00:12:20.620being open to learning new things versus these kind of conservative gay groups that are arguing,
00:12:26.780you know, well, maybe if we were just a little more normal, then we could fit in and then society
00:12:31.820would accept us. And really, it's the crazy gays and activists and the people who wear,1.00
00:12:35.840you know, long nails and 37 pronouns, and it's their fault that we don't fit in.1.00
00:12:41.420Well, it's always a back and forth, right? When you look at the history of these things,
00:12:46.880because pure assimilation can't work because if you try to make yourself smaller and smaller and
00:12:55.680smaller until you fit into a society that's basically against you existing you're gonna
00:13:02.080shrink to the point of annihilation right and some people do try to do that they think that0.76
00:13:08.800if they can just try to be normal enough and just try to keep their gayness in the bedroom and if0.55
00:13:16.260they can just, you know, try to repeat the other conservative talking points and join in with other0.89
00:13:23.300forms of bigotry, then they'll be one of the good ones and they'll be accepted. And I've watched
00:13:28.120multiple people over the last five years, very publicly attempt and fail to do this by becoming0.97
00:13:35.000gay Republicans or God help them trans Republicans. And that doesn't work. There's another extreme,0.92
00:13:42.440where you can get so disillusioned with the homophobia or the transphobia of society that
00:13:51.280you almost kind of give up and you become, I would say, a separatist. And so I've met queer
00:13:58.080people like this. They think, look, there's no place for us in this society, so we need to go1.00
00:14:02.440our own way and we need to become separatists. And they often think of this as a very radical
00:14:07.040position but in my opinion it isn't because separatism isn't going to change society you're
00:14:13.040just leaving right and i mean it's like it's like that type of radical feminism that's like okay
00:14:18.800it's all the women are going to go out into like the wilderness and and have a radical feminist
00:14:24.040commune it's like well is that a is that a challenge to patriarchy or have you simply
00:14:30.800created a convent well is there a world in which that happens i personally have never thought that
00:14:37.580it's that it's an effective way of doing anything because you sort of need to balance the the two
00:14:43.880approaches right you need someone needs to assimilate a little bit in order to get the power
00:14:50.340to change society so you know you're gonna need someone like harvey milk to get elected and then
00:14:59.560from that position can start making these changes that need to be made if you're so against
00:15:04.820assimilation that you won't even engage with you know government or with uh you know any kind of
00:15:12.180existing power structures then you were never going to have enough power to affect the change
00:15:16.040that you're trying to affect so that's the way that i see the history of this is sometimes like
00:15:20.700assimilation goes too far then you have to do something like stonewall um but but you know
00:15:25.580there has to be a follow-up to a riot right like a riot ignites a new era of activism but that
00:15:32.940activism then has to get organized it can't just be an ongoing riot because a riot is too chaotic
00:15:40.000to you know change uh a riot on its own that is you know it can ignite a movement that will
00:15:46.940affect change but a riot on its own is is too destructive to really change anything speaking
00:15:52.700of trans republicans one of the most popular trans influencers at least trans political
00:16:01.980influencers is a republican i know you're probably tired of this but we're i have no idea what you
00:16:09.940mean me neither let's go on to the next topic yeah um so so blair white is a trans conservative
00:16:19.820influencer. And I know you've both had a lot to say about each other over the years. And she is0.99
00:16:26.720just, to me, a fascinating case study. I'm going to show you another small video clip. This was
00:16:34.480from a vice debate where it was conservative queer people debating progressive queer people.
00:16:43.880And this is what Blair White had to say at one point about non-binary people.
00:16:48.600I think that a large reason why a lot of people do not understand trans people is because of non-binary and because of all these other identities that we've all talked about are constantly tacked on to the acronym that have always worked.
00:17:02.600She says that non-binary people are the reason people don't understand trans people and all of these other identities that have been tacked on to the acronym that before this always worked.
00:17:28.120What would lead someone to feel that way?
00:17:30.440Well, I think it's a combination of incentives to think this way.
00:17:33.620I think that in a way, it's a way of like defending yourself psychologically, because at the moment there is a massive amount of animosity being directed at LGBT people and at trans people in particular.
00:17:48.600And when you have, you know, very prominent political figures, Ron DeSantis, you know, Christopher Rufo, etc., saying loudly and publicly that trans people are groomers or pedophiles, the shame and the stigma of that is a lot to deal with psychologically.
00:18:09.760So I think one thing that people do is that it's almost like trying to reassure yourself,
00:18:14.460oh, they're not really talking about me.
00:18:15.880Of course, I'm not really the object of this scorn.1.00
00:18:18.700It's because of the non-binary people.1.00
00:18:44.500I think that when you're talking about commentators and influencers, it sounds like kind of a cheap accusation to be like, oh, they're just doing it for money.
00:18:54.780But also, I don't know, influencers are often motivated by what is a financially viable position to advocate for.
00:19:00.840and there's off there's there's always going to be a job opening for a queer person who wants to0.54
00:19:06.680talk about how homophobia is gay people's fault right totally like there's always going to be0.54
00:19:12.180people who are going to pay to hear you say that and so there's you know there's always going to
00:19:17.280be some cynical person who's going to come along and be willing to perform that part well and i
00:19:24.660feel like at this point Blair White has helped carve out this like actual field in a certain0.69
00:19:32.220part of conservative media that like you see more and more queer people occupying which is
00:19:37.240the conservative queer influencer which is I mean it's there's Blair White there's Arielle0.86
00:19:43.700Scarcella there's Christian Walker this boy on TikTok this like insufferable twink Clarkson0.90
00:19:52.660lawson who just they all make the same videos which is that they just go on and they're like
00:19:58.680well maybe if trans activists and non-binary pronoun people blue hair yada yada weren't so
00:20:04.720crazy they'd finally start accepting us you guys and it's like they amass these really big audiences
00:20:11.060immediately and also they immediately get put on like newsmax and they get these like prime time
00:20:18.160specials where they're like so it's true like homophobia doesn't really exist in 2023 and
00:20:23.580they're like yes tucker that's true and that's why i made the joke at the beginning where it's like
00:20:29.900i don't actually think for these people for these specific like commentators and influencers it is
00:20:35.480cheap to be like well they're just doing it for money i think there's an i think like you said
00:20:39.480there's a number of psychological reasons why you might want to believe that because like you said
00:20:44.500in one of your videos, you know, pointing the finger away from yourself and at like the weirder0.97
00:20:48.400queer people, it, you know, it takes the blame off you. It's like the witch trials. You just0.99
00:20:52.900pass along the blame and the shame and the accusation. But also there's like a pretty
00:20:57.760well-defined route to like having a primetime right-wing media show at this point as a queer
00:21:02.980person. Yeah. Caitlyn Jenner did it. That's a stone that, you know, we're not going to leave
00:21:08.920unturned in this episode either. But the other thing I wanted to bring up with Blair White was
00:21:13.660her blair white's pinned tweet right now that's pinned to her profile for the last several months1.00
00:21:20.900is a selfie of her looking hot she looks great she's wearing a bikini she's serving cunt and0.99
00:21:31.300the replies there are 5 000 replies mostly from conservative men who are arguing with each other1.00
00:21:39.840about whether or not it is gay that they find her hot.
00:21:44.460I don't want to get into that conversation,
00:21:46.800but the conversation that I do find fascinating is like,
00:21:50.220Blair, like beyond money, what is in this for you?
00:24:42.960Three, it's gay to be attracted to trans women,0.90
00:24:46.080but I'm not gay, but I am attracted to you. And, you know, it doesn't make sense. Of course,0.59
00:24:50.220it doesn't make sense. They joke about it because they're uncomfortable, right? They make those
00:24:54.580jokes about, you know, trans women trapping them or whatever, because they sort of conceptually
00:24:59.460don't know how to deal with the nuances of gender and sexuality. And that's what trans people do,0.98
00:25:07.000is they sort of force people to confront those nuances. Trans people blur the lines of the most1.00
00:25:13.220fundamental human distinction. And that's something that people find threatening to1.00
00:25:17.720their own identity. So if you can find a way to be a trans person that is minimally threatening,
00:25:23.080then you'll be given more accommodation. So there's a kind of short-term self-interest,1.00
00:25:28.260I think, that comes with debasing yourself in this way.
00:25:33.440Yeah. I read the replies. I was reading them last night, and I'm not going to read them here,
00:25:38.520But I was reading the replies to her, to that thirst trap. And I was like, God, you know, I feel badly for her in some moments. And then I see what she says about other queer people. And then my sympathy runs dry pretty quickly.
00:25:55.300yeah but it i mean it's gosh just debasing yourself your identity you know there's i know0.80
00:26:03.900people say this and i know it's like probably cheesy but when i see queer republicans the
00:26:09.740conservatives whatever pandering to these swaths of you know white cishet men or the republican0.56
00:26:17.840Party or the RNC or Fox News. And they're just like chipping away at everything that makes them
00:26:26.100special as queer people, just for like a fraction of attention or congratulations or pats on the
00:26:35.780back or validation from these people who will never really see them as like fully human.
00:26:41.180It's upsetting to me, but it is complicated, like you said, because I think to just write
00:26:46.000this off as like oh well they hate themselves and they'll do anything for attention it's like
00:26:50.660i mean like you said there's more it's more psychologically complicated there is something
00:26:54.520to be said about that validation and also in the case of blair white money yeah i mean once you
00:27:01.240commit to this as a career path then it sort of it sort of becomes less interesting to me to
00:27:08.700analyze it in terms of like what is this person getting out of this and it becomes okay well this
00:27:13.520this person's this person is doing you know i mean there's always been people from marginalized
00:27:19.680groups who engage in you know a debasing form of entertainment because it's financially
00:27:27.180remunerative and it yeah it comes at i'm sure a certain cost in terms of your own self-worth
00:27:33.620and self-respect but you know everyone's got to pay rent everyone does have to pay rent
00:27:41.960even even Blair White um I was listening to a podcast a while ago and there was
00:27:49.420a black woman who was talking about Candace Owens I was wondering when Candace Owens was
00:27:55.580going to come up yeah Candace Owens does come up and because it's it's there are parallels here
00:28:01.980with her being like the face of black woman conservatives and this woman on this podcast
00:28:10.720who, I believe her name was Africa Brooke. She had a really interesting point of view,
00:28:16.620which was not, she didn't agree with Candace Owens' politics. And she made this point,
00:28:22.300which I did find compelling, which is that, you know, for white, cisgender, heterosexual
00:28:27.560men, there is not a political position that they could take where anyone would ever accuse them
00:28:34.800of being politically at odds with who they are as, you know, in their identity. And it is something
00:28:42.440that is afforded to like specifically that group of people that women don't get. And then as you
00:28:47.340get into the intersections that people of color don't get, that queer people don't get. And so0.99
00:28:51.080that was like one of the most compelling arguments that I've ever heard to be like, yes, queer people
00:28:57.120should be allowed to be conservative and still be queer. And I'm not going to like strip them of
00:29:04.180that, but also I'm still going to unfortunately think less of them. I don't know how else to put
00:29:11.000it. Well, I think that you can't even understand what they're doing without reference to their
00:29:17.900queerness, right? The fact that they're saying these things and the reason that they're saying0.64
00:29:23.380these things is inextricably tied up with their queerness, right? So no, it doesn't mean like,
00:29:30.040oh, you're not gay if you're a Republican,1.00
00:29:33.000it just means that you're a sort of self-annihilating gay person.0.99
00:29:36.860Yeah, that's too cunty of a description, honestly.1.00
00:36:57.200So the group formed in 1977 in response to the Briggs Initiative, which was a bill in California where Republicans were trying to make it illegal for gay people to teach in public schools.
00:37:16.640And so the Log Cabin Republicans were like a bunch of gay conservatives who formed around making the Briggs Initiative not pass.0.84
00:37:24.500And they were successful. And that was one of the last times they've been successful.0.89
00:37:28.780They have made basically this, you know, over the last five decades, they've just latched on to every, you know, Republican candidate, endorsed this person, endorsed that person and, you know, made all of these pleas to prominent Republicans like we're supporting you.
00:37:50.240And then every single time the Republican in question is like, I don't really need your support.
00:38:13.680Where the Republican who ended up losing to Bill Clinton.
00:38:16.200But the Log Cabin Republicans, I don't know if you know this, they sent him a $1,000 donation as an endorsement. And Bob Dole returned it, saying that he literally returned the money and he said, I 100% disagree with everything that is on your agenda.
00:38:35.380Yeah. And the log cabin Republicans have also been barred from having a table at the Texas GOP convention for the last 20 years. So it's a really sad case.
00:38:50.760Yeah, there's an amazing dedication to believing that Republicans will accept you if you just do enough things. I mean, it reminds me of, I feel like my favorite gay Republican to hate on is this guy called Dave Rubin, who used to have a political debate show on YouTube.
00:39:13.060Well, he used to be with the Young Turks, a kind of left-leaning YouTube political show. And then in 2016, I think it was, he split from them to do right-wing, we're talking 2016, so at the time the big issue was anti-SJWs, anti-social justice warrior content, a lot of complaining about campus activism going too far and free speech on campus.
00:39:39.040wait so he was he was liberal to begin with he was on the young curve yeah yeah yeah so he started
00:39:44.820out as liberal and then he decided that in 2015 like the left went too far because they were
00:39:51.340protesting like milo yiannopoulos or something and so i mean what's funny is that like this is
00:39:59.360the obama administration so i do definitely wonder if he would have gone this way if he if he knew
00:40:07.300that seven years later, it was going to be DeSantis and not Milo Yiannopoulos, who was going
00:40:14.540to be the person he's fighting for. But he's really dedicated to the cause. There's this
00:40:22.460amazing clip of him on stage at some conservative event where he talks about how he's moved from
00:40:29.700Florida to California to get away from those lids. And sometimes his neighbors look at him
00:40:37.960and his husband skeptically, but he always pulls out his wallet and shows them that he has a picture
00:40:43.880of him standing next to DeSantis. And that's my governor. And it's like, my guy, Ronald DeSantis
00:40:53.100is never going to be your daddy. He's never going to say that he's proud of you. He's never
00:40:58.060like I don't know the delusion is just incredible didn't Dave Rubin also have a conversation
00:41:06.860on Ben Shapiro's show at one point it was actually it was actually on his show
00:41:11.400Ben Shapiro he invited Ben Shapiro on his show yeah where they were he was like Ben
00:41:17.760we're friends would you come to my wedding and Ben was like no will you bake Rubin a wedding cake
00:41:26.980The answer is no, and the reason I won't is because as a religious Jew, I do not participate in activities that I believe are sinful.
00:41:36.260But again, we live in a free country, and Dave knows this.
00:41:38.800He doesn't have to care what I think about sin.
00:41:42.280I mean, okay, and are we friends? Yeah.
00:41:44.500And are we going to go out to dinner sometime in the near future? Yeah.
00:41:47.060But there's a difference between me just being friends with Dave and me actively participating in an event that I feel is religiously sinful.
00:41:56.940And while that's awkward, we're still friends in spite of it, which is why we're friends.
00:42:00.320If we couldn't be friends in spite of it, then it would be a bad thing.
00:42:02.140Well, look, when I did your interview show, you said that to me, and I truly mean this.
00:42:07.180If you think what I'm doing is sinful, it sounds glib, but I don't care.
00:42:13.700Right, and then this is my view, is you don't have to care, right?
00:42:17.960And it's like, look, of course someone's going to go, well, wait a minute.
00:42:22.800If you really think his marriage is sinful or something, of course, there may be a place that in the nature of our friendship, maybe that we can't quite get to, that I would be able to get to with someone that didn't think that.
00:42:39.100Because we go home at night and we can have our own lives.
00:42:41.440I mean, that's really, and I think part of friendship, by the way, is that.
00:42:44.020Well, I think that Dave, on some level, is in a state of genuine – I mean, this is part of the reason why I find him a compelling and fascinating figure, is that with him, often the delusion seems to be genuine.1.00
00:43:02.860Yeah, I think he's just kind of a himbo.1.00
00:43:05.240And, like, I don't know, that makes it more endearing than a more sinister manipulator.1.00
00:43:10.040but he seems to think that he can negotiate with ben shapiro this kind of like you know we have our
00:43:16.600differences but like we can still be friends and that means like you'd go to to my anniversary
00:43:21.700with me and my husband right and ben's like well no of course not you live in sin and
00:43:26.680david's just like oh okay well but at least we can have this conversation and isn't it great
00:43:35.180that we can have this conversation and ben is like yeah whatever i don't like you and dave's
00:43:41.680like we're such good friends it's like i don't know and then right and they have this conversation
00:43:46.340that ultimately amounts to ben being like i will never see your love as real love it will never be
00:43:53.120valid to me and i think you're going to hell and then dave rubin kind of like shrinking in his
00:43:57.600chair is like but at least we can talk about it and have such a great podcast about it and it's0.69
00:44:03.680like dave stand up yeah it's it's like so spineless that it's like amoebic like it's amazing
00:44:11.620like i i love like watching him like like i don't know just like sway in the water like seaweed like
00:44:18.140as as ben shapiro sits there saying like your marriage is not valid you're a menace to children
00:44:23.600and dave is like yes but we can talk about this in a civil way and it's i mean it's like it's
00:44:29.500the virtue of a civility taken to such like a comical extreme that it's, it requires like the
00:44:36.400complete absence of any kind of self-respect where you won't defend yourself. You won't defend your
00:44:41.900relationship. You won't defend your family or your own relationship to your children. You'll
00:44:47.980just sit there sort of quietly nodding as Ben Shapiro just completely trashes your entire
00:44:53.720personal life. It's amazing. It is amazing. So swinging back to the log cabin Republicans
00:45:02.860and this DeSantis video, after the video of him bragging about how homophobic he is,0.55
00:45:09.100and he's the most homophobic presidential candidate comes out, the log cabin Republicans
00:45:13.800tweet, Ron DeSantis and his team can't tell the difference between common sense gays and the0.89
00:45:20.080radical left gaze. He sadly sees them all the same. His naive policy positions are dangerous
00:45:27.040and politically stupid. And it's like, yeah, Ron DeSantis can't tell the difference between1.00
00:45:33.120common sense gaze and radical left gaze. And also no politician that you have ever tried to make
00:45:40.580yourself available to has seen the difference either. And they never will. And that's the thing
00:45:46.540that is so wild to me is we see this happen again and again and again and again and again
00:45:51.060it's that like famous old tweet that's like i never thought the leopards would eat my face
00:45:57.860cries the woman who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party it's like the leopards are
00:46:04.340going to eat your face they are eating your face why are you acting surprised after you voted for0.96
00:46:09.520the leopards eating people's faces party it seems like what's going on is people vary and what how0.92
00:46:14.520we interpret the euphemism how when the lepers eating people's faces parties say we're going to
00:46:20.240eat people's faces like there's some some of us who say oh that's bad they're you know no one's
00:46:27.620faces should be eaten we won't vote for them and then there's the people who hear that and somehow
00:46:33.300like translate it in their head into we're going to eat other people's faces but not yours um and
00:46:39.580And I think it's like, I don't know, they get excited about some of the level of face eating, maybe.
00:46:45.240But I also think that it has to do with this euphemism thing, right?
00:46:48.740A lot of times a homophobic, for example, a homophobic politician will find it expedient in a liberal society to argue, like, of course I'm not homophobic.
00:46:59.880Of course I support the right of gay people to exist.
00:47:02.320I just think there needs to be a few, like, reasonable restrictions on, you know, whether gay teachers are allowed to teach certain things or whether, you know, whether we want children being exposed to information about homosexuality, right?
00:47:15.660So that's the kind of smart way to play it if you think that the voters are not as homophobic as you.0.94
00:47:24.760But it seems like the log cabin Republicans just take that at face value and they think like, oh, so I'm fine, but it's just the bad gays.0.88
00:47:33.800OK, well, that's good. But I, you know, I don't know. I never took that at face value because it shouldn't be taken at face value.0.92
00:47:41.280right you know they're never going to stop at the radical left gaze whatever how whatever that
00:47:46.980means right when they when they take away your rights that's all of our rights i think they
00:47:53.180just look so delusional when they say this because it's not like it was always going to be this way
00:48:01.280the more power you give them the more power they they gain the more they're going to push the line
00:48:07.520right and that's why you have to fight back against them and not make concessions and not
00:48:13.040do this like appeasement stuff of like oh okay well we'll agree with you about getting the
00:48:17.720non-binary people and about getting the radical left gaze and about getting wokeism whatever that0.99
00:48:22.260is right once once you get rid of all them you're next and that's what the log cabin republican0.99
00:48:28.860types don't seem to get they don't seem to get that they're next once they're done helping
00:48:33.700the reactionaries, you know, destroy the people more marginalized than them.
00:48:41.700They're up next. Read the poem. First, they came for the wokes.
00:48:46.860Like, is that how it starts? And you should have spoken up.0.99
00:48:51.880But I didn't because I was not woke and I was, I was anti-groomer.
00:49:00.000I think when it comes to people who behave like this politically in the LGBTQ community, a lot of people online and in real life that I've seen have this conversation, just basically the conversation, their analysis of it starts and ends at like, oh, well, these people just hate themselves and that's why they do this.0.73
00:49:19.540My thing with that is that there's probably some self-hatred in there, for sure. But also, I think most queer people have at some point dealt with self-hatred as it pertains to our identity. Some people deal with it for a really long time. And yet the bulk of us don't turn to self-hating politics.
00:49:40.140And I also just think that accusing people in this derogatory way of hating themselves doesn't really leave the conversation with any room to go on. It's like, well, you hate yourself, so fuck you. And like, there's got to be more there.1.00
00:49:55.400Yeah, I think that it's reasonable to have a level of animosity towards people who take their self-hate and then use that to hate other people and use that to bolster politics that's going to hurt all of us.
00:50:10.560I also think that when you deal with your self-hate, say, as a gay person by being an enthusiastic trans basher, well, at a certain point, self-hate has become other hate. You're passing it on. You're sort of projecting it outwards. And I think that's just how bigotry works.
00:50:29.080Like, I think that a lot of bigots, every bigot, every abuser, every dictator has their own issues. They were deeply wounded in childhood. Like, Joseph Stalin was beaten by his father. Every common domestic abuser has some kind of sad backstory.
00:50:45.920like sure the question is like what you do with that trauma and what you because we all have some
00:50:53.540degree of trauma and I do think that some level of self-hate is probably a near universal part of
00:51:00.360the queer experience like who among us has not had times in our life when this was like the most
00:51:08.500salient emotion we were experiencing um i think that is it's very common i i remembered when i
00:51:16.480was doing research for my video on cringe like reading all these reddit posts from people posting
00:51:23.900to like r slash confessions where it was like i'm trans and i hate other trans people like i'm gay
00:51:29.220and i hate other gay people i remember this one post from someone who was they lived in a very
00:51:35.020homophobic country and they came from a homophobic family and they described this experiences of0.98
00:51:40.720seeing a pride parade and feeling this like horror and disgust because they were scantily clad people
00:51:48.320and people kissing in public and wearing you know rainbows and it was everything that like my0.80
00:51:54.360homophobic family would say they were and that's why my family would hate me and why I can't come
00:51:59.140out to them and why right not to get all Freudian on it but like a lot of times the wound comes from
00:52:04.600from the family and from early in life. And I think a lot of conservative influencers probably
00:52:10.560have like a homophobic father or something. And the desire for approval from your parents is a
00:52:18.140long lasting thing that even if you no longer have a relationship with your parents is still
00:52:23.960somewhere inside of you. And if you feel like, you know, you want your, say your father's approval,
00:52:30.420like you'll kind of seek out that type of approval from other right-wing men and I think that that
00:52:40.120is you know so it's it is like self-hate in a way but it's it's more complicated than just self-hate
00:52:47.060because it touches this like yearning for acceptance and love that we all feel and that
00:52:53.880I think queer people in particular, a lot of us have this basic wound of the shame of like years
00:53:02.160of hearing, you know, ourselves disparaged, whether it's like seeing like derogatory depictions in
00:53:09.600media or it's hearing homophobic talking points within your own family growing up. And so that
00:53:18.860like yearning to be accepted and for the shame to be reduced motivates a lot of this kind of
00:53:25.540behavior i think and and i think there is a grain of of something sympathetic in that that's not0.95
00:53:30.920just like oh this idiot hates themselves right i mean i remember like being one of the very few0.96
00:53:38.420out gay people in my high school you know i've always been feminine i was in the glass closet1.00
00:53:45.420as they say. I was never really... I came out as gay and people were like, yeah. I carried so much
00:53:51.460shame as most queer people do for whatever reason. There's very few queer people who have1.00
00:53:57.720a universal experience, a universally just accepting great experience.1.00
00:54:04.540It's hard to even imagine. And I remember going to college. I moved to New York for college
00:54:09.620and seeing other queer people who were way more outwardly queer than i was who you know other
00:54:18.700gay guys who were way more feminine who were super into drag before i had really accepted
00:54:25.240interest in that within myself all this stuff and like seeing people who were like quote unquote0.96
00:54:30.760weirder or freakier than me it was like oh it like soothed a part of me that i was like
00:54:36.980i've always wanted to be on the other end of thinking someone was weird because we all deal0.99
00:54:44.900with that like oh everyone fucking thinks i'm a weird everyone thinks i'm a faggot it's a dangerous0.98
00:54:49.440thing to feel good about because then that could lead to me forming actual resentment towards these0.99
00:54:55.440people thinking that it will stop other people from having that resentment towards me i feel
00:54:59.380like i'm in a therapy session right now well it is kind of a therapy session that we all kind of
00:55:04.940constantly need to be in. But yeah, no, I have the same kinds of experiences. Like when I first
00:55:11.200came out as trans, I, you know, there was this kind of mix of elation that, okay, I'm actually
00:55:17.940doing this thing, but also terror because it's like, I don't know if there's gonna be a place
00:55:25.060for me in society after this. And so you look for some kind of anchor and I ended up kind of like
00:55:31.940latching myself on to this other trans woman who seemed to have her shit together. And so I thought0.99
00:55:38.560like, look, if I stay close to you and I do what you do and I take your advice, then I'll be okay.
00:55:44.500And in some ways that helps me, but in other ways, I think, you know, she was someone who was very
00:55:50.000much still working on this kind of self-loathing stuff and who was a little bit obsessed with0.96
00:55:56.060passing and you know introduce these like terrible like cruel dichotomies that trans people make0.75
00:56:03.520like there's all these like these kind of like fake dichotomies that trans people make between0.60
00:56:08.660the true transsexuals and either the like trender uwu two cutes sorry there's a lot of jargon or
00:56:17.800the like pervert fetishist huns like these are these are these are like categories these are0.92
00:56:23.720like sort of cruel categories that trans people have to distinguish like oh there's the real trans0.69
00:56:28.460people the good trans people and then there's like oh the weird fetishists or oh the blue-haired
00:56:34.740teenage people doing this just as a trend right it's like it's like blair white versus like the
00:56:40.82037 pronouns he they it zero yeah yeah that's that's that's a common way of setting up the
00:56:47.540distinction. But I definitely had a couple years where I was kind of like getting dangerously
00:56:54.420invested in the idea of myself as one of the good ones, because it was like I needed to believe that
00:57:01.840to feel like I was going to be okay, like I was lovable, basically. But I also kind of noticed
00:57:11.800that the way that my thinking was getting uncomfortably cruel, and I was sort of fixated
00:57:17.700on disparaging the kind of person that I was rejecting what I thought was unacceptable in
00:57:25.540myself, right? It's like your shadow self, right? The unbearable parts of yourself that you have to
00:57:31.880sort of project out of you, and you rage against it when you see it in someone else, because you're
00:57:36.900kind of trying to kill what they represent to you you're trying to kill some part of yourself that
00:57:43.300you're trying to shove down and you're doing this like by projecting it out onto other people um
00:57:50.060and i i feel like i feel like i was able to come out of this and and just be self-aware enough to
00:57:55.740realize that oh i'm like starting down a path that leads to acting like a bully right and so
00:58:04.900I think that that video cringe is the kind of my reckoning with that in a way. Like it's me
00:58:10.440noticing, you know, that like probably a section of that video I wouldn't do now has to do with1.00
00:58:16.960me describing my intense reaction of like anger and hostility to this like trans woman behaving0.98
00:58:23.080poorly in public and not passing or, you know, and like me sort of processing the fact that my0.91
00:58:29.620rage and disgust towards this trans woman had to do with my own terror of anyone seeing me like0.94
00:58:36.720that. I don't know. Maybe doing that in public, maybe doing that in a YouTube video was not the0.72
00:58:42.780right way to do it. Maybe it should have been done in therapy. But I don't know. It's hard to
00:58:46.460find a good therapist. Sometimes it's easy to just tell YouTube. So yeah, I think that this is
00:58:52.340work. It's work that we all sort of have to do to kind of learn a more compassionate way
00:58:59.600of seeing and to find ways of healing your own damage that don't involve projecting it out of
00:59:08.740yourself as cruelty. Right. The same cruelty that you experience pushing it onto other people. And
00:59:15.580I honestly feel like that is unfortunately just extremely common. I mean, it's within the queer1.00
00:59:22.880community and you can go to extremes where you have people like the log cabin Republicans who0.89
00:59:26.820Like I'm going to wield political power against my own community because that's how much I want to, you know, unload my own shame onto the people who theoretically I'm going to go down with.
00:59:39.140And that's and that's kind of why I wanted to round out the conversation here, because I don't want to like I do want I think compassion is the word I do want to empathize with the people who end up there politically to an extent because those feelings of shame and the feelings of wanting to scapegoat that shame onto other people in the community that they think are weirder or less acceptable or less able to fit into society.
01:00:08.520than them. Natalie's experienced that. I've experienced that. I think we've all had moments
01:00:13.900of that. And I think it's extremely human to have experienced pain and then not know what to do with
01:00:21.680it and sometimes do the wrong thing with it. But also, like we're saying, it's the slippery slope
01:00:26.440where you have to catch yourself as you're falling into it so as to not hurt other people.
01:00:33.840Yeah, it's a situation that we're all in, right? And that is the point, I think,
01:00:36.940where we can sort of have some understanding for the log cabin republican types is like yep they're
01:00:43.240processing the shame same shame that we're all processing but if you have the strength and the
01:00:50.300self-awareness you can choose to make the cycle of shaming and cruelty stop with you
01:00:57.000and i think that that's a very powerful choice to make and that's a choice we should all try to make
01:01:04.300Yeah, totally. I mean, the last question that I kind of had for you was, I have people who follow me online who are ostensibly not conservative, because I just don't accrue that kind of audience, generally speaking.
01:01:19.520but you know there are these very social media savvy groups like gays against groomers and you
01:01:28.880know these other influencers some of whom we've talked about today who create this content that
01:01:34.060is very compelling um it works really well on social media and so sometimes i have people who
01:01:39.740follow me who don't really know what the cruelty is behind these groups and the psychology behind
01:01:49.340them that we've talked about today they just see you know oh gays against groomers posted this
01:01:54.720thing of look how crazy this non-binary person was behaving and this is really bad for a community
01:02:01.060and they send it to me and they're they kind of know that maybe it's not something that i would1.00
01:02:06.080say but they're not sure and they find it a compelling piece of content and so i get these
01:02:10.120messages from young people you know high school age and younger being like hey i'm not really
01:02:15.480sure what to think about this. And it's like, they're really vulnerable to, as you and I both
01:02:23.200have, being like scooped up into that thought process of like, well, they'll accept me if I,1.00
01:02:29.140you know, throw the wrench at all of these weirder gays and all of these weirder trans people and the0.98
01:02:33.32037 pronouns. And how do we stop that cycle of, you know, and that's a big question, but how do0.99
01:02:40.380we stop that cycle of like transferring our own pain how how how do we make it end with us well
01:02:47.280i think that one way is to just be very public and vocal in deconstructing the workings of it
01:02:54.700like showing what's going on what gates against groomers are doing how it works why it works why
01:03:01.320even if you aren't a cruel or bigoted person you might still feel a strong pull towards this
01:03:08.220as most of us have at some moment. And I think that that probably is the strongest
01:03:14.560way to fight it. And then the other part of it is just kind of accepting the difficult fact that
01:03:22.540for a lot of young queer people, this is kind of just a stage that they're going to have to go
01:03:28.120through. Like some people will just have to learn for themselves why this is not a good path to go
01:03:34.420down um and you know you can kind of show people the way out and you can show people the flaws of
01:03:41.120that thinking but ultimately each individual person has to kind of come to the understanding
01:03:47.260of their own and and see why they need what they have to decide what choice they're going to make
01:03:53.440for themselves so we can guide them but we can't you know you can't do more than that yeah and if
01:04:00.260you find yourself sitting on a podcast with someone who's politely telling you that they
01:04:04.360won't come to your wedding because you're burning in hell, but hey, at least we can talk about it,
01:04:08.840you know, leave that podcast chair, leave it, leave it immediately.
01:04:12.400Yeah. If you, if you find yourself acting like Dave Rubin, this might be a good time to rethink
01:04:16.800your life. If you've made it this far in the episode, I want to thank you so much for joining
01:04:24.820us today. I also want to thank Natalie Nguyen. Where can people find you and support your work?
01:04:29.620you can find me on youtube as contra points and on twitter or whatever twitter is called by the
01:04:38.760time you listen to this or instagram or uh patreon that's how i make money if you're if you know but
01:04:46.160watch my content first see if you're really that into it yeah natalie natalie will make about two
01:04:51.260two hour blockbuster youtube video feature length films per year and they will both be worth watching0.78
01:04:57.420I promise if you enjoyed this episode feel free to share it with your friends your mom your gay0.98
01:05:06.020uncle who has like a you know weird newfound vendetta against non-binary people maybe they'll0.96
01:05:12.560they'll give us a listen and and start to rethink things again you can follow us on whatever app you
01:05:18.660get your podcasts on if you enjoy this episode we would love if you could rate the podcast it takes
01:05:24.500five seconds. And if you didn't enjoy the episode, please do not rate the podcast.
01:05:30.020Thank you so much. And until next time, take care and stay fruity.