Nuanced. - 192. Meghan Murphy: Feminism vs. Gender Identity: Are They at Odds?

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Meghan Murphy, host of The Same Drugs podcast, joins Aaron Pete to discuss feminism, trans rights in sports, cancel culture, and the importance of free speech. She shares her journey from a committed leftist feminist to a vocal critic of modern gender ideology. Banned from Twitter, blacklisted in Canada, and later invited on The Joe Rogan Experience, Megan explains why she continues to speak out on women’s rights and freedom of expression.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. What is going on with the feminist movement? Is it growing or fading away? I'm speaking with a woman who took a stand for women's rights when it was difficult to do so. We discussed the feminist movement, trans people in sports, being invited onto the Joe Rogan experience, and the importance of sharing your voice and your perspective. My guest today is Megan Murphy.

Megan, thank you so much. much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind first briefly introducing yourself? I'm Megan Murphy. I'm a writer. I'm the host of the same drugs podcast. I lived in Canada for 40 years before exiling myself to Mexico. And I, yeah, I'm trained in journalism. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for having you. Would you mind giving us some of the origin story? People might be familiar with a bit of your story, your experience with Twitter in 2018, but would you mind taking us through your journey prior to that? Yes, for sure.

It's a long journey. I launched a website called Feminist Current back in 2012. I did a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in women's studies. I think I'm actually the only person on the planet who ever made use of that degree by, you know, criticizing women's studies and modern feminism to the extent that I have. I know it from the inside. And, yeah, I was a socialist for most of my life, essentially. You know, I sort of, like, oscillated between identities like Marxist or anarchist when I was younger

and settled on, you know, the more moderate socialist as I was got older. And, yeah, I was really, really invested in leftist politics and feminist politics for most of my adult life. And so that's what most of my writing focused on and my podcasting work and my journalism. And when gender identity ideology came along, I was at. actually aware of it pretty early on because of a specific fight that was happening in Vancouver with an organization called Vancouver rape relief and women's shelter. And they were forced to go to court. They were dragged through one of these human rights tribunals by a man calling himself a woman. And they did win eventually at the Supreme Court, I believe. And they they

they won the right to define their own membership, which for them ensured that they didn't have to allow men to train as counselors at this women's shelter, this shelter for women who were escaping, you know, really domestic violence and really, you know, horrific male violence in general. But as a result, they were tired as transphobic for all the years following. You know, I think this case happened back in 1999 or something like that. So they were constantly under attack by these trans activists and by a lot of leftists in Vancouver. And I was allied with these women.

I was very supportive of the work that they were doing for women. And I was defensive of them. And so I got schooled in gender identity ideology, trans activism, and defending women's spaces pretty early on. So I started, you know, covering this fight back in. you know, around 2012. And so when the, um, when Bill 6C-16 came along, which was Canada's gender identity legislation, which passed in 2017, but when that bill came along, um, presented by the, the Liberal Party, of course, um, in 2016, I was one of the only people in Canada to speak out. And certainly one of the only people in Canada to speak out as a feminist and a leftist.

and I managed to, after like a great deal of struggle, publish a piece explaining my criticisms of the bill at the time in the National Observer and, you know, luckily had my own website, my own platform and my podcast so that I could cover this extensively because the Canadian media not only, you know, wasn't covering it not fairly in any case, but they refused. to even acknowledge that somebody like me would have a criticism. You know, they would allow for Jordan Peterson to be presented as a critic of gender identity legislation and gender identity ideology because they could frame him happily as, you know, like this bigot and this misogynist and all of those things.

But they couldn't do that to me because I was this leftist feminist. So they just pretended that I didn't exist and essentially erased me from the conversation. And blacklisted me, you know, like I'd written for a lot of these publications prior. I'd written for the CBC. I'd been on the CBC before. And I, yeah, you know, I struggled and struggled to speak out about this in Canada, but it was an enormous challenge. I mean, I could barely get a venue to speak and we would get counseled at every turn.

I didn't have any resources or any funding. It was always just me and like a couple of other women just trying to talk about this. And I testified against the bill at the Senate in 2017. In 2018, at the end of 2018, I was permanently banned from Twitter for, essentially for criticizing gender identity, ideology and trans activism, but the tweets in question that had me permanently banned were saying men aren't women. And I referred to a man named Jonathan slash Jessica Yeniv as as him. So those were those were my crimes. I was banned from Twitter for four years until Elon took over and freed me. Wow. The part I want to start with that stood out to me is where you started

from in your schooling, the perspectives you had. What brought that change about? That's a pretty significant move. And I think what we're seeing right now, hopefully, is people's commitment to movement on positions, that we shouldn't kind of ground ourselves in one understanding forever, that we should adapt to the facts on the ground, be willing to open our minds to different perspectives. That doesn't mean we have to agree, but that that is a part of living. That is a part of the human experience.

What brought that about for you? Yeah, and I think that, you know, if you're genuinely interested in understanding the world around you, if you're genuinely committed to truth and integrity as best you can in any case. And, you know, if you are genuinely a critical thinker, if you're interested in learning, you will change your mind when presented with new information. And that's what happened to me. You know, I was very invested in a very particular ideology for a long time.

And at a certain point, I started listening to alternate points of view and reading different perspectives and, you know, really, I feel really blessed to have the podcast that I do the same drugs because I was able to interview so many people who saw things differently than I did and had different experiences than I did. And I learned a lot from these people and, you know, I've changed my mind about a lot of things as a result. And it's very amusing to me because now people come at me and they're like, oh, you're just this like right wing. ideologue, you know, you're just knee-jurking, you're obsessed with, you know, Trump and they call me MAGA and all of these things. And I'm like, you guys, for 40 years of my life, I was this like

Uber leftist, Uber, like I was more feminist than the feminist and I was more left than the leftists. You know, the NDP wasn't leftist enough for me because they, they dropped the word socialism from their platform. That's what I was, you know, that's when I think I was quite unthinking, you know, and I think that the gift that I was given from that experience is that I really understand the way the left thinks. And I know what it's like to be an ideologue, and I know how it shapes your worldview and limits your ability to understand the truth and to understand people and to, you know, yeah, to really understand those around you. Because I thought that people who didn't think like me, i.e. right-wing people were

conservatives or whatever you want to call them, I just thought they were either, you know, stupid, they just needed to be re-educated, or they were greedy, or they weren't empathetic. Like, they didn't care about other people. They were selfish. That's what I thought. And so I know that's what the left thinks about these people and now, I guess, people like me because people now label me in bright wing and conservative, despite the fact that I don't know that those labels particularly fit. I don't really, I'm not super attached to any label, and I don't know that any label fits me perfectly, but people like to categorize and label people so that they can dismiss them more easily or decide if they're an ally, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, I just. I started to poke holes in my own arguments and my own politics. What brought that on?

Like, did you just become interested in challenging yourself? Did you get exposed to somebody who you didn't have an answer for? I'm just trying to figure out how do we replicate that? How do we help people challenge their own perspectives over time? How do we support them in challenging their own assumptions? You know, I think there was a big turning point for me. when Hillary Clinton lost the election in the U.S. and Trump won because I was totally confused about how that could happen. I didn't know anything. I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know

anything. You know, I bought all of the propaganda that was being fed to me around how horrible Donald Trump was. And I thought Hillary Clinton deserved to win and that anybody that didn't support her hated women. You know, that's what I bought into that. narrative. And when she lost, I was devastated. You know, I couldn't believe it. I cried. And I don't, I've, I'd never voted in an American election at that point. I don't, I was just so invested in this idea that it was like, you know, men, men versus women and good versus evil and the evil man had won. And I couldn't believe it. And I didn't understand it. But what I did do was that I, thought to understand.

I was like, okay, I don't understand anything. Like, I had no idea that it was even possible for Donald Trump to win this election. Because, you know, mainstream media told us that it was impossible. They told us essentially that she was a shoe in. And so, yeah, I started talking to and listening to and reading all sorts of different kinds of people. And it was around that time when the so-called, at the time, intellectual dark web, was coming up. So I did start, yeah, yeah, like now I think we kind of refer to it more as heterodox, I suppose. But I did start, you know, listening to Jordan Peterson, for example.

And I started to see the way that, you know, the feminists around me that I worked with and engaged with and, you know, shared politics with and allied with, you know, they were some. unthinking and so unwilling to consider different points of view and so invested in council culture and you know around that this was also around the time when me too was all the rage and I remember being in Vancouver and there were men who were getting canceled and their lives are getting destroyed and you know maybe some of those men did deserve it maybe some of those men were awful men who were rapists or who were dangerous in some way, but some of them weren't. And it didn't matter, you know, a woman would say something and everybody had to believe her

no matter what. And there was nothing that the accused could do to defend himself. And we couldn't talk about it. I remember there was a man who was the head of the creative writing department at UBC, Stephen Galloway. And he was accused essentially of abuse, but nobody would explain what happened. Nobody explained what the abuse was. The media covered this story, you know, they covered the accusations, but would not report on the incident or incidences. And when I would ask other feminists online, you know, in our little Facebook groups or

whatever, when they were, you know, tarring Stephen Galloway as this horrific, abusive, dangerous, misogynist. And I would ask, I would be like, well, what did he do? Nobody would tell me. But I was expected to participate in this mass cancellation campaign against him. I was expected to believe the accuser, who also no one knew, you know, this was an anonymous accuser that we were supposed to just blanket believe. And Steve Galloway's life was destroyed. You know, he lost his job. He lost his career.

He was a very well-known, successful writer in Canada, which is not an easy feat, but he was. And, you know, he suffered essentially a mental breakdown. down. And these women were just so committed to a narrative that they didn't know anything about this case. They didn't know, they knew nothing about what happened. They didn't know anything about the accused or the accuser. And I was getting, you know, canceled by these women just for asking, what happened? Does anybody know? Well, we know, but we can't say. Or, you know, some people know. We know he's bad. How do you know? What, you know, and he

didn't do anything. It was a bogus accusation. And, yeah, I, you know, like I talked to some people, journalists who were, who were covering this accurately, you know, my friend John Kay, who I've known for a long time, he edited me at the, yeah, yeah, at the Walrus and the National Post a long time. We've been in touch for a long time. And he was one of the old. only ones speaking out against what was happening, Stephen Gallowin. And, you know, I just was like, this is, this is BS. These people don't want to think, they don't want to know, they don't want to understand, they just want their mantras and their ideologies, their anti-free speech, you know, while we were, these were the radical feminists and the leftist feminists who were

opposed to gender identity ideology. So we're all getting canceled. for saying that men aren't women and you can't change sex. We're all being silenced. We're all being no platform. Women are losing their jobs. And they still can't bring themselves to defend free speech. You know, I was never a huge defender of free speech prior to like 2015 or something because I as a typical progressive Canadian just didn't really.

I was never necessarily against free speech. I just didn't think about it. It just didn't seem important to me. I think I probably just assumed I would always have it. And then I didn't. And then I saw, you know, these cancellation campaigns happening to so many other people. I was subjected to many, many, many cancellation campaigns. And so I became a defender of free speech and all of a sudden all these women were turning against me because I was talking to people who I wasn't supposed to talk to, people who were, you know, sexists or racists or Islamophobic or whatever. And I was like, how can you be on be a target of a cancellation campaign be canceled because you're supposedly transphobic because you say this this thing that's true but not politically correct and then still advocate that others be canceled for the same reasons because they don't share your politics and your idea

I just saw I saw so much hypocrisy I was so frustrated I also just found the whole thing really intellectually lazy and I'm a writer And I write because this is how I process and understand the world. This is how I figure out what I believe through that process. And I was getting kind of bored of myself. I was just like I felt like I was just repeating and saying what I was supposed to be saying. You know, I have a feminist analysis. So naturally, my view on this is this expected feminist analysis.

And I was like, I don't want to, I don't feel like. I'm thinking this through fully, and I want to. I genuinely want to understand, and I want to challenge myself to know if my ideas and my arguments and my analysis is sound. Can I ask you a question? In your experience on that? I'm just thinking of, like, I've been a fan of Jordan Peterson since the beginning, and I feel like he's gone in a direction in the very recent past with his partnership with the daily wire. Like, I just, I feel like he's, when I first started listening to him, the part that I really appreciated was that he'd talk about the importance of the left and he'd talk about the importance

of the right and how they both have an integral role to play. And I learned a lot from that and I do my best to live with that perspective that right now in Canadian culture, it looks like the conservatives are likely going to win the next election. They're going to have power for four to eight years. and then we may be able to review potentially whether or not they're the right fit during that time period that we have to adjust with the information on the ground. Right now, I feel like he's been at war with so many people for so long. He's been attacked for so long that it feels like at the moment, not forever, but at the moment, he feels like he's picked aside. He's interviewing Pierre Pauliev. He's interviewing Maxine Bernier. He's not interviewing Chegg Meetsing.

And now he may have reached out. They may not be interested in that interview. I totally understand that, but it just doesn't, it feels like he's been forced onto a team for the, for the time being, and that he's aligned himself with people that he, that have also been put in a similar boat. And I, I'm just trying to think through, how do you manage that? Because that's, I can't imagine what that is as an experience to have people trying to stop you from speaking, having your Twitter account banned, like you're, that must feel like you're at war, like everybody's trying to stop me from speaking. This is all going on. And so I'm just trying to figure out, how do you digest that during these periods? Because it's so easy to go, it's those people over there now that are the problem. And now you're just, you could end up on the other side.

But it sounds like you use writing to kind of process where you're actually at and check the temperature in the room and try not to kind of become loyal to one new position over the other and be dogmatically on a new side. How do you kind of process that? because there are people coming after you and trying to take your livelihood, make sure that you don't have a financial income. Like, that is something to take personally. That isn't something to say, oh, it's just the internet. Like, that's a real experience that you would have to carry. Yeah.

And it was exhausting and it was stressful and it was really hard for many, many years. At this point, you know, I think I've developed such a thick skin. in that there's not much that bothers me at this point. I feel like I've been canceled so many times and I'm like, what are you going to do to me now? And, you know, the tides have turned. So it's easier to speak about a lot of these things. Thank God, it's still, you know,

there's still lots of censorship to go around. And, you know, in Canada, I still struggled to speak about gender identity ideology. You know, I was back in Canada and BC over the summer and early fall last year, and we were trying to organize events. We still lost every single venue we booked. We still get protested. We still get threats.

Things are changing a lot in the U.S., obviously because of Trump's win in large part. Things are changing in other countries around the world. At this point, Canada, there's a bit of pushback, but they're still really clinging to gender identity ideology and a lot of the woke stuff in particular. You know, I guess I just don't see, I don't see left and right in the same way that I used to.

I think I really have rejected the left. I don't see much value in leftist politics or ideology anymore. And it's because it just seems phoning to me. You know, what leftists say, we can talk about Canada in particular, I suppose, you know, what leftists or progressives in Canada say is almost always rooted in BS. Like, it's not rooted in reality.

It's not rooted in facts. It's regurgitated narratives that have been fed to them by their algorithm or by the media or by their friends. And again, you know, like climate change hysteria, I think for, I mean, an easy one is that, you know, trans women are a marginalized population, they're always under threat, you know, they're in danger at all time, they're, you know, there's some kind of oppressed group of people that are called trans people, which I don't buy into at all, because I would like to know what a trans person is beyond somebody just announcing

that they're transgender, you know, there's no. such thing as a transgender person as far as I'm concerned. You're either a man or a woman and you can have all sorts of feelings about gender and gender roles. You can have cosmetic surgeries if you want to. You can dress however you like, but you can't change your sex. If you're male, you're always male, you're female, you're always female. There's no such thing as somebody who's in between or has managed to cross over biologically. Just like to follow up on that, just to make sure I understand. Sex has remained, from my understanding, the same,

but it's the gender piece that people have claimed has been more fluid. And again, to your point, this is regurgitated information that I've heard and my cursory understanding. But the gender has been more flexible throughout human history. That sex, to your point, is much clearer and easier to identify. But that gender piece is something different than sex. And I think that's where the vulnerability was on this topic. That's where the complexity stands is because we do have two different terms.

I'm not exactly sure why or how long that's existed for. But for some reason, we have two terms. And at one point in time, we realize that there are people who like, who are male, who like to dress as females or females who like to dress as males, tall and boys like we we understand that there's there's flexibility there and then that from my perspective has had a microscope put on it for the past few years and we've really been trying to figure out why do we have this term gender and why is it separate from sex and how do we think about these issues and that's become a public a very public conversation yeah so gender has been melded

with sex in a really confusing way thanks in large part to this gender identity ideology debate. So to me, I sort of wish that the term gender didn't exist at all, because I think it just confuses things. And you're right, it is sort of a new term. In the English language, in any case, in other languages, the words gender and sex are kind of the same, or there's only one word and it sort of means gender, but it also means sex. So in the English language and in our modern context, gender is just about gender roles and stereotypes, so masculinity and femininity. So, for example, the idea that girls like pink and boys like blue and boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls. And as a woman, I like dresses and makeup and high heels and being

passive and nurturing and those kinds of ideas. And, you know, a lot of those things are actually rooted in evolution, but they're just not hard and fast rules. And it just doesn't really matter all that much. Like whether or not I want to wear a dress or whether or not I like the color pink has no bearing on my biological sets. I'm female regardless of my personality or clothing preferences or my haircut or whatever. You know, when I was a kid, I was a tomboy. I probably like still am kind of a tomboy. Like, I don't really think of myself as a very feminine person in terms of my personality. So, yeah, it's just sort of, it's sort of a useless and confusing concept, especially because we've now conflated it with sex. And if you talk to trans activists,

which is always a very confusing conversation, you know, the whole ideology is really incoherent, but they'll say, no, no, no, you're confusing sex with gender. Gender is fluid. And I'm like, no, you're confusing sex with gender because you're the one saying that a trans woman is actually a literal woman. You were the one saying that a man who identifies as a woman is literally female when he's not. If you want to say, this man loves wearing women's clothing, then fine, this woman, this man loves wearing women's clothing. This man doesn't like masculine stereotypes. That's fine. And that's actually something that, you know, feminism fought for during the second wave, you know, in the 70s and 80s, was to say,

you know, boys don't have to be unemotional. You know, it's okay for boys to cry. It's okay for girls to do masculine things. It's okay for... Can I quickly just ask, can you, would you mind clarifying your position? Like, where do you stand on feminism? Like, what is your align? I've heard about the first, second, third wave feminism. Which one resonates with you? I mean, I sort of don't identify with feminism anymore. I just say that I advocate for women's rights, you know, women's rights are important and will always be important. I've always been critical of third wave feminism, even when I was, you know, more invested in feminist ideology, I suppose. But, you know, when I first started writing about feminism publicly in my blog,

on my website, in my journalism, and so on and so forth, I really identified more strongly with second wave feminism, which, and the aspect of second wave feminism that challenged pornography and, you know, domestic abuse, violence against women in general, prostitution. You know, I was invested in like material things that were happening to women. I wasn't interested in talking about like slut shaming and mansplaining and this idea that, you know, a woman is empowered by any choice she makes at all. So if she chooses to do pornography, then you go, girl. That's a empowered choice that she made.

I always thought that third wave feminism was pretty silly and actually, pretty harmful to women in a lot of ways. But yeah, I mean, I would say that I'm invested in women's rights. And there's still lots of places around the world where women and girls don't have rights, you know, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia. And it's, yeah, it's just, it's interesting how twisted things have become when modern feminists are, you know, refusing to criticize Islam, for example, and are saying things like sex work is work and that, you know, prostitution is just a job like any other when, you know, prostitution and sex trafficking is such a massively harmful, disgusting industry that that hurts women and girls all around the world.

You know, it's just, I think that feminism has really become a joke in a lot of ways in the Western world. So I don't want to align with it. And of course, you know, so many modern third wave feminists align themselves with this gender identity nonsense. And it's like, how can you call yourself a feminist? How can you claim to be standing for women's rights when you're defending men in women's sports and violent predators being transferred to women's prisons and allowing grown men to walk into girls' change rooms with their genitals? out. You know, it's just, it's so appalling and backwards. So, you know, I don't, I don't want to align myself with that kind of ideology or movement. It's embarrassing. Right. The piece that I'd like to

try and make sure that I touch on, in the start you had talked about, like, how conservatives typically are seen as less compassionate. And that was your understanding growing up. The only piece that I just, I want to hone in on a little bit more is when you talked about, like, trans, you know, and how they're marginalized and how we have these groups of people and like that it isn't the case that there isn't as much evidence the only piece that makes me think of is that piece that you talked about that that doesn't sound compassionate when you say it and I'm not saying that you're not compassionate it's just when we when we say things like that to me that reminds me of that that sounding of a lack of compassion for the the maybe very so say there's a hundred trans people and you and I don't we we agree that a large percentage of them are bad actors in this process. But a very small few, maybe good actors struggling young people who are struggling with their identity, they still deserve that compassion. And I'm just wondering if you can help me square that circle.

Yeah, I mean, I feel awful for young women who are growing up during this time and to believe that because they, you know, don't like femininity or they're feeling uncomfortable. with the changes they're experiencing during puberty or, you know, maybe they're young lesbians. And they are told, oh, like, maybe you're a boy. Maybe you're actually a man. You know, these surgeries and these hormones, these puberty blockers will make you feel better. They'll make you feel more like yourself as opposed to being told, you know, you're a teenager and you're experiencing normal teenage things. And we all struggled with going through puberty

and are changing bodies and, you know, figuring out where and how we fit in this world. And, you know, in a lot of the young women who are being trans or identifying as trans, if you listen to their stories, so many of them have histories of, you know, molestation,

and sexual assault and things like that. And, you know, it makes a lot of sense that if you had that kind of experience, you would want to shed your female body in a way, you know, shed what you interpret as being the reason that you were molested or raped or whatever it was. You know, your body that's becoming sexualized by adult men as you're going through puberty um but yeah you know i i feel awful for those girls and and those girls lives are being destroyed their lives and bodies are being destroyed by this ideology and this this practice um so it's not that i think that people identifying as transgender are necessarily bad or don't deserve

compassion um but i'm not interested in having compassion for men who are you know know, walking into women's spaces and making them unsafe. I don't think that, you know, being nice is not an important value to me. I think that it's more important to have integrity and to tell the truth and to be ethical and to do what's right. So a lot of things that I say do come off as mean, and some of them are mean, but we can't always be nice about everything if it means. that we have to lie or stand by and watch something dangerous happen. And that's what I saw happening with gender identity ideology right away. You know, as soon as it, when it was just a debate,

when we were just arguing about it in our feminist blogs, then that's one thing. But once we start talking about legislation, things become really serious. Once we're legislating around this idea that, again, is incoherent and that essentially nullifies women's rights, then this is a big deal. And that's when I really, really, really doubled down on speaking out and was really, really quite disappointed to see how many, how few people were willing to stand with me in Canada,

including feminists and certainly including leftists. You know, I had a lot of people who I knew agreed with me, but would say, you know, but I can't, I can't possibly speak out. You know, it's too dangerous right now. I'm like, well, you're just, you're waiting. until it's too late. And why is your life so much more important than my life? You know, I'm losing and risking everything. You know, I don't have financial stability. I don't have safety. I don't have anything here. But, you know, somebody has to say something before it's too

late. And it, of course, did become too late. I wasn't able to stop this from happening. And hopefully now that more people are speaking out, we can turn things around. But I just can't believe we let things get this far with this craziness. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the compassion piece, like, I feel compassion for the individuals. But as a whole, this practice and this ideology and this legislation is across the board bad and wrong and unethical and disgusting and dangerous. And I think that the people advocating for men to be allowed into women's spaces and women's sports, I think they're doing something bad. I think that the people advocating for minors to be put on puberty blockers and hormones and have these surgeries that render

them sterile and destroy their bodies for life are doing something really bad. So, I don't really see a way to be nice about that because I think it's it's just such a big, bad, dangerous thing. That did clarify that for me. I appreciate that. The other piece that I wanted to ask about is how does the transgender movement impact women's rights from your perspective? Well, I mean, there, when I, when I spoke at the Senate, In this is, it was either at the end of 2016 or early 2017. When I testified against Bill C-16, I talked about how this ideology was really actually quite sexist. So, you know, saying that being a woman isn't just about a biological, a material reality of being female, but that it's inherently attached to femininity.

I saw it as a really regressive idea. I was like, this is what, you know, this is why women, in part, were prevented from voting. It's like, you don't need to vote. You shouldn't be participating in public life. You're too delicate for politics. Women should be in the home and having children and taking care of their families and sort of like they should be seen and not heard kind of thing. I was like, you know, saying that these stereotypes are what makes me, defines my womanhood is sexist and regressive. So there's that piece. But, you know, women fought

really, really, really hard for the right to compete on fair ground in sport. And they won that fight in the U.S. in Title IX, for example. And all of a sudden, these men or these males are being allowed to compete and they're winning all these competitions and these girls who've worked so hard their whole lives to compete, to get scholarships, to get opportunities, are just being pushed aside and erased for these guys who are essentially cheating. Can I ask how widespread is this from your, that's what I, I've heard this. And then the question that I get put back to me is, how widespread is this? Is this, we hear about the outlier cases where this comes up, but what would your response

be to somebody who says, how widespread is this? Is this a real, real growing issue? I mean, I guess I don't think it's relevant how widespread it is because it's happening. And if it happens one time, that's too many times. I mean, I feel like we're hearing about it pretty regularly in Canada and in the U.S. where men are, you know, competing and winning track races or, you know, winning in swimming competitions. Or, you know, we see, you know, we've seen men competing on like women's rugby teams in volleyball, you know, and there's been women and young women, you know, girls who've experienced really serious injuries as a result of this, you know, and women like Riley Gaines have lost competitions to men, Leah Thomas, right?

You know, it's not, it's definitely happening, and it's widespread enough to matter. But if it was just one man, it would be too many men. You know, women's sports are for women, end of story. Like, there's no exception there. You're male. You compete as a male. If you're not good enough, too bad. sorry. This isn't about your feelings. This is about sports and athletes and competition and

fair rules. And it's just wild to me that we even need to explain this and talk about it. And it does seem to me that it's happening everywhere. Like I was just watching a video on Instagram of a girl who was in a jujitsu competition fighting this massive man who was identifying as a woman. And I was like, this is just sick. You know, there was a, you know, in boxing, MMA, you know, it's, it's dangerous too, right? Like women can be really, really seriously hurt. It's a huge safety thing, especially like, of course, Joe Rogan came forward when it started happening in MMA and was like, okay, this is not, this is not the same thing. These are two people in very different physical conditions. On that note, we talk about the challenges and you went through

many of them, people trying to silence your voice and your perspective on these issues. Then a person like Joe Rogan comes forward and reaches out and extends an olive branch. Less about the, maybe the experience, like I'm just wondering what does that mean when you've been silenced and push to the side so many times to have somebody reach out and go, hey, I'd love to speak with you. Like, what was that experience? Like, and what did that mean to you during that period? Yeah, I mean, that was incredible.

Joe Rogan is an incredible person. He's like a highly ethical, really genuinely good man, despite, you know, what the mainstream media tries to say about him. He's a genuinely wonderful person. And he cares about doing the right thing. and he cares about the truth. And when I was banned from Twitter, we tried to sue. We lost the case.

And he had talked about it on the podcast a number of times. And actually, the first time that I was on Rogan's podcast, I had reached out and I was like, thank you so much for covering my case. I really appreciate that you keep talking about this because he just kept talking about how crazy it was. I was banned from Twitter for saying that men aren't women. And I was like, I'd love to talk about my case. So then he invited me on. And we became friends after that. So the next time I went on, I, you know, I think I just kind of happened to be going to Austin. He was like, hey, come back on the podcast. But, you know, he did so much for me. He supported me. He helped me out when he didn't have to. He had nothing to gain from me. I have nothing to offer in this world. I know, you know, I'm not.

an important person. I have no power. Um, and yeah, you know, he, he sticks. Can I just briefly say that I think it's tragic that you say that, um, that you don't have anything to offer after. I don't mean I don't have anything to offer in terms of, you know, obviously my voice and my writing, but it's like, you know, he doesn't gain anything from supporting and platforming me. If anything, the first time he had me on, he had something to lose because, you know, he would be a act is transphobic for having somebody like me on who calls men he and, you know, points out that, you know, a lot of these men who are identifying as women are autogynophiles and are men with fetishes and are perverts. Like, sorry, but, you know, you're going into a

girl's change room with your genitals out, you're pervert. That used to be like a pretty accepted thing in society, pretty accepted understanding. So, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't mean that in like a self-deprecating way. I just mean that, yeah, I mean, he, he supported me and helped me out in a lot of ways when he didn't have to because, you know, in part because we were friends and, and in part because, you know, it was maybe it was the right thing to do. Like you said, he was one of the ones to speak out against this early on when Fallon Fox was fighting a woman in the MMA. And he was like, this is dangerous. right i'm wondering what advice you have it does feel like we're heading into a new time

freedom of speech to me is a responsibility it's a right but it's also you have responsibilities with the rights that you have what advice do you have for others looking to share their voice and grow into it i mean i think you you have to try to be as truthful as you possibly can and that takes vulnerability, and it's scary. I also, you know, I think anything goes. I think you should be able to say anything you want to say, even if it's offensive, even if it's mean, even if it's unpleasant. I have never enjoyed self-censoring.

I just want to be myself. And I think that that's something that a lot of people in this world, especially young people, are lacking. You know, they're scared to speak. They're scared to say what they really think. And I think that's kind of tragic. You know, I know a lot of people who, you know, they're scared of their own friends. You know, they're scared of what will happen if they challenge the accepted ideologies or politics of their friend groups. this is a really common thing in Vancouver.

Vancouver is a very progressive place. And when I started speaking out against transgenderism, I lost a lot of friends. I was ostracized by a lot of people. But I also had a lot of friends who would tell me privately that they agreed with me and they supported me, but they couldn't possibly say so, you know, not even to their wives.

And I just can't imagine living like that. that. And I think I want people to know how good it feels to speak out and to tell the truth, even when you lose friends. Maybe even if you lose your job, you know, if you get attacked online, it's okay. It's hard and it can be stressful. But at the end of the day, you come out stronger and you come out more confident and you come out liking yourself more. You know, to live with integrity and authenticity feels so good. You know, you want to talk about empowerment. it feels really empowering and it makes you brave you know people are not born brave i don't think i don't think you're born fearless or even courageous i think that you gain those qualities

by doing you know i think i became brave by doing brave things and i became much less fearless by doing things that were really, really scary. You know, speaking out about this stuff wasn't easy for me. It was scary. Putting yourself out there is scary. Even just in your writing, never mind going out into public and into the public and speaking in public and saying controversial things. It's scary.

And it's like you do it anyways. And then you realize you can. And that's what makes you break. And I think that I want to encourage people to do that and to understand that and not to think, oh, well, you know, maybe Megan can, but I can't. That's just not me. It's like, well, it could be you if you do it. And we have to, you know. Canada has let way too much slide. And I think we're so close to a really, really bad, scary situation where people don't have rights and freedoms.

We've already experienced a loss of rights and freedoms. You know, we saw what happened over COVID and what the government did to the convoy and supporters of the convoy. And we know how far things can get if we don't stand up and speak out. And it's now or never. There's no safe time. You know, if people are waiting around for a convenient time, when it becomes safe to say something,

that's when it's too late. You do it now and it is a risk. That's that's part of it. How can people follow along with your work? I would love it if people would go to my substack, which is at www. Megan Murphy.com or they can just search for Megan Murphy on substack and become a paid subscriber. It's just like $5 a month. And that's, you know, really how I make a living is just through subscribers. I'm not sponsored by anyone. I'm not doing ads and not, you know, I've stayed independent all this time on purpose because it's allowed me to do what I've done all these years. I don't think I would have been able to speak out as much as I have been able to

and to cover the issues that I've been able to cover if I didn't have my own personal platform. You know, there was nobody limiting me, limiting me. Like, I didn't have, thank God, a threat of being fired. I had a threat of income loss. And, you know, as an independent, it's a huge struggle to make a living as an independent podcaster and writer. So, yeah, I hope that people will come to my substack and subscribe. I hope that people will find my YouTube channel and subscribe there. That's really helpful.

It's really easy and helpful actually to just find the same drugs podcast. podcast on Spotify and click the follow button. That doesn't cost anything. But yeah, yeah, that would be wonderful. And I'm, of course, back on Twitter now X, and I'm overly prolific there. People want to know my opinion about every single thing in the entire world. That's a great to follow me. That's at Megan E. Murphy. Amazing. Thank you for being willing to share your time today in your perspectives. It takes a lot, as you described, to take a stand or take a position on something when it's not popular. And I learn a lot about the courage and the determination and the resilience of people through those moments and how they're willing to stand up

against a mob in those moments. So thank you for being willing to share your time and your story. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out. I enjoyed the conversation. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you.