#314 — The Cancellation of J.K. Rowling
Summary
J.K. Rowling has been accused of being anti-transphobic and anti-feminist, but does she have a case to defend? In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Megan Phelps-Roper about her new podcast series, The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling, a look at the controversy that has subsumed the life of the world s most famous and beloved author, and how it intersects with women s rights, free speech, and other things we value. And I take her side in a very direct way, far more directly than Megan does, and I don t want to mislead anyone about the series she's produced, because it's far more balanced and judicious than the conversation I have with her here, at least my side of it, which is much more nuanced and nuanced than the one you'll find in this episode. In fact, there's no better case in which to witness the excesses of transphobia than the case of the one that has gotten her into hot water: the one about which she's written and produced a podcast series. And it's not even close to being on the cutting edge of the conversation, and that's what makes it so difficult to separate fact from fiction, and what it really means to be a feminist in the 21st century. This is an episode that will pitch me with both feet into the topics of trans rights and trans activism, and the ways in which they collide with women's rights and free speech. and the rights of women and girls and in this case, and . The Making Sense by Megan Phelps Roper of the Free Press a podcast produced by Barry Weiss, Nellie Bowles, and Nelli Bowles . . . and the work by Barry and Nelle Bowles at The Free Press, a podcast by Nelli Weiss, and their team at The New York Times writer and editor-in-chief at The Huffington Post, and by The New Republic, and all of their friends at The Daily Beast, Barry Weiss and Barry Weiss & Weiss. We don't run ads on the podcast because we don t run ads, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers only through the efforts of our listeners, and because we're made possible by our subscribers, not by ads. Thanks to you, the listeners, we're making sense, and we re making sense.
Transcript
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Well, today I'm speaking with Megan Phelps-Roper about a podcast series she's produced over
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at the Free Press, which is the media platform that Barry Weiss and Nellie Bowles and a few
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And really, the purpose of this podcast is to bring your attention to it.
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It's a wonderful series titled The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.
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And if you haven't heard about the controversy that has subsumed the life of J.K. Rowling,
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But suffice it to say, this is an episode of the podcast that will pitch me with both feet
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onto the topics of trans rights and trans activism and the way in which they collide with women's
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rights and free speech and other things we value.
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Given how combustible this subject is, I think I need to say a few things at the outset, some
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First, I have no doubt that gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon, which is to say that some
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people feel that they have been more or less born into the wrong body and are made powerfully
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unhappy by that discovery and want to transition to one or another degree in their gender identity
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and perhaps use hormone treatments and or surgeries to accomplish that.
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I have no doubt that in many cases this predicament is all too real.
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And in those cases, these medical interventions should be available to people.
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And I think it should go without saying that their political rights should be protected.
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So, at least in my own mind, there is nothing that I think or feel or articulate in this podcast
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that I believe is a symptom of transphobia, much less bigotry against trans people.
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The problem, however, is that believing these things and being morally and politically committed
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to them does not resolve all of the difficult questions.
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There are cases where the rights of trans people seem in direct opposition to the rights of
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And acknowledging that fact is what has gotten J.K.
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What's more, there are troubling signs that the increase in gender dysphoria is not a matter
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of our simply discovering how many people in the world suffer this condition and have been closeted
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Rather, there's considerable evidence of social contagion, especially among teenage girls.
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So, insofar as social contagion is an element here, that adds an additional reason to be circumspect
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before recommending irreversible medical interventions to teenagers.
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So, all of this has to be talked about compassionately and reasonably, and even with the best of intentions,
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there are no guarantees that there won't be corner cases that entail real trade-offs.
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And J.K. Rowling's commentary on this topic has more or less lurched toward those.
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Now, as I say in this podcast, I take her side in a very direct way, far more directly than
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Megan does, and I don't want to mislead anyone about the series she's produced.
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It's far more balanced and judicious than the conversation I have with her here, at least
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Rowling has been attacked quite unfairly by people who have been made hysterical,
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This is of a piece with what I think about wokeness generally, and there really is no
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better case in which to witness these excesses than the case of J.K.
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Can you talk to me about some of the threats that you've received over the past few years?
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There have been a lot, a huge amount, as every woman will know who speaks up on this issue,
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a huge amount of, I want her to choke on my fat trans dick.
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Well, I don't think all of them mean it literally, but attempts to degrade, to humiliate, people
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And, you know what, up to a point, you're probably right, though it's very unpleasant
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to be on the receiving end of it, particularly in the quantities I've had it.
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Then I have had direct threats of violence, and I have had people coming to my house where
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my kids live, and I've had my address posted online.
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I've had what the police, anyway, would regard as credible threats.
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The pushback is often, you are wealthy, you can afford security, you haven't been silenced.
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The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women.
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And I say that because I have seen it used that way.
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I have seen other women, and other women have told me, I literally had someone say this
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to me the other day, I was told, look, look what happened to J.K. Rowling.
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The purpose of this episode, and the purpose of Megan's series, isn't to produce any final
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verdict on the ethical and political questions that this topic raises.
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It really is limited to carving out the space for a rational, compassionate conversation.
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And this is something that the activists on the far left and the far right have, until
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So, for better or worse, I bring you Megan Phelps Roper and The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.
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So, you have done this, you've created this amazing podcast series, The Witch Trials of J.K.
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And you've done this for the Free Press, which is Barry Weiss's new media property, which
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People can find out more about that at thefp.com, T-H-E-F-P.com.
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And this is a, I mean, she has her own podcast, honestly, but you have created this podcast
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And I don't know if there's anyone else you need to credit there, but you're the woman
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Do you have any other collaborators here you need to acknowledge?
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I'm just really, I feel like I got really lucked out here working with two of, I think,
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the best in the podcasting business, Andy Mills and Matt Bull.
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Because, you know, when I did your show back in 2015, he was working at Radiolab.
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And we really quickly bonded over our, you know, shared history in, you know, being raised
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So, it's been, you know, amazing to finally work with them on something that has a lot
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And Barry and Andy are both refugees from the New York Times.
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So, yeah, lots of history in podcasting and elite media spaces.
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I mean, it's completely unlike a podcast of the sort I produce.
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You have a ton of archival audio, which is fascinating.
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And you are really the perfect person to have done this.
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As I think some people recognize, you've not only been on this podcast before, but you are
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the voiceover actress for the Essentials series that Jay Shapiro produced on the basis of my
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But as we will remind people, you have this very unique background, which I think made you
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And I think she more or less acknowledges it in the series.
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I mean, you can just see that she's really able to open up to you, given your background.
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So, I think before we jump into the series itself, remind people how far you've come,
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We started protesting when I was five years old, and I was a true believer.
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You know, I was surrounded by people, you know, a very loving, very involved family,
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highly educated, very logical, analytical people, who were just absolutely persuaded
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that their understanding of the Bible was the one true understanding.
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And so, we went around the country sharing this message of, essentially, you have to obey
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God, or you will be cursed by God in this life, and then spend hell and eternity.
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And the strength of our belief, our certainty in those beliefs, led us to do all kinds of
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really horrible, and to justify all kinds of really horrible, cruel things.
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I think maybe that some of the most extreme things that people are aware of is the protesting
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at funerals, funerals of AIDS victims, funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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And then also, you know, praying for horrible things to happen to people.
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And we did this believing that what we were doing was, you know, in spreading the truth
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This is the very definition of what it means to love other people.
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And so, it obviously gave me the understanding that people can do really horrible things with
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You can have all, you know, seem to have all of the tools that you would need to live a
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good life, and still, because of the strength of your beliefs, end up doing really horrible
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Well, before we jump into the series, I think I'm just going to recommend that people pause
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this episode and subscribe to it so that it's waiting for them in their podcast app after
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they're done listening to us, so they can find it under the title, The Witch Trials of J.K.
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And you've released six episodes at this point.
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There's seven in the main part of the series, but we will be back with an epilogue in about
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a month, and then we're weighing whether to release, we recorded, you know, dozens of
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interviews at this point, and some of them, many of them, were extremely moving, and there
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just wasn't space for them in the series, because as you say, like, we are trying to
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cover an awful lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time, and so we're thinking
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about sharing some of those other interviews later for people who want to go a little deeper
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into some of the things that we discuss in the show.
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How many hours of audio did you get with Rowling?
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About nine, over the course of, I took two trips to Scotland, and so we recorded with
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I have one editorial note or piece of advice for listeners.
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I think that episode two is probably going to be the least interesting to most people.
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This is where you get into the history of the Christian backlash to the Harry Potter series,
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which was, I mean, it's fascinating for me, and it's a very interesting context to what's
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It's just, and it is one of the ways in which you were so well qualified to be reaching out
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to Rowling, because you come from the Christian right, and you understand the kind of the other
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side of the fanaticism that was aiming to cancel her.
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But, um, I think some number of people will bog down in episode two, so I just, I want
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to admonish our listeners, if you listen to episode one, and you love it, and you start
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to get antsy in episode two, do not abort the series, just press on to episode three and
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four, because, I mean, this is just, it's a truly fascinating document.
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There's so much that is driving our culture fairly mad at this moment that is, that can
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be seen, you know, through the lens of this topic, and, and, you know, measured by what
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Well, can I just defend episode two for a second?
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Yeah, no, I mean, I don't, I can just tell you...
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No, no, don't get me wrong, I, I, I, I loved it, but I just, I know that...
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I know the experience of listening to three and four, and it's, I don't want anyone to
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get off the ride before they hit three and four.
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It's really funny, because too, a lot of people think, you know, like, like what you thought,
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like that, that, that maybe we are on a digression here.
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And in fact, I think so many of the things that we hear about, you know, first of all,
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a lot of people just love that, you know, kind of refresher on the 90s.
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It's really fun, I think, for a lot of us to go back and remember some of those things
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and, you know, through the lens of the present and, and to realize that so many of the things
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that we see, you know, part of the culture war right now have their origins in the 1990s.
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And seeing the echoes of those things, I think is, is really fascinating.
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And it was really interesting to go back and recognize that like the Christians, it's easy
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to look at the Christians in, you know, the late 90s and the early 2000s who were, as you
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say, trying to cancel J.K. Rowling, like part of this backlash where they are burning her
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books, you know, they become one of the most banned books, according to the American Library
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And so they're, they're kind of a constant target.
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And you say, oh, these are just religious fanatics.
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But when you actually look at, at the culture and what was happening at the time, it makes
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And it's, it's kind of trying to help us understand that, you know, we are still today, we're doing
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We, we are human beings responding to the context and the society in which we are living.
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And to just, to not look at people and recognize the context in which they are, where they're
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And I mean, you're talking to people who thought that witchcraft was real, right?
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I mean, they want to cancel her because they believe in witchcraft and they think that her
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books somehow advocate for it and you, and you have, you know, the president of the United
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States, George Bush, denying her some, I forget which award it was, but they, you know, the
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White House didn't want JK Rowling to get some award because George Bush was concerned that,
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that she was advocating witchcraft in her, in her books.
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But anyway, I, I stand by this admonishment because I, I, I'm with you.
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I've seen a few people kind of get bumped just, I had to drag a few people to episode
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three after they, they got bogged down in episode two.
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And, and, you know, one was a teenager who, um, you know, really did need to hear this
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So let's talk about what's happening to Rowling.
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How would you, well, actually just one question about the Christian piece of it.
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Do you remember what your reaction was to the Harry Potter series?
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Was it on your radar in, when you were in the Westboro Baptist church?
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And it's actually kind of, kind of funny because my family was not part of that backlash at
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You know, we, we targeted people for a lot of things, but my dad is the one who brought
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home the first Harry Potter book and insisted that I read it.
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So he's an elder in the church and, you know, we saw it, this is just fiction.
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And I remember thinking that the people who were upset about it were, you know, are they,
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So it was, it was really, this is actually one of the things that was so interesting to
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me when, when Andy Mills first called me about this, you know, a little over two years ago
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And he, he reminded me about that, that original, that Christian backlash to JK Rowling.
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And we got off the phone and I immediately started researching that and going back and, you
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know, looking at it, you know, with, with, with fresh eyes and it was really, really fascinating
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And, and anyway, sorry, I don't want me to digress too far, but, but we didn't participate
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I, we were major fans, like my siblings, I'm the third of 11 and we passed those books around
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And I actually, you know, I, I included this in my letter to JK Rowling.
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The fact that I was standing on the picket line, balancing these like massive books because
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I didn't want to, I didn't want to quit reading.
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So yeah, we didn't, we didn't participate in that.
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So JK Rowling is, um, I think it's, it really is not, it's strange to say it, but it's,
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it is not an exaggeration to say, I mean, I think it is literally true to say that she's
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probably the most successful and most beloved author in my lifetime in the English language.
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I mean, I just, I don't, I don't know who could stand a chance of being in first position
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I mean, I can't think of any other author for whom, you know, bookstores need to open at
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So lines of hundreds of children, you know, on her pub date.
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And, you know, there are literally theme parks opened in celebration of her, her characters.
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I mean, it's just, you know, so there, she's really one without a second as an author.
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So she was uniquely placed to weather the storm that has been directed at her.
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And I think it's, it's also safe to say that a lesser author, you know, even a, just a normal
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bestselling author would have completely lost their career over what has happened to her.
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So the fact that she's still standing and is, you know, relatively unscathed, I mean, we'll
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get into the details of just what has happened to her personally and professionally.
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But, you know, it's, if anyone looks at her case and thinks, you know, you can draw the
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lesson that, you know, there is no such thing as being canceled because look, she's still
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I mean, I don't, I don't know who else could have survived what's gone on with, with her
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And what it is, it's something like a, you know, we just had a, you know, famous or a couple
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of famous runs on banks here in the U S and, and, you know, we're recording now when the
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instability of our financial system is still everywhere in the news.
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And I do view this, you know, what's happened to her in particular on social media as a kind
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You know, it achieves a certain contagious hysteria and then it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling
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process where, because everyone is criticizing this person, because everyone is defecting,
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everyone is, you know, washing their hands of the person who's come under the focus of
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It becomes harder and harder for anyone to defend him or her.
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It's just, it becomes, you know, reputationally too toxic to even be associated with the phenomenon.
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And it's a, you know, you're using the obvious analogy of, of a witch burning, but the speed
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and crown dynamics of it, it really does remind me of a, of a run on a bank.
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And, you know, this is, you know, she, reputationally, she was a very big bank.
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I mean, I really think the biggest, and so she has, she is still solvent, but it really
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And, um, first, why did you want to make this series and how would you describe what has
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So we wanted to make this series to investigate the, I mean, cause obviously when you look at
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just her history, you know, she has been an absolute force in the culture for, you know,
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And the world has changed so much during that time.
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So in witch trials, we are using her story as a way of exploring those changes.
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And, you know, we're investigating these two very vocal backlashes that she's faced, you
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know, first from the Christian right, as we talked about, and then now from the, you know,
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progressive left who accused her of transphobia.
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And it's really not about shaming or blaming people for being angry with her or vehemently
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disagreeing with her or, you know, condemning her.
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It's really about trying to understand where people on all sides of this conflict are coming
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from, you know, in a scrupulously good faith way.
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I mean, and I can just explain just a little bit more, like anybody who's followed this
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conversation at any depth, I would say, because at the very beginning, I was watching, you
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know, I saw those tweets, you know, first in December of 2019, and then in June of 2020.
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When she started to weigh in on sex and gender, I had very little frame of reference for that
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And then, and just specifically, like why it ignited such a firestorm.
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I'm reading her tweets and trying to understand why, you know, a criticism of using the phrase
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people who menstruate is causing people to respond that she, that JK Rowling is calling for the
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And so I just, I was coming from a place of relative ignorance.
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Like, I don't understand what's happening here and really wanting to understand.
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And I think her story just touches on so many of, again, of these changes, like the changes
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in the internet over the past 20 years, you know, initially people saw it as this, you
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know, kind of maybe even a, you know, a path to some kind of utopia where, you know, we are
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And this, you know, connection is inevitably going to be a very good thing.
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And it's going to give everyone a voice and, and it's going to, you know, what it will
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do for democracy will be this incredibly positive thing.
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And we've seen that shift quite dramatically over the last decade.
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And, you know, trying to understand how is it that now that it seems like, you know, the
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barrier to entry, you know, to, to give everyone a voice, like, why is it that so many people
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Why is it that the most extreme positions are being conflated with, you know, sort of
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any kind of dissent on or difference of opinion?
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And so like, it's trying to understand, you know, all of these dynamics, like, including
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like what social, what social media in general is doing to public discourse, you know, incentivizing
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extremes and amplifying some of our worst impulses and, and flattening context.
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And so it, so there's, there's so many elements that we're trying to get at in this, you know,
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So obviously it's a lot of, a lot of ground to cover.
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So let's just remind people what has happened here, because I would, I would assume more
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or less everyone knows the general shape of it, but how would you describe what kicked
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this off for a, well, how did the controversy begin and what is the logic of it?
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I guess I'll, I'll just set you up by saying that there's an interesting conflict between
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And there's also an interesting tension between trans rights and gay rights.
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And it's just, you know, unless someone has spent a little time focused on this issue,
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you know, these are, this might sound like surprising claims, but the structure of the
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controversy is really framed by those underlying conflicts.
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I mean, there's just certain situations where you are opposing what, you know, most women,
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certainly most feminists would consider a concern for protecting the rights of women with these
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new rights for members of the trans community, in particular, biological men who identify as
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I mean, we'll talk a lot about, you know, trans and non-binary people here as you do in the
00:25:52.360
series, but really the, the issue with women's rights is not biological women and girls deciding
00:26:02.960
It's those who are moving in the opposite direction, you know, biological men who, who
00:26:09.740
So with that as set up, what happened with, uh, JK Rowling?
00:26:16.560
So in, in, I think I'm going to start with the, there was this one tweet that she posted
00:26:24.980
There were little things that happened before, but really the first time she publicly weighed
00:26:29.160
in on the discussion around sex and gender came in December of 2019 with the case of a
00:26:37.900
And this might feel like it's a little bit in the weeds, but it is, it is ultimately the
00:26:46.240
And the short version of that case is that Maya Forstader lost a contract that she, her employment
00:26:52.740
contract was not renewed at this nonprofit because of public statements that she had made.
00:26:57.940
And the statements that she made were in response to a proposed change in the law in the UK.
00:27:04.900
And so she brought this case before what's called an employment tribunal in the UK to
00:27:15.040
I should be able to say that biological sex is immutable and not be, not lose my employment
00:27:23.740
And so it was really, it was largely a free speech issue at that point because if it's
00:27:29.780
really, and it wasn't just about Maya Forstader, it was about the precedent that that set that
00:27:34.360
anybody in the UK, if they will state that opinion, that biological sex is immutable and then they would
00:27:42.760
have to risk losing their job if they were going to express that opinion.
00:27:46.860
And that, that seemed unconscionable, I think, to JK Rowling.
00:27:51.760
And so she weighed in and she posted this, I think what a lot of people, even people who initially, a lot of
00:27:59.820
people initially read it as, you know, support, unequivocal support for trans rights.
00:28:08.080
She said, dress however you please, call yourself whatever you like, sleep with any consenting
00:28:14.520
adult who will have you, live your best life in peace and security, but force women out of their
00:28:22.540
Hashtag I stand with Maya, hashtag this is not a drill.
00:28:26.200
And so what, what she's saying there is she's trying to say, I don't think there's anything
00:28:31.320
wrong with trans people, we should still be able to express these beliefs that us, you
00:28:37.520
know, there, there are people who think that to have any concerns about this, you know, as
00:28:43.940
you put it, this, this conflict between, or potential conflicts between the rights of
00:28:47.940
women and the rights of specifically, it's, it's almost like, like also, like you said,
00:28:51.940
it's almost always trans women, the rights of natal women and the rights of trans women.
00:28:55.420
Like that, that is seen as in and of itself, transphobic by a lot of, a lot of people on the
00:29:02.960
So it, it, it was a free speech concern as well.
00:29:06.160
And she was, um, reacting as many people have to this, uh, fairly Orwellian denigration of
00:29:16.920
When, you know, rather than refer to women, you know, even in the context of, of scientific
00:29:25.640
And I think the one she reacted to on Twitter at one point was people who menstruate, right?
00:29:29.980
And she said, you know, didn't we used to have a word for that?
00:29:35.120
And she was, obviously people could have viewed that as snide, but.
00:29:43.680
Yeah, but it's also, I mean, there's so many people are at their, are at the end of their
00:29:49.640
patience with this fixation on language, which, I mean, there is something, you know, I, I view
00:29:57.080
it as not only wrongheaded, but sinister to sort of rule out certain kinds of thought.
00:30:04.000
I mean, it is, it's the very essence of what, you know, what we mean by Orwellian, right?
00:30:08.840
I mean, you know, Orwell has earned this place in our language, not only because of his novel
00:30:14.980
1984, but because of his quite famous and deservedly so essay, Politics in the English
00:30:22.320
I mean, it's just, this is a tactic for making it hard to think about, much less say certain
00:30:31.900
I mean, you, you, you, you seize control of the words we use to name things.
00:30:38.460
And it has been so programmatic and clumsy coming from the left of late, and yet it's
00:30:47.980
I mean, the, the style guide for the Associated Press and you have, you've got places like
00:30:53.380
Stanford University coming out and, and offering lists of forbidden terms, right?
00:30:58.660
And, and this is now far beyond the, the trans issue, but this goes to race and many of these
00:31:08.660
Anyway, her reaction as a writer to that is completely understandable, but what she then
00:31:13.580
came to focus on more than anything, it seems, is the rights of women to have protected spaces
00:31:20.400
like, you know, domestic abuse shelters and changing rooms and bathrooms.
00:31:25.080
And I mean, if I'm not mistaken, that's where things really heated up and where she, where
00:31:32.000
she expressed most of her concerns with respect to the trade-offs between protecting the rights
00:31:39.020
of vulnerable girls and women and the rights of trans women.
00:31:44.880
I mean, I just want to go back just for a second on the language thing, because obviously it's
00:31:49.420
important to, we understand that the people who are advocating for these changes in language,
00:31:57.660
Like they, they are coming at it from very good intentions.
00:32:01.300
They want things, the world to be better and for, you know, racism and sexism and transphobia
00:32:07.360
for all of these things to, you know, to, and, and using language to, to accomplish these,
00:32:15.220
But also, as you just said that, you know, one of the reporters that I, that I spoke with,
00:32:18.540
Michelle Goldberg, you know, she, you know, she's covered this topic for a long time.
00:32:22.060
And she told me that, and I thought this was very well put, she said that the seeds of
00:32:26.080
the backlash are contained within the effort to suppress questions and dissent and to this
00:32:32.400
effort to kind of force a consensus when it hasn't been reached organically through conversation
00:32:38.060
and persuasion, which is how pluralistic societies function.
00:32:41.680
And so this kind of top-down imposition of these changes in language, which a lot of people,
00:32:48.040
I mean, myself included, I, I didn't have any sense of, any real sense of, of like, what,
00:32:54.260
what is, why not essentially, like, why not do this?
00:32:58.860
And, you know, I, you hear one of the, one of the main issues is, as you just said, it is,
00:33:06.100
It can be very difficult to talk about specifically the biological differences between males and
00:33:12.820
females and between natal women and trans women.
00:33:16.400
Like all, it seems like all of the language has been, has become politicized in some way.
00:33:21.520
Like, so the choice to use one word over another.
00:33:24.120
And so it's, it's been a huge issue in this series, trying to talk about all of these things
00:33:29.620
in a way that a, that we, the term we keep using is a normie listener, right?
00:33:34.400
Somebody who is not the uninitiated, essentially, into this conversation.
00:33:38.740
And it's, you know, not in an effort to, you know, denigrate trans people or to choose one
00:33:45.240
side or another and, and to be respectful of everybody involved.
00:33:51.900
And it is not, not because we, again, not because we don't respect everyone, but because
00:33:55.520
it's so much of the language has become politicized in that way.
00:33:58.440
And I think one of the things as well is, is just this, the question of, are there times,
00:34:04.780
like it's, it's essentially, are there times when biological sex is implicated in a way
00:34:10.700
that makes it more important or, you know, more, I don't know if that's the best way to
00:34:17.680
And, you know, cause essentially like that is, that is the, I think one of the, one of the
00:34:24.740
So when we talk about, you know, men and women, we are talking about gender identity
00:34:29.340
rather than sex, but, and I feel like, I feel like I'm going to go down a rabbit hole
00:34:35.700
So maybe I shouldn't, but it's, there is no consensus on the language.
00:34:40.300
Like to my mind, one obvious, you know, way of splitting the difference is like when you
00:34:45.180
talk about men and women, that that is referring to gender identity.
00:34:49.580
And when you talk about males and females, that's talking about biological sex, that
00:34:54.620
seems to make sense to me, but there is no consensus on that.
00:34:58.020
So for instance, even in the New York times, you'll, you'll read, you know, trans female
00:35:06.560
It's just very, very hard to parse is all I'm saying.
00:35:09.900
I mean, I guess one thing to acknowledge is that your series is not just a straightforward
00:35:19.520
I mean, your series is more balanced than I will sound in this conversation.
00:35:24.760
I mean, I just take Rowling's side in this in a very straightforward way.
00:35:29.460
I think she's been maligned as a transphobe and a bigot.
00:35:35.000
And, you know, from what I can tell, she's none of those things.
00:35:38.940
And, you know, what's more, it's, you know, I acknowledge that many of the people, even most
00:35:45.780
of the people who are attacking her, are doing it from a place of, you know, as you say,
00:35:54.020
They think they are, are mitigating human suffering.
00:35:56.780
And they think Rowling is increasing it, whether by intention or not.
00:36:06.080
But it's, I do view many other people in this space to be bad actors of a different sort,
00:36:12.320
or at least, you know, more conflicted than just attempting to do something good,
00:36:20.120
I mean, you know, so to say that everyone has good intentions, I think is, it's a bit
00:36:24.500
I frankly think there, there's a fair degree of, of mental instability and even frank mental
00:36:34.560
I mean, you know, in really in all activist communities, but I would say in particular,
00:36:40.160
this one, from what I can see, I mean, it's just the level of viciousness and hysteria
00:36:46.460
is, you know, it's hard to know what to compare it to.
00:36:50.420
And it's, you know, it's one of the reasons why I have avoided, you know, I've been among
00:36:54.900
the people who've more or less avoided this issue because it's just not worth it, right?
00:36:58.800
It's just, why do you want this experience that JK Rowling is having?
00:37:04.500
And I mean, it's that, that dynamic that you're describing though, it's, it's, it's what's
00:37:08.980
really fascinated me was that, so before I ever wrote the letter to JK Rowling asking
00:37:13.680
if she would do this before I'd even decided to do it, I spent a lot of time talking to
00:37:18.760
a lot of people and a lot of people specifically in the LGBT community and then specifically a
00:37:24.920
lot of trans people. And it was wild to me to realize that most people from as far as I can
00:37:33.340
tell, do not hold those extreme positions that you see in a lot of activist communities,
00:37:39.460
specifically on Twitter and like realizing how much more, it's much more reasonable.
00:37:46.060
Like the, the, the sense of it is like, and even the idea, you know, the, the importance
00:37:51.240
of having the conversation. Like I talked to many trans people who were like,
00:37:54.920
we believe that the lack of a conversation here is harming our interests far more than
00:38:01.200
people like JK Rowling and, and many who even agreed with her and they understood her concerns
00:38:06.080
and, and shared them. And sort of like the need to have the conversation to navigate, you
00:38:11.740
know, what is fair for instance, in, in women's sports, what is, you know, how do we navigate,
00:38:16.920
you know, single sex spaces and, you know, women's prisons and, you know, childhood
00:38:21.680
transitions, all of these things that JK Rowling has expressed concerns about those, many of
00:38:27.580
those concerns are shared by people, right? By other, many other trans people. It's just
00:38:33.040
that like the, the effort to suppress the conversation, I think it comes from, I think
00:38:38.120
it's, it's a, it's largely a fear-based response. Like there are a lot of people who are genuinely
00:38:42.600
anti-trans, there are a lot of, there's, you know, violence against them, threats of violence,
00:38:48.820
all of the laws that are being passed targeting, you know, the, the trans community. And even when
00:38:53.940
they're not passed, actually, just feeling like you are the constant target of, of people with
00:38:59.340
power. It kind of, I think that's partly what's driving this, you know, kind of the extreme nature
00:39:05.400
of this conversation. But talking to so many other people, it made me realize like there is
00:39:10.660
actually a lot of space for it, but it doesn't seem that way because of this very distorting
00:39:20.460
Yeah. And you've found some, you know, reasonable people who are quite critical of Rowling too. I
00:39:26.560
mean, so like I'm recalling the trans woman, Natalie Wynn, otherwise known as ContraPoints on
00:39:33.640
YouTube. And I was, when I was on Patreon, I used to support her channel, although I sort of lost
00:39:39.220
touch with it in recent years. So it was nice to hear her again, but she's very critical of
00:39:45.320
Rowling, but she's, you know, I don't know how much you spoke to her, but in terms of what made
00:39:51.260
it into your podcast, you know, she seems quite reasonable. So I wouldn't put her on the far
00:39:58.440
fringe of this activist culture that is showing these kind of cult-like and, you know, puritanical
00:40:05.840
traits. There's, it has all the, I mean, this is why the, you know, the witch-burning
00:40:11.740
analogy is so appropriate. I mean, this is, it really has a cult-like hysteria about it, where
00:40:18.900
there's the scapegoating of heretics, there are blasphemy tests, there's just, you know, there,
00:40:24.160
no one is far left enough to be immune to being, you know, castigated by the mob if they make one
00:40:32.120
wrong move. Maybe so Natalie Nguyen herself was attacked by the trans community for not
00:40:36.040
aligning with every one of its points of piety. It's somewhat mysterious that it has achieved
00:40:42.100
this level of cultural influence, given how fringe a phenomenon this is, right? I mean, this is the
00:40:49.680
very essence of a fringe issue, you know, whatever its actual political and ethical importance.
00:40:56.740
I'm not disputing that this is something worth paying attention to and that the rights of trans
00:41:02.160
people are worth safeguarding, etc. But how has this become the 20 megaton issue, which again is
00:41:11.720
sort of under the radar for, you get the sense that it's under the radar for much of the culture.
00:41:16.080
It's like, it almost requires that one be too online to know every, you know, permutation of what
00:41:22.180
we're talking about here. And yet, in terms of its actual influence at, you know, Fortune 500
00:41:27.660
companies and our universities and our science journals and every, every media company, I mean,
00:41:35.380
it's just, it has a truly an overwhelming influence now at HR departments everywhere.
00:41:41.680
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting. It obviously comes from, I should say obviously,
00:41:48.140
but from my sense, you know, people, it was very, it seemed very clearly, and I was one
00:41:53.760
of these people to whom it seemed very clear that, that trans rights, this was the next
00:41:59.100
frontier, right? In the, you know, LGBT activism, you know, same-sex marriage was decided, you
00:42:05.620
know, that the, the, the right in this country to same-sex marriage in, you know, 2015 came
00:42:10.340
down from the U.S. Supreme Court. And so this battle was won in a very real and important
00:42:15.660
way. And trans rights was the next frontier. And it's, it was not obvious to, I think,
00:42:21.980
to a lot of people that there could be any, a lot of people compare the trans rights movement
00:42:27.720
to the, you know, the gay rights movement, and they see any resistance to trans rights
00:42:33.340
as it must necessarily be the result of bigotry. And you, you hear Natalie Wynn in episode six,
00:42:41.720
you know, describing this dynamic where, you know, George W. Bush, when he was, you know,
00:42:47.320
describing why he was against same-sex marriage, you know, it's about defending marriage. Like,
00:42:51.320
we, we have to defend, and so likewise with trans rights, we have to defend women's spaces. Women
00:42:56.440
are at risk if we, if we don't defend these things. So, so I think it, it comes from this desire to
00:43:03.720
protect this, you know, vulnerable minority, which again, is a very good instinct. It's obviously also
00:43:11.160
part of our social, social nature. You know, we want to be part of a group and there's this appeal
00:43:16.500
and the desire of, you know, to be righteous. And yeah, it's like all of this stuff, like we talk
00:43:23.500
about this in episode three, how, you know, none of these ideas originated on Tumblr, but we had four
00:43:29.420
different people, two internet historians, Catherine D and Angela Nagel, as well as Helen Lewis, who is a
00:43:35.300
reporter at the Atlantic, and then also Natalie Wynn herself. These people who spent a lot of time on
00:43:39.860
Tumblr and, and saw how they migrated from Tumblr to Twitter, where every, you know, as Natalie put
00:43:48.720
it, like basically every journalist in the world, many of them are, are on Twitter and really caught
00:43:55.740
fire there. So it's no longer, it's like, you know, we're having this, this conversation on the,
00:43:59.920
you know, biggest public platform where many powerful people, and I want to say it's not the right word
00:44:05.400
exactly. I actually, let me pause for a second, because it's, I was about to say infiltrate, and
00:44:08.960
that sounds really, it's, that's not what I mean. But they really caught fire in these institutions
00:44:16.260
Yeah. That was a piece of internet history that I was completely unaware of, and it was fascinating.
00:44:21.000
I had no idea that Tumblr was the crucible in which all of these woke terms got annealed,
00:44:29.260
and refined, and made, made ready for export to the rest of culture. And then, so, you know,
00:44:36.240
microaggressions, and, and all the rest. Safe spaces, trigger warnings.
00:44:40.520
Yeah, all of it got sent into Twitter, where every journalist and politician was just waiting to have
00:44:47.060
their, their brains addled by this new orthodoxy. Before we go further, I mean, I think, you know,
00:44:54.500
it should go without saying, but the truth is, saying it is completely meaningless for the people
00:44:59.680
who are most activated by this ideology. You know, I, I'm completely convinced that the trans
00:45:09.180
phenomenon is real, which is to say that, you know, gender dysphoria is real, and we absolutely want to
00:45:18.280
protect the rights of, of people in that situation, uh, at whatever stage of life. And, you know,
00:45:25.280
and I'm completely convinced that, in certain cases, medical transition is the most compassionate
00:45:31.500
and rational thing for a person to, to do. You know, there's nothing about what I'm saying here,
00:45:38.240
or my, or explicitly or implicitly, that should be considered a denial of that fact, right? So that,
00:45:45.660
I mean, I just think we, we should have an ethical and political commitment to protecting the,
00:45:50.320
the, the, the rights of everybody. And we should acknowledge that this is a real phenomenon, which
00:45:56.720
would, you know, like homosexuality or, you know, other aspects of human difference and human
00:46:02.120
variation that, you know, we should just acknowledge and, and find some way of incorporating into a,
00:46:08.460
a tolerant society. And so that, I mean, that's, I certainly don't doubt that J.K. Rowling is also
00:46:15.060
committed to that. And it's fairly obvious when you hear her speak at length that she is,
00:46:20.120
but the question is, what, how do we navigate these, these odd collisions that seem to be zero
00:46:28.000
sum, at least in certain cases, between the rights of one beleaguered community and the rights of
00:46:35.920
Well, I was just going to say, it was really interesting to me to, as I was speaking with
00:46:41.140
many trans people to realize, and I mentioned this earlier, that, that they share, many of them
00:46:46.600
share the same concerns that Rowling does. So, I mean, when you hear in episode six, Natalie talks
00:46:52.120
about women's sports, you know, she has this question herself, like where, what is the line? Where is
00:46:57.040
the, and, and it's like the, the idea of simply denying that there is, there is any conflict or
00:47:06.340
that, that, that there, that there is a battle worth fighting here and calling people bigots for
00:47:11.940
having those concerns. I think, I think those tactics are, are understandable. And I, I think I
00:47:17.400
understand after, after all these conversations where they're coming from, but I don't think that
00:47:22.160
suppressing the conversation is the way forward because we've seen, you know, a, a, I would say,
00:47:28.420
a, a major backlash to trans rights, partly in response to the tactics that some activists have
00:47:35.640
Yeah. Yeah. And also in response to this corruption of language, which is fairly crazy making. I mean,
00:47:43.700
it's just, you know, when I look at the people who I've fallen out with over political issues in
00:47:49.760
recent years, I mean, the people who got captured by the right and by Trumpism and, and these people
00:47:55.380
who frankly have clearly lost their ethical compass in that they're now unable to pay attention to
00:48:01.080
anything other than the problem of, you know, wokeness for lack of a better term. The reason is, it is
00:48:08.000
things like, I think in one of your episodes, there's a headline that J.K. Rowling refers to, which
00:48:15.660
was, I believe, woman convicted of exposing her penis. The fact that we're, I mean, it really just
00:48:23.140
seems like the gaslighting of a whole society, right? It's just, if we're going to insist that a
00:48:29.600
biological male who's done absolutely nothing to transition is a woman simply because he calls
00:48:36.780
himself a woman, right? For the purposes of going into a prison, you know, or, or for the purposes of
00:48:41.980
going into a woman's changing room. And we're not going to dignify the concerns of women and girls
00:48:49.560
who are placed in, into that situation as anything other than, you know, their own closed-mindedness
00:48:56.660
and their own bigotry, right? It's like, it's just, this is going to drive people crazy for obvious
00:49:02.060
reasons. And it's going to make them single issue voters for obvious reasons. Just as a purely,
00:49:07.640
whatever you think the, the underlying ethics are, purely as a matter of, you know, practical
00:49:14.100
politics, it's just disastrously stupid to be insisting that we use language in this way.
00:49:22.120
So yeah, I mean, I just know people who I literally can't have relationships with anymore because
00:49:26.020
they've been driven so crazy by this kind of issue. And it's understandable. I mean, I, you know,
00:49:33.180
I, I'm not, you know, sharing their, their monomania happily, but this is a place where it's pretty
00:49:39.640
clear we need to hold the line. And if we can no longer use the term woman or girl in any straightforward
00:49:47.480
way, if we have, you know, if we have people insisting that you can't put a baby's biological
00:49:53.060
sex on its birth certificate, because that could be, you know, misgendering them, and that we need to
00:49:58.300
be open-minded as to whether we've had a boy or a girl until the, this child's, you know, seventh
00:50:03.660
birthday or whenever it is that they can be counted upon to know what sex they are. I mean, this is
00:50:08.960
just, just as an opportunity cost for a society. The fact that any time is being spent getting tied in
00:50:15.840
those particular knots is going to drive people crazy for, I think, for obvious reasons.
00:50:20.480
Well, I think it's the, again, it's, it's back to, is there, is there a time like, and, and if so,
00:50:28.100
when are they that biological sex is more important or should take precedence over gender? And I think
00:50:35.340
that those, those lines, I mean, it depends on the situation, right? And some instances it does,
00:50:41.020
it would be fine. I think I, I, and I don't, I should say a big part of the series, as you say,
00:50:46.240
like, it is not a defense of JK Rowling. It is an attempt to kind of lay out what has happened
00:50:51.960
so that people can have the conversation. We see this as the start of a conversation. We're not
00:50:57.180
trying to litigate all of the issues because that, that's not our job. I think it's trying to set it
00:51:02.780
up so that other people can have these conversations because the lines don't have to be, I think, so
00:51:08.220
black and white. It doesn't, it does appear in some, in some cases, I think you're right, that maybe it
00:51:13.220
is zero sum and decisions have to be made, but there's actually far more, I think, space for
00:51:20.340
conversation. Like there are some sports where, you know, sex doesn't matter as much. And in fact,
00:51:25.260
I listened in on an interview with Diana Nyad where she, um, who's a, oh God, I'm going to try to,
00:51:30.680
I'm going to try to gloss this incorrectly. She swam from Cuba to the coast of Florida. Um, so this kind
00:51:36.100
of very long distance swimming. And she said, you know, essentially the, the biological differences
00:51:40.400
between males and females, you know, kind of disappear at a certain length. And so all I'm
00:51:46.400
saying is that there, there are lines that can be drawn and things that can be done to accommodate,
00:51:51.580
you know, one of the things about sports could be, you know, you have a, instead of men and women,
00:51:56.740
it's females and then an open category. So anybody can, so it's something that doesn't, you know,
00:52:03.080
misgender people. Like I don't know what the right answers are on all of these things,
00:52:06.480
but they're conversations that, that need to happen. And that I think, I think there is space
00:52:11.580
for them. One of the things that, that was very compelling to me and that, that made me feel like
00:52:17.280
I should pursue this project was the realization that many gay people are kind of despairing about
00:52:26.480
the fact that for a long time, they were getting this, this criticism from the right, this shaming,
00:52:33.460
kind of endless shaming and being targeted by the right for their sexual orientation because they
00:52:40.120
are same-sex attracted. And there are, I don't want to say it's not all activists and it's not
00:52:46.140
all trans people at all, but there is a certain strain of activism that, you know, accuses gay
00:52:51.620
people of being genital fetishists, for instance, if they are same-sex attracted rather than same-gender
00:52:58.400
attracted. And, you know, talking to these gay people who feel despairing about the fact that,
00:53:04.180
you know, they spent decades fighting the right over their, over their right to be, you know,
00:53:10.060
proud in public who they are. And now it's coming from the left, people that they, they saw as allies.
00:53:17.600
And, and so it's, it's, there, there is a lot of, it's not just women whose rights,
00:53:22.760
who feel that their rights are, are at stake. And you can really go down a lot of rabbit holes. Like
00:53:28.360
all of the, think about just all of the places in society where sex matters. And it's, these
00:53:34.720
like very fundamental things, sex and dating and parenting.
00:53:39.320
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