take them at face value because that means that he can, well, I'm not the target. It's not about me.

It's about the groom. Right. Hello, like, grummer means gay. Like, when these people say it, right? I mean, it seems like he's not even now realizing that, but he thinks that this is some new thing. Oh, suddenly, like, shockingly, there's this turn of events where DeSantis is no longer just attacking the groomers,

but attacking all gay people. And it's like, anyone who's paying attention knows that it was about all gay people the entire time, right? Yeah, that was really well said. I'm kind of floored. And then the third response is from our friends, the log cabin Republicans. Are they still kicking around? They are still kicking around.

And for anyone who doesn't know what the log cabin Republicans are, they are a group, I was doing some log cabin Republican history, which is truly like pulling teeth yesterday. But they are a group of Republicans who are gay. They're gay Republicans. That's their whole thing. The group formed in 1977 in response to the Briggs Initiative, which was a bill in California where Republicans were trying to make it illegal for gay people to teach in public schools. And so the log cabin Republicans were like a bunch of gay conservatives who,

formed around making the Briggs initiative not pass. And they were successful. And that was one of the last times they've been successful. They have made basically this, you know, over the last five decades, they've just latched on to every, you know, Republican candidate, endorsed this person, endorse that person, and, you know, made all of these pleas to prominent Republicans. Like, we're supporting you. And then every single time the Republican in question is like, I don't really need your support. It's okay. Thanks, though. They made, oh, I forget the politician, but I think in the 1996 presidential election, the, was the Republican candidate, dole? Yeah. It was, yeah, they, 96. Yeah, where the Republican who ended up losing to Bill Clinton, but the log cabin

Republicans, I don't know if you know this, they sent him a $1,000 donation as, you know, an endorsement. And Bob Dole returned it, saying that he 100, he literally returned the money and he said, I 100% disagree with everything that is on your agenda. Yeah. And the log cabin Republicans have also been barred from having a table at the Texas GOP convention for the last 20 years. years. So it's a really sad case. Yeah, there's an amazing dedication to to believing that Republicans will accept you if you just do enough thing. I mean, it reminds me of, I feel like my favorite gay Republican to hate on is this guy called Dave Rubin, who used to have a political debate show on YouTube. Tell us about him.

Well, he used to be with the young Turks that kind of left-leaning YouTube political show. And then in 2016, I think it was, he split from them to do right-wing. We're talking 2016. So at the time, the big issue was anti-SJWs, anti-social justice warrior content, a lot of complaining about campus activism going too far and free speech on campus. Wait, so he was liberal to begin with. He was on the young clerk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he started out as liberal. And then he decided that in 20, 2015, like the left went too far because they were protesting like Milo Yanopoulos or something. And so, I mean, what's funny is that like this is the Obama administration. So I do definitely

wonder if he would have gone this way. If he knew that seven years later it was going to be dissantis and not Milo unopolis, who was going to be the person he's, you know, fighting for? The person that he's fighting for. But he's really dedicated to the cause. There's this amazing clip of him on stage at some conservative event where he talks about how, you know, he's moved from Florida to California to get away from those lives. And, you know, sometimes his neighbors look at him and his husband skeptically, but he always pulls out his wallet and shows them that he has a picture of him standing next to DeSantis. And that's my governor.

And it's like, my guy, Ronald DeSantis is never going to be your daddy. Like, he's never going to say that he's proud of you. He's never, like, I don't know, the delusion is just incredible. Didn't Dave Rubin also have a conversation on Ben Shapiro's show at one point? It was actually, it was actually on his show. Ben Shapiro. He invited Ben Shapiro. on his show, yeah.

Where he was like, Ben, we're friends. Would you come to my wedding? And Ben was like, no. Will you bake Ruben a wedding cake? The answer is no. And the reason I won't is because as a religious Jew, I do not participate in activities that I believe are sinful. But again, we live in a free country, and Dave knows this.

He doesn't have to care what I think about sin. Does Dave have a husband? Yeah. I mean, like, okay, and are we friends? Yeah, and are we going to go out to dinner sometime in the near future? Yeah, but there's a difference between me just being friends with Dave

and me actively participating in an event that I feel is religiously sinful. And while that's awkward, we're still friends in spite of it, which is why we're friends. If we couldn't be friends in spite of it, then it would be a bad thing. Well, look, when I did your interview show, you said that to me, and I truly mean this,

like, if you think what I'm doing is sinful, like, I don't, it sounds good, but I don't care. Right, and this is my view is you don't have to care, right? It's a free country. Right, like, that's the thing. And it's like, look, look, there is, of course someone's going to go, well, wait a minute, if you really think his marriage is sinful or something,

of course there may be a place that in the nature of our friendship, maybe that we can't quite get to that I would be able to get to with someone that didn't think that. Why is it that we're able to do this? And most people can't do this. That's what I'm curious about. We go home at night and we can have our own lives. I mean, that's, that's really, and I think part of friendship, by the way, is that. Well, I think that Dave on some level is in a state of genuine.

I mean, part of the, this is part of the reason why I find him a compelling and fascinating figure is that with him, often the delusion seems to be genuine. Like, he, like, he's just very stupid. Yeah, I think he's, I think he's just kind of a hymbo. And, like, I don't know, that makes it more endearing than a more, like, sinister manipulator. but he seems to think that he can negotiate with Ben Shapiro this kind of like, you know, we have our differences, but like we can still be friends. And that means like you'd go to my anniversary with me and my husband, right? And Ben's like, well, no, of course not.

You live in sin. And Dave is just like, oh, okay. Well, but at least we can have this conversation. And isn't it great that we can have this conversation? And Ben is like, yeah, whatever, I don't like you. And Dave's like, we're such good friends. And it's like, I don't know. And then, right.

And they have this conversation that ultimately amounts to Ben being like, I will never see your love as real love. It will never be valid to me. And I think you're going to hell. And then Dave Rubin kind of like shrinking in his chair is like, but at least we can talk about it and have such a great podcast about it. And it's like, Dave, stand up. Yeah, it's like so spineless that it's like, um, Mibik. Like, it's amazing. Like, I love, like, watching him, like, like, I don't know, just, like, sway in the water, like, seaweed. Like, as Ben Shapiro sits there saying, like, your marriage is not valid, you're a menace to children. And Dave is like, yes, but we can talk about this in a civil way. And it's, I mean, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it requires, like, the complete absence of any kind of self-respect where you want. And it's, it's, it's, it requires, like, the complete absence of any kind of self-respect. Where you want. You won't defend yourself. You won't defend your relationship. You won't defend your family or your own relationship to your children. You'll just sit there sort of quietly nodding as Ben Shapiro just completely trashes your entire personal life. It's amazing.

It is amazing. So swinging back to the log cabin Republicans and this DeSantis video, after the video of him bragging about how homophobic he is and he's the most homophobic. presidential candidate comes out. The log cabin Republicans tweet, Ron DeSantis and his team can't tell the difference between common sense gays and the radical left gaze. He sadly sees them all the same. His naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid. And it's like, yeah, Ron DeSantis can't tell the difference between common sense gays and radical left gays. And also, no politician that you have ever tried to make yourself available to has seen the difference either. And they never will. And that's the thing that is so wild to me is we see this happen again and again and again and again. It's that like famous old tweet that's like, I never thought the leopards would eat my face.

Cries the woman who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. It's like the leopards are going to eat your face. They are eating your face. Why are you acting surprised after you voted? for the leopards eating people's faces party. It seems like what's going on is people vary and how we interpret the euphemism. When the leopards eating people's faces party say, we're going to eat people's faces. Like there's some of us who say, oh, that's bad.

No one's faces should be eaten. We won't vote for them. And then there's the people who hear that and somehow translate it in their head into we're going to eat other people's faces, but not yours. And I think it's like, I don't know, they get excited about some of the level of face eating, maybe. But I also think that it has to do with this euphemism thing, right?

A lot of times a homophobic, for example, a homophobic politician will find it expedient in a liberal society to argue, like, of course I'm not homophobic. Of course, I support the right of gay people to exist. I just think there needs to be a few, like, reasonable restrictions on, you know, whether gay teachers are allowed to teach. teach certain things or whether, you know, whether we want children being exposed to information about homosexuality, right? So that's the kind of, the kind of smart way to play it if you think that the voters are not as homophobic as you. But it seems like the log cabin Republicans just take that at face value. And they think like, oh, so I'm fine, but it's just the bad gays. Okay, well, that's good. But I, you know, I don't know, I never took that at face

value because it shouldn't be taken at face value, right? You know, they're never going to stop at the radical left gaze, whatever that means, right? When they take away your rights, that's all of our rights. I think they just look so delusional when they say this because it's not like, it was always going to be this way. The more power you give them, the more power they gain, the more they're going to push the line, right? And that's all you had to fight back against them and not make concessions and not do this like appeasement stuff of like, oh, okay, well, we'll agree with you about getting the non-binary people and about getting the radical left gaze and about getting wokeism, whatever that is, right?

Once you get rid of all of them, you're next. And that's what the law-caven Republican types don't seem to get. They don't seem to get that they're next. Once they're done helping the reactionaries, you know, destroy the, the, the, you people more marginalized than them, they're up next. Read the poem. First, they came for the wokes. Like, is that how it hurts? And you should have spoken up. But I didn't because I was not woke and I was anti-groomer. Yeah. Good luck with that. I think when it comes to people who behave like this politically in the LGBTQ community, a lot of people,

online and in real life that I've seen have this conversation, just basically the conversation, their analysis of it starts and ends at like, oh, well, these people just hate themselves and that's why they do this. My thing with that is that like there's probably some self-hatred in there, for sure, but also I think most queer people have at some point dealt with self-hatred as it pertains to our identity. Some people deal with it for a really long time. And yet the bulk of us don't turn to self-hating politics. And I also just think that accusing people in this derogatory way of hating themselves doesn't really leave the conversation with any room to go on. It's like, well, you hate yourself, so fuck you. And like, there's got to be more there. Yeah, I think that it's

reasonable to have a level of animosity towards people who take their self-hate and then use that to hate other people and use that to bolster politics that's going to hurt all of us. I also think that, you know, when you deal with your self-hate, say, as a gay person, by being an enthusiastic trans basher, well, at a certain point, self-hate has become other hate. You're passing it on. You're sort of projecting it outwards. And I think that's just how bigotry works. Like, I think that a lot of bigots, every bigot, every abuser, every dictator has their own issues. They were deeply wounded in childhood. Like Joseph Stalin was beaten by his father. Every common domestic abuser has some kind of sad backstory. Like, sure, the question is

like what you do with that trauma and what you, because we all have some degree of trauma. And I do think that some level of self-hate is probably a near universal part of the queer experience. Like, who among us has not had time this in our life when this was, like, the most salient emotion we were experiencing? I think that it's very common. I remembered when I was doing research for my video on cringe, like reading all these Reddit posts from people posting to, like, R-slash confessions where it was like, I'm trans and I hate other trans people. Like, I'm gay and I hate other gay people. I remember this one post from someone who was, they lived in a very homophobic country and they came from a homophobic family and they described this experiences of seeing a pride parade and feeling this like horror and disgust because they were scantily clad people and people kissing in public and wearing, you know, rainbows. And it was everything that like my homophobic family would say they were.

And that's why my family would hate me and why I can't come out to them and what, right? not to get all Freudian on it, but like a lot of times the wound comes from the family and from early in life. And I think a lot of conservative influencers probably have like a homophobic father or something. And the desire for approval from your parents is a long lasting thing that even if you no longer have a relationship with your parents is still somewhere inside of you. And if you feel like, you know, you want your, say your father's approval. like you'll kind of seek out that type of approval from other right-wing men. And I think that that is, you know, so it's, it is like self-hate in a way, but it's,

it's more complicated than just self-hate because it touches this like yearning for acceptance and love that we all feel. And that I think queer people in particular, a lot of us have this basic wound of the shame, of like years of hearing, you know, are selves disparaged, whether it's like seeing like derogatory depictions in media or is hearing homophobic talking points, and you're within your own family growing up. And so that like yearning to be accepted and for the shame to be reduced

motivates a lot of this kind of behavior, I think. And I think there is a grain of something sympathetic in that, that's not just like, oh, this idiot hates themselves. Right. I mean, I remember like being one of the very few out gay people in my high school. You know, I've always been feminine. I was in the glass closet, as they say. Like, I was never really, like, I came out as gay and people were like, yeah.

I carried so much shame as, you know, most queer people do for whatever reason. You know, there's like very few queer people who have like a universal experience, a university just like accepting great experience. It's hard to even imagine. It's hard to even imagine. And I remember going to college. I moved to New York for college and seeing other queer people who were way more outwardly queer than I was, who, you know, other gay guys who were way more feminine, who were super into drag before I had really accepted interest in that within myself, all this stuff. And like seeing people who were like quote unquote

Weirder or freakier than me It was like oh it like soothed a part of me that I was like I've always wanted to be on the other end of Thinking someone was weird Because we all deal with that like oh Everyone fucking thinks I'm a weird Everyone thinks I'm a faggot It's a dangerous thing to feel good about

Because then that could lead to me forming actual resentment Towards these people thinking that it will stop other people from having that resentment towards me I feel like I'm in a therapy session right now. Well, it is kind of a therapy session that we all kind of constantly need to be in. But yeah, no, I have to say the same kinds of experiences. Like when I first came out as trans, I, you know, there was this kind of mix of elation that, okay, I'm actually doing this thing, but also terror because it's like, I don't know if there's going to be a place for me in society after this.

and so you look for some kind of anchor, and I ended up kind of like latching myself on to this other trans women who seemed to have her shit together. And so I thought, like, look, if I stay close to you and I do what you do and I take your advice, then I'll be okay. And in some ways that helps me, but in other ways, I think, you know, she was someone who was very much still working on this kind of self-loathing stuff and who was a little bit obsessed with passing. And, you know, introduce these, like, terrible, like, cruel dichotomies that trans people make. Like, there's all these, like, these kind of, like, fake dichotomies that trans people make between the true transsexuals and either the, like, trender, ubu, two cutes, sorry,

there's a lot of jargon, or the, like, pervert, fetishist huns. Like, these are, these are, like, categories, these are, like, sort of cruel categories that trans people have to distinguish, like, oh, there's, the real trans people, the good trans people. And then there's like, oh, the weird fetishists or, oh, the blue-haired teenage people doing this just as a trend. Right. It's like Blair White versus like the 37 pronouns, he they, it's zero. Yeah, yeah. That's that's a common way of setting up the distinction. But I definitely had a couple years where I was kind of like getting dangerously invested in the idea of myself.

as one of the good ones because it was like I needed to believe that to feel like I was going to be okay, like I was lovable, basically. And but I also kind of noticed that the way that my thinking was getting uncomfortably cruel and I was sort of fixated on disparaging the kind of person that I was rejecting what I thought was unacceptable in myself, right? It's like, your shadow self, right? The thing, the unbearable parts of yourself that you have to sort of project out of you and you rage against it when you see it in someone else because you're kind of trying to kill what they represent to you. You're trying to kill some part of yourself that you're trying to shove down and you're doing this like by projecting it out onto other people.

And I feel like I feel like I was able to come out of this and just be self-aware enough to realize that, oh, I'm like starting down a path that leads to acting like a bully, right? And so I think that that video cringe is kind of my reckoning with that in a way. Like it's me noticing, you know, that like probably a section of that video I wouldn't do now has to do with me describing my intense reaction of like anger and hostility to this like trans women behaving poorly in public and not passing or, you know. and like me sort of processing the fact that my like rage and disgust towards this trans woman had to do with my own like terror of anyone seeing me like that. I don't know.

Maybe maybe doing that in public, maybe doing that on YouTube video was not the right way to do it. Maybe it should have been done in therapy. But I don't know. It's hard to find a good therapist. Sometimes it's easier to just tell YouTube. So yeah, I think that this is like work. It's work, right? that we all sort of have to do to kind of learn a more compassionate way of seeing and to find

ways of healing your own damage that don't involve, you know, projecting it out of yourself as cruelty. Right. The same cruelty that you experience pushing it on to other people. And I honestly feel like that is unfortunately just like extremely common. I mean, it's within the queer community and like you can go to extremes where you have people like the log cabin of Republicans who are like, I'm going to wield political power against my own community because that's how much I want to, you know, unload my own shame onto the people who theoretically I'm going to go down with. And that's, and that's kind of why I wanted to round out the conversation here because I don't want to, like I do want, I think compassion is the word.

I do want to empathize with the people who end up there politically. to an extent because those feelings of shame and the feelings of wanting to scapegoat that shame onto other people in the community that they think are weirder or less acceptable or less able to fit into society than then. Like, Natalie's experience that. I've experienced that. Like, I think we've all had moments of that. And I think it's extremely human to have experienced pain and then not know what to do with it and sometimes do the wrong thing with it. But also, like we're saying, it's the slippery slope where you have to, like, catch yourself as you're falling into it so as to not hurt other people. Yeah, it's a situation that we're all in, right?

And that is the point, I think, where we can sort of have some understanding for the log cabin Republican types is, like, yep, they're processing the same shame that we're all processing. But if you have the strength and the self-awareness, you can choose to make the same. cycle of shaming and cruelty stop with you. And I think that that's a very powerful choice to make. And that's a choice we should all try to make. Yeah, totally. I mean, the last question that I kind of had for you was I have people who follow me online who are ostensibly not conservative, because I just don't accrue that kind of audience, generally speaking. But, you know, there are these very social media savvy groups like gaze against rumors and you know these other influencers some of whom we've talked about today who create this content that is very compelling

um it works really well on social media and so sometimes i have people who follow me who don't really know what the cruelty is behind these groups and the psychology behind them that we've talked about today. They just see, you know, oh, Gaze Against Groomers posted this thing of, look how crazy this non-binary person was behaving and this is really bad for a community. And they send it to me and they're, they kind of know that maybe it's not something that I would say, but they're not sure and they find it a compelling piece of content. And so I get these messages from young people, you know, high school age and younger, being like, hey, I'm not really sure what to think about this. And it's like, they're really vulnerable to, as you and I both have, being like scooped up into that thought process of like,

well, they'll accept me if I, you know, throw the wrench at all of these weirder gays and all of these weirder trans people and the 37 pronouns. And how do we stop that cycle of, you know, and that's a big question, but how do we stop that cycle of like transferring our own pain? How do we make it end with us? Well, I think that one way is to just, be very public and vocal in deconstructing the workings of it, like showing what's going on, what gays against groomers are doing, how it works, why it works, why, even if you aren't a cruel or bigoted person, you might still feel a strong pull towards this, as most of us have at some moment. And I think that that probably is the strongest way to fight it. And then the other part of it

is just kind of accepting the difficult fact that for a lot of young queer people, this is kind of just a stage that they're going to have to go through. Like, some people will just have to learn for themselves why this is not a good path to go down. And, you know, you can kind of show people the way out and you can show people the flaws of that thinking, but ultimately each individual person has to kind of come to the understanding of their own and see why they need what, they have to decide what choice they're going to make for themselves. So we can guide them, but we can't, you know, you can't do more than that. Yeah. And if you find yourself sitting on a podcast with someone who's politely telling you that

they won't come to your wedding because you're burning in hell, but hey, at least we can talk about it, you know, leave that podcast chair. Leave it immediately. Yeah. If you find yourself acting like Dave Rubin, this might be a good time to rethink your life. If you've made it this far in the episode, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. I also want to thank Natalie Wynne. Where can people find you and support your work? You can find me on YouTube as contra points and on Twitter or whatever Twitter is called by the time you listen to this. Or Instagram or Patreon.

That's how I make money. if you're if you know but watch my content first see if you're really that into it yeah Natalie Natalie will make about two to our blockbuster YouTube video feature length films per year and they will both be worth watching I promise um if you enjoyed this episode feel free to share it with your friends your mom your gay uncle who has like a you know weird newfound vendetta against non-binary people maybe they'll uh they'll give us a listen and and start to rethink things. Again, you can follow us on whatever app you get your podcast on. If you enjoy this episode, we would love if you could rate the podcast. It takes five seconds. And if you

didn't enjoy the episode, please do not rate the podcast. Thank you so much. And until next time, take care and stay fruity.