Ep 423 | Feminists vs. Radical Gender Ideology | Guest: Meghan Murphy
Episode Stats
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Summary
Megan Murphy is a writer, podcaster, and activist who has been exiled from the feminist movement because of her views on gender identity and feminism. In this episode, we talk about her experience being kicked off of social media and why she believes that gender identity is not real.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone's having a wonderful day. I am so excited for
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you to listen to this conversation with Megan Murphy. She is a podcaster. She is a writer.
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She is an activist for women's rights. And she was, she has been kind of exiled because
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of her views on gender activism and quote, gender identity. And so we're going to talk
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all about that today. We're going to talk about the parts of feminism that she has started
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to question the parts of progressivism that she has started to question since she has
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kind of been pushed to the side by her former political allies and former fellow feminists.
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And so I'm really excited for you to just glean a lot of wisdom from her. And I think a lot
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of courage as well. She embodies a whole lot of courage and she's got some good advice
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for us at the end. So without further ado, here is Megan Murphy.
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Megan, thank you so much for joining me. I have been wanting to interview you for a very
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long time. Can you tell everyone who may not be familiar who you are and what you do?
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I'm Megan Murphy. Um, I, uh, ran, uh, well, I still run a feminist website called feminist
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current, um, out of Canada. Uh, I have a podcast and a YouTube show called the same drugs. Um,
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I'm probably most, maybe, maybe most well known for getting kicked off of Twitter for understanding
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the difference between men and women. So I don't know. Is that a good intro? I'm a writer. I write
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Yes, that is, that's a great introduction. I think that is probably where I, I, I heard of you first.
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That might be where a lot of people know your name from. I know you're probably tired of telling
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the story and like rehashing this over and over again, but for those who don't know, can you tell
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them why you got kicked off of Twitter? I don't know how many years ago it was now a couple of years
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ago. Yeah, it was at the end of 2018. Um, and I essentially was kicked off for, I mean, the,
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the funny thing is that I still don't actually know. I don't technically know what rule I broke
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because Twitter never told me like you just get one of those form responses that says you broke a
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rule for hateful conduct. Um, so, you know, essentially I was kicked off for speaking critically
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about gender identity ideology. So, you know, I refuse to pretend that men can become women.
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It's not possible. I refuse to be, to pretend that it's possible to change biological sex. Um,
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primarily what I was speaking out about were laws and policies that would, um, effectively,
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uh, you know, it would harm women and girls would, um, harm women's rights would put an end to women's
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sex-based rights. And I said, one of the tweets that I was suspended for was men aren't women though.
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Um, I wasn't attacking anyone. I was just engaging in a conversation. Uh, and the one that finally got me
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kicked off was when I referred to a male named Jonathan Yaniv, who is now calling himself Jessica Yaniv,
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who is predatorial, who's a grifter, who's an all around, uh, a bad person, a person who is trying
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to coerce female estheticians into waxing his balls. Um, to put it bluntly, um, I referred to him
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as he, and then I was permanently banned from the platform. And this is a man who looks like a man
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at the time he was still using his male pronouns in his social media accounts. Um, you know, he hadn't
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medically transitioned or anything like that. I don't think I even knew that he was, you know,
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trying to pass himself as a woman. And that was that I got a foreign response. I appealed,
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I got another foreign response. We, we tried to sue in California. Um, we lost that case. Uh,
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you know, like I, I, I still don't totally understand the situation because again, I've not,
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I don't, I don't know if there was a rule against, um, referring to males as he, if they didn't want to
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be referred to in that way. Uh, the, the day that I got kicked off, I, there was a, a news report,
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a news report, an article in pink news. I don't want to refer to pink news as like a legitimate
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news source. Um, yeah. Saying that Twitter had a new rule against dead naming and against misgendering.
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And that was, you know, like, I don't know, 15 minutes off after I got banned from Twitter. So
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the timing of that was very strange. So I'm just guessing that these are the rules that I broke.
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But I think that what it was is that I had like a really, I was gaining a really prominent voice and
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I was getting a lot of support in terms of my critiques of gender identity ideology and the
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impact on women and girls and somebody at Twitter or some people have connections at Twitter didn't
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like that. And they just decided to silence me or attempt to silence me.
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It seems like the pushback has been harder against people that trans activists would call
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TERFs like you, then people like me, I'm, you know, a Christian conservative who of course,
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um, is not in alignment with most of progressive ideology in, uh, including this idea that men can
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become women and, and vice versa and using different pronouns for people that does not
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correspond with their biological sex. Um, I'm sure I have said things very similar to what
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you've said on Twitter. I've certainly seen plenty of other conservative commentators say
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things like that on Twitter. Do you think that there is like more hatred and more animosity
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towards people that they consider TERFs, like radical feminists who are against transgender ideology
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than there is against people like me, like Christian conservatives who are against it?
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Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting because, you know, I do, I try to avoid making generalizations
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like, um, you know, Twitter hates women, or this is a misogynist bias, but I did note at the time
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and, you know, and men noted at the time too, that, you know, Ben Shapiro called me, we talked on the
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phone after this happened, he was trying to offer his support and he said, you know, like I, I tested
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this basically by tweeting almost the exact same thing that you did to see if I would get banned.
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And I didn't, you know, like I was targeted specifically because, you know, what I think
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that it is, is that the media and the trans activists and the, you know, progressive social
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justice warriors, whatever you want to call these groups of people, I think that they really want
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to, and have worked really hard to frame this debate as left versus right. So, you know, they want
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the, the public to believe and, um, policymakers to believe legislators, to believe that the only
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people who would ever oppose gender identity ideologies are these right-wing Christian conservatives
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and anybody who is a leftist, a progressive, i.e., you know, a good, a good liberal who supports
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rights and, and progress, those people all support, um, gender identity ideology and trans activism.
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And I was obviously not, I didn't fit within that narrative, you know, like I've been a feminist
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for a really long time. I was a long time leftist, you know, I've sort of now tried to move away from
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those labels because I don't, I don't want to, um, attach myself to identities that I feel are,
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are limiting. I want to be able to explore ideas as ideas rather than attach myself to specific
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ideologies. But for most of my life, I identified as a feminist and a leftist. And I was, you know,
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I supported socialist policies and socialist, the socialist ideology and, um, you know, radical
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feminist ideology. And here I was pushing back against gender identity ideology and against
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trans activism. And so I think that's a big reason why I specifically got silence and, and they'll still
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allow conservative commentators to say essentially the same things that I was saying. Um,
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you know, maybe there's a different analysis there, but the words are the same, right? Men aren't
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women. You can't change sex. Biological sex is real. Only women can become pregnant. Those kinds of
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like crazy ideas. Yeah. Yeah. So everyone listening and watching knows my perspective on it. I talk a lot
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about like the theology of the body, theology of sexuality. Um, and also we do talk about the legal and just
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practical ramifications of, for example, men being able to enter into women's spaces. We talk about
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it from a biological perspective, but I'm interested in hearing from your feminist perspective. Traditionally,
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I know you're trying to shy away from labels, but traditionally progressive perspective, why are you
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against this whole gender identity movement? Why do you refuse to believe that men can be women and vice
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process? Well, I mean, in terms of material reality, it simply isn't possible for a male to become
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female. Um, a man can adopt, let's say feminine stereotypes. So he can wear a dress, he can,
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you know, get plastic surgery so he can have, you know, breast implants. Um, he can, he can try to sort
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of appear more like a woman, but he can't literally change his cells. He can't literally become a
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female. Um, no male is ever going to have ovaries and, you know, be able to get pregnant and give birth.
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Um, but you know, my, my concerns initially were that I didn't see a way to have gender identity
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legislation and protect women's sex-based rights. So you can't have sex and gender identity. You can
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either have sex or you can have this thing where we all just identify as whatever we want. Um, you
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can't protect women's spaces. If you say that any male who announces that he's a woman can have access
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to those spaces. You know, you can't protect, uh, women, women and girls sports, for example,
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if a boy or a man can just say, I'm a woman. Now I get to compete alongside these girls or against
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these women. Um, you know, we know that there are men being transferred into women's prisons and
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that's really dangerous. And there's already been assaults and sexual harassment. Of course,
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like often these are violent men. Often these are men who are rapists. And because of this,
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these gender identity policies and laws, they're allowed to just say, I'm a woman, you have to
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let me, uh, be transferred to a women's prison. Same thing with change rooms, same thing with
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bathrooms, locker rooms, uh, transition houses, shelters. Um, and exactly what I predicted would
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happen, happen. You know, when I started speaking out against these laws, it was because Canada was
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introducing gender identity legislation, Bell C-16. And I was one of the only people in all of Canada
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who said something, and it was a struggle to say something, you know, I, I pitched all over the
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place to try to publish an article explaining my concerns in a very respectful, rational way. Um,
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and almost no one would publish it. Eventually I, I found somewhere to publish it, uh, the, uh,
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the national observer, which is a Canadian, you know, a smallish Canadian online news
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magazine, I suppose. And, you know, she was like, fine, I'll publish it, but you have to write it for
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free. I was like, sure, fine. I'm just trying to like, get the word out. But you know, it was me
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and then Jordan Peterson, basically who were the voices who were speaking out about this. And of
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course, Jordan Peterson became rich and famous and I became vilified and silence and censored. And I
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lost my book deal and I was banned from Twitter. So I don't know. It's like interesting also.
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Yeah. I mean, there does seem to be, like you said, a lot of misogyny in this, and I'm sure the
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people who are for trans activism, of course they wouldn't call themselves misogynists. Of course they
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would say that they're all for women's rights. They're for protecting girls, but they're never
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actually made to explain kind of the, uh, the dissonance that you just pointed out that you
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can't have sex and gender identity, or you can't have sex protection and gender identity
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production. They're actually mutually exclusive. No one is ever forced to actually explain how those
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two things, at least in their mind can exist. Have you seen any headway in that
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arena and like having these conversations and trying to actually reason with this ideology that
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just seems so incongruent in a million different ways?
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People who are attached to trans activism and to gender identity ideology won't engage with
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critiques. Um, you know, they consistently just resort to these, these mantras and these attacks.
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So either they just will repeat, you know, trans women are women endlessly. Um, or they'll say,
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you know, you'll be inclusive. Like they'll accuse you of being transphobic. No one will explain to me
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why this is a question that I've asked a number of times, why it's important for a man to be able to
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identify as a woman if a woman isn't a real thing. So, you know, when I've engaged with trans activists,
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usually what I start with is I just say, what's a woman. So if you're saying trans women are women,
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what's a woman, you know, what is it that you're identifying with? You're a man, you identify as a
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woman or trans woman. What is that thing? And nobody will answer me. Um, so I don't, I don't even
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understand why it's important. You know, why do you have to identify as a woman if you don't even
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know what that means. And if that's not a concrete material thing, like, like, why don't you just say,
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I want to be accepted as I am. I like dressing this way. I want my face to look more feminine.
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Like that's all fine. I mean, to a certain extent, like we can debate those things, but in as far as how
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people want to live their lives as individuals, personally, I'm not going to interfere with that.
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If you want to get cosmetic surgery, you can get cosmetic surgery. That's your right to do that.
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You can wear whatever you want. I don't care. You can wear makeup. But when you start creating laws
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and policies around these ideas and start trying to force people to say, you know, I identify as a
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woman, therefore you also have to acknowledge that I'm literally a woman and you have to accept that
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I'm female, then no, no, I'm not going to do that. First of all, I'm not going to lie. Like I'm not,
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I refuse to say something that's not true. And I know that that's not true. Um, I think that's a
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dangerous road to go down. Um, I think it's dangerous to start saying that words don't mean anything
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anymore. And a word is just subjective. Um, that material reality is just subjective that,
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you know, like if I feel like, you know, I feel like I'm black or I feel like I'm a man then,
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or I feel like whatever I'm indigenous, then you all have to accept that. Cause it's how I feel. I
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mean, that's crazy. And so, no, I mean, you know, people have tried to set up interviews, debates
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between me and trans activists and every single time. Um, or I should say, you know, 95% of the
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time I did, I did do one debate with a trans activist in Calgary a couple of years ago.
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Um, they can't get anyone to participate in the debate. They just won't do it. And I don't want
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to be like egotistical about it, but I'm like, I think that they won't engage because they know
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that they can't respond to the things that I'm saying. Like it's much easier for them to just say,
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Oh, Megan's hateful. Megan's a bigot. Megan's transphobic. Instead of actually engaging with me
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when everyone is watching and can see that I'm not hateful or bigoted and that the questions that
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I'm asking are reasonable and the things that I'm saying are reasonable and that they really,
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they really can't respond to these kinds of critiques. They can only repeat their mantras and
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vilify and silence and shut down. It reminds me a lot of critical race theory.
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And how critical race theory and all forms of critical theory, probably queer theory included,
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they're all self-certifying. So it is true because it's true. And if you argue against it,
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it's not because you have a legitimate point. It's because you're part of the problem.
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And for example, like if, um, a person who is black doesn't agree with some of the tenants of critical
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race theory, that for example, every single institution and interpersonal interaction is,
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it's characterized by racism in the United States. It's not because they just have a difference in
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opinion or even a different experience. It's because they've internalized whiteness. I mean,
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it's, it's the whole thing. It's like a Kafka trap. And I see that a lot with what you're talking about,
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that it's the same thing that if someone says, you know, you're crazy or you're a transphobe or you're
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a racist and you say, well, no, I'm not. And then they say, well, that's exactly what a crazy person or a
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transphobe or a racist would say. Um, and so there's like, there's no recourse, there's no
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argument, there's no debate. And it makes sense when you think about, okay, well, we've made truth,
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even biological truth, like this arbitrary that we can't even define something that we've been able
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to define for millennia, a man and a woman. Then of course, why would we expect people who hold those
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kind of beliefs to be able to have any kind of logical, logical reaction to it or logical stance
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on it? Um, but that really scares me. Like being in this post logic post truth world where we can't
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actually discuss anything. I, I just don't see that ending well. And I can't even say what the end
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result is. I hope it's like some kind of implosion to where it just breaks down. I don't know. What do
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you think? Well, yeah. And I mean, what happens is, you know, for example, if you're accused of being
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a racist and you say, no, I'm not a racist, I don't hold racist views, then the person accusing
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you, you know, especially if they, they hold the correct identity, if they identify as a person of
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color or whatever, we'll say, oh, well, you don't get to decide. Like I get to decide if you're a racist
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or not. And it's like, okay, I mean, then what is it like, you know, prove that I'm a racist, I guess.
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And it becomes this really slippery slope where they're like, well, you know, you essentially you
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use the wrong language or you challenge the wrong thing. You know, anyone who is anti-racist would
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support everything that black lives matter does, um, would, you know, hate the cops, um, whatever.
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It becomes all based in identity, but you know, political identity. And like you, you were alluding
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to if a black person doesn't support critical race theory or doesn't support black lives matter,
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or doesn't support all of the, you know, policies and ideas being pushed by black lives matter or
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whatever it is, then they're self hating or they're some kind of traitor. Um, and the same thing happens
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in all these activist groups, I think, you know, like it happens in feminism too. Um, I've sort of
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started to question a lot of, uh, feminist mantras and, you know, things that we're supposed to accept
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as true and not question in feminism, which has put me at odds with a lot of feminists. Unfortunately,
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um, people get really mad when they, when, when you question the ideas, the ideologies,
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the activism that they've attached themselves to for so long. Um, and I've never quite figured out
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why, but I, I agree with you that it's sort of, I think it is a dangerous road that we're going down.
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And I'm, I've been rereading 1984 over the past couple of weeks and it's quite terrifying considering,
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you know, the context of what's going on with COVID and all the shutdowns and restrictions
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and the loss of freedom and freedoms and rights there, but also in terms of what we're doing to
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our language and discourse. And, you know, we're, we're, we're arguing against, I'm, I'm not doing
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this personally, but a lot of people are arguing against free speech, um, because they believe that
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free speech is harmful, you know, essentially free speech that they don't agree with is harmful.
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So for me to ask these questions about transgenderism, about gender identity ideology,
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supposedly that's harmful and dangerous and even violent, despite the fact that, um, I'm not violent
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and I don't think I'm dangerous and I'm not trying to harm anyone. In fact, I'm trying to protect
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women and girls, which, you know, these females are half of the population. So I would consider that
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an important project. Um, but, uh, you know, I, and it's, it's ironic because I've, I'm the one who's
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been threatened over and over and over and over again by trans activists with death, with rape,
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you know, every time we've held an event, there's death threats. There was a bomb threat at our event
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in Seattle, which I think was the last event that I participated in on this live event before the,
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the shutdowns, you know, and it's really scary. Like I was, I was really scared at that event in
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Seattle, which was at the Seattle public library, because they wouldn't let us hire private security.
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And I always have private security with me when I do these events. Um, and they wouldn't let us.
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And I just thought, you know, what if somebody shoots me? Like I just, a lot of these people are
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really kind of mentally unstable. I'm not saying all trans identified people are all mentally unstable,
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but these kinds of activists are really quite unhinged. You know, it's unhinged to threaten
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someone with death because they want to have a conversation about women's rights and you don't
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like what they have to say. Like these people are not behaving in rational ways. And yet, you know,
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we're the ones being accused of being dangerous, um, or of having a minority of you. I mean,
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that's the other crazy thing is it's like, they try so hard to paint us as this minority of like
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radical feminists who have this crazy belief that only women can give birth. But like,
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these are just basic views that everyone in the world holds, except for a tiny minority of people.
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Like I don't even believe that most trans activists. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't even,
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I don't even believe that everybody who says like trans women or women literally believe that a man
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can become a female. Like that's a, that's a crazy thing to believe. Everyone knows that that's not
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possible. Like you'd have to be really, I'm not trying to be mean, but you'd have to be seriously
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delusional to not understand that there's a difference between male and female bodies.
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I think some people are delusional. And I sometimes wonder if that's the point. Like
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you talked about nine, 1984, like limiting the scope of consciousness and critical thought that
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people can have by limiting the language that just seems to be something that's happening. And of
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course, controlling the schools and like what kids can learn. But I saw some stupid two tweets the
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other day about how we shouldn't call it breastfeeding anymore. We should call it chest feeding,
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which I'm, I'm very confused, like about who is being accepted in that way. Because if a biological
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woman is having, if a woman is having a baby, and she has breasts to be able to breastfeed,
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why would it be wrong to say that she has breasts? I don't understand. I don't understand the whole
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thing. But it does seem to be just like creating this cumbersome burden on our language,
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while at the same time limiting our scope of consciousness. So like in 1984, instead of saying
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excellent, they say like double plus good, which is ridiculous and longer and more cumbersome. But at
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the same time, it limits your scope of reality, like it limits your scope of language, because you just
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keep on recycling words. And that's what this reminds me of, like lactating people or gestators,
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or like chest feeding and things like that. It's limiting our understanding of reality.
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And so yes, I do think that there are some people that are delusional. I said something one time about
00:26:42.920
like, women needing the right to be able to defend ourselves, because men are inherently stronger. And
00:26:49.800
we just don't have the same, we don't have the same ability to fend off a predator or something.
00:26:54.700
And I had a woman tell me who I'm sure was not dumb. I mean, but she said that's internalized
00:27:00.360
misogyny that you think that a woman isn't able to physically fight off a man. And I'm like,
00:27:06.100
Oh, my God, I don't, I don't know how to reason with that. I don't I don't know how to reason with
00:27:10.880
it. I don't know how to talk to a person like that.
00:27:14.160
I mean, it's sort of that sort of like, equality gone nuts, right? Like, it's like,
00:27:20.220
we're not literally trying to be equal to men as in the same, we just want equal rights. And we want
00:27:31.040
autonomy and freedom and the ability to live our lives autonomously and independently and with
00:27:36.320
dignity. But anyway, I mean, yeah, like, I think it's, it's that people really, it's like people have
00:27:45.160
been brainwashed, you know, they've been brainwashed by activism and progressivism. And,
00:27:53.020
you know, it's people are really shocked when you challenge these mantras that they've seen all of
00:28:00.380
their friends say, and that they've seen shared on Twitter and Facebook over and over and over.
00:28:05.520
It's in their feeds constantly. So they just believe it to be true and right. And if you start asking
00:28:10.620
questions, they're just like, it's like they're, you know, brain short circuits or something.
00:28:16.920
And they've been told that anybody who questions these things, again, is like bad, is right wing is,
00:28:24.460
you know, far right, or alt right, or whatever it is that you want to people decide to label so that
00:28:31.940
you dismiss them and you don't listen to them and you don't engage with respect. It happens online,
00:28:37.500
it happens in terms of my, you know, I guess my political or ex political allies with my friends,
00:28:46.340
you know, just to even say, like, you know, I've said things like, you know, these people are
00:28:54.100
struggling with like a mental condition or mental illness. And, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not
00:29:00.780
trying to be mean. But if you're a man, and you literally believe that you're a woman,
00:29:04.800
then that's a form of mental illness. Like, I don't know how else to get around that you're not
00:29:13.400
operating in reality. And it doesn't mean that we should hate those people or vilify them. But I
00:29:22.020
don't know why we're creating laws and policies around these kinds of ridiculous delusions that
00:29:29.080
again, only a tiny minority of people actually believe
00:29:33.740
at the expense of women at the expense of a much larger population, by the way, like, it doesn't
00:29:42.320
matter that I don't want my daughter to be sharing a bathroom with a man or with a boy doesn't matter
00:29:50.200
that I want my daughters to be able to, you know, compete against other girls, because it's fair,
00:29:58.020
that doesn't matter that I want that, or they might want that. Or it doesn't matter that I'm
00:30:02.040
offended as someone who has been pregnant, and who has breastfed that I'm offended by the language
00:30:09.020
of chest feeding and gestators, like it's so crude, and rude, like I find that really offensive.
00:30:14.980
But my offense doesn't matter. The offense of the majority of people, the majority of women just
00:30:22.540
doesn't seem to matter. I guess it's just the intersectionality scale. I don't know. I don't
00:30:27.520
have enough oppression points for my offense to matter. I don't really know. I don't know.
00:30:35.380
Yeah, exactly. It is. It's, it's, we're creating laws and policies to address a tiny minority of people
00:30:43.120
at the expense of women and girls who are half of the population and who remain a very vulnerable
00:30:50.180
half of the population. Like it is true that women can't generally fend off men, you know, like
00:30:56.280
there might be a few anomalies here and there, like very strong women and weak men, so on and so forth.
00:31:03.860
But like, in general, like, you know, like, I box, I lift weights, I work out, there's I don't think
00:31:11.780
there's any man that I could physically fight off. It's just our bodies are different. And we are
00:31:18.260
vulnerable to men and male violence. And it seems crazy to me that we now can't even acknowledge
00:31:23.580
that like the fact that you don't want your daughter in a change room with a man. I don't even why should
00:31:31.320
we have to debate that, you know, is that not obviously inappropriate? And, you know, the sports,
00:31:39.860
the debate around women's sports and the conversation around, you know, trans identified people in sports,
00:31:46.460
which is really only a conversation about males competing against females, like there's not
00:31:51.540
swaths of like, trans men, so females who identify as men who are wanting to compete against other men,
00:31:58.740
because why would you? There's no advantage. Yeah, exactly. There's a big advantage if you're a male
00:32:06.200
in being able to compete with and against women and girls. But I mean, that's, that's, that's been a
00:32:12.960
good conversation, actually, because a lot of people who aren't politicized, politicized, who weren't
00:32:19.140
engaged in this debate prior will look at this situation and say, wait, what, like, that's a guy,
00:32:26.440
like, look how he's so much bigger and taller than all these women. Like, this isn't fair. You know, people
00:32:33.240
just sort of inherently know, like, this isn't fair. This is okay, this is a bit much like, it's one thing
00:32:39.000
if you're like, you want us to call you like Susie or whatever, sure, fine, who cares? Like, a lot of a lot of
00:32:46.440
feminists, well, you know, the kinds of feminists who are pushing back against gender identity, ideology,
00:32:52.080
not the other kind, saw where this was going early on. And we're trying to warn people, you know, women like me,
00:33:00.880
women like Jermaine Greer, women like Julie Bintzel. And we're super vilified over it. And like I said, you know,
00:33:10.560
exactly what I predicted would happen is happening. And it's just maddening, because, and I'll see on
00:33:18.720
Twitter, I'll see like conservative men be like, where are the feminists on this? And then like,
00:33:25.200
ban from Twitter. Like, I'm here. Yeah, I know. You're like, I'm here. I just did not give you a platform,
00:33:31.360
or at least. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm frustrated to that less that more people didn't speak out way
00:33:39.460
back when. So I sort of get it. But I'm also like, you know, like, I really was punished and
00:33:46.840
silenced in a lot of ways for, for saying all this stuff a few years ago. And, and yeah, I'm still
00:33:56.260
struggling with that. I know that, you know, people are like, Oh, it's just Twitter, who cares? Like,
00:34:01.020
it's just social media to use another social media platform. But like, I work for myself,
00:34:05.380
like, I'm, and I'm independent, I've always been independent. And I'm independent intentionally,
00:34:11.120
because I want the freedom to tell the truth and to say what I actually think, like, I don't want to
00:34:17.200
have to deal with worrying about being fired, or canceled. But at the same time, you know, like,
00:34:25.180
because I'm independent, I'm totally dependent on platforms like Twitter. Yeah,
00:34:30.860
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, mostly Twitter, like, if you're a journalist or a writer, Twitter is the
00:34:36.340
platform that you use. And that was the primary platform that I was using to speak to my audience
00:34:40.600
and to connect with interviewees. And it's just it's made my work a lot harder, essentially.
00:34:49.220
And it does sort of in some ways erase you from the public conversation. You know, I think if you're
00:34:54.740
not you're not on there, people kind of forget about you. And if you don't have institutional
00:34:59.560
backing, you know, like, if you're not working for some big, like publication or channel or something
00:35:08.080
like that, it's it actually has a really big impact. It's it's not nothing. It's a, it's a good
00:35:15.580
Yeah, and of course, they know that. And that's exactly why they kind of exact the powers that they
00:35:32.900
You mentioned a few minutes ago, how there are parts of feminism, you still consider yourself a
00:35:39.120
feminist, I'm, I assume. But there are parts of feminism that you have started to question and
00:35:46.320
wonder why all feminists have accepted? What are some of those things that you've kind of started to
00:35:55.140
Well, I mean, I do, I am a feminist. So I have to say, yes, I consider myself a feminist, because I am,
00:36:03.660
you know, I advocate for women's rights, I advocate against male violence against women and sexism and
00:36:11.240
sexist practices. But like I said, I just, I don't, I don't want to attach myself to labels that mean
00:36:19.140
that people can eject me from that label or category or identity or whatever. So, you know,
00:36:28.420
people will say like, well, if you're a feminist, you, you have to be on the left. Like, if you're a
00:36:34.780
feminist, you have to be intersectional. If you're a feminist, you have to, you know, believe all women
00:36:42.380
or whatever it is. And it's like, well, I don't, I'm not saying that I don't support these things,
00:36:48.380
but I'm saying that I want to assess situations and ideas independently.
00:36:55.100
Um, and I don't want to be bullied into supporting a certain narrative or mantra just because I say
00:37:05.900
I'm a feminist. So now I sort of am more inclined to just say, I advocate for women's rights. Um,
00:37:12.300
and I feel like that's more specific. That's what I'm doing. I don't want to do, I don't want to do
00:37:17.480
ideology. I want to support women's rights and women's autonomy and freedom. Um, and again,
00:37:24.800
fight against violence against women and girls, but you know, I've, I've, I've found myself at odds
00:37:32.180
with feminists who say, you know, well, if you're a feminist, you have to support Biden, or if you're
00:37:39.160
a feminist, you have to support black lives matter, or you have to be intersectional, whatever,
00:37:46.800
like whatever that even means, you know, like if you, if you talk to conservatives or right-wing
00:37:52.620
people or people that we've deemed anti-feminist or libertarians or whatever, if you talk to somebody
00:37:58.320
who doesn't fit, you know, our politics exactly, who isn't on the left, then you can't be a feminist.
00:38:05.460
And it's like, well, then I don't want to do this anymore. Like this isn't, I want to talk to everybody
00:38:10.960
that I can talk to. You know, I want to know as much as I can. I don't want to limit my scope of
00:38:16.720
knowledge. Um, I'm engaged in critical thinking. That's what I do as a writer. Um, and, and I want
00:38:26.180
the truth, even if the truth doesn't fit within this political narrative. So I would just rather
00:38:32.620
not attach myself to these ideas. I don't want to attach myself to the left anymore. I hate what the
00:38:38.020
left is doing. I think it's wrong. Um, it doesn't mean that I'm, I reject everything that the left
00:38:44.740
believes, you know, like as far as economic policy goes, I'm, I'm, you know, probably pretty left.
00:38:51.620
So, you know, I still support universal healthcare and universal daycare. Um, and I, but you know,
00:39:01.540
the, the ideas that the left are pushing are not ideas that I support. And I hate that they won't
00:39:07.000
engage in debate in good faith. And I hate that they, they hate people who are different than them.
00:39:13.380
Um, like, I don't think that that's a healthy way to build society. Like I really, I like talking to
00:39:19.560
people who are different than me. It's a good way to learn about people and to build empathy.
00:39:24.680
And instead what the left is doing is saying anyone who disagrees, anyone who's different is bad and
00:39:31.740
wrong. And I think that's bigoted. It is bigoted. You know, that's what bigotry is. Um, and you know,
00:39:40.100
in feminism, you know, I, I, I found myself at odds with feminists because a man will get accused of
00:39:48.220
something and I'm sort of just supposed to go along with it and vilify him and cancel him no matter what,
00:40:00.760
like, even if I don't have any information about what happened, even if I'm, you know,
00:40:07.300
questioning of the narrative. And for the most part, you know, I don't like, just to be clear,
00:40:14.200
it's like, you know, most women who say I've been raped or I've been sexually assaulted are not lying.
00:40:20.220
There's not like a lot of women who have a lot to benefit from lying about rape and sexual assault.
00:40:26.420
But at the same time, I have found myself in, in the position of just wanting to ask questions,
00:40:31.880
wanting to know more, wanting to have critical conversations. Like, I don't, I don't like this
00:40:37.160
culture that we live in, where if one person says one thing about another person, you have to believe
00:40:43.360
them because of their identity. And that person should automatically be canceled and vilified and
00:40:49.180
lose their whole life and livelihood. That's not what I'm about. And that is what a lot of feminists
00:40:55.620
are about. And, you know, feminists have really failed to support free speech and have been very
00:41:03.640
censorious themselves. So, and I think that's so hypocritical and contradictory and wrong. Like I,
00:41:12.700
I am a free speech absolutist. Um, I'm not going to demand that I be allowed to have free speech,
00:41:19.860
but then say, Oh, but you can't because your speech is bad. Like lots of people think my speech is bad.
00:41:26.540
That's, you know, if we, if we decide that we only support the speech of people that we like or agree
00:41:32.480
with, then we don't have free speech for anyone. Then we're all vulnerable to being censored. And so
00:41:38.540
many feminists don't really seem to get that. And I just, I find it frustrating. You know, I can't, um,
00:41:45.260
I can't, I can't support that. Yeah. I, you know, I've always kind of seen all of that.
00:41:53.340
What you just explained is just kind of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. Okay. How can they say,
00:41:58.340
for example, like someone like you, you're inciting violence or you're hurting people,
00:42:02.820
or you're a violent person just for saying something when they are actually inciting violence against you
00:42:08.580
or threatening you or whatever it is. Um, you know, how can they say someone like me is dangerous that
00:42:14.700
I shouldn't have free speech that I shouldn't have a platform, but they don't want to think
00:42:19.640
about if the shoe was on the other foot or if that standard was applied to speech that they do
00:42:24.540
like or speech that they said. But then I realized that it actually is a consistent philosophy, not
00:42:29.960
of everyone on the left, but an increasing number of kind of rabid, progressive, this kind of, um,
00:42:37.020
repressive tolerance, this idea that really, in order to have a tolerant society, you have to be
00:42:42.500
fiercely, uh, against what you see as intolerance. So transphobia, homophobia, racism, again,
00:42:50.820
their definitions of these things. And so violence is justified. Deplatform and silencing is all
00:42:57.860
justified because if you think that your version of a future utopia of, you know, that you think that
00:43:04.600
your vision for the future is the only way to true justice and true equality and true equity and all of
00:43:11.800
that, then of course you're going to take out any impediments. You're going to take out anyone that
00:43:16.580
you see as a, as a barrier to that, because you believe like you're storming the beaches of Omaha,
00:43:24.200
taking down Nazis. Like you think that you are some kind of warrior and hero. So of course you're going
00:43:31.280
to justify violence, but you're not going to like it when the so-called Nazi does it. And I,
00:43:36.340
I don't know how to necessarily pull people out of that, but I just keep telling, like, whenever I see
00:43:42.620
this, you know, another person being canceled for something stupid, voting for Trump or something
00:43:48.520
like that, what I want those people to realize is like, you are the fascist, like you're the fascist,
00:43:54.580
you are the fascist. And I'm just, I'm like, hopefully I can just say that enough. At least it'll get
00:43:59.600
through to like some people that the people that are going around calling everyone Nazis,
00:44:05.060
they're the fascists. Like we've seen this behavior throughout history. This isn't new.
00:44:11.600
Exactly. I mean, I'm just like, do people not even bother like Googling the words that they're using?
00:44:18.120
Like, I just want to be like, look up that word fascism and see what it means before you start
00:44:23.480
tossing it around in the way that you are because you're wrong. Um, and it's, I mean, yeah, I, I don't
00:44:32.780
know. And, you know, crack a history book, like people, people are repeating history in a really
00:44:39.020
dangerous way and they don't realize that they're doing it. And they believe very strongly that they're
00:44:44.260
on the right side of history and they're not, they're on the wrong side of history. Um, and I, I mean,
00:44:52.020
I, I ended up on the wrong side of that, that debate around voting for Trump versus for Biden
00:45:01.940
too. Um, because I said essentially like, you don't, a woman doesn't have to vote for Biden.
00:45:09.680
She's not kicked out of feminism because she votes for Trump or votes for anyone else besides Biden.
00:45:15.480
And I was vilified just for saying that, like, I'm not voting. I'm, I live in Canada. I didn't vote
00:45:23.360
in the American election, but like, I totally understand why people voted for Trump. And it's
00:45:29.320
not because I love Trump. I think Trump is an and a moron. Like I do, but I, that's not, that's not the
00:45:37.860
only reason that people make decisions around who to vote for. Like these are complicated issues.
00:45:43.820
And there was a ton of things that I found really scary about Joe Biden, not just that he was going
00:45:50.800
to erase women's sex-based rights, which he did immediately as he promised he would, but, you
00:45:56.500
know, he's in bed with big tech, you know, like this is, you know, I think that, um, social media,
00:46:05.720
the, you know, these monopolies are really scary and dangerous. You know, we're essentially being,
00:46:11.520
everything that we do is being monitored. Um, they're dictating our speech and our access to
00:46:17.960
information and to news. And you, you want women to just blindly vote for a man who's going to double
00:46:29.900
down on that stuff and, and support these companies and support these monopolies and support,
00:46:35.260
um, you know, censoring of news and information that doesn't fit the, the progressive narrative
00:46:43.340
or the preferred narrative in terms of people who are Democrats or whatever. Like, it's just,
00:46:50.900
it's not that simple. And the fact that so many feminists would not engage in this conversation
00:47:01.580
and, and in good, you know, in good faith. And so labeled me right wing or racist or white
00:47:08.300
supremacist or a Trump supporter just for saying this, um, you know, this is not so complicated.
00:47:14.540
Maybe you should go talk to some Trump supporters and try to understand why they support him because
00:47:20.580
it's not all irrational. You know, maybe some, some people irrationally support Trump cause they're
00:47:27.580
rabid racist or whatever, but I don't believe that most people do. Um, there's lots of good reasons
00:47:34.340
to reject the Democrats. Um, I hate the Democrats. I, there's no perfect answer here, but you know,
00:47:44.340
in Canada, there's, um, there's no party that I support at this point, but I just, that kind of
00:47:52.200
binary thinking and that the, the enthusiasm with which these people who believe themselves to be
00:48:00.100
so progressive and to be in the right and to be building this idealistic, better, more just world,
00:48:06.620
but are so eager to hate and vilify and shut down and are unwilling to try to understand or empathize
00:48:14.720
with other human beings. Like I, I, I just, it makes me so angry and scared about our future. So
00:48:24.380
no, I'm not going to align myself with people who behave in that way. That's not how I choose to
00:48:30.280
behave. That's not the kind of people that I want to be around. And I think these people are scary
00:48:35.720
and dangerous, like more dangerous than Trump. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously I agree with
00:48:44.280
you and most people listening to this and watching this are going to agree with you too. There's going
00:48:48.400
to be some people who listen to or watch this conversation. And it's funny actually how people
00:48:53.360
have called me a turf because I'm not a radical feminist and no one would have ever called me a
00:48:59.700
radical feminist, but it's, you know, like we've talked about, we're in this post-logic world and all we
00:49:04.420
want to do is categorize people and villainize them. So if a turf is the worst thing you can be,
00:49:10.160
then I'll be that. If we're a right-wing Christian fundamentalist is the worst thing that you can be,
00:49:15.040
then Megan Murphy will be that, even though that doesn't describe you. Um, and so I think a lot of
00:49:21.240
people, you know, they're fearful of that. They're fearful of being canceled. They're fearful of being
00:49:26.000
called a bigot. Um, can you speak to those people? Cause I, I do think the vast majority of people
00:49:31.720
agree with you agree with us on this issue when it gets down to it, protecting women and girls.
00:49:36.640
I really do think it makes up the majority of people, whether they say so or not, some people
00:49:42.520
might be manipulated or tricked by the euphemisms of trans rights or human rights. They hear that
00:49:47.760
and they say, well, yeah, I believe in human rights. Yeah. I believe that transgender people are
00:49:51.120
people that should have rights. Um, but when it gets down to it, when it gets down to what it looks like
00:49:56.980
for women and girls, I think most people do agree with us. Can you give some advice or some
00:50:03.280
encouragement for young women who want to start speaking up and talking about this? Or maybe,
00:50:08.300
you know, I've talked to people and their nursing program, they're forced to put like their pronouns
00:50:12.380
on their name tag or like labor and delivery nurses. I hear from telling me that they have to ask their
00:50:18.740
pregnant patients who are in labor, what their gender identity is or what sex they were born with,
00:50:24.740
which is crazy. Um, people who are in school, they're hearing this stuff for their friends
00:50:30.120
or even their church. They're starting to push this kind of gender identity nonsense. Um, and people
00:50:35.980
just want to know like, what do I do? How do I speak up? Where do I get the courage to do that? Can
00:50:41.180
you give people some, some encouragement? Yeah. I mean, the reality is that if we are going to
00:50:50.120
combat any of this, the gender identity stuff, the cancel culture stuff, um, the polarization stuff,
00:50:59.460
we do all need to start speaking out. Um, and when you speak up, it gives other people courage. You
00:51:07.820
know, when they see other people talking about the things they've been questioning in their own minds,
00:51:13.740
I'm sure, you know, you probably get emails and messages from people like this, but I get
00:51:18.700
messages all the time from people being like, Oh my God, I thought I was going crazy. Like,
00:51:24.360
thank you so much for saying these things. It makes me feel sane. Like I thought I was the only one. I
00:51:29.140
feel like everyone I know thinks this thing and it didn't make any sense to me. And now I know that
00:51:35.400
it's sort of okay to say this and okay to talk about these things. And there's, there's lots of
00:51:40.580
different ways that you can push back. Like you don't need to get on YouTube. You don't need to,
00:51:46.500
you know, publish some big statement on Facebook. You know, you can go talk to your MP, your political
00:51:52.220
representative, you know, like you should definitely, if you're a parent, you should be talking to like,
00:51:58.520
um, the administrators, uh, teachers. Like, I think that a lot of people just think,
00:52:04.800
Oh, well, this is how things are now. We just have to go along with it. And so that,
00:52:09.720
so I do think that it's helpful if you sit down with say like your kid's teacher or the principal
00:52:15.780
or whatever, and be like, you know, like I have really serious concerns about this. You know,
00:52:21.640
you have a right to speak to these people about your concerns. They're having a major impact on
00:52:27.520
your kid's life. You absolutely have a right to set up a meeting with your political representative,
00:52:33.020
with your MP or MLA in Canada. Um, and to, to talk about, you know, I just, I feel like we need to
00:52:43.460
normalize the fact that people have concerns again, like we can't, we can't accept this narrative where
00:52:51.960
we're this minority, we're a majority. And the only way that they're going to understand that we're my
00:52:57.040
majority is by speaking out. So, you know, however you can do it, whether if it's on social media,
00:53:03.280
great. If it's writing a letter, great. It's making a phone call, great. Setting up a meeting,
00:53:08.100
great. Talking to your friends, great. But you, you gotta do something. I mean, and, and we,
00:53:13.940
we do need, we need more voices and we need more people and we do just have to be brave and it is
00:53:21.640
scary and it can be dangerous. And people do suffer consequences. Sometimes, unfortunately,
00:53:26.960
I know women who've lost their job. Um, it's hard, but that's how it goes. Like it's, it's hard and,
00:53:35.460
and doing the right thing is hard and telling the truth is hard. And we just all need to be
00:53:41.320
braver and we need to support one another in this, right? Like we can't leave the, the lone woman out
00:53:47.880
there stranded, like, and, and, you know, vilified and targeted as this like crate. Oh, it's only Megan
00:53:55.860
Murphy. She's the only one in Canada who thinks that, you know, women are, are female. Like,
00:54:02.880
right. Like, yeah, no, like what she's saying is true and reasonable. She's not, she's that bad or
00:54:09.580
nuts. Yeah. I think there's so much power. And we've talked about this on this podcast before,
00:54:15.780
when you see someone being unfairly maligned, whether or not you agree with everything they
00:54:21.260
say, or whether or not, you know, them personally, but say it's because they voted for Trump or say
00:54:26.520
it's because they believe that men are men and women are women. When you see them being canceled
00:54:31.460
or their character being slandered, there's a lot of power and you raising your hand amongst very
00:54:38.400
scared people and saying, I agree with that. Or even if you don't agree, it's okay that they think
00:54:44.480
that. Like that's okay. There's a lot of power in sharing the arrows of your friends or the people
00:54:53.220
that you align with on certain issues. Or even if the only commonality that you have with someone
00:54:58.540
is that you care about free speech, but say you disagree on everything else, but you just,
00:55:02.920
you disagree on the freedom to dialogue, like standing up for that person. Like you said,
00:55:08.280
courage begets courage. It adds a lot and it's treating people how you would want to be treated.
00:55:13.480
Like if you were unfairly maligned for something because you had an unpopular opinion, wouldn't
00:55:18.400
you want people to come to your defense and say, what you're saying about her being a racist or a
00:55:23.480
terrible person or whatever it is, just, is it true? Wouldn't you want that? I would want that.
00:55:29.780
And so I do think that we have to be more courageous in, in helping each other in that way and sharing the
00:55:35.900
arrows and sharing the heat that comes and realizing like we kind of are in, not to be,
00:55:41.220
not to exaggerate or to, you know, be hyperbolic or mushy or anything, but it is a historic moment.
00:55:48.000
I do think that generations are going to look back and, and wonder like, what the heck did people do?
00:55:53.160
Like, was there anyone who disagreed with this? Was there anyone who stood up against this? And you
00:55:58.320
hope that one day people see the insanity of it and that they look back to conversations,
00:56:02.660
maybe like this one and say, okay, there were actually people who cared. There were people
00:56:08.540
who said something about this lunacy. I think that's the hope and maybe the optimism, even if
00:56:13.960
it's like a, a tepid optimism that people can have. Do you agree?
00:56:20.760
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, yeah, people are going to have to, you know, we may not
00:56:26.120
win this fight, but, but people are going to have to look back and say, you know, like people stood up
00:56:34.640
and pushed back. And I, I agree with you that, you know, like I've stood up for people that I don't
00:56:42.040
agree with, you know, maybe I didn't like what they did. Maybe I didn't like what they said, but I've
00:56:47.120
still stood up and said, you know, like this person doesn't deserve to be treated in this way. This
00:56:53.240
person doesn't deserve to be fired or canceled or vilified. They're not a terrible person. Um,
00:56:59.980
and it sort of offers other people the freedom to do the same, to say, oh, it's, it's, it's possible
00:57:06.320
to stand up for Megan or whoever it is. I mean, there's, there's so many people who've been subjected
00:57:14.200
to cancel culture over the past couple of years. And again, like it's, it's important and you
00:57:23.060
should think about, I mean, you shouldn't, you shouldn't only be making these choices
00:57:27.500
out of self-interest. Like, oh, what if this happens to me? You should just have ethics and
00:57:33.120
you should stand up for what's right and stand up when something wrong happens, but you should think
00:57:38.920
like, oh, well, what would I want people to do if I were in this situation? Anyone could be in this
00:57:44.200
situation. You never know when you're going to find yourself on the wrong side of the political
00:57:49.620
debate or, or the cultural conversation. Um, it can change in a moment. And would you want people
00:57:57.980
to hear what you have to say and treat you with respect and empathy? Or would you want them to all,
00:58:04.880
you know, unfriend you and stop speaking to you and accuse you of being an awful person and a hateful
00:58:12.080
bigot who should be murdered because like they said the wrong thing on Twitter. Um, it's just not,
00:58:19.000
it's just not a good way to engage with other human beings also. And I, you know, think about
00:58:24.140
like, how would this conversation go if we were just one-on-one, if we were having this conversation
00:58:29.500
on person and nobody was watching and I wasn't virtue signaling my politics to all my friends,
00:58:34.660
like how would you engage with this person? Probably in like a pretty decent, humane way.
00:58:40.760
Um, we've created this culture where we dehumanize one another and, and that's scary. You know,
00:58:48.240
when you start dehumanizing people, it just, it makes it much easier to hate them, to be,
00:58:55.200
to be violent towards them, um, to be cruel. Um, so I don't know, we really need to, we really need
00:59:02.900
to start treating people with, I don't, you know, I don't want to say kindness because it ends up being
00:59:08.960
like, Oh, be nice. And it's like, I don't think you have to be nice all the time. Like that's sort
00:59:13.080
of like, I don't know. I'm not nice all the time, but at least treat people like they're complex
00:59:19.560
humans and they're not these one dimensional figures. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Can you tell people
00:59:27.860
how they can support you? They can't follow you on Twitter, but that's okay. They can follow you on
00:59:32.040
Instagram for now and they can listen to your podcast, right? Can you tell everyone where to find you?
00:59:37.040
Yeah. So I have a public Instagram account at Megan Emily Murphy. I have a public Facebook page,
00:59:47.360
Megan Murphy. Um, my podcast is the same drugs. You can find me on YouTube. Um, I do a lot of
00:59:55.300
interviews there. I have a Patreon to support my, um, YouTube channel and podcasts. So if you want to
01:00:03.640
support me there, I really appreciate that. Uh, I publish interviews there and some, some writing
01:00:10.260
there as well, but also, you know, just as if you feel like supporting my work or whatever,
01:00:16.320
that's awesome. I really appreciate it. All right. Well, we'll put the links to that,
01:00:21.600
including your Patreon in the description of this podcast. So people can just look there either on
01:00:27.360
YouTube or wherever you're listening and you can click and you can support Megan. I really
01:00:31.680
encourage people to do that. You're a good follow up and following you for a long time. And I'm glad
01:00:35.860
that we finally talked. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Um, I know people are
01:00:41.560
really going to be encouraged by the conversation. Thank you so much for having me. I really, I really
01:00:48.420
appreciate your reaching out and it was really nice to talk with you. I really enjoyed this conversation
01:00:53.700
and I'm really glad that we've connected. For sure. Thank you.