00:04:37.980And since the opportunities started rolling in from all of these different conservative news outlets from the Republican Party, they've kind of incentivized her to become more and more cruel over time, which is sort of a through line you see with a lot of these grifty conservative types.0.98
00:04:56.440is they realize pretty quickly that their audience is hungry for more and more extreme takes. And so0.94
00:05:03.900that is what they deliver. And it kind of turns everybody who's watching this from the sidelines
00:05:07.920more cruel and divided and bigoted as they, you know, stay along for the ride.
00:05:13.180Yeah, I like that you point out that at the beginning, she was kind of like, well, you know,
00:05:16.920I wish Leo luck, but I don't think this is fair. Like it is, it's possible to have a civil
00:05:22.480disagreement but at every turn that choice is not the choice being made and that's for delivery
00:05:27.960reasons which we'll get to i'm sure and like i said simone biles the other player here is
00:05:33.600simone biles so this also like one of the most famous athletes in the world which riley wasn't
00:05:42.640was never before or after the race against a trans swimmer and so she had to make a career
00:05:46.820doing something else. And where that career has landed her was this. Last week, there was the
00:05:53.140Minnesota State High School Softball Championships, which this high school Champlin Park won. One of
00:06:01.760the players on this high school girls softball team is trans. So Riley Gaines quoted a picture0.77
00:06:08.820congratulating this children's softball team and wrote, comments off, LOL, to be expected when
00:06:16.540your star player is a boy so well what are we doing here right like what is the point of this tweet
00:06:25.120are you asking me i mean the point of this tweet seemingly would be to get a bunch of people to
00:06:35.560harass um children on the internet and she's just deciding to deliberately antagonize a random child1.00
00:06:43.020Yeah. So a little bit of background here. And honestly, I don't feel comfortable giving that
00:06:48.700much background here because I don't feel comfortable talking about a children's high
00:06:53.660school softball team in this level of detail. They're not public figures. There was this
00:06:58.100softball team and one of the members is trans. There's press covering all of this in a way that
00:07:03.680I think is really unethical. And I just don't feel comfortable talking about children in really any
00:07:09.220level of detail but essentially she is a child she's a high school student she began transitioning
00:07:15.660when she was nine years old and this is who riley gains is choosing to go after on her twitter
00:07:23.220platform of one and a half million people what are we doing here you know she's saying oh well
00:07:29.720the comments are off on that original post by the high school because you know that we come after
00:07:34.640you for having a boy on your team it's like what you're you're a multi-millionaire and you're mad
00:07:40.900that you can't harass a child in the comments of their school high school team twitter account
00:07:47.420yeah god forbid a children's sports team not want millions of strangers on the internet
00:07:53.380telling them to kill themselves and alive themselves my thing is when i saw this is this
00:07:58.740is so obviously cruel like i don't need to spell out especially for like someone listening to this0.95
00:08:02.840podcast why it is cruel to go after a 17 year old softball player but it's also just like if you look
00:08:09.880at the arc of riley gaines career right her whole thing is like we need fairness in women's sports0.64
00:08:15.640and so we need to get rid of trans women it is no secret that this has been a winning issue for the0.97
00:08:22.640republican party over the last couple of years and so much of the sports world has capitulated0.91
00:08:28.920to this anti-trans hysteria and we'll get into the fact that like this is not a real issue that's
00:08:35.480like affecting a big part of the population at all like if it was they wouldn't have to go over
00:08:41.400these obscure examples of like prepubescent high schoolers but it is notable to add that like the
00:08:48.060ncaa where riley encountered a trans competitor when she was an athlete has already prohibited
00:08:55.440athletes assigned male at birth from competing in NCAA women's competitions. They changed that
00:09:02.060rule after Trump got into office. So like, you'd think that Riley would be like, okay, great. You
00:09:08.920know, we won. But for her, the constant fomenting of outrage is the career. She's not actually
00:09:19.320arguing for policy proposals. She just needs a constant stream of outrage. And so once she gets1.00
00:09:25.400what you'd assume was the goal which is to ban trans women in ncaa sports she moves on to literal0.93
00:09:31.840children because the policy like the policy goal has already been achieved1.00
00:09:36.200so it's at this point it's just the grift needs new blood child blood
00:09:41.040who's drinking the blood of children now who's drinking the blood now riley we should we could
00:09:49.560do conspiracy on this podcast the way that these people find ever new ways to victimize themselves
00:09:56.760even after they literally get everything they wanted they have all three branches of government
00:10:02.220they have culture they have the ncaa and riley gains like you have everything and it is part of
00:10:09.780this self-victimizing grift where you always have to be the underdog to continue raising support to
00:10:14.380continue raising money to continue gaining followers to make it look like you're fighting
00:10:18.000for something even when you have everything they even have democrats making concessions they have
00:10:22.240gavin newsom agreeing with them yeah like who are they fighting with at this point you have
00:10:26.480everything and yet all of these people especially in this issue they'll be like we are fighting
00:10:31.100the hard fight and we're never backing down it's like you have everything you have everything to
00:10:36.220support trans people right now is so especially trans athletes especially trans kids is is the
00:10:43.060unpopular position and you're still framing it like riley gains again multi-millionaire from
00:10:48.920from bullying children online is framing herself as like oppressed by this 17 year old girl on a
00:10:56.620softball team in a high school it's ridiculous oof i'm getting heated well i think it also reveals
00:11:01.960a kind of dishonesty of what their talking points are on trans women in athletics because usually0.61
00:11:08.580they'll talk like it's the olympics right or they'll be like oh this is a serious safety issue
00:11:13.560because right if you have men doing you know whatever high contact sports like someone could
00:11:20.420a woman could die right but then okay but the person which you're which you're actually doing0.90
00:11:26.360though you're making fun of a like a 17 year old trans girl who transitioned before puberty by the0.97
00:11:32.820way and is also playing in a high school league i don't know does like a trans girl not deserve to
00:11:39.940be part of this like what is like basically like a social part of most kids lives growing up i don't
00:11:45.860know it's just so like transparently like mean spirited it's like so transparently not really0.98
00:11:50.640about fairness or safety it's just like this teenager is a transsexual and it's just so0.91
00:11:57.760interesting because if you have at least been peripherally paying attention to politics in
00:12:02.940america you'd think that trans participation in sports was like one of the top five most
00:12:08.860important issues americans are facing today yeah and if that's true then why why is all you have
00:12:16.940to go after why why are they having to dig this deep to come up with examples of it what why do
00:12:23.660You only have this 17-year-old girl on a high school softball team in Minnesota.
00:12:28.440And I will say, if there were better examples, Riley Gaines would find them.1.00
00:12:35.800Well, they're always also, like, talking as if it's, like, this imminent event where, like, women's sports is going to be over.
00:12:42.080As it's completely filled with men, right?
00:12:46.780And then it's like, okay, I feel like if that were happening, we would notice, right?
00:12:51.340Like, I think that there would be a lot of examples for you to choose that don't involve high school teams in Minnesota.
00:12:59.500The head of the NCAA, before they ruled that trans women can't participate in women's NCAA sports, said that there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in the NCAA, which is made up of over half a million athletes total.
00:17:13.060One thing's for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around.
00:17:17.660Now, as many would quickly point out, an imperfect statement.
00:17:21.560But the main point, which is that Riley Gaines is a sore loser who's using her platform of millions to bully a child for MAGA internet points, I think was well taken.
00:17:31.360What's striking to me about this tweet, considering the direction this is going to go, is just how soft of a rebuttal it really is.
00:17:40.200Like with Simone, Simone is not even suggesting she's not even really defending the idea of trans women in sports. She's proposing, well, maybe we could have a transgender category, right, for sports. And just simply pointing out that Riley's comments are just sort of needlessly mean spirited, even if what she's concerned about is, you know, even if you think that trans women in sports is unfair, like there's there would be a way to talk about this is not as mean spirited as she's being.
00:18:07.920You could, for example, be advocating that for trans women in their own leagues.
00:18:11.380That's like all that Simone is even saying here, right?
00:23:43.080I was learning about Taylor Silverman this morning.
00:23:46.400She brands herself, like in all of her social media bios, as the skateboarder who spoke up.
00:23:52.020that's really good i love that i love that i love that she was in like one red bull sponsored
00:24:00.920amateur skateboarding competition years ago and lost to a trans girl and that and then it was
00:24:08.980like a local thing that you like pay 20 to participate in or something and now she's like
00:24:14.140i'm the skateboarder who spoke up well invite her to the 2028 republican national convention
00:24:19.440she'll be speaking to address the oppressing issue of transsexual skateboarding
00:24:24.040so she's been a heavy hitter in this in this discourse she tweeted at simone biles if larry
00:24:34.940nassar came out as quote-unquote trans would you want him moved to a women's prison which riley
00:24:42.500gains quoted and wrote this is an excellent question for simone biles so simone biles tweets
00:24:48.740i don't think we should bully random transgender children and in response it's like oh so you're
00:24:55.140saying that famous sex criminals should be moved to women's prisons and you're saying that you0.65
00:25:01.060support your own abuser because that's what it sounds like you're saying to me and they and she
00:25:07.460just kept pushing this riley gains tweeted again the following day uh a video of simone's testimony
00:25:13.220before congress for safe sport which is a bill that protects athletes against sexual abuse
00:25:18.440and she wrote Simone Biles when she had to endure a predatory man versus Simone Biles when other
00:25:25.780girls have to endure predatory men and it's a side-by-side of the testimony with her tweet at
00:25:30.400Riley Gaines like why why are they always relying on these like outlandish hypotheticals to make
00:25:36.360their point right it's like wow well what if Larry Nassar was a trans woman what then it's like okay
00:25:42.940well like what it's like saying like what if jeffrey epstein was a woman would you still be
00:25:48.960a feminist then and it's like okay well jeffrey epstein's not a woman right what if jeffrey epstein
00:25:55.400was an immigrant i think maybe you wouldn't feel so pro-immigration then right right like okay and
00:26:02.820also larry nassar jeffrey epstein like they they're not trans women no these people riley
00:26:10.560gains and co think that like men who want to be sexually predatory will dress up as women to do
00:26:17.980that like they'll just do it as men they do do it as men it's a regular occurrence i mean it's1.00
00:26:24.000always displacement right i mean that's basically why this issue works for right-wing women is that1.00
00:26:29.520it's these proxy issues right because if you're a right-wing woman you can't really take a feminist1.00
00:26:36.400stance against powerful men because I make you a crazy feminist, right? You can't be against1.00
00:26:42.360patriarchy, but you can displace the target of your anger onto someone weak, and then it becomes
00:26:51.020an acceptable right-wing strategy, right? So, okay, women are allowed to talk about sexual abuse,1.00
00:26:57.200but they have to talk about it coming from immigrants or from trans people,
00:27:00.760right that's kind of like that's the game we're playing you're not you're not allowed to criticize
00:27:06.880power you have to criticize an outsider someone marginal right scapegoat and then maya poet who
00:27:14.280i made another episode about but who's a far less successful trying to be a grifter chimed in and0.95
00:27:21.380wrote at simone biles must want what happened to her as a little girl at the hands of a predatory0.99
00:27:26.500man to happen to every little girl who plays sports and it's just like have we lost our goddamn minds0.80
00:27:32.000it's again i'm like reading all of these in succession and i'm like i can't believe anyone0.96
00:27:36.280takes this seriously and in good faith and yet as this campaign was unfolding any brand that had
00:27:43.440ever worked with simone biles like athleta any person associated with simone biles who had like
00:27:48.900interviewed her recently and put that on instagram or anything flooded with hundreds thousands of0.54
00:27:54.400comments being like how dare you work with her how she must want what happened to her to happen
00:27:59.760to every little girl i mean i can't fathom how successful these campaigns are because they just0.83
00:28:05.880are so ridiculous yeah it's interesting that they're able to so fluidly draw an equivalence0.98
00:28:11.060between a transgender high school softball player existing and universal acceptance of child rape0.99
00:28:18.920right like like how are they connecting these dots i mean but do you think it's just that like0.71
00:28:24.380Like they need to exaggerate it times a thousand every single time and twist it so severely because if they actually represented what Simone Biles said in these tweets, which was maybe you shouldn't bully a child, then people would not agree with their outrage campaign.
00:28:39.660Yeah, they have to make it about something other than what it is about because what they're saying just fundamentally doesn't make a lot of sense, nor is it really worthy of a high level of outrage.
00:28:49.040But again, they're drawing from like rage that people have about other issues, about sexual violence against children, for example. And they're sort of harnessing that energy to advance this goal that has basically nothing to do with that, right? Namely, scapegoating teenage athletes who are transgender, as if underage trans athletes bear all the responsibility for crimes against children.
00:29:15.060i would like to take a quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode
00:29:22.440factor lately between doing this podcast and social media commentary and keeping up with the
00:29:28.580news and trying to see my family i haven't had a whole lot of free time and might i add it's now
00:29:34.780summer in new york the best time to be in new york and with what free time i do have i want to get
00:29:40.200outside. I want to bike on the West Side Highway. I want to take a nap in Central Park. Well, maybe
00:29:45.820not a full nap. Don't want anyone to steal my backpack. But like a shut your eyes for 10 minutes
00:29:50.660without falling asleep kind of nap. You know what I mean. The point is, something that I really don't
00:29:54.880want to be doing is spending hours inside cooking. Or really spending much of any time at all
00:29:59.940cooking, for that matter. Because I don't love cooking. But I do love eating. And one thing that
00:30:05.140helps me get around that conundrum is Factor. Factor is a meal delivery program with chef-made
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00:30:52.460fruity50 off for 50% off your first box and free shipping. That is factormeals.com
00:30:59.620slash fruity50 off. Thank you so much to Factor for sponsoring this episode. And now let's get
00:31:06.680back to it. There was another component of this outrage campaign where you're get ready because1.00
00:31:15.500you're about to read a Nancy Mace tweet. There was another huge component of this outrage campaign
00:31:20.120that was like, if you had to compete against men, you wouldn't have any medals. Riley tweeted that,
00:31:27.460one of her tweets, what did it say? You mentioned this earlier. You know how many gold medals you'd
00:31:31.900have if your inclusive dream came true? Zero. Do you want to read this Nancy Mace tweet?
00:31:37.820Honey, if biological men competed in women's gymnastics, odds are no one would know your name.
00:31:44.280first of all nancy if you didn't take a selfie in front of bathroom signs every time you went1.00
00:31:51.140to take a shit no one would know your name so let's start there what does nancy maze thinks0.98
00:31:56.840gymnastics is well we're actually going to talk about that in just a short second because i am a1.00
00:32:02.540big gymnastics fan and i actually i want to make the case that nothing these right-wing outrage
00:32:08.200people are doing like they don't actually care about sports and what this is is about something
00:32:12.600much bigger which we're gonna get to but i care about gymnastics and i want to care about sports
00:32:17.840for a second because i know more about it than these people but first but first i want to address
00:32:23.980this sort of strain i have a cold it really came out when i said that this strain there's this1.00
00:32:35.040strain of thought in trans exclusionary feminism feminism quote unquote where basically they just0.99
00:32:42.400think that like women are naturally worse at everything than men oh absolutely they'll argue
00:32:48.220this like you know that there shouldn't be trans women like trans women have an unfair advantage1.00
00:32:52.180like jeopardy yeah yeah poker or chess beauty pageants beauty pageants yeah trans women have1.00
00:32:58.740an unfair advantage in beauty pageants because they think that trans women are men and they
00:33:03.540think that men are just like men are better at literally everything everything and i'm like this0.96
00:33:07.680how is this a feminist position? And so with that in mind, I would like to talk about gymnastics for
00:33:13.420a second. Men and women's gymnastics are essentially two different sports. And one could
00:33:19.520argue that men are actually given a competitive advantage by not having to compete alongside
00:33:25.240women. Men's gymnastics prioritizes upper body strength, while women's requires that and
00:33:31.700flexibility and the sort of athletic artistry. There were all these tweets being like,
00:33:37.000Simone Biles would have never won any of her medals if she had to compete against men,
00:33:41.540which, first of all, we're talking about trans people here. I don't want to accept the premise0.93
00:33:45.100that trans women are men, that trans women athletes are men. But just while I can go on0.85
00:33:50.040this little gymnastics tangent, that is not true. Like, there was this one tweet,
00:33:55.240is Simone Biles willing to compete against Brody Malone on vault? Until yes, she needs to shut the1.00
00:34:01.740fuck up. That got over 30,000 likes. Brody Malone is a famously MAGA supporting member of the1.00
00:34:10.4802024 U.S. men's gymnastics team. Simone Biles would smoke him on vault. Simone Biles does
00:34:17.860something called the Yurchenko double pike, which very, very few men in the world would even attempt0.99
00:34:23.780and she can perform it better than any of the ones who do. And there are lots of videos on Instagram0.99
00:34:30.260that you'll see of male gymnasts trying to perform very basic elements to women's artistic
00:34:36.100gymnastics like a back walkover and they can't do it because they don't have the back flexibility
00:34:42.200for example and so while this isn't really like the point for me because i don't believe any of
00:34:47.900this is genuinely about sports it's interesting to see these supposed sports advocates openly
00:34:53.860display such an incuriosity about sports right like with this brody malone tweet they just
00:34:59.560attached a photo of him and like he has big biceps and it's just interesting that a lot of
00:35:05.280these like trans exclusionary radical feminists like they just see a man with biceps and assume1.00
00:35:09.900that like that man is better at any woman at everything yeah and then also of course the1.00
00:35:16.120usual thing where it's like they just don't make a categorical distinction between trans women and
00:35:20.580men so they're like you think that trans girls should be allowed to play high school softball
00:35:26.560well then i suppose you shouldn't think the rock should be able to box your mom or like0.78
00:35:31.300you know what i mean like like okay that's not really what we're talking about i also just
00:35:37.460speaking of of visuals you know when i go back to that photo that riley initially commented on of
00:35:43.220this high school girls softball team you look at these kids and like they're really just kids yeah
00:35:50.460kids tend to be like that sorry i wasn't trying to use it's you know what i mean though because
00:36:00.660they want it they want to invoke like literally like you said like would you want your daughter
00:36:05.360to be in the ring with arnold schwarzenegger and it's like yeah yeah what are we these are
00:36:10.780these are for these are kids i suppose you want your daughters changing in front of larry nassar
00:36:15.360well first of all people's daughters were changing in front of larry nassar
00:36:18.780It had nothing to do with transgender people.0.88
00:36:21.760I feel like the ignorance on display about gymnastics is also, for me, it's a case of
00:36:27.280why the federal government shouldn't be making like sweeping prohibitions about sports ethics.
00:36:33.780Shouldn't this be something that's litigated at the level of leagues and of associations,
00:36:39.640right, and decided on by people who are experts in the particular sport?
00:36:43.900Like, I don't know that much about gymnastics, for example.
00:36:46.460so like do trans women have an advantage have a group advantage of over cis women in gymnastics
00:36:52.580i don't know i'm not qualified to know that and neither is nancy mace and neither is riley gains
00:36:58.540like shouldn't these decisions be made by people who know what they're talking about
00:37:02.000well and it's just i mean i feel like we've been making the case and we'll continue to but it's
00:37:07.600just you're offering practical solutions right now to people who aren't actually interested in that0.52
00:37:14.120yeah trans women like i said were categorically excluded from women's sports in the ncaa they're
00:37:21.120still equally mad and yeah that satisfied riley games for all of seven seconds yeah because it's0.52
00:37:26.900not about sports like i i know a lot of people are going to hear this and be like you know when
00:37:32.460you call the trans athletes inclusion in sports like a non-issue like it's it's a cop-out but
00:37:38.360But it's really, first of all, it's like, it is a non-issue.
00:37:42.460Think about the amount of athletes that make it to the elite level.
00:37:46.960Think about the amount of trans people there are as a percentage of the population.
00:37:51.440And then think about, like, we're talking about a couple people.
00:37:55.140This is not an issue that affects a population.
00:37:58.360And beyond that, I just, again, I have to, like, hammer home constantly.
00:38:02.160That's not what Riley Gaines is interested in.
00:38:04.540And it's not what the Republican Party is interested in.
00:38:06.900they're not looking for solutions to this. They're just looking for constant outrage
00:38:11.080to build political support off of. And so when I see people get wrapped up in these hypotheticals
00:38:17.080of, well, what if, and what if Simone does want this? And what about your daughter? And
00:38:20.940it's like, well, none of this is happening. You know what this kind of reminds me of?
00:38:25.880Is so when there were all these pro-Palestine protests popping up on campuses across America,
00:38:32.920Basically asking universities to divest from Israel, to divest from the mass bombing and starving of Palestinians, right?
00:38:42.320And you had these three university presidents famously sit in front of a congressional hearing over anti-Semitism on campus.
00:38:50.960And Elise Stefanik, this Republican, asked each of them the question which would ultimately lead to all of their firings from their universities,
00:38:59.260which was if students were calling for a genocide against jews on campus would that qualify as hate
00:39:06.840speech and they gave bad answers to that question yeah but it's also not something that was
00:39:13.360happening the thing that was happening was them asking their universities to divest from the
00:39:19.920genocide against palestinians and so similarly like with this like trans athletes debate it's
00:39:26.060like well what if a trans person was in the ring with your child and hurting them and it's like0.88
00:39:32.060what's actually happening right now in reality on the earth that we all live in is like palestinians0.94
00:39:37.880are being killed and trans people are being brutalized this is another thing that i learned
00:39:42.460from kat speaking of like abuse dynamics but it's like darvo deny attack reverse victim and
00:39:48.380offender which is basically this semantic trick in which you accuse the person who you are harming
00:39:53.980actively of harming you and it strikes me as like a similar thing and they have to work in0.58
00:40:00.260hypotheticals because hypotheticals are the only worlds in which like cis people are being dominated
00:40:06.580by trans athletes yes does that make sense i feel like that was a solid tangent well it kind of goes
00:40:11.980back to their so many of their talking points are just hypotheticals you know the way they speak
00:40:15.860you would think that there was like this this nationwide epidemic of female athletes being0.90
00:40:21.520sexually abused by transgender athletes. And it's like, I mean, I can't think of a single case of
00:40:29.100that happening. We're talking completely about hypothetical things here. I don't know, usually
00:40:33.900like really, really pressing political issues don't need to be just discussed only in terms
00:40:39.020of hypotheticals, right? We promised you, dear listener, that this would devolve into a beauty
00:40:46.360pageant and we have arrived at that point another thing that really started to happen which happens
00:40:53.120a lot in these sort of anti-trans circles is it's just very quickly becomes how much do trans
00:40:59.960athletes look like my idea of what a woman is for example riley gains tweets amidst this fury to
00:41:07.500simone biles this guy is a beautiful woman lol and it is a photo of you guessed it leah thomas
00:41:15.300the swimmer that Riley Gaines tied for fifth place with three years ago and who is a completely
00:41:21.320private figure. But Riley Gaines' career depends on constantly reminding us of the, you know,
00:41:27.720Holocaust that she went through by tying with her for fifth place three years ago. And it's like,
00:41:31.660wait, when did beauty become part of this? Yeah. Why is that the conversation? What does beauty
00:41:36.460have to do with fairness in sports or anything for that matter? Well, a lot, apparently.
00:41:41.380Right. I mean, don't you think it's so revealing of how these people actually think gender works?0.55
00:41:45.760Yeah. I mean, so much of the argument is based on the optics of like pictures, right? They'll show
00:41:52.080like a trans athlete next to a cis athlete and the juxtaposition is the main argument. But of
00:41:58.480course, you can also do this with two cis people and increasingly they do do that. I mean, I've0.85
00:42:02.540seen, I feel like a lot of female athletes are being, I mean, everyone's being transvestigated0.98
00:42:06.920these days we did an episode on that but like i've seen like pictures of a katie ledecky going
00:42:11.560around yeah the female swimmer going around twitter with people being like this is a man
00:42:17.880yeah there was this one tweet that went viral where it was a side-by-side of simone biles
00:42:22.580in her sort of athletic clothes and riley gains with her makeup and hair done in a dress full
00:42:31.640glam the tweet says simone biles recently said riley gains looks like a man what do you guys
00:42:36.480think and so now the whole argument is who looks like a man and who looks like a man usually
00:42:42.960involves a comment like like a juxtaposition of one woman who has muscles and is not wearing
00:42:48.740makeup next to a woman who has a full blowout and a full face of makeup and is wearing some kind of
00:42:54.160glittery dress okay and then someone quote tweeted that to prove the point you know with
00:42:59.740a picture of simone biles in a dress in purple eyeshadow and riley gains you know with biceps
00:43:06.460in a leotard and saying well you know yeah yeah you could just put a photo of a woman doing sports
00:43:12.620next to a picture of a woman dressed up with makeup on and that's like half of what this
00:43:16.700discourse has become i mean it's interesting it actually like says a lot about gender which is
00:43:21.760that like sorry if this is getting into like the philosophy territory but like like judith butler
00:43:26.720says in gender trouble that like there's this element of difference and juxtaposition is like
00:43:32.220how sex and gender are constituted right the aretha franklin song you make me feel like a
00:43:38.240natural woman what is it that makes you feel like a woman well in the song the implication is that
00:43:43.280it's a masculine lover that makes you feel like a woman you know it's why in gay couples people
00:43:47.880straight people want to figure out who is the man who's a woman they want to look for this like
00:43:52.420difference that makes the idea of masculinity or femininity coherent because those two things are
00:43:57.940defined by their contrast with each other and so a lot of this is like this you know optical
00:44:03.560argument about who's more feminine um when it comes to women's sports and i feel like that i
00:44:08.760feel i mean i feel like the outcome of this is that is like i don't know women competing at the
00:44:12.540olympics as if they're as if they're pageant queens totally again very quickly this became
00:44:17.840like a beauty contest of like who looks more like a woman riley gains or simone biles and i'm like0.61
00:44:23.540Well, this feels feminist. There was this photo that went around from Ryan McEnany, who's sort of a Nepo pundit. She's Kaylee McEnany's sister, but it was a photo of her and Riley Gaines. And she said, Team Riley Gaines, which Riley Gaines retweeted. And it's interesting because in this photo, Riley Gaines is like, she is literally like yassified to maintain anonymity.
00:44:44.520yes she she's like a plastic doll yeah she is so deliciously face tuned and i'm like god like
00:44:51.360you're part of a movement where like it's not it's not genitals that make you a woman it's0.97
00:44:57.600it's face tune yes womanhood is stored in the face tune
00:45:00.900it doesn't make you a man if you have pores i wanted to take a quick break from this episode
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00:47:31.700netflix documentary the intention behind this is that simone has a new docu-series coming out on
00:47:37.000netflix they believe it's an attempt to put her name her profile her face her image back in the
00:47:42.140public sphere which was really fascinating because i just love how riley gains thinks that simone0.96
00:47:47.900biles needs her to like get publicity that simone biles is somehow less of a celebrity than yeah1.00
00:47:53.880I mean, maybe in my world of deranged niche Twitter drama, but not for like normal people.0.91
00:48:01.780I want to bring this back down to earth a little bit and like explain what's actually going on here with this whole online outrage cycle and the effect that it has on like real people in real life who aren't doing weird transvestigative online beauty pageants.
00:48:22.080And to understand that, I think we have to talk a little bit about Gamergate.
00:48:27.120Natalie, could you explain what Gamergate is and how it kind of ties into what happened last week?
00:48:34.700Well, Gamergate was kind of one of the most foundational events in the history of internet harassment.
00:48:40.500This began in 2014 when, I mean, I would say the background of it was long.
00:48:45.880There was these sort of longstanding resentments within the video gamer culture, I guess, about an increasing line of criticism from professional games reviewers, which would critique misogyny in gaming.
00:48:59.400In other words, we would apply like fairly standard methods of criticism that we would apply to movies or to any other form of art, but apply to video games.
00:49:07.540And it would ask questions like, why is it that in so many video games, a woman is basically functioning as a prize, or instead of as a character, right? So this was this was very threatening to a lot of gamers. And so conspiracy theory thinking developed where they, I guess, began to accuse what initially started with one particular game designer, a female game designer, who they, through elaborate, like conspiracy type connecting of the dots were like, I think that she slept with this journalist for reviews.
00:49:37.060And then the number of targets sort of increased as the conspiracy movement turned into this harassment campaign. And eventually, the effect of it was basically to terrorize anyone in the gaming industry who was a woman, who was not white, who was queer.
00:49:55.920The fact of it was basically a mass intimidation of people to stay in their place and not speak up because you will be doxxed and swatted and you will live in fear, basically, if you don't conform to, you know, our status quo of like masculine traditional gaming or whatever, right?
00:50:15.280and gamer gate which oh my god i remember it was like there were like three i think main like
00:50:21.020female video game critics who were like harassed within an inch of their lives like they had to1.00
00:50:27.200get like security to go anywhere these were like private nita therkesian and um zoe quinn1.00
00:50:32.340and brianna woo brianna woo yeah and brianna woo who's now well that's for next time that's for
00:50:41.180next time yeah but they were all harassed within an inch of their lives private citizens and i feel
00:50:47.020like this laid the groundwork for like libs of tiktok and stop anti-semites which is like the
00:50:53.520zionist version of libs of tiktok to terrorize anyone who supports palestinian liberation0.54
00:50:57.700they drum up this like mass amount of harassment to like you said make sure that anyone who's a0.83
00:51:06.940woman anyone who's queer anyone who like supports anything short of like total fascism does not get
00:51:16.560to speak those views and so the way that that looked in this situation was like like i said
00:51:23.500anyone who was even tangentially associated with simone biles was totally harassed to the point
00:51:31.320where like they needed to answer for her one of simone biles recent brand partnerships like i
00:51:37.240mentioned was athleta and the comments on the athleta brand page were all demanding for the
00:51:44.280company to cut ties with her there were mainstream news outlets covering how athleta refuses to
00:51:52.320reveal whether or not they'll cut their partnership with simone biles because simone biles told her
00:51:57.540she couldn't bully a child it's funny because the main conservative obsession for like five years
00:52:03.280was this idea of cancel culture yeah was the idea that oh like you know the politically correct
00:52:10.020woke scolds are going to try to get you fired if you say the wrong thing and it's like well0.99
00:52:15.320this is exactly that right they're basically trying to target simone biles career her revenue0.98
00:52:23.000sources over a statement that barely was political and and so the point of these campaigns whether0.99
00:52:31.180it's gamergate or libs of tiktok who very explicitly wants to get people fired or things
00:52:36.420like this where it's attacking all of simone's sponsors and a hundred thousand comments and all1.00
00:52:41.820of her friends instagram posts it's the the point here is not fairness in women's sports0.63
00:52:47.040the point is like i mean it is cancel culture it is literally like we want to make it socially
00:52:54.040politically commercially financially professionally unviable to hold any position short of trans
00:53:02.440people shouldn't exist yeah would you say that's fair that that is fair yes there i mean there's0.99
00:53:08.680very few people on the right at this point who have any kind of even remotely moderate stance0.89
00:53:13.480about trans people right there's no there's no like oh well trans people have a right to
00:53:17.660to exist as equal citizens and participate in public like no like no one's saying that
00:53:21.760i would not say that the mindset is of extermination but it's like the quieter
00:53:28.640form of you know erasure ratcheting up the stigma and marginalization to the point of
00:53:35.740the this type this population being pushed out of sight i think that's what they what they would
00:53:40.940like. And I think that Simone Biles, unfortunately, doesn't understand that as evidenced by this
00:53:49.420follow up apology she released yesterday at the time that we're recording this. So Simone Biles
00:53:56.680publishes this apology. And I'm not going to read the whole thing. But it's basically,
00:54:00.340I wanted to follow up from my last tweets. I've always believed competitive equity and inclusivity
00:54:05.720are both essential in sport i want to apologize to riley for getting personal and heated these
00:54:12.080are sensitive complicated issues she kind of does this middling response of like well i didn't mean0.99
00:54:18.020to get involved and i just want to be very clear like simone biles should not have apologized
00:54:22.700and obviously i say that because like politically i'm like never apologized to riley gains
00:54:29.420but also strategically never apologize to any of these people because this apology right it
00:54:37.200presumes that the people harassing her are doing so in good faith and will stop if she says i i'm
00:54:43.540sorry and that's not that's not what's happening here this is a big win for them i think they're
00:54:48.280happy about the apology because it signals that they have the strength to assert dominance in
00:54:55.600this way right that they can tell you to shut up and you have to yes basically because it threatens
00:55:02.460your career threatens your relationship with advertisers it threatens your ability to
00:55:06.140exist in public without being harassed by mobs of people riley gains literally while natalie and i
00:55:12.820have been recording this riley gains went on fox news and said simone biles was pushing quote pro
00:55:19.400trans propaganda and she's apologized for it and realized she was wrong and i'm grateful for that
00:55:25.560Nonetheless, I accept her apology. I see this, truthfully, as a really big win. You have this really famous public figure who is now issuing a groveling public apology and backtracks after, again, tweeting pro-trans propaganda, if you will. This scenario would have been unthinkable a year, certainly two years ago. Whether it's sincere or not, I think that's a different question. But nonetheless, she learned we are not living in 2020 anymore.
00:55:51.200and it's like this is why you can't cede to these people at all yeah i feel like i want to go back
00:55:59.020and look at simone's original tweet because it's because i'm like did she really post pro-trans
00:56:04.480propaganda but to these people like saying that you shouldn't bully trans kids is pro-trans
00:56:10.760propaganda yeah i mean the claim is you should be uplifting the current trans community and perhaps
00:56:15.700finding a way to making sports inclusive or creating a new avenue where trans people feel
00:56:20.960safe in sports may be a transgender category in all sports. So in other words, acknowledging that
00:56:26.600trans people exist and should be given some level of fair treatment in society, whatever that may
00:56:33.160look like to you, that's what we're claiming as trans propaganda. So I think at this point,
00:56:37.440like even saying the word transgender without scare quotes means that you're doing trans
00:56:41.780propaganda to them right yes because they from their point of view there is no such thing as0.68
00:56:47.360being transgender and the idea of being transgender is this like degenerate ideology that's being like
00:56:55.160pushed on us by the globalists right you know someone right but the thing is like transgender
00:57:01.340people are are not an ideology we are a type of person and to you cannot erase the concept without
00:57:08.820erasing the people so unfortunately unfortunately there will be a human cost to this and now you
00:57:16.800know riley gains goes on and like i'm sure we'll parade this around for the next however many
00:57:22.640days weeks months of like oh simone biles learned her lesson yeah these people you know gavin newsom
00:57:31.680did a version of this recently which i think you mentioned natalie where he was basically like he
00:57:36.600he like threw trans people under the bus. He was like, I'm a Democrat who won't get caught up in
00:57:41.340that trans sports craziness. Yeah. But that assumes that these people want compromise and1.00
00:57:48.580that they're actually concerned with trans people in sports. Like I've made the case for, there are
00:57:54.180very few elite athletes in general and almost no trans ones. So what is this really about?
00:58:01.340Well, it's a, it's a, it's an Overton window shift, right? They're constantly pushing and
00:58:06.200pushing and pushing and it's a result of trump winning in 2024 in part right i think that's been
00:58:11.580felt by many on the right as a major cultural victory i think i think in a way it was a major
00:58:17.880cultural victory gavin newsom seems to think it was major cultural victory and the result of that
00:58:22.640is that democrats are now are kind of shifting rightward on immigration and trans people as they
00:58:29.020try to kind of meet the i mean this is how democracy works is that you have is that
00:58:34.800unfortunately, sometimes the majority actually is who decides things. And right now, the majority
00:58:41.040is not really with trans people, I'm sorry to say. I mean, I think it's comforting to say some kind1.00
00:58:45.400of conspiracist thing about like, oh, you know, it's just like the elites that hate trans people
00:58:49.600are keeping us down. And most people actually support us. Well, I don't know if most people
00:58:52.600support us. I think that most people could be persuaded to support us. I think that probably
00:58:57.980most people, again, if you actually meet with them one on one as a trans person, I'd say probably
00:59:03.160most people will find that, oh, right, you're a person, and they'll treat you like a person.
00:59:08.800But I think that the current media environment, meaning social media, meaning very effective,
00:59:15.440I guess, right-wing mass media, has succeeded. In other words, they're creating these moral
00:59:20.660panics around trans people, and sports is currently our most losing issue. So I guess
00:59:26.680strategically, I don't know. I don't know. I can't quite decide what to do about it at the moment,
00:59:31.800but but we have to figure it out right i mean at moments i've even felt um temptation to like
00:59:37.820make the concession to just be like okay well never mind like obviously we've lost on the
00:59:41.680sports thing let's try to defend something but i don't that's not a good idea i know it's not
00:59:45.820because the second they get sports because like you say it's not about the sports it's just not
00:59:50.560it's not about sports it's and the second they went on sports okay bathrooms are next okay
00:59:54.100healthcare is next okay housing is next okay right it's it's they don't want trans people to to to0.94
00:59:59.880exist so sports is is an area they've discovered where oh they can get most people on their side1.00
01:00:05.800but that's the beginning not the end a thousand percent sorry are you gonna no it's i'm just
01:00:13.240thinking out loud which i guess is like what a podcast is oh my god how do we fight back against
01:00:19.800this i mean i mean that's a question it is genuinely hard when you feel like you're going
01:00:25.100uphill against this moral panic. And it is a moral panic. Again, if it wasn't a moral panic,
01:00:32.560Riley Gaines, the professional picker of examples to foment outrage around, would have a better0.51
01:00:37.400example to pick than a high school softball player. I talk a lot about moral panics on this podcast.
01:00:44.800And my theory around a lot of it is just like people in power, people like, you know, Rupert
01:00:52.220Murdoch, who are bankrolling people like Riley Gaines, it is in their interest to make you
01:00:58.680continue to think that your life is not the way that you would like for it to be because of a
01:01:04.00017-year-old softball player in Minnesota. That's not who's getting in the way of your American
01:01:10.120dream. People like Rupert Murdoch are standing in the way of your American dream. It's always like,
01:01:15.120I hate to be like, it comes back to billionaires, but it's like, that's how power works. They're
01:01:21.060getting you with someone with relatively very little power to consume your your life and your
01:01:28.540frustrations towards people who have even less power than you so you forget about who's really
01:01:34.780in power not to do like the leftist podcast thing but right no but i mean that's true and i also
01:01:40.780think there's another layer on top of it where it's like i think a significant number of people
01:01:45.780have noticed that this does seem to be some kind of a distraction in a sense that like it is a
01:01:52.380little bit difficult to explain to yourself why you're spending this much time talking about
01:01:56.980transgender people in sports right and so i think i think a lot of people do sense that this is a
01:02:02.960distraction of some kind but then they attribute the blame for that in the completely the wrong
01:02:08.620direction right before we started recording this podcast i listened to jimmy door's podcast on the
01:02:14.300same topic and he had this like take where it's like trans people in athletics is just like you
01:02:21.040know it's an agenda that's being pushed by the by palantir and by the broadway zionists and by the
01:02:26.440by the big pharma right and it's like there to to distract working people from it it's like
01:02:32.280well this is like 50 correct and upside down right it's like it's like yes this is a distraction
01:02:38.120it is functioning to keep working people from getting mad at people who are exploiting them0.95
01:02:42.540but it's not the fucking liberal deep state that's that's pushing a transgender ideology that's not0.98
01:02:48.660the source of this distraction the source of this distraction is that a bunch of right-wing0.99
01:02:52.840pundits and strategists realized that it's really easy to get people angry about the idea of men and
01:02:58.460women's sports and so they create endless stories about that and look how deep they have to reach
01:03:03.940to find those stories they have to reach into you know high school softball but they as long as they
01:03:10.040keep that in the forefront of discourse and they keep that in the forefront of what constitutes
01:03:13.860news yeah they have you they have you thinking about this instead of thinking about something
01:03:18.000else i have a question for you the listener who i know can't respond to this because this is a
01:03:23.200podcast sorry but like riley gains got what she wanted in college sports so now she has to go
01:03:29.180after children and people who defend children online how dare they and like i have an honest
01:03:36.640question i have an honest question that you can't respond to because this is a podcast
01:03:40.180if they were to create some federal law banning all transgender athletes in high school and in
01:03:49.820middle school from participating with other children in the sports leagues that uh align
01:03:55.300with their gender do you think riley gains would be like i'm done now do you think there is a point
01:04:01.940at which riley gains and everybody like her who's part of this movement would be like i'm done now
01:04:06.340natalie do you want to answer the hypothetical in place of anyone listening
01:04:10.420like they're never done i mean riley gains might be done in the sense that she will she may cease
01:04:17.840to be useful she will cease to be like invited to cpac and to republican conventions as they move on0.61
01:04:24.420to the next thing right but i think that no that that the conservative social agenda as laid out
01:04:32.680in things like project 2025 as we've all known what it is because there's all these evangelical
01:04:37.000think tanks and so on who who promote it the goal is a kind of return to they don't want they don't
01:04:43.040want women working they don't want women having reproductive self-determination they want not
01:04:49.560just trans people but also gay people to be excluded from public life out of schools that's0.87
01:04:54.960the vector of this strategy so the so sports is a is a convenient entry point for them and it's0.87
01:05:00.680that they've used very effectively but no if if they achieve total victory on this
01:05:04.620they will immediately move on to the next thing and they already are and they already are even
01:05:10.320just in this simone biles news cycle case riley gains is going on fox news admitting to more of
01:05:17.380a victory than simone conceded in this statement simone said well i think we should figure out
01:05:22.500something and riley said well i'm glad she apologized for spewing pro-trans propaganda
01:05:27.500right you know and it's like that is why i'm such a believer that like you can't
01:05:33.740cede an inch on any of this stuff because these aren't people interested in compromise these are
01:05:38.020fascists yeah well and it's it's frustrating right because you get treated as as hysterical
01:05:43.320when you try endlessly to argue that i don't think they really care that much about fairness
01:05:47.220in women's sports but then it's like okay simone apologizes for her comment on this
01:05:53.100and the response is like she apologized for pro-trans propaganda okay so so you're anti-trans
01:05:59.120in other words right that's just that just like Riley Gaines just is she's just anti-trans this
01:06:04.120is more or less openly admitted I think at this point this is not like 2020 JK Rowling where it's
01:06:08.920like oh I love and support trans people and I'd march with you if you were oppressed but like no
01:06:12.680they would not march with you they want you to be oppressed and they're more or less openly saying
01:06:17.140that. Yeah. So I guess I feel strongly about making people aware of how these campaigns work,
01:06:24.580because when you search Simone Biles and all of these things come up that make it seem like she
01:06:30.660has done something irredeemably controversial, and just you see underneath every single thing
01:06:36.540that mentions of her thousands of comments, her apology from yesterday has 41,000 replies
01:06:41.860of people telling her that she already soiled her reputation by standing with the pro-trans mob or0.52
01:06:48.600something. It's so easy for an onlooker to just see the numbers, the sheer numbers, the sheer
01:06:55.460force that these people exert in these online campaigns and think that something legitimately
01:07:01.820controversial has taken place. And I feel like that is how the Overton window moves right by
01:07:07.160treating standing up for a 17 year old transgender kid as controversial as this like brutal attack on
01:07:13.380all women so i guess it's like what do we do to better combat these campaigns because clearly like
01:07:17.720you just you can't apologize yeah i mean it's very difficult to make people see that they're being
01:07:22.900baited into outrage over something disproportionately because it sounds because when you try it when
01:07:29.840you try to make that argument it sounds like you're sort of dodging the question i think like
01:07:34.980at the level of politicians what i think that the democrats messaging on this should be is i mean
01:07:40.060maybe this will be perceived as evasive so i don't know workshop this but i guess what i'm liking at
01:07:45.380the moment is is like the federal government should not be legislating sports ethics right
01:07:50.160this is a thing for sports associations to decide and for leagues to decide on an individual basis
01:07:56.740which is which i think makes sense right and if people have disagreements with the rules take it
01:08:02.120up with with the leagues not with riley gains the president of the united states yeah or riley
01:08:08.160gains or fox news right like it just doesn't it makes no sense the sports governing body of riley
01:08:12.300gains right riley gains who knows so much about gymnastics yeah yeah it's awful for that matter
01:08:19.760i think to cap this off i'm just going to reiterate something from simone's initial
01:08:22.900statement which is riley gains one thing is for sure no one in sports is safe with you around
01:08:28.920is that a good place to cap it love that i mean i hate it but yeah you know it is what it is
01:08:33.880i'm revoking the apology on simone's behalf yeah we take it back
01:08:37.620can we make her unsay it i guess i also want to clarify that like i feel bad for simone in this
01:08:46.320situation no i don't agree with her decision to apologize but i don't want to add another layer
01:08:50.200of harassment of people being like wow i can't believe you would apologize you know what i mean
01:08:53.280isn't there a way to do politics that doesn't involve harassment campaigns maybe not maybe
01:08:56.420you're naive i don't know it just feels like what the internet has become it's i know it's just like
01:09:01.060what the internet does and i guess all we can do as like better bystanders again is just like look
01:09:06.880at what's actually at the heart of what's going on which is like standing up for a trans kid
01:09:10.280encourage people to slow down and like try to like think a little more about like what they're doing
01:09:15.280and what actually is happening and to like try to process the ideological spin that these things
01:09:21.700are given and like step back have a sense of proportion before you know you decide that the
01:09:27.220most earth-shaking issue of our time is ethics and games journalism or transgenderism in high
01:09:33.200school softball natalie i know we don't usually this was more of like a like current twitter tea
01:09:38.640it was yeah than i usually do but uh you know it's when you've seen these campaigns play out
01:09:45.500so many times it's so easy to identify them in real time and like i was like oh don't apologize
01:09:51.560they're gonna run with it and now they're running with it they're running with it all we can do is
01:09:55.880just like make people aware and like don't participate in these things and like don't
01:09:59.920participate in the moral panic around trans sports like it's not worth it it's it's it's
01:10:04.480actually bad it's actually bad natalie thanks for coming on thanks so much for having me maybe
01:10:10.600we can do uh another episode sometime and talk about something that's more fun yeah sorry i
01:10:15.800promise next time i'll give you well actually i mean it's probably won't be more fun let's be
01:10:19.860honest i never talk about anything fun because i feel like the world is the world is just not a
01:10:23.800fun place at the moment i'm not having fun yeah but like i don't know maybe we could talk about
01:10:27.840bi sister or something we could talk about by oh my god we could do like the five year oh wait
01:10:31.780have we already passed the five year anniversary yeah it was it's uh i think we just passed six
01:10:35.780years i feel like my like my like bones are turning to dust
01:10:40.500six years since bi sister you me and tati westbrook yeah yeah i knew that tati uh
01:10:49.800skin smoothing filter you need some halo beauty yeah i need halo beauty exactly thank you so much
01:10:57.540for listening today i know everything feels really shitty right now and honestly it kind of is but
01:11:03.880like i just want to at least be able to recognize reality together and that's sometimes what we try
01:11:10.160to do on this podcast so thank you i love you until next time stay fruity