J.K. Rowling’s Spiral into Madness (with ContraPoints)

From “sex is real” to Holocaust denial — if it happened to the wizard lady, it can happen to you.

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Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit

Fruity, the show where we think that you

should never live in the closet, Harry,

even if the woman who created you changes
her mind.

If you would like to support the show

or perhaps want a little bit more of the
show,

we are on Patreon and by the time

this episode is up, it'll be around the

same time that I upload March's deep dive

on Patreon, which I do every month

and this month it is on the wokeness of

Sydney Sweeney. The right just figured
out who Sydney Sweeney is because

they saw her on SNL and they never watched
Euphoria and her being hot is

causing a freakout of epic proportions.

So we're going to do a little analysis

of a woman's body, which is something

that I'm fairly new to.

So, you know, wish me luck.

Today, we are joined, once again,

by someone who I'm honored to call a

friend of the show, Natalie Wynn—or as you

may know her online, ContraPoints—is an

ex-philosopher, she is a YouTuber,

but I think calling her a YouTuber

is kind of diminutive to her craft.

She puts out a couple feature film-length

videos a year that you've probably
watched, but if you haven't, you really

should go check those out.

She talks about philosophy, and sex and

gender, and capitalism, and Twilight

[Matt] Natalie Wynn, welcome back to A Bit
Fruity.

Thank you so much for having me back on,

I am excited to be here again.

I'm honored to be a friend of the show.

I'm honored to have you as a friend
of the show. So, a couple weeks ago,

J.K. Rowling, she got caught up in a

little Holocaust denial.

She does a little Holocaust denial.
- [Matt] (laughs)

From time to time, (laughter) yeah.

It wasn't always this way. J.K. Rowling

wasn't always on Twitter denying

that queer people were persecuted in

the Holocaust. Until 2019, J.K. Rowling

was a universally beloved children's

author who taught every kid that there

was magic inside of them, no matter how

cast out they may feel. Today, though,

how would you characterize her position
in the culture today?

Well, her position in the culture is

kind of weirdly split, right? 'Cause on

the one hand, there is her continuing

legacy as the author of the wizard books

and on the other hand, there's

almost her entire public persona, that
we mostly experience through Twitter,

which is basically obsessive bigotry

towards trans people. That's become

sort of her definitive thing, right?
I think that people who don't follow this

kind of don't understand the extent of it

because, you know, I don't know, people

throw around all kinds of accusations

on Twitter, so it's easy to think that

this is some kind of internet drama

blown out of proportion. But what you're
missing is that if you have not been

paying attention to J.K. Rowling's Twitter

for the last, at this point, we're

talking about four or five years, which

is a long time. Like, she's basically used

her platform, more often than not, to do

trans-bashing. There's a reason why

this gets talked about so much because,

I mean, she's one of the most famous

authors in the world with an enormous

platform, and she's just using it

constantly to target this small and

already besieged minority of people

who are facing all kinds of

legislative and cultural backlash in

the U.S. and the U.K. So it's really

devastating (chuckle) that an author

that's this influential is also

this obsessively devoted to persecu—
you know, to contributing

to the persecution of this group of
people, who's already so harassed.

But it's also, I don't know, it's also

kind of a bizarre spectacle? In its own

right, it's kind of another reason
I feel like we're drawn to this, maybe,

is that it's kind of darkly fascinating.

How does this happen?
- [Matt] Mm.

Like, how do we go from the

Gryffindor common room and, you know,

Severus Snape to these unhinged

rants about the transsexuals. It's weird.

It is weird and I think also, I mean,

yeah, if you go to J.K. Rowling's Twitter

right now and scroll through her feed,

it is literal years of talking every

single day, almost exclusively, about

transgender people. For years.

Which I think is the type of behavior

we associate with boomer Facebook

moms, and then I guess, in a sense, she

kind of would have been that, if she
hadn't become a billionaire and one of

the most famous and beloved children's
authors of all time. But she is those

things and the idea of her behaving the

way that our homophobic aunt does

or whatever, but from some castle

in the U.K., is just a very jarring
image.

That summarizes it really well, right?

It is like your bigoted aunt's deranged

Facebook post, except on a platform with

millions of people as the audience. I feel

like we as a society have yet to know how

to deal with this type of thing 'cause

J.K. Rowling's not the only case of it.

I mean, Elon Musk has dabbled

a little bit in some similar forms of

bigotry with a comparable or even

larger platform. But I feel like what's

unique about J.K. Rowling is that

she's single-mindedly focused on

trans people as this one issue.

So she wasn't always this way though,

and what we're gonna do today

is use J.K. Rowling as what I think is

a valuable case study in the worm hole

that transphobia is. The way that it

can serve, as it has for J.K. Rowling
and so many millions of other people,

as a portal into the broader world

of right-wing ideology that gets pretty

scary pretty quickly. We're gonna

try to understand why transphobia, and

I think especially when it's cloaked,
(chuckles)

no pun intended, as a progressive

feminist cause, is an especially effective

gateway into the alt right. One day,

you're reminding people that you

just like to be referred to as a woman

and that you are a woman, and then,

you know, the next day you are

participating in Holocaust denial. It can
happen to you.

[Natalie] (chuckles) Many such cases.

[Matt] Many such cases. And so, to begin

this story, I wanna go back to 2019

to the first tweet that I remember

seeing of J.K. Rowling's, her foray into

the anti-trans movement, which at the

beginning, was very tepid. I am going to

send you the tweet.

[Natalie] "Dress however you please.

Call yourself whatever you like.

Sleep with any consenting adult who'll

have you. Live your best life in peace

and security. But force women out of their

jobs for stating that sex is real?

Hashtag I stand with Maya. Hashtag this is
not a drill".

So what was the context of this one?

[Natalie] So, the context is that there

was a English consultant named

Maya Forstater who, I guess she wasn't

fired but her contract was not

renewed because she had refused

to use the correct pronouns for a trans

coworker or something along those lines.

And a lot of so called "gender-critical"—

that is, "transphobic"—people in the U.K.

decided to turn this into a celebrated

cause. They, you know, rallied behind

this hashtag, "I stand with Maya".

The idea being, like, "Oh, we shouldn't

have to submit to gender ideology by,

you know, using the correct pronouns
for trans people in the workplace or

whatever. This is where J.K. Rowling

decided to join this discourse

officially. She decided to jump in on

the side of people who think that it's

terribly oppressive to have to use
the correct pronouns for a trans person.

And I guess at first, there was
some ambiguity because you could be

like, "Well, she's not transphobic. Maybe

she just believes in free speech and she
thinks that, you know, that people

shouldn't be fired for having different
opinions." And okay, at first,

you could sort of plausibly think
that, maybe, given the benefit of the

doubt, that's why she was getting

involved in this. But to people who

kind of know the pattern that

transphobia takes, we all pretty
much knew that "Oh, okay, she's really

transphobic behind the scenes".

Like, there's no way that you would

decide to die on this hill, unless
- [Matt] Mm.

you already were. At least, that's what I
think now. I think J.K. Rowling

was at her most dangerous in 2019 and

in 2020 because the stuff she was

saying seems kind of plausible and

reasonable to the average person, you

know. And so, there's this kinda
clever selection of which topics to

get behind, right? Instead of just,
I don't know, calling trans women "men

in dresses" or whatever, it's like she's

defending the "right" of people to not
use the correct pronouns if they don't

agree, right? These people

kind of hedge in this way, when
they have a kind of bigoted opinion.

Instead of just stating it outright,

they sort of defend their right to have

that opinion.
- Matt: Mhmm.

[Natalie] So that was very much what this
thing with Maya Forstater is, right?

It's like she's not saying something

sort of directly transphobic, but she's

kind of indirectly getting there by being

like, "I am going to publicly champion

Maya's right to be transphobic. "

I feel like, in the early days,

she did so much of this plausible

deniability stuff where it's like, you

know, "I'm just saying sex is real".

And right? And the average person who

isn't a terminally online queer
is gonna be like, "Yeah, sex is real,

whatever, like, who cares?"
It's not a big deal.

Yeah, she was very effective

early on at kind of deciding what

it was that she thought people

were mad about, right? And so, she
framed the conversation like, "Oh, here's

why I'm getting backlash. I'm getting

backlash because I said, "sex is real".

And so, it kind of seems

like if you believe her account of what
people are mad about, then it sounds like

everyone who's mad is unreasonable
because they're mad at her taking

this kind of—

Taking what? An abstract, philosophical
position about the metaphysics of

biological sex? Is that what people

are mad about? No, right? Of course, it's

not that. It's because she is intervening
in this social and political debate,

right? On the side that wants trans people

functionally not to exist in public

life or not to be acknowledged in

public life. So, that's what people

are mad about, right? But early on,

I think she was able to kind of
frame her position as being this,

I don't know, almost philosophical
position about the reality of sex or

some—you know? That's what she

wanted to make it sound like, instead of

a political position about the place of

transgender people in society.

When you first saw that tweet, were alarm
bells ringing?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, at that point,

I was like, yeah, I basically internally

thought there was like a nine
hundred and ninety-nine out of

one thousand percent chance that

it's, as people say, over, right?

(laughing) Right.

It's so over, right? I basically

already kind of knew that.

But I also kind of knew that,

well, most people aren't gonna notice

that it's over until she says something
more explicit.

Until she's doing Holocaust denial.

[Natalie] Yeah, until she's doing
Holocaust denial, exactly.

But, of course, I've seen enough
people who kind of start this way

with this flirtation with bigotry, where

stage one is usually like, "Well, I

support the right for people to be bigots.

I don't like that there's this

cancel culture, whatever, politically

correct, you can't say anything anymore."

That's usually the prelude to a
bunch of bigoted stuff. It's kind of

like a softer way of getting a foot
in the door. You're not necessarily

committing yourself to saying anything
bigoted. But you'll stand up for the right

of people to say that and you don't
like how, you know, how vicious people

are being towards people who are getting

criticized for saying more bigoted things.

In retrospect, it's clear that she's

preparing the way to be the one saying

those bigoted things herself.

For a while longer, well into 2020,

she continues this road of

like, "sex is real". And so, I'm going to
- Natalie: Yeah.

send you another thread.

It's funny how I know all of these

by heart practically. (laughs)
- [Matt] Oh. (laughs)

-It's like song lyrics. (laughing)
- [Natalie] Right? I'm like a scholar

of the things she has said about
- [Matt] (laughing)

trans people, right? Like, "Ah yes,

tweet seven, verse three".

[Matt] (wheezes)

I know, 'cause we've read these

f***ing tweets so many times.
- [Natalie] I know. I know,

the last four years has been

dominated by having to read these

terrible opinions again and again.

Honestly, no one should be

allowed to get this famous. It's too
dangerous.

(laughs) Okay, but for the normal people

listening who aren't so online, do you
you want to read

what she tweeted on June 6th, I believe,
2020?

Dear normal people, this is me reading
from the Book of Rowling, Chapter Six.

(laughs)
-Natalie: Quote:

[Natalie] "If sex isn't real, there's no
same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real,

the lived reality of women globally

is erased. I know and love trans people,

but erasing the concept of sex removes

the ability of many to meaningfully

discuss their lives. It isn't hate to

speak the truth."

Tweet two: "The idea that women like me,
who've been empathetic to trans people

for decades, feeling kinship because
they're vulnerable in the same way

as women—that is, to male violence—'hate'

trans people because they think sex is

real and has lived consequences—

(English accent) it is a nonsense."

(laughs)
- [Natalie] Sorry, I feel like I cannot

say, "is a nonsense" without doing it in

an English accent.
-Matt: (laughs)

[Natalie] I'm gonna switch to doing an
English accent for the last

one because I just feel like—

[Natalie] (English accent) "I respect
every trans person's right to live any way

that feels authentic and comfortable to
them. I'd march with you IF you were

discriminated against on the basis

of being trans. At the same time, my

life has been shaped by being female.

I do not believe it is hateful to say so."

"I'd march with you if you were

being discriminated against."

Yeah, that's a big, big red flag, right?

And this was the same month that, again,
the U.S., Donald Trump had announced an

intention to ban trans healthcare.

Yes.

The notion that discrimination

against trans people is this
hypothetical thing that might occur in

the future, right? (laughs)

If ever there was a trans person who

faced bigotry on the basis of their

identity, I would stand up for them. But

that hasn't happened yet, so I'm just not.

I'm not standing up.

Yeah. Right. "No one's ever been

discriminated against for being trans. But

if it does happen, I'll march with you."

But, okay, first of all, by the way, these

tweets got hundreds of thousands of likes

and people were like, "Yes! You're a
- [Natalie] Yes.

warrior!" But again, a normal person who

isn't super online, and, I mean, you know,

from the queer and pro-trans end, but also

from the super TERF-y, anti-trans end,
if you aren't a part of either of those

groups, you're reading this and you're

like, "What the f*** is she talking about?

What is this "sex is real" thing? What is

she talking about?
- [Natalie] Yeah. It's a weird argument,

right? Because it seems on the surface

like it's a linguistic point that she's

trying to make, right? Like,
she says, quote, "If we get rid of

the concept of sex, that removes the
ability of many to discuss their lives."

Okay, this is what I think the assumption
is: If we acknowledge that trans people

are who they say they are,
then that means that none of

the rest of us can talk about how gender

has impacted our lives, right? In other

words, if a trans woman is a woman, then
I guess, you know, "I, J.K,. Rowling, can

never talk about the way that I have

been discriminated against for being

a woman." I mean, it's a little bit of an

oppression olympics almost kind of

argument, where there can only be one
- [Matt] Mm.

oppressed group, right? And if we talk

about how, you know, there's no way to

include trans people as a valid concept

without sort of, somehow, deleting or

erasing the entire concept of women,

which, I mean, it doesn't make any sense,

right? In fact, J.K. Rowling will later

use as an example. Okay, what does it mean

to "erase women"? I mean, well, okay, so

she'll use the example of some
hospital somewhere, on a piece of

paperwork uses the term "pregnant

person" instead of "pregnant woman".

Why? Because there is transgender men who

can and have gotten pregnant. And so,

saying "pregnant people" is a more,

even if you find that to be an awkward

phrase, it's still a more inclusive

phrase that is going to help trans men

who need reproductive healthcare

that, you know, conventionally would be

"women's health", right? I just don't

understand why making it inclusive to

transgender men somehow deletes

the concept of women from existence.

Like, what? I—It just doesn't make
any sense to me. I feel like it's a weird

pretext for being prejudicial.

Well, and it's just such a lie. I mean,
- [Natalie] Yeah.

you see this a lot with TERFs, trans
exclusionary radical feminists. It's like

the arm of, quote unquote, "feminism"

that is basically just defined by

transphobia, especially towards trans
women.

Yeah, I don't even know if I would say
that it's especially towards trans women.

I would say that they're especially
vitriolic towards trans women

and they kind of vilify. Trans women are
- [Matt] Mm.

sort of cast as dangerous predators.

But trans men, I feel like, the way that a

lot of, including J.K. Rowling, talk about

trans men is quite reprehensible, I think,
too.

Usually, the idea is trans men are
- [Matt] Mm.

confused girls who've been tricked by the

medical establishment, the evil

cabal of endocrinologists who have,

somehow, hoodwinked vulnerable girls

into thinking that they're men. Which, of

course, is not how the healthcare system

works at all. You really have to

scream and cry to get hormones.

No one is persuading you to do this. In

fact, quite the opposite. Everyone is
telling you not to. So, the idea that

trans men or that any kind of assigned

female at birth trans person is this sort

of confused, vulnerable baby child.

It's not vilification to the extent that
they've vilified trans women as dangerous

predators, but it's infantilizing in a

way that I think can be just as harmful
in its consequences, right? When someone

says, "Oh, you can't make decisions about

your own body because you're too confused

and childish." Like, you know, that has
-Matt: Yeah.

devastating consequences which we see.

And any feminist should be aware of how

this works 'cause this is what they say
about abortion; it's what they say about

contraceptions; it's what they say about
women's health in general.

"Shut up, little girl, you can't make

decisions about your body. We'll do it

for you." And that's exactly the same

thing J.K. Rowling is essentially saying
to trans men.

TERFs, especially towards trans men,

do this like, "We're losing our lesbians.

They're all becoming trans men" thing.

Which, that as a refrain, I just don't

understand at all because,

statistically, when you look at the number

of gen Z people who are coming out as
queer, under every single one of the

letters, it's higher in all of them.
- [Natalie] Yeah.

[Natalie] Right.

There are more out lesbians today

than there have ever been.

Yes, right. (chuckles)
There's never been more lesbians.

[Matt] There's—(laughs) and to be clear

I love that. (laughs)
- [Natalie] Yes. It's good. It's good

actually, yeah. No, I mean, I feel like it

comes from—
It's a very selfish, childish perspective.

It's almost like, "Nooo, don't transition,
you're so sexy, aha", you know?

(laughing) Yeah.
- [Natalie] I feel like that's kind of

like what—and some gay women

do say this about trans men, like,
"No, all the butch women are

transitioning. I wanted to f***
them before, no!" And it's like, okay,

well, too bad, (scoffs) other people
don't have to live their lives in

accordance with what you find sexually
attractive. Like, again, as a woman

you should know this, right? You should

know that when you're speaking about
- [Matt] Yeah.

someone as if your sexual attraction

to them entitles you to their living a
certain way, you should know why that's

bad and why that feels violating and why
that robs someone of autonomy, right?

And with TERFs and this whole thing of

"They're erasing the linguistic

concept of a woman", (sighs)—
-[Natalie] (chuckles)

What world do you have to live in
- [Natalie] Yeah.

for that to feel like the truth? And,
look, I'm not a woman. And so, sometimes

with these conversations, I'm very careful
about, even J.K. Rowling, a woman

who I disagree with entirely on so many

of these issues, I don't wanna

police her understanding of her own trauma

as it pertains to being a woman.
- [Natalie] Yeah.

However, I still, like, we all live in

the same society, and I'm just very

hard pressed to think that the

word "woman" is going anywhere.

(scoffs)

I don't think that because

in some medical papers that

are being published, that they're using

the terms "people who get pregnant",
"people who have periods", I don't think

that that means that they're gonna start

calling you in casual conversation

"a person who menstruates."

No. And no one talks like that way.
I've never heard a trans person

casually refer to cis women as
"people who menstruate" because the

entire point of that term is that it

doesn't just refer to cis women.

The people have a sort of a visceral
reaction to it, which I

guess I can kind of understand.

If you were to make an intelligible,
understandable argument out of what

J.K. Rowling seems to be saying in these
tweets,

I think you could put it like this:
"For most women, the way that they are

oppressed in society is, in fact,

intertwined with biology," right? With

women's reproductive role, as most women
are capable of getting pregnant. And

that becomes an area where women's lives

are policed, right? And it's interesting

how J.K. Rowling never talks about this,

right? Not a word, not a word.
- [Matt] Mm.

[Natalie] About Roe v Wade being

overturned in the United States. For most

women, biology and misogyny, they

certainly are intertwined. And there's a
- [Matt] Yeah.

case to be made that anyone who's assigned
female at birth does sort of belong

to an oppressed class by virtue of

their reproductive capability. Especially,

you know, the sensitivity around saying,
"people who

menstruate" or "people who give birth."
If you hear those phrases in

isolation, they kind of can be

abrasive sounding because there's

a lot of shame and stigma—there
have for thousands of years around

menstruation—and, you know, women

often are kind of reduced by patriarchy

to birthing people in a sense, right?

So, I feel like that there's some

grain of something I can sympathize
with there in terms of having a visceral,

negative reaction to these phrases.
But anyone who takes a second

to cool down, understand the context

of the phrase, will see that's clearly

not the intention. They know that it's

going to have an emotional effect for a

lot of women to see those phrases.

And so, they kind of decontextualize it
- [Matt] Mhm.

and then blast it onto Twitter with

a kind of vague implication that:

"Oh, this is what THEY are going to

reduce you to," and, like, "they" is who?
- [Matt] Right.

"They" is, quote unquote, "trans ideology"

which is sort of vaguely implied to be

this powerful cabal.

(laughs) Right, which is also incredible

because, in real life, it's like people

with a hundred followers on Twitter.

Yes, right! It's like you're being yelled

at by random furries.

(laughs)

J.K. Rowling, she does fixate heavily on

her own perceived persecution by trans

people on Twitter. J.K. Rowling often

gets into these feuds, very
public feuds that she—

Actually, I wanna google how many

followers she has on

Twitter. J.K. Rowling... Do you know

the number by heart?

I mean, I think it used to be like
14 million.

Oh! It's 14 million.

I hate that I know this.

(laughs) Me too.

[Natalie] I don't want these stocks in my
head.

J.K. Rowling, to her 14 million

followers, she regularly puts these

random a** people on blast, and,
I don't know, I have, what? I have, what?

I have 400, 000 Twitter followers,

which is, by the way, too many for a
twink.

But, nonetheless, lots of

horrible people say horrible things

to me on the internet. You have to

be aware of the power dynamic of

when you have 14 million followers.

I feel like what's missing from J.K.
Rowling's discussion of how she's

victimized by social media, is any

understanding of power, and I think

that a key thing that is going on with

J.K. Rowling is that she doesn't

conceptualize herself as a powerful

person. I mean, and this is common,

right? 'Cause, you know, most people
kind of think of themselves as

heroic underdogs, I feel, because, I

don't know, you got bullied as a child,

you got, you know, right? And

J.K. Rowling's case, she

used to live in relative poverty. She was

a single mom, she fled a, you know,

abusive relationship. And so, I still
think, in a way, she kind of thinks of

herself as this small, scared

person on the run.

Mmm.

I mean, she's had 25 years

to catch up to the new reality,
but internally, she still

hasn't, right? I think it's hard for a

lot of people to make this switch where

you realize, "Oh, I am the big fish now,"

right? Like, "I am the one who has power."

And I think that, I mean a lot of what

privilege is is a kind of blindness

to your own power. She hasn't noticed that

she's extremely powerful and influential.

So it hasn't occurred to her that,

I don't know, going after some random

YouTuber with a hundred, you know,

a hundred thousand subscribers is

weird behavior for a celebrity of her
size.

And not even a YouTuber with a hundred
thousand subscribers, random a** people.

I was just scrolling through her Twitter

the other day getting ready for this
episode, and she was sending

multiple tweets, screenshotting
this man's tweets and then sending out

her responses to her 14 million

followers. This guy named Rajan who
wrote, "I am a cis male and an ally

of the LGBTQ community. All of my life,

I have fought for diversity and equality.

I advised two attorney generals on

race and equality issues and prosecuted
on behalf of victims of crime. I know

who I am and I am proud of what I stand
for." And then she responded with

her own tweet, which she was pretending

to speak in his voice, in Rajan's voice,

where she wrote, "I am a man who wants to

see girls and women stripped of their

rights and protections for the benefit of
my fellow men." And it's like, okay,

obviously, that's not what Rajan was

saying. But then I was like, "Who the hell
is Rajan?" He has 453 followers.

The tweet which she sent out to her

14 million followers, Rajan's original

tweet, had 25 likes!

Yeah, it's literally just some guy

and she's just comple—there's

no sense of the influence that she wields.
I mean, in a way, she does think that

she's just someone's Facebook aunt.

She's behaving in a way indistinguishable
from the way—

She's not acting like a public figure.

I just can't understand how J.K. Rowling
has spent—and this is what she does

everyday, by the way. Listener, feel

free to go to her Twitter. She's beefing

with someone who lives in, like, f******
Iowa. And I just can't (laughs)

conceptualize, especially if I had a

billion dollars. I don't know. I would

be on, like, a yacht probably. And not

arguing with f****** Rajan, 453 followers.
Rajan, if you're out there, shout out.

You seem like a great guy.

(laughs)

Yeah, we love Rajan on this podcast.

I just can't make sense of her spending—
I imagine her rocking back and forth in

the corner of her eleventh living room,

in her sixth castle, just on Twitter,
sweating.

(scoffs) I think we like to imagine

that when people get really
rich and famous, then there's a sense of

peace or happiness or tranquility

that accompanies that, but that seems

not to be the case, right? I mean, I'm

trying to imagine being in that situation.
I feel that once you've achieved a

certain level of, you know, success

beyond most people's wildest dreams,

it must be hard to know what to do with

that feeling of discontentment that's

still inside of you.

And I think that sometimes people,
- [Matt] Mm.

wildly successful people,
like J.K. Rowling or Elon Musk, they

get addicted to Twitter as this

source of conflict (scoffs) almost.
- [Matt] Mmm.

It's almost like once you don't
have to worry about money, once, you know,

you're free of your, you know, your past

abusive relationship, once you've
accomplished all the things you

previously wanted to accomplish, it's

almost like you need to—you can't just
be happy with that—you need

to find a new fight almost.

And so, people go looking on Twitter;

you can always find a fight on Twitter.

I think there's something very unhealthy

about the way a lot of people relate

to using the internet as a source of

conflict, and then, once your ego gets

invested, I think that's, you know, part
of what's going on with J.K. Rowling, of

course, is that because she's come,
you know, she's positioned herself

so firmly on the anti-trans side, she now

feels like she has to defend it viciously.
Because, otherwise, that would mean

admitting that she was wrong and admitting

that she's caused a massive amount of
damage.

Yes and you know what? It is really hard

to profess your beliefs in front of

a lot of people. I have basically

done that as part of my job of making

social and political content and

commentary online for the last few years.

One of the things that took me

too long to come to grips with is that

sometimes you need to know when

you're wrong, and "take the L", as the

kids say. And I've had to take L's
- [Natalie] Yeah.

online and it's embarrassing

and it makes you feel small. I mean,

Natalie, I know that's happened to you

where you've had to come to the mic and

be like, "Yeah, I was wrong about this

thing," even if it takes a while to do

that. That is also one of the greatest

personal lessons that I've taken

away from being online politically,

is that being wrong is actually

I mean, it's so f****** corny,

but it's an opportunity.

I think it's genuinely spiritually

good for you to be able to

accept that. It's been helpful to me

over time to learn, to get a lot of

criticism, and to kind of be at peace

with it, and to not feel like I need to

constantly be a vigilant defender

of my own ego. People are gonna say

things about me, they're gonna

misrepresent me, and they're gonna

criticize me, and some of it will be

true, and a lot of it will be false. And

you just kind of have to learn to

- find peace with that. Otherwise, you'll
- [Matt] Mm.

go crazy. But, yeah, what we have on

our hands here with Ms. Rowling is a case

of someone who is pathologically

incapable of ever letting anything go

ever, right?
- Matt: (laughs) Ever.

Like, I don't think she's ever once

admitted to being wrong about a single
thing.

No, and that includes the Holocaust denial

arc, which I'm teasing the listener with

'cause we're not quite there yet.

I wanna return to the role of language

in all of this and semantics,

right? We're gonna be talking about

the transphobia serving as a gateway

into further right wing, you know, broader

right wing ideology. But then I also think

that, taking it back a step, I think some

people's entry into transphobia are

these, frankly, silly semantic

- word arguments.
- [Natalie)] Yeah.

"They're erasing the word "women."" And so,

as another example, what I think is a

powerful example of that: Ana Kasparian.

So, Ana Kasparian, she's one of the

political commentators on the Young Turks,

which is one of the bigger and one of the

earlier left wing political YouTube shows.

You know she had her viral "I don't

care what the Bible says! I don't, like:

I don't CARE if you're Christian.

In fact, I will fight for you to have

your religious liberty and practice

your Christianity. I believe in that. I

don't believe in Christianity, which means

that you do not get to dictate the way I

live MY life based on your religion.

I don't CARE what the Bible says. You have

every right in the world. All those women

who identify with your religion have every

right in the world to not get an

abortion, to not take birth control.

But they do not have the right to dictate

MY life and what I decide to do with

my body. I don't CARE about your godd*mn
religion!"

Think she's had some really great

things to say over the years.

And none of that, none of the education,

none of anything stopped her from falling

into the transphobic semantic rabbit hole

last May. Like all horrible things this

took place on Twitter. So I'm gonna send
you the tweets.

Okay, so this first tweet is: "I'm a woman.

Please don't ever refer to me as a

person with a uterus, birthing person,

or person who menstruates. How do

people not realize how degrading this is?

You can support the transgender community

without doing this s***."

If you just take this tweet at face

value, I don't even disagree with it.

I think, yeah, right, don't, you

shouldn't refer to an individual person

as a "birthing person," that's weird. I

agree. I feel like where I disagree is in

the subtext, right? The first question

I have is: In what context did someone

refer to Anna in this way? Did this

happen? Did someone call her

[Natalie] "a person who menstruates"?

Like, in what context? Was the context

on a piece of medical paperwork? Should

phrases such as "a person who menstruates"

replace the phrase "woman" in everyday

English? No, of course not. Who's

suggesting that? Is anyone suggesting

that? I've never once heard a trans person

suggest that. So we're arguing

against this position that,

like, who are we arguing against?

I don't know. It feels like for some

reason, there's this need to argue

against this straw-man version of a

trans activist, who insists that we stop

using the word "woman". I've never heard

someone claim that. I also think

even the extent to which this is used

in medical context is overstated. Like, I

don't know, I'm thinking of recent

times I've interacted with the medical

system. I feel like I'm often, you know,

when you select your gender on medical

paperwork, it's usually male, female,

or other (scoffs) and it'll ask

you to explain. So I will usually add,

you know, as a context note that

I am a transgender woman. So that, insofar

as that's medically relevant, it's

noted. I have not given birth, nor have I

been to the hospital with someone giving

birth recently, so I cannot say what the

experience is like, but I guess I'll be

curious to know how often, I don't

know, if someone's listening this,

you know, if you had a baby at a

hospital recently, how frequently

were phrases like "birthing person" used?

My guess is not very frequently.

- So I'm not sure what, it just
- [Matt] Right.

feels like a sort of an imaginary argument
that we're having.

Totally, totally.

I'm lacking context for, like,

where is this occurring? I spend a

lot of time around women, actually. And

I feel like I don't see these

phrases being thrown around

very often these days. And I'm in a very

trans inclusive, you know, kind of social

environment. So, you'd think if
- Matt: (laughs)

lots of people had replaced the word

"woman" with "person with a uterus," I

think I would have heard that, but I
haven't.

(laughs) Right. So, she's starting to get

kinda dogged online and she responds

with tweet number two. Please hold.

Did you receive?

Umm, hold on. Not yet.

Oh, wait. Did it not send to you?

- I don't see it.
- [Matt] Oh, weird.

Okay, wait, let me try again. Maybe I

just sent it to the wrong person. (laughs)

And then out of nowhere you receive it

(laughing)
- [Matt] and it's some tweet

from a year ago. (laughing)

You might want to figure out who you

just sent that to 'cause it could be kinda
- [Matt] (laughing) Yeah.

weird with no context. (laughs)
- [Matt] (still laughing)

Okay, tweet two: "LOL. The meltdowns over

wanting to be referred to as a woman

rather than a "birthing person" is pretty

wild. I'll never apologize for that,

especially as biological woman who

has had a f****** lifetime of being

told I'm less than. I'm a woman. No

apologies." (sighs) So, again it's like, I

don't know. A lot of this type of

transphobic stuff comes from a kind of

misdirected frustration with

misogyny. Ana reacts as if: "Oh, people

are sort of forcing me to be called

a 'birthing person', and then that's

sort of somehow erasing the lifetime of

misogyny that I've had to experience

as a woman." I mean, I think it's like a

kind of scapegoating, right? I feel that,

a lot of times, people who get

into this sort of gender critical

talking points, it's often a kind of

displaced rage and frustration at

experiences of misogyny, often in

leftist spaces, right? 'Cause that's a

real thing. Misogyny is pretty rampant on

the left as it is everywhere. And I think

that a lot of women find that hard to

complain about. And it's difficult in part

because men usually are in power. I don't

know, as a woman, you kind of have to

pander to men to get through the day to
some extent.

Yeah.

[Natalie] So it's frightening to take a

stand against men, but trans people are

this kind of hated minority that is

sort of easy to, like, it's kinda easy to

dump all of your frustrations

and rage onto trans people because

there's a social momentum behind that,

in a way that there sort of isn't against,

I don't know, frustration with

misogyny in leftist spaces, for example.

I honestly kinda feel bad for Ana reading

these tweets 'cause obviously there's

some massive, as she says, a lifetime

of difficult experiences that's

behind this. And it's blowing up now, but

it's choosing as its target this very

weird thing that seems to me to be

slightly off topic.

So these tweets are in March. And then in

July, she is still kind of stuck on

this transgender issue. In a discussion

about various social justice movements

and their methods for accomplishing

their goals, she tweets what I have

selected as tweet number three,

which I will send to you now.

- Oh, this one. (scoffs) Yeah, this is—
- [Matt] (laughs)

Okay, see, and this is, okay, this tweet—

I know I'm talking about the tweet

before I've read it, but I do feel

that this tweet that I'm about to read,

it really kind of does showcase the way

that transphobia is kind of a red flag and

it's often the prelude to a whole bunch

of nonsense. Okay. (sighs)

Ana Kasparian: quote, "The Civil Rights

Movement did not use the same strategies

as the trans movement. They didn't

barricade speakers they disagreed with in

a classroom for three hours. They

persuaded through non-violence and

showing America their humanity."

So this is (sighs), this is basically the

entire thing that the podcast called

"The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" was

about. This was the podcast with

Megan Phelps-Roper of Westboro Baptist

Church fame and J.K. Rowling where a lot

of the argument was, like, "Oh, what we

really hate about the trans movement is

they use illiberal methods. And

it's so unlike all past movements. Like

Gay Rights wasn't like this, and Women's

Rights wasn't like this, and the Civil

Rights Movement, they never did anything

violent and they were always polite and

they never raised their voices and they

never called people names." And it's just

like, well, I'm sorry that historically
is not true.

And it's so jarring to see someone like

- Ana Kasparian, who knows all of that
- [Natalie] Yeah.

though.
- [Natalie] Knows, yeah.

She knows all of that. I mean, all

of these movements had—

You think about that one famous

clip of Angela Davis talking about

whether or not she endorses violence.

And she's just like, "Well, whether or not

I endorse it is besides the point.

Violence is the only thing I've ever known

as a black person in America. "

Have these people heard of Malcolm X?

Like—(stammers and scoffs)

Stonewall! Like, come on!
- [Natalie] What do these people think

the Civil Rights Movement was? I mean,

it's literally every one of these

movements too. I mean, again, people think

of Women's Suffrage and it's assumed to

be, you know, you think of the women

marching with their banners and it's like,

"Oh, they just had to show people their

humanity by being peaceful," and it's

like, churches were firebombed (scoffs) by

suffragettes in the U.K. People were

murdered for Women's Suffrage.

Which is not to say that I am endorsing

these violent methods, but it's like—

I'm about to get so demonetized.

Okay, wait, hold on, hold on, let me

rephrase that: People were unalived.

[Matt] (cackles)
- [Natalie] People were unalived in the

name of women's suffrage, right?

Churches became more on fire than they

previously had been in the name of women's
- [Matt] (laughs)

suffrage, right? This is the historical

reality that people forget because it's
sort of more comfortable, I guess,

to assume that "Oh, Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. just had to get up on a podium and

say, "I have a dream. Look, I'm human.

And then all the white people clapped and

said, "Yes, let's have rights for all""
and it's like, no, that's not what

happened. To desegregate schools in
Alabama, president Eisenhower had to

send in the army. Desegregation happened

at gunpoint; it was not a peaceful
process.

I hope that trans rights can be
accomplished with less violence than that,

and I think, in fact, there's no reason
why that shouldn't be the case.

But to suggest that the trans rights movement
is this uniquely violent—

It just isn't. It just isn't.
It's just false.

You've teed me up. We've arrived at
Holocaust denialism.

We sure have. (sighs)

Two weeks ago, JK Rowling
saw a tweet someone had written to her:

[Matt] "The Nazis burnt books on trans
healthcare and research. Why are you so

desperate to uphold their ideology around
gender?"

And this obviously pissed her off a lot
because she screenshotted it

and tweeted it out to her own audience

with the additional caption where she
wrote,

[Matt] "I just... how? How did you type
this out and press send without thinking,

"I should maybe check my source for this,
because it might've been a fever dream?""

And, I just want to add,
before we get into any of this,

my favorite thing about this exchange
is that the tweet which JK Rowling took,

which accused her of sharing the Nazi's
ideology on trans healthcare,

the tweet has five views.

Not likes.

Wow.

[Matt] It has five views.
That is zero likes.

That is, like, you get five views on
a tweet just by it existing in the ether.

Yeah, I mean, I've almost never seen a
tweet with that few views.

[Matt] She—(laughs) she went out of her way
- [Natalie] (laughs)

to find a tweet that would allow her to

participate in Holocaust denial.

It was like she had to chase this one.

Yeah, that makes it all the more baffling

because, okay, I understand why you would

start doing a little casual Holocaust
denial in the heat of the moment

because of, I don't know. (laughs)
- Matt: (laughs)

Like, you were on the spot and,

I don't know, someone had you

backed into a corner and you
said whatever you thought you needed

to say to win the argument. But this is
- [Matt] Right.

freeform, completely out of the blue.
- Matt: (chuckles)

"You know what, I've been searching
around the dark corners of Twitter lately

and I feel like today is the day
I shall begin denying the Holocaust."

(laughing)
- [Natalie] Like, like what? (laughs)

[Matt] You need to buy a yacht and just
go on it!

So she tweets this, right?
And so the person's claim is that

Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and

research and JK Rowling says that they
must be experiencing a fever dream

to have claimed that.

That is absolutely true.

The Nazis did ban hordes of books
of some of the earliest and most important

at the time books on trans healthcare and
research.

Specifically, what this person is referencing

is the burning of the library of
the Institute for Sexual Research.

So, just a little bit of quick history:

There was this young doctor, young gay doctor,

in Germany. His name was
Magnus Hirschfeld.

In 1919, he opened the—
I'm gonna do my German voice—

the Institute for Sexualwissenschaft,

which translates roughly to
the Institute for Sexual Research.

It was the first sexology research center
in the world.

You know, Hirschfeld was gay;
he had grown up in a deeply homophobic

era of Germany. He was super
traumatized, not only by being gay

but witnessing homophobia against
other queer people.

He would later go on to talk about having
witnessed in medical school,

watching a fellow gay student who was
trotted out naked in front of a class

to be humiliated by the rest of the class
for being a, quote unquote, "degenerate".

So, at this Institute of Sexual Research,
which he opened,

he basically had all of these gay and
trans patients

who he would treat for various
needs.

There were anti-crossdressing laws
in Germany at the time, and he

would get his trans patients this
special transgender ID card

that, by today's standards, would be,
y'know, strange and demoralizing,

but at the time, it actually legally
protected them from being prosecuted

under these crossdressing laws.

If the cops came up to you, you were like,
"Here's my trans ID, see I'm a certified

transgender," and then they'd be like,
- Natalie: (chuckles)

"Okay, you're—", y'know. (laughs)

Magnus Hirschfeld was—this was cis gay to
trans allyship.

Also in the Institute of Sexual Research,
there was among the first libraries

about sexuality and gender.

And this guy was collecting research
a hundred years ago on these topics

that would be considered progressive today.

There was some of the earliest
literature on the various gender-affirming

surgeries, and by 1930,
the Institute was performing some of the

first, you know, what we think of today
as modern gender-affirming surgeries

in the world.

And who was one of his patients?

Lili Elbe.

[Matt] Lili Elbe was—

The Danish girl.

[Matt] The Danish girl. (laughs)

Was one of his patients!

You know, so, the Nazi party comes to rise,

and Hitler wanted to cleanse society of,
you know, what he deemed lives

unworthy of living.

On May 6th, 1933, the Nazis raided
the Institute of Sexual Research,

and burned 20,000 of its books
in the street.

And, this was very famously
one of the first Nazi book burnings.

Like, there are photos of it. This isn't

deep, buried research—
- [Natalie] No, it's not obscure.

It's not obscure stuff.

It's like one of the most famous photos
of Nazi book burning,

which I guarantee most people have seen.

And so, this initial tweet that
JK Rowling called this person

basically insane for writing was:

[Matt] "The Nazis burnt books on trans
healthcare and research. Why are you so

desperate to uphold their ideology around
gender?"

And so, this is just factually true.

Right? Like, whatever you think of
JK Rowling, the Nazis did do that,

and she does share their view on trans
healthcare in gen—

That's just what's happening.

And so, people start to point out
that, like, babe, you know,

you're doing a little bit of Holocaust
denial by saying that this didn't happen.

Alejandra Caraballo, who is a notable
trans person on Twitter,

she responded, writing, "You're
engaging in Holocaust denial."

JK Rowling responds:

(English accent) "Neither of your articles
support the contention that trans

people were the first victims of the Nazis
or that all research on trans healthcare

was burned in 1930s Germany.
You are engaging in lying, Alejandra."

(regular voice) So, she responds by being
pedantic.

I don't know, it's hard to respect this.

It's not engaging at all with
the spirit of what anyone is saying.

I mean, so, first of all, we can get,
I mean, we can, and it is interesting

to dive into the actual
historical record of this,

and the way that some of the, you know,
first Nazi book burnings were,

in fact, targeting an early library of
books about gay rights and about

transgender, you know, medicine.

But it also, you know,
even without talking about the factual

record, let's think big picture here.

Do we really think that the National
Socialist Party was—

would have just been fine with trans
people? Right?

Like, oh, no, they're against the gays,
and they're against the Jews,

and they're against the Romani, but
sure, the transvestites,

yeah, we love 'em! Like, like, what?

I mean, and of course, we can verify
historically that, yes, trans people

were persecuted.

I've seen a lot of what I consider
extremely bad faith discourse about this

controversy with people saying,
"Well, the Nazis didn't have the

category transgender, which is a more
recent invention,"

and yes, that's true, but
okay, the Nazis didn't officially persecute

lesbians either because, I mean,
if you look

at the history of lesbophobia,

often the form that lesbophobia takes
is that lesbians are just not seen as real,

right? It's just sort of not acknowledged
even as a valid phenomenon, where

male homosexuality is seen as degeneracy,
and then that's something to be persecuted.

Oftentimes, it's just kind of like flatly
denied that lesbians exist.

Now, does that just say that no lesbians
were persecuted in the Holocaust?

Almost certainly not.

I know that like the Nazis had these
categories of like asocial.

Correct.

It's like a black triangle was the badge.

[Matt] Yeah.
- Natalie: And I think that a lot of

queer women were sort of

killed on the basis of
being "asocial", quote unquote.

So, this kind of pedantry of being
like, "Well, technically, the Nazis

didn't use the wor—" Like, okay,
but they still killed

queer women, and they still
killed trans people.

So why are you playing this
pedantic game to—

Well, because they're engaging
in the denial of transphobia, right?

Well, and it's so exhausting too
because she writes,

"The contention that trans people were the
first victims of the Nazis

or that all research on trans healthcare
was burned in the 1930s."

And it's like she's arguing against the
point that nobody made.

Yeah, she didn't say—
did Alejandra say that?

[Matt] No!
- Natalie: Did she say that every single

piece of research was destroyed?

No! Alejandra didn't say that,
and the original tweet that J.K. Rowling

said was insane, once again, just said,
"The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare

and research."

That was the claim.

Yeah, so she's consistently
arguing against positions that no one

has taken.

Correct, and instead of ever admitting
fault,

she just shifts the goalpost over and
over.

And then, that leads you,

really, with transphobia or with anything,
if you refuse to admit fault in

anything that you say, you will keep
shifting the goalpost because

that will be the only way that,
in your head, you can maintain

the upper hand in an argument.

This refusal to admit being wrong ever
leads you to some fucking whacky places.

It led her to Holocaust denialism, and it
led Ana Kasparian to saying that

the Civil Rights Movement was entirely
peaceful,

which she knows that that's not true!

Well, it's like, if you can never admit
that you're wrong

about anything, if you make one wrong
turn, you'll never get on the right path

again.

[Matt] Right.

Because if you don't admit that
you've made a wrong turn, then you

can't correct it.

So, I feel like that is part of the
fallacy that's going on here

where, okay, J.K. Rowling can't
admit that she was ever wrong about

anything, and so, she has no choice but
to double down and triple down and

quadruple down and just keep walking
in this terrible direction, basically, right?

To completely mix my metaphors.

That's why she has, and will continue to
say, more absurd and dangerous things

because that is the only option
that she has, if she can't admit

that she made a wrong turn somewhere.

I wanna talk a little bit
about this transphobia to

general right-wing madness pipeline a

little bit.
- [Natalie] Yeah.

Media Matters conducted this study where
they made a TikTok account

and in that TikTok account, they only
liked exclusively anti-trans content

to see what the For You page algorithm
would then feed the account.

Very quickly, the videos—
and they did an analysis of 400

videos that TikTok then fed into their

For You page—

did not just keep feeding them transphobic
videos, but racist videos, misogynistic

videos, anti-vax and kind of other
right-wing conspiracy theories,

a lot of antisemitic conspiracy theory
type content

I think that's interesting

because I think it reflects what

we see when people engage with

transphobia in real life.

And so, what do you think,

first of all, what do you think makes

transphobia, including this TERF-y

transphobic feminism thing,

what do you think makes it a

fundamentally right wing ideology,

one that is so effective and sucks

people in that way?

Well, yeah, I definitely think it's true

that transphobia is a gateway

bigotry, like it often will be like the

prelude to a bunch more other forms of

bigotry that people feel—

I think transphobia is sort of a little

bit more socially acceptable still
[Matt] Mm.

than a lot of other forms of

bigotry, so that will often be the one

that people decide to publicly declare.

But I also think that what is it about

transphobia that makes it distinctively

right-wing? And I feel like it has to do

with the kind of structure of basically

scapegoating a vulnerable minority, and

then blaming them for various social

problems, right? So I feel that predjudice

usually sort of operates that way, or it's

one common type of prejudice, right?

In the case of someone like J.K Rowling,

it seems like trans people are kind of

functionally taking the place of

patriarchy, right? In her arguments. So,

whereas a left wing person would

notice the kind of structures of power,

and the kind of broader inequalities,

you know, that are the reason why women

are oppressed, instead of doing that, you

take the kind of way that right wing

women go, which is you almost sort of

accept the patriarchy as natural and

inevitable, and you instead displace that

frustration onto immigrants, onto, y'know,
- [Matt] Mmm.

[Natalie ] Instead of complaining about,
you know, men, men who are your brothers

or your, you know, you complain about,

I don't know, Muslim men, right?

Or you complain about the Jews, or you
- [Matt] Mm.

complain about, in this case, trans people.

In the 70s, for Anita Bryant, it was gay
people, right?

It's this kind of, sort of shifting

scapegoat and trans people

are the current scapegoat of choice for

a lot of people.

But the structure of argument and

the psychology behind it is very

similar to many, many other, you know,

bigoted movements. I think also

there's this element of amnesia,

where people sort of forget how similar

this current moral panic is to

homophobia from the Bush era.

Totally.

Including things like the

linguistic obsession.

Does no one remember the arguments that

people used to have back then? I guess
I'm just old, but people used to—(laughs)

Like, I don't know, I remember the 2000s.
I remember people having a similar

semantic hang up on the word marriage,

where the phrase "her wife" was seen by

a lot of people as, not just sacrilegious,

as blasphemy, as a kind of sin, but also

as an attack on meaning itself.

An attack on the English language,

"her wife" being this total nonsense,

right? In the same way

that I think "his uterus" or whatever

seems to grate on certain people today.
- [Matt] Mm.

Right, so again, there was always:

"Oh, they're re-defining marriage." That

was such a slogan in those days.

It sort of avoids taking a political

stance. Really, what they're mad about

is the social equality of gay people.

Right? But the way that they present their

argument is as if they're, I don't

know, pedants about grammar or

something and that what really concerns

them was words being redefined

which, I don't know, it doesn't make sense

for that to be something that you feel
passionate about in my opinion,

but it's because that's not what they're
really passionate about, right?

The semantic thing is a cover for a social
and political thing. So I see transphobia

in the 2020s as almost functionally

identical to homophobia in

the 2000s, in terms of the role

that it plays in politics and in terms of

the types of arguments that people make
in its favor.

And speaking about gay, something

that J.K. Rowling does a lot is speak

on behalf of concerned lesbians. She does

a lot of this posting which, I don't know

if you have feelings about this, but she
does a lot of this posting about:

"All of the work that gays fought for

bravely is being undone by radical trans
activists" and its like, J.K. Rowling,

first of all, you are not gay. (laughs)
- [Natalie] Yeah.

So take a seat, but it pisses me off too

because she has more of a reach than

almost any gay person in the world, and

she does this thing where she'll speak on

behalf of gay people being like,

"Gays don't want—"
She echoes the

"Gays want a divorce from the trans and
queer people." You know, a political

divorce. She does that
rhetoric a lot, and I'm like,

you're not gay, you don't know what the
f*** you're talking about

and also, the majority of cis gay
people are entirely cool with trans people

and down with the cause,

so what the hell are you talking about!?

[Natalie] Yeah, it's one of the most
disgusting, honestly,

things that she does. It's the
way she constantly—

Instead of speaking for herself in the
first person, she constantly speaks,

particularly she uses lesbians as the
banner for whatever she wants to say,

as if she's charitably, or chivalrously
almost, defending the

lesbians, right? Again, as if that's the
- Matt: Totally.

reason that she's involved in this.

And, again, their claims don't make any

sense, right? Like,

"Oh, we're eroding all the rights that gay
activists fought for."

Okay, which rights are those? Did gay
activists fight for the rights not to use

trans people's pronouns? Like, what are
you—

(laughs)
- [Natalie] Which part of the gay rights

struggle did that occur in?

And the same is true with:

"Oh, women's rights are being eroded, the
rights that we fought so hard for."

And it's like, well, but which rights? This

is just not a thing in the history of
feminism.

Women never had to fight for the right to

bathrooms segregated by chromosomes.

That was never a thing. I feel like

patriarchy never had a problem with
there being separate bathrooms. Right?

That was never a thing

that women had to fight for. In fact, if
anything, it was sorta the opposite.

The threat of unisex bathrooms was used

by Phyllis Schlafly in the 70s as a

kind of "Ooh, this is what's gonna
happen if you pass an Equal Rights

Amendment."

Mhm.
[Natalie] Right? It's like a scare thing.

In order to stifle feminism.

Separate sex-segregated bathrooms has
never been a thing that feminists needed

to fight for.

Yeah, wow. That is such a—

Phyllis Schlafly did say that. With the
Equal Rights Amendment, she was like,

"There are gonna be no more women's
rooms. If Equal Rights passes

and men and women are considered equal
- [Natalie] Yeah.

in the eyes of the law, then all bathrooms

are gonna be unisex."

And it's literally the same stupid

"they're erasing the word "woman"".

It's the same shit over and over.

It's this fear-mongering about things
that even they know are not gonna happen.

It's the same kinda slippery slope

argument where it's like, "Okay, but if

men and women have equal rights, then

there will be no basis on which women

aren't sent to war and there will be no

basis on which, you know, we shouldn't

just have only one bathroom and it's the

same kinda thing as like, oh, if you sorta
legally and socially recognize trans

people, then they just list off all the

exact same things that Phyllis Schlafly
said were gonna happen if there was an

Equal Rights Amendment.

And it's like, "If we allow gay people to
get married, then what's next?

Dogs?" Like again—
- [Matt] (laughs)

(laughs) Like, "Where's the line?"

Well, the line is somewhere, right?
[Matt] (laughing) Right.

We're not talking about whether there

should be a line at all. But for them,

it's like moving the line or slightly

altering our semantic usage is tantamount

to total destruction of the entire

system of meaning. Right? So that the word

"woman" will mean nothing now. And the

word "marriage" will mean nothing now.
And, you know, chaos will break out

and there'll be fornication in the streets

and there will be—like no, there won't be!

No, there won't be.

J.K. Rowling has literally become
one of these people who, 15 years ago, was

like, "The gays are tearing at the social
fabric of society."

That's literally just what she's doing.

But replace gay with trans.
- [Natalie] Yeah, the social fabric of

society.
[Matt] The social fabric of society!

That's what they would always say.

Right, and then they put a sorta
pseudo-feminist twist on it where it's

like, "Oh, you will have destroyed the
ability to talk about being a woman."

Because if we say the phrase "trans women
are women", then suddenly, women can no

longer talk about all those struggles that

J.K. Rowling interestingly already never

talks about.
[Matt] (laughing) Right.

That's the other thing—is that she claims

that her whole thing is feminism. But the

only thing she ever talks about is,

you know, disparaging trans people.

Well, I think about it this way:
J.K. Rowling is a victim of domestic

violence. And think about how powerful a

thing it could've been if she decided to

speak about that in some context where the

focus was on domestic violence and

stopping domestic violence.

But she never said a word about it and

never has since. Except when she was

kind of inserting it into the middle of a

multi-paragraph tirade against trans

people. There's so much potential here

for her to be a powerful spokesperson for

an actually good and worthy cause, but

instead she only brings it up for the

point of oppressing trans people.
[Matt] Mm.

It's like this piece in this terrible game

of chess that she's playing and that she

never sort of brings up women's rights in

any other context.

So where does this leave us today? Well.

(sighs) I wrote down, "J.K. Rowling has

kind of a cult-like status in the

anti-trans community. She's kind of
their queen."

Well, of course. I mean, she's in a way

the best thing that ever happened to
them, right?

Yeah.
[Natalie] I mean, if you were a kind of,

sort of fringe bigot movement.

In a way, the best thing that could

possibly happen to you is someone as

famous and as loved as J.K. Rowling was

—and, to a large extent, still is—

to kind of become the champion of your

cause. Right? So it is good for them,

I think. But I also think that for

J.K. Rowling, she's now wedded to this and

this is now half of her legacy.

[Matt] And it's certainly the part of her

legacy, at this point, that she cares the
most about because she sees herself as a—

Yeah.

—warrior standing up for women's
rights and you know what?

As many people

as there are like you and I

who are willing to get into the weeds of

how dangerous all of this shit is. She has

millions of people online who worship the

ground she walks on, not in spite of the

TERF shit, but because of it.

Yeah.

There are a lot of people who sincerely
view her as the feminist of our time

which sucks.

[Natalie] Yeah, it does. Well, especially
when it's coming at the expense of a lot

of attention that could be going towards

feminist issues that matter. Like again,

I live in a country where we just

overturned the right to abortion and

instead of talking about that, the most

famous author in the world has decided to

lead a crusade against transgender people.

She's currently—she and Elon Musk,

which, I don't know, does she ever see the
- [Natalie] (laughs)

people who she's aligning herself with?

Does she ever see the people who are

defending her? Fucking Putin defended her!

- Yeah, yeah.
- [Matt] Did you see that?

Oh my god, I'm gonna insert the clip of
- [Natalie] I did, yeah.

- [Matt] Putin defending her.
- Natalie: Yeah, play the clip.

[Translator] They canceled Joanne Rowling

recently, the children's author—her books

are published all over the world—just

because she didn't satisfy the demands of

gender rights.

Like, I don't know, do ever just stop and

sit down and be like, "Wow, my comrades

are Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin."
- [Natalie] And Vlad Putin, yeah.

(laughs) "I must be on the good
side." (laughs again)

Cancel culture is coming for everyone now.

Russia, J.K. Rowling—(laughs) like what?
- [Matt] (laughs)

I'm sorry, what? It just doesn't—(sighs)

What the fuck is going on? So yeah, so she

and Elon Musk are kind of outspokenly

campaigning against this new hate crime
- [Natalie] Yeah.

law in Scotland that would make it illegal

to "stir up hatred against protected

characteristics". So, you know, of course,

Joanne Rowling is fighting against this
because that's all she does now and that's

all she's done for the last 5 years, is
- [Natalie] Yes.

stir up hatred against protected

characteristics, being trans people. And

it's just, I don't know, one of those
things too, where it's like, do you ever

find yourself campaigning against a hate
crime law?

(laughs)

And wonder, "It's me. (laughs) I'm the
problem." (laughs again)

Well, I think that's the problem, is that,
at this point, I don't think there's any

moment that could cause her to have the
realization that "I'm the problem", right?

[Matt] Right.
[Natalie] It's like that part of her brain

has shut down.

It's scary to think how far that she

could go with this because I don't think

there is a limit.

I don't think there is a limit and
speaking of where this leads, obviously it

leads to so many dark places and damaging

and harmful places, but every now and then

transphobia and just the brainworms that

come with it can lead to some truly

spectacular results and so, I want to end—

We're gonna revisit, actually, the woman

who kind of kicked this all off, which is
Maya Forstater.

(laughs) My favorite.

Her feud with Tala.

So (laughs)—

Goddamn Tala.

(laughing continues)

Tala the most sinister figure ever to—

(laughing continues) In 2022, a chain of

libraries in the United Kingdom updated

their mascot from (laughs)—

[Matt] I need to pull it together.
I need to pull it together.

A chain of libraries in the UK updated

their mascot from what was a mama bear

reading to its little child bear to Tala,

a cartoon baby alien-looking thing.

Very adorable, big eyes, little pink nose,

green skin, just adorable little baby

alien Tala. Tala's gender was not

specified and the library referred to the

updated mascot using they/them pronouns.

Maya Forstater—

[Matt] I'm gonna send you the tweet.
You have to read them.

Can you do the voice?

I got it, I got it, yeah.
- [Matt] (laughs)

(laughs) I've been training for years for
this moment.

(laughs)

[Natalie] Also, Tala, yes, Tala looks

gender-neutral because Tala looks like a
toddler. That's what toddlers looks like.

[Matt] (laughing) Right.
[Natalie] Right? (laughs)

Toddlers don't—they don't have secondary
sex characteri—

Like, what are we doing here?

(laughs)
[Natalie] (laughs)

Like?

Alright. (sighs) Here's Maya Forstater.

(English accent) "Some more thoughts
about Bookstart Bear and Tala because no,

I don't buy the sneering

argument that this is not important. Stuff

about young children and mothers is not

beneath consideration. That's feminism."

So (laughs)—

[Natalie] (regular voice) And then below,
there's a picture of two alternate logos

for the Hertfordshire County Library, one

of whom is the Bookstart Bear and the

other of whom is Tala the alien.

"I don't buy the sneering argument that

this is not important."

(laughs) This turns into kind of a

multi-day tirade for her and the library

ultimately responds. The library addresses
the issue and so I'm gonna send you that.

[Natalie] (English accent) "A mother with
her baby daughter at HitchinLibrary,

at HertsLibraries' Rhyme Time, aimed at

0- to 5-year-olds, messaged me:

(regular voice) "Bookstart Bear has been
retired and replaced with Talia, a "trans"

bear, with they/them pronouns. I cannot

express how upset I feel. Why do children
need this?""

And then the library responds to the tweet
saying, "Just to confirm—Tala isn't trans.

They are an alien."

So obviously Maya was not done at that.

I think she did like—what? It must've been
30 tweets.

Oh yeah, she has—and I have a couple more

if you wanna round it out.

Oh yeah, yeah, let's go in.

Yeah. (laughs)

[Natalie] (English accent) "Tala is an
"otherwordly creature". The publicity

doesn't even say alien. But one thing that

is clear is it is an infant. Big eyes, big

head, and to emphasize it, toddler's

clothing. So where does this infant—who

"takes they/them pronouns", parents are

told—come from? Where are its parents? Did

it hatch from an egg or was it born from a

mama? Who looks after its interests?

Ask these questions and you get the usual

"you are obsessing about genitals.""

(laughs) So there are like a hundred more

tweets that she writes about Tala.
(laughing)

Yeah. There's so many tweets. There's so
many tweets. And it's so fixated on the

biological reproductive origins of this—

What about the three-eyed alien from

Toy Story? Was that hatched from an egg?

[Matt] Like, did Tala come out of a
vagina?

We need to know which vagina Tala came out

of, if any, and if so, how—

I mean, this is an interesting—

'Cause you know how, I don't know,

anything gay people've done is viewed by
homophobes as inherently sexual. I feel

like the second you—

Just simply using they/them pronouns for a

cartoon character is enough to send these

people spiralling into a crisis about the

nature of life on earth.

(laughs)

(laughing) Where they're like, "Ok, well—"

They just need to—

Why do you need to know how a cartoon

character was spawned? I feel like we

don't do this with the Berenstain Bears.

(laughs) I guess they're bears, so
- [Matt] (laughs)

presumably mammalian reproduction. But

I don't know. I feel like it's pretty

common for cartoon characters for

children not to go into intricate detail

about the precise nature of how they were

biologically conceived.

(laughs)

I don't know, this is a weird thing to
spiral about.

She's just tweeting over and over again

about like, "Was a dick inserted into a

vagina to reproduce this? And then it's a—
- [Natalie] (laughs)

[Matt] —picture of little green Tala.
(laughing)

I just don't see this and think about its

immaculate conception and I think to see a

cartoon character of this nature and for
that to be the thing that you fixate on

for multiple days, that's the brainrot,
right?

Yeah.
- [Matt] It's this and Holocaust denial.

Right, there's real things going on in the
world and this is what they're talking

about. I feel like it's, you know, we've

gone over a bunch of people who get upset
about essentially nothing, whether

it's Tala or whether it's, I don't know,

the hypothetical use of the phrase

"person with a uterus" or it's the totally

crazy idea that somehow trans people are

going to destroy the concept of woman

itself. All of this is nonsense and it's

very funny to laugh at, but at the end of
the day, it's being said in a context where

trans people's right to healthcare is
being legislated away.

Yeah.
- [Natalie] And that's the kind of sad

other side to this coin which is that as

silly as all these arguments are, they

ultimately are being made in the service

of something that's gonna hurt a lot of
people.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, what I want to end on

is just the rabbithole to go down,
whether it's through anger about Tala or

anger about, you know, this fear based on

nothing, like that your identity as a cis

woman is gonna be era-

Like, what do you see as an effective way

to stop it before it starts for people?

Is it just being aware of dogwhistles?

Yeah, it's being aware of the dogwhistles
and it's also trying to redirect

conversations back to the things that

really matter. It's so hard to avoid

getting completely derailed by these kind

of pseudo debates about semantics, right?

Like the "sex is real" stuff.

[Natalie] There's some part of me that
thinks, "Oh, we shouldn't be too mean to

people when they start with those
dogwhistles because I fear that kind of

pushes them further into this spiral, but

also I feel like not calling out the

dogwhistles is bad 'cause we—

Those of us who have been doing this long
enough, we know what they are and we have

experience with this and it's hard to

suppress your own pattern recognition at a
certain point.

[Natalie] (sighs)

Trans people are losing their healthcare
and we're fussing over the exact

terminology used in medical paperwork and

stuff, and I don't know, is this a good

priority? Is this really the most pressing

thing affecting women or affecting trans
people today? Like no, not even close.

You know, this is like a circus sideshow

that somehow manages to absorb so much of

people's energy. It's really frustrating

me when it's public figures—

Mm.
- [Natalie] —who should know that—

You know, don't get led into little traps

like this, right?
- [Matt] Mm.

Don't get baited into opening up the
- [Matt] Mm.

funnel of bigotry. Because I feel like
that's what a lot of these

people do, like even if they don't say

outright, "Oh, I hate trans people. Trans

people should be persecuted legally."

They sort of drop you off in front of the

door to those types of position where

someone who actually does think that,

like Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump or

whoever it is. It's kind of priming people

for receptivity to those more sinister
arguments.

Mm.

It sounds like with J.K. Rowling,
she's already at the most sinister end

where, you know, denial is fundamental
part of bigotry and denying that trans

people were persecuted by the Third Reich

is pretty heinous.

Oh, one other thing I wanna say is that I
know some pedantic people are gonna be

like, "Um, technically, she's not denying
the Holocaust because she accepts the

Holocaust happened. She just doesn't think
that people were persecuted because they

were trans." And it's like, okay, well,

that's still a form of denial because even

if the category "transgender" was not
something that was used by the Nazis,

the category "degenerate" existed,

the category "homosexual" existed,
- [Matt] Mm.

and the category "asocial" existed,
and trans people absolutely were

persecuted under those labels. And also,

there were transsexual people. That was
the word they used back—

I believe the word "transsexual" was
actually coined by Magnus Hirschfeld.

And so, there, absolutely, yes, were

people who were killed and their ideas

burned for being trans in that sense, so
yeah.

She's also just wrong.

She's also just wrong. And you know what?
We didn't make this for J.K. Rowling.

She's too far gone, but you're not.

No, no no no no.
- [Matt] Your mom's not, your sister's

not, so send this to someone who is just

saying, "Well, sex is real, right? Sex is
real. And you can dress however you please

and sleep with any consenting adult who

will have you."
- [Natalie] (laughs)

[Matt] (chokes on laughter)

I'm so sorry, she really did get off to a

rocky start with that one though.
"Consenting adult that will have you"?

Like yeah, fucking obviously.

It's all the implication, right? (laughs)

Well, okay, wait, but this is actually one
last question that I wanna ask you before

we go—I know, I keep saying we're gonna
end on this—we are gonna end on this.

Because there's a lot of people who buy
into these sort of more tentative

transphobic things like, "Well, yeah, sex

is real" or "But I just don't know if
there are two genders" or whatever. In the

case of J.K. Rowling, do you think that

she has been ideologically, in private,

where she is now the entire time and that

she was just better at hiding it in those

early years, whereas now, the mask is

"fully off"? Or do you think she descended

into madness in the way that she's
presented it?

Well, I kinda think both. I think, in a

sense, she has always been transphobic and

as evidence I will point to the first time

that J.K. Rowling and transphobia appeared

together in public discourse was actually
2018.

Oh! It was before the "sex is real" tweet.

Yeah, it was before the "sex is real"
tweet. Actually, it was Shon Faye, author

of the book "The Transgender Issue".

[Natalie] She says: "Trans culture is
seeing the beloved author of your

generation like a transphobic tweet from a

troll account which has repeatedly called
you a man".

This is March 2018. And the tweet that

J.K. Rowling liked says: "I was shouted at
by men at my first Labour Party meeting,

aged 18, because I asked them to remove a
Page 3 calendar. I've been told to toughen

up, be louder, stronger, independent.

I've often not felt supported. Men in

dresses get brocialist solidarity I never

had. That's misogyny!"

Wait, so in March 2018, she liked a tweet

referring to trans women as men in
dresses.

Yeah, in March 2018, she liked a tweet
- [Matt] Oh.

referring to trans women as men in dresses
and then, when she got backlash for it,

she initially claimed that she liked the

tweet accidentally in a "middle-aged
moment".

Okay, Joanne.
- [Matt] She said,

"A middle-aged moment". I mean, I have
middle-aged moments too, but I don't like

deranged transphobic tweets.

And she also later admitted that that was

a lie, like her, I guess, publicist told
- [Matt] Mm.

her to say that it was an accident, but in

her essay called "TERF Wars", she admits

that she did like it on purpose.

So, I don't know, I think that in a sense,

yeah, she's been on the "trans women are

men in dresses" or whatever thing since

before this was even a widely discussed

public issue, but I also find it unlikely

that she was this obsessed with it until

more recently. I think it was probably

kind of a background bigotry and then, by

sort of receiving a lot of public
backlash, I feel like the need to defend

her bigotry led her into this spiral where

it became the defining issue that she
talks about.

Yeah, there's something to be said for the

feedback loop, and we've all, I mean,
anyone—

We're all Facebook moms in a way because,
you know, when someone kind of baits you

into arguing with them in the comments
section of something online, you wanna

argue back, 'cause you wanna be right.

We're all Facebook moms.
- [Natalie] Yeah.

We are all Facebook moms. And something

that sucks about J.K. Rowling is that
having millions of dollars and being a

beloved childhood icon did not prevent her

from becoming the worst type of Facebook
mom.

Well, unfortunately, the fame and wealth

is, if anything, insulation against the

need to take a step back. No one can tell
her what to do. No one can tell her what

to do, no one can take her phone away,

no one can tell her to step away and maybe

think about this a little bit. She has too

much power. She can't be stopped. That, in

a way, is bad for her because sometimes

you need someone to tell you these things,

right? Sometimes you need someone to tell
you, "Mm, maybe put down Twitter for a

while" or "Mm, maybe you should rethink
this", right? I think that it's kind of

important to have someone in your life

tell you that you might have messed up a

little bit and the sense I get with
J.K. Rowling is that there's just no one.

There's just no one who's saying those
things.

Mm.
[Natalie] So,

It's all gas and no brakes. She can't seem
to stop.

Natalie. Wait, okay, lemme think about a
good—

We've reached the conclusion. We've
reached the conclusion! (stretches)

I need to get up from this fuckin' chair.
Okay. (laughing) Sorry, that was not

graceful. That was not a graceful
transition.

It's perfect.
- [Matt] (laughs)

Well, I feel like it captures the fatigue
of J.K. Rowling.

Yeah, and fixating on her for 5 years to
the point where you've memorized the

lyrics to her tweets.

We've been broken by this woman. (laughs)
- [Matt] (wheezing laughter)

Natalie, thank you so much for coming here

once again and spending a couple hours

talking about this woman whom we are tired

of discussing. But you know what? I really

do think there is something to learn from
her situation. I think she's too far gone,

but, like I said, I think most normal

people aren't. I really do think learning

from her wrong turns can hopefully help

other people make the right turns, so I'm
grateful that someone who's smarter about

this than I am was here to explain it.
Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for having me on.
It was nice talking to you again.

Where can people—

I mean, whatever, I'm saying, "Where can
people find you?" as if you're not more

famous than me, but in case someone
listening to this doesn't know (laughing)—

where can people find you and support your
work and hear more of you?

Well, my Youtube channel is called
ContraPoints and I also am on Twitter, but

don't bother, just follow me on Youtube.
- [Matt] (laughs)

That's where I put in the (laughs)—

That's where I actually devote work and I

have a couple of videos about J.K. Rowling

if you're just dying for more of this

topic, but I also talk about, you know,

other things. I don't know, there's

probably some people—

I mean, those videos have a lot of views.

There's obviously people out there who

cannot get enough of the Rowling
discourse.

(laughing) Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me and I,

yeah, anytime. Especially if we wanna do
another—

We should do a whole Tala episode.

(laughing) Yeah. Next time, yeah, as a
redemption for both of our mental health,

next time, we're just gonna talk for an
hour about Tala and worship them.

Yeah, Tala our new god.

(laughs) I love you all so so so much.

Thank you for being here and, until next
time, stay fruity.

[Natalie] Love it.
Matt: We did it. We did it!

[Natalie] We did it. Whew!

(laughs)