A Seven-Hour Podcast Explores Trans Extremists' Response to the Harry Potter Author
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a 2023 podcast examining the backlash after JK Rowling, in 2019, tweeted in favor of women's rights. Rowling was accused of transphobia. She was labeled a TERF. "TERF" is a misogynist slur trans extremists use to dehumanize women. It is an acronym for "trans exclusionary radical feminist." TERFs, in this definition, do not recognize men who identify as women to be women. In her 2019 tweet, Rowling expressed support for women's being allowed to have their own opinion about what makes a woman, and to not lose their jobs for expressing that opinion. After Rowling tweeted, online vitriol, boycotts, death threats, and book burnings ensued.
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast is approximately seven hours
long. Trials was produced by The Free Press, which was founded by Bari
Weiss in January, 2021. The host is Megan Phelps-Roper.
Bari Weiss left her position as a
columnist for the New York Times on July 14, 2020. She published a
famous resignation letter that characterized the Times as too
Woke. Weiss describes herself as a "classical liberal." She is
working, she says, to create a media company that represents classical liberal
ideals. Trials is part of that project. Weiss is a bat mitzvah and she
is married to a woman. Her Jewish religion and her lesbian identity inform her
politics.
Podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper gained
prominence, when, in 2012, at age 26, she left the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps-Roper
is the granddaughter of church founder Fred Phelps. The Westboro Baptist Church
is a small congregation of about seventy members in Topeka, Kansas. Members
gain outsize media attention by protesting while holding signs that read
"God hates F--s." Westboro also preaches hatred of Catholics;
"Pope in Hell" is a favorite sign at their rallies. Westboro has protested at Catholic churches. The
Westboro website includes an anti-Catholic statement by Fred Phelps.
JK Rowling is the author of the Harry
Potter books about British child wizards. The books have sold 600 million
copies worldwide and are the bestselling book series in history. They were
published between 1997 and 2007. Rowling interacts with fans in person and on
the web, and is a beloved mother figure to many.
Before we look more closely at the Witch
Trials of JK Rowling podcast, some background information will be helpful
to those unfamiliar with the outbreak of trans extremism that it covers. I use
the words "trans extremism" to refer to a violent fringe (see here and here.) Those who engage in trans extremism
are not representational of all people who identify as trans. Many trans
extremists do not identify as transgender at all. Rather, they call themselves
"allies," and others may call them "transmaids." "Transmaid" is a satirical term for
women and girls who support trans extremism, who insist that men can become
women, and who believe that TERFs deserve severe and violent punishment for
their beliefs.
Trans extremist attacks on JK Rowling
began in 2019. Maya Forstater, a visiting fellow at the Center for Global
Development, lost her job for alleged "transphobia." The Center for
Global Development is left-wing. It addresses climate change, a
"pro-science" stance.
Forstater voiced opposition to "self ID," that is, legal support for a
man announcing himself to be a woman without any therapy, lifestyle, or
surgical alterations. With legal self ID, any man, at a moment's notice, with
full male testosterone levels and genitalia, can announce himself a woman and
enter women's bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, locker rooms, athletic competitions,
and prisons. He qualifies for any financial or employment benefits designated
for women.
Data collection is skewed, as is
healthcare. Males commit more violent crimes than females; suddenly official
statistics would report a spike in violent crimes, including rapes, committed
by self-identified women. Male and female medicine differs; self-ID would blur
medical education, research, and treatments and negatively affect health
outcomes.
Maya Forstater's thought crimes included
tweeting the following: "Radically expanding the legal definition of
'women' so that it can include both males and females makes it a meaningless
concept, and will undermine women's rights & protections for vulnerable
women and girls," and "I don't think being a woman is a matter of
identity or womanly feelings. It is biology." For such thought crimes, the
leftist, "pro-science" Center for Global Development terminated Forstater's
employment.
Kathleen Stock is a prominent British
philosopher. She is a recipient of an OBE, or Most Excellent Order of the
British Empire medal. She is a left-wing, "sex-non-conforming" lesbian.
She referred to her students by the pronouns they demanded. If a male wanted to
be referred to as "she," Stock happily complied.
On December 18, 2019, Stock published
"This Is Not a Drill," a short essay
supporting Maya Forstater. In this short essay, Stock stated that, like
Forstater, she also does not believe that a man can become a woman. Further,
she argued that arbitrarily deciding that men can suddenly become women because
they say they have become women will cause women to lose "their legal
capacity to discuss what they see as their distinctive nature and interests, in
certain important political contexts … we are approaching a situation where
women (and men) cannot even legally speak about this loss." Subsequently,
students, colleagues and outside activists so intensely harassed and threatened
Stock and her employers that she had to leave her job at the University of
Sussex.
On December 19, 2019, Rowling tweeted
the following. "Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace
and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill."
Rowling knew that she could have
remained silent. She didn't, she said, because women less wealthy and less
famous would be punished for speaking out. She wanted to take incoming fire as
a way of protecting, inspiring, and empowering women more vulnerable than
herself.
Rowling was correct. Uncounted women
would lose jobs and safety in the ensuing lynch mob atmosphere. Gillian Philip
was a successful children's book author. She tweeted support for JK Rowling. She
became another target of trans extremism. "It started with online messages
threatening to kill and rape me, moved on to emails being sent to my publishers
demanding my sacking and ended, a day later, with me losing my
livelihood." Her publisher terminated her just after her husband died; she,
in her fifties, was now sole support for her two sons. Philip is now a truck driver.
The child actors who owe their careers
to Harry Potter movies denounced Rowling. The Potter books describe a game,
played on flying broomsticks, called quidditch. There are adults who play
quidditch. Partly to escape the shame of being associated with
"transphobe" Rowling, players changed the name of the game to "quadball," which, beginning, as it
does, like the word "quadriplegic," sounds like an event for
Paralympians. In fact "quadball" is already used for rugby as played
by those in wheelchairs. It's not clear how they escape the shame of being
adults who play with imaginary flying broomsticks. Potter fans burned their books.
Trans extremists justified their attacks
on Rowling, Forstater, Stock, and others by alleging that any speech, indeed,
any thought that does not support and affirm trans extremism is tantamount to
murder. There is an ongoing "genocide" of trans people, they insist,
as well as an "epidemic" of murders. If you refer to a man who
identifies as a woman as "he" rather than "she," you are
genocidal and you deserve capital punishment.
False claims of genocide are a
distasteful and disordered expression of Holocaust envy. Statistics do not support the assertion
that there is an epidemic of murders of trans people. Trans extremists apply
one standard to their chosen enemies and another standard to themselves. Merely
using the pronoun "he" to refer to a man is genocidal. Calling for
TERFs to be killed is righteous. Free speech for us, but not for others, is
their unspoken, elitist motto.
Extremists explicitly accuse Rowling's
words of "killing" trans people. Rowling "perpetuates the kind
of anti-trans rhetoric that literally gets trans people killed," said one. Her "bull---t"
"gets trans people killed" another critic wrote, under an image of a trans person
pointing a gun at the viewer with the caption "Shut the f--- up
TERF." Your "rhetoric" "gets trans people killed,"
wrote another.
This violence and hate is distinctly
misogynist. The misogyny can be summed up in threats sent to Rowling, for
example, "I will choke you to death with my trans cock." Trans
extremists do not express comparable violent hatred against men. Women who
identify as men are not, for example, beating men in public in the way that men
who identify as women do beat the women they perceive as TERFs.
"Kill all TERFs" has been a
trans extremist slogan at least since 2014. The violence of trans extremism is
the violence of teen slasher flicks. It is directed against women, and it is as
undisciplined as a childhood tantrum, or a Caligula. It relishes bodily gore.
Let's "slowly and horrendously
murder terfs in saw-like torture machines and contraptions," one trans
extremist wrote in 2014; Saw is the name of a torture slasher flick.
"Such threats have become so common that radical-feminist Web sites have
taken to cataloguing them. 'It's aggrieved entitlement … [men who identify as
women] are so angry that we will not see them as women,'" the New Yorker reported in 2014.
Trans extremist misogyny is not limited
to social media, university campuses, and street assaults. In February, 2022,
Gretchen Felker-Martin, a man who identifies as a woman, published Manhunt, a
horror novel. Felker-Martin depicts trans characters killing women and burning
Rowling alive. National Public Radio's reviewer, Liam McBain, a woman who
identifies as a man, loved Manhunt. The book
"sickened me more than any other horror novel I've read," and that's
a good thing. "The prose is simultaneously erotic and gruesome … sadistic
… Thinking about it even now makes me full-body cringe." She recommends
the book to readers young and old, as do many online reviews. An amateur reviewer enthusiastically approves of the
book's theme of "trans women" – that is men who identify as women – murdering
real women, whom they label with their slur, "TERF." "There's
just something extremely satisfying about trans women shooting TERFs."
Amateur reviews of Manhunt were
not always so positive. One wrote, "Even if you ignore the
sick incitement to violence, the hideous misogynist tropes, and the
stomach-churning imagery that only the most deranged of individuals could come
up with, the writing is so bad it can barely be classed as a book. Don't do
this to yourself." Another, "misogyny is alright as long as you
identify as a member of a certain group. If you want to read a messed up
individual's unhinged violent sexual fantasies against women then this is the book
for you!" And another, "This 'writer', I use that term loosely, is
riddled with hate and jealousy towards women … Imagine the uproar if a woman …
incited the attack of trans women? … Revolting!" And another "the very presence of
testosterone in one's body can turn a person into a cannibalistic rapist … so
many explicit descriptions of trans girls' genitals … as a trans person, this
book made me feel terrible about myself. It's simply a bleak, joyless slog
about how trans people will never be loved or accepted, because people find us
disgusting."
In February, 2023, Felker-Martin tweeted that he would like to slit
Rowling's throat. In a previous tweet, Felker-Martin tweeted about trans-critical journalist
Jesse Singal: "Bind Jesse Singal with strong rope and bring him to the
quarry at the edge of town. Give him to us alive and unspoiled. Leave, and no
matter the sounds you hear, do not look back."
Trans extremism produces not just
abusive language, but also real world violence. On March 27, 2023, a
trans-identified shooter murdered six people at the Christian Covenant School
in Nashville, Tennessee. In comments, a police spokesman said that the
shooter's trans identification may have played a role in these killings.
After the Nashville shooting, Josselyn
Berry, press secretary for Arizona's Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, tweeted
support. "Us when we see transphobes" was the
caption of an image of a woman holding guns in both hands and pointing them
forward. "Beat them; hurt them," one trans extremist said. "We are on
attack; it's time to fight back." The Trans Resistance Network, under a
pink unicorn logo, announced that the shooter was herself a
victim of "genocide" and "hate" from "certain
religious institutions" and "forced conversions." "Hate has
consequences," they concluded. "Respect the pronouns of trans
individuals," the statement warns. Otherwise, the "consequences"
would be more dead Christian schoolchildren.
On March 25, 2023, Kellie-Jay Keen
Minshull, a British housewife and woman's rights advocate, was almost killed by
a violent mob of trans extremists in Auckland, New Zealand. Before her arrival
in New Zealand, mainstream press organs whipped the ignorant into a frenzy.
Australian and New Zealand media insisted, falsely, that Keen Minshull is a
Nazi. Even Wikipedia, allegedly neutral, demonizes Keen Minshull as an
"anti-trans activist."
Keen Minshull is not
"anti-trans." Rather, she believes that a woman is, as she puts it,
"an adult human female" and that men do not belong in women's spaces
like battered women's shelters, locker rooms, and prisons. Trans extremists
insist that using an accurate pronoun, that is, referring to a man as
"he," is a capital crime, and that it is tantamount to murder. At the
same time that trans extremists exert totalitarian pressure on others' language
use, they insist on labeling their perceived enemies as "TERF,"
"Nazi," "Transphobe," and "cis." These hate terms
have inspired violence and death.
On April 6, 2023, athlete Riley Gaines
was violently assaulted, including by a man in
a dress, at San Francisco State University. Gaines believes that girls and
boys, women and men, should compete in separate sporting events. For that she
was imprisoned in a room for hours; her captors wanted money before they would
release her.
In September, 2017, 61-year-old feminist
Maria MacLaughlin was "standing around and chatting" in a London park
when she was violently assaulted by 26-year-old Tara Flik Wood, aka Tara Wolf, a
man who identifies as a woman. During the trial of her assailant, a judge
ordered MacLaughlin to refer to her male assailant using female pronouns.
On a different front, fought with
different weapons, corporate America contributes its capitalist clout to trans
extremism. Dylan Mulvaney is a male actor who posts videos recording his
transition into being a "girl." His misogynist fantasy of a girl is helpless,
silly, frivolous, obsessed with vanity, and so
"hot" he could steal your husband. Mulvaney's tag line is
"love ya," but even this anorexic waif with the rictus smile threatens women who won't acknowledge that
he is one of them. "I'm not misogynistic; you're transphobic,"
smiling Mulvaney accuses. "This will probably make you feel really
good," he says. His prediction is very wrong. "I'm jealous of you. I
wish I was born in your body," he says. "I wish I was born in your
body": he seems unaware of the fictional serial killer Buffalo Bill, who
was based on the real Ed Gein. "You want me to experience pain and
trauma" he insists, indulging in a masochistic persecution fantasy.
"My pain is very real. That was your goal. Congrats … Just please don't
call the police on me if we bump into each other in the bathroom … I love ya.
But I'm also very nervous for you. Someday soon transphobia won't be tolerated.
Your comments may come back and haunt you." Nice life you have there. It
would be a shame if something happened to it.
On April 1, 2023, Mulvaney announced
that Budweiser had partnered with him to sell beer. On April 5 media covered
Mulvaney wearing a Nike sports bra and leggings. Mulvaney has the musculature
of a male and a body fat percent unachievable by most women; his body has
straight hips, unlike human females, who have wide hips designed to accommodate
childbirth. Given society's emphasis on the value of thinness for women,
Mulvaney flaunts a body many women futilely punish themselves to achieve. Mulvaney,
exhibiting his "anorexic chic," prances about in a Nike sports bra.
"Mulvaney's offensive parody makes a total mockery of female athletes like
me," wrote shot putter Amelia Strickler.
Trans extremism is not a bottom-up
people's revolution. Rather, it is a top-down manipulation of the masses by
people with overwhelming money and power. Investigative journalist Jennifer
Bilek traces the sudden upsurge of trans extremism to billionaires like
Jennifer Pritzker, Martine Rothblatt, and the transhumanist movement (see here
and here). Activist scholar James Lindsay
points out that corporations push trans extremism because they are pressured by
groups that will go after them on social media if they do not knuckle under (here and here.)
Some voices have chosen to speak about
trans extremism very directly. Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, for example, insists
that a woman is an "adult human female." She makes no apologies. You
can sample her forthright rhetoric here.
Helen Joyce, former editor at The
Economist, holds a PhD in mathematics. In 2021, Joyce published Trans:
When Ideology Meets Reality. Joyce speaks directly and fearlessly. Utterly
blunt interviews with Joyce can be found here
and here.
Matt Walsh, creator of the documentary What
Is a Woman, similarly adopts a very direct approach. Walsh addressed Dylan
Mulvaney on February 14, 2023. Walsh's words attracted
much attention; his tweet has been viewed 18 million times. Walsh tells
Mulvaney in no uncertain terms that he is, inescapably, a man. Not a woman.
Detransitioners like Chloe
Cole and Sinead Watson and those who regret
transition like Shape Shifter and Scott
Newgent have also spoken graphically and courageously about the
impact of trans extremism on their lives.
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, on the other hand, takes an softer
approach. That softer approach has worked well for many listeners. As of early
April, Trials has received 6,000 reviews on the Apple website, with an average rating
of 4.7 out of 5 stars. One five-star review states, "Not a justification
of J.K. Rowling’s views of trans rights. This podcast is ultimately about
certainty and willingness to listen. It’s about opposing viewpoints and why
people hold their views as they do … Rowling has birthed a new kind of story in
this podcast and Phelps-Roper is the perfect midwife to bring it forth."
There are a much smaller number of one-star
reviews. These reviews repeat that Rowling is a transphobe, as well as a rich
white woman – both capital crimes – and that she kills trans people. The
podcast will also kill trans people: "actual harm is being done to trans
kids, who already had high suicide rates and before JK."
For this listener, The Witch Trials
of JK Rowling was a mixed bag. Its best feature is JK Rowling. She comes
across as maternal, compassionate, careful, fair, and, yes, like a secular
saint. Rowling is an immensely generous philanthropist. Rowling recounts a bit of
her own biography in "Trials." She describes herself, in her
twenties, as lost, disassociating, and married to a man who beat and threatened
her. She escaped and was later a single mother on welfare, living in government
housing. It's remarkable that someone once as low as Rowling, through her own
creative powers, rose to the heights of success. I found her immensely warm and
likeable.
Megan Phelps-Roper did not work for me
as the host of seven hours of discussion of very important and complex issues.
Her voice sounded, to me, like an Ivy League graduate on her first internship
at National Public Radio. That is, as someone earnestly trying really hard to
be the twenty-first-century NPR version of the "voice of God," the
Walter Cronkite journalist who announced neutral facts so authoritatively that
they were beyond dispute. She also came across as someone trying to prove that
she has overcome her Westboro past. At the same time that Phelps-Roper assumed
the "voice of God" / "just-the-facts" stance, she
repeatedly injected her own tabloid-worthy bio into her reporting. "I left
the 'God hates f--s" church, she reminds us repeatedly. She also tells us
that she takes cold showers in winter and is sure to walk ten thousand steps a
day. I needed less of that kind of personal revelation and more command of
complex subject matter.
Because she was a spokesperson for
Westboro up until her departure at the late age of 26, Phelps-Roper says, she
can never know the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies. That
repeatedly emphasized handicap, for this listener, disqualifies her from the
voice-of-God journalistic stance. What felt to me like the narcissism of her
telling us that she is beyond questions of good and evil grated almost as much
as her trendy vocal fry.
Her hard sell of relativism as the
correct approach did not convince me. I am sure that if a child chasing a ball
ran out in front of Phelps-Roper's car, even if Phelps-Roper were late for an
important appointment, she would, in complete surety, know that the moral thing
to do would be to slam on the brakes and not hit the child. She would not
engage in a philosophical debate with herself about whether or not braking a
car about to hit a child was the right thing to do. But Phelps-Roper does not
want to apply that surety to trans extremism. Garret, as a boy, was castrated as part of
his "transition." He was then given breast implants. He became
acutely suicidal. He decided to detransition and re-acknowledge
that he is in fact a male. If Phelps-Roper met Garret, would she really engage
in an open debate on whether or not the surgeon who castrated Garret, and the
other surgeon who placed silicone sacs in his chest to simulate breasts, were
guilty of malpractice? Phelps-Roper disdains, as she calls it, "black and white
thinking." Sometimes "black and white thinking" is appropriate.
You don't run children over with your car if you can help it. You don't chop
off healthy boys' healthy genitals. Relativism is a very trendy stance and it's
very easy to assume when it's not your genitals under the surgeon's knife.
Both Rowling and Phelps-Roper, in this
broadcast, bend over backward to be nice. They both insistently pound on the
same points: we love trans people; we want trans people to have equal rights;
we do not judge trans people. Judgment is bad and scary and leads to
"witch trials." In struggling so hard to be nice, they come across as
engaging in a stereotypically feminine, and stereotypically leftist, strategy. Women
are less physically powerful and less chemically and culturally primed to be
aggressive risk-takers than men. Women may present themselves as harmless and
even pathetic in order to gain advantage in spite of their relative
powerlessness.
As much as I loved the JK Rowling in
this podcast, I found it pathetic, offensive, and manipulative for her to
rehash her tragic personal history. Rowling does not have to request permission
to speak from people who want to rape her to death. "I was once a battered
woman so that's why I think women are women and men are men and men should not
be allowed into women's domestic violence shelters," she more or less
says. This stance complies with the leftist insistence that identified victims
are allowed to exercise authority that those who are not victims are not
allowed to exercise. There are complications to the left's elevation of victims.
The left doesn't privilege all victims.
The left privileges victims whose victimization can be exploited to undermine
the left's chosen enemy, Western Civilization. The left betrays and demonizes
victims whose victimization casts a negative light on leftist agendas. Blacks shot
by whites are valuable; blacks shot by blacks are abandoned. Blacks are valued
unless their victimization conflicts with Muslims, who are perceived as a
greater threat to Western Civilization than blacks. Witness the left's betrayal
of black man Juan Williams in favor of the perceived
victimization of Muslims. By the same calculus, leftists now betray women in
favor of men who identify as women.
Undermining basic sexual divisions which
stretch back between one and two million years ago in evolutionary time is a
far more powerful weapon to undermine Western Civilization than undermining
women as vulnerable nurturers. As Dr.
Jordon Peterson says, few approaches, outside of denying the
existence of gravity, could be more disorienting than undermining the
difference between male and female. And, so, men who identify as women are more
valuable, and more valued, to the left, than are women, including domestic
abuse survivors like JK. Rowling.
To trans extremists, Rowling's pain does
not matter. In the podcast trans extremists are quoted mocking Rowling, mocking
her British accent, mocking her account of being an abuse victim, and denying
her any sympathy whatsoever. Rowling, an author of world historical importance,
a self-made woman, one of the world's most significant philanthropists, is,
according to trans extremist Natalie Wynn, a "whiny self-absorbed
bigot." For Wynn, men who identify as women must receive all victim
status. Women must receive none. Victim status is far too precious and limited
a commodity. Men who identify as women must monopolize all victim status; they
must not allow real woman to possess it.
Another problem with the "privilege
victims" approach is that, contrary to Phelps-Roper, there is such a thing
as objective truth, and thousands of years of human history demonstrate that
men, as a group, pose a risk of violence to women that women, as a group, do
not pose to men; ergo, men in domestic violence shelters for women is an idea
that is dangerous to women. One can know that and not share Rowling's history as
a victim of male spousal battery.
In struggling so hard to be nice, to
announce their "liberal" politics, to renounce "black and white
thinking," Phelps-Roper and Rowling have not received any grace from trans
extremists, who still revile them. Mainstream press organs like the Washington
Post continue to pillory Rowling. See condemnation for the podcast as
transphobic here, here, here, here, etc.
Trials includes interviews with two trans
people. Noah is a 17-year-old girl who identifies as male. Noah comes across as
very sweet and naïve, as do many girls. Noah "showed no signs of gender
dysphoria growing up." She had "feminine interests," but was
overwhelmed with gender dysphoria at puberty. There were many comorbidities.
"I had a lot of mental issues. A very severe anxiety disorder. A
depressive disorder. Obsessive compulsive disorder. ADHD." Thirteen-year-old
Noah turned to the internet. "That's all I would do. Just watch"
trans videos. Her mother sent Noah to a therapist who specializes in gender. Noah
joined a support group for transgender youth. Her therapist "helped"
her to recognize that she suffered from "gender dysphoria." When Noah
was 16, she underwent a double mastectomy, and she takes testosterone, which
has given her voice that distinctive, tinny sound that women who take
testosterone acquire. Given that she had previously never had "masculine
leanings," her parents are "still struggling with that." Noah
repeatedly cites medical professionals' assessments as proof that she is really
a boy and that the double mastectomy and testosterone are the right path for
her. Noah says had she not had her breasts removed at age 16, she might have
killed herself. In fact medical transing is no guarantee of suicide prevention;
see a survey of, and links to, various studies, especially this one, here.
Phelps-Roper tells Noah how much she
hated femininity as a pre-pubescent and pubescent girl. I didn't want to have
periods and suffer the pangs of childbirth, Phelps-Roper says. Many women feel
that way, especially at puberty, Phelps-Roper says. Phelps-Roper is now a
married mother. How are all of us other women different from you? she asks
Noah.
Noah says that no one has ever asked her
that question. That is mind boggling. Multiple medical professionals urged Noah
to alter her body and undertake a lifetime of dependency on the pharmaceutical
industry without ever simply letting her know that it is common for women and
girls to feel discomfort with the physicality of being female, or the social
roles expected of females, and that most females learn to cope with the
challenges of their bodies, without surgery or drugs.
Phelps-Roper also chats with Natalie
Wynn, a 34-year-old man who identifies as a woman. His father is a psychology
professor; his mother, a doctor. Wynn is an award-winning and influential YouTube
broadcaster, a democratic socialist, an opponent of the right, and a
Christophobe. He characterizes Christianity as "twisted necromancy." Christians lead
"barren lives of self-flagellation." Wynn mocks the persecution of Christians, while
hammering away at how persecuted he is because he is trans.
Wynn's YouTube woman-face is intense. He
films himself in front of Victorian, velvet, flocked wallpaper, the kind
typically seen in Vincent Price horror films. He wears false eyelashes,
wide-brimmed hats, elaborate dresses, and assumes an above-it-all, eye-rolling,
limp-wristed, indifferent stance while delivering bitchy, passive aggressive
zingers against perceived enemies he hopes to wound. He films himself sipping
wine while soaking in hot bubble baths surrounded by candles – because that,
you know, is the essence of what it means to be a woman.
Wynn psychoanalyzes and presumes to speak for "older lesbian
women on the more butch side of things." He also psychoanalyzes JK
Rowling's relationship with her father. Wynn addresses Rowling, "you have
a lot of traumatic gender baggage of your own, and it's interfering with your
ability to genuinely empathize with trans people." After speaking for
lesbians, Christians, and JK Rowling, Wynn chastises Rowling. "You are a
self-appointed spokesperson on trans people." Wynn, the man who identifies
as a woman, can speak for everyone else. No one dare speak for him. False
eyelashes notwithstanding, Wynn is more the arrogant, privileged son of
professional parents than any other identity.
Wynn's award-winning wisdom includes the following. "A person with a vagina
can be fully a man in bed." A man can be "the radiant model of
womanhood." "I let a straight guy go down on me … Can you feel like a
woman while your dick is being sucked? The answer is yes." That may be the
answer, but the question is, how does Wynn know what it feels like to feel like
a woman?
Phelps-Roper treats Wynn with kid gloves
in the Trials interview. Wynn, in the interview, repeatedly refers to
being "rejected and humiliated" as a trans person. Wynn finds it
important to emphasize, as if beating a drum, his own victimization, even as he
mocks other victims.
In fact, as REM sang, "everybody
hurts," not just trans people. We've all been "rejected and humiliated,"
for various reasons. For being fat, for being ugly, for being poor, for being short,
for having a speech impediment, for being of a minority religion, for being
from the South … The solution is an ethos that rejects bullying. Wynn's
solution is to "reject and humiliate" his perceived enemies, through
YouTube videos.
After Trials was released, Wynn
took to the internet to trash it, Phelps-Roper, and Rowling. They made
him cry, he whines. See here. In the mainstream press and in the
reaction from Natalie Wynn, Trials' soft, nice, feminine, relativist, "classical
liberal" kid-glove approach didn't win any more friends than the blunt
approach taken by Keen Minshull, Joyce, or Walsh.
As part of its nice approach, Trials relativizes
trans hate for Rowling. After all, the podcast points out, Christians bashed Rowling,
too. To make this point, the podcast pays an extended visit to the 1990s.
Suddenly we hear Bill Clinton saying, "I did not have sex with that
woman" and a 911 call from Columbine high school during the shooting. Trial's
point in all this is that back in the day Christians were intolerant, too.
A school board in Cedarville, Arkansas
required that parents give consent before students could access Harry Potter
books. Parents brought suit and the rule was tossed out as
unconstitutional. Phelps-Roper interviews attorney David R. Hogue, who argued
for the parental-consent requirement. Though Hogue lost, he says he should have
lost. Kids have a right to read books, he says. He comes across as charming and
rational. The process was a lawsuit, not a threatening mob of
"balaclava-wearing figures brandishing flares," as in the case of Kathleen Stock. The
arbiter was the US constitution. To trans extremists, the arbiter is the
command to "kill TERFs." Phelps-Roper's on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand"
relativist comparison between the Cedarville court case and the Rowling
hounding doesn't wash.
A final note about Trials. Recent
years have produced revolutionary scholarship on the witch craze of the late
middle ages and early modern period. This scholarship has reversed previous,
inaccurate, and stereotypical depictions. Past narratives were all too often crafted
by storytellers who sought to benefit from negative propaganda against
Catholicism, because they saw Catholicism as a competitor for power. These
previous storytellers included Protestants and Atheists. New scholarship is too
complex to detail here; interested parties can explore that scholarship here
and here. After I studied, and then taught,
this new scholarship, I resolved never again to use phrases like "witch
trial" to describe irrational persecution. After I made that vow, I
suddenly realized that there were ample other metaphors I could use. "The
Terror," from the French Revolution. "Show trial," from
Stalinist Russia. "Cultural revolution," and "struggle
session" from Mao's China. "Re-education camp," and "rice
paddies," from Khmer Rouge Cambodia. "Police state" from East
Germany. "Thought police" from Orwell. I suddenly realized: more
recent historical examples of irrational persecution come from secular, leftist
regimes, and they were all magnitudes more deadly than the witch craze. Witch
craze metaphors inaccurately conflate that persecution with Catholicism. If we
were to adopt these other metaphors, we'd be implicating Marxism, and
implicating Marxism is very much not a Woke thing to do. So we fall back on
witch metaphors, metaphors most of us do not understand at all.
Megan Phelps-Roper goes farther than
using the witch trial metaphor. The soundtrack of her seven-hour podcast is a
faux Gregorian chant with audible Catholic prayer as lyrics. Every time
Phelps-Roper, in her NPR vocal fry voice, invokes humans forming mobs and
behaving irrationally, that faux Gregorian chant, utterly Catholic, chanting
Catholic prayers, rises on her soundtrack. In this little bit of scapegoating
and hate-mongering, Phelps-Roper is still very much the granddaughter of Fred
Phelps, who preached hatred of Catholics as well as gay people.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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