Transcripts / The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

This is a transcript for the video essay “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” which can be found here.

Saur. I'm gonna talk about JoRo once again. But first…story time.

Chapter One: Anita

Natalie: The most famous bigot in American LGBT history is a woman called Anita Bryant. This is her story.

1977 was not a good time to be gay. Is it ever really a good time to be gay?

In 1969, the Stonewall Riots forced gay rights into national consciousness. The first pride parades were held in the summer of 1970, and in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. But only after gay activists disrupted their conference and shouted, "Gay conversion therapy is torture! We have abnormal urges, and we will not be silenced!” [alarm blares]

Because that's the only way to get anything done in this country. You have to be super annoying about it. They give you no choice.

On January 18, 1977, Dade County, Florida, known for such popular cities as Miami, approved a law that added the phrase "affectional or sexual preference" to its nondiscrimination ordinance, effectively banning housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

And it was just then, as things seemed to be getting better, that Anita Bryant made her little appearance.

Announcer: Anita Bryant, Miss Oklahoma.

Natalie: Anita Bryant is a native Oklahoman who once had a career as a pop singer, beauty queen, and spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission.

Anita: ♪ Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree ♪

My twins love 100% orange juice from Florida any time of the day. Orange juice from Florida, It isn't just for breakfast anymore.

♪ Orange juice with natural vitamin C From the Florida Sunshine Tree ♪

Natalie: She was known for these TV commercials with the tagline-

Anita: A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.

 Natalie: Cute. When Anita heard her pastor speak about the nondiscrimination ordinance, she felt "a divine disturbance" in her heart. How touching.  

Anita: According to the word of God, it's an abomination to practice homosexuality.

Natalie: As a mother, she would not stand for this. So Anita wrote a letter to the county commissioners saying,

Anita: As a concerned mother of four children, I am most definitely against this ordinance amendment, I have never condoned nor taught my children discrimination against anyone, but if this ordinance amendment is allowed to become law, you will, in fact, be infringing upon my rights and discriminating against me as a citizen and a mother to teach my children God's moral code as stated in the Holy Scriptures.

Natalie: Anita…kill your shitty child.

When the amendment passed, Anita created a campaign for its repeal, the Save Our Children coalition, which sponsored provocative TV ads implying that gay people are degenerates who ruin communities and seduce children.

Announcer: The campaign has been vicious. With television commercials, the Save our Children group is appealing to parental anxieties, saying gays will flaunt their homosexuality before impressionable children. –

Anti-Gay Commercial: The Orange Bowl Parade, Miami's gift to the nation. Wholesome entertainment. But in San Francisco, when they take to the streets, it's a parade of homosexuals, men hugging other men, cavorting with little boys.

Natalie: Save Our Children sparked the first organized backlash to gay rights in the United States, escalating the conflict into a national controversy. On one side were the gay rights activists, who argued that nondiscrimination was a matter of human rights. On the opposing side, Anita Bryant argued that the nondiscrimination ordinance would give "special privileges" to homosexuals.

Anita: We all believe in human rights. But we don't believe in human rights that would corrupt our children, or for individuals to have special privileges that would go against the constitutional rights of normal America. As long as they don't want to flaunt their homosexuality they have the equal rights the same as anyone else.

Natalie: In other words, gay people already have equal rights, just as long as they stay in the closet and don't do anything gay. That's very helpful. Thank you so much, Anita, for standing up for our right to be gay in secret!

Anita: As long as they do their jobs and don't come out of the closet and force their homosexuality on me in the areas of business and the schools, they can live their life. We're not going out after their jobs or trying to get them out of their teaching jobs or housing.

Natalie: Anita also argued that allowing flaunting homosexuals to teach children was tantamount to gay recruitment.

Anita: Just biologically, that God made mothers so that we could reproduce. Homosexuals cannot reproduce biologically, but they have to reproduce by recruiting our children.

Natalie: It's the exact same argument that's being used today by right-wing politicians who claim that queer people are "groomers."

Lauren Boebert:  Stop confusing our babies with your groomer gender ideologue!

Conservative State Senator: This wicked book, "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl". Sexually indoctrinated with wicked vile books. And she believes that traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and in that book it talked about two moms.

Tucker Carlson: Stay away from the children, creep, or you will regret it. People should definitely arm themselves. I agree with that.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: The Democrats are the party of p*dophiles. The Democrats are the party of teachers, elementary school teachers, trying to transition their elementary school-age children and convince them they're a different gender.

Chaya Raichik: They're just evil people and they wanna groom kids. They're recruiting.

Conservative State Senator: If you don't know what furries are. It's where school children dress up as animals, cats or dogs, during the school day, they meow and they bark.

Natalie: What a great country we live in. I love it so much.

Gay people around the country rallied against Anita Bryant and Save Our Children. There was a national boycott of Florida orange juice, with many gay bars taking screwdrivers off the menu and replacing them with an apple juice and vodka cocktail called an "Anita Bryant."

Let's make one now! [soft jazz music] Forgot my cocktail measure, so I'm just gonna have to eyeball this. Just a dash of apple juice. Give it a stir. [coughing] Needs a garnish. Stunning. I mean, it's not as good as a screwdriver, but if I was in the '70s, I would've thrown back so many of these goddamn things out of pure spite.

There's a story that Troy Perry, the founder of the gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church, was on a transcontinental flight and when the attendant put a glass of orange juice on his trey, he said, "Take that away! I'm a homosexual!"

At gay Pride marches in 1977 and '78, anti-Anita Bryant slogans featured prominently on T-shirts, signs, and buttons-"Anita Bryant Sucks Oranges" A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine. True.

And meanwhile, Anita's campaign inspired more anti-gay legislation, including bans on gay adoption and same-sex marriage, both of which passed in the Florida Senate, as well as the failed Briggs Initiative in California, which would have forced public schools to fire gay teachers. So Anita Bryant was worse than a bigot. She was an influential bigot. But she may also have helped to unify and galvanize gay activists by providing them with a common enemy.

According to historian Lillian Faderman, "Anita Bryant created fervent activists out of those who'd previously been content simply to enjoy their newfound freedoms." Faderman cites Eric Hoffer's observation that "a mass movement can get along fine without a god, but it won't get along at all without a devil. For gay people all over the country, Anita Bryant became that devil."

Bob Kunst (gay rights activist, but he later became a Trump supporter, booo): I think that she is rallying the community together like I have never seen before. There's no way I could have done it on my own.

Natalie: So even though she succeeded in her initial goal to repeal the nondiscrimination ordinance, there's no question that in the long term, Anita Bryant was the loser. She took a lot of Ls. RIP. That must be super hard for her.

For the short remainder of her career, gay activists protested her events, they shut down the tour for her book about how persecuted she was by the militant homosexuals. And they succeeded in turning public opinion against Anita Bryant to the point that she became virtually unemployable in mainstream entertainment. It helped that she came across as kind of a judgmental prude, that even hip straight people didn't want to be associated with.

Jane Curtin on SNL Weekend Update: Our top story tonight, Anita Bryant, former mediocre actress and orange juice promoter, performed coitus in public yesterday as a campaign to promote heterosexuality.

Gay Bartender in popular sitcom Maude: We don't serve orange juice anymore.

Natalie: Like she famously told Playboy Magazine—

Anita: Why do you think the homosexuals are called fruits? It's because they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. God referred to men as trees, and because the homosexuals eat the forbidden fruit, which is male sperm.

Tati Westbrook: Oh my God!

Natalie: Like the woman is heterosexual cringe. This is how you lose the culture war.

Anni O’Brien: ♪ So let's all squeeze a fruit for Anita Pass a little juice around ♪

Natalie: And of course there was the famous incident where a gay activist smashed a banana cream pie in Anita's face during a TV appearance.

Anita: And we went into a place called Norfolk Virginia and were met with protests and all kinds of problems and every [pie is smashed in her face] [crowd exclaiming] [camera shutter clicking]

Onlooker: Security, security.

Bob Green: No, let him stay, let him stay.

Anita, cattily: Well, at least it's a fruit pie.

Natalie: Miami-Dade County finally reinstated the non-discrimination ordinance in 1998, and they added gender identity to its protections in 2014. In 2021, Anita took another metaphorical pie to the face when her granddaughter, Sarah Green, came out as gay, announcing her marriage to a woman and publicly struggled with whether to even invite her grandmother to the ceremony.

Sarah: It's very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is an evil delusion.

Natalie: That it is Sarah. That it is. So that's the story of Anita Bryant as students of LGBT history know it. But isn't it a bit one-sided? Wasn't there a lot of toxicity on both sides?

Announcer: The Anita Bryant forces talk of absolute truth and morality. Gay leaders are equally dogmatic about human rights.

Priest: A plague on both their houses.

Natalie: Isn't it cruel, even, to slur Anita as a "bigot" and "homophobe"? In fact, is it possible that Anita Bryant was the real victim? [dramatic organ music]

Oh no, oh no. [laughing] Ugh, I can't do this anymore. I'm eating my pie, I'm eating my goddamn pie.

Chapter 2: The Witch Trials of Anita Bryant

God help us all.

Natalie: The mainstream media would have us believe that Anita Bryant was a so-called "homophobe", some kind of hateful bigot. But isn't this just an authoritarian tactic used to silence valid concerns? Mothers in this country are worried about their children going to school to be taught by perverts. How can we be so sure that the militant homosexuals weren't the real bigots?

Isn't it possible that Anita Bryant was in fact the first victim of cancel culture? Of, dare I say it, wokeism?

Well, no. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. But suppose that you're an idiot. And suppose that that's the narrative you wanted to promote. Well, what would be your argument? If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to make that argument, I'd probably say something like this.

*Somber music plays*

Anita Bryant lived a difficult life. In 1940 she was born into brutal poverty in rural Oklahoma. Her parents divorced when she was just two years old, the same year she made her singing debut at the Baptist Church.

Anita: Parts of my childhood I've blocked out because it hurts too much. I guess I was happiest when I was eight years old and my parents were remarried, and I was baptized and came to know Christ as my personal savior.

Natalie: Her father abandoned the family again when she was 12.

Anita: It was real painful and it just about killed my mother. She was a very submissive wife-she was too submissive and it angered me. She let my dad step all over her. Because of him, I think I went through life for a long time hating all men.

Natalie: Anita described her most intense adolescent memory as a feeling of intense ambition.

Anita: A relentless drive to succeed at doing well the thing I loved.

♪ Glory glory hallelujah ♪ ♪ His truth is marching on ♪ (the Judy Garland at home)

Natalie: But Anita's ambition conflicted with her submissive role as a traditional Christian woman. In 1960 Anita married Bob Green, Miami's top disc jockey, though only after he relentlessly badgered her into it.

Bob Green: See this is what heterosexuals do, fellas! [He kisses Anita, people clap]

Natalie: Green was allegedly a controlling and abusive husband. Feminist scholar Andrea Dworkin claims

Andrea Dworkin: Green manipulated Bryant with a cruelty nearly unmatched in modern love stories.

Natalie: And Anita rationalized the abuse, saying:

Anita: Despite our sometimes violent scraps, I love him for it.

Natalie: But while submitting to her husband and raising four children, Anita was still able to build the career she'd always wanted. By the 1970s she was on the payroll of Big Orange Juice, earning half a million dollars a year, enough to move her family into a 27-room Spanish mansion on Biscayne Bay.

So Anita Bryant struggled all her life for her success. Did she really deserve to lose it all just because she took a stand for something she believed in?

Announcer: Anita Bryant's role as a leader in the campaign against homosexuals may be hurting her campaign to sell orange juice.

Interviewer: Are you being blackballed?

Anita: Well, it looks that way. It's worse than that. We're being threatened and there's all kinds of harassment, even with my job at Florida Citrus. I have been blacklisted for exercising the right of a mother to defend her children and all children against their being recruited by homosexuals.

Announcer: Her entire life has become a series of catastrophes. She's been dropped as spokesperson by the orange growers. She's been dropped as a commentator on the Orange Bowl Parade. She lost a television show contract. Her bookings dropped drastically.

Anita: It destroys the dream that I have had since I was a child, to entertain and present wholesome subjects to my fellow Americans, because I dared to speak out for straight and normal America.

Announcer: No one has paid as dearly as Anita Bryant for taking a public stance on something she believed in.

Anita: I remember lying in the bed in my mother's house in a fetal position, wanting to die.

Natalie: Gay activists in the 1970s didn't exactly limit their tactics to polite debate in the free marketplace of ideas.

Gay Rights Activists: Stop Anita now! Stop Anita now!

Announcer: Homosexuals started fighting back. The gays formed new groups and picketed the performer's public appearances, forcing her to cancel a few.

Natalie: Gay activists routinely compared Anita to Adolph H, they created pastiches of her orange juice slogan, they blamed her for hate crimes, they burned her in effigy, they disrupted events she was involved in. They printed toilet paper with her face on it. Some sent Anita death threats; or they mailed her rotting oranges, dead cockroaches, human excrement. See, this is how you canceled people before phones. Instead of shitposting you would simply mail human shit through the United States Postal Service. Neither snow nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night.Anita's husband pleaded to supporters.

Bob Green: How would you men feel if you opened a letter, and there was a photo of your wife's head superimposed on some other female nude body in the most lewd and shocking sexual act you can imagine?

Natalie: I can imagine quite a lot. I do think it would be fair to say that a lot of the rhetoric did take on a misogynistic tone. Lillian Faderman recounts that "Lesbians, particularly lesbian feminists, abhorred the sexist terms that were being used to characterize Anita Bryant: 'bitch' and 'whore', gay men called her. The harassment escalated to the point where Anita had to cancel her book tour because of demonstrations and bomb threats from gay activists. And of course, there was the pie. [crowd exclaiming] So much for the tolerant Mattachine Society! That's kind of a deep cut. Well something to entertain the boomer queers.

Gay activists claimed to stand for human rights, but what about Anita's right to free speech? I wish I had some literal pearls to clutch. Civil libertarian, Nat Hentoff wrote in his 1992 book "Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee", that the orange juice boycott reminded him of a little thing called McCarthyism.

Have you ever considered that being pro-gay is quite similar to being anti-gay, in that both…are opinions?

As Anita tells it, she and her "foot soldiers of God" were the victims of sinister gay carpetbaggers.

Anita: The foot soldiers were housewives and mothers, religious and civic leaders in opposition to a well-organized, highly financed, and politically militant group of homosexual activists. We were cast as bigots, haters, discriminators, and deniers of basic human rights.

And all of this happened because we were sincerely concerned for our children and our community.

Natalie: So Anita's version of the story is that she and a handful of well-intentioned Christian mothers were "cast as bigots" by a highly funded mafia of gay extremists, all because they had a few teensy tiny concerns about the militant homosexual cavorting with little boys.

Homophobic commercial: Cavorting with little boys.

Natalie: Is it really fair to call this woman a bigot? Until the Dade County ordinance, Anita was a registered Democrat and considered herself a liberal. She never said that she hated gay people or wanted them dead. In fact, she even said that she loves homosexuals.

Anita: I love homosexuals, if you can believe that. I love them enough to tell them the truth. Because I know that there is hope for the homosexuals if they're willing to turn from sin, the same as any individual, that they can be ex-homosexuals, the same as there can be an ex-murderer, an ex-thief, or ex-anybody.

Natalie: She loves homosexuals! Because they can change. Just like murderers. Would a bigot have said that? I've just about McFuckin' had it.

Anita was so kind-hearted she even said that she related to the homosexual.

Anita: I can relate to the homosexual because I've had emotional scars in my own life. I really felt the rejection of my father, and that is one of the things that maybe lead someone going into homosexuality. Look, I don't hate homosexuals, that's the truth, no matter what they think of my motives. I've always said I love the sinner but I hate the sin.

Natalie: Wow. What an empath. I actually think it's really noble how she's able to project all of her own emotional baggage onto the marginalized group whose rights she's trying to take away. Okay, so we've given a fair hearing to both sides, to many sides. We've considered all the evidence. Now, let's suppose that there's no longer a gun to my head, and ask, did Anita Bryant really deserve that pie to the face?

Well, yes. Obviously. The point I'm trying to make here is that it's possible to take genuine virtues like nuance, empathy, and impartiality, and to twist them into fucked up apologia for horrible, oppressive behavior.

If you play this game long enough you can essentially explain away the entire concept of bigotry, and conclude that in reality there are no bigots, there's only tragically misunderstood people with difficult childhoods and valid concerns, cruelly demonized by militant activists defaming and silencing them with such reputation-ruining slurs as "homophobe."

Now, because you, viewers, are smart, media-literate people, you understand framing, and so you already know that I'm about to compare Anita Bryant to J.K. Rowling. In case you didn't know, J.K.Rowling—

[deep sigh]

J.K. Rowling is a popular author who used to write whimsical stories about wizard school, but who now writes books about transvestite serial killers masturbating into stolen panties because she's lost her goddamn mind. Lo ho ho dear readers. Christ. What a nightmare.

Chapter Three: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

Natalie: Alright, kids, it's transin' time.

Last year, I agreed to be a guest on a podcast about J.K. Rowling, hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, an escapee from the Westboro Baptist Church, the notorious hate group from Topeka, Kansas most known for protesting the funerals of soldiers with signs that say "God Hates f*gs.”

God and me both. I'm tired of you people. JK, ILY.

Westboro Baptist Church is one of the most famous homophobic hate groups in the world. In a way I'm like a lifelong fan of these people. I've watched all the Louis Theroux documentaries. I went to a counterprotest in 2010. I remember how when I was in high school the Westboro Baptist Church was like the one thing conservatives and liberals could agree on, because they hated the troops and the gays. Essentially the two genders of 2006. But let's not pretend that the Westboro Baptist Church is all bad. Okay, when Megan was at Westboro she used to do these amazing Lady Gaga parodies about how the gays are going to hell which to this day I am a big fan of.

♪ What what did you say ♪ ♪ You think God loves your praying ♪ ♪ He hates all you do ♪ ♪ 'Cause you love fornicating ♪

♪ F-fornicating ♪

It's perfect, I love it. Play it at my funeral.

♪ Stop praying, stop praying ♪ ♪ God will not hear you anymore ♪

♪ You taught the boys And the girls to be proud whores

♪ ♪ For-Forever burn, For-Forever burn Go devil spawn, you just keep pushing on ♪

♪ To the hell where you will forever burn ♪ -

Megan left the Westboro Baptist Church in 2012 after a crisis of faith precipitated by a power struggle within the church. She wrote about all this in her book "Unfollow", which is honestly a pretty interesting account of deconversion and the circumstances that lead to someone leaving a hate group. Megan contacted me for her podcast because I had criticized J.K. Rowling in a video a couple years ago. Now you might be wondering, Why would I think that a person who has been carrying a "God Hates f*gs" sign for most of her life would be the correct person to lead an international conversation about the intricacies of LGBT issues?

Krusty the Clown: Because I'm an idiot, happy?

Basically I agreed to the podcast because it's a pretty irresistible pitch. A former member of the Westboro Baptist Church wants to mediate a conversation between me and the author of "Harry Potter". Would you say no to that? Maybe. If you're smart. Last month the podcast was announced in an essay by Megan, titled "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling", obviously a tendentious framing that posits JoRo as the target of irrational trans witch hunt. The essay included a teaser quote from Rowling complaining that she's been "profoundly misunderstood," as well a photo of an angry trans mob holding a "Rot in Hell Rowling" sign, juxtaposed with an image of conservative Christians burning "Harry Potter" books in the early 2000s. This did not bode well.

So I disavowed the podcast on Twitter, because I didn't want my name lending legitimacy to some kind of unearned J.K. Rowling redemption tour. This caused Megan's mom Shirley to quote tweet me calling me “a bigot against God.”

I mean God is one of the most vulnerable minorities. There's only one of him. And he could really use your help, Shirley.

I said in these tweets that I felt used, which, that is how I felt, but ultimately I need to take full responsibility for my involvement in this. The thing about being a guest on a documentary like this is you honestly have no idea what the final product is gonna be like, so the decision to participate is always a leap of faith. And I can't really say that Megan misled me. There were red flags from the beginning, and I ignored them, because I was projecting my own hopes onto the situation. You know, it's a compelling story. I liked the idea that this famous former bigot could talk some sense into a famous current bigot. We all love a good redemption arc. And I started my career "deradicalizing the alt right." That's something I've moved away from but there's still part of me that wants to see the best in people and to believe that people can change if you just talk to them and make a good enough argument. (sighing) Maybe. My wishful thinking was that because Megan left Westboro, that must mean she understands all the intricacies of anti-LGBT bigotry, right?

And despite no evidence for this, my hope was that Megan would act a trans ally and could be really effective at confronting JoRo about all the transphobic stuff she says, right?

Wrong.

Megan: I’m Megan Phelps-Roper and these are "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling".

[lachrymose Gregorian chanting]

Natalie: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is more than seven hours of apologetics for JKR. The podcast presents Rowling as a complex, humane, heroic figure with an inspiring feminist backstory.

Unnamed Speaker: Jo Rowling's rise to success is this sort of feminist Cinderella story.

Natalie: Now cruelly besieged by a vicious mob of transgender activist.

Angry Mob: TERFS go home, TERFS go home!

Natalie: And all because she, as a woman, had a few tiny concerns about the transgender rapists.

Joanne: I had been becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which women were being shut down. Women who I felt had some very valid concerns.

Natalie: Megan uncritically accepts Rowling's framing of the conflict as "feminists" versus "trans rights activists," whom Rowling describes as

Joanne: A powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement.

Natalie: For the first five hours of this podcast, Rowling's critics are presented as an irrational mob of enraged, shrieking, sexually violent fanatics.

Antifa Supersoldier: You are murdering trans children! [crowd shouting indistinctly]

Joanne: A huge amount of "I want her to choke on my fat trans dick."

Taiti Westbrook: And you did it at my birthday dinner.

Natalie: There's this one clip of some kind of Antifa supersoldier's abrasive screaming that they play like once per episode.

Antifa Supersoldier: Fuck you, you ugly piece of shit. You look like you got your teeth knocked out, you fucking fascist. Nobody knows who you are and nobody cares and you will die alone.

Natalie: And then it usually cuts to like somber monks chanting some kind of Medieval lament.

Antifa Supersoldier: You will die alone and you will burn in hell. [choir singing]

Natalie: Just in case you didn't get from the title that this is a witch hunt.

[lachrymose Gregorian chanting]

Do you guys get it? Do you get it yet?

Antifa Supersoldier: You look like you got your teeth knocked out you fucking fascist.

[angry mob shouting indistinctly]

Natalie: And then these mobs of irrational, misogynistic trans rights fanatics are contrasted with this poignant story of how J.K. Rowling escaped her abusive husband to publish our generation's most beloved novels.

Joanne: I was so very committed to those parts that I plotted in darkness, as it were, because there was a truth to them and there was a power to them. (Me talking about my Snape fanfiction)

Natalie: The only voices of genuine trans dissent appear in episode six out of seven, more than five hours in, and there's only two of us. One is me…Shame. And the other is a teenager named Noah, who kind of just seems like he wants to be liked and understood, and wishes that his favorite author would please stop saying bigoted things about him.

Noah: I'm such a big Harry Potter fan, or I was a big Harry Potter fan, especially because it was so hard to be in the real world. I can't even state how important it was to me. J.K. Rowling, I stole her biography from my 3rd grade classroom and I kept it for a long time because I just loved reading it 'cause I just admired her so much.

Natalie: It's honestly pretty heartbreaking to listen to. On my last day editing this video, I got in touch with Noah. I asked him if he had any thoughts about the podcast he wanted me to pass along and this is what he said.

Noah: I want to emphasize that the stakes of this issue are very different from any sort of rhetorical debate. Conversation, dialogue and debate are important, but for many of the most vulnerable people in society, the outcome of this conversation dictates their health, wellbeing, and ability to survive. How we treat or talk to people like J.K. Rowling should come second to fighting for maintained access to healthcare, support, and general resources for children and adolescents seeking gender care.

Natalie: I agree. The most frustrating thing about this podcast is that it refuses to be honest about what it is. They spend seven hours implying that J.K. Rowling is the victim of a witch hunt in the most heavy-handed way imaginable.

Megan: These are The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

[lachrymose Gregorian chanting]

Helen (she actually said this) Lewis: I mean, "TERF" is basically "witch".

Natalie: But if you point this out, they just deny it.

Joanne:Show me the actual words, Jack. Show me where I said I'm the victim of a witch hunt by trans people.

Twitter User @arsonistalien: you're on a podcast called "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.”

Joanne: Yes, a podcast on which I never once say I'm a victim of a witch hunt by trans people.

Dee Reynolds from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”: What are you talking about? I'm not scamming the government if that's what you're saying. -

Government Official: Your license plate says $cammin.

Dee Reynolds: Uh, no.

Government Official:- What do you mean, "No"?

Dee: Reynolds: Yes.

Natalie, incredulously: … Joanne!

“Show me where I ever said that I'm the target of a witch hunt, you liar! Why would you even think that? You're crazy! By the way, come get your "this witch doesn't burn" t-shirt. For sale now at Wild Womyn Workshop!”

Natalie: And Megan is not much better. Like, there's this whole section in episode two where Megan interviews the Christians who burned Harry Potter books in the 1990s, and this is obviously meant to be foreshadowing.

Megan: So looking back, would you say that the Christian parents were maybe part of the moral panic?

David, a former priest: Yeah, absolutely. It's a scary world out there.

Natalie: Megan doesn't explicitly say she thinks that trans protests against JoRo are equivalent to the Christian ones in the '90s, but she does heavily imply it.

Megan: There was an explosive reaction to Rowling's tweets, which led many, including lifelong fans of her work, to condemn her and to call for her books to banned, boycotted, and in some cases…[pausing for dramatic effect] burned.

Natalie: When confronted about the obvious implications of the podcast's title, Megan said,

Megan: The title is ambiguous. Toward the end of our conversations, I spent a long time talking with J.K. Rowling about discernment. About how a person can ever know if they're standing up for what's right, or joining a moral panic. I think you'll be surprised by the thoughts she shares!

Natalie, not mad, just disappointed: Megan, I was not surprised.

Joanne: I know I won't ever regret having stood up on this issue, ever.

Natalie: The podcast released new episodes weekly, and whenever Megan was challenged about the blatant one-sidedness, Megan would respond,

"Oh, you just think that because you haven't listened to the whole podcast yet. Maybe you should reserve judgment. Much more of other perspectives is coming." Make sure to tune in next week! More bombshell revelations to come!

Well, I've listened to the whole podcast now and I truly don't think anyone with basic media comprehension skills could come away from this thinking that the primary intention was anything other than to portray J.K. Rowling as the martyr of an unjust, uh what's the word…witch hunt? This is the obvious implication of the podcast from the first words to the very last. And of course, Rowling does literally get the last word. The final episode concludes with this.

Joanne: There are more important things in this world than being popular. And that doesn't mean it's more important to me to be right. It means it's more important to me to do the right thing.

Natalie: Why would you end on that note? Why would anything about this podcast be the way it is, if Megan didn't fundamentally believe that J.K. Rowling is in the right?

Anita: I don't regret it 'cause I did the right thing.

Natalie: Like there really is no other reasonable way to interpret this. So I wish that she would just be honest. If you believe that J.K. Rowling is the misunderstood victim of a witch hunt, then just say that. Make the argument you want to make. Don't crouch and hide behind this disavowal, this obfuscating veil of "just asking questions." Don't rely on innuendo and framing and lachrymose Gregorian chanting to make your point while coyly denying you have any kind of agenda beyond "I just believe in conversation."

I don't know. I just find this a slippery and dishonest way to argue. But if you happen to be a fan of slippery and dishonest arguments, you're in luck! Because there is more where that came from.

Commercial Break:

♪ Bach: Goldberg Variation 6 ♪

This video is sponsored by Cannibox. Cannibox offers fresh human meat delivered directly to your doorstep. As an alphabet mafiosa, sometimes I just can't fit The Most Dangerous Game into my busy lifestyle of destroying the family and recruiting children.

Whenever a new box arrives, I get out my copy of "Bless This Food: The Anita Bryant Family Cookbook".

The best thing about human meat delivered to your home by mail in the dead of night? You don't know who you're eating. So it's totally guilt-free and ethically sourced.

Maybe.

There's there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. That means you're not allowed to cancel me.

Chapter 4: JoRo's Transphobia

Chapter four. JoRo's Transphobia. That's it. [wand thudding] I'm going full Slytherin.

In Episode five of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, JoRo compares trans activists to Death Eaters, the fictionalized fascists in Harry Potter.

Joanne: My position is that this activist movement in the form that it's currently taking echoes the very thing that I was warning against in Harry Potter. The Death Eaters claimed we have been made to live in secret and now is our time. I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement.

Natalie: When an article then claimed she equated trans people to Death Eaters, the podcast's PR firm reached out demanding a correction, because she only equated the movement to Death Eaters, not trans people in general.

“Yeah, I don't hate marginalized people. I just hate when they advocate for themselves.” So I do have to be very careful with my wording here, lest a defamation letter arrive by owl.

J.K. Rowling's bigotry is exhausting to argue with because she expresses it as an endless series of what are called motte and bailey arguments. A motte and bailey argument is named after a type of castle consisting of a motte, that is, a tower atop a mound or hill, easy to defend-and a bailey, a fenced courtyard that is much more vulnerable to attack, difficult to defend.

So a motte and bailey argument is when someone makes a provocative claim that's difficult to defend, the "bailey." And then when confronted with counterarguments, they walk it back to a much less controversial and easy to defend version of the claim, the "motte."

For example, Rowling will make an ambiguous claim like "sex is real." What does she mean by that? What are the implications? Well in the podcast she explains that she thinks it's very sinister that the Associated Press style guide that says that instead of referring to a trans woman as "a man who identifies as a woman," journalists should just say a trans woman "is a woman."

Joanne: That, from the Associated Press is hugely powerful, they've edged from "identifies as a woman", so a man identifies as a woman, which I think we all understand what that means, into "is a woman." And that's precisely the creep that I'm talking about. We are using language to make accurate definition of sex difference unspeakable.

Natalie: Which is of course false, because the words "trans" and "cis" exist precisely to make it easy to talk about sex difference without excluding trans people. Thanks a lot Tumblr! God, there's this whole section of the podcast that sort of implies that transgender people were invented on Tumblr, which I'm not even gonna get into because we don't have time.

Rowling has also Tweeted that she thinks all people who menstruate must be referred to as women. Or was it wumben? I'm pretty sure it was wumpmud. So trans men, trans masculine people, they're all women and must be referred to as women, because J.K. Rowling demands it. (yes, I know not all transmasculine people menstruate, but I’m trying to make a point here.)

This is controversial, right? Calling trans women "men who identify as women." Calling trans men women. This is the bailey in her motte and bailey argument: Trans women are men, trans men are women.

That's the controversial interpretation of "sex is real." Now, when accused of transphobia and facing backlash, Rowling walks the argument back and says, "I'm being persecuted just for saying that women should be allowed to discuss how being female has shaped our lives."

"Women should be allowed to discuss how being female has shaped our lives." This is the obvious and utterly uncontroversial interpretation of "sex is real", the motte. And virtually every argument sophisticated transphobes make about trans people follows this pattern. J.K. Rowling's friend and ally Maya Forstater will tweet inflammatory things like "men cannot change into women" but then when she's criticized she'll say that she's being attacked for "gender critical belief".

Maya: Gender critical belief, which is the absolutely ordinary belief about sex, that your mother and your grandmother are women; being female is a thing.

Natalie: “Your mother and your grandmother are women; being female is a thing." That's literally all I'm saying! But if that's literally all she was saying, then no one would be mad, would they? Nein, naur. "Men cannot change into women" is the bailey, "your mom is a woman" is the motte. Your mom's a woman. [crowd going ‘oooh’]

This is why arguing with these people is infuriating. They'll insinuate that trans women are dangerous rapists, exhibitionists, and voyeurs. Then when trans people understandably get mad, they'll say “Look! I'm being attacked just for saying that being female is part of my experience!” It's dishonest. They talk a bunch of trash about trans people and then when trans people talk trash back they pretend they're being victimized for making totally innocuous statements. We could name this behavior “The Birthday Boy Argument.”

Twitter user @PissJugTycoon: I dated a 5'8 guy who'd taunt every jacked, 6'3 bro he met until they'd pull their fist back to beat him up, whereupon my ex would go "heyheyheyyy c'maahn I'm a little guy, I'm just a little guyy, noo, it's also my birthday, I'm a little birthday boy." And somehow it always worked.

Natalie: So a birthday boy argument is when you make aggressive, inflammatory assertions followed by "teacher, teacher, look what he's doing to me" when the target reacts with anything less than extreme politeness.

Another common tactic you see anytime Rowling's transphobia is discussed is you'll see someone jump in to say "show me one thing she's said that's transphobic!"

For example, here's someone on Twitter called Large Gamete Producer. It's funny isn't it, how these people will insist that awkward inclusive language like "people who menstruate" is horribly oppressive and degrading, but then they'll just straight-up call themselves "large gamete producer."

Which, by the way, is Rowling's definition of a woman.

Joanne: A woman is the producer of the large gametes.

Natalie: Oh, I like it. It's very brood mother. That Rowling's words regularly appear in Gender Critical arguments shows the massive influence that she has in the anti-trans movement. She's like their queen, their leader, their headmistress. She's the best thing that ever happened to them. 'Cause Sheila Jeffreys certainly wasn't persuading a lot of people. If you know, you know.

Large Gamete Producer says "JK isn't anti trans. Give me just one direct quote that she has said which is anti trans. Oh what's that? You cant find one? Well color me shocked." -

Paul Joseph Watson: Imagine—

Natalie: Before we waste our time trying to provide examples, let's take a look at Large Gamete Producer's profile: "Trans women are not women, they are men. Trans men are not men, they are women. Nothing can change that. Sex is binary"

Like if this person doesn't think "trans women are men, trans men are women" is a transphobic statement, then what would they consider a transphobic statement? This is why first question you should always ask such people is: "do you believe that transphobia is a legitimate concept? What are some examples of statements that you would consider transphobic?" Because many of them don't believe that transphobia is a valid concept, because they don't believe that trans people are a legitimate minority.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, AKA Posie Parker: There's no such thing as a trans woman. There's no such thing as a trans person. There is no such thing. There are people that call themselves these things that may have other issues manifesting that then make them think they're this, but no. We have to stop using any words like transgender. There may be more words that we have to say in order to say that. We may call it transgender ideology, but when it comes to a person, they may be following transgender ideology, but they are not transgender. There's no such thing as a man or a woman being anything other than a man or a woman.

Natalie: So when they say “show me an example of something transphobic J.K. Rowling has said,” this is a trap. They're just messing with you. There's nothing that she could have said that they would acknowledge as transphobic. Now if you're someone who believes that transphobia is a valid concept and you believe that trans people are a legitimate minority, but you just generally are unaware of what J.K. Rowling has said on the topic, then I will refer you to my past video on J.K. Rowling's transphobia, rather than recapping it all here. Just keep in mind that she's gotten significantly worse since I made that video. I mean just look at her twitter feed. True, she never says the phrase "I hate trans people" because she's not a complete idiot. But Anita Bryant never said "I hate gay people." She said, "save our children."

Anita: I love homosexuals.

Natalie: For that matter, I'm pretty sure David Duke doesn't say "I hate Black people," but he will share a lot of statistics about “anti-white crime.” So, this is not really a very good criterion for deciding who's a bigot, is it? What J.K. Rowling does do is tweet again and again about transgender rapists, about the danger trans women pose to cis women. She implies that trans inclusive language is equivalent to the dystopia of Orwell's "1984". She writes at length about the vague nefarious cabal of endocrinologists and ideologues that is supposedly "persuading" confused vulnerable girls to transition.

To quote Washington Post opinion writer Monica Hesse, "I do not know what is in Rowling's heart. But reading her Twitter feed, this is the overall effect: Her Twitter feed does not ask its readers to think. It asks them to fear. It creates phobias. Of trans people. It creates trans phobias."

If you will.

Rowling has also attacked pro-trans politician Nicola Sturgeon, calling her "destroyer of women's rights" via a t-shirt she got from anti-trans hatemonger Posie Parker.

Posie Parker: There's no such thing as a trans woman. There's no such thing as a trans person. There is no such thing.

Natalie: If there's one thing that I want people to understand about Rowling's transphobia, it's that this is not just a case of someone posting a couple insensitive tweets that got blown out of proportion. Rowling is an extremely outspoken opponent of trans rights. This has been her main issue for several years now. And because she's so famous, she's become the de facto global champion of backlash to trans rights, truly the Anita Bryant of transphobia. Except worse, because she's way more famous and way more liked than Anita Bryant ever was.

Rowling has also praised self-described theocratic fascist Matt Walsh for his transphobic propaganda film. She refers to trans women as "trans-identified males", known as TIMS, among people for whom this has become an unhealthy obsession (Get it? Because they’re men, harhar—a bit of TERF humor for you). She retweets images of the trans colors being erased from the progress flag. Also the colors representing queer people of color, so, you know, great, love that.

Often Rowling pretends that she's being transphobic for the principled and valiant purpose of defending lesbians, it's something of a fixation for her. I find this particularly gross because it plays into a lesbophobic trope that gay women are especially anti-trans, when in fact they are the least transphobic demographic of cis people. According to a survey of young adults in the UK, lesbians were most likely to know a trans person, and also most likely, at 96%, to say they are supportive or very supportive of trans people, so I think it's fair to say that most gay women are probably not super thrilled whenever JoRo the lesbian defender logs on.

My own partner is a cis lesbian and I asked her if she enjoys J.K. Rowling defending her from the transsexuals,

and she said—

Vita: It makes me want to gouge out my own eyes like Oedipus.

Natalie: By the way, here is J.K. Rowling enjoying a bit of banter with her friend Baroness Emma Nicholson, the co-founder of Rowling's charity, Lumos. Baroness Nicholson is a conservative member of the House of Lords who voted against same-sex marriage in 2013. In 2020 she tweeted in defense of her vote, claiming that gay marriage "would lead to degrading the status of women and girls."

Truly, one of the great lesbian allies.

And in 2022 here is J.K. Rowling joking around with Lady Nicholson: "Excellent question, Emma! Defining lesbians as same sex attracted women excludes and oppresses the most marginalized of all groups, ie, people with penises and beards who want to shag women. And before you say 'but aren't they straight men?’ THEY’RE WEARING EYELINER, BIGOT! x, Jo."

Try, for a moment, to put aside any nostalgia you may have for the Gryffindor common room and just look at this interaction for what it is: Two straight women, one of whom is a homophobic peer of the realm, having a nice little chuckle together about how trans women are men wearing eyeliner.

So that's it right? It's over. Case closed.

[gavel bangs]

I still like hammering things.

I'm not gonna argue anymore about whether J.K. Rowling is transphobic because anyone who believes in transphobia can see that obviously she is. The question now is whether transphobia is the sort of thing that progressives can denounce, the way we at least aspire to denounce racism, and misogyny, and homophobia. That's usually what we're talking about when we talk about J.K. Rowling, right, whether it's fair to "cancel" her.

That's what The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is about. The Rowling debate is a proxy for a larger question: is transphobia a legitimate viewpoint worthy of polite consideration and respect in liberal, humane society? Or is it just an ugly prejudice that we can justifiably react to with scorn and condemnation?

And there's an even broader question here about whether we can justifiably react to anything with scorn and condemnation. Is "canceling" ever warranted? Is it right to condemn racism, homophobia, and misogyny, or should we allow spokespeople for these prejudices a respected position in the free marketplace of ideas, where we can all sit around debating the legitimacy of gay marriage or the possible merits of a white ethnostate. Is the Final Solution a myth promulgated by the International Jew? Are yoga pants to blame for sexual violence? Wouldn't the taxpayer save a lot of money if there weren't so many disabled people? Who knows! These are open questions, let's sit down with people on both sides, on many sides, and have a calm, civil conversation about it for the rest of our goddamn lives.

Chapter 5: Debate

Saur, I know I did this look before and it's not related to the video topic at all, but it just makes me feel sliving.

The boy who slived. So, Megan Phelps-Roper's viewpoint seems to be that scorn and condemnation are never appropriate, that we should approach every conflict with empathy and compassion, even when dealing with the worst, most destructive people in the world.

Megan: Hi, my name is Megan, and my heretical belief is that even the people who seem to be the worst, most destructive people in the world are human beings who deserve compassion and empathy, if we want to find a way to change their minds.

Natalie: In her book, in her TED talk, in her public appearances, Megan expresses the idea that society has recently become polarized in some unprecedented way, that we've all become extremists, that, in some sense, we've all become the Westboro Baptist Church.

Megan: I can't help but see in our public discourse so many of the same destructive impulses that ruled my former church.

Natalie: She identifies things like certainty, vilification of compromise, us versus them thinking, suppression of empathy, and celebrating death and misfortune, as Westboro-like elements in public discourse. And this really bothers Megan because she claims that a decade ago, when she went on Twitter to tweet about how f*g marriage is abominable to God, it was people who engaged her in a civil, rational way that eventually led her to renouncing Westboro's ideology. And like, I don't entirely disagree with Megan about this. She's totally right that if you want to change people's minds, then approaching them with compassion and empathy is usually the best way to do that.

But Megan reaches another conclusion that I don't agree with, which is that because compassion and civil conversation are most likely to persuade people, we should never "cancel" anyone, even the most horrible bigots. And canceling is a pretty meaningless term at this point. What Megan means is we shouldn't say mean things to bigots, we shouldn't boycott or counter-protest or raise our voices; we shouldn't shun or exclude anyone. Because “that's just not how you change minds.”

And I get why Megan thinks this, right, deradicalization was a really important part of her life experience. She's also clearly holding out hope that other members of her family will leave Westboro and have a life on the outside. She has a quote from her mom on her Twitter bio. The last lines of her book address her family. "I want to tell them that I love them. I'll just have to find another way." This is touching and human and also…kind of a conflict of interest.

The problem is Megan's views about this only make sense if you assume that Megan is the main character of reality. If you assume that the moral improvement of bigots is more important than protecting the people they target. Or if you assume that changing bigots' minds is the only way to make social progress. Which it isn't. As far as I know, Anita Bryant is 83 years old and she's still homophobic. But even without Anita's blessing, gay rights have somehow managed to progress since the 1970s. Because gay activists didn't need to persuade Anita Bryant, they needed to defeat her. And that's what they did.

We have to accept that realistically, persuading all the bigots is just not an option. Yes, we should convince as many people as possible, but there will always be bigots, and mocking them, shaming them, or boycotting them, is, I think, a perfectly valid strategy. Does that mean when we cancel bigots we're acting kind of like the Westboro Baptist Church? Naur. You would only think that if you are a total moral relativist. I guess, controversial opinion, but bigotry is shameful. And it should be shamed. I'll say it.

You know if you're trying out some racist ideas in your head, you might feel afraid to express them publicly for fear of being shamed or judged. Is that because we live in an Orwellian dystopia that punishes people for wrongthink? No. It's because racism is dangerous and shameful, and you should be ashamed of it, and the people judging you are right to do so. And sure, there are some very patient people who devote their lives to deradicalizing bigots, which I think is a perfectly noble thing to do. There's a guy named Daryl Davis who has has befriended members of the Ku Klux Klan for over 30 years, and he claims he's convinced more than 200 of them to leave. And good for him. Deradicalization is a valid strategy. But it cannot be the only strategy, and it must not be the primary strategy. Because we're not going to defeat racism by telling Black people to be a little nicer to racists. Feminists would be wasting their time trying to convince Andrew Tate to respect women. In general I think that the massive effort that it takes to maybe persuade bigots is better spent persuading other people not to listen to them.

And it's also worth cautioning that deradicalization is often a messy and incomplete process. 20-year-old white nationalist Peter Cytanovic became the face of the fascist Unite the Right Rally in 2017, when a photo of him mid-scream, tiki torch in hand, was published in news outlets all over the country. Peter was unrepentant in interviews he gave immediately after the rally, but he began to question his beliefs after befriending a Muslim woman who, according to Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, "challenged his views without insulting him, allowing him to understand the hurt he had caused."

Peter is no longer a white nationalist, but that doesn't mean he's flushed out every trace of bigotry. In a 2019 interview with the London School of Economics' student paper, Peter said-

Peter: I don't like the whole transgender thing. You're born either a man or a woman.

Natalie: [sighing] So he maybe still has a little bit of work to do. When I did deradicalization work on YouTube I used to get some criticism from people of color who were not thrilled that I was bringing a bunch of semi-reformed racists over to the left, a frustration that I totally understand. To paraphrase YouTuber Ian Danskin, diverse leftist communities are maybe not the best holding space for someone who's

Ian, AKA Innuendo Studios: A bit of Nazi but working on it.

Natalie: In the case of Megan Phelps-Roper, I don't know if has lingering bigoted sentiments, but what she does have is a kind of hyper-vigilant skepticism about anything she perceives as "ideology." This is pretty common with people who are former religious fundamentalists; they were so certain they were right only to realize everything they believed about the world is wrong. So they become distrustful of any strong moral convictions, because it reminds them of their former fanaticism.

Megan: Coming from Westboro, where I believed so strongly that I was doing the right thing, and then to leave and come to believe that it was so destructive and harmful, I had this moment in time, and it lasted for many months, where I was like, how can I ever trust my own mind again?

Natalie: This kind of skepticism is in some ways a good impulse, but valuing dispassionate intellectualism above all else can cause problems, especially where topics of social justice are concerned. Because it can lead you to the kind of toxic centrism that asks, why are marginalized people so unwilling to have calm, philosophical debates about whether they should have rights? Are they afraid of dangerous ideas?

Atheist philosopher Sam Harris, in his podcast about Megan's podcast... Can we talk about how there are too many podcasts? I am calling for a complete and total shutdown of podcasts until we can figure out what's going on. Sam Harris, in his podcast about Megan's podcast, complained that trans activism and activism in general is plagued by mental illness and hysteria.

Sam Harris: I frankly think there is a fair degree of mental instability and even frank mental illness in the activist community, really in all activist communities. The level of viciousness and hysteria, it's hard to know what to compare it to.

Natalie: Diversity win! Man accuses trans women of being hysterical.

Is it really "hysteria" to react with strong emotions when your basic inclusion in society is up for debate? Aren't there certain situations where strong emotions are warranted? It reminds me of this awful episode of Joe Rogan feat. Ben Shapiro, where Lil’ Benny argues that gay marriage is immoral with his usual whining sophistry, and Joe gently raises objections for Ben to talk circles around.

Ben Shapiro: The human sex drive was made to procreate within a stable relationship in order to progenerate and have future generations of people. Misuse of that sex drive, in any way, whether you're talking about from masturbation to homosexual activity, is therefore a diminishment of the use of that drive. That's the natural law case against homosexual activity.

Natalie: All of the top comments on this video are all like this:

Joe Rogan fan #1: Imagine talking about different beliefs while still having a productive conversation. Things progress when you don't demonize people.

Joe Rogan fan #2: The discussion here was excellent. Two guys, with opposing opinions, speaking calmly and intellectually without cursing, shouting and making disparaging comments about each other. This is how it should be done. Kudos to both of them.

Joe Rogan fan #3: Joe is a great interviewer. He can totally disagree with someone and still have a calm collective conversation. This is how it should be. Just two people sharing ideas learning different point of views from each other. This is why Joe is the number one podcast.

Joe Rogan fan #4: Joe Rogan beautifully asks the tough questions. And Ben answers honestly, he is strong in his faith. I love this debate because it's two so contrasting views and they have a civil conversation. Great learning.

Natalie: And like, yeah, it's easy for two straight men to have a dispassionate theoretical conversation about the "ethics" of homosexuality because it's not their lives and their relationships that are up for debate. These people don't understand the emotional burden placed on marginalized people who are asked to defend their rights. Like if you're straight, do you want to publicly debate whether your marriage is valid? Andrea Dworkin claimed that penetrative heterosexual intercourse is inherently an act of violence. I've noticed most straight men don't want to have calm, civil discussions about that.

So imagine how they'd react if there was powerful political movement to criminalize penetration or revoke their right to marry. Add in a lifetime of ostracism, family rejection, bullying and discrimination, and maybe then you'll begin to understand the "hysteria" of a lot of queer people.

Ben Shapiro: It is my right to raise my child with the moral precepts that I find to be beneficial for my child. Beto O'Rourke does not get to raise my child, and if he tries, I will meet him at the door with a gun. That is insane.

Natalie: Wow, Ben Shapiro threatening violence because he can't handle the debate. Sounds like a classic case of hysteria to me. Why can't Ben Shapiro just have a polite conversation about Beto O'Rourke transing his children?

Ben Shapiro: I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me.

Natalie: Dave Rubin is a gay conservative whose career requires that he convince his right-wing audience that he's "one of the good ones." This means he's willing sit across from his so-called friend, homophobe Ben Shapiro, and listen to Ben say he would never attend his anniversary party because that would be tantamount to endorsing sin.

Ben Shapiro: There's a difference between me just being friends with Dave and me actively participating in an event that I feel is religiously sinful.

Natalie: The two of them then congratulate themselves about how they can still be great friends.

Dave Rubin: Why is it that we are able to do this and most people can't do this? That's what I'm curious about.

Ben Shapiro: We go home at night and we can have our own lives.

Natalie: And here's Dave having a civil conversation with conservative Glenn Beck, who compares homosexuality to alcoholism and then congratulations himself on "having the conversation".

Glenn Beck: I am a deeply religious man and my religion says man and a woman, that is the basic building block of family and that's what I believe. But I also know God created you just like he created me, flaws and all. You know, I believe I have a gene, they've never found it, that makes me very susceptible to alcoholism 'cause it runs in my family. So it's craziness, but it runs in my family.

Natalie: While Dave smiles and nods. Probably because he's thinking about how much he enjoys the taste of boots.

Dave Rubin: Usually I just take out a picture of me and DeSantis and then we're good because they get it, they get it. That's my governor…Yeah.

Natalie: I think a lot of straight people look at Dave Rubin and they say “finally, a reasonable gay person who doesn't scream ‘bigot!’ at everyone who disagrees and can actually have a civil conversation.

But that's not what I see. I look at Dave Rubin and I see a spineless, bootlicking doormat who won't even defend his own family from the most fundamental disrespect. I also can't help but notice that none of these civil conversations seem to change anyone's mind.

Persuasion is more complicated and less rational than people think. Megan often says she was deradicalized on Twitter, but if you read her book carefully you'll notice that's not exactly true.

The major precipitating even for Megan's crisis of faith was her mother's mistreatment at the hands of an increasingly misogynistic church leadership that made Megan feel like she was the victim of the church for once. She says of the church discipline,

Megan: For the first time in my life, the accused were people I lived with and knew most intimately, and I knew that the judgments leveled by the elders were wrong. I could no longer blindly trust the judgment of these men.

Natalie: So she finally experienced firsthand what it's like to be the victim of her family. She stopped voting for the leopards eating peoples' faces party only when the leopards ate her face. It also seems relevant to notice that the people who had calm civil conversations with Megan on Twitter were generally not gay people, the people most affected by her family's violent rheoteric. They're mostly straight men, like director Kevin Smith, who started #savemegan because, quote, "she's hot". There is often an erotic component to persuasion and that certainly seems to be the case with Megan because one of the people who helped deradicalize her is now her husband. And I feel like that's a relevant detail if we're trying to understand the role of reason and emotion in deradicalization experiences. I think this experience is usually more akin to religious conversion than it is to logical reasoning. There's also a world of difference between the mostly private conversations that actually lead people to reflect on their beliefs, and the spectacle of public debate. Ben Shapiro is never going to become less homophobic because he livestreamed a civil conversation with Dave Rubin. So who is this conversation even for? Well, obviously, it's for the audience.

I think these civil conversations basically function to reassure a homophobic audience that just because they "disagree" with the lifestyle, that doesn't mean they hate gay people. “Look at Ben Shapiro. He's friends with a gay!” Public debate is one way that we define the limits of the Overton window, the range of beliefs that are socially acceptable to hold. So often people who want to promote bigotry will use "debate" as a foot in the door, It's a way of establishing that their prejudices are within the realm of reasonable and socially accepted opinion.

Here's obsessive anti-trans bigot Graham Linehan in a fury that a drag queen is on "Doctor Who" without the British public "having a proper debate about these issues." Now why do we need to have "a proper debate" about whether drag queens should be allowed on television, when drag performance has been a staple of British Entertainment since at least the time of Shakespeare?

Lesley Garrett and Lily Savage:

♪ Life is a joke that's just begun ♪

♪ Three little maids from school ♪

Monty Python: Fishy fishy fishy fish.

Twelfth Night:

As I am man, my state is desperate

for my master's love. As I am woman, now alas the day.

Natalie: Bigots like Graham want perpetual debate on their own terms, because this is how they dignify their pearl-clutching, It's how they convince the public that a moral panic about drag queens on TV is actually a valid concern, rather that the tedious, small-minded, whining about nothing that it really is. Having "the debate" on a bigot's terms is not a good way to win people over, unless you're really skilled in the art of humiliating people, which most of the time is what public debate is actually about.

This is something J.K. Rowling doesn't seem to understand. In The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, JoRo takes a contradictory stance on deplatforming. She brings up right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, saying that activists are "making a strategic error" and "giving Milo power," by protesting his events, making him look "dangerous and sexy." But when trans people try to deplatform TERFs, Rowling categorizes this as "silencing" them.

So is deplatforming a strategic error that gives power to your opponent, or is it a powerful tactic of silencing?

I find Rowling's conviction that we ought to debate Milo Yiannopoulos really out of touch. Milo Yiannopoulos doesn't have reasons for the things he does. He has strategies for humiliating people.

Milo Yannopoulous: I've taken some time out of my busy schedule being fabulous and doing my hair to prepare a speech for you. Well, a few remarks really. Feminism is cancer. Thank you very much. (crowd cheering)

Natalie: To again quote Ian Danskin, you can't really reason with someone who thinks that feminism is cancer because you don't reason with cancer, you eradicate it.

Rowling objects to the slogan no debate in the strongest possible terms.

Joanne: And then we come to the famous two word slogan, the stock phrase, “no debate.” No debate, no debate. We hear it all the time. That alarms me, really alarms me. I can't think of a purer instance of authoritarianism than "no debate".

Natalie: It's kind of amazing to me that someone can think angry trans people on Twitter are the "purest example of authoritarianism." I truly hope that one day I am privileged enough to be capable of such a perspective.

Before I move on, I want to clarify that I do think there are trans issues that are legitimately debatable by people who are not bigots. In my opinion, trans women in women's sports is one of those issues. But it's a complicated issue, like first of all, which sport are we talking about? Are we talking about figure skating? Middle school field hockey? I see no reason why trans girls should be excluded from that. But if we're talking about professional weight lifting, well, then it seems plausible that trans women who have been through male puberty may still retain some kind of group advantage. But not all trans women have experienced male puberty, people are transitioning younger now. That's another thing you have to consider. So I'm not against debating this issue, I just want people to approach it with nuance and good faith. And currently a lot of the people who are vocally against trans women in women's sports, sound like this.

Donald Trump: And we will keep men out of women's sports. [crowd cheering] How ridiculous. That will take place on day one.

Natalie: And I don't want to debate those people, I want to serve them a banana cream pie.

Chapter 6: Illiberal Methods

Natalie: . One of J.K. Rowling's core complaints about the trans rights movement is that she sees it as "illiberal in it's methods" - So when I first became interested and then deeply troubled by what I saw as a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods

Natalie: So what are these "illiberal methods"?

Joanne: If you are saying that this person is “canceled,” that is the language of a dictator.

Natalie: It's true, cancel culture is exactly how the Third Reich started. First they canceled the socialists, and I did not speak out because the hashtag was trending. But maybe we should see what an actual dictator thinks.

Vlad Poutine: They recently canceled the children’s author, Joanne Rowling because she is an author of books — which sold hundreds of millions of copies around the world — but didn’t satisfy fans of so-called gender freedoms.

Natalie: You know, I can't help but wonder what counts as acceptable activist methods to an author for whom Hermione protesting slavery was taking things too far.

Joanne: I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement. I do not see this movement as either benign or powerless.

Natalie: Rowling seems to think that the trans rights movement is dangerous and authoritarian in some unprecedented way that makes it different from all past liberation movements. But how, what are these "illiberal methods" that distinguish trans rights activism from similar past movements? "Canceling"? Anita Bryant was way more canceled than J.K. Rowling ever will be. Boycotts? Boycotts have been a staple of every progressive movement in modern history. Disrupting feminist meetings? Disrupting feminist meetings is a feminist tradition. Haven't you heard of the Lavender Menace?

In 1969, Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique" and founder the National Organization for Women and Second Wave feminism in general, coined the phrase "Lavender Menace" to describe the threat she believed that lesbians posed to the women's movement. Friedan was worried that being associated with lesbians would make it easy to dismiss the movement as a bunch of mannish man-haters. This understandably pissed off a bunch of lesbians who attended Second Congress to Unite Women in 1970 to stage what used to be known as a "zap", a disruptive public protest designed to draw attention to gay rights issues. Think glitter-bombing, think pies. Half aggression, half whimsy. Like that time the Lesbian Avengers zapped Rowling's friend Baroness Nicholson's house demanding that she resign.

This podcast has pushed me over the edge. Centrism has gone too far and I am now pro-cancel culture.

So just as the meeting was beginning, a group of 17 lesbians wearing Lavender Menace T-shirts switched off the lights, pulled the plug on the mic, and charged down the aisles laughing and screaming. Their leader Rita Mae Brown took the mic and yelled "This conference won't proceed until we talk about lesbians in the women's movement." One of the NOW organizers yelled back, "I object to your coming in and taking over this meeting! You're acting like men!" Betty Friedan would later speculate the lesbians were a CIA psy-op designed to make the women's movement look bad.

So the Lavender Menace disrupted the feminist meeting, using "illiberal tactics" not because they were against feminism but because they wanted lesbian-exclusionary feminists to include them.

This is the same thing that's happening today when trans people protest "feminist meetings" as J.K. Rowling puts it, interestingly neglecting to mention which feminist meetings these are.

Joanne: I was starting to see activists behaving in a very aggressive way outside feminist meetings. There was a feminist meeting in which they were banging, kicking on windows, very threatening.

Natalie: There's a historical obliviousness to Rowling's idea that trans activists are somehow more aggressive than similar past movements. Like she retweeted a transphobic gay man called Dennis Noel Kavanagh, who says "All those gay rights and AIDS protests, I don't remember a single one where we intimidated or silenced a woman. Not a single one."

Not a single one. [cut to the Lesbian Avengers staging a zap at Baroness Nicholson’s house]

Not a single one. [cut to the Lavender Menace at the NOW meeting]

N O T A S I N G L E O N E [cut to Anita Bryant getting hit with a pie]

Dennis has also tweeted that he preferred AIDS to the trans movement; and also, uh, quote,

"I will fucking nail you to a wall what you have done to these innocent children your mutilation of these little humand because they were gay will be nothing compared to what I will do to you legally you think you are ghouls wait till I deal with you bastard and I mean to"

Dennis, it's time to log off, gorg.

I do wonder, does threatening to "nail people to a wall" count as illiberal methods? I guess J.K. Rowling doesn't think so, because she's never condemned it. In fact, when Dennis's Twitter suspension ended, she was right there to welcome him back. And she continues to retweet him.

I've always been happy to acknowledge that angry trans people on Twitter sometimes take things too far. Things like death threats or misogynistic insults, I don't support that and I have called it out in the past.

Like when the leftist streamer Vaush, [alarm blaring] Drama alert, who is not trans, tweeted at J.K. Rowling "Women be quieter and start apologizing challenge." I called him out, tweeting "Doing edgy ironic misogyny while defending trans people magnifies the grain of truth in what TERFs say about there being misogyny in 'trans activism.'" I tweeted that because I recognize that if people who are claiming to speak for you are doing so in a misogynistic way, and if you just let that slide, you're going to wake up one day to find that you're in a misogynistic movement.

Of course Vaush took the criticism really well, explaining that ACTUALLY I just didn't understand the complex tactical arguments for the moral necessity of being misogynistic to J.K. Rowling, and then he accused me of cancel-culturing him while at the same time telling his followers to publicly shame me.

They recently canceled the children’s author, Joanne Rowling because she is an author of books — which sold hundreds of millions of copies around the world — but didn’t satisfy fans of so-called gender freedoms.

Vaush: The more of you are in the replies being like, that's not what's happening right here. Like this is necessary, okay? Publicly shame her into changing her mind on this.

Natalie: Then bringing up my past struggle with addiction.

Vaush: Is this not, verbatim, what the wokescold types said to you? Almost down, point-to-point? The people who drove you off this site and into—I don't wanna bring up the substance abuse.

Natalie: So that pretty much confirmed to me that Vaush doesn't actually care about advocating for trans people and just uses "trans rights" as a pretext to act like a fucking dingus. I won't tell you to publicly shame him though, because unlike Vaush, I would never sink to that.

The point I'm trying to make is, I have no qualms about calling out people on "my side" whenever they go too far or cross a line. Or do stupid tweets and then mansplain to me about how I don't understand tactical misogyny. Idiot.

But the same cannot be said of J.K. Rowling. I have never once seen her call out any of the bigotry and abusiveness that is absolutely rampant in the Gender Critical movement. There's a great video called "JK Rowling's New Friends" by YouTuber Shaun that exposes the dishonesty of framing this conflict as meek "concerned feminists" versus the abusive trans mob. A framing that The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling accepts uncritically, citing numerous examples of death threats and abusiveness from trans advocates

Megan: Things like KillTERFS2014, "How about slowly and horrendously murdering TERFs in saw-like torture machines and contraptions."

Natalie: Now I don't think people should joke about putting anyone in Saw traps, but also, how serious is this threat, that was poster to Tumblr in 2014? Let's use our critical thinking skills here. Do you think that Jigsaw, the villain from the "Saw" movies, has a Tumblr account and is threatening TERFs? Or do you think this was posted by a 14 year old?

The podcast cites zero examples of death threats and abusiveness from anti-trans bigots. And it's not exactly like you have to dig deep to find any. I can fill the screen up with examples just from people who J.K. Rowling has explicitly supported or interacted with.

"I will drive you out into the desert and bury you nine-feet down," one tweet says, from a fan of J.K. Rowling. "First I'll set you on fire and piss on your half-alive corpse. Fuck trans activism, fuck gender ideology and fuck you." Another threat from the same user is so graphically violent and sexual, I don't know if I can even read it aloud without violating the YouTube terms of service. But threats like this from the Gender Critical side are simply not mentioned in the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. Both Rowling and Megan seem happy to cherrypick threatening tweets, and sound bites of shouting protesters

Antifa Supersolider: Fuck you, you ugly piece of shit. You look like you got your teeth knocked out,you fucking fascist.

Natalie: As evidence that the trans movement is dangerous and insidious to the core. But this exact technique has been used against literally every liberation movement in world history. For example let's consider Reclaim the Night, the protest movement against sexual violence in Britain, which first got J.K. Rowling interested in feminism in the 1970s.

Here's how the Guardian, Britain's spineless centrist paper of note, covered a Reclaim the Night protest in 1979: "Chanting slogans against rape seems reasonable to promote awareness, but what about the hissing and swearing at any innocent male and cries of 'Castrate men'? We were all sympathetic to the principles of the women's liberation movement but we left the crowd of shouting, torch-bearing women when it became clear that my friend's brother was running the risk of personal mutilation if he remained with us."

The protestors were allegedly singing, "Here I stand, my knife in hand. Free castration on demand!" So this is how the British press covered the women's movement: angry, torch-bearing women, screaming "castrate men." Now, is that a fair representation of the women's movement? Should we judge every movement by its most militant extremists? Is it fair, say, to pretend that Valerie Solanas, who shot Andy Warhol, who advocated male extermination in her Society For Cutting Up Men manifesto, is representative of feminism as a whole? Many anti-feminists over the years have done exactly that. But it's not fair, is it? So why does J.K. Rowling think it's fair to judge the trans movement by the worst things trans people have ever tweeted?

Joanne: "I want her to choke on my fat trans dick."

Tati Westbrook: And I made excuses for you then!

Natalie: In the fourth episode of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, Megan interviews New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who has written sympathetically about transphobic feminism. There's a moment in this interview where Michelle kind of stumbles into an honest observation that I find fascinating:

Michelle Goldberg: I think you'll often hear people say "I'm not gonna debate my basic humanity." And part of the difficulty is there are indeed certain issues which we have decided somewhat collectively with some sort of consensus are beyond the realm of debate. And I think that part of what is so difficult about this issue is that there's certain people who think that this kind of consensus can be imposed maybe as opposed to evolve organically. And so they're sort of desperately trying to shore it up in the hopes, I think, that if they can they will enjoy the same sort of assumed protection as other groups whose rights we've decided are not up for public conversation. The problem is we don't actually have a consensus.

Natalie: So Michelle correctly observes that the reason trans people are often reluctant to debate our rights, is that we want the same assumed protections as other groups whose rights liberals have decided are not up for debate. But then Michelle suggests that trans people have to debate our rights because there isn't a mainstream consensus that we deserve rights.

I am really curious to know how Michelle Goldberg thinks past liberation movements have succeeded. Like, does she think that women's suffrage just "evolved organically"? Did suffragettes have calm, civil conversations about whether women are intellectually capable of voting, until all the misogynists were rationally persuaded?

No! They stood up and demanded the right to vote, sometimes violently, especially in the UK. Like people forget this, maybe because they were called suffragettes, which is kind of a cutesy name. But the suffragettes, they murdered people. There were suffragette terrorists. They broke windows. They bombed churches. They set fire to a theater. In 1909 a suffragette attacked Winston Churchill with a horse whip. (Queen shit, honestly.) The English suffragette Mary Leigh threw a fucking hatchet at the prime minister's head!

My point is not to advocate terrorism, or to excuse the terrorism of past movements. I think these kinds of tactics have tended to turn people against the movement, I don't think it's effective. But let's not pretend that past movements have never made demands before everyone was ready. Because there there never has been and never will come a time when everyone is ready. I mean, Mary Wollstonecraft published the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" in 1792, and misogyny, in case you hadn't noticed, remains rampant.

So there never has been a consensus about women's rights, and there probably never will be. In fact, marginalized groups wouldn't need rights if there was a consensus that we deserve rights. The whole reason to have rights is that they protect you from the kind of people who don't think you shouldn't have them. I mean it's a nice thought that we can just politely persuade everyone to give us rights, but the reality is that that's not how this works, and it never has been.

Like how do these debate-me centrists think that slavery ended in the United States?

Well, between 1861 and 1865, there was a little event called the American Civil Debate. See what I'm holding in my hand? This is a high-caliber idea that I picked off the polite discussion field of Manassas.

Do you people think American schools were integrated because all the white people in the South were persuaded that segregation is bad? No dum-dums, Eisenhower had to send in the 101st Airborne to enforce that shit at gunpoint. And my point is not to equate LGBT rights movements with Black civil rights. I am aware that being a white queer person is not in any way the same as living in the aftermath of slavery. I'm just saying that there's this tendency to sanitize history and to imagine that progress has been smooth and bloodless, that "consensus evolved organically" when it just didn't. And then people get the impression that current movements are somehow more militant than successful past movements, when they just aren't.

Joanne: I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious, misogynistic movement…the cultural movement that is illiberal in its methods, and I believe absolutely that there is something dangerous about this movement and it must be challenged.

Natalie: [sighs] Why is J.K. Rowling like this?

Chapter 7: Why Is J.K. Rowling Like This?

J.K. Rowling loves to quote radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, whomst I've already mentioned a couple times in this video.

Andrea Dworkin: I myself favor violence, deeply I favor it. (Illiberal methods! Hypocrisy dunk!!)

Natalie:  Dworkin is known for her extreme sex-negative views, which I don't agree with, but she was an interesting writer, one of those half-crazed savants who get in your head, who you can't stop thinking about. In my opinion, Dworkin's best book is "Right-Wing Women", published in 1983, the era of Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant.

"Right-Wing Women" is an analysis of why so many women are drawn to conservative politics, seemingly against their own interests. Anyone who is interested in understanding the Gender Critical movement, a crypto-reactionary backlash disguising itself as feminism, should read this book. In Dworkin's analysis

Andrea Dworkin: The Political Right makes certain metaphysical and material promises to women that both exploit and quiet some of women's deepest fears. No one can bear to live a meaningless life. Women fight for meaning just as women fight for survival.

Natalie: And conservative politics promises women meaning.

Andrea Dworkin: The Right offers women a simple, fixed, predetermined social, biological, and sexual order. Form conquers chaos. Form banishes confusion.

Natalie: The Gender Critical movement offers women a brutally simple understanding of sex and gender. A woman is an adult human female. Right-wing anti-trans activist Posie Parker has made this phrase into the motto of the Gender Critical movement.

A D U L T H U M A N F E M A L E

It's on billboards, it's on T-shirts, it's on banners, signs, and tweets. Presented with the authority of a dictionary definition, it's rigid, it's orderly, it's immutable.

There are no exceptions. There are no blurred lines. There can be no change.

This mantra is a defense against the conceptual instability and chaos that Gender Criticals fear, the same fear that once drove homophobic women like Anita Bryant.

Anita: Just biologically that God made mothers so that we can reproduce. Homosexuals cannot reproduce biologically.

Joanne: Erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.

Natalie: Dworkin says—

Andrea Dworkin: Within the frame of male domination, there is a good reason for women to hate homosexuality, both male and female. Women are interchangeable as sex objects; women are slightly less disposable as mothers. The only dignity and value women get is as mothers, having children is the one social contribution credited to women, it is the bedrock of women's social worth. Without childbearing, women know they have nothing. Homosexuality for women means having nothing; it means extinction.

Natalie: Substitute "transgenderism" for homosexuality, and you'll understand the Gender Critical movement. J.K. Rowling's definition of a woman is this.

Joanne: A woman is the producer of the large gametes.

Natalie: “The producer of the large gametes." Rowling says her primary "concern" about young trans men is the loss of fertility.

Andrea Dworkin: Homosexuality—its rise in public visibility, attempts to socially legitimize or protect it—makes women expendable. The one thing women can do and be valued for will no longer be valued. Male homosexuality is especially terrifying because it suggests a world without women altogether, a world in which women are extinct.

Natalie: This exact fear appears frequently in Gender Critical rhetoric: [ominous music plays] Trans activists are "erasing women," they're "erasing biological sex", they're going to call us "pregnant people!” Confused girls are being robbed of their precious fertility; trans women are going to "replace biological women."

Marjorie Taylor Greene: As a woman, I feel threatened because biological men are aggressively replacing women. (I worked on this story for months and she just…tweeted it out)

Charlottesville Alt-Right Rally Attendees: You will not replace us!

Natalie:  Sometimes this paranoia ramps up to the point of obsession, and the results can be…dazzling. In September 2022, Maya Forstater, who you'll remember as the anti-trans activist whom J.K. Rowling came out as a TERF to defend, went on a full-blown Twitter rampage because the Hertfordshire County Libraries announced they were changing their children's storytime mascot from the Bookstart Bear—if you don't know where this is going, strap in. From the Bookstart Bear to a bright, vibrant, gender-neutral creature called…Tala.

Are you enraged?

If not, you haven't been spending enough time on Mumsnet. Maya tweeted the words of an indignant mother, who referred to Talia--wait wasn't it Tala? Referring to Talia as "a 'trans' bear with they/them pronouns," describing the mascot as "ideological, creepy, and gaslighting" "I cannot express how upset I feel."

The library jumped in to clarify that Tala—not Talia—isn't trans; they are an alien.

Maya then demanded to know how this alien was birthed. "Did it hatch from an egg or was it born from a mama?"

Some people tried to reason with Maya: "There's an advantage in having a character that isn't identifiably male or female as it can be equally relatable to either sex and avoid promoting gender stereotypes."

But Maya was not convinced. "It seems highly unlikely that an alien that had evolved with such a recognizable vertebrate body plan, is not sexually reproducing. It’s a relatable anthropomorphic character not a slime mold."

I need to know how the alien fucks, right now.

I said, I need to know how the alien FUCKS, before I can show it to my child. [laughing]

When Twitter understandably laughed it up at Maya's expense, she just kept posting. And she posted hard. Honestly I don't know if ever seen anyone post so hard. In a lengthy diatribe, Maya wrote about the miseries of new motherhood:

Maya: You are in charge of a baby. You have never done this before. You haven't had a good nights sleep for months and won't for years. Everyone has an opinion on what you are doing right and wrong, and you have become invisible. You had politics, you had a career, you had interests, you had a sex life. Now you have the daily needs of a completely dependent person, and your world has shrunk. The fact that these men, and the young women that cheer them on think this is so laughable reflects society's disdain for mothers. This is what it means to say woman is not a feeling, or a costume. This is why the hub of the resistance is on Mumsnet.

Natalie: [laughing] So I am fascinated by this thread, I think it's one of the most revealing texts in Gender Critical history. Because, you know what, Maya Forstater actually does have valid concerns. But the concerns she has that are valid, have nothing to do with trans people, and they definitely have nothing to do with an adorable cartoon alien. [Tala giggling]

Honestly, reading this, I have some concerns. Concerns like, where is Maya's husband? I know she has one. Isn't raising children supposed to be a mutual project? No one should have to feel this alone raising children. That is a valid concern. Oh my God, we actually found one. It's like finding El Dorado.

♪ A valid concern, a valid concern ♪

Isn't what's going on here, that Maya is taking legitimate feelings of being over-burdened and under-appreciated, and displacing those feelings onto transgender people? This is exactly how the Gender Critical movement recruits, by providing a scapegoat to frustrated women. It's not your husband's neglect, it's not the increasing atomization of society, it's not the indignities of aging.

It's Tala, the non-binary alien, with its dungarees and smug aura of gender neutrality. Mumsnet is the hub of the resistance [laughing] to non-binary cartoons.

It's too much. These people are too much.

Okay we have to be serious now. The political Right also promises women safety, and security.

Andrea Dworkin: For women, the world is a very dangerous place. The Right acknowledges the reality of danger, the validity of fear. The Right then manipulates the fear. - Women fear and resent male violence, which they're most likely to experience from then men closest to them: boyfriends, husbands, and fathers.

Joanne: They're most likely to be killed by sexual partners.

Natalie: But the need to survive in a male-dominated society means that women's legitimate fears and resentments often cannot be directed at the men with power.

Andrea: Inevitably this causes women to take the rage and contempt they feel for the men who actually abuse them, those close to them, and project it onto others, those far away, foreign, or different.

Natalie: And this displacement of rage is just transparently what is going on with J.K. Rowling. In her essay about "sex and gender issues", Rowling speculates that trans men are transitioning to be “the son her father wanted.”

Anita: I really felt the rejection of my father. And that is one of the things that maybe lead someone going into homosexuality.

Natalie: And she describes the lingering trauma from her first violent marriage.

Joanne:  The marriage at this point had turned very violent and very controlling.

Natalie: And that, she says, is why she decided to speak out against the transgender movement. If you try to understand this rationally, it looks like a total non sequitur. But if you look at it emotionally, there's a kind of logic to it.

Andrea Dworkin: The existence of the dangerous outsider always functions for women simultaneously as deception, diversion, pain-killer, and threat. Women cling to irrational hatreds, focused particularly on the unfamiliar, so that they will not murder their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, the men with whom they are intimate, those who do hurt them.

Natalie: In the 1970s, many conservative women displaced this rage onto lesbians, the threatening outsider of the day. Dworkin attended the National Women's Conference in 1977, where she spoke to a lot of women about their fear of lesbians.

Andrea Dworkin: Right-wing women consistently spoke to me about lesbians as if lesbians were rapists, certified committers of sexual assault against women and girls. To them, the lesbian was inherently monstrous, experienced almost as a demonic sexual force hovering closer and closer. She was the dangerous intruder, encroaching, threatening by her very presence a sexual order that cannot bear scrutiny or withstand challenge.

Natalie: It's almost surreal to read this because of how precisely it describes how Gender Criticals talk about trans women.

Twitter User @HairyLeggedHarpy AKA “Vulvamort:” Pronouns are like Rohypnol. They dull your defenses. They change your inhibitions, they're meant to.

Natalie: Now it's true that trans exclusionary radical feminism began as an offshoot of far-left lesbian separatism, with academic feminist Janice Raymond writing in 1979 that transsexualism should be morally mandated out of existence. But the Gender Critical movement was always destined to become a right-wing movement, because it has the structure of a right-wing movement; taking women's fear and rage toward familiar men and displacing it onto an unfamiliar outsider. The momentum behind this is just too ripe an opportunity for conservatives to pass up. As Dworkin says—

Andrea Dworkin: Because women so displace their rage, they are easily controlled and manipulated haters. Women require symbols of danger that justify their fear. [Tala giggling] The Right provides these symbols of danger by designating clearly defined groups of outsiders as sources of danger.

Natalie: In the 2020s anti-trans bigotry has become a keystone of conservative party platforms, both in the UK, where Lee Anderson, deputy chair of the Conservative Party predicts the next election will probably be won on—

Lee Anderson: Probably a mixture of culture wars and trans debate.

Natalie: And in the US, where the ACLU is currently tracking more than 450 anti-LGBT bills, including more than 130 gender affirming care bans, 51 trans sports bans, 40 drag bans, 29 trans bathroom bans, and 21 bans defining trans people out of the law. Republicans have escalated anti-trans rhetoric to eliminationist extremes that have most trans people in this country living in a constant state of fear for our future. - Transgenderism should be eradicated from public life entirely.

Michael Knowles: The left is attacking our children, pushing sex talk, transgender extremism and noxious politics in our schools.

Tom Fitton: We should reject this demonic assault on the innocence of our children and stand fast against leftist efforts to mutilate their bodies and minds.

Lauren Bobert: Stop confusing our babies with your groomer gender ideologue!

Donald Trump: I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilization of our youth, [crowd cheering] and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden's cruel policies on so-called gender affirming care. Ridiculous. I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.

Natalie: A few Gender Criticals still want to insist they have nothing to do with right-wing anti trans bigots, like Helen Lewis.

Helen Lewis: I mean “TERF” is basically "witch".

Natalie: Who attempts, in her interview in The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, to distinguish between transphobia of the far right, and that of "feminists"

Helen Lewis: I think the hardest thing for outsiders to understand is that there are two different arguments going on. One is the traditional conservative right argument, which is anti-LGBT. The other one is a criticism from the left in which it says sometimes male people and female people have different interests no matter how the male people identify.

Natalie:  But as a trans person, I don't care whether you justify your transphobia in the name of "protecting women" or "protecting children." Whether it's radical feminist Janice Raymond calling for transsexualism to be morally mandated out of existence, or conservative Catholic Michael Knowles calling for transgenderism to be eradicated from public life. It's the same repulsive bigotry to me.

And in any case, the Gender Critical movement has recently reached an implicit consensus that they're mostly done pretending to be feminist. The rising star of the movement, Posie Parker, AKA Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, rejects feminism entirely.

Interviewer: Do you call yourself a feminist now?

Posie Parker: No.

Interviewer:  Did you ever call yourself a feminist?

Posie Parker: I probably did for a short time.

Interviewer: But so you wouldn't be like a Julie Bindel type feminist?

Posie Parker: No. Well, some feminists, I mean, Julie Bindel has been critical of mothers in the past, and I think that's a theme flowing through feminism.

Posie Parker, yelling at protesters: I'm not a feminist! I'm not a feminist!

Natalie:  This is not Andrea Dworkin. This is Phyllis Shlafly.

Parker's campaign is currently funded by the right-wing CPAC.

Posie Parker: CPAC came along and said that they would sponsor our events and cover all of our insurance throughout our whole trip, which is really kind of them. But what we would need to do is we would need to show that we were working for them—working with them.

Natalie: She has no qualms about collaborating with far-right white nationalists.

Posie Parker: I wanna talk about Marjorie Taylor Green. Let me tell you what she's been saying. She's a Republican, but I agree with her wholeheartedly.

Natalie:  She's opposed abortion and contraception for teenagers.

Posie Parker: Why are we enabling children to take sometimes contraceptives that are quite harmful or access to abortion? I think that we really need to rethink of all of this. I think parents need to take back control of their children.

Natalie:  She's called trans people "fools and perverts"

Posie Parker:  Transgenderism is nuts. It's for fools and perverts.

Natalie: She's denied that transgender is a legitimate concept.

Posie Parker:  It's not a real thing. There's no such thing as being born in the wrong body. There's no such thing as a trans woman. There's no such thing as a trans person. There is no such thing. There are people that call themselves these things that may have other issues manifesting that then make them think they're this, but no. We have to stop using any words like transgender. You know, there may be more words that we have to say in order to say that. We may call it transgender ideology. But when it comes to a person, they may be following transgender ideology, but they are not transgender. There is no such thing as a man or a woman being anything other than a man or a woman.

Natalie: She's called trans women pedophiles.

Posie Parker:  We know that if a man has a paraphilia of dressing as a woman, the most likely cross paraphilia is pedophilia. We know that these men have multiple paraphilias. They don't ever stop at one.

Natalie:  She's said that each and every woman who stands in her way will be annihilated.

Posie Parker:  Each and every one of you women who stand in my way, each and every one of you, let me just tell you, you will be annihilated.

Natalie: She's called on armed men to enter women's restrooms to attack anyone they perceive as not a real woman.

Posie Parker:  And men, for once, I'm talking to you, I'm talking about you dads who maybe carry, I think that's what you say. I'm so down with the American lingo. Maybe you carry, maybe you don't. Maybe you consider yourself a protector of women. Maybe you are that sort of man. Maybe you have a daughter or a mother or a wife. Maybe you have a sister. Maybe you just have some friends. Maybe you just think women are human and you don't need any absolute connection with them to feel compelled to protect us. I think you should start using women's toilets, men.

Natalie: And she's said that "women who call themselves men should be sterilized" Which seems to be a little bit in tension with J.K. Rowling's "concern" about the fertility of "confused girls".

You know, you might look at these differences of opinion between Rowling and Parker, little things like pro-feminist versus anti-feminist, left versus right, pro-abortion versus anti-abortion, "concern" about trans men's fertility versus advocating forced sterilization of trans men, against annihilating women who stand in your way versus pro… annihilating each and every woman who stands in your way. You might look at these differences and expect that these two women would be at odds.

But they aren't. Because promoting anti-trans bigotry is a common cause that, for both of them, trumps all else. In 2020 Posie Parker paid for a poster reading "I heart JK Rowling" to be displayed at a railway station in Edinburgh. And Rowling has tweeted in defense of Parker numerous times and has modeled her t-shirts.

So, the Gender Critical movement started by lesbian separatists in the 1970s has finally passed into the hands of "pound shop Eva Brauns," as Gender Critical lesbian Julie Bindel memorably described them. It's a movement that has no beliefs apart from a shared determination to reduce the number of trans people.

Joanne: In the numbers we're currently seeing, particularly of young people coming forward, I find cause for doubt.

Helen Joyce: In the meantime, while we're trying to get through to the decision makers, we have to try to limit the harm, and that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition.

And that's for two reasons. One of them is that every one of those people is a person who's been damaged. But the second one is every one of those people is basically, you know, a huge problem to a sane world.

Like if you've got people that, and whether they're transitioned, whether they're happily transitioned, whether they're unhappily transitioned, whether they've detransitioned. If you've got people who've dissociated from their sex in some way, every one of those people is someone who needs special accommodation in a sane world where we re-acknowledge the truth of sex.

Natalie: So to wrap this up, is the backlash against J.K. Rowling a witch hunt? Unequivocally, no. It's very thoroughly deserved. But I will say this, a movement can't get along without a devil, and across the whole political spectrum there is a misogynistic tendency to choose a female devil, whether it's Anita Bryant, Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or J.K. Rowling. And there's always gonna be people who seize on any opportunity to be misogynistic. So I would advise trans people and our allies to keep in mind, that J.K. Rowling is not the final boss of transphobia. She's not our devil. The devil is the Republican Party, the Conservative Party. The devil is patriarchy. It's the right-wing men who will be the ones to put Gender Critical theory into brutal practice.

Anita Bryant, Posie Parker, and J.K. Rowling, are, to borrow a term from TERFs, handmaidens. TERFs are the real handmaidens. They're useful idiots who put a concerned female face on the patriarchal violence against trans people that will ultimately be enacted by right-wing men.

Posie Parker Rally Attendee: I call on men who consider themselves decent human beings to call out the deviants among them and eradicate these monsters from society. (crowd cheering)

Natalie: And Megan Phelps-Roper and centrists like her are wrong that civil conversation can resolve this.

Posie Parker Rally Attendee: Call out the deviants among them and eradicate these monsters from society. [crowd cheering]

Natalie: People like Michael Knowles and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump cannot be persuaded, they have to be defeated. As for what to do about J.K. Rowling? Honestly let's all just block her. Open up Twitter right now, go to her profile, and just block her. Problem solved. Like don't harass her, that doesn't help. But also, I wouldn't wait for her to change. She's gone down what I call The Bigotry Whirlpool.

The deeper you go in, the harder it is to leave, for the same reasons that it's hard to quit a cult or scam. To quote video essayist, Dan Olson.

Dan Olson: One of the most insidious elements of a confidence scam is that the victims who invested the most are often the most passionate defenders because shame is a powerful force in the human psyche, and they can't bear the shame of admitting they were tricked.

Natalie: Reformed bigots have to face not only the shame of being dupes, but also the guilt of having devoted years of life to harming vulnerable people. This is something Megan, to her credit, faced head on.

Megan: If we were wrong, then I had spent every day of my life industriously sowing doom, discord, and rage to so many, not at the behest of God, but of my grandfather. I had wasted my life only to fill others' with pain and misery.

Natalie:  Most bigots cannot stand to face this moral sunk cost. It's why an obsessive bigot like Graham Linehan—whose all-consuming hatred of trans people has ruined his life, cost him his marriage, and left him alone to tweet about destroying gender ideology minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve—feels psychologically compelled to insist with ever more certainty that trans people are not just delusional or dangerous, but are all demonic perverts, an enemy so hyperbolically evil that they justify his self-immolating crusade.

Graham Linehan: They took everything from me. You know, they took my family. (AKA his wife left him because he’s like this now) You know, and I just said, now, hang on a sec, stop calling these women TERFs, Stop sending them abuse. Let them speak. And for that they, they just destroyed me.

Interviewer: Do you honestly feel destroyed?

Graham Linehan: No, because the one thing about this, the one thing about this that keeps me going is that I know I'm right. You know? I know I'm right.

Natalie: As long as he stays here in the bottom of the whirlpool,

he never has to face that he's ruined his relationships and wasted years of life because he just couldn't let it go. And if J.K. Rowling doesn't log off soon, this will likely be her fate as well.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, Harry Potter's dead to me. I'm switching to Twilight.

*Claire de lune plays*

Natalie: At least it’s a fruit pie.