Pirate Wires - We Need To Talk About Pride Month | PIRATE WIRES EP#3

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

EPISODE THREE, THE PRIDE ISSUE: "We're coming for your children," nudity at Pride events, the politicization of the Pride flag, the forever-changing history of Stonewall, the purpose of drag, how Pride has changed over the years, and more. Featuring Mike Solana and River Page Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: A Roundup Of All Pride Month News: https://www.piratewires.com/p/bad-week-for-esg Pirate Wires Twitter: @piratewires Mike Twitter: @micsolana River Twitter: @river_is_nice TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro To Pride Month 3:00 - Summary Of All Major Events During Pride Month 5:25 - River & Mike's Previous Experiences At Pride 11:45 - "We're Coming For Your Children" Insanity 15:05 - Jake Shields' Ridiculous Tweet About Gay Men - Questionable Sources 20:20 - Naked Bike Riders In Front Of Children - What Are Parents Doing? 23:00 - Drag Culture 32:30 - Old Man Twerking In Front Of Children 38:45 - Open Letter From GLAAD To Stop Hate - Includes Biggest Celebrities 43:30 - Stonewall - Misunderstandings and History Is Being Changed 52:45 - What Happened To The Culture And Where Do We Go From Here?

All right, we're back. Man. Okay. So we thought it would be pretty fun. I'm in at the end of some crazy travel in between another. We want to get like one final podcast out. It's the end of June approaching July, my birthday and also the birthday of our great nation. We got to do a pride. We got to sneak in one pride episode. I think nobody probably has done, nobody is capable, I think, of doing the pride episode that we're going to do. I want to talk about anti-pride. This is a concept that we sat down and talked about with Brandon at like the very top of the month, it seemed like, I mean, and you could just river, just jump in here if you disagree or agree or whatever, but it seems like it's, this felt like the first pride in my life that was definitely marked more by strong aversion to the concept than it was by a strange sort of rainbow splattered spectacle is it kind of like roughly where you're yeah well it seemed like weirdly tame compared to like past years at least like on social media anyway like we didn't even have really that much of like kink at pride discourse which is like something i feel like if on like gay Twitter every year for like the past five years, it's just like this, like picture of this like Puerto Rican twink with like a bandana tied around

his dick and everybody's like, is this okay? Should we be able to do this? And there was none of that. I didn't see him once. And yeah, I mean, I, I think that it's be, it's a, it's a little more tame this year. There's still like some wacky shit that happened like there is every year. But I think it's definitely I don't know. I think people are kind of like uncomfortable with the state of how the politics of all of this has become. So that probably has something to do with it.

We'll get into that. I'm trying to throw a little color on here. I don't know if rainbow is really the color for me. Yeah. Speaking of bandanas, it's not... So I don't think that... I don't think it was tamer. So let's just go, Brandon kind of helpfully put together

a whole list of all the crazy links that we've been sharing. Not all, I think this is honestly like a pretty, this is a pretty edited list. This is I think maybe a third of the crazier stories we've been dropping in, they've been happening all month. And we're gonna kind of, I have a handful, really two or three big ones that I want to talk about today.

But just to give you a sense of, just to give everyone a sense of like the insanity of this particular sort of pride season. What have we got over here? Right at the top, we'll start at the end, which is most recently, I think the most recent one. Maybe the open letter is the most recent one. at the end, which is most recently, I think the most recent one, maybe the open letter is the most recent one, but NBC claims the we're coming for your children chant heard at a New York City pride event last week has been used for years at pride events, according to longtime March attendees and gay rights activists. This is the chant. I've never heard this. No one's ever heard this. Okay, so Dick's dangling at Seattle pride. So naked guys everywhere in front of a twerking man in front of children. Liberals betrayed after Muslim majority city council bans pride flags. That was a funny one we wrote about. And I think I'm not sure if that was clown world or the nation sounds that feels like a clown world.

binary character, a sexless water creature. Horror strikes Canada after rowdy team boys have fun at pride protests. Quote, there was a group of guys and they were more like harassing us than supporting us. They were more like harassing us than supporting us. Homophobic chant at Mexican soccer games. This is like a chant the fans have been doing for a while. Space Force decries so called anti-LGBT laws, says they are a threat to military readiness. Still not entirely sure what the Space Force is even up to. There's Trans-Titty Gate, of course. Target stores see more bomb threats over Pride merchandise. That one was a really funny one in which the right wing was blamed for, I guess, threatening Target with bomb scares or with bomb threats.

Turns out they were activists. I think it's like that was in most of the pieces, but the headline was clearly designed to make it seem like there was a sort of white nationalist attack on on Target. Cracker Barrel canceled over a gay rocking chair. over a gay rocking chair. Elliot Page, I don't want to say she faked any transphobic comments, but it's really giving Smollett. We've got Armenian parents in Antifa spar over Pride Day at Glendale. We have the human rights campaign declaring a state of emergency for the LGBTQ.

And I think as with every year, and this is where we want to end, where we're going to end today, there's just throughout all of this been a kind of broad misrepresentation of what happened at Stonewall, which I think is interesting. We'll kind of like break that down at the end. I think that's actually, that's how you and I first connected was maybe over a piece of years on that topic. Yeah. So that's that. I mean, that is like. Yeah. It was pretty tame and like 17 things that like i wrote about this month like listen like you don't understand like i used

to i mean i used to live in pensacola which is like where like pride gets like kicked off at least in the south because we have pride on Memorial day weekend. So I would just start every pride by like seeing people like drop it, like doing Molly, like on the beach and like, just like people spilling poppers everywhere. And like, basically like fucking like I can full view of like everything.

It's like, so I guess maybe that's why I'm like, it was pretty tame this year. Like I can remember everything that I did and everything that happened. so but yeah i mean there's like nationwide there's a lot of like this was a very like dramatic pride um very like a lot less fun seeming i think well i think probably what happened was more people were involved in Pride this year than ever before, both haters and lovers. I mean, we've expanded the LGBTQ plus whatever to include basically everybody. And there are, it turns out, way more people who want attention than there are actual gay people, like more than we ever thought imaginable.

So it's like, you know, 20% of the straight population now considers themselves queer or whatever, and they're going to come out with their blue hair and sort of take the spotlight. I guess there's a broad question of like, what is the point of pride? I think this is something that probably a lot of gay people ask themselves. In the same way, it's like, it's a very similar conversation, though, that I think the civil rights struggles are entirely different, but it's, it's a similar conversation as people have about like women's history month and black history month. Like, do we need a month for this? It feels separatist in what way I separatist in some way and like sort of counterproductive,

um, to the original goals of pride, I think, which was, I thought was like, you know, acceptance generally. But the difference between Pride, I think, and the rest is that Pride was always a party. And now, I mean, this is kind of happening, like just for a little context before we get into sort of the we're going to come get your children chant that happened at the last pride. Was that a New York city pride or something? I mean, culture is just so different now, right? It's like, we're, we're at the end. We've been writing about this for a while, this sort of overall vibe shift in the cultural vibe shift.

This is no longer the sort of woke sort of cultural, the age of woke cultural authoritarianism, it feels like we're well past that at this point. And there's the Overton window is significantly broad that you can say all sorts of things. I think people are really exhausted by the like woke tone policing and things like this, the woke sort of language policing, thought policing. People are freaking out over school stuff. So there's like a sort of, there's an activist right now that has never existed. And it was just maybe the perfect storm for a backlash against the excesses of what I was thinking most recently, there was some series of weird,

kind of like you mentioned there was like not much fetish stuff. I saw a bit and I saw some people on Twitter kind of going after it. And it's like, I hate to be that guy, but most of what happens at pride is like really benign. It's just like people hanging out on a street drinking. And I mean, that's like most of what I see. And then all of us, uh, I didn't go out. I haven't gone out actually in the last few years, other than Miami, there's not really much going on down here. Um, but when I go out and you haven't gone out actually in the last few years. I live in Miami. There's not really much going on down here. But when I go out and you see weird shit, like we're kind of making fun of it too. We're like, oh my God, is that like a guy in a dog mask? What is that?

But that's not what, that's not really what Pride, Pride's just like a big party. Yeah. I mean, like the craziest shit that I always saw at Pride was on usually like in gay bars like around other like there's no kids in there despite what you may have heard i've never seen a fucking kid in a gay bar like ever in my entire life um and it's yeah it's just like gay guys like and sometimes lesbians hang out and like yeah there's like crazy shit that happens people are drunk they're doing drugs um you know not the most like respectable like vision of gay people but we're amongst each other so it's like who gives a fuck i mean the original like like thing uh or by purpose of pride at least

if you go back to like stonewall wasn't wasn't even actually, it wasn't even acceptance. It was just like, leave us alone so we can like party and get drunk in this mafia control, shitty dive bar, which I think is, you know, the American dream, the American dream to be left alone, to get fucked up in the shitty bar where you can smoke inside.

Preferably. So I mean, like if we can just like get back to that, because like, frankly, like, I don't want like, I don't want to have a conversation about non binary people when I'm trying to get fucked up in a shitty dive bar. And I also don't want like Matt Walsh lurking around. What's a woman? I'm like, I'm trying to get fucked up. Can you leave me alone? Yeah. What's a woman? I'm like, I'm trying to get fucked up. Can you leave me alone? So yes, on board completely. I think probably most people are. The problem is this like fraction, maybe let's just call it a 1% issue. Let's, the problem is like this 1% of like

truly to Matt Walsh's credit, or maybe just like in slight marginal, the tiniest bit of defense of Matt Walsh. Um, there are a lot of crazy people here saying really crazy things and who even want really crazy things. And you kind of can't discount the insanity that we've seen from trans activists. I think all the stuff happening with kids and school, uh, let's I'll, I'll focus down a little bit. I think specifically the,ization, let's call it, of what seems like to me the medicalization of homosexuality via the trans stuff. So the idea that we're going to be chemically castrating young kids who are presenting in a weird sort of gender non-conforming way. That is worth being really upset about and really angry about. And so I understand

where all of the sort of frustration is coming from. And then you pair it with just, again, the craziest people alive, doing really crazy things. For example, New York city pride, you have a group of people chanting, uh, you were coming for your children. and it's like why why would you do that what what is what possible reason could you have to chant something like that right now in public everyone's got their cameras out like what do you think is going to happen if this is an activist activist event, your purpose, let's say, is to get people on board. This is the opposite. I almost think it's a sign-up.

I almost want to believe those were Matt Walsh's friends out there. But I know they weren't because I know enough crazy people like this to know who they were and what they were doing. And maybe in their fucked up, crazy imagination, they really thought they were like that article from NBC said they were just taking back the language. You know, they were taking the insults that applied to them and like working. It's like, no, it just I don't know, like that, that kind of stuff. I'm like, OK, shut it down. Now is not the time for irony about fucking kids. You know what I mean?

Yeah, man. It was bad. It's like, what do you think is going to happen? That's going to be front page news everywhere. That is like what people, that's the story that people want to tell. It's like Gilbert Gottfried making a 9-11 joke like three days after as the smoke is still clearing or whatever yes you can't do that it's just now it's not the time not here not now uh it plays directly into the hands of people like you said the Matt Walsh the sort of daily wire contingent of the

right wing which is extremely I would say I don't like to use the word homophobic because I don't think any of these people are actually scared of gay people I think it's I think it's likery. It's like they don't want to see it. They don't want it to exist. They think that things were better before all this stuff. I think genuinely people believe that the reason that we're seeing the transing of the youth right now is because people stopped putting gay men in prison for going to gay bars back in the 60s. I think that's like the roughly the arc of things here. And there is, I think it's a small contingent, but I think it's a loud contingent that's driving most of these narratives. And that's the point at which they sort of draw the line. They're like, no, we got to go way back. And I think this stuff really plays into it. And so you are seeing

this resurgence of them. They have no shortage of, of, uh, of anecdotes they can pick from the craziest gay people a lot. And let's, are they gay? Like most of the people in that New York city chant were women. I think almost all of them. And so I'm like, who, and they're like weird, the ones like with the fucking weird haircuts and like, like tape over their tits and shit. I'm like, that's a gender goblin. I know what that is. That's not a gay guy in a gay bar chanting about your children. That's like an annoying woman who wants attention. Um, yeah, they were like, these are, they were like drag protesters. I'm like, that's not a drag queen. That's just an ugly woman. You know what I mean? Like there's a,

most drag queens are prettier than that. I don't, I don't know. Um, but it plays into their hand so you see this shit i saw this tweet uh you and i were talking about it yesterday the one from jake what's his face i think he's like a former jake shield maybe why aren't we talking about the fact that 50 of gay men were raped as a child it seems like that's like like the fact that that happened is like obvious his implication was like that's why they're gay and that's a big reason they're behaving the way they're behaving. And I thought immediately, well, I don't think we're talking about that because it's not fucking true. Where did you even read that?

He cites – go ahead. Well, first of all, 50% of UFC guys have also done gay porn. And that's actually a true statistic. This is why it's so familiar to him exactly yeah uh but no it's like literally i don't know where like people i found like i got to an argument with somebody about this one time they linked me to some study in the 90s where it was like it was an insane number it was like 40 or something of like gay men in this study had like gotten molested. And I was like, okay, well that, I, that seems questionable to me. I think it's, so you have

to, first of all, Jake Shields cited, he cited his argument. He cited pink news, which is a, like a gay news website that said 50% of gay men had been sexually assaulted as adults. Now what that means, this is so sexual assault. This is the, it's very much in the sort of realm of when people say, you know, one in four college girls get sexually assaulted. And I'm like, let's double click on that. What do you mean by sexual assault actually? Because that's like crazy statistic, 25% of, because obviously I think sexual assault actually? Because that's like crazy statistic, 25% of, because obviously I think sexual assault, I think rape. I'm like, I know a lot of girls. I don't know many. And we're very close. I'm going to bet most of my best friends are women. Like this topic has come up and I, my sense is that number is high. Um, 50% of gay men getting

sexually assaulted as adults is like, what does that mean? And you click in. That includes things like getting your ass grabbed in a gay bar. And then it's like, oh, well, that makes sense. Like, okay, now I understand where that's coming from. That's not the same thing as getting raped as a child. And Pink News specifically is talking about this because it's part of the broader victim narrative thing. They weren't doing that to be like, oh, gay men are abused and broken and that's why they exist as gay men. They were doing that to be like, look how bad society is to gay men. And that's stupid. And we should make fun of that

impulse and we should make fun of that stat. That's definitely not true we shouldn't then use it to sort of what i go after the entire concept of gayness itself yeah yeah i mean like i i remember when all that that stuff was coming out it was like gay guys wanted to have their like have like a me too moment or something or like activists anyway wanted to and it was like like the the term sexual assault is like very it's like were you raped or not because like that's like too coley like getting your dick or ass grabbed like in a gay bar is i'm sorry but like it is par for the course maybe you don't want to about how it shouldn't be but like it's happened to me so many times that like i don't even fucking notice i just like keep walking or whatever it's just not not the same thing. And there, you can't, a word it's the phrase sexual assault

is purpose. It's purposely ambiguous. So you can, again, broaden the umbrella. This is a classic sort of leftist activist tactic. You want to broaden the umbrella to get it as large as you can to shock people with a number and also bring people into whatever your cause is. And like, I'm sorry, but getting your, like you get your ass grabbed. That's not going to turn you gay. It's just not how it works in my experience. Yeah. And it's also, there might be someone out there who just like switch. Getting your ass grabbed at a gay bar as a gay guy is a lot different than like a woman, like getting like fondled on the street. I'm sorry.

It just is like most of the time, like, like I like, I've gotten my ass grabbed by guys that I could like kill with my bare hands. If I wanted to, you know what I mean? Like 120 pound,

like Asian twinks. I could just like strangle. It's like, because it's like one, it's not like actual sexual aggression. And two, it's like, you're both men. Like if it's actually a problem, like you could handle actual sexual aggression. And two, it's like you're both men.

Like if it's actually a problem, like you could handle, you could protect yourself. You know what I mean? And that's like often not the case with women. So it's like the stakes are like different. It's interesting. I feel like again and again, we come back to this because this stat being used in a sort of malicious anti sort of, let's say bigoted way. Um, truly the implication here is that homosexuality is the effect completely of abuse, which means if you get rid of abuse,

you get rid of homosexuality. Um, it's just not true. And it's, but that stat it's like, where does that information come from? That comes from the activist that comes from activist leftist LGBTQ plus to infinity people. That's where it comes from. And it's like again and again, it's like with the sort of weird fucked up pride chant with this with in Seattle. So Seattle pride had this crazy sort of series of stories involving nudity. You have like all these naked bikers at one point and nudity weirdly is kind of a part of like I see nudity a lot in Pride but in San Francisco it wasn't just Pride. We have Beta Breakers is a huge sort of costume event and it's a costume race and like you see you see nudity there you see nudity on the street. They're nudists who are sort of like roaming the

streets. It's very strange but legally sanctioned. So in Seattle you have this like nudist thing and then you also have what the twerking guy. They're sort of, they're slightly different stories. So let's start with the nudist one. You have these people show up. They are naked. There are children also at Pride. Children now see the nudity and now you have a story. That's like, you know, these men were being accused of quasi pedophilia by, uh, just being naked in front of these kids at pride. And now I think it is weird. Like you should not be out there naked. I don't think you should be naked in public. I think that's weird. I don't think you should be naked at a parade, especially if you know, there are going to be kids there. However, this parade is, it's like a semi, there, there's nudity there. And if the problem is that I'm thinking like,

I would never take my kids to an event like that. I don't have kids. I would never take my niece and my nephew ever in a million years to an event like that. Um, how was the problem? First of all, not the parents for doing this. The same thing as we saw whenever a kid sneaks into like a, when there's like a kid in a, we have these few videos of kids in gay bars and shit. Like they should not be there. Where are their parents is what I'm thinking. Not like, not like why is this man on stage dancing in a gay bar? That's what they do at gay bars. Why is there a kid there? That is a question for who is that kid's guardian. And the second one is if you really hate the pride shit, you don't like the nudity. I think that's totally valid. You want to get rid of it? Okay. We're in a democracy. Why aren't you talking to your representative? There is actually someone in charge who made a decision to allow

this in the government. Why aren't we talking to him? Yeah. I mean, isn't there some town where they do a naked bike race and it's not a's not like a pride thing it's like just a regular thing i don't know if this is in san francisco their beta breakers is a race and many people run the race naked yeah i mean i i think that like public nudity is weird as you said like this isn't europe sorry like i don't want you like your dick shouldn't be out in like a public street it's just i i don't i don't get especially like your dick shouldn't be out in like a public street it's just I don't I don't get especially in Seattle it's cold there like you're not giving your best and I mean um yeah I mean again yeah like as you said it's like where are the parents

and this is really just I I blame every likeupaul has so much to answer for really because i mean this it's kind of his fault in a way it's like the with the drag shit with the kids at drag and are like pride and shit like that and uh kids at drag shows and all of that i do think that it's because like it's because of straight women watching drag race because like who like the type of gay guy that i know who like has kids for the most part is not like the type of gay guy who's going to a drag show every weekend and like getting fucked up you know what i mean like yeah they tend to be a little bit more um either like i mean like either older they're just like grown out of it or a little bit more i don't know kind of

like you know william sonoma like conservative sort of like gay guys who um that's not really their scene anyway so i i i'm like these like these are are straight women bringing these kids here. So maybe we just need to talk about straight women involving themselves in gay culture. I tweeted a little bit about this. And I'm always nervous to talk about this stuff. Because every time I do, I get crazy sort of bigoted people in there calling me all sorts of messed up. And I'm just like, I'm just like,

I don't need to be involved in every conversation. Um, but here I am in this conversation. And some of the comments resonated with me. And this was along these lines actually was the main one. It's like, well, you got to do something about these straight women because they are out of

control. And that's, that's like really, that is the root of all of this. It's like, if your kid is at a gay bar or cross-dressing at age seven or whatever in public and like doing it for tips or something like that's clearly the fault of the parents. And like, typically it's a straight woman who's watching RuPaul's drag race. Like that's where all of this is coming from. They're like,

maybe my kid's a drag queen. No kids are drag queens. Drag, drag is a form of like adult. What is it? Vaudeville? Is that the thing? It's, I mean, this is like, or burlesque. It's like, it's, this is no kid is that you're not born a drag queen. Drag queen is the thing that you do as an adult. Um, and it's, it's like, but again, that's not the fault of adult performers. That is the fault of a mom who needs a reality check. Yeah. And you can see, I think a lot of like this coming to bear with like, I don't know if you've been watching like the last season or this currently airing season of all stars but like people getting mad at um jimbo the canadian drag queen because he'll have like the massive like z cup like tits just like waddling around

and whatever and like people are like i think i just like on twitter like seeing all these like straight women they're like um this feels misogynistic this feels like he's mocking women i'm like do you not know what drag is? You don't know that they've been mocking you this whole time? Like, that's what drag is. It's about making fun of women. I think that's one of the speeds. I think a lot of it is obsession and gay kids getting called, but also gay men getting called little girls their whole life.

And they're like i'm gonna own it and become this other thing and but yeah there's like a mockery of drag is sort of i think it's a mockery of everything i think yeah yeah it's like a relentless mockery of and there's nothing that's supposed to be sacred and i think the saddest thing about the popularization of drag over the last few years is that it is like the whoa sort of like cultural authoritarians are trying to colonize it and like and break it basically they're trying to like constrict it and make it bow before them um to be become essentially like priests of the movement but uh it's a really

it's an awkward fit it doesn't make because drag is so irreverent, it's really hard to make that work in the context of something that is the opposite. uppity like sort of substitute teacher energy feminists and what is a sort of complete mockery of everything that they care about so yeah and i mean there's also like this trend that i think that you see in a lot of like the right wing backlash um where one people backlash um where one people equating and also in the left i think you see sometimes people equating being trans with drag queens like they're like almost completely melded especially on the right like they don't seem to know the difference between like drag queens and like being trans it's like most drag queens are not trans like like, all that shit comes off, like, the minute they get off stage. Like, I've seen it happen. And they also, I think the right also thinks that there's, like, that drag shows are supposed to be, like, sexually provocative or, like, titillating in some way, which is just not true.

It's, like, no. Well, it is and it isn't. Go ahead. Finish your thoughts. I know I kind of know where you're taking this but take it there and then i'm gonna disagree with you so i i mean like no gay guys like gay guys are not watching drag shows and like off you know what i mean like like nobody's like getting like turned on by the drag queen if they are it's not like a gay guy it's like some weird like i don't know like uh i i don't know chaser or something absolutely true 100 true however when they're like there are all different

kinds of drag and some are sexual in nature or adult in nature and some are not i mean i've seen a lot of drag in my life just living in san not even because I have been to gay bar, but like, it's like living in San Francisco, you see drag and, uh, it's almost all sort of sexually provocative in nature because you're putting on huge fake breasts and like this, I feel like nudity is a part of it. And there's something really, uh, raunchy about the humor that is like drag has sort of been birthed inside of and that's like a weird that's a a weirdly difficult history to decouple yourself from so the concept for me of seeing drag queens at like drag queen story hour or whatever that feels actually subversive that feels like that's in the history of that's still a subversive act i feel like drag queen story hour like they know it's subversive too and they're trying to pretend it's not subversive. That feels like that's in the history of, that's still a subversive act. I feel like drag queen story hour, like they know it's subversive too. And they're trying to pretend

it's not subversive. Why would you care about a man in a dress reading to kids? That's not really what's happening. Drag is a highly subversive art form. It always has been. And this is, you're doing it because it's subversive is my read of this. I don't think it's sexual in the way that you're, I agree with you. No, no one's going to a drag show to be turned on. It's, but it is sexually provocative. It's like constant sex jokes. Most drag queens that I've seen at night, uh, even at pride in the daytime, there is some element of, you know, dressing in a sort of very sexually provocative way, like nudity. And yeah, you don't have to do that. You could go out there looking like a 1950s housewife, but if it's rooted in the tradition of something that at its core is subversive in nature then we

should not be surprised when people clock it as subversive because it is yeah but most of the time the sexuality is like not really any it's not really that much more than you would say like at any pop concert because most of the time they're like emulating they're like like dressing up like Beyonce. So it's like, you know what I mean? It's like, Oh yeah, they're wearing like a singlet or whatever. And like twerking on stage, but it's also like Beyonce does that. Like, it's like, you know what I mean? So it's like, there, I mean, there are like some crazy stuff where it's like people whipping their dicks out or whatever, like that occasionally happens,

but like that hasn't really been my experience of drag to me it's more like people dressing up like pop stars and like doing the sort of like sexually provocative things like a pop star might do but also like making dick jokes and like it's it's not that serious um but nonetheless yeah you do then i, you go to something like Pride. For everything that you're saying here, it's like there will be endless anecdotes in the opposite direction. And that's because it only takes one or two. And now we all have smartphones and we all see them immediately across the whole because you have an entire class of of people, media people who are incentivized to sort of capitalize on this. And people are literally making hundreds of millions of dollars off of this is via, I'm talking about the daily wire right now.

That's a majorly successful business. And a big part of what they do is confirm people's biases in. This is one of their right now primary directions. It's like this entire, all the gender stuff, let's call it is out of control. And they include just the existence of gay people. And under that umbrella, not all of them, I feel like, you know, some of the guys are, and the girls, I mean, there's like the Candace's of the world. Some of them are not, you know, quite as obsessed with this issue as, as others, but the few who are making the most noise and that's, you know, that's like Matt Walsh is at the top of that hill.

Yeah. And how can you blame him when you're seeing stuff like, for example, at Seattle also? And this one was I couldn't. It's like, why is this guy doing this? You had a guy in underwear twerking in front of kids. and it's like even if even if nudity or semi-nudity is like sanctioned at this thing, you do have to kind of look at that person and be like, that's wrong. You just shouldn't do that. Right. But also, like, where are the parents?

Right. Where are the parents? That's just something that like you never hear them bring up. Because I think it's because they want they want they want people to think that like this could happen to your kids like your kids could see this and it's like actually if you have like any sense at all like your kids won't see this because that's exactly yeah it is a classic sort of moral panic in a way you know they're coming for your children but to go back to the top of the conversation it does not help when you have people who are explicitly saying that they are, in fact, coming for your children. in this sort of rainbow umbrella, do the craziest, most awful things in the name of kind of fighting back against what they perceive to be fascism that's trying to eradicate them. In reaction,

the most, let's say, regressive elements of the right seize on those moments, blast them out to the internet, and get people riled up to a point where they're willing to say things like, I mean, there's a conservative influencer who I am sort of aware of. I don't want to say I follow him because I don't literally subscribe to what he's doing, but I mean, he's in my feed constantly. I can't stand this guy. I mean, he believes that homosexuality should be illegal. Like the act itself should be illegal. Like not just like get rid of gay marriage, not just like, well, I guess the next step after that is, yeah, not just get rid of protections for employment or whatever, but literally like the act itself should not be allowed. a view that I think is becoming more popular because of the deranged excesses of the left.

But then also like when a statement like that is made, the left then seizes on that in the same way the right seizes on the sort of excesses of the left, they amplify it and they whip themselves up into new fresh hysterias that lead them to further crazy action that is also recorded on a camera. So like we're in this really sort of vicious cycle that is, um, I mean, I guess you see cycles like this throughout culture and all sorts of dimensions, but, but this one is just more, it's just really obvious to me that that's what's happening. And, um, and the longer that it goes on, the worst things that become, you've got all sorts of polling data now indicating a dip for the first time in decades in acceptance of just homosexuality.

Gay men, gay women, like that acceptance of that has gone down. And how could it not in an environment like this? Yeah. And I guess it does make me wonder because I feel like you can trace all of this back to like the trans kids shit like that's kind of the thing that broke people like that was the catalyst for all of this because before that people i mean certainly didn't give a fuck about gay people and i feel like for the most part like if you were like i mean trans adults were like so rare that i think people just viewed it as like a strange novelty like they they were like, Hey, I mean, I guess, you know, whatever, if you're like 25 years old and you

decide that's what you want to do, I don't give a shit, you know? But I think like when it got into the kid shit, like people that like broke people and that sent people like down like a spiral. And I don't know, like, I mean, I think that like surgery and hormones for minors should just be banned for people under 18, just like as a principle. Um, but I don't, which is why they're not just accept that. Like, why wouldn't you at this moment be like, OK, yeah, you're right. Actually, the kids thing was crazy. We're not you don't believe like they should have just severed that immediately and been like, whoops, like went too far to dial it back. But maybe they know that they can't at this point. So they have to hold that line because they don't hold that line. They lose everything else. And there's an economics of this, too, I i think because it's like the human rights campaign glad like all of these like gay organizations lgbt like ngos or whatever like after gay marriage

was passed it was like they didn't really have much else to do on like the front of like gay rights like they had to find like a new frontier in like activism to like yeah basically maintain solvency yeah and so like there are like material forces basically that are like driving this sort of lobbying and this sort of like activism on like a pretty like on like a professional level um and i mean like honestly like i think that like if all of those ngos had just like shuttered after like gay marriage was passed like we probably wouldn't even be dealing with this right now because it's like what there would have been like no like major push i i don't think you know one thing you know one thing that we have to talk

about before we get to Stonewall is just in terms of the hysteria that the sort of back and forth hysteria from both sides that leads to sort of hysterical, crazy, ridiculous, clownish things. One maybe bright spot just in terms of it was funny to me was this open letter, which I think you tweeted about at the time. Do you want to talk about the open letter that cabello signed so we have this open letter from glad saying that people need to take action on the rise of anti-trans and anti-hate lgbtq hate and disinformation whatever i have to say they have 250 public figures that they say have signed this. Headlining is Camila Cabello, which is insane. I mean, the hard times for GLAAD if you're having Camila Cabello open.

Okay. But the whole thing is basically saying that companies need to censor anybody who's misgendering anybody who's saying hateful things about particularly trans people it's they're not even even though things have gotten more homophobic it seems like they're still not even concerned it's mostly just trans people um and yeah it's insane they're still not even concerned. It's mostly just trans people. And yeah, it's insane. They're calling for more censorship, which I don't think is going to help because I think that there's a lot a lot of this is being fueled by censorship, people feeling as if they can't actually say anything. And, you know, it's just not good. Yeah. I think it's the, the, this is exactly the impulse that it's, well, it's, this is obviously part of the impulse. This is one of the impulses that led to our present moment of extreme correction. It's like, uh, you have people who are looking at something that is obviously wrong. For example, what was happening to kids? Um, just the idea

that, that this should be normalized among children. Uh, and you weren't allowed to talk about that on a lot of different social media platforms, or you could, it was really, really, really difficult because there were so many different roles you had to sort of balance as that is eased up a little bit, now that people feel like they can speak, they have a lot to say. And so your reaction naturally, if you're on the far left, is to be like, well, we were right. Like the whole reason this is happening is because people are saying stuff now and they're getting each other spun up. What they don't realize is that everybody was already spun up. Their sense of what was happening culturally was just distorted because they were living in a world

where, where they were the only people who were allowed to speak. And, um, and I don't know how this, I don't know what is a, I don't know how to navigate this in a way that is healthy at this point, because it does just seem so toxic on on both sides and um i mean maybe it burns itself out though maybe this is maybe this is uh this is this this summer of anti-pride is the the end of the worst of it though yeah the thing that i'll say for basically all political movements is that if you give people enough rope they'll sort of hang themselves which is not to literally like destroy that but like basically to say that they'll make their things seem so cringe that people will just stop doing it i've sort of already like seen this

with the ride a little bit ever since elon was like oh you can misgender people people have just been like people are like oh you feel like posting memes where it's the meme is like right-wingers when they misgender somebody and it's like you know like they right it's not funny anymore yeah yeah in a weird way the the freer the speech has become, the less funny these people have become. And that's because humor is cleverness and cleverness is difficult. You have to be smart to execute it properly. And in a weird way, previously, this is a whole other interesting conversation that extends well beyond gay stuff. stuff. Um, when you have a bunch of rules in place, blocking you from speaking your mind, you have to be smart. And so actually the most subversive voices are the most intelligent, but as the cost of subversion has decreased, the, uh, and the things that you're seeing are no longer, they're no longer that they're no longer great. I used to feel like I was, um, I used to feel like I was really like, there was this movement of, there was this really smart thing boiling up.

And, um, and in fact, the smart people were just the only people who, who were visible. And now it's like, we are back to, it's like, it's just clown world in both, it's clown world in every direction. And, um, and it comes, I mean, it comes fully formed with an ethos, with, uh, a politics, like sort of a religious ethos, a politics. It even comes, uh, as I think we're going to conclude now with its own history and, um, and Stonewall. So I think Stonewall is famously where gay rights began. It was a bar back in the day. A lot of straight people don't realize this. Back in the day, it was illegal for gay men to congregate, I think across the United States, but certainly in New York City where Stonewall was. If gay men were congregating, all men were congregating, men

dressed as women were sort of around. Police would literally come, pack everybody up, fingerprint them and send them home, shut the place down. This would end up in the news and these men would lose their jobs. And that was why it was being done. It was a sort of and this was late. This was in the 60s. Stonewall is the day where some gay people fought back and famously one person threw something and it's no one knows for sure who threw what first what triggered the riot and there's a lot of importance behind this moment because there's some I guess weird sense that like whoever threw that first rock is the person who's responsible for all of gay

rights that followed which is not true but anyway it was probably a lesbian let's be honest and uh and and but the rest of that crowd for the most part gay men and to really spin people out of control they were mostly white gay men. That's who was there. A lot of black dudes too. You see them in all the, you just, and you see this because you see this in the photographic evidence at the time. It was mostly men, mostly white, because most people in America were white. Most people in New York in those bars were white, but also a lot of, a lot of gay black dudes, a few, a sprinkling of some lesbians and a couple of cross-dressers, not even identifying as trans, because that's not a, that's not a, that's not a, I don't think that was a thing that people

even called themselves. No one was calling themselves like trans woman back then. What you wrote about this, what is this, what is this like the enduring complication of, of the Stonewall story? How, how is that actually now? How is that framed by the left today? When did that that sort of transition begin and why is it meaningful? Why should people care about this? this idea that trans women of color were at the forefront of Stonewall, specifically Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were both, neither of them identified as trans women, by the way, they identified as either gay men or transvestites. But these, that these people were like,

either the ones who threw the first brick at Stonewall, either usually Marsha P. Johnson is the one that said or that they were like the leaders of this riot, which is just not true. Neither one of them were there on the first night of the riots. of the riots there's there was a movie that came out um i want to say it was like 2015 or 2016 called stonewall that people got really up in arms and out and i think this is when it like cemented really in the culture is these activist types got really mad because the lead in the movie is like a sexy white gay guy. Yeah. He's like a good looking white guy. No. Not on our watch.

Yeah. And they were not happening. They were like, there were no white men at Stonewall. And there's like pictures of this event. Like you can see them. One man was arrested that night. We have a picture of him. It's a white dude.

That's like my whole comment on the matter we have pictures of the riot we have a picture we have we have the fucking police photo of the one dude who was arrested and it's just like this version of gay rights in which it was like you said all sort of like trans women of color at the forefront. It's just not reality. And, um, it, it's like everything at the time back then, I mean, all of the leftist causes or left-wing causes, liberal causes were run mostly by, it was like white people. And then especially black people, when it comes to like civil rights and stuff, obviously for obvious reasons, um, because that's what most of the breakdown of the country was in, in like the, in cities, it was, you know, more or throughout the deep South rather it was more black people and in cities where there

were mostly white people around, it was white people. And it's like, why would we expect it to be something other than that? And then even if, even if our expectations were wrong, you know, you can page back to the photographic evidence of the time. And we all know it's like it's the 1960s. We know what that was. We know what it looked like. We have we have it. We have the evidence. We're looking at it. Right. Yeah. It just became this sort of thing where people were like, OK, who's the most oppressed? Who's, you know, the flavor of the week or whatever? And that sort of became like the black trans woman the black trans woman is almost like this like sort of like mythical creature i think in

like modern liberalism where it's just like the sort of like the paragon of like oppression but also they've driven like every movement in history forward like it right there's so marginalized society that they're like they're they're erased and they're made invisible and yet they're also ever present they've been everywhere they've seen everything they're omnipotent omniscient that can't be stopped um it's like how many are there even it's like not that many you know what i mean i mean yeah it's like such a tiny sliver demographic and it feels it's so strange because it keeps getting chopped up into the smaller and smaller like people are talking about oh we need to have a space on the flag for like intersex

people like hermaphrodites and that most of those people like probably do not consider themselves like part of the lgbt just by like just by consequence of having a medical condition like a lot of those people could probably be just like heterosexual and they're like yeah i just you know i got surgery or whatever to to make that look a little more normal down there or whatever the issue is but it's not um no they don't consider themselves a member of a sort of sexual minority category and but also i mean the flag no longer means that the flag is not really about sexuality at all anymore um you literally have a black and a brown stripe that it has to do with that's a race that's a racial category it's nothing to do with sexuality um and and now you have uh i mean we're told that transness has nothing to do with sex either now

we're told that it's a gender thing so the flag is all sorts of fucked up at this point it's like not redeemable it's gone um and it's an obviously also which is why people react to it now it's a clearly political it's a clearly political, it's a clearly political symbol. It's also, it's a globalist symbol. It exists across the world, wherever you see that, that flag. Now it means the same set of values. Um, and, and it's just not, it's not a big umbrella that means like fun and happiness and accept yourself. It, it means like you got to vote a certain way and you have to argue for a certain set of things that a lot of gay people don't want. This is the internal tension we saw at first with lesbians, specifically more sort of feminist lesbians being upset about this. And then now

it's like, I mean, once you get to sort of policing sexual behavior, you're going to lose the gay men. That's where we are now. Yeah. I think the myth of Stonewall is interesting because in a way, the way that we talk about Stonewall is a really good, it's a really good indication of where the movement is at any given point. Like that myth,

it's been recast and rewritten to accommodate a new set of values. And in the beginning, it was like gay rights in the very beginning. It was mostly it was just about gay men. And yeah, there were a few there were a small handful of lesbians who were very important and very like critical throughout the early gay rights sort of history. But it was just most of the gay people were men and most of the people who were really at risk were gay men. Um, and I know, but when I say at risk, I mean like, not like at emotional

risk, but I mean, real risk, risk of either being, you know, physically accosted, but also like losing your job and things like this. Um, and, and, and Stonewall is sort of story of Stonewall, the sort of story of Stonewall paired with that exactly. Now, with all gay rights, literally all, I can't think of any gay rights that are not secured at this point. The myth has been recast to accommodate a new set of political struggles that are ever-changing, sort of kaleidoscopic, bizarre. And so you just, you lose sense of what actually happened, which is maybe also indicative of where we are right now, just in this historical moment. It's like, of course, we would have a completely fake news version of history for this movement, because everything about this moment in history is fake. Yeah it turned i think into i i think it's very telling that the story sort of flipped it all became about marcia p johnson somebody who

admitted that she wasn't there right after like gay right gay marriage was like legalized because that was the last sort of thing and i think this had been building for a long time because actually what the strength of like the gay rights movement had been is that gayness is like pretty well distributed among the population in terms of like class, race, you know, all that. So it's like you had during the AIDS crisis, gay millionaires, um, funding, you know, likery kramer's like act up and stuff like that you had this like big coalition of people from all different walks of life varying degrees of like political influence and i think that there's like a there's a certain type of leftist that doesn't like that, that sees that as sort of. Illegitimate in a way, because some of the people who really pushed gay rights forward were wealthy white men, and that is not a narrative that they they want to deal with no in a way

what you saw this is the enduring rewrite of gay culture is that it's a sexist racist classist place in some ways it's like the most fascistic corner of american culture is the the realm of the gay white man but in in fact, throughout history, all the evidence that we have indicates something like the opposite, that actually like gay spaces were more or less the dream that leftists today imagine, which is that it's like any gay bar

was just sort of anything goes environment where anybody could walk in. It did just so happen that most of the people in those places, at least in, in, in cities like New York at places like Stonewall in particular, I'm sure there were bars that were, that were, that were different, but, but a lot of the more famous ones were mostly white men. You look at San Francisco, it was the same story because mostly the people who were in those neighborhoods were white. Um, but they were, you actually, you mentioned RuPaul earlier. I love RuPaul. Um, but they were, you actually, you mentioned RuPaul earlier. I love RuPaul.

Um, RuPaul talked, I forget, it was in the earlier seasons before, uh, the new cultural rules were written and forced on everyone's throats. So maybe 10 years ago, but he talked about this, about the experience of, of people from all walks of life being together and how beautiful it was. And it's sad that that part of gay history is forgotten because I do think it's cool. It was this thing that everybody, all of the things that divide us today, race, religion, like you said, class, those things don't really matter when you're a little gay, you know, you're 15 and you're like, shit, I think I like guys. Um, suddenly no matter what class you're in, no matter what religion you're a part of, no matter what race you are, you feel at odds

with, with your, with where you're from. And you go looking for other people who have this similar experience. And everybody did all of people, in a way that straight people really can empathize with, suddenly all of those people had something important in common, which was not just their sexuality, but the way that they were treated by the rest of the country for having that sexuality. And that produced something interesting, which was a bond that actually did bring a lot of americans from different places together which was cool i think yeah i mean that's definitely like the the strength of like early gay culture and but now i think it's become fragmented again it's in some ways by this growing divide between gays as we traditionally understood them and like queer

people which is this totally different thing some of them are gay most of them are not though and it's most of them are girls who like attention right it's this like it's this weird sort of funhouse mirror version of gay culture that is just constantly staring into itself and claiming that it's like the to watch it's just it's just strange to see effectively heterosexual women try to tell gay guys that they're doing it wrong essentially or that they're they're feeding into the right by you know not wanting nine-year-olds to transition or whatever. They were, this isn't what we fought for. It's like,

what do you mean? We like, you would have been a housewife 30 years ago. I don't know. Um, I think that's a good note to end it on. Uh, the problem as ever is crazy white women.

Um, I'm joking for the most part. Uh, happy pride. Uh, happy pride. I am off for a 4th of July vacation. Um,

see you guys back.