0:06

One of the things I been asking people about

0:08

kind of the elephant in the room so to speak

0:11

is the author, j k

0:13

Rowling. Has your

0:15

relationship to j k Rowling changed? Since

0:17

the early days?

0:19

I don't really care for J.

0:21

K. Rowling unfortunately because the

0:24

comments that she's made I don't agree with.

0:27

It's really sad actually because she

0:29

seemed so progressive. The Harry

0:31

Potter book like when we were kids, they

0:33

seemed progressive. I think to have

0:36

the author of these beautiful, loving,

0:39

accepting stories hurting

0:42

marginalized communities. It

0:45

sucks. Yeah. She's super transphobic.

0:47

She's a terf. She's pretty terrible.

0:50

I really wish this was not the hill she chose

0:52

to die on. Someone like her. She

0:54

really is just truly at the heart, bigoted,

0:57

hiding in this you know,

0:59

sheep's costume pretending that she is an ally.

1:06

As I have been working on this series, The

1:09

accusation that's come up over and over

1:11

again is that JK Rowling

1:13

is a transverb and

1:15

a big n. In

1:17

fact, last year at leakycon, a

1:19

Harry Potter fan convention, staff

1:21

took the accusations so seriously that

1:24

at one point, They announced that attendees

1:26

should report anyone who was vocally

1:28

supporting Rowling in any way, saying,

1:31

quote, we have zero tolerance

1:33

for transphobia and bigotry of

1:35

any kind. For many

1:37

people who support Rowling, They

1:39

say that these accusations are so

1:41

off base, that they can be dismissed

1:43

out of hand. But for me,

1:46

Bigatory is not an accusation that

1:49

I can take lightly. And

1:51

that's because for a long time, I

1:55

was a notorious begin.

1:59

The Westboro Baptist Church is known

2:01

for picketing the funerals of US

2:03

soldiers and marines in protest

2:05

over what the church sees as the ills

2:08

of Americans decide. The Westboro

2:10

Baptist Church is one of America's most

2:13

notorious religious eight groups.

2:15

From the time I was five years old,

2:18

I could be found almost every day,

2:20

protesting alongside my family as

2:23

proud members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

2:25

God's wisdom has been crying

2:28

to this evil mission. Listen

2:30

to these lied

2:30

politicians. Let your

2:32

children be taught it's okay to be gay.

2:35

We became infamous for picking events

2:38

like the funerals of soldiers and celebrities

2:41

with signs that said unspeakably cruel

2:43

things. God, pates,

2:46

fags, fags, doom,

2:48

nations.

2:50

Fags, you're worthy of death. Hey.

2:55

And I know it's hard for some people

2:57

to believe this, but we truly

3:00

didn't see these words as cruel and

3:02

bigoted. We thought that

3:04

what we were doing was right.

3:06

As you can hear me try to argue here

3:09

at one of our protests twelve years ago.

3:12

Right. you if you see your favorite setting and you don't

3:14

warn them, what you're doing is you're taskless,

3:16

enabling and encouraging them on their way to

3:18

help. That's not loving your neighbor. So how

3:21

can you love your neighbor unless you're out here? So

3:23

this is about love. Right.

3:24

Well, exactly. This is the definition of

3:26

love.

3:26

But people What's the definition of hatred? They

3:29

don't think it's love. What would you tell? We saw

3:31

ourselves like the biblical prophets. Warning

3:34

people that they needed to obey god

3:36

or else suffer his curses

3:38

in this life and hell in

3:40

the next. And we proudly

3:42

defended our views, like in this

3:44

clip of my mom and me, on the Tyria Banks

3:46

show, back when I was twenty years

3:48

old. You said why are you so angry?

3:50

Well, we're not angry. What we're trying to do is get

3:52

the point across to people who hate

3:54

our message, who hate us, who

3:57

hate God, who hate his judgments, that's

3:59

why we have to get into a little bit quiet.

4:02

Yeah. Because I have to make sure if you're gonna

4:04

hear us that we talk loud enough to be heard

4:06

because you cut us off before we say the

4:08

words because you don't like the

4:09

word. And it's not just you, it's everybody we talk

4:11

to. From the outside,

4:14

I understand how this all sounds absurd,

4:17

but we actually saw ourselves as

4:20

living out meaningful values and virtues

4:23

like courage. When

4:25

we protested, we knew people

4:27

would hate us for it. We knew

4:29

there would be people who would even attack us

4:31

for

4:31

it. So I understand that there's some

4:33

people that don't like what you have to

4:35

stand for and they've taken some strong actions about

4:37

that. Once you once you tell me about that? Yeah. We've

4:40

had so many crimes committed against us,

4:42

vandalism, we've had cars

4:44

driven at us, we've been shot at, And

4:47

I thought this was the, you

4:49

know, do your own thing generation, tolerance,

4:52

loving. Yeah. Where is that?

4:54

There were people who bombed my house,

4:57

set our church on fire,

4:59

regularly vandalized our homes, doxxed

5:02

us and sent us death threats and rape threats

5:04

in enormous numbers.

5:06

And these attacks only furthered

5:08

our feelings that we, or being

5:10

persecuted for

5:11

telling a hard truth to the world.

5:14

To a society that would rather

5:16

hurl insults at us or violently attack

5:18

us, then listen to us.

5:22

After I left the West Pro Baptist Church

5:24

at age twenty six, I had

5:26

to wrestle for a long time

5:29

with some truly terrifying questions.

5:33

How was it that I could be so certain

5:35

that I was right and still

5:37

be so wrong for so long?

5:41

How was it that my critics, even

5:43

the ones who would threaten and attack us,

5:46

had seen reality more clearly than I

5:48

had. And most terrifying

5:50

of all, how can I

5:52

ever trust my own mind again?

5:56

When I go back and watch these videos of

5:58

myself on the Tyria Banks show or me

6:00

picking these funerals, there's

6:02

a part of me that wants to say, That

6:05

was a different person. But

6:08

the truth is, I am

6:10

still that person. It

6:12

was me who held those beliefs. It

6:15

was me who shouted those cruel

6:17

words at grieving families. Ever

6:21

since I left, I've been cautious,

6:24

just so careful when trying

6:26

to discern what is true, what

6:29

is right, What is

6:31

good? I try

6:33

to stay away from certainty. To

6:35

remember that at any given moment, I

6:38

am only seeing a tiny fraction

6:40

of the

6:40

world. I tell

6:42

myself to embrace humility.

6:44

And one of the ways that I do this is

6:47

by listening, really listening

6:49

to people and where they're coming from. I

6:52

try to understand them and their experiences

6:54

and their values

6:56

and how they've come to the positions

6:58

that they have.

7:05

So after speaking with Rowling, and

7:07

trying to really understand her experiences

7:10

and how they shaped her views. I

7:12

left Scotland and did the same thing with

7:14

many of her critics. Including many

7:17

who are transgender. Now

7:19

of course, trans people, like all

7:21

people, are not a monolith, In

7:24

working on this project, I met trans

7:26

people who agreed with Rowling and admired

7:29

her for speaking up and others

7:31

who viewed her as such menace that

7:33

they didn't wanna be on a podcast that included

7:36

her voice and many

7:38

more in between. But

7:40

for today, I wanna share

7:42

two conversations with two different

7:44

critics who not only were thoughtful

7:47

in their critique of Rowling, but

7:49

were also really frank with me

7:51

about the difficult experiences that

7:54

informed their views. I'm

8:01

Megan Phelps Roper, and this

8:04

is chapter six. Natalie

8:06

and Noah.

8:09

So I want to understand your critique

8:11

of JK Rowling's recent

8:13

comments over the past few years. But

8:16

before we do, I would love to know

8:18

what you think the two of you have in common

8:20

on these issues

8:21

of, like, trans identity, feminism.

8:24

I think that we both in some broad

8:26

sense believe in women's

8:30

liberation and equality, I

8:33

think that we both support gay

8:36

marriage. For example, the sort of

8:38

very basic twenty ten

8:40

level activism. I

8:43

think, sir, we both recognize that

8:47

far right movements like Donald Trump

8:49

politics, for example, are are dangerous. I

8:51

think those are their kind of the foundations and

8:53

then things quickly start to split.

8:56

This is Natalie Winn, a popular

8:58

YouTuber, better known as ContraPoints.

9:01

She makes artful and insightful videos

9:03

about politics, culture, the

9:06

Internet, and about being transgender.

9:08

A

9:09

lot people have this sense that oh, being trans

9:11

is this kind of fad, people

9:13

go online and then they get sort of

9:15

trans by exposure

9:18

to the social contagion in these trans communities.

9:21

Well, I mean, in my case, I will say

9:23

that I experienced gender dysphoria

9:25

and experienced these kinds of subjective

9:28

personal things long before

9:30

that. But the Internet makes

9:32

it possible to form communities out

9:34

of people who would otherwise be very geographically

9:37

isolated. You know, I think, like, less than one

9:39

percent of people are are transgender. So

9:43

I don't think I actually met someone who

9:45

I knew was transgender. Until I

9:47

was in my twenties. And,

9:50

you know, if the only experience that you really

9:52

have with trans people is

9:55

whatever media you saw about trans people

9:57

from the nineties and two thousands, you've

9:59

seen portrayals that are monstrous, that

10:01

are alien, that are mocking.

10:04

Right. It's always a punch line or

10:06

it's like a horse or you don't want anything

10:08

to do with it. Mhmm. For me to sort conceptualize

10:11

myself as oh, I am a transgender person.

10:14

I had to actually see trans

10:16

people who seemed like

10:18

people. Right? And YouTube

10:20

was great for that.

10:21

Natalie transitioned in twenty seventeen,

10:24

and she says that YouTube was revelatory.

10:27

There's, you know, trans people sharing their transitions.

10:30

And that was really helpful to me to recognize,

10:33

oh, this is something that I want to do.

10:35

She says it not only helped her on her path

10:38

to self discovery, but it also

10:40

inspired her to share aspects of

10:42

her own transition on her channel.

10:44

There's something about YouTube that

10:47

it makes it easy to kind of share private

10:49

things about yourself with big audience because

10:52

you are talking to a camera alone in your

10:55

room there's a kind of

10:57

false intimacy of that. I

10:59

feel that there's a lot of things that I said

11:01

to a YouTube audience that I

11:04

had never said to my own friends and family

11:06

even. It just felt easier to

11:08

say to anonymous people on the Internet.

11:11

And that experience of sharing

11:13

these intimate parts of her life with

11:15

so many people

11:16

online, she says it was

11:18

really significant. The early

11:20

transition era of my life online

11:23

was a kind of mix of

11:26

the like rush of this

11:28

like Disney let it go moment.

11:30

Right? Like, where where you yours you've broken,

11:32

like, all the rules of your upbringing

11:35

and done something that you're, like, very

11:37

drastically not supposed to do. As

11:39

a person who has assigned male

11:41

birth, you're really not supposed to be

11:44

a woman. And so if

11:47

over the course of years, this

11:49

kind of need,

11:52

this longing has been building

11:53

up, it does feel good at

11:55

first to to finally let

11:57

it go. My

11:59

guest today is self described YouTuber

12:02

and ex philosopher for Natalie Winn,

12:04

better known as

12:05

ContraPoints. The verge has called her an

12:07

elegant whipsmart middle finger to this

12:09

Her videos, including the ones following

12:11

her transition, ended up becoming

12:13

really popular.

12:14

Today, we are very lucky to have Natalie Winn

12:17

AKA contra points, an excellent

12:19

philosophy. Wins impact on YouTube culture

12:21

is so notable that the library

12:24

of congress recently said it was archiving

12:26

her entire

12:27

channel. She was featured in The New York Times,

12:29

Bice, NPR, BuzzFeed, and

12:32

pretty quickly, she became a very

12:34

well known trans person. I was

12:36

suddenly very prominent. I was very visible.

12:39

And all this attention, it ultimately

12:41

led her to getting over one

12:43

point five million subscribers to

12:46

our channel.

12:48

But it also attracted

12:51

a lot of transphobic hate.

12:53

I've been dogs. I've been

12:55

swatted. Oh, jeez. I've received

12:58

death threats, mutilation threats,

13:01

anger, shaming, mockery,

13:04

any kind of terrible online behavior you can

13:06

imagine I've been the target of.

13:09

I would say that at first, it was primarily

13:11

from anti trans people, but

13:14

when you become sort of a

13:16

very prominent person from

13:18

a marginalized community, you

13:20

sort of inevitably are going to tracked

13:22

a lot of aggression from that community

13:25

itself. In twenty

13:27

nineteen, Natalie posted

13:29

a tweet indicating that She didn't

13:31

like how sharing pronouns in what she

13:33

called hyperwoke spaces made

13:35

her feel. And that along

13:38

with the fact that she briefly worked with a controversial

13:40

trans man, inspired a

13:43

really vicious backlash where

13:45

she was called a Nazi, a grifter,

13:47

and a traitor to the trans community. People

13:50

online not only targeted

13:52

her, but demanded that her friends

13:54

and people she'd worked with publicly

13:56

denounced her. When I was being

13:59

Twitter mobbed where I the

14:02

trans community kind of really turned

14:04

on me, I remember

14:06

walking around Baltimore with

14:08

a hoodie over my head and sunglasses

14:11

and headphones in because I was actually almost

14:13

delusional about how

14:15

total my ostracism

14:18

was. I sort of thought I would be hated on the street,

14:20

which is which is crazy in retrospect, but that's

14:22

how it felt at the time it's

14:23

overwhelming. Mhmm. And

14:26

that honestly got worse

14:28

than the transphobia because

14:29

coming from people that you would see as your

14:31

allies. Yeah. It's kind of easier

14:34

to dismiss hateful bigots

14:36

because it's like, well, whatever. Like, they're they're

14:38

gonna hate me regard those. But when it's from

14:40

people who's, like, political side

14:42

that you're supposedly aligned with and from

14:45

people who share your identity, and

14:47

they're the ones who are really

14:49

coming at you the hardest. Like, yeah, it's painful.

14:51

You know, being trans is pretty

14:54

socially isolating experience

14:56

in general, and a lot

14:58

of trans people rely pretty heavily on

15:01

other trans people for support. So

15:03

when you are an outcast from

15:06

the trans community,

15:07

you feel very alone. And

15:10

this experience that Natalie had, which

15:13

she used to make one of my favorite of her videos

15:15

called Cancel Culture, gave

15:17

her a deeper insight into why it is

15:19

that speaking about trans identity and

15:21

gender issues online, so

15:23

often leads to these vicious public shamings,

15:26

even towards allies to the trans rights movement.

15:29

I think that a lot of trans people

15:32

are living with intense shame

15:34

and there's a lot of bitterness because

15:38

people feel excluded from society.

15:40

A lot of times thrown out by their families, humiliated

15:42

by their families, And when

15:44

you have unresolved anger and bitterness

15:47

and humiliation, that's

15:49

aggression in search of a target. And

15:52

when you feel downtrodden and

15:54

you feel abused and you feel humiliated, there's

15:57

a vindictive impose.

15:59

You want revenge, not just justice,

16:02

but often the person that we take

16:04

revenge against is not really

16:06

the person who's responsible, but

16:08

rather they are a symbol

16:10

of all the pain that we feel.

16:13

You need a scapegoat. A scapegoat. Yeah.

16:16

In

16:18

January twenty twenty one, Natalie

16:21

released a video essay. So

16:24

you've probably heard by now about Joanne Rowling's

16:26

transphobic tweets, unless you've

16:28

been living under a rock, in which case,

16:31

get back onto that rock sweetie. There is

16:33

nothing good going on up

16:34

here.

16:34

And in it, she unpacked her thoughts

16:37

about JK Rowling. Or maybe

16:39

you heard that all Joanne did was say biological

16:41

sex is real. And now crazy

16:44

gender ideologues and transactivists are

16:46

trying to silence her. This is cancel

16:49

culture going too far. This is a witch hunt.

16:52

Celebrities are under attack. This

16:54

is the new Salem. This is Orwell's.

16:57

And one of the reasons that I really

16:59

wanted to talk to her was that as

17:01

a transgender fan of Harry Potter,

17:03

who was also a critic of cancel culture.

17:06

She was critiquing Rowling from the point of

17:08

view of someone who has been deeply

17:10

interested in the very same dynamics in

17:12

our society

17:13

that I had been investigating myself. This

17:16

is a painful topic for me all around

17:18

because as a transgender woman,

17:21

I am honestly hurt by

17:23

a lot of the things Joanne has said in the last

17:25

year, but I also know what it's

17:27

like to be the target of a Twitter mob. And

17:29

I realized that to most people, complaining

17:32

about being canceled. It

17:35

sounds incredibly whiny and self

17:37

absorbed. Like you'd especially think

17:39

that rich and famous people like JK Rowling

17:41

would be above staying up

17:43

alone at night, reading mean things

17:45

people say online. But

17:47

you'd think wrong, and when I see her

17:49

getting trashed, on the TL. There's

17:52

a traumatized part of me that's unironically

17:54

triggered by watching people cancel her.

17:57

But there's also part of me that wants to join the

17:59

shocking. How could you do this to me, Joanne?

18:02

I did not come out of the cupboard under the stairs

18:04

for this. So what I want? So in

18:06

that video, I distinguish between what

18:08

I'm calling sort of two rhetorical

18:10

styles of bigotry, which I call

18:12

direct and indirect. Direct usually

18:15

involves framing the target

18:18

as vermin, invaders,

18:20

parasites. Right? This sort of

18:22

dangerous, foreign, infiltrating

18:26

menace. The idea of the bigotry

18:28

is simply hate. I call

18:30

the Westboro Baptist Church, the area

18:32

of bigotry. It's the idea that bigots

18:34

are people who outright say We

18:36

hate you. God hates you.

18:39

And we're all marching around with signs about

18:41

how much we hate you. I think in the video you

18:43

used my family as an example of direct

18:45

bigotry. Yeah. The West Reruptive Church.

18:48

God hates Sags. Pretty direct. Mhmm.

18:51

Right? I and I think that in some ways,

18:53

like, that's it can render

18:55

it less and dangerous. Mhmm. It's not

18:57

insidious. Yeah. Because I

19:00

don't think that it's as influential,

19:03

you know, protesting at funerals, that

19:05

puts people off. People don't wanna be associated

19:07

with

19:08

It kind of has the opposite of the effect

19:10

of getting people on their

19:11

side. It alienates people and pushes people away.

19:14

Yes. But remember that, like, the political

19:16

talking points that were used,

19:18

you know, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty

19:20

years ago, you know, when the sort of

19:22

bush era conservatives made

19:24

opposition to gay marriage a major

19:27

point of their platform. It was not

19:29

about godhead's fags. It was

19:31

about defending marriage.

19:34

Mhmm. Like, we have to protect this institution.

19:36

That's the foundation of the family. That's

19:39

here to protect children. There was this

19:41

kind of fear that if we allow for ambiguity,

19:44

if we allow for the strict rule

19:46

about one man and one woman, and we'll

19:48

include two men or two women, then

19:51

order falls apart, slippery slope,

19:53

as a slippery slope, and then anything could happen.

19:56

Right? Indirect bigotry

19:58

manifests as concern

20:01

or debate about a host of proxy

20:03

issues. It's often defensive in

20:05

tone rather than offensive. Frequently

20:08

the claimants that a once needed the liberation

20:10

movement has now gone too far, but it's

20:12

now the activists who are the There's a kind of

20:14

parallel rate between where people are afraid

20:16

that if we allow trans people

20:18

to participate in society, then the

20:20

gender order will collapse. And if

20:22

it'll be anything goes and men can invade any

20:25

women's space and the protections

20:27

such as they are that exist for women will fall apart

20:29

because of the collapse of the gender order.

20:32

Mhmm. And when it comes

20:34

to those ideas of direct

20:37

and indirect bigotry, when it

20:39

comes to Rowling, and her views about,

20:41

you know, prisons or or childhood transition.

20:44

Is your is your claim that Rowling

20:46

is being transphobic indirectly? And

20:49

maybe even unknowingly?

20:51

I mean, I think that I'm

20:53

willing to engage with someone who is

20:56

skeptical for example about is it fair

20:58

for trans women to be sports. Because I was I don't know. That's

21:00

like it's honestly a question I have myself,

21:02

but I feel like that I'm not

21:05

my willingness to engage with that is going

21:07

to decrease if it's with someone who I think

21:10

doesn't really believe in trans acceptance

21:12

at a much more fundamental level, which

21:14

is kind of the the feeling that I get

21:17

from from

21:19

show Rowling. So, JK Rowling frames

21:21

her position as. I am just

21:23

saying the fact that sex is

21:25

real. It's not hateful to say a

21:28

fact. Why is everyone so

21:30

mad at me? A fact can't be

21:32

bigoted, and I agree

21:35

that a fact cannot be bigoted, but

21:37

a fact on its own doesn't

21:40

mean very much. Usually, when we discuss

21:43

facts, we're using those

21:45

facts to tell a

21:46

story. And facts can be

21:48

used to tell bigoted stories.

21:51

You know, suppose someone This was I think

21:53

one of the hardest parts of your critique to

21:55

consume because of just my own understanding of

21:57

how important doubts are and

21:59

how important open dialogue is. Obviously,

22:01

because of that being the,

22:03

you know, most transformative thing I've

22:06

ever experienced in my life.

22:08

And I just wanted to ask you to help me understand

22:10

where you're coming from. So one

22:12

critique you may clear in the video, seeing

22:14

it as the coded language of indirect

22:16

bigotry is the danger of

22:18

people who say that they're just asking questions.

22:21

And I I totally see what you're talking

22:23

about because there are, for sure

22:26

bad actors and also just

22:28

people with really bad ideas. And

22:30

all these people online who make their whole careers

22:32

out of using the just asking questions idea.

22:35

As a smokescreen, essentially. Right?

22:38

But there are a lot of people and I've met

22:40

many of them while working on this project

22:42

who just genuinely have a lot

22:44

of questions, and sometimes they're afraid

22:46

to ask them. And I I think asking

22:49

tough questions and pulling apart arguments

22:52

is, yeah, it's obviously a cornerstone of

22:54

reasoning. And it's actually a

22:56

thing that you do so well on your YouTube

22:58

channel. So I just wondered,

23:01

like, why is it that you see

23:03

rolling in other people in this debate

23:06

why do you see that as as if they're just,

23:08

like, clearly trying to disguise bad

23:11

intentions? I don't necessarily

23:13

see it as to trying to disguise bad intentions.

23:16

I think my I'm less concerned with the intentions

23:18

and I have the consequences. And when

23:20

you have someone who is as influential,

23:23

as JK Rowling, posing

23:26

ignorant loaded questions on Twitter,

23:28

like, this is not the acceptable forum

23:31

for that level of discourse. Right?

23:34

So, okay, yes, there's very

23:36

complicated questions that are

23:39

legitimate. To be asked. But I feel

23:41

like I don't know. If you're going to be someone

23:43

with a huge platform who wants to,

23:45

like, pose these questions, you

23:47

kind of have to be responsible for the way that

23:49

you go about doing that. If you do

23:51

it in a way that's harmful to trans people

23:53

as I consider beyond any question

23:55

that the way JK Rowling has done it has been

23:58

harmful, then I

24:00

think it's valid for people to be upset

24:02

with you and to criticize

24:03

that. Is it that you believe

24:05

that it's dangerous to ask the questions or

24:07

just that you don't trust that she's actually engaging

24:09

in good faith? It's primarily

24:11

that I don't trust that she's engaging in good faith. I've

24:13

never really gotten the impression that she wants to know more

24:15

about the experiences of trans people

24:17

from the way that these questions are posed. It's all

24:19

about isn't this dangerous to all the

24:22

rest of us? Right? Aren't these

24:24

people posing a threat to us? Isn't this

24:26

dangerous to children? Like, I

24:29

see that as a very loaded

24:30

question.

24:31

Right. So you're saying it's not the text,

24:32

but the subtext. In other words Yeah.

24:34

Completely.

24:35

Do you think there's any validity to the concerns

24:38

that she's raised about the possibility of

24:40

rushed

24:41

care? There is

24:43

a small minority of trans

24:45

people who de transition. And

24:48

many of these people do kind of cite

24:51

that trans identity for them

24:53

was some kind of shelter

24:55

from other issues going on

24:57

in their life. But the idea

24:59

that Transcare is rushed

25:02

is something that probably is pretty

25:04

greeting to most trans people to hear.

25:06

Because most trans people have this experience,

25:09

of sometimes years long waiting lists

25:12

to get care of having to jump

25:14

through all these hoops, of having to

25:17

answer sort of invasive questions

25:19

about, you know, why you're transitioning and so on,

25:22

you know, having to really fight, in other words, for

25:24

care. So the idea that oh, we're

25:26

just throwing any teenager who plays

25:28

with the wrong type of toys into the transition

25:31

pipeline. That's just not happening.

25:33

Probably some people are

25:35

getting sloppy care because that's

25:38

generally a problem with health care in

25:40

the U. S. And the UK. The medical infrastructure

25:42

is actually not that great. But I

25:45

feel that this is being presented as

25:47

a bigger problem than in fact is,

25:50

which is not to minimize like that. Obviously,

25:52

it's very painful if you transition

25:55

and then realize that you've made a

25:56

mistake, but it just doesn't happen that

25:59

often. Mhmm. So

26:01

is your issue on the possibility of

26:04

trans children transitioning being

26:06

rushed in some cases is that you enrolling.

26:09

Don't necessarily have a totally different point

26:11

of view, but more about what she's choosing

26:13

to focus on?

26:14

Well, no one wants to rush

26:16

teenagers into transitioning if that's not what's

26:18

gonna be the best outcome for

26:20

them. Right? I just feel

26:22

that a lot of the kind of moral

26:24

panic over this is overstated. It

26:27

sounds like you think that she's exaggerating the

26:29

risks and that adds to a climate of fear

26:31

around something that society still seems

26:34

hesitant to embrace. Yeah.

26:37

When I was talking to Natalie

26:39

about this idea of exaggerating

26:41

real risks in a way that might distort

26:43

them, I asked her if she felt the same

26:46

way about ruling's concerns around

26:48

self ID and gender recognition

26:50

certificates, and what they could mean

26:52

for single sex spaces. I

26:54

mean, first of all, she says, you know,

26:56

there's this fear, oh, men are just gonna be able to come

26:58

barging into bathrooms with those certificates. Do

27:00

you need a certificate to enter a bathroom now? That's

27:02

not how bathrooms work. Like, to

27:04

me, this is a sort of imagined fear

27:07

generated scenario that doesn't really line

27:09

up with the actual

27:11

experience of people in bathrooms. Right?

27:13

People identify your

27:16

gender based on how you look.

27:18

I've been using women's bathrooms for five years.

27:20

No one has ever approached me about it. Mhmm.

27:22

Right? So generating a paranoia

27:25

about men and women's bathrooms is

27:27

sort of this purely imaginative scenario

27:30

where, you know, there's gonna be perverts

27:33

in bathrooms who have full face no consequences

27:35

because of, like, I don't know, sexual

27:38

assault is still illegal. It's not really clear

27:40

to me how much protection a certificate

27:43

gives someone.

27:44

When you talk about the danger of the, like, asking

27:47

questions idea or or seeing it as indirect

27:49

bigotry, the an interesting

27:51

aspect of this part of it is that

27:53

you know, in the first chapter of the first Harry

27:55

Potter book, Uncle Vernon keeps yelling

27:57

at Harry over and over again. Stop asking

27:59

questions. And when I asked

28:02

rolling about why she started the book this way. She

28:04

said that from the start, the book was anti authoritarian,

28:07

and that she understood starts when people are

28:09

discouraged from voicing their

28:10

doubts. And you are someone who's been

28:13

vocal about the ways that the Internet has become

28:15

a place where authoritarian behavior

28:17

is on the rise. Like, do

28:19

you see what she's worried about?

28:21

I think that to be authoritarian, you

28:23

have to be able to leverage authority. And

28:27

trans people are in a weak position. Right?

28:29

I don't see the the like this trans

28:32

big brother that you can't question. Like,

28:34

like, that's a very melodramatic and self pity

28:36

in a way of framing this, that I

28:38

understand why do people with feels? Like, oh, the mob

28:41

is attacking me. Well, I

28:43

don't know, is that that the the mob

28:45

is is it can be vicious

28:47

and unreasonable and unsympathetic

28:50

and unnuanced Absolutely. But

28:53

to me that's fundamentally different from

28:55

Big Brother. In

28:57

her j k Rowling

28:58

video, Natalie talks about

29:00

the way that some trans people wield

29:02

power online, including

29:05

why that power is sometimes wielded

29:07

so fiercely.

29:09

A lot of extremely online trans

29:11

people really don't have

29:13

a strong sense of conviction in their

29:15

own identity, which is why they need constant

29:18

x internal validation to prop them

29:20

up. They need to constantly be

29:22

told that they're valid, that they

29:24

really are, the gender that they say they are.

29:26

And if someone even oblique threatens

29:29

or questions, their fragile self

29:31

concept, they lash out.

29:34

And for some of those trans people, Canceling

29:36

celebrities on Twitter is the

29:38

one kind of power they have. Plus

29:41

a lot of You know, have people been

29:43

abusive, disproportionate out

29:46

of line and reacting against

29:48

Jake Herrling. Of course, do

29:50

I endorse people saying, like, violent or

29:53

or abusive cool things. No. I've

29:55

been the target of a lot of that myself,

29:58

but I also kind of understand what people are

30:00

about about.

30:01

Mhmm. I definitely hear you. As

30:04

I'm thinking back, you know, of course, I was

30:07

out in Westbrook when the discussion about At

30:09

the end of our conversation, I

30:11

told Natalie a bit more about my own story.

30:14

How it was people willing to engage with

30:16

me even when I was saying really

30:18

cruel things. That was so transformative.

30:21

And how I wonder, as uncomfortable

30:24

as those conversations can be,

30:26

if they're really the best path to progress

30:28

that we have. Over

30:30

the last decade, when it comes to things

30:32

like opposition to same sex marriage, so

30:35

many people have been persuaded and

30:37

now supported. And I

30:39

asked her whether one of the reasons she was

30:41

willing to speak publicly about these issues

30:44

was because in a pluralistic society,

30:46

actually having the conversation is

30:49

how effective change is made. That

30:51

they serve a purpose that is ultimately

30:54

good even though we wish there was

30:56

a more ideal

30:57

realm. Howard Bauchner: Well, I think that realistically,

30:59

that is how acceptance that is the

31:01

trajectory. Like, I'm not under any

31:03

illusions about what it's going

31:05

to take for trans people to be accepted. I

31:08

think that we're probably twenty

31:11

years away. And think

31:13

that what it is gonna take is

31:16

people simply habituating to a world

31:18

that includes trans people and

31:21

my guess is that once that happens, once

31:23

that habituation happens, it becomes much

31:25

less of this hypothetical new scary invasive

31:28

thing, and it becomes something

31:30

that's sort of accepted in life. And

31:33

that will happen with trans people. Trans

31:35

people are not going anywhere. You're not

31:37

gonna be able get rid of us. I

31:39

think that once

31:42

this becomes normal, it will become to

31:44

most people a bit more of

31:46

an embarrassment that they behaved in this

31:48

way. During these years. And

31:51

I certainly do believe in having the conversation.

31:53

I mean,

31:54

if I consider myself, I think I'm having the conversation

31:57

right now.

31:58

Mhmm. And thank you for that. Again,

32:00

I I just want you to know how much I

32:02

appreciate that because I

32:03

think I'm willing to have a com conversation

32:05

because I I feel that I often have no choice.

32:08

But, you know, I also hope

32:10

that people sort of understand the reason why

32:12

a lot of trans people might not be super

32:14

eager to politely answer every question

32:16

they have about isn't giving you healthcare,

32:19

dangerous for children, isn't allowing

32:21

you into bathrooms going to leave women vulnerable

32:23

to rape. Like, it takes patients

32:26

to answer these questions and to not feel insulted

32:28

or attacked, I mean, I

32:30

am willing to, like, do it to a certain extent because

32:32

I know that I have to. Right? Because

32:35

unfortunately, the

32:37

progress of trans people is in

32:39

its still fairly early stages.

32:41

Mhmm. And and I

32:43

I hope you understand like how deeply

32:46

I know this in my bones. Because

32:48

when I think about the people who engage

32:50

me on Twitter, back

32:52

in the day, the ones who were

32:55

patient and showed me grace

32:57

when I displayed the kind of

33:00

absolutely horrible, cruel

33:03

behavior that I did.

33:06

It it honestly shocks me. So any

33:08

Yeah. I I just I completely understand that, and

33:10

I appreciate it. I do I mean, I some I do

33:12

sometimes worry that I'm, like, somewhat losing

33:14

my ability to be to

33:17

have that kind of, like, tranquil,

33:20

forgiving quality because

33:24

you can get worn down doing this for too

33:26

long. Sometimes

33:28

I I worry that I'm -- Mhmm. --

33:30

I guess, I

33:33

usually I sort of usually avoid these conversations

33:35

lately because I I honestly

33:37

kind of have gotten a bit burnt out on it, but

33:39

I do still feel this kind of you know,

33:42

why am I here? I think JK

33:45

Rowling, like, you

33:47

know, if she I

33:52

read all those books and I was, like, yeah,

33:55

there's there's so lingering emotional Like,

34:00

there's part of me that actually still cares. Sorry.

34:14

Does

34:15

it part of me that still cares what she thinks?

34:17

You know? Mhmm.

34:23

What would you wanna say to JK

34:26

Rowling?

34:31

I just kind of hope

34:33

she could try to see why

34:36

so many trans people are angry

34:38

and hurt by this and

34:42

I didn't realize that that means asking for

34:44

a second to, like, leave her

34:48

own position of feeling her

34:50

and threatened. That's

34:52

what she says that she wants to do. And

34:55

to me what doing that would look like would

34:57

be understanding

34:59

why people who

35:02

are sort of being constantly rejected and

35:04

humiliated by our families, by

35:07

the government who

35:09

are losing our access to healthcare or being

35:11

threatened with it. Who are

35:13

kind of just, like, fighting for a basic ability

35:15

to participate in society, like,

35:18

why we might feel hard and betrayed by

35:21

her sort of contributing to like

35:23

fear about

35:24

us. That's

35:26

I guess what I would say.

35:36

We'll

35:52

be right back.

36:15

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37:29

Hi there, listener. My name is Nelly Boles.

37:31

I'm a writer for the free press. Every

37:34

Friday, I published a column I called

37:36

TGIF, where I run

37:38

down the big and small news stories of

37:40

the week, while cracking jokes at my

37:42

own and others expense. Most

37:44

of my own. Anyways,

37:47

it's fun, but it's also informative.

37:49

And dare I say occasionally provocative,

37:53

At the Free Press, we publish investigative

37:56

stories, provocative opinion pieces,

37:58

and podcasts. Like this one. The

38:01

goal or at least my goal is

38:03

to surprise our readers and to follow

38:05

my curiosity. If you're curious,

38:08

if you're interested, Come on. You're interested.

38:10

Right? Come check us out and become

38:12

a subscriber today at

38:15

VFP dot com.

38:21

So

38:21

first of all, thank you so much for doing this.

38:24

Can you start by just telling me your

38:26

name and how old you

38:27

are? Yeah. My name is Noah,

38:30

and I'm seventeen as

38:32

of, like, two weeks

38:32

ago. Oh, amazing. That'd be birthday.

38:35

Thank you. A while

38:37

back, our team got an email from

38:39

a father in California. He'd

38:41

written to say that he was confused

38:43

and upset about j k Rowling, and

38:45

why she was speaking out about young people

38:48

medically transitioning. He

38:50

said that if we wanted to understand what

38:52

that experience is like, we should

38:54

talk to his teenage kid, Noah,

38:56

who is trans. And when we

38:58

sat down for the

38:59

interview, I was surprised to hear

39:01

that Noah already knew who I was.

39:03

It's exciting to meet you because part of my

39:06

whole gender journey was, you know, finding

39:08

resources on the Internet.

39:10

And I watched every

39:13

TED Talk about every remotely

39:15

queer subject that there

39:16

was, so I saw yours more than once

39:19

On YouTube, he'd seen a TED Talk

39:21

I gave back in twenty seventeen. In

39:26

my home, life was framed as an epic

39:28

spiritual battle between good and evil.

39:30

The good was my church and its

39:32

members, and the evil was everyone

39:34

else. Explaining how

39:36

and why I'd left the West Pro Baptist

39:38

Church. My friends on Twitter

39:40

didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles,

39:43

only their scorn. They

39:46

channeled their infinitely justifiable offense

39:49

and came to me with pointed questions tempered

39:52

with kindness and

39:53

humor. They approached

39:55

me as a human being. I watched it

39:57

and I I appreciate that

39:59

it was sort of a resource for developing critical

40:01

thinking. I guess, I like to think of myself

40:03

as someone who tries my hardest

40:06

to second guess myself in a positive

40:08

way. And I like to think maybe you helped with that.

40:11

Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters

40:13

of divine truth, but flawed human

40:15

beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise.

40:18

I couldn't justify our act.

40:19

So nice to meet you. Nice

40:22

to meet you too. That's amazing.

40:25

It felt serendipitous to meet Noah

40:27

because He not only shares my

40:29

commitment to investigating our beliefs,

40:31

but also, he is in many ways

40:34

the embodiment of one of Rowling's concerns.

40:37

A young person born female

40:40

who showed no signs of gender dysphoria

40:42

growing

40:43

up, but was overwhelmed with dysphoria

40:45

at puberty. And

40:47

within a few years had medically

40:49

transitioned, including getting

40:51

surgery as a minor.

40:53

Can you tell me how long have you gone by

40:55

Noah? I've gone by

40:57

Noah since the

41:00

summer of twenty eighteen. I

41:03

tried out the name Blake for like a month

41:06

but I've been going by a name that was not the one I

41:08

was assigned to birth since March of twenty

41:10

eighteen. March of twenty eighteen. And

41:12

so how old were you at that point then? I think

41:14

I was thirteen.

41:16

And how do you describe yourself

41:18

and your gender? I

41:22

think the the simplest way describe

41:24

myself as trans male, a trans masculine

41:27

person, which is a term for anyone

41:29

whose gender transition has led them

41:31

to a more masculine place than when they started.

41:34

And when did that start for you?

41:36

When did you start to feel different? My

41:38

therapist just said that it's very common for

41:42

trans people to only come to

41:44

the realization that they're trans in puberty, which

41:46

was the case for me. For a lot of my

41:48

childhood, it just didn't come up, which

41:50

my parents had a really hard time with because

41:53

the portrayal of transgender people,

41:55

the extent of what they had encountered is

41:58

It's like a four year old who

42:01

is a girl and then says, I wanna play with

42:03

trucks. I hate trucks. I won't wear one, etcetera.

42:05

And then they get older and they have the words to articulate

42:07

their feelings and everyone realizes,

42:10

oh, you were transgender and we only wall along and

42:12

nobody's caught off guard, but that wasn't

42:14

my story. I have a

42:16

feminine interests and I had feminine interests

42:19

growing up and it wasn't until

42:21

I was ten or eleven. That I started

42:23

being uncomfortable with my body. When I started

42:26

developing a more feminine body, I knew I

42:28

was uncomfortable. And then when I was

42:30

in middle school, I started

42:33

discovering portions of the Internet

42:35

where people would talk about queer identity issues.

42:38

What specifically were you looking at? My

42:40

sort of gateway was BuzzFeed because

42:43

they have a ton of viral content. Dear

42:46

BuzzFeed. When I was four, I just thought

42:48

I was like any other boy. As I grew a

42:50

little older, I started realizing I was different.

42:53

Jamie Dodger, whose

42:56

video it was titled Dear BuzzFeed or

42:58

something similar. I tried to fit in his female

43:00

during my early teens. I could never

43:02

find clothes I liked, felt uncomfortable on anything

43:04

I wore and disliked my hair being long. I

43:07

must have watched that twenty times.

43:10

The day I started testosterone was incredibly

43:12

exciting. My dad picked up my prescription

43:14

for me and it was sitting waiting for me when I got home

43:16

from college. From

43:19

BuzzFeed, I started doing my own research.

43:21

When I was eleven, I used

43:24

to just rewatch videos over

43:26

and over of trans men documenting

43:28

their journeys online, and even before I understood

43:30

why, I was fascinated with that content.

43:33

That's just all I would do is just rewatch

43:35

videos like

43:35

that. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to my

43:37

channel. Today, I'm gonna be giving y'all

43:40

some of my most effective

43:42

for you hacks tips to get over

43:45

this for you. I'd like to recommend that everybody

43:47

document their transition. Having before

43:49

pictures and videos and recordings

43:51

of your voice that you can look back on

43:53

later in your transition will end

43:55

up being so

43:57

meaningful. It's made a big difference

43:59

in my A lot of my exploration. None

44:02

of it was you should be trans.

44:04

It was just this is my journey.

44:07

I really liked it when people called me a tomboy.

44:09

I liked it when I fit in with was

44:11

more than the girls around me. This

44:13

is what I just I want to tell the world

44:16

about my journey and about the community at large.

44:18

Today, I'm going to be going over

44:21

my one month post op top

44:23

surgery kind of a general

44:25

overview. And I

44:27

took all of that information in and

44:30

I came to the conclusion, I should

44:32

allow myself to explore who I am and

44:35

trying use that as an avenue to find happiness.

44:38

And something that had a really, really significant

44:40

impact on me was people who portrayed

44:43

a trans body in whatever forms

44:45

that came in as beautiful or

44:47

normal, which taught

44:50

me that there is hope for me to be happy

44:52

and that I can

44:55

allow myself to feel

44:57

joy or find some joy in how I look.

45:00

And were you seeing a therapist

45:02

or a counselor at that

45:03

time? Like, when all of this started?

45:06

I had a lot of

45:08

mental issues Maybe that's not the

45:10

most delicate way to say that, but I was dealing with a lot

45:12

of mental struggles once

45:15

puberty began. You mean aside

45:17

from your issues with gender?

45:19

Yeah. And I couldn't really identify that

45:21

I had issues with gender. I just had all of these

45:24

abstract feelings that didn't coalesced into

45:26

gender dysphoria until I understood

45:28

what that term meant fully, which was later

45:30

on in my life. And so I was dealing with

45:32

a very severe anxiety disorder a depressive

45:35

disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder,

45:37

and attention deficit, hyperactive

45:40

disorder. And so my mom got

45:42

me a therapist who I've been with ever

45:44

since. And when she picked out that

45:46

therapist, she picked out someone who specialized in

45:50

anxiety and gender issues and adolescence,

45:52

which find interesting to look back on.

45:54

And I had a

45:56

psychiatrist as well And

45:59

around eighth grade, I went into this really severe

46:01

depressive episode, and I ended up

46:04

telling my psychiatrist that I was debating

46:06

suicide, and so everyone decided that we

46:08

were gonna have to, like, keep an eye on me.

46:10

And so I just kept

46:12

going to therapy, And like

46:14

I said, the core issue, which we couldn't figure

46:17

out, was never resolved. And

46:19

I believe within a year,

46:21

I joined a support group for

46:24

transgender youth, and

46:26

my therapist helped

46:28

me identify that a lot of what I had been expressing

46:30

to her for a really long time could

46:33

be identified as feelings

46:35

of gender dysphoria and after

46:39

at least a year and a half or two years

46:41

of those issues being present, she

46:44

referred me to a gender clinician. And

46:47

talking to my parents was the first big

46:50

step that was taken. We identified what

46:52

I wanted from the gender clinic,

46:54

which was to go on testosterone

46:57

and to get top surgery, but that couldn't

46:59

happen partially because I was too

47:01

young. I believe the limit was sixteen for

47:03

surgery and they just weren't comfortable. At

47:06

fourteen. So my our

47:09

task that we got was for me to discuss my gender

47:11

with my parents. And so

47:13

once or twice a week for a long time,

47:16

at least a year, my parents would

47:18

sit down with me and we would have a long talk about

47:20

how I was feeling. Because it had to become

47:22

very clear that not only was

47:25

my gender dysphoria spawning

47:27

all of the other mental issues I was having,

47:30

but that this solution was

47:32

medical intervention, and that was

47:35

seemingly the only thing that could help me because

47:37

we had tried pretty much every other

47:39

option at that point. And

47:41

how did your parents react when you first

47:43

told them that you wanted a transition? They

47:45

had both been watching me struggle for a really

47:48

long time. And my dad in particular

47:50

just really wanted to help me improve

47:53

and help me do better and help me become healthy,

47:56

but it was very intense for them.

47:58

It was very intimidating. They

48:00

were pretty caught off guard. Like,

48:02

they raised me. There wasn't any

48:05

very intense masculine leanings. And

48:07

when I brought it up, they were really surprised. So

48:10

it took a lot for them to even be

48:12

on with me not being a a girl, and

48:14

I think they're still struggling with that to an

48:16

extent, which is understandable. And

48:18

I can empathize with where they're coming from on

48:20

that, of course. And I've done my best

48:22

empathize with every possible

48:25

point of view that this situation involves.

48:28

They did not really want me medically transitioning.

48:30

They It took a very long time and it

48:32

took like three or four

48:34

or maybe even five medical professionals saying

48:37

to

48:37

them, we have been observing your child

48:39

for a long time, and we believe this is the right

48:41

step for them, for my parents to be on board.

48:44

And and can you talk about what

48:46

specifically made them uncomfortable? Like, what

48:49

were their concerns about I

48:51

mean, it sounds like you're saying in part that

48:53

they just couldn't envision you as anything

48:55

other than a

48:55

girl. But were there other concerns

48:58

that they had that they expressed to you?

49:00

I think a lot of it was

49:02

that they understandably had

49:05

this certain ideas in their head of

49:07

who I was going to become, things

49:09

like one day, your dad will walk you

49:11

down the aisle, towards a bride

49:13

or groom that didn't matter that to them as much,

49:16

but they pictured me

49:18

in a gown and they pictured being

49:20

in the operating room as I gave birth to my child

49:22

and they had all these specific ideas

49:25

and dreams and goals and hopes

49:27

for me. So lot of it was there

49:29

expectations for me and how

49:32

they saw me developing. But

49:34

would argue the majority

49:37

of their concern was to

49:40

quote Abigail Schrier that I was doing irreversible

49:42

damage to myself, that I was

49:44

making a choice, that it was incredibly drastic,

49:47

that I could not make because I

49:49

was a minor and that I would regret

49:51

and have to reverse later in my life, all

49:54

of which are very, very valid concerns.

49:57

And I took them all very seriously as

49:59

did all the other adults and medical

50:01

professionals in that environment. And

50:04

another issue that was raised

50:06

by my dad was he

50:09

has transgender friends

50:11

and he

50:13

has encountered a lot of transgender people who

50:16

don't pass or who it's clear that they're

50:18

transgender. And he

50:20

felt that I would be discriminated against or I

50:22

would never fit into the beauty standard or

50:24

that I would both of my parents expressed

50:27

concern that I would have a harder time living

50:29

my life if I was a transgender person

50:31

in terms of finding love

50:34

getting married and having children and

50:36

how people would react to me and

50:38

feeling like an outside of my entire life.

50:41

They had a lot of concerns with my

50:43

quality of life would decrease even if

50:45

I made the right choice by

50:47

transitioning. So

50:50

Even with all of your parents concerns, what

50:53

made you and eventually them

50:56

feel safe in moving forward with medical

50:58

transition? To me, what's important

51:00

is that I had a team of medical professionals

51:03

who had done this and who could help me

51:05

make the right decision. And

51:07

help guide me. And I felt convicted

51:10

of things in my life, but I've never felt

51:12

as convicted as I have about

51:16

my identity in terms of knowing

51:18

what would make me more comfortable, which was medical

51:20

intervention. And as

51:22

convicted as I was about that, which was

51:25

one hundred percent. I

51:27

don't know if I would have let myself

51:30

make that decision. Had I not had

51:33

help from a support network, who

51:36

did not just blindly say yes to

51:38

everything I was telling them, who asked me

51:40

more questions, who guided

51:43

me in a way that wasn't just everything

51:46

sounds right. You've checked off all the boxes. Let's

51:48

move you to the next stage of your transition. It

51:50

was a very thoughtful,

51:53

serious process as

51:56

I believe it should be for everybody.

51:59

You know, as you're doing all that research

52:01

and thinking things through, did

52:03

you read or see stories

52:05

about dtransitioners during that time?

52:09

Yeah. I definitely did.

52:11

I think it was a

52:13

concern for me in some ways.

52:16

It was a concern for me because the

52:19

idea of detransitioning was scary to me

52:21

because I know I feel this way now

52:24

if other people have also felt this way and transitioned.

52:27

They must have just woken up one day and felt

52:29

a completely different way. And

52:31

I don't wanna dismiss the transition as

52:33

an issue because not

52:36

exploring it is risky

52:38

and it's important to talk about because

52:40

just as much as I feel transition is liberating

52:43

I don't want it to become limiting for

52:45

anybody. You don't want someone to do it?

52:47

Yeah. Who won't really benefit from it? Exactly.

52:49

I want everyone who will benefit from it to

52:51

do it. Everyone who won't not which is

52:53

a hot take, I think. I'm revolutionary

52:56

in that way. Mhmm.

52:58

But I thank you for laughing

53:00

at that.

53:03

Well,

53:03

I mean, like, you're right, though. Like, that -- Yeah. --

53:05

this

53:05

topic obviously elicits a lot

53:07

of really, really strong feelings.

53:09

And and people have sometimes a really hard

53:11

time talking about it with Nuance

53:14

because the stakes feel extremely

53:16

high.

53:17

Yeah, I completely agree. And I

53:19

I think one of the reasons I'm excited to be talking

53:21

about this is I think it's so important to

53:24

emphasize that

53:26

everybody comes into this issue with

53:29

a core belief that people should

53:32

be happy. And a lot of the people

53:35

who are anti trans not

53:37

all of them for sure a lot of them are

53:39

grifting, but a lot of them

53:42

come at it from the perspective of not wanting

53:44

other people make irreversible mistake

53:47

and do irreversible

53:48

damage. And I

53:51

think it's really important to note

53:53

that I take all that really seriously and

53:55

I'm coming from the exact same place.

53:57

Of wanting to mitigate irreversible

53:59

damage. Mhmm. Part of what J.

54:01

K. Rowling says in her essay, she

54:03

lists all these things that are common among

54:06

people, my age who transition

54:09

from female to male, and it's like anxiety,

54:11

association, all of these

54:13

different things that are very common in transgender

54:15

people. But she is interpreting

54:18

those real facts as these

54:21

children are misinterpreting their difficult

54:23

feelings. As being on account of gender

54:26

dysphoria. And I

54:28

think what's crucial is that I

54:31

was not the only person making these decisions

54:33

for myself. I expressed how

54:35

I was feeling to adults

54:38

and to professionals, and they

54:41

came to medical conclusions. The

54:43

same way you would about go undergoing

54:46

any sort of medical procedure? Mhmm.

54:49

Okay.

54:49

So you know, a lot of people

54:51

like to break with social norms like, you know, women

54:54

who shave their heads or guys who wear

54:56

eyeliner. And I just

54:58

wanna understand what

55:00

was different about your what you were

55:02

experiencing? Can you can you talk

55:04

about that little bit more?

55:05

That's a good question. That's a question my parents

55:07

had too. For me, what was

55:10

different between my experience and

55:12

maybe just a masculine woman's experience

55:14

is that I didn't feel I could

55:16

continue living happily or

55:18

living sustainably at all

55:20

unless I was living the

55:22

life of a a man as opposed to

55:24

a masculine person. When I

55:27

was being perceived as a woman, it was

55:29

incredibly distressing to me. It

55:31

just became incredibly important and a sort

55:33

of psychological need that I'd

55:35

be seen and referred to and

55:37

live my life the

55:39

way that a a man would. It was

55:42

also so severe for me that medical

55:44

and intervention

55:45

had to be taken from my own well-being?

55:49

Mhmm. Okay.

55:51

So I just wanna stick here for

55:53

one more minute because I really

55:55

wanna understand your experience and to help

55:58

other people understand it. And

56:00

I think one way to do that is to

56:02

compare it to an experience that's I

56:04

think pretty common and then

56:07

to see where yours diverges from that.

56:09

So I remember being seven

56:12

years old and there was a curl

56:14

in my glass who was experiencing, you know,

56:16

what I now know is called precocious puberty.

56:18

So she started her period. And

56:21

I didn't know what that meant. So I went home and

56:23

asked my mom and she pulls out this book. I'd seen

56:25

the book before and she starts showing

56:27

me illustrations of uteruses and

56:29

ovaries and fallopian

56:30

And I last about ninety

56:33

seconds before I was just so disgusted.

56:35

But I was just putting it away.

56:38

And she laughed at me and kind of we went

56:40

on. But you

56:42

know, as a kid, I just remember being

56:44

angry and offended and upset

56:47

when I found out that childbirth was painful.

56:49

I was like disgusted and embarrassed

56:52

you know, by bras and

56:54

breasts and periods and basically

56:56

anything that distinguish me from boys.

56:58

Like, it just seemed to me that boys had

57:01

it easy. And I just wanted nothing

57:03

to do with femaleness. And

57:06

I guess my question is, you know, is

57:08

that discussed and discomfort

57:10

that I felt that kind of alienation from

57:13

my body and from the role

57:15

that I understood I was supposed to occupy

57:17

in life. Is that similar to

57:19

what you felt? And do you think that maybe

57:21

the magnitude of it was just more extreme in

57:24

your

57:24

case? Or what do you think are

57:26

the biggest differences between what

57:28

I described and what you went through?

57:32

That's interesting. I think my experience was

57:35

different in ways that I hadn't

57:37

thought about because I hadn't had someone, you know,

57:40

expressed to me that question

57:42

formatted that way. But think for me,

57:45

I sort of was excited for puberty

57:47

and then I thought it would be an escape

57:49

where I would finally get to a place, where I was

57:51

comfortable, and I

57:54

could fit into a role. Like, I

57:56

always didn't really feel like I fit

57:58

in places. And so I thought,

58:00

well, puberty, I can't wait to turn into a

58:02

woman. I can't wait to grow breasts

58:04

and begin my period and everything because

58:06

then I'll finally feel like,

58:09

I am belonging to

58:11

the female gender for the first time. And then I'll

58:13

I'll everything will click into place.

58:15

And I was really excited and then, you

58:17

know, things started developing and I remember telling

58:20

my mom, I don't like it, but I'm sure

58:22

I will, like, they're just it's just because don't like

58:24

that they're small. When when my breasts are bigger, then

58:26

I'll be happy. And then they got bigger and I was

58:28

less happy. And so I

58:30

guess I really was looking

58:32

forward to puberty because

58:34

I thought it would be a gateway

58:37

to feeling acceptance and finally feeling

58:39

at home in my body. And

58:41

then the opposite happened and

58:44

part of me leaned in and part of me was leaning

58:46

out and it took a

58:49

lot of daily discomfort and

58:53

a certain amount of self loathing to

58:55

get to a place where

58:57

I understood that

58:59

what I wanted was to

59:02

be a masculine person, and then I think it didn't

59:04

click until I had experimented with

59:06

masculinity. At the start of my

59:09

gender journey, you could say, when

59:11

I was just using different pronouns and

59:14

different name, it made a huge impact

59:16

to how I felt and I was finally feeling

59:19

more like myself. So I guess the difference

59:21

between me and maybe

59:24

another person going through feminine puberty

59:26

who was leaning in masculine direction is

59:29

that I leaned so far into that masculine

59:31

direction and only

59:33

found that I was finally happy and secure

59:36

once I had gone all the way from female

59:38

to male, and any in between

59:40

zone, any masculine womanhood

59:43

or anything like

59:44

that, was unsatisfying and I was

59:46

still unhappy. Does

59:48

that make sense? Yeah, it does.

59:51

Can I ask, how old were you when you

59:53

got top surgery?

59:55

I got top surgery three months

59:57

ago tomorrow. And so you were sixteen?

1:00:00

I was. And what do you think

1:00:02

would have happened if you'd had to wait until

1:00:04

you were at least eighteen to

1:00:06

make these

1:00:07

decisions. I've thought about

1:00:09

that a lot and

1:00:12

I think if I hadn't and

1:00:15

again, this is very severe language.

1:00:17

If I hadn't killed myself, I would have at least tried.

1:00:19

And I

1:00:22

have dealt with self harm and stuff like that. And

1:00:24

it's just I was dealing with emotional problems,

1:00:27

but not being I'm dealing with a lot of them

1:00:29

now like, transitioning didn't

1:00:31

share any of my disorders, but it made

1:00:33

everything so much easier. And

1:00:36

it was just sort of this pit

1:00:38

that dragged me down into a place where

1:00:40

I felt so hopeless and so

1:00:42

miserable and part of my journey

1:00:44

with self mutilation was that I

1:00:47

hated my body and I wanted to punish

1:00:49

my body because it was causing me so

1:00:51

much pain and I

1:00:53

wanted to, like, crawl out of my skin, but

1:00:55

I couldn't do that. And it

1:00:58

was, at times, genuinely agonizing,

1:01:00

and it was difficult having

1:01:02

to square my reality of

1:01:04

living what was sometimes an agonizing

1:01:07

life experience with also understanding

1:01:10

that I am sixteen, fifteen,

1:01:12

fourteen, when I'm going through all this, as

1:01:14

so many of the teenagers have felt miserable

1:01:17

and then grown up and and they've been

1:01:19

fine. But for me, it was just

1:01:21

a deep need that I just felt so

1:01:24

miserable in my body that

1:01:26

couldn't bear to be alive in the body

1:01:28

I was in. I personally believe

1:01:31

that I, if I had had to wait longer, would

1:01:33

have attempted suicide, and I might have

1:01:35

been successful. And I was experiencing

1:01:37

all that while I had friends who were calling

1:01:39

me the right name. And it was

1:01:41

sort of a constant state of crisis and

1:01:43

that was sort of the hardest part was I understood

1:01:46

the reality, and I understood that I it's

1:01:48

not as much as I know

1:01:50

what I'm feeling is real. I also

1:01:52

know I can't expect my

1:01:54

parents to hear that and go great. Let's just

1:01:57

let's just have you undergo surgery right

1:02:00

away. It had to be a long process because

1:02:02

that's how you do

1:02:04

everything safely, but it was agonizing

1:02:06

to get to that point. And so I think

1:02:08

there needs to be a balance. I

1:02:10

don't think that a teenager. think there are a lot

1:02:12

of teenagers who commit who

1:02:14

attempt suicide or commit suicide, who

1:02:17

maybe think that transitioning is the answer for them

1:02:19

and it isn't. And if they had

1:02:21

sent to their parents, have to transition or

1:02:23

I'll commit suicide, they might have made the wrong decision.

1:02:26

But for me, it was the right decision

1:02:28

and I knew that and

1:02:30

doctors knew that and

1:02:33

It was just it was what I needed to feel like

1:02:35

I could stand to wake up

1:02:37

in the mornings. Mhmm.

1:02:41

Thank you so much for sharing

1:02:43

that with me.

1:02:45

Before you go --

1:02:46

Mhmm. --

1:02:47

did wanna make sure to ask you about JK

1:02:49

Rowling and Harry Potter and how

1:02:51

you feel about all of that now.

1:02:55

I can let me share with you some of my accolades

1:02:57

I've read the books four times. I

1:03:00

know what house I'm in. I know it wand. I

1:03:02

have I brought my Harry

1:03:04

Potter wand that I made out of hot glue and a chop

1:03:06

stick -- Mhmm. -- to prove that I have stake

1:03:08

in this conversation. I mean that when I was,

1:03:11

like, seven. I'm

1:03:13

a Gryffindor. I have a Gryffindor

1:03:15

letterman jacket in my closet that I wore

1:03:17

even way past when it was remotely cool

1:03:20

or interesting for me to do

1:03:22

that. I I

1:03:24

have my my golden snitch right

1:03:26

here. I'm such a big Harry

1:03:29

Potter fan or I was such a big Harry Potter fan.

1:03:31

Especially because it was so

1:03:33

hard to be in the real world. I

1:03:35

can't even state how important it was to me.

1:03:38

Shake your rallying. I stole her

1:03:40

biography from my third

1:03:42

grade classroom and I kept it for a long

1:03:44

time because I just loved reading it because I just

1:03:46

admired her so much. And some

1:03:48

part of her has shaped who I am and gotten

1:03:50

me through so much and her

1:03:53

work is so important to me now

1:03:55

in so many ways And

1:03:58

she just really taught me to believe

1:04:00

in beauty. I'm really going on about Jacob Rollins

1:04:02

and Harry Potter, but they it just dominated

1:04:04

my life for a really long time. And

1:04:07

so,

1:04:08

what

1:04:08

do you think now about JK Rowling?

1:04:11

Like, how do you understand the things that she's

1:04:13

been saying about sex and gender? And

1:04:16

I guess, where do you think you agree

1:04:18

and

1:04:18

disagree? Do you think?

1:04:21

That's a very, very good question. I

1:04:24

am almost positive and maybe this

1:04:27

is a child like thing for me to say that if

1:04:29

I sat down with J. K. Rowling, we would

1:04:31

have a great time talking and

1:04:33

we would get along and she would say things

1:04:36

that I would cherish for the rest of my life coming from

1:04:38

my childhood hero who was one

1:04:40

of the youngest billionaires of all time and then

1:04:42

lost that title because she gave so much a bit away.

1:04:44

Mhmm. Oh, god. I just I've adored her

1:04:46

for so much of my life. And I'm

1:04:48

sure I would cry if I ever met her. And

1:04:51

I believe she believes a lot of the same things

1:04:53

that I do, and I think a lot of what the

1:04:55

issue has become is that a

1:04:57

lot of what she has said is not big a tree

1:04:59

in the way that bigotry

1:05:02

is portrayed sometimes in that

1:05:04

to my knowledge, I strongly believe she has never

1:05:06

said anything like, I'm better than

1:05:08

trans people or trans people are this negative

1:05:10

thing, this thing, this negative thing. But

1:05:13

I think that there was bigotry

1:05:16

veiled in what she was saying or

1:05:18

that thing she was saying were reminiscent of

1:05:21

bigoted ideas. And

1:05:24

she expressed what our very

1:05:26

reasonable emotions to

1:05:29

a platform where they became interpreted

1:05:32

as facts or used to to support

1:05:35

opinions that are bigoted or untrue

1:05:37

or harmful. And I I guess

1:05:39

the issue is, I

1:05:43

I feel that she came from

1:05:45

a reasonable place, but I

1:05:48

think she is contributing to the

1:05:50

idea that trans people and trans

1:05:52

activists

1:05:53

are irrational or they're harming

1:05:55

children because she is overstating. A

1:05:59

lot of what she has said is a very real account

1:06:01

of what she's gone through and what's inside to her end, what she's

1:06:03

encountered. But because she's sharing

1:06:06

the story of a cisgender woman who experienced

1:06:09

a predominant amount of backlash from trans people.

1:06:11

The story that gets shared to an

1:06:14

unfathomably large audience is

1:06:16

one, where trans people

1:06:18

are the bad guys because in her

1:06:20

story, I guess it's fair to say

1:06:22

that they were and that's dangerous,

1:06:24

I think. So it's more

1:06:26

like it's not what she said. It's what

1:06:28

some people can interpret or take away

1:06:30

from what she said. Yes.

1:06:32

Mhmm. Is

1:06:35

there anything that you would like to say to JK

1:06:37

Rowling? don't

1:06:41

know. Definitely thank you.

1:06:43

For changing

1:06:46

my life. I have

1:06:48

a lot of hope for

1:06:50

her and maybe

1:06:53

naively a lot of faith in

1:06:55

her and I

1:06:58

just what I would like

1:07:00

to see is just I want

1:07:04

I want to look back on this in ten

1:07:06

years and be like remember when everyone

1:07:08

thought that J. K. Rowling was transphobic and

1:07:10

then there was that big dialogue where

1:07:12

she, like, I don't know, something something,

1:07:15

said something and didn't abandon her original concerns,

1:07:17

but and I don't know how possible that is. But

1:07:20

I guess I wanna say I hope that this is

1:07:22

a blip on her legacy and

1:07:24

a point in the timeline

1:07:27

of trans liberation

1:07:28

that's sort of coincided. And I guess

1:07:30

I just

1:07:32

I I want people to be able to identify her

1:07:34

as having good intentions. I

1:07:36

want that to be what we come away with, but

1:07:38

that's just my hope, is that

1:07:42

we look at her as a

1:07:44

well meaning

1:07:45

positive figure and not

1:07:48

evil or

1:07:51

or vulgar one.

1:07:52

Over all the point.

1:07:58

Noah, thank you so much for your time.

1:08:00

You have been so generous. And and again, I'm

1:08:02

just incredibly impressed with the kind of

1:08:05

thoughtful nuanced positioned

1:08:08

that you have taken. So thank

1:08:10

you again for sharing that with us. Thank you

1:08:12

very

1:08:12

much. Thank you for having me.

1:08:23

As a fan who's been there from the beginning,

1:08:25

like, what is it you'd like to say to her on this?

1:08:28

Wow. That's a really powerful question.

1:08:30

I would say to her that She's

1:08:33

just wrong.

1:08:35

What would you wanna say to her? I

1:08:37

would say, I know

1:08:39

you have a lot of strongly held

1:08:41

beliefs. And I

1:08:44

I just would like you to listen to us

1:08:46

a little more and hear

1:08:48

hear what we're saying.

1:08:50

What would you say to her if she were listening? It's

1:08:53

just Yeah.

1:08:56

Why?

1:09:14

On my second trip to Scotland, to

1:09:16

again sit down and talk with JK Rowling.

1:09:19

I wanted to give her the chance to answer

1:09:21

some of the hard questions posed by her

1:09:23

critics to hear what she makes of

1:09:25

them. And to ask her

1:09:28

essentially the same question

1:09:30

I am always asking myself. What

1:09:33

if you're wrong?

1:09:38

More next time.

1:09:57

You've been listening to the witch trials

1:09:59

of JK Rowling. Brought to

1:10:01

you by the Free Press and produced

1:10:03

by Andy Mills, Matthew Bowl

1:10:06

and me, Meghan Pulpstropper. This

1:10:08

week, with invaluable production support

1:10:11

from Candice Mattel Khan. Our

1:10:14

sincere thanks to you for listening, and

1:10:16

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1:10:18

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1:10:20

you can send us an email over at

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