A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Transvestigating (with Contrapoints)

00:00:00.000 live in fact sorry can you believe what they did to the green eminem

00:00:07.520 um i'm sure that'll come up oh sure we're gonna transvestigate all the candies

00:00:14.020 hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity i'm matt bernstein and i'm so happy that you're here

00:00:25.400 Can you imagine a reality in which you constantly have to prove to everybody that you meet that you are the gender that you say you are? 0.67

00:00:33.700 Well, that's just a daily reality for trans people.

00:00:36.300 But I really did write this like I'm like a 60 minutes.

00:00:40.860 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:00:42.840 Well, that's just a daily reality for trans people.

00:00:45.640 But this Olympic Games, it became the reality for one of the best cisgender athletes in the world.

00:00:51.280 That is so 60 minutes. 0.90

00:00:52.620 we're gonna cut to someone you know on location what does it mean to get transvestigated

00:00:58.960 who gets transvestigated what gender are you listener i don't care but jk rowling would like

00:01:05.920 to know right now i guess that's a little less 60 minutes what gender are you what gender is anyone

00:01:13.120 i mean you don't should do that today we are going to use the latest global sports

00:01:20.320 controversy and i put that in air quotes as an entry point for broader conversations about gender

00:01:26.960 race surveillance and some really weird facebook groups to do that we are once again joined by

00:01:34.640 friend of the show ex-philosopher youtuber someone who i admire so much someone whose

00:01:40.100 work you're probably already familiar with but if you're not then i'm jealous of you because you get

00:01:44.240 to experience it for the first time after you listen to this podcast natalie wynn aka contra

00:01:48.560 points welcome back to a bit fruity thank you for having me back i am so happy to be here 0.98

00:01:53.800 this is getting a little professional okay yeah we should what should i say fuck it's gonna

00:01:58.920 degrade really fast like we're gonna start like we're gonna start we're gonna start talking about 0.98

00:02:03.980 this the dumbest tweets that have ever been made we're gonna be doing some light slander about mold

00:02:09.400 before we get into today's show if you would like to support the show or you would like more of the 0.96

00:02:14.020 show you can get that over on patreon the link to the patreon will be in the description for this

00:02:20.040 episode i do exclusive episodes over there every month this summer i have been working on a multi

00:02:26.560 part series about the bye sister scandal so we're having a lot of fun over there

00:02:31.160 this is my job i didn't know you had done the bye sister episode i need to go listen to that

00:02:38.320 because i i also i'm like a bisister scholar casually it was so fascinating i mean i remember

00:02:44.360 i could not stop looking at my phone when that was happening i remember going to see a movie with my

00:02:49.180 mom and my brother and the entire time on the way back from the movie i was like staring at my phone

00:02:53.140 i was trying to explain to them like why this controversy was earth shattering they're just 0.88

00:02:56.200 like what the fuck are you talking about tati westbrook is over party i know i mean because 0.88

00:03:01.840 it's also like so comedic it was over it was over vitamin supplements well it's like vitamin 0.99

00:03:06.320 supplements and then she tried to like manufacture this like this like moral crusade right right 0.99

00:03:12.760 because otherwise because otherwise who no one would give a shit because oh she's mad that her 1.00

00:03:15.960 vitamins aren't being endorsed by that like like who cares tt westbrook became youtube's anita bryant 0.98

00:03:21.480 no if she became anita bryant like it was over a hair vitamin sorry i just derailed you again

00:03:28.680 on july 30th 2024 once beloved children's author now user of x.com jk rowling tweeted

00:03:37.060 what will it take to end this insanity a female boxer left with life-altering injuries a female

00:03:43.300 boxer killed it's leviosa not leviosa

00:03:50.340 when i saw this tweet i had no idea what was going on yeah she doesn't really explain it

00:03:56.500 you're expected to be like up to date on all the lore of like boxing gender investigations and i

00:04:03.360 mean especially since jk rowling's followers and she's always talking about women's boxing you know

00:04:08.080 she's such an expert in that and something she obviously hears about so much until now

00:04:12.000 well okay no this is a good place to start though because she attached this article the article from

00:04:17.900 the guardian that she attached to this tweet was titled boxers who failed gender tests at world

00:04:23.660 championships cleared to compete at the Olympics. Now, I read this with no understanding of what

00:04:30.080 was going on. This is the first time I heard of this story. And looking back now, it seems

00:04:33.940 incredibly irresponsible of a publication like The Guardian to publish a headline like this.

00:04:40.680 Yeah, The Guardian is not necessarily known for their most responsible covering of what they call

00:04:45.540 gender issues or gender debate. So I guess that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that

00:04:50.580 this was coming up considering that I knew that there was no transgender athletes competing in

00:04:55.980 the Olympics. So you would think that that would make you immune to having to sit through 1.00

00:05:02.660 transgender discourse the entire time, but it turned out not to. That's a good opening question. 1.00

00:05:09.280 How did having no trans athletes at the Olympics somehow make the Olympics entirely about trans

00:05:14.900 athletes and what we think about them? That is the question. We are going to be unpacking a lot

00:05:20.080 of discourse today as we do on this podcast. But beforehand, I want everybody to be working with

00:05:26.660 the same set of facts here. And so I have made a little outline for myself with some background

00:05:32.000 information that you need to know to understand what we are going to talk about for the rest of

00:05:36.280 this episode. So for a couple of minutes, I am going to be telling you the story of a boxer and

00:05:42.160 two different boxing organizations and a little bit of Russian corruption, a little bit of Putin

00:05:47.920 and um we're gonna work from there it sounds like a spy thriller it basically is it basically is

00:05:54.940 yeah except everyone's getting investigated iman khalif iman khalif grew up in the rural village

00:06:01.740 of tiaret algeria she grew up in relative poverty she played soccer growing up football there

00:06:08.140 with boys and boys were mean to her growing up because they were intimidated by her and she's

00:06:14.660 tall. And interestingly, the way that she got into boxing was from dodging punches that guys

00:06:21.420 would throw at her. Starting at 16, she would sell scrap metal to afford the bus fare to the 0.56

00:06:27.440 training gym, which was in the town over. And after a few years of training, long hours every

00:06:33.060 day, she began competing in international competitions for boxing. In 2020, she competed

00:06:39.000 in the Tokyo Olympics and lost in the quarterfinals, which is interestingly never mentioned

00:06:44.100 in this conversation about the alleged man dominating boxing because like when she was

00:06:50.360 losing, she was never accused of being a man. Right. This is a woman who's competed in the

00:06:54.740 Olympics before with no one saying anything about it. No one. Literally no one. By 2023,

00:07:01.160 Iman Khalif had competed in multiple IBA world championships. She reached the finals in 2022

00:07:08.020 and it was never a problem. The IBA is the International Boxing Association. They host

00:07:14.560 all of these world boxing competitions. We'll get to that in a second. She was going to compete in

00:07:20.140 the finals in 2023 when she was disqualified for failing a quote-unquote gender test. Initially,

00:07:27.920 the IBA said that she failed the gender test for having high testosterone levels, and then the 0.85

00:07:32.920 president of the IBA, Umar Kremlev, more on him in a second, said that she was disqualified because

00:07:38.340 the tests showed she had XY chromosomes. Iman and her representatives said that she had been

00:07:43.740 the victim of a conspiracy. Notably, neither the methodology for the test, nor Iman's results,

00:07:49.400 nor just like anything about what this test actually was, has ever to this date been made

00:07:54.160 public. Notably, Iman's disqualification came three days after she defeated Azalea Amineva, 0.94

00:08:00.380 a previously undefeated Russian boxer. Iman's disqualification restored Azalea's undefeated 1.00

00:08:07.900 status. So what is the IBA, the International Boxing Association? It's an organization that

00:08:14.560 governs amateur and professional boxing worldwide, and it has long been plagued by controversy and

00:08:21.660 financial mismanagement. It previously worked with the IOC, that's organization number two,

00:08:28.020 the International Olympic Committee, IOC, to establish regulations around the Olympic boxing

00:08:34.360 competition. In 2019, though, the IOC suspended the IBA over concerns about their financial

00:08:39.880 mismanagement. And this is before all the Russian stuff, so bear with me. In 2020, one year later, 0.99

00:08:45.780 Umar Kremlev became president of the IBA. This is when the IBA's relationship with the IOC,

00:08:51.000 again, IBA, World Boxing, IOC, Olympic Committee, that's when it really falls apart. Who is Umar

00:08:56.900 Kremlev. Umar has long been involved in the world of Russian boxing, and he's also a pal of Vladimir

00:09:04.060 Putin. Umar made Gazprom, which is a Russian state-owned gas company, the sole financial

00:09:09.620 sponsor of the IBA. So in 2023, the Olympics officially and permanently cut ties with the IBA

00:09:16.220 over concerns that it was basically corrupt. It was just acting as a vehicle to promote the

00:09:21.900 interests of the Russian state and Russian athletes. Now, fast forward to Paris 2024. I

00:09:27.620 promise I'm almost done with the background. We're doing great, guys. Because the IOC cut ties with

00:09:32.340 the IBA, the gender test that they ran on Iman Khalif, whatever that was, it meant nothing to

00:09:38.620 the IOC. And so this year, Paris 2024, the Olympics said that Iman could compete. And this is when she

00:09:45.700 enters the public imagination. In the second round of the women's welterweight competition, Iman fought 1.00

00:09:51.020 Angela Carini, an Italian boxer. Angela quit that match in pain after Iman hit her twice. 1.00

00:09:57.660 Afterwards, Angela Carini refused to shake Iman's hand, and she would go on to say it's not fair, 0.88

00:10:03.560 which she would, interestingly, within days, express regret about. But it didn't matter.

00:10:09.080 The media ran with that story that it wasn't fair, that Iman Khalif had failed a gender test

00:10:13.600 administered by the IBA, an organization that nobody who goes on to talk about any of the

00:10:18.980 things we're going to talk about in this episode had previously known anything about nobody cared

00:10:22.880 if the IBA was a disgraced corrupt organization that has become a function of the Russian state

00:10:27.820 nobody least of all JK Rowling fact-checked and the culture war ensued and that is what we are

00:10:35.120 here to unpack today congratulations you have made it through the context it's all downhill from here

00:10:41.960 I'm sorry to say I mean I think it's important for people to have the like before we understand

00:10:46.820 what we're talking about here one difficulty i feel like i've had trying to talk to people about

00:10:50.860 this case is a lot of people are under the impression that this is a question of trans

00:10:57.140 women competing in sports when it just isn't no one in the story is transgender nobody in the

00:11:02.860 story is transgender nobody in the story is transgender and nobody in the story that we

00:11:08.100 know of has x y chromosomes or high levels of testosterone like that was the other thing is

00:11:13.340 at the beginning, a lot of people were saying when the story broke, like, oh, well, you know,

00:11:18.200 some women who are athletes especially naturally have high levels of testosterone. And there are

00:11:22.620 genetic variations where cisgender women can have XY chromosomes. And that is all true. But Iman 1.00

00:11:28.580 Khalif just never had any of those things. And so I don't even want to give credence in this

00:11:32.540 particular story to the idea that like she did because the IBA has never presented any evidence

00:11:39.140 about this gender test or what it was yes anyone claiming that imam khalif is intersex or has high

00:11:45.380 testosterone levels is basically engaging in pure conjecture there's there's no solid evidence of

00:11:50.340 any of that right which jk rowling has done like upwards of 20 times yes should we talk about jk

00:11:55.800 rowling's meltdown yeah let's just get into it there are a number of people who are responsible

00:12:00.040 for making this story something that we're talking about today and those include jk rowling

00:12:06.120 elon musk logan paul donald trump all of the people that you want to have lunch with i think

00:12:12.260 that jk rowling is a good entry point because she's where i've learned about all this for the

00:12:15.960 first time yeah so what ignites this is this photo of angela karini and iman khalif after their match

00:12:23.660 where karini is crying and iman is comforting her yeah and i think what really ignites this

00:12:32.860 as a controversy is the visual spectacle of this feminine european woman weeping as a taller

00:12:43.060 darker skinned woman uh has just won a boxing match against her yes to me iman khalif what 1.00

00:12:50.860 she looks like is a professional female boxer she's tall she has long limbs she is muscular 1.00

00:12:58.460 because that's what champion female boxers look like, 1.00

00:13:03.180 as we've seen from a lot of the other women who compete in these matches. 1.00

00:13:07.860 But in this picture, you get the vibe is kind of of a damsel in distress, I think.

00:13:14.580 And that becomes the sort of mythological framing of what happened.

00:13:20.020 So the first time I saw this picture was when J.K. Rowling tweeted it.

00:13:23.160 Let's just read the tweet because I think this really establishes the tone of the discourse.

00:13:27.600 Could any picture sum up our new men's rights movement better?

00:13:32.040 The smirk of a male who knows he's protected by a misogynist sporting establishment,

00:13:37.180 enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head,

00:13:40.900 and whose life's ambition he's just shattered.

00:13:44.060 Hashtag Paris 2024.

00:13:46.320 I did text Natalie beforehand, and I was like,

00:13:48.480 can you please use the voice when you read the tweet?

00:13:50.560 Yeah, I've been walking around the house, like, doing my Hermione impression all day.

00:13:53.680 Yeah, this tweet gets 449,000 likes,

00:13:57.000 And according to Twitter, which I believe kind of inflates these metrics, but 120 million views.

00:14:02.900 And one of the things that really interests me about this picture that you just described is that it gets circulated by all of these people, including J.K. Rowling.

00:14:12.740 But and it's clearly, you know, Iman Khalif is patting Angela Karini on the back.

00:14:17.660 But it's portrayed as because she's taller and necessarily she has to look down at Angela Karini, who's shorter than her.

00:14:26.260 it's it's framed as this like menacing like you know like a predator preying on their prey

00:14:33.080 absolutely i mean the first i mean the first obvious thing to say about this right is that

00:14:36.640 like the discourse is already not even about fairness in sports like we're already like we've

00:14:42.080 instantly moved way beyond that it's not a question of oh is iman intersects it's not a

00:14:47.520 question of are there heightened testosterone levels is this fairness the critics are immediately

00:14:52.800 saying she's a man or they're not even they're not even using she at this point they're saying

00:14:57.260 he's a man this is a smirking male enjoying the distress of a woman that he has punched

00:15:04.600 right that's the language that jk rowling uses so in a way even though iman is not trans she's

00:15:10.780 getting the full trans woman treatment which is to say that she's getting portrayed not only 0.86

00:15:16.760 as a man but like a diabolical man a misogynistic man who enjoys violence against women and you know 0.95

00:15:24.460 I just don't get that from this picture at all even even taking gender out of it I look at Iman 0.87

00:15:28.860 Khalif in this picture and I see someone offering condolences and support totally like you have to

00:15:35.280 be engaged in like huge levels of speculation and vilification to look at this and see quote

00:15:43.240 the smirk of a male who's quote enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head

00:15:48.560 where do we even start with this right like it's it's the punching people in the head competition

00:15:54.180 like right like why is that being framed as this like shocking thing well that's that's what i was

00:15:59.700 gonna say is right i mean there's every everything about this tweet which really does on august 1st

00:16:04.520 like kick off this conversation that would just become only more miserable over the following week

00:16:09.540 and we're going to talk about all of it but like a man who's just punched a woman in the head like

00:16:14.220 first of all we are talking about boxing that's that's like if two tennis players come off the

00:16:19.540 court and you're like and he was hitting the ball with the racket like yeah that's what the sport is

00:16:24.140 yes it's like this weaponization and you see that over and over and like a lot of the images

00:16:29.320 shared by people who are trying to make the case that iman khalif was like uniquely violent against

00:16:36.280 other women or something they use photos of them boxing and it's like yes they are punching each

00:16:41.700 other that's boxing yeah it's being framed not as unfairness in sports but as an issue of violence

00:16:48.320 against women crazy male violence against women crazy and there's so much like subtext to this

00:16:55.460 like all the things that you have to kind of believe for this narrative to make sense i mean

00:17:00.060 And one, you have to believe that Iman Khalif is a man, which J.K. Rowling seems to believe based on vibes.

00:17:07.680 We're talking about someone who is assigned female at birth, grew up as a girl, who is from a country where trans, where being transgender or gender transition is illegal.

00:17:19.280 Is illegal. And these people think that they sent a trans woman to the Olympics.

00:17:23.360 so one all that is just complete speculation based on more or less nothing except jk rowling's gut

00:17:31.080 feelings two you have to think that this boxing match which everyone agreed to which is regulated

00:17:38.000 by an organization that has public rules saying what their you know standards are and who meets

00:17:44.080 them and who's allowed to compete and everyone who enters into a boxing match has consented to this

00:17:49.660 situation right and again and this is not as this is not a complex consent kind of situation right

00:17:55.920 it's not like women are sort of socially coerced in a million ways to become boxing champions right

00:18:02.560 in fact usually quite the opposite you know as a woman you would have to go out of your way to go

00:18:06.960 into boxing as caliph in fact did we know from her backstory that that boxing was strongly

00:18:12.240 discouraged because boxing in itself is seen as a masculine activity right and that's kind of part

00:18:18.520 the background of this is that the fight for women's sports has often been a fight for women

00:18:25.620 to do something that is seen as masculine now we're portraying it as like sort of almost

00:18:30.700 equivalent the implication is that this is sort of equivalent to domestic violence right or that

00:18:36.380 imam khalif is somehow like getting away with punching women because of like some little

00:18:42.540 loophole in the rules like life hack want to hit a woman simply become an olympic athlete as if

00:18:49.540 men don't get away with with hitting women every day all over the world right yeah as if as if

00:18:55.180 domestic violence was only made illegal within the last hundred years in many places some places it's

00:19:00.240 still not illegal a sinister scheme is being invoked to explain what is a boxing match you

00:19:06.140 don't necessarily have to think that anyone involved in this has bad intentions but the worst

00:19:11.280 possible intentions are being ascribed to a mon caliph again on no evidence at all yeah kat ten

00:19:17.540 barge who is a friend of mine who's a journalist who is someone who i've had on the show a number

00:19:21.400 of times she reports a lot for her work um celebrity domestic violence cases and i just

00:19:26.760 remember her writing online that like she had never seen anyone care about an actual female

00:19:33.240 victim of physical violence this way ever i've never seen it in my entire life you would think

00:19:38.440 that everybody was like actually diehard like into protecting women's rights or something the

00:19:42.720 way that they approach this conversation they don't care about women they just hate trans people

00:19:46.280 more or people who they think are trans people trans gender non-conforming the list is expanding

00:19:51.660 i mean compare the way that the internet has received imam khalif to the way that the internet

00:19:57.260 has received johnny depp yes i think that says all that needs to be said treasure troves of evidence

00:20:02.520 to show that a woman had been abused in the entire world and the entire internet fought against it to

00:20:07.720 protect the legacy and reputation of a movie star johnny depp who jk rowling is friends with

00:20:12.180 johnny depp who jk rowling is friendship we have people like elon musk jd vance donald trump

00:20:17.700 piers morgan ian miles chung weighing in to to attack this woman suddenly these people who have

00:20:25.760 i mean some of whom are domestic abusers themselves and none of whom have ever really

00:20:29.760 spoken out about about domestic abuse as an issue before are now suddenly really really concerned

00:20:34.320 that a woman was punched in a boxing match one thing i do want to say is that angela carini the

00:20:40.720 italian boxer who initially said it's not fair she retracted everything within like two days

00:20:46.380 and then released a public statement where she was like i really wish i hadn't behaved that way

00:20:50.680 and i regret not shaking her hand and if i could see her again i would embrace her

00:20:54.140 and a lot of people make her like kind of the villain in this whole thing and i understand why

00:21:01.860 And there was a lot of definitely like the weaponization of the image of like white woman tears and all of that stuff.

00:21:09.340 I just think that like at the end of the day in this media circus, I think that she is not the biggest issue here.

00:21:17.880 Yeah, I also want to reiterate that I do not think that Angela Carini is the villain in this situation.

00:21:23.160 I think that crying when you have lost your match in the Olympics is not unheard of.

00:21:29.140 and can sympathize i mean i think that she's been kind of a bad sport in the moment but like most of

00:21:35.040 the escalation of this into a global campaign of insane bullying i don't think she could have

00:21:41.880 foreseen that no in which she has denounced wait right she has condemned it to be clear

00:21:46.660 yeah she has and and i think a lot of the things that people like jk rowling and elon musk

00:21:51.280 have said about this have been ascribed to her but they're really just being said on her behalf

00:21:55.340 without her permission and that's the other thing that really distinguishes this from a case

00:21:59.360 where a woman has been abused is that usually in cases of abuse there's a victim right there's

00:22:07.600 there's there's someone who is claiming to have been abused in this case there isn't it's a bunch

00:22:12.320 of people who have decided that angela carini is a victim of male violence quote unquote despite

00:22:18.760 the fact that this is a boxing match that she agreed to and when she realized that she was

00:22:23.980 facing an opponent that she could not beat she tapped out you could argue that boxing is inherently

00:22:30.000 inviolent and that we should abolish full contact sports i mean there's a there is like semi-credible

00:22:35.380 arguments that like abolish the nfl like right it's causing brain damage in all these men right

00:22:39.840 okay but that's not a mainstream position and no one here is saying that right no one is it doesn't

00:22:44.780 seem that anyone is advocating that boxing be abolished now all the attention is specifically

00:22:49.300 on the fact that a woman who people are perceiving as a man based on vibes has hit a woman who kind

00:22:56.840 of seems feminine and damselish in the way that this has been framed online. I would like to take

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00:24:44.100 at nordvpn.com slash fruity. That'll also be in the episode description. It's nordvpn.com slash

00:24:53.580 fruity. Now back to the show. Would you like to read the next JK Rowling tweet?

00:25:02.460 To provide a little context here, so we're moving into August 2nd, day two of the discourse,

00:25:07.060 if you will. And between August 1st and August 2nd, a lot of people started to make light of

00:25:12.440 the fact that like, IBA is kind of a shady organization. We don't really know anything

00:25:18.000 about Iman Khalif's biology. And looking into this to the extent that people are begging to

00:25:24.460 is kind of dehumanizing. And also like this is a cis woman, JK Rowling, probably you should pump

00:25:30.100 the brakes a little bit and so jk rowling famously very bad at accepting that she has ever wrong 0.69

00:25:35.580 about anything digs her heels in i don't think i've ever seen by the way jk rowling admit that

00:25:41.260 she has been ever wrong about anything not once no when she did her holocaust denial which was

00:25:46.740 the impetus for the last episode we did together she never walked that back and it's a it's a

00:25:50.720 habit that jk rowling has that i think actually might kind of be a key to understanding her

00:25:56.680 madness right i mean i'm sure we'll discuss later like how did she get this bad some people have

00:26:02.540 proposed a black mold i mean my personal theory is that this is someone who's self-radicalized

00:26:08.940 essentially through a accelerating feedback loop of doubling down on bad takes of responding

00:26:16.780 vindictively to any criticism of being love bombed by an already rabid hate movement

00:26:23.300 I think that's how we've gone from, you know, some of my best friends are trans and I have

00:26:28.440 a hard time thinking of them as anything but women.

00:26:31.180 And, you know, saying I'll march with you if you're persecuted, if you're ever oppressed

00:26:35.600 just to like the insane tirade that we are now in the middle of.

00:26:40.680 And that we go on like once a week with her. 0.99

00:26:42.960 Once a week at least.

00:26:44.240 J.K. Rowling's transphobia did not fall out of a coconut tree, but here we are nonetheless.

00:26:50.160 August 2nd, day two.

00:26:51.520 The idea that those objecting to a male punching a female in the name of sport are objecting because they believe that Khalif to be trans is a joke.

00:27:00.920 We object because we saw a male punching a female.

00:27:04.640 So because people are like at this point have pushed back on the idea that Iman Khalif is a trans woman.

00:27:09.860 Here she's just saying no Iman Khalif is a man.

00:27:14.000 And I know that because I can see it.

00:27:16.180 Yeah, she's saying that, okay, she's not a trans woman, but she's just a man.

00:27:22.100 Okay, what does that mean, Joanne?

00:27:23.580 I mean, you're saying that a person who was assigned female at birth, who has lived her entire life as a woman, is a man based on, based on what?

00:27:34.540 Speculation.

00:27:35.100 I think one of the reasons that I found this entire saga around hating Iman Khalif to be, like, fascinating is that to me it represents, like, a significant escalation in gender critical rhetoric, right, where, as I think that most of their most vicious hate in the past was kind of directed at trans.

00:27:56.480 I mean, initially, right, J.K. Rowling denied even that she's she was trying to maintain a front of compassion for trans people, but saying, oh, but I just have like a few concerns about the safety of women's spaces and so on.

00:28:08.200 years ago she moved from that to just being openly vicious to trans people online misgendering

00:28:15.160 attack just attacking random trans civilians appearance for no other reason than essentially

00:28:21.500 to be a bully but now we've escalated even further to using these same the same playbook

00:28:27.000 against people who are not even trans yeah it kind of is a departure from what has previously been

00:28:33.560 their theory of gender right because you used to see gender critical people argue that oh the reason

00:28:39.760 that trans women are not women is that they don't have like female socialization right you have to

00:28:45.680 have been socialized as a woman to have the distinctive sort of traumas that are constitutive 0.97

00:28:51.100 of womanhood because they have this sometimes they have like a very like victim-centered idea

00:28:55.820 of what it is to be a woman right to be a woman is to suffer in these particular ways but here's

00:29:01.160 someone who was assigned female birth someone who has been socialized as a woman and yet they're

00:29:05.980 saying oh no that's where that's a man and it's a misogynistic man and we're going to misgender you

00:29:10.460 and we're going to vilify you and there was a time when all these people would agree a person 0.98

00:29:15.980 born with a vagina could never be a man and now here we that has also been abandoned so what is 0.96

00:29:23.000 it exactly that makes someone their gender at this point it's not genitals at birth it's not 0.85

00:29:28.200 socialization it's not hormone levels presumably it's basically nothing to do with phenotype

00:29:34.120 at all because otherwise they would have to say that trans men are men in a lot of cases right

00:29:39.700 i think because of secondary sex characteristics it seems basically to be a kind of like royal

00:29:45.160 proclamation theory of gender identity where it's like whatever her majesty jk rowling decides

00:29:51.740 based upon vibes that's your gender gender assigned by jk rowling gender that's clearly

00:29:58.160 what it is is gender assigned by jk rowling it's based on what she perceives assigned male at jk

00:30:03.700 rowling assigned male at hogwarts assigned male by jk rowling and we're supposed to just accept that

00:30:08.140 fucking crazy well so that was the thing that i noted with this tweet is she said 0.81

00:30:11.880 we object because we saw a male punching a female we saw and it's like okay i thought the whole 0.99

00:30:18.300 thing was being a woman is about what's in between your legs but now you're telling me that it's not

00:30:23.120 necessarily what's in between your legs it's about what i see who's we who's we object who gets to

00:30:29.280 decide who sees right it's now a question of subjective perception and and whose subjective

00:30:34.420 perception matters because there's not agreement on this point i do not look at iman khalif and see

00:30:39.580 a man quote unquote right so who's like who's who saw what whose perception is the privileged one

00:30:46.180 But I mean, presumably it's J.K. Rowling.

00:30:48.380 It's also I just want to be like really frank here.

00:30:50.900 Like, what did you see?

00:30:52.140 You saw a woman, Heman Khalif, who was insufficiently performing femininity. 0.96

00:30:58.620 Right. And you said that is a man. 0.81

00:31:01.320 And you said that maybe because she was too tall or maybe because she was too brown or she was too strong or she punched too hard about like in the boxing match or, you know, she didn't have on makeup or her.

00:31:11.700 She had a wide jaw or like whatever it is that you think you saw.

00:31:14.980 And like you saw a man.

00:31:16.180 I don't even like want to give any credence to this. She's just saying, I saw someone who I

00:31:23.000 thought looked like a man because they didn't look feminine enough. And that's the joke about

00:31:27.400 this kind of like feminism, right? Because JK Rowling, of course, she would first and foremost 1.00

00:31:31.740 identify as a feminist. And this is the thing is that her version of feminism, trans exclusionary 0.85

00:31:36.560 radical feminism, this is what it comes down to. And it kind of originates in this gender critical 0.89

00:31:41.540 dogma that quote we can always tell so the idea is that they are they have decided to confidently

00:31:48.520 maintain that they can always tell the biological sex and therefore gender of a person true gender

00:31:54.080 right because they believe in that of a person based on their own perception right they think

00:31:59.220 that they always get it right and i mean obviously that's demonstrably wrong because there's we could

00:32:03.200 point to a million examples of gender critical people getting it wrong including this one

00:32:07.620 Including this one, including just silly things where someone online will post a picture of JK Rowling to some transphobic person and being like, so are you saying that this is a man? And they'll be like, yes, that's a man. Because they've been primed by the situation to think that the picture is going to be of a trans woman. So it causes them to perceive the woman in it as, quote, a man.

00:32:30.560 right and any woman could be anyone could be transvestigated in this way and what they're

00:32:35.340 doing is they're exploiting a kind of feminist idea that like women need to trust intuitions

00:32:42.160 we all need to trust our gut because you know there's people who will try to gaslight women 1.00

00:32:46.840 and who will try to put to put it use use the norms of femininity and agreeableness to put us

00:32:52.920 to put women in uncomfortable situations okay i understand that that's where this idea comes from

00:32:57.400 But the problem with always trust your gut is like, what if your gut is racist?

00:33:02.940 And it probably is, right?

00:33:05.060 And I feel like this is a situation where your gut is always right.

00:33:09.660 It's not only incorrect, it's actually making you the dangerous aggressor.

00:33:14.860 I mean, you could point to other situations like, I don't know, white women calling the police on black and brown men because, you know, they had a bad feeling about it.

00:33:23.960 I mean, it's very like Emmett Till.

00:33:25.880 It's very Emmett Till. 0.59

00:33:26.700 yeah exactly and the concept of white women tears is a concept that originates in non-white women 1.00

00:33:33.860 pointing out this problem with with the feminism of a lot of white women where it sort of doesn't 1.00

00:33:39.620 occur to to white feminists sometimes that white women may not be the most victimized class on 1.00

00:33:47.480 earth in some situations right and that there actually is a kind of power that comes with being 1.00

00:33:52.500 particularly a feminine white woman you know the patriarchy makes a confined space granted 0.59

00:33:59.600 but also a nonetheless almost sacred space for the feminine white woman and you know you see it 1.00

00:34:05.920 in films like birth of a nation where the idea of the white woman under assault from this like 0.80

00:34:10.980 dangerous dark other is invoked or in situations like the emmett till trial trial right where 0.92

00:34:20.340 basically a white woman adopting a posture of victimhood is weaponized against non a non-white

00:34:28.400 man or a non-white woman it's hard not to see this as falling into that exact pattern yeah yeah so

00:34:34.160 for the rest of that week jk rowling in the face of all evidence to the contrary continues to

00:34:41.100 tweet and retweet and tweet some more about how iman khalif is a man and on august 7th

00:34:49.360 she tweets this so i'm gonna send this one to you so the gender critical account fair play for women

00:34:57.100 tweets quote be kind they said and there's a picture of a women's boxing match and then jk

00:35:04.320 rolling quote tweets that saying quote but not to women they meant hashtag paris 2024

00:35:11.240 this is really isn't funny but like the pudding hashtag paris 2024 with a little eiffel tower 0.90

00:35:17.360 emoji next to all of her like disgustingly racist and just like ridiculous and factually untrue 0.56

00:35:22.480 tweets is so funny to me she's like that can't be a woman she's not white hashtag paris 2024 0.73

00:35:29.080 i know it's like there's something like tweet about using this hashtag after like the most it

00:35:34.600 reminds me of a tweet where she tweeted about her children's book the ichabog and then like

00:35:39.160 accidentally like control pasted the text of some insane screed about trans people and turfs that

00:35:45.580 she had been writing elsewhere it's kind of the fascinating paradox of jk rowling in general

00:35:50.340 is that there's this this kind of jekyll hyde thing where it's like oh children's author who

00:35:56.020 writes whimsical stories about wizard school on one hand and on the other hand it's like these 0.93

00:36:00.620 like insane venomous diatribes about the transsexuals yeah i think it's one reason why 0.81

00:36:06.560 we're all sort of so fascinated by this is is that there's just something kind of fundamentally

00:36:10.500 absurd be kind they said but not to women they meant and it attaches the photo of iman caliph

00:36:17.920 punching one of her opponents in the middle of a boxing match and again it's this weaponization

00:36:23.840 of like a narrative about violent men and it's literally just two women having a boxing match

00:36:30.100 boxing is hitting not to sound like a broken record but that's what boxing is right boxing

00:36:36.000 is being unkind i guess yeah and this like like i don't know you could take any picture of two

00:36:40.940 boxers in the middle of a punch and like frame this as like wow that's not very nice is it

00:36:46.980 well don't watch boxing then i feel like there's something else subtextual going on

00:36:52.940 where it's unclear i mean if she thinks that what she's claiming is a man in a consensual boxing

00:36:59.220 match with a woman this is fundamentally violence and it's male violence against women which the

00:37:05.200 subtext is sort of that this resembles you know intimate partner violence and i kind of wonder

00:37:12.020 like i mean i guess the subtext right is that she doesn't think that it's unkind for women to punch

00:37:17.760 each other in the context of a boxing match right because she's not saying that she's not saying

00:37:21.880 abolish women's boxing so i i mean does she think that like women cannot commit intimate partner

00:37:28.820 violence against each other she seems to have i mean she seems to have this idea of of womanhood

00:37:34.220 where it's like to be a woman is to be a victim and to be like a kind of delicate flower or

00:37:41.300 something right and that's not a new idea there's an interesting book called in the dream house by

00:37:46.600 Carmen Maria Machado about her experience being in a abusive lesbian relationship and like one of

00:37:52.640 the and like the difficulties of like how do you talk about that when it's something that one it's

00:37:57.780 like you know could contribute to the stigmatization of gay people there's an anxiety about that but

00:38:02.860 there's also a lot of people who sort of don't understand that women could be capable of committing

00:38:09.560 domestic partner violence in a way that kind of echoes the way that like British courts a hundred

00:38:15.080 years ago they struck down a law that was going to make female homosexuality illegal because the

00:38:22.300 british parliament i think decided that it simply is not possible for there to be a sex act between

00:38:27.580 women because you know it's missing it's missing the masculine element i think that there's a

00:38:32.440 quote from some you know member of parliament who said something like without the penetration like 0.51

00:38:39.000 how could orgasm be possible um so you know it's also like you know the english parliament 0.81

00:38:43.580 collectively admitting that they don't know what the clitoris is which is funny um this book that

00:38:48.820 i'm talking about it echoes it like with with cases sorry i have it right here because i

00:38:52.440 wanted to mention it like there was a case in 1892 where um there was you know a incident of

00:38:59.460 lesbian domestic violence alice mitchell slit the throat of her girlfriend frida ward and the court

00:39:07.420 kind of couldn't make sense of this as killing between lovers, right? Because they just could

00:39:14.340 not grasp that these women were lovers. In the last century, in 1989, there was the first case

00:39:20.300 ever of battered woman syndrome being invoked as a defense in a case where a woman killed her

00:39:27.240 female partner who was abusive. And the judge actually would only allow the defense if they

00:39:33.800 changed the phrase to battered person syndrome because they just didn't get how a woman in a 0.75

00:39:41.520 lesbian relationship could be a battered woman but what battered woman means is to be the victim of a

00:39:48.500 man so there's i don't know there's this long history of sort of not understanding that like

00:39:52.700 women are capable of doing active masculine aggressive things and i feel like i certainly

00:39:58.860 think it's subtext for how women for how jk rowling views lesbians in general as this kind of sexless

00:40:05.460 separatist movement or something but i also think it's how she views boxing where she's where she

00:40:10.820 thinks that you know female athletes must be sort of fundamentally dainty victims and she like sort 0.98

00:40:16.900 of can't wrap her head around the concept of a powerful aggressive woman in sport sorry that's

00:40:23.400 a long ramble but no it was good we have one more jk rowling tweet and then i'm gonna put us out of 1.00

00:40:28.040 jk rowling our misery only to be graced by logan paul coming up it really does only get worse

00:40:37.080 it's just a sinking to the bottom you know i want to just say like amidst all of this like

00:40:43.300 jk rowling is sending millions and millions and millions and millions of people to eviscerate

00:40:51.600 Iman Khalif online and one thing I want to say about people who are new to celebrity as Iman

00:40:59.840 Khalif is like when this was all kicking up at the beginning like I don't know I went to Iman

00:41:04.820 Khalif's Instagram this morning and she has almost 2 million Instagram followers now and that's

00:41:08.820 amazing and I hope not only does she sue all these people and become rich but I hope she gets all the

00:41:12.900 endorsements however when this was starting you know just a few weeks ago I went to her Instagram

00:41:18.660 and she had like 20,000 followers and I'm sure I was even a little late like I'm sure it was way

00:41:23.040 less than that when the Olympics started and again outside of the boxing world nobody knew who she was

00:41:27.940 and the thing is we think about Iman Khalif right now as a celebrity because she has become one

00:41:35.220 over the last couple weeks but when you're very new to being a celebrity you don't yet have the

00:41:42.320 money the resources the people to stand in between you and the online vitriol like you don't have any

00:41:49.640 of that even if you're at the olympics a lot of people don't have money when they get to the

00:41:53.980 olympics a lot of people do sex work to make it to the olympics and like i say that all of this 0.79

00:41:58.580 because jk rowling was essentially sending a very very angry mob which she has a lot of power over 0.94

00:42:05.900 to harass, ultimately, an unknown woman with very little resources to do anything to combat it.

00:42:13.560 Absolutely. I would actually argue it's a global digital bullying campaign that actually may be

00:42:20.380 unprecedented in its scope. People talk about cancel culture and pretend that they care about

00:42:28.700 that. There's been a lot of hand-wringing over the last few years, and some of it justified

00:42:32.820 hand-wringing about cyberbullying. And the celebrity case of this that's often brought up

00:42:38.200 is from 10 years ago. It's Justine Sacco, who was this woman who made a racist joke,

00:42:43.120 then got on a plane. All of Twitter basically decides to get this woman fired by the time she 1.00

00:42:47.200 lands. Twitter is a lot bigger than it was 10 years ago. And also a lot of the people who are

00:42:52.340 participating in the dogpile against Iman Khalif, which is also completely unwarranted and completely

00:42:57.580 based on lies. Many of the most powerful and famous people in the world are joining in the

00:43:03.300 dogpile. I don't know that I've ever seen someone get bullied by this many people in power. Someone

00:43:10.740 who three weeks ago, basically none of us had heard of and who could not possibly be prepared

00:43:16.740 for the psychological stress. I mean, it's hard to even imagine what it must be like to be

00:43:23.520 the target of this logan paul oh i have to skip ahead to logan paul but logan paul i hope i never

00:43:30.760 say that again i do have to skip ahead to logan paul logan paul tweets this is the purest form

00:43:38.960 of evil unfolding right before your eyes in relation to the iman caliph angela karini match

00:43:45.060 where he uses the same photo of iman comforting angela karini and it's just like this is the

00:43:51.680 purest form of evil like let me go back on your twitter and see if you've said it it's like

00:43:58.400 anything about anything ever yeah have you ever commented on any kind of women's issue at all

00:44:05.120 have you ever said a word about domestic violence have you ever said a word about any man who's been

00:44:09.860 outed as an abuser i don't think i can recall a case of logan paul ever being a spokesperson for

00:44:14.560 that okay so we're going to transition from jk rowling to logan paul i love my job i mean and i

00:44:23.860 think that the transition from jk rowling to logan paul is kind of an illustrative example of the

00:44:30.260 type of talking points don't just remain contained in your little field where you developed them 1.00

00:44:36.660 so gender critical feminists i mean i've always been amazed by how not bothered they seem by how 1.00

00:44:43.280 many like right-wing male misogynists seem really enthusiastic about taking up all their talking 0.89

00:44:48.680 points yes if i feel like if i was had had found that all the talking points i'd used for the last

00:44:54.980 five years were suddenly enthusiastically being embraced by the u.s republican party by logan paul

00:45:00.680 by elon musk i would feel that i must have done something very seriously wrong i say this on my

00:45:06.420 podcast a lot but it's like if ben shapiro is retweeting me like if i'm having friendly

00:45:11.520 engagement with matt walsh on twitter as jk rowling has done it's time to go to the mountains

00:45:16.600 and like meditate for three months is she will never do it no but so logan paul tweets at the

00:45:22.780 beginning of this i can read the logan paul tweets i'll do my logan paul voice this is the purest

00:45:28.580 form of evil unfolding right before your eyes stop i think it's pretty good no i love it it's so good

00:45:33.320 it's so good thank you a man was allowed to beat up a woman on a global stage crushing her life

00:45:38.980 stream while fighting for her deceased father this delusion must end okay first of all a lot

00:45:45.900 of people have their dreams crushed at the olympics like i think first of all like we have to start

00:45:49.960 there most most people most people lose like what do you think the olympics is it's again it's like

00:45:54.960 weaponizing all of this stuff that has nothing to do with like gender or biology or protecting

00:45:59.520 women or whatever they're claiming to care about but it's like does he want participation trophies

00:46:03.740 but yeah i also think that the the language the purest form of evil the purest form of evil is

00:46:09.460 about as black and white as it gets in terms of your moral nuance right i mean look i'm if i was

00:46:15.540 if i were a turf i feel like what i would be trying to like okay so if i were a turf

00:46:21.120 exactly if i were a turf and i believed that imam khalif was you know whatever

00:46:28.840 turfs think the criteria for a man is x y chromosomes or whatever okay suppose i thought

00:46:34.100 that i feel like what i would be arguing and like the only sensible thing to argue from that position

00:46:38.820 would be that i understand the the complexity of the gender identity of this person but and i think 0.85

00:46:46.480 this is unfair and you know i think this is unfair and should be excluded from women's sports

00:46:50.760 i don't think i would then escalate into saying that iman khalif is a man nor would i suggest that

00:46:57.980 she was motivated not by you know wanting to win an athletic competition in a sport that she's been

00:47:04.060 practicing for years but rather you know a sinister diabolical desire to get away with

00:47:10.160 punching women and then escalating from from even that to simply saying it's the purest form of evil

00:47:15.620 we're ascribing like satanic motivations almost well something about a lot of like the language 0.95

00:47:23.700 and imagery we're going to get into that was used amidst this reminds me not to take like a really

00:47:30.040 dark term but it reminds me a lot of the way that like nazis would talk about undesirables

00:47:33.680 it's it's dehumanizing it's like fascist dehumanization the purest form of evil there

00:47:39.720 was an image that went viral after iman's match with angela carini that someone had illustrated

00:47:46.360 which basically portrayed them in the boxing ring and angela carini was drawn as this kind of like

00:47:52.000 wafy looking, very feminine, thin white woman. And Iman Khalif was depicted as a literal beast.

00:47:59.160 Like a minotaur, goat horned, like, like male bodybuilding physique, boxing gloves five times

00:48:06.800 the size of her opponent. And the opponent is like a, you know, a 5'2 Caucasian biological, 0.99

00:48:13.620 like Barbie. It's just this like imagery of like King Kong and beauty, right? 0.99

00:48:19.880 The first thing that I thought when I saw that, which went viral in part because her opponent after Angela Karini, like her upcoming opponent, which she would go on to be, would share it on her Instagram page, along with a bunch of other memes calling Iman a man.

00:48:33.700 Ironically, those two women, Iman Khalifa and this opponent who shared all these things about her being a man, they were physically very similar in stature.

00:48:42.660 Yes. I mean, I really think people should look at this picture because I think...

00:48:46.760 Yeah, I'll throw it up on the screen. 0.58

00:48:47.800 The distance between what we're looking at here, which is two women who have more or less the same physique, although the opponent in blue actually, to me, looks taller and, if anything, more muscular than Iman, but is lighter skinned, right? 0.98

00:49:02.020 But is white. 0.78

00:49:03.020 Yeah.

00:49:03.320 This is where, like, it's hard.

00:49:04.840 There just is no non-racist explanation for this, right? 0.82

00:49:08.120 Because what we're seeing is Iman now not just being portrayed as a man, but being portrayed as like a subhuman monster. 0.96

00:49:15.860 Well, right. 0.60

00:49:16.600 And the first thing that I saw when that image circulated was that, like, oh, this reminds me a lot of Nazi propaganda about Jews and other, like, quote, unquote, undesirables in the 30s and 40s.

00:49:27.440 Like, there's this one image in particular that I'll put on the screen, but it was from 1942.

00:49:33.960 And it's Nazis would do this, like, in their propaganda where they would, like, portray Jews sometimes as, like, ants, but also as just, like, you know, like, monsters and satanic looking ghouls and beasts.

00:49:45.360 And, like, seeing trans women or just, like, people who people think are trans women portrayed that way, it's, like, very haunting to me because dehumanization is, you know, one of the steps of fascism.

00:49:58.440 Absolutely. And I have to say, as a white trans woman, I have seen white trans women portrayed as monstrous or as, like, hulking muscular men who are dangerous to women or as kind of, like, hideous abominations. 0.83

00:50:13.620 but i don't think i've ever seen this level of like animalization with like literal horns

00:50:20.940 there's just like i said i think it's only racism explains why this imagery would be invoked yeah

00:50:27.020 yeah logan paul amidst people pointing out that he has done a spreading of misinformation tweets 1.00

00:50:33.940 he's such a fucking idiot tweets oopsies he literally starts to tweet with oopsies i'm not 1.00

00:50:40.800 oopsies are you like oopsies are you fucking kidding me oopsies i might be guilty of spreading 1.00

00:50:47.300 misinformation along with the entirety of this app so it's like not only did i do it but everyone 0.97

00:50:52.320 did it we were all doing it like haha we all we all did a little oopsies we all did like no logan

00:50:57.860 paul we did not all do a little okay matt get through the tweet although she's been previously

00:51:01.760 disqualified for failing a quote-unquote gender test and has xy chromosomes false that's false

00:51:07.360 some sources say imam khalif was born a biological woman i stand by my sentiment and the sentiment

00:51:14.200 in question was that imam khalif is the purest form of evil exactly and then so he basically

00:51:19.520 is like oopsies i made a mistake and then in following right up because the common theme with

00:51:23.960 all of these people is that none of them can ever be wrong even in the face of literally just being

00:51:27.840 wrong he tweets again is my opinion that men shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's sports

00:51:33.600 transphobic with a poll to where people can answer yes or no because it's like okay well maybe i was

00:51:39.580 wrong about iman maybe iman's not trans but hey it's still wrong for trans people to be included

00:51:43.980 it's just like yeah it's like i may have been factually wrong but in a different more spiritual

00:51:49.120 sense i was correct and then he maybe immediately pivots to like whipping up a transphobic mob 0.97

00:51:54.860 despite the fact that there's not even any fucking trans people involved in this in this situation 0.96

00:51:58.720 I got like really, really fucking frustrated when all of this was like swirling around. And I made this Instagram post where I attempted to dispel all of like basically the mainstream narrative that people like Logan Paul and JK Rowling had propagated at this point. 0.94

00:52:13.920 and it got so much traction on instagram which of course i was grateful for but like it made me

00:52:19.900 simultaneously so upset that it is like people like me people like you it sometimes feels like

00:52:29.400 all we can do is push back that like the people like who who create the center of these conversations 1.00

00:52:35.380 are like these just like fucking idiots yeah the worst people and the least intelligent and the 1.00

00:52:42.560 least scrupulous and the least moral people have the hugest microphone in the world and they're all 1.00

00:52:48.400 so rich and so well cushioned in every aspect of life that they are answerable to no one that

00:52:55.820 they're accountable to no one all of these people spread misinformation to enormous audiences the

00:53:01.220 other tweet that i had here was elon musk retweeted riley gains who posted a picture of

00:53:08.480 angela karini writing i stand with angela karini men don't belong in women's sports and elon musk

00:53:13.820 to the tune of 1.8 million likes wrote absolutely there was never a retraction from elon musk

00:53:22.140 there was never a retraction from riley gains bless her heart there was never an attract a

00:53:26.960 retraction from jk rowling or logan paul or any of these people they can say whatever they want 1.00

00:53:32.020 and they are accountable to no one and they are so and i cannot stress this enough so stupid and 0.96

00:53:38.300 And this is really, I think, exacerbated by Elon's ownership of Twitter, where, or X or whatever we're calling it. 1.00

00:53:45.060 Yeah, fuck X. 1.00

00:53:45.920 Yeah, fuck X. 1.00

00:53:47.040 I know. 1.00

00:53:47.280 You can't, like, no one knows what you mean if you say X.

00:53:49.480 Great branding, by the way.

00:53:50.820 There's no accountability in part because Elon wants this website to be his propaganda tool.

00:53:58.100 He's basically already encouraging it.

00:54:00.280 Not only is there no accountability, but there's sort of rewards for engaging in these hate campaigns.

00:54:05.800 There's something like spiritually good about talking about this.

00:54:09.260 I feel like I'm like expunging it from my body.

00:54:12.120 Well, because you feel you feel insane when you're just looking at it on Twitter all day.

00:54:16.200 And it's like literally like how can literally everyone be this wrong and this cruel all at once?

00:54:22.060 And like just reason and facts and sense and compassion.

00:54:27.460 It just it just feels like like I don't know, like throwing gravel at a skyscraper in terms of how effective it is.

00:54:35.800 I'd like to take a quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode,

00:54:41.020 Blueland, who, along with my supporters over on Patreon, make it possible for me to spend

00:54:47.500 12 hours a day going down right-wing online rabbit holes, which, you know what, when I put it that

00:54:53.800 way, maybe we should all stop enabling this behavior. Maybe we need to stop. Blueland is

00:54:58.740 on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials that are better

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00:55:14.200 of microplastics that end up back in the water supply. I didn't know this. Maybe that makes me

00:55:19.160 dumb. I recently switched over to Blueland dishwasher tablets, which just like everything 0.82

00:55:23.720 else in their line, both in the product and the packaging and the delivery system, has no single

00:55:28.800 use plastic. You know I feel like sometimes when you switch over to like the eco-friendly or

00:55:33.000 sustainable version of an everyday product a lot of times you're sacrificing on quality but I now

00:55:39.080 live in a basically entirely Blueland household and I will tell you my dishes are as white as

00:55:45.100 they've ever been, my clothes are as clean as they've ever been, you're really not sacrificing 0.86

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00:55:58.240 to keep your home clean but you're also saving a good amount of money over time and i know this

00:56:02.100 isn't really the point but i will say having an entirely blue land household it is kind of nice

00:56:09.520 to go to my cleaning supply drawer and everything is in these like beautiful pastel tins and bottles

00:56:17.160 looking uniform looking chic it really does beat all of the you know garish drugstore stuff there

00:56:24.220 are so many reasons to love blueland if you would like to try it out you can go to blueland.com

00:56:30.360 slash fruity for 15 off your first order again that is blueland.com slash fruity thank you thank

00:56:38.000 you thank you to blueland for sponsoring this show and now let's get back to it there were a number

00:56:45.420 of mainstream publications also who published entirely false narratives about imam khalif

00:56:51.560 the boston globe published an article titled you want to read it the title of the article 0.98

00:56:59.540 is transgender boxer advances that's the title bold the headline jesus fucking christ and then 0.95

00:57:08.420 they released an apology in the form of an editor's note oopsies they didn't say oopsies but 0.98

00:57:15.780 can you imagine they start their editor's note with oopsies they wrote a significant error was

00:57:21.300 made in a headline on a story in friday's print sports section about algerian boxer iman khalif

00:57:26.340 incorrectly describing her as transgender she is not additionally our initial correction of this

00:57:31.940 error neglected to note that she was born female we recognize the magnitude of this mistake and

00:57:36.200 have corrected it in the e-paper the electronic version of the printed globe this editing lapse

00:57:40.520 is regretful and unacceptable and we apologize to khalif to associated press writer greg beacon

00:57:45.760 and to you our readers. And I just want to say that like any of the retractions that were made

00:57:52.200 from anyone about publishing false information about Iman Khalif like they usually correctly

00:57:57.520 apologize about being wrong about Iman Khalif. But I do want to clarify that like being transgender

00:58:05.160 is not a bad thing. Yeah I mean that sounds pretty controversial because you

00:58:15.200 could you elaborate on that but it's just like you know yes it is it is wrong to call someone

00:58:21.840 trans who is not trans because that's just factually incorrect but i guess what i'm trying

00:58:28.500 to say is we shouldn't treat it as belittling to call someone trans what we should be apologizing

00:58:33.740 for in addition to you know the boston globe doing bad journalism here is that in spreading

00:58:41.180 this misinformation it's just ultimately aiding in this anti-trans hysteria yeah right it's about

00:58:47.000 who picks it up and where it goes and it's also kind of an overton window shift where you have

00:58:51.960 like even people who are trying to be allies saying stuff like no no she's not trans she's

00:58:57.280 she's a biological woman like she's like they may as well be saying like no she's not trans she's a

00:59:00.700 real woman this has been one of the kind of revealing things about this whole episode for me

00:59:05.100 is that i feel like even if transphobia escalated to the point that they literally like rounded up

00:59:10.240 and shot every trans person i feel like that still wouldn't be the end of transphobia if trans people

00:59:15.920 didn't exist they would have to invent them and that and they're doing it they're inventing trans 0.97

00:59:20.720 evil to get mad at i mean and i think some of the motivation when it's like a newspaper doing it

00:59:24.560 is that it's just like man is dominating women's sports is like a great fox news chyron you know

00:59:31.460 what i mean it's just like for low information people who aren't going to follow up and who just

00:59:36.440 trust whatever outrage stimulating ideas put in front of their eyes i mean it's the reason why

00:59:42.240 like donald trump for example will use his talking point whereas trump doesn't he doesn't talk about

00:59:48.020 trans people a whole lot i think it's i think transphobia is something that he doesn't really

00:59:52.480 emotionally connect with that much like in the way that i do think he is like very passionate

00:59:57.440 himself about hating on you know migrants like he's very racist i don't i don't think transphobia

01:00:04.600 comes like transphobia came naturally to ron desantis yes and it shows right because like

01:00:09.740 desantis almost couldn't help himself from bringing it up right and that's kind of the

01:00:14.580 distinctive thing whereas with trump it always feels a little forced he seems to he often can't

01:00:19.340 even really get the transphobic talking point straight like like he recently did this press

01:00:25.580 conference where he was talking about tim waltz and he was like yeah tim waltz he supports things

01:00:30.320 you've never heard of he's big into the transgender world yeah big into the transgender world like

01:00:37.440 what is like what what does that mean but the one thing that he does seem to be able to get right

01:00:41.640 in terms of he uses the right transphobic rhetoric is he says i will put an end to men in women's

01:00:48.060 sports yeah i think he posted that right yeah he posted and he did post that specifically about

01:00:52.660 the iman khalif situation yeah he attached a picture of iman khalif so i think there's a

01:00:56.860 kind of sledgehammer simplicity to this talking point where it's kind of tempting for media and

01:01:04.000 for right-wing politicians to use it because the people in the audience don't need to have any idea

01:01:08.800 what they're talking about. Just that slogan, it gets people angry. And when people are angry,

01:01:14.540 they click on things and they go to rallies and they vote. Yeah, I'm looking now. He said at one

01:01:20.440 of his rallies, this young girl from Italy, she did not know what hit her. It's a person who

01:01:25.860 transitioned he was a good male boxer like he doesn't even know how to be transphobic he's just

01:01:30.320 saying yeah he doesn't even know how to be transphobic he doesn't even know baby's first 0.50

01:01:34.000 transphobia also like again like listen to the vocabulary choice like this girl okay a girl not

01:01:39.280 a woman a girl from italy was was beaten up by like a male boxer who a great male boxer well

01:01:46.560 what's interesting though is that she for she oh my god misgendering donald trump oopsie well he

01:01:51.540 said he has no he said he uses any pronouns right right oh he's fluid yes in the latest with laura

01:01:56.280 ingram he's laura ingram yeah kamala harrison her twitter bio which i never noticed until this

01:02:01.780 morning states her pronouns as she slash her um what are your pronouns i have no i don't want

01:02:10.580 pronouns i don't want pronouns i saw you're fluid what is that but what's interesting is he first

01:02:15.560 describes iman khalif as a person who transitioned like gender neutral pronouns and gender neutral

01:02:21.260 language I think comes more naturally to Donald Trump than transphobia does. Yeah completely

01:02:25.720 completely. Good for her. Good for her. I want to talk a little bit about the trans sports debate

01:02:32.960 and what I think it really is about. The trans sports debate in preparing for this episode I

01:02:39.540 learned is about a hundred years old. There's a century old history of sex testing specifically

01:02:46.220 in sports and particularly administered to female athletes who are accused of not actually being

01:02:52.340 women because they are too good at their sport interestingly where do all signs lead when they

01:02:57.520 don't lead to reagan nazi germany it dates back to the 1936 summer olympics which was held in

01:03:03.540 berlin in nazi germany which that olympic cycle was also used by hitler as a way to like promote

01:03:10.200 his regime. The idea to introduce gender testing in the Olympics was introduced by a bunch of Nazi 0.83

01:03:17.620 party members who basically lobbied members of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, 0.91

01:03:23.500 we're learning so much on this episode, as part of their ongoing panic to weed out undesirables,

01:03:28.680 right? And these Nazis were basically able to start a panic big enough for the IOC to introduce 0.76

01:03:34.520 a rule that would allow athletes to challenge the gender of their competitor via physical 0.66

01:03:40.380 examination.

01:03:41.920 And this humiliating ritual was only banned in 1996.

01:03:46.880 Michael Waters wrote a book about all of this called The Other Olympians, which is really

01:03:50.900 interesting.

01:03:51.520 And if you want to learn more about the history of sex testing in sports, you should go read

01:03:54.560 it.

01:03:55.040 I don't really want to talk a lot about this episode.

01:03:58.320 Actually, I don't want to talk at all in this episode about trans fairness in sports.

01:04:04.520 And I want to explain why, you know, not only do I not want to talk about trans fairness in sports, because Iman isn't trans, no one in the story is trans, this was never actually like should have been about trans people in sports. But also, that's not the real reason. The real reason I don't want to talk about it is because I don't think that the trans fairness in sports debate is a legitimate debate, or at least it's not the one that we've turned it into.

01:04:29.800 And I don't want to give credence to what I think is a stupid conversation.

01:04:33.640 And the reason that I say that is because I don't think the people who start these conversations, 0.97

01:04:40.060 these debates about trans inclusion in sports, actually care about fairness in sports or

01:04:45.560 trans people who participate in them.

01:04:47.340 Trans people are such a small minority of the population.

01:04:52.760 Trans athletes are even proportionally a statistically smaller group than cis athletes.

01:04:58.580 this is such a non-issue on so many levels like when we are having the argument about trans sports

01:05:05.100 and should they or shouldn't they it's like it is almost always a hypothetical what i think these

01:05:10.420 debates really are are people whose ultimate goal is for trans people to not exist in public life

01:05:16.240 people whose goal is to strip trans people of fundamental rights not just to play in sports but

01:05:21.840 health care being legally recognized as people they say they are that kind of thing i think

01:05:27.120 the trans sports debate is their way to get you to like dance with them right i think if we turn

01:05:33.800 this into a metaphor of like dance i think they are trying to drag you out on the dance floor of 0.55

01:05:38.000 like entertaining their desire for trans people to not have human rights and i think if they come

01:05:43.420 out and tell you that they don't want trans people to have human rights you're going to be like well

01:05:47.280 no that's ridiculous i'm not a terrible person kind of i think it's an easier entry point for 0.92

01:05:51.920 them to get you at but it wouldn't be fair right if if trans women were to compete with cis women 0.88

01:05:56.760 and that's like they're appealing to logic a little bit because like you have this primal 0.97

01:06:00.700 way to be like oh well no but if you were born as a man and they're dragging you on

01:06:04.680 the dance floor a little bit and I think that's where they get you to think well no but then 0.93

01:06:08.040 trans women aren't really women and then you're also thinking about well do trans women pose 0.90

01:06:12.440 a physical danger to cis women and they're like getting these gears turning into your 0.96

01:06:16.700 head and you know are trans women stealing cis women's valor and achievements or jobs

01:06:23.140 And then all of a sudden, you're like doing the tango with a transphobe who has fully roped you into this conversation that I just don't want to have. And so I don't give this an inch because I don't think that anyone who starts these conversations about trans fairness in sports actually cares. I don't think that's what it's about.

01:06:40.740 And you know that that's the case, because most of the people who at a high level are making or bringing this rhetoric up are people who never talk about women's sports in any other context. They don't watch women's sports. They don't know anything about women's sports. They're not interested in it. But it's like you say, it's a wedge issue. It's, to mix the metaphor, it's a foot in the door.

01:07:01.260 You know, and another reason, you know, is like I, as a trans person, am very often approached online or even offline by people who demand to have an explanation from me as to like, OK, but why are trans women trying to like dominate all the women's sports?

01:07:16.740 And it's like, well, one, like, why am I being asked about this?

01:07:19.860 Because I'm trans.

01:07:20.680 I never talk about sports outside of when people approach me about this.

01:07:24.760 I don't play sports.

01:07:26.300 I don't like I have no expertise on this question at all.

01:07:31.260 But they're approaching it to me because, again, it's like an issue where it would be a mistake, right, for me to respond being like, well, the question of fairness of trans women competing in women's sports is actually really complicated.

01:07:44.380 And it's going to depend on the sport. And it depends on, you know, who are we talking about here? Like, at what age did a person transition? Like, are we talking about someone who was on hormones?

01:07:52.460 like right there's all these these factors that go into it but the minute you start doing that

01:07:56.320 you're kind of you're losing because like like you say the point of this talking point is that

01:08:02.040 it introduces a conversation about trans women taking away things from cis women and trans women 0.62

01:08:07.140 being a danger to cis women and so i think you know i think it's effective for them as a wedge

01:08:12.720 issue for that reason because you can spring this like question on normal people and not necessarily

01:08:19.840 immediately come across like you're a raving bigot which is you know probably is the case if

01:08:24.800 you lead with one of the more insane talking points you're never gonna you're never gonna 0.71

01:08:28.980 have success as a anti-trans fanatic talking to the man on the street about autogynephilia or one

01:08:36.460 of their more like abstract like abstract almost a cult kind of talking points where it's like

01:08:42.460 but you can't lead with that or you sound like a crazy person but I think you can you can lead

01:08:46.820 with well i'm concerned about fairness in sports without sounding like you have an almost perverse

01:08:51.360 obsession with trans people i mean i think i think often the best thing to deflect is to

01:08:55.440 is to simply point out like there's no trans woman in the olympics why are you talking about this

01:08:58.920 every time a trans woman wins any kind of sports competition at any level it becomes national news

01:09:06.500 basically and so people have a few cases on hand to point to but like there's not a single sport

01:09:13.740 at any level that is being dominated by trans women none yeah literally it's like yes we have

01:09:18.800 the whole country talking about like a high school field hockey game fabulous it's a completely 0.99

01:09:23.100 hypothetical problem who gives a fuck and and it's like i know you don't care about it and neither do 0.66

01:09:28.440 i we don't care we don't care we're talking about the humanity of trans people like that's what this 0.97

01:09:33.960 is and that is why i'm not talking today about trans fairness in sports i don't care i will say

01:09:39.660 If you genuinely care and want to engage with this on like a substantive level, a friend of mine, Skylar Baylor, who is a trans man who swam on the men's swimming team at Harvard, who has dedicated a big portion of his career to like dispelling myths and explaining, you know, all these things about like variations in hormones and depending on when you started transitioning and what you've gone through and what you haven't gone through and where that puts you in the sports conversation.

01:10:05.520 He explains it in really interesting and nuanced ways, but I think the majority of people don't

01:10:10.940 actually care. The majority of people certainly participating in the conversation about Iman

01:10:15.260 Khalif don't care, and we're not going to talk about it. Okay, Natalie and I just took a short

01:10:19.320 break from recording, and I checked my phone, and the first thing I saw was Trump in a new video

01:10:25.360 from a rally he did yesterday, which I guess he did last night after, because okay, to contextualize

01:10:30.440 this for anyone listening, we were recording this the day after Iman won the gold medal,

01:10:34.640 and trump said in a in a rally last night i'd like to congratulate the young woman who

01:10:40.400 transitioned from a man into a boxer you saw he won you saw he won she won the gold medal

01:10:48.200 he doesn't know how to be transphobic he doesn't like the concept of transphobia he's actually

01:10:54.980 kind of he's trying to learn right he's doing his best he's putting in the work like he's

01:11:00.160 educating himself he's listening and he's learning listening he's learning he's he's he's taking his

01:11:04.680 seat he's trying to learn how to be a transpo but he's he's still having a little bit of a hard time

01:11:08.660 with it you know sometimes he's sometimes he struggles with the language and the pronouns

01:11:13.260 he's trying he's trying to get better at all at all at always calling the people they're mad at

01:11:17.740 a man but he'll he'll get there he'll get there it can be tough i guess at first you know but but

01:11:24.220 i think we should we should give him some time so i said it was all downhill from the top but

01:11:29.300 the truth is we are gonna have a little bit of fun and can i say that or does that make it seem 0.98

01:11:33.500 too light-hearted maybe i should just not no you can absolutely say that transvestigators are fun 0.79

01:11:38.540 they're it's like i mean they're they're fun in the way that like i don't know watching like

01:11:42.820 documentaries about david koresh is fun but but what is that your reference point for fun it is

01:11:50.800 for me but i'm like a sicko learning about the waco siege that is kind of what i do for fun like

01:11:55.140 i watched cults yeah i mean this is kind of a cult it is kind of a cult and it's kind of a

01:12:00.000 conspiracy theory it's not kind of a conspiracy theory it's a conspiracy theory so what is it

01:12:04.580 so we're going to be talking about transvestigation which is a word that we've dropped a number of

01:12:09.240 times already in this episode but i think we should visit it in its most extreme form in a

01:12:15.720 way that demonstrates how the people who are kind of the biggest people like in our media culture

01:12:20.920 like elon musk like jk rowling are actually inching their way and actually not even inching

01:12:25.880 their way they're kind of running towards the place where they are the people in these facebook

01:12:30.100 groups of transvestigating hollywood so what is transvestigating actually natalie i'm gonna have

01:12:35.420 you take the wheel on this one so transvestigating is basically armchair social media behavior where

01:12:42.760 you sort of in the way that conspiracy theorists do their own research quote unquote quote unquote

01:12:48.440 You investigate the gender of various celebrities or even sometimes non-celebrities on the basis of things like the width of their shoulders, the tilt of their eyes, the width of their brow bone.

01:13:07.080 I mean, there's hundreds of, we could go on for hours about what the, they're the kind of people who post a lot of photographs of people with like circles and arrows and diagrams drawn all over it to decide like, oh, Hollywood has been telling us that Henry Cavill is a man.

01:13:22.380 But if you look at the hip bone to waist ratio, you can actually tell that he is a she and a biological woman, right?

01:13:28.920 So it's this, this is like the basic concept of transvestigating. 0.59

01:13:33.040 You are investigating whether someone is transgender on the basis of whatever you've decided are the objective markers of biological sex.

01:13:42.080 I've seen some things about the transvestigation of Henry Cavill.

01:13:45.200 And personally, I'd be thrilled if it comes out that he's a woman, because that means I get to finally be a heterosexual.

01:13:51.260 Congratulations.

01:13:52.740 Which will thrill the family back home, I'm sure.

01:13:55.400 transvestigating it's basically what we've done as a culture for the last two weeks around

01:14:01.360 imam khalif like this was one big transvestigation yeah right and it frankly was just as nonsensical

01:14:08.180 albeit less entertaining because there was someone again a previously random unknown person to the

01:14:13.660 world suffering the abuse through all of it right and i had the pretense of being about fairness in

01:14:18.840 women's sports which transvestigation usually isn't it's just like i don't know i guess a

01:14:23.880 recreational activity to these people or like a conspiratorial rabbit hole i have joined a lot of

01:14:30.620 transvestigation as you can imagine takes place on facebook in facebook groups devoted to this

01:14:35.400 where it's just thousands of people posting pictures of celebrities zoomed in to where you

01:14:40.820 can see each pixel and they're just like did you guys see this like do you think scarlett johansson

01:14:46.280 is a woman like um i have joined a few of these facebook groups for research purposes

01:14:51.160 and entertainment i assume i mean it is entertaining it's just like these people

01:14:56.700 think that everyone is trans and in fact i remember seeing one about caitlin jenner and

01:15:01.660 then more recently dylan mulvaney where because these people are out as trans they actually

01:15:06.720 reverse transvestigate them like hold on i'm gonna pull this one up about dylan mulvaney

01:15:11.420 transvestigators have reverse transvestigated reverse transvestigated dylan mulvaney

01:15:17.940 to conclude she must have been born a woman forcibly transitioned to male as a kid

01:15:23.000 and then transitioned into female in adulthood yeah so they posted a picture of dylan mulvaney

01:15:28.900 in one of these facebook groups and someone named krista wrote possibly female to male to female

01:15:34.780 there are other body markers to look at as well shoulder to hip ratio leg to arm length the way

01:15:40.900 their stride and strut presents itself sometimes it is very hard because some children are being

01:15:46.780 transitioned before they hit puberty so this person is basically arguing that dylan mulvaney

01:15:52.200 was born female forcibly transitioned to male in her like infancy and then later came out as a

01:16:01.500 female which she was actually born as there's another comment on this post that refers to

01:16:06.920 dylan as a quote possible double flipper which is a new piece of jargon to me i have never heard

01:16:15.760 the term double flip but these people are so deep in it they have a term for this when someone

01:16:20.920 like secretly transitions twice and then presents to the media as a trans woman even though they're

01:16:27.680 a cis woman who transitions to male first before tricking everyone by transitioning again and that

01:16:36.380 is most insane what these people are claiming is essentially it's a conspiracy theory right where

01:16:41.640 They're saying that basically all celebrity, all Hollywood actors, literally all of them

01:16:46.300 are trans, right?

01:16:47.660 So Scarlett Johansson is a man.

01:16:49.620 Henry Cavill is a woman. 0.88

01:16:51.340 Like any celebrity you can think of basically has been transvestigated at this point.

01:16:56.120 It could happen to you, Andrew Tate.

01:16:58.940 And it has. 0.57

01:17:00.060 Can we look at the transvestigation of Andrew?

01:17:01.840 Yeah, let's do it.

01:17:02.560 Let's do it.

01:17:02.920 Andrew Tate was transvestigated this week. 0.98

01:17:05.200 Here, I'm going to send this one to you. 0.98

01:17:06.700 All right.

01:17:07.000 so we have i mean i guess i should describe for the people not watching the visuals what i'm

01:17:12.840 looking at here it's a facebook post about andrew tate caption i guess she forgot to wear her fake

01:17:20.200 eggplant emoji laughing crying emoji and it's a picture of andrew tate in a speedo and then

01:17:26.780 perversely like zoomed into the like extreme like pixelated degree on the crotch of the speedo

01:17:33.740 where i mean it is like admittedly like a slightly bewildering picture to me like

01:17:39.780 what like if it's a tuck it's a good tuck it's like i will say it's a really good talk like 0.96

01:17:47.700 because i cannot tell that he has a penis are we transvestigating andrew tate i mean well that's 0.97

01:17:54.080 the thing right is like you start engaging with these people and now you're doing it 0.99

01:17:57.600 right and now you're one you're walking down the street wondering is everyone trans

01:18:01.660 like i don't know is is is my mom trans is my like is like i don't know am i was i am i actually

01:18:08.540 am i a double flipper like was i born female and i'm like like i don't know i'm starting to

01:18:13.300 question i'm questioning everything you know you you listening at home could be trans like i don't 0.56

01:18:18.500 know did your parents trans you when you were a kid are you on the precipice of becoming a double

01:18:22.780 flipper i couldn't prove that they didn't and isn't that the same as as evidence maybe we are

01:18:30.420 all trans well i mean maybe that's i don't know maybe that's what we should be striving for if

01:18:34.220 everyone's trans then no one will be hmm trans what trans normativity yeah exactly victoria

01:18:41.960 comments he slash she blocked me for calling him slash her a trans transformer they do have so many

01:18:49.020 amazing words for trans people that i don't even they're using them as pejoratives but like

01:18:53.760 transformer that's kind of kind it's hard to get mad about being called transformer it's like when

01:18:58.660 they call gay people members of the alphabet mafia like i think it just makes us seem i think

01:19:02.900 it makes us seem a little bit too cool yeah it does why are you why are you making it sound so

01:19:06.580 cool but you know i tacked this on to my outline for today's show because even though these people

01:19:11.920 it's like laughably insane what these people are doing jk rowling is barreling towards this it's

01:19:18.740 kind of the ultimate conclusion of their rhetoric right which is that basically you know whatever i

01:19:24.860 perceive is what the gender of a person is so jakey ruling thinks that she can intuit like oh

01:19:30.220 i just saw with my eyes a man punching a woman meaning like she can just she thinks that she

01:19:34.800 can always tell well of course these people inevitably run into the fact that most people

01:19:40.600 cannot in fact always tell and you know that i mean this is something that we have just attempted

01:19:44.740 to discuss for a long time in trans discourse you know the fact that like masculine women are

01:19:50.620 often casualties of transphobic witch hunts too, because bathroom panics often target masculine

01:19:56.520 women. I mean, I think that probably a feminine trans woman is in a lot of ways less likely to get 0.57

01:20:02.260 confronted in a woman's bathroom than a masculine cis woman, because a lot of people cannot in fact

01:20:08.120 always tell, and trans women are accused of like reducing womanhood to feminhood stereotype, to

01:20:14.200 like long hair and makeup and dresses or whatever, but a lot of these people, that does in fact seem 0.94

01:20:19.460 to be how they perceive gender right there's been multiple other cis women in this olympics

01:20:25.120 who have been accused of being men on the basis that you know they're muscular and not wearing

01:20:31.220 makeup because they're in the olympics an athletic competition there's a video on twitter i should

01:20:36.880 find it of this female athlete like in tears and she's wearing like now a full face of makeup and 1.00

01:20:42.860 like feminine clothes jewelry and everything to try to i guess re-establish herself as a woman 1.00

01:20:47.980 in the eyes of the public because people see a lot of female athletes they have muscle because 1.00

01:20:54.540 they're athletes right and a lot of people see that and they don't see any like overt feminine

01:20:59.940 signifiers and so they see them as men all this kind of line of thinking that a person does not

01:21:05.140 get to tell you what gender they are you get to tell everyone else what gender they are

01:21:08.680 it does lead to transvestigation and in some ways that to me is the significance of this entire

01:21:14.040 story about Iman Khalif is that this represents a kind of global mainstreaming of a transvestigation

01:21:20.700 witch hunt. Right. I mean, there were Katie Ledecky is another one who there were multiple 0.79

01:21:25.720 like viral posts about Katie Ledecky not being a woman. And I'm looking at this one right now in

01:21:32.640 front of me. It's from Ian Miles Chong, who's another genius. He wrote, is this a man or a

01:21:38.000 woman? How you respond will determine the strength of your character. And it's like, okay, yeah,

01:21:42.000 whatever ian myelstrom but what's interesting is that all of these tweets with katie ledecky or

01:21:47.120 with iman khalif like with katie they use pictures of her where she's just gotten out of the pool 0.99

01:21:50.980 obviously she doesn't have makeup on because she was fucking swimming her hair slicked back and 0.69

01:21:55.160 they choose photos and jk rowling did this too with iman khalif where they it's just women who 1.00

01:22:01.660 don't look feminine in that moment and like that's what this is they choose an unflattering photo of

01:22:07.920 woman and then that's the proof that she's a man right again like the as far as far as i'm aware

01:22:13.460 this is the first time that anyone has called katie ladecki's gender into question but it's

01:22:18.380 being questioned right because it's a photo of her after getting out of the water where your hair is

01:22:22.860 slicked back which doesn't which causes you to have the appearance of a larger forehead and

01:22:27.560 she's not wearing makeup because i don't you already said it like i don't need to explain

01:22:33.760 why an olympic swimmer might not be wearing makeup during competition do i okay but to ian

01:22:37.900 miles strong you do to in miles strong you do and that is where this is all kind of headed right 0.71

01:22:42.120 the ultimate social pressure that's going to be applied is for women in all circumstances to never 0.98

01:22:46.640 be seen without a full face of makeup nails hair you know that's what a woman is going to have to 0.99

01:22:52.260 do to not be transvestigated and even then it won't be enough because as we can see from these 0.94

01:22:57.160 transvestigation groups you know they're transvestiting scarlett johansson i mean i think

01:23:01.620 it's worth talking about how like this disproportionately affects women of color it

01:23:05.960 disproportionately affects butches and masculine women but ultimately like there's nothing that 0.87

01:23:11.220 will save you from being transvestigated by certain people it's not that men don't get

01:23:14.940 transvestigated too but i think it's most i i think it ultimately will lead to increased gender

01:23:20.220 policing of women in general at all times so to conclude iman khalif as you know ended up winning

01:23:28.900 gold congrats to her i hope she has a lifetime of peace and happiness i also hope she sues the

01:23:35.040 out of all these people who lied and considering jk rowling's in the uk where libel laws are

01:23:40.180 flimsier and easier to leverage yeah iman on the off chance you're watching this um england has

01:23:46.420 very has libel laws that really kind of favor the plaintiff so you might be a good place to start 0.79

01:23:51.580 and we know that she's got money so just a thought iman beat out her competitors including

01:23:56.720 Anna Hamory, the Hungarian fighter who shared memes of her the previous day about Iman being

01:24:02.900 a man. Last Monday, the IBA, International Boxing Association, held a press conference led by none

01:24:10.580 other than Umar Kremlev. A room full of journalists convened in person and Umar joined over Zoom.

01:24:17.800 And according to the Washington Post, Umar talked in circles for 90 minutes about testosterone and

01:24:23.540 the need to protect women's sports and also admonish the olympics opening ceremony for

01:24:28.660 hosting drag queens because you know why not and when journalists asked repeatedly for evidence

01:24:34.640 of iman's gender test because that's the only reason any of them wanted to speak to him he said

01:24:39.140 that he couldn't provide any and wouldn't provide any and eventually many of those journalists just

01:24:44.040 left the press conference while umar was still talking so natalie in this world of increasing

01:24:50.340 transvestigation, the gender surveillance panopticon, as I call it. Where do we go from 0.88

01:24:56.160 here? How do we not barrel towards a world where this becomes the norm and where one of the most

01:25:02.380 popular self-identified feminists of our time is championing the cause of making women act more 0.87

01:25:08.540 feminine lest they be described as men? Well, I think it starts by not allowing this whole

01:25:14.540 incident to be memory hold right a lot of times bigoted movements rely on denial of their own

01:25:21.320 horrible behavior or they just rely on people forgetting and moving on to get away with

01:25:26.300 continuing to do it again right so i think maybe keep this whole situation in mind and all of its 0.98

01:25:31.980 ugly consequences the next time someone is being globally transvestigated and you know push back

01:25:39.720 against the people doing it. Remember that these people were all wrong last time. And I think that 0.54

01:25:46.160 being aware of the way a certain type of moral panic functions can help you to kind of not get

01:25:53.320 swept up into like really ugly witch hunt type of behavior. Also, you know, I think sometimes

01:26:00.400 the comedy of transvestigation can be helpful because transvestigators are ridiculous. And I 1.00

01:26:07.020 think just laughing at this as like abnormal behavior in some ways is more effective than

01:26:11.620 arguing against it because some people in this conversation jk rowling among them are not

01:26:17.480 available for a rational conversation to be had so what can you do but laugh at them and move on

01:26:24.140 oh you know what this is where we'll end the episode i just opened twitter iman khalif has

01:26:30.460 filed a legal complaint for online harassment oh my god we're on the up and up kids we're ending

01:26:35.340 on a high note we're winning i hope she gets a lot of money she deserves it hashtag paris 2024

01:26:41.000 hashtag paris 2024 natalie where everybody knows where to find you but i have a ritual of doing

01:26:49.000 this so i must ask where can people find you and you should if you haven't go watch our videos

01:26:55.500 thank you so much i am contra points that's the name of the youtube channel and it's also my

01:27:01.260 handle on twitter on instagram uh i guess add me on threads too in case we decide that you know

01:27:07.460 we don't enjoy using a website owned by the kind of person who does what we've been talking about

01:27:13.100 this entire episode and uh yeah thanks so much for having me on again oh my god thank you for

01:27:18.320 being here if you have made it this far you're welcome or i'm sorry i hope that you had a little

01:27:24.600 bit of fun today um no that's not what i want to say if you learned something from this if you found

01:27:30.520 this meaningful feel free to share it with your family member on facebook who shared some really 0.93

01:27:36.100 disgusting shit over the last two weeks and um i love you i appreciate you we are all in this 0.96

01:27:41.760 together i love you so much and until next time stay 0.99

01:27:45.680 cut

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - August 14, 2024

Transvestigating (with Contrapoints)

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