Podcast #252: Trans Rights, Israel, and the Progressive Circus

Introduction: My guest this week is Brianna Wu. Brianna is a software developer and Democratic political operative. I invited her onto the podcast for two reasons. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7th October, she has been a voice of reason on the left, pushing back against the anti-Zionist and increasingly antisemitic rhetoric among American progressive activists in particular.

In addition, she takes a measured and moderate stance on trans issues, advocating for trans people’s dignity and access to healthcare in the US, and yet happy to stand up for the rights of those who are born women and willing to confront scientific reality head on. I have found her a sensible, nuanced commentator on both these topics, and those are the subjects we’ll be covering today.

The easiest way to stay abreast of Brianna’s work is to follow her on Twitter, @BriannaWu.

Iona Italia: So Brianna, I want to start by talking to you about trans issues...

Brianna Wu Oh my goodness. We’re going straight to the trauma. We’re just leaping right in. Let’s get to it.

II: Can we do that? Is that OK?

BW: I love trauma. That’s why I have a Twitter account. Let’s do it.

II: And then I think I’d like to talk to you later about the impact on your views of the 7th of October, but I have just been watching your video that you recently posted, which is called, “Is Brianna Wu Trans”? And I will post that in the show notes and direct people to that. I thought it was a very powerful video and I was particularly struck by something you said towards the end of the video. I’m going to just slightly elide some parts of the quotation, but basically, you say,

There’s no one that understands what a surgically hacked-together Target knockoff version of womanhood I am better than I do. I don’t need you to tell it to me all the time. As incomplete and painful as this feels, it’s the best life I’m ever going to have. I don’t know if I’m actually a woman, but I’m really, really certain that I can’t function in life as a man.

I thought that was an extraordinarily powerful statement.

BW: You make me tear up just reading it back to me.

II: Oh sorry! I also teared up when I was watching the video.

BW: Really, why? What affected you about it?

II: I think it’s the courage to view things head-on as they are, which is not to say that when I’m looking at you or interacting with you, it’s uppermost in my mind that you’re a Target knockoff version of womanhood or anything like that. It’s more that I feel that at the heart of the problem with trans rights activism is that many people are fixated on the idea that they need to try to force people to see them as they see themselves. While I’m sympathetic to some trans rights issues, I’ve become less sympathetic over the years, actually not more, unfortunately, and we’ll talk about why. I think you will agree with me on the reasons. But the fundamental problem is that in most forms of activism, you have a concrete goal that people could just achieve, something that you specifically want socially, that you want as policy, that you want to happen. And in the case of the trans rights lobby, what I’m seeing from many people—not from you, but from many people—is simply a demand that people see them in the way they want to be seen. And that is an impossible demand. You can’t control how other people see you.

BW: I think something that has really changed with trans people, from my generation—because I transitioned 20 years ago—with this group today is … I don’t mean to sound like a Republican here, but we used to feel that if you were failing to pass, there was some agency involved on your part. If you’re looking at me right now, I’ve had a lot of FFS, which was very painful and expensive. Insurance didn’t help me with that. I paid for every bit of it myself by working and my hair is long …

II: Sorry, could you say what FFS is? I know what it is, but other people might think...

BW: Sure. Sorry, of course. FFS is facial feminisation surgery. So basically having your face taken apart and the markers from testosterone sanded down and weaned away to make you look more feminine. The jaw stuff particularly is extremely painful to get through, so I don’t recommend that if you don’t really have to do that.

But what I’m saying is: for my generation, one of the very first things we did was learn to voice train. There was just more of a sense that we were responsible if people saw us as a woman or not.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you I am perfect at any of this. I’m not. But I can tell you as I go about my day, it just doesn’t come up. I mean, I’m married to a heterosexual guy. I’ve managed to do things that make the gender dysphoria not a major part of my life. The only time it comes up is when I’m online.

I think something has really changed for activists today. They have this phrase, “trans women are women.” I hate this phrase so much. I think it is so emblematic of how progressives can have good intentions but can set people up for failure. The truth is some trans women, if you’re lucky enough genetically and with some work, you can function socially as well. But that requires work on your part. I think it’s so counterproductive to declare the mission accomplished before you’ve even started it, if that makes sense to you.

II: I can tell that you are trans, but my brain is not screaming at me, “This is a man.” So I have no issue seeing and treating you as a woman. The main feeling I have is that I’m talking to another woman and therefore it’s intuitive and easy to use feminine pronouns. If I were introducing you to someone, I would say, “Brianna Wu. She is a political campaigner.” I think that it’s very different from someone showing up looking not even as feminine as a very obvious crossdresser or drag queen, still with a beard, and saying, “My pronouns are she/her. You need to treat me as a woman, regard me as a woman.” I find that very difficult. And I’m also concerned about the implications of that. If there is no gatekeeping to female identity, then there are clearly a lot of edge cases, but nevertheless important cases in which that’s going to be a problem: in women’s professional sports and women’s prisons, etc.

BW: If trans Twitter sees this, they’re going to get really angry at me, but it’s the truth. This is just the truth. Honey, if you’re out there and you’re a trans person, and you don’t understand why cis women need to feel safe when they’re using the bathroom or going to the gym, or if you don’t understand why they might want their sports to be safe for them, you don’t understand that you’re not a woman. You’ve not been socialised. You don’t understand some really basic stuff. And until you get that socialisation, and you can talk to someone about this, there’s other stuff in your life that’s going to be failing along with this. This is a trend I think we’re going to come to repeatedly in this conversation where you and I want the same policy, but we’re coming at it from different ways.

I want gatekeeping for trans people because I think it sets them up for success. And I think there’s a policy in place that if someone is legitimately medically transitioning and they need to use the bathroom that we can assume some good intentions there because we’ve got a system in place to keep all the fetishistic cross dressers [out] and make sure that someone didn’t just exploit a loophole to go into a women’s locker room, because they have a fetish about showing people their penis—something that actually happened in California.

17-year-old scolded for crying over transgender woman’s penis at YMCA

A California teen cried as she recalled seeing “a naked man” in her local YMCA, telling the city council in her San Diego suburb she’d been traumatized by the experience with the …

New York PostDana Kennedy

I think all this stuff was entirely non-controversial 10 years ago. It is the crazy trans activists that have taken us to a place where normal people just won’t go with us, if that makes sense.

II: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. I think, in particular if you’re transitioning male to female or have transitioned male to female, there is an obligation to demonstrate good faith. I think that it’s not an identity that can just be bestowed upon you because you ask for it.

BW: No!

II: I think there’s got to be some meeting halfway or at least part of the way. I accept that there are people who … there are certainly some trans women who I very much respect who really don’t pass and are not going to pass and who transitioned later in life. I’m happy to not have some subjective standard where I say, “At this point of femininity, I’m going to accept you and if you look more masculine than this, I’m not going to accept you. You have to look like Blaire White to join the club.” I think that that would be wrong. But what I do want to see is some good faith effort.

BW: Yeah. And the thing is: this is where the politics can’t fix your gender dysphoria. If you’re out there in the real world and you’re getting misgendered all the time, this is feedback. You cannot insist that you are the thing and then be the thing. The feedback that you’re getting out there in the real world is what people are calling you.

I do agree with you that there are some people that have a very hard path because testosterone is such a powerful drug that it’s going to be very difficult for them. But that just makes the process of socialisation really important. I really hope we can talk about this for a second. It really scares me with these younger trans women how they literally don’t have any non-trans girlfriends. I don’t know how you’re going to learn stuff like how does communication in all-female groups go. There’s a protocol involved that a man would really stand out in. To me, the entire point of transition is to go out there and live your life. I’m really incredibly concerned at the number of younger trans girls that don’t seem to have any interest in that.  

And just one more thing on this: when I transitioned 20 years ago, one of the things the NHS really tried to do in Britain is they would actually not give you a GRS—which is the downstairs surgery, which I won’t go into because I’m polite—but they would not give you GRS until you had lived for a year as a woman and you were employable as a woman. You’d demonstrated an ability to function in society, either going to school or having a job. I am really, really, really worried by the number of trans people I see that don’t seem to have any job except for hanging out on 4chan. Why are you transitioning? What is the point here?

II: Listening to you and watching your video: in your own case—and I have also encountered or heard about other cases like yours and listened to similar narratives—for you personally, for example, you knew from an early age, and you personally would clearly have benefited from taking puberty blockers in childhood, not going through male puberty. You would probably have had to have less surgery. I mean, your jaw is less square than mine is now. I have quite a square face actually. It looks pretty good. But you would have had to go through far less anguish. It would have been easier to pass more completely. And you also went through a period of enormous psychological anguish. The very difficult thing is that, while I would like puberty blockers to be given to children like the child that you were, I also think it’s impossible to tell in advance which children those will be. So I’m against puberty blockers for children. And there do seem to be some fundamental issues that can’t be solved socially or politically, that require a biotechnological solution. That’s one of them. Maybe at some point in the future, we may have a better way of diagnosing, but at the moment there is too high a risk of desistance and regret later and we can’t conduct elective life-changing surgeries on children.

BW: Can we go through this one at a time? Because I think we’re going to agree on some stuff here. If you look at the bulk of children that are desisting, the bulk of them are female to male. That is the overwhelming majority of those cases. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen the other way, but it’s biological girls that are learning this is not a good fit for them. Now, I wasn’t lucky like you to get through like a normal cis girl childhood. But as best as I can tell from every girlfriend I’ve ever had, and then us talking about this stuff, it seems really traumatic. The stories of being 16, having creepy old men sexualise you, or not feeling like you … As bad as it was for my generation, with Instagram I can’t imagine what these girls are feeling about their own bodies nowadays.

What I would say is two things. As far as the FTMs that are that problem over there,  testosterone is such a powerful drug I think I am open to the idea of pausing over there because there’s not really a big difference for them if they do it at 15 or 18, right? Testosterone is going to work its magic. So that’s over there. I think for the FTMs, this is where I’m really, really extremely angry at trans activists because they have lowered the bar, and they have lowered the bar, and they’ve muddied every part of the science, and they’ve made it impossible to have a really long discussion of what constitutes gender dysphoria.

My local Facebook group just this week, [an] LGBT Facebook group from my town, has a very young child that came to their mother asking if they were a they/them because they’ve read a book and they’re starting to have these questions. I’m actually really unsure that this political project to tell kids they can be whatever gender they want is helpful because … You listened to my story. Do you think I needed anyone to tell me I was a girl after listening to that story? I knew, right? So, I think that two things could happen—though I’m not sure about this. I’m truly looking into the science and working with people on this. I think if we go back to raising the standards … the criteria right now for you to get gender dysphoria diagnosis is two out of six criteria. I urge you to go look at them. They are so basic that I’m sure you’re getting a lot of false positives.

Table 2. [DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria ()]. - Endotext - NCBI Bookshelf

DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria (20)

NIH NLM LogoNota NM, den Heijer M, Gooren LJ.

There is no child out there—because symptomology indicates treatment—that does not very, very, very strongly display all six for a long period of time and has comorbidities like depression or extreme anxiety or social dysfunction. It should be the clearest, most extreme cases that you’re intervening with. My hope is if we can … it’s going to be difficult, but I have voice with trans activists that are truly interested in the science, that are willing to admit it’s real even when it doesn’t say what we want it to say, I think a protocol could be developed. I agree with you: we are having a lot of detransitioners.

And just one more thing. It doesn’t serve trans people to have a system that gives cis people our healthcare. That isn’t good for us, that puts our entire political project in jeopardy. So we should be the strongest advocates in the entire world for gatekeeping. We should care more about this than cis people do. We’ve abrogated any responsibility to do oversight on this. I think that’s why we’re heading towards an overcorrection. And I think it’s why you have your views.  

II: Yeah. I think that gender nonconformity is very common—very common among children, as well as among adults. There has got to be a bright line between gender nonconformity and gender dysphoria. I feel that a lot of modern-day trans activists have blurred that boundary and that’s extremely unhelpful.

BW: I agree.

II: I mean, you were not just a sissy boy who was going to grow up to be an effeminate gay guy, right? I feel that a lot of the descriptions I’m reading as to how to tell if your child is trans, also a lot of the self-descriptions of people who identify as non-binary … I’m a non-believer in non-binary, I’ll just say that now, which is controversial in some circles. But a lot of those descriptions are for me just purely gender nonconformity. It’s just butch lesbians. I have an acquaintance who is a very butch lesbian woman and she—actually, if she were here, I would say “he,” because she actually prefers male pronouns and has done for many many years, this predates the whole trans thing—

BW: Really? Oh my goodness.

II: And also dresses in male clothes, is quite flat chested, but binds her breasts anyway, and really passes for a guy. And she’s a dancer, dances the male role, etc. And calls herself David also. Many people actually just think, “This is a man.” I’m totally fine with that. And that’s a completely okay way to be. That’s one extreme of gender nonconformity, which I’m good with. I think that it’s preferable if you are able to do that but remaining in your original body, so you don’t have to go through the enormous trauma and surgery, the medical interventions, the hormones, which can have bad effects, especially early in life, can be expensive. It’s better if you’re able to be happy without going through that. But obviously there are people for whom that is not possible and you are one of those people and those people need assistance.

BW: I fully agree with everything you just said. I don’t understand why the trans movement today is unwilling to say, “You shouldn’t transition unless you really, really, really, really, really have to.” It is painful. GRS is not a fun weekend, right? I had this cheekbone … when I had this one fixed, I couldn’t sleep on this side of my face for three years because it just pinched a nerve, and it hurt too much. This stuff is non-trivial. And oestradiol, there are studies … this affects your metabolism. I’m fortunate that I run obsessively, but the fight to not put on weight is a real thing for trans women. And not just that—this is the other part where the politics are not serving the community.

So, Harry Benjamin … I understand this is a little bit dated, but I still think it’s useful as a shorthand for people. So he had a scale from zero to six of transvestites and then transsexuals on the end: one, two, three, four, five. And for people that are kind of right here in the middle, I personally did not have a pathway to transitioning through fetishistic cross-dressing.

No judgment for the AGPs that do; it is just not my pathology. But some of them, they are a type four, which is non-surgical. They like to think of themselves as women. It’s autoerotic for them. And their identities disintegrate, and they move to a type five to the point where they have to have surgery. For a lot of people here that have autogynephilia, they’re on this line between four and five. And some of them are going to … you can tell them what they are, you can explain to them what’s going on, you can give them informed consent if all these surgeries are going to help them or not. And some of those people can remain men and have their sex life that’s personal and not go through all this stuff. Because—just being really honest with you—Anne Lawrence wrote a book on some of these people. It’s called Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies.

They just don’t have the same feminine vibes that a lot of type six and type fives have, and they’re not going to be set up for success if someone is telling them the only path to happiness is hormonal medical transition. Additionally, when it comes to non-binary people—I was looking at studies about this today—and for all these studies indicating that non-binary people benefit from surgeries or hormonal intervention, go look at them. The overwhelming majority of them are putting people like me into a category of people that prefer they/them pronouns. And it’s mixing that science together. These are two different cohorts. We have two different pathologies. Two fundamentally different things are going on, but we’re just putting it in a blender and that doesn’t serve the patients. So what I would advocate for the entire trans movement is: we’ve got to get off Twitter and we’ve got to get back to the business of honest public advocacy for ourselves. We need to admit when we don’t know things we don’t know yet, which is a lot of stuff around children, and we need to give people informed consent. And part of that is telling them not everyone needs to go through this path because it is hell.

II: I’m really sorry that you went through hell, because I find you a very sympathetic person. I think that one issue is also … there is a tendency among progressives.

(I’m going to continue to use the word “progressives” rather than “liberals,” which would be very confusing because, for example, here in Australia, liberals are right of centre voters. Yes, I think it’s from “classical liberals.” So we call them we call them liberals. They are the right wing.)

So, progressives have a tendency to think that by changing the language around something, you can somehow change the attitudes by mandating what vocabulary people must use, and that you can even change reality by just changing the description, which is, to me, magical thinking.

I think that’s how I feel about the non-binary stuff. This is just a way of describing your gender nonconformity that you don’t really need. And it’s just going to be counterproductive because you’re making it into an identity and therefore you are creating a personal attachment to it. And that means that you are fragile and non-resilient because you’re placing your own self-esteem in the hands of other people and what they say about you and what they think about you and how they perceive you and how they talk about you. That’s a very bad idea. And I think we’re all prone to that.

And I have been through this myself in that I used to … people used to insist that I was a conservative and a right-winger because I was opposed to a lot of woke stuff. And because I was an old-fashioned leftist, not a progressive. And I would have a lot of arguments with them about this. I would say, “Look, I voted Labour. I’m a left-winger.” And eventually I thought, “This is just idiotic. What does it matter what they call me?” So now I’m just like, “That’s fine, call me whatever you like.” And it was a great relief to me when I finally grew up—older than you are, I finally grew up and realised this was a stupid fight to be having.

BW: I love that. And I think that’s fair. For me personally … and this is … I don’t want to say a difference of opinion, but this is my perspective on this. I have a really close friend of mine. She’s AGP. She’s really normal, passes really well. She’s one of these people that was like a type four and went to a type five, history of transvestic fetishism, got on hormones, transitioned, it resolved. She’s just normal now. You can have girl chat with her. You can go out to dinner. It’s fine. Her partner is non-binary. And it took me a really … I’ve talked to her for so many hours trying to understand it because she’s gone through so many of the medical pathways. She’s got breast implants, and she’s had GRS downstairs and some FFS, but she also refuses to do any voice training. So when you talk to her, it’s extremely obvious that you’re talking to a trans person in a way that’s frankly very jarring. You can talk to her, and she will tell you that, this non-binary identity and surgeries feel right to her. And it’s not something I understand—but I also don’t understand being in relationship with a woman. So, I think this stuff to a certain degree, it’s like homosexuality. It needs to be letting people do what they want to do. But it’s also extremely true at the same time, particularly if you’re asking insurance to pay for it, the medical evidence that people that identify as non-binary benefit from all this medical intervention is very, very shaky. You’re talking studies with 200 people that are self-reported surveys—and that’s just not the best science in the entire world. I think as a matter of public policy, a lot of this is just, for lack of a better word, it’s this gender nonconformity that was very common in the 90s, was not really a mistake to us. Some girls don’t look like Barbie. I think it’s this, but almost like colonising what I think of as transsexualism. And I don’t think that’s really helpful.

II: So the thing that struck me about that thing you said at the beginning that, “I don’t know if I’m actually a woman, but I’m really, really certain that I can’t function in life as a man.” In fact, everything you said in that initial quotation that I read, I thought was incredible, really very eloquent and frank and clear. One of the issues for me is there is ordinary social politeness, and then there is history and scientific data and medical facts. Where I feel very uncomfortable is when people are trying to blur those two things. I would not spend all my time talking to you or to some other trans person who I knew and respected—I don’t actually know any trans people in real life at the moment, but if I did meet someone …

BW: We’ll have to hang out. We’ll come party together.

II: I would love that actually; I think it would be really fun.

I’m not going to be spending my whole time talking about how they were born male or wanting to see old photo albums or insisting upon that topic. However, I think that people who think that we should never use a dead name, we shouldn’t even be referring to the history that happened, that makes me very uncomfortable. I think that that is bordering on mendacious and also just … it’s a falsifying of the past. And it’s also very fragile. You have this dirty secret that can never be mentioned. It’s much better to be open about things. And also things can be accepted and dealt with much better generally if you begin with openness. So I think it’s important to be frank in the correct context about the history. And I think it’s also important often for data collection that we know whether the subjects in our study were born male or born female, because we want to be able to get information about that. And it’s a fundamental difference in our species. And it may be the case that, in some things, trans women like you do have a lot in common with people who are born women. But we won’t know that if we are allowing people in surveys or when we’re collecting data on medical stuff, on crime, on whatever else it might be, on sports performance, if we’re allowing people to just choose whatever pronouns they like and self-identify in any way they like.

BW: I think that’s fair.

II: The fact that you can change your sex on the birth certificate seems to me also very strange and wrong. I think that the birth certificate should say something like “female, born male” or something, that would be possible. But I don’t like the idea that we are literally falsifying data here because data is important.

BW: Well, I hear what you’re saying. I really do, particularly with medical data. I think one of the things that makes this hard is … you talked at the beginning about giving a little to get a little, right? And one of the things that I’m telling you, I personally don’t have a problem with that, but one of the reasons there’s so much hostility from a lot of trans people about this stuff is it’s not done in good faith a lot of the time.

It’s used to dehumanise. It is a slur. If I’m tweeting about Palestine, there is no reason whatsoever to bring up the fact that I’m trans and to deadname me and post pictures of that, right? Which is something that happens all the time. So, I hear what you’re saying. It’s just that there’s so much. It’s almost like the trans rights activists and the TERFs really deserve each other at this point almost. 

They’re two mirror images and don’t get me wrong, if I’ve got to pick a team, I’m team trans. But there’s a wider pattern of behaviour here where I really cannot distinguish trans Twitter from the Gamergate mob that made me famous a decade ago. The tactics of harassing people, of threatening them, of rape threats, they’re exactly the same.

And the TERFs are involved in something equally nasty. It’s hard to have a cooler head on some of this stuff when you’re constantly under attack. Does that make sense to you? Do you know where I’m coming from?

II: Yes, yes. Yes, I do. What I’m seeing among a lot of the gender-critical feminist movement is first of all, a genuine kind of just nastiness, lots and lots of attacks on people’s appearance, which I think is completely beyond the pale. Also, just a real insistence on this issue and a kind of intransigence that just leaves no place for trans people to be accepted and happy. I feel that some of those people, they are illiberal. Adults should have the right to do what they wish with their own bodies. I do agree with you that there should be medical necessity and there should be medical gatekeeping. But once you’re beyond that, you as an adult have chosen to undergo surgeries, to do things that you want to do to your own body and to live your life in the way that you would like and what you are doing is not curtailing anyone else’s freedoms. So, the problems arise when there is an intrinsic conflict of interests between women and trans women, which we do find in some areas like professional sports, for example. But I think there are a lot of people who seem unwilling to compromise at all on this and who also insist on talking about trans people as having a mental illness, which I again, I feel this is just fetishising language.

BW: Do you think so? I do have a mental illness. I mean, I did, you know, it’s in the DSM.

II: I think it could be useful to think of it as a mental illness if you’re seeking treatment.

BW: Yes, and then you do it and resolves, and you move on.

II: Yeah, and maybe for some people it continues to be a mental illness in the sense that they are still feeling dysphoria because the transition may not be perfect, they’re still feeling distress. But—I don’t know—who among us does not have a mental illness? I feel like the insistence on that just seems a little bit silly among the TERF types.

And I have also found that there is a purity spiral among the radical feminists. And for some of them, their issue is basically with men. For them, trans women are a subset of men. And it is another way in which men are intruding on women’s spaces and threatening women. And I think that it’s easy to descend into paranoia about men and male violence and male threats to women. It’s easy to become a gender warrior and I think that that has happened to many people on that side of the debate.

BW: I agree. What I wish trans people would welcome is a chance to defend our views. To hit that head on and to talk about it. In the video, you heard the story about a man nearly raping me, which really set me off course for a really long time. It was probably one of the big reasons I dated a girlfriend at first instead of a guy. It really messed me up. I’m not a stranger to sexual violence. I get rape threats every single day. So it’s easy for me to understand. I truly have empathy for the TERF position. I don’t agree with the conclusions that they’ve come to, but I can understand the emotion behind it, a feeling that their daughters are being quote unquote “transed” by the popular culture. I understand their feelings on that. I understand the fear of … I’ve gone into a bathroom and seen a trans person there that had not done a good job with electro for their beard, and it scared the hell out of me for half a second. And that’s me. I understand that fear. And this fear of men in society, especially for women, they’re the victims of sexual violence. Misogyny hurts. You can look at what I dealt with during Gamergate. I really understand that. But the conclusions that they come to that are so bereft of seeing any humanity in other people … it’s not even that it’s hateful towards me—and it is—but these are clearly not healthy people. So I think if you’re talking about public policy, it has got to come from the middle. And this is why I’m inviting trans people to get off of the extreme and come talk to me, come work with me, trying to have a more fact-based view in the middle. The important thing is that we have access to healthcare. The important thing is not convincing someone of a philosophical discussion about the existence of womanhood. I don’t care what someone thinks of me. If they’re calling me she/her, I’m good, y’all. I don’t care. So that’s how I feel.

II: The definition matters only in specific circumstances.

BW: Yeah, the outcome.

II: Yeah, I mean, it’s just not practical. When Candace Owens debated Blaire White … I don’t know if you saw that famous train wreck of an interview; it was on Dave Rubin’s podcast?

BW: No.

II: Blaire White, for example, just looks like a woman, full stop.

BW: She’s gorgeous, yeah.

II: She was clearly a very petite and effeminate boy. There is no way that I think anybody would even be able to tell that she is trans. And Candace said at one point, “I refuse to call her by female pronouns.” She just slipped up. In certain circumstances, you have to actually make a concerted effort. And perhaps a concerted effort is necessary in some edge case situations, for example, if we’re reporting crimes in the newspaper. I do not like seeing the headline, “Woman raped these ten girls with her penis” or some ridiculous thing like that. But there are people who would argue that by using she/her pronouns to refer to someone like you, I’m participating in a fiction. But even if I allow that, then we participate in socially convenient and polite fictions all the time. The question is just: who is it harming? And I would say that’s definitely not harming anybody.

And I wouldn’t find it natural. If I wanted to refer to you as he, I would have to really make an effort. So I don’t see the point. I don’t see the benefit of that.

BW: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I think that’s why we’re friends, not just that, but the worldview where we’re struggling to find the truth and also your love of dancing. So I appreciate that. I do want to say … and this is coming back to the TERFs. I’d love to know your opinion on this, but something that’s really, really different today than when I transitioned 20 years ago is the extremely sexual, public bent of trans Twitter—not that we had trans Twitter 20 years ago—but the community and the public face of it is so ugh … I’ve got a friend of mine, and I think she’s going to be okay in five years. She’s got the ability to pass, but girlfriend’s posting her penis on main every day and in lingerie, trying to find other trans women to hook up with. I remember we all transitioned because we wanted boyfriends. There’s something that’s really happened in the community of having this sex-first, fetishisty, public, it’s uncomfortable. And the thing is, if you really want what’s best for trans women, you want us to integrate socially and be employable and to go on and have productive lives, being trans should not be your focus forever. I’m not going to judge. Someone can decide what their own path should be, and I will support that—but taken as an aggregate, the number of trans women that seem to be enthusiastically going into sex work. I’m 47. And for me at this age, gendered stuff for me nowadays is going out to coffee with girlfriends and talking about what’s going on with their kids, right? It’s not lingerie at the club uptown. So you’d better be in this for the long run, girls, because there’s a lot of life after your 20s and 30s and I don’t see any of this being discussed. Have you seen any of this on Twitter? Does that match your perception at all?

II: Well, I think that there is a parallel between what has happened among some gay rights activists as well, that the attitude has shifted towards … among some—I think in the gay community, it’s very much a minority and perhaps among trans people as well, but of course, it’s a very visible minority—of people who are defiant about their identity and whose attitude is “let me try to offend you and shock you as much as possible to see if you still accept me.” And I find that a quite puerile attitude, actually. And within the trans stuff, it is strangely incompatible with people’s allergy to the idea of autogynephilia, which I think is a really useful idea. There is a difference between someone like you or Blaire White, who knew from a very early age and who transitioned as early as you could, and someone like Debbie Hayton who began with cross-dressing and excitement at the idea of being a woman, etc. And there is a feeling that if you are transitioning for sexual motivations that makes it cheap and tawdry and illegitimate and therefore we must pretend that this never happens. I found Alice Dreger’s view on this very interesting. And I think I mostly agree with it. She said that sexual motivations are important; sex is very important. And therefore, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with doing something when your primary motivation is sexual fulfillment, that it’s just an important part of human life. But I find it confusing that there is a rejection of that idea and on the other hand some of the same people who reject that idea are also participating in a hyper-sexualised exhibitionistic culture.

BW: I think all of that is really well said. I directionally agree with that. I do just want to say that there are some AGPs that know they’re trans at a young age. They feel it in a different way. And they do fetishistically cross-dress and then they transition, and those feelings go away and they’re normal. A really good friend of mine who actually passes gorgeously and works a completely normal, very credible job that has a very important function for the United States, she’s one of these people. I just wanted to say that there can be a pathway that takes you to normality there. But I actually don’t agree with you that it’s a minority of the trans people. What I think a consequence of lowering the gatekeeping has been is that a whole lot of people are out there and they’re medically transitioning, and they’re being told it’s going to solve all of their problems and they’re not acting like women, and they have no interest in making friends with women and they don’t want to be socialised as women. They want to be these highly sexualised trans caricatures and maybe it’s going to be okay for them in their twenties, but I’ve got a lot of questions about how that’s going to play out for them in their thirties. This actually is something in the community that’s changed and it’s really, really going off course in a way that gives me a lot of pause.

II: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s bound up with this increasing fetishisation of identity. And it leads to a very narcissistic view of life and also a view that’s extremely performative because you’re constantly looking for validation from other people. I think that’s a large part of the problem. I think that wanting validation from other people, that is an unavoidable part of life, of course. We all want validation from other people. We all want to be recognised for who we believe ourselves to be. But it can’t be the only thing that is bolstering your sense of self. And I think for a lot of these people, it’s become so front and centre. And we see this not just in the trans arena, but also with race and with religion, with other identities as well, with politics, I think it’s damaging. And I’m a person who likes labels and enjoys celebrating my identities. But also if you’re hoping for that validation from other people, it’s going to be very difficult.

I have the argument—sorry to make this too much about me, having talked about narcissism, now I’m going to make this all about me—so, for example, I put my Twitter handle as @IonaItaliaPhD and lots of people are angry with me about this. And my view is that I want to celebrate having a PhD, but I don’t expect you to celebrate it. In fact, I know you’re going to laugh at me for the fact that I put it in my bio. And also, I don’t expect you to call me “Dr.” In fact, the only time anyone calls me Dr is when friends are taking the piss out of me.

BW: I do that to my husband too, who has a PhD. When I call him “Dr Wu,” that’s always sarcastically to give him attitude. So I identify with what you’re saying. Also, I know what he went through to get his PhD. So I think if you want to put that in your Twitter bio, if I’d done all that BS, you’d better believe I’d have it in my Twitter bio. So I support that decision actually.

II: Thank you. I have a crush on your husband. He looks so cute. I love the photos.

BW: He’s so sweet. I feel like I hit the marriage jackpot. I know it’s not a marriage podcast, but he is attractive, he’s sweet, and he makes a tonne of money, and he’s a science fiction celebrity, and he does awesome stuff like help develop the coronavirus vaccine. He’s really awesome, so I’m very thrilled about that.

II: I wanted to ask you: do you feel that there are things that you know and have discovered or that you value or that you enjoy that have come specifically from being trans, from having gone through that. Or do you feel just regret, do you just feel you wish you had been born as a woman to begin with and had not had to go through this, through obviously some physical and psychological trauma that you’ve endured in the past? I’m sorry to keep coming back to these tough topics.  

BW: No, it’s entirely fine. You’re actually the first person to interview me about this since I’ve come out. So, hooray for you. Yeah, it’s hard for me to say because, on one hand, I’m in my forties. I don’t have children. I regret that a lot. I see women that are able to have that, and I just feel sadness every single time. So, of course I feel regret about that. But I also know if I had been born a cis woman, I’d ultimately just be another Mississippi redneck. I’d probably be living in Hattiesburg still like a lot of my classmates did. I probably wouldn’t be a national figure. I certainly wouldn’t be making a difference on the national stage in the way that I do or talk to Congress as often as I do.

I think it made me stronger. I have to deal with the life that I have. It’s really interesting to me. This is just speaking for myself, but, for me, femininity is a gum that’s never going to lose its flavour. And it’s sometimes surprising to me that when it’s date night and a lot of women my age are with their husbands and they’re in sweatpants, and I’m wearing a dress and full face. So I think there are parts of myself that, because I fought for them so hard, I really, really, really value them. And I think there’s some beauty in that. But I’m also not going to tell you there’s not immense amount of pain.  

I was adopted, so that’s losing one family right there. And then when I came out, my family threw me away like a piece of garbage. I’ve not talked to them for 20 years. Every year, the holidays are incredibly difficult for me. So, it’s really a mix. And on my best days, I try to see the good, if that makes sense to you.

II: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m sorry we haven’t got on really to talking about the progressive stuff.

BW: Let’s do it.

II: Shall we talk about it briefly? You recently published a piece in—sorry, what journal was it in?

BW: It was the Boston Globe, a really big paper here in Boston.

I fear that progressivism has become the very thing we fought against - The Boston Globe

My fellow leftists are betraying our Jewish allies.

The Boston GlobeBrianna WuUpdated September 9, 2024, 3:00 a.m.

II: I’m going to read a couple of little excerpts from it. You write, “My progressive fever started breaking on October the 7th, 2023.” You say: 

In the past 10 years, I’ve moved into the public policy realm. While my job is to help progressives win elections, I’ve become more concerned about the people I’m standing next to. Watching democratic town halls change policies so non-binary people could take delegate slots reserved for women raised questions, but did it really matter? Watching Linda Sarsour and others align the women’s march with the antisemitic agitator, Louis Farrakhan, was disturbing. But was it disturbing enough to compromise a coalition fighting for women’s rights? And as Black Lives Matter protests turned violent and buildings started to burn, I asked myself if I should be speaking up about it. Was it racist to say that setting buildings on fire was deplorable?

There’s a term for the problem with progressivism: the purity spiral. Leftists have no mechanism to hit the brakes on bad ideas, so they continue drifting leftward. What starts as a good cause, such as looking at police violence targeting black communities, continues to move further and further to the fringe, where supporters begin to advocate the defunding of all police. Today, we are at the terminal stage of the worst ideas.

No conflict demonstrates the toxic horror that progressivism has become more than the Israel-Hamas war. There’s no kind way to say it. Many progressives have betrayed our Jewish friends and neighbors.

So do you want to talk a bit more about how October 7th and the responses to that have changed your views or perspective?

BW: Sure. Well, I was under the impression—which was apparently mistaken—that progressives were interested in women’s rights, which is why I was so stunned on October 7th to open up my phone immediately after that and see videos of the woman terrified in back of a Jeep with blood all over her pubic area being escorted at gunpoint by a jihadist. And to see this, you would think any woman on Earth would see that and it would strike something really primal inside of her. It certainly did me. And it’s why it was so shocking to see people I considered friends, people I’d worked with on feminist initiatives, to claim that up is down and black is white and what was going on there wasn’t a rape. That really fundamentally disturbed me. And as I wrote about in this piece, my break with progressivism has been building for a long time. And it’s not just seeing Black Lives Matter occasionally turn violent, but directionally, there were a lot of peaceful protests, but it’s also like 10 years of behind-the-scenes work, trying to get actual stuff done to win elections and seeing a bunch of children consistently hijacking the bread-and-butter work you’ve got to do to actually get power in this country. So yeah, I think anyone who sees my Twitter can see I’m pretty upset with the way progressives have rolled on October 7th.

II: Yeah, me too. Me too.

BW: What is your impression of it? What do you see from your position?

II: Well, one thing I’ve done is, I’ve stopped calling myself a leftist, even though I don’t think my political views have changed very much. I think my political views still lean left of centre because my priority is ensuring a social safety net for people. But I have felt as though I no longer want to be associated with the Left—in name at least—because of the stuff that I’ve seen happening since 7th October. I think also that I had a more sympathetic view towards the Palestinian cause before 7th October but since then I’ve been reading history about it, and I am much less sympathetic. I’m certainly sympathetic to peacemakers and forward-looking people on the Palestinian side like John Aziz. I really admire him. But I feel it’s become a kind of moral Disneyland for a lot of people, that they’ve lost sight of what’s actually at stake here. It’s Star Wars for them, and the Palestinians are like Jedi and it’s extremely toxic. It’s a culture of generational victimhood and death fetishism. I think that that should bother you even if you care only about Palestine and Palestinians, even if you didn’t care about Israel and Israelis at all—which you should—but even if you didn’t, that should worry you and repel you. That’s no way to live. That’s how I feel.

Replacing Israel with Palestine: A Dangerous Delusion

The only plausible way forward for Palestinians is a commitment to peaceful coexistence alongside Israel.

QuilletteJohn Aziz

BW: I agree with every word you just said as strongly as I can in my heart. I talk about this in the piece, but I am ashamed to admit I had not read that deeply about Israel–Palestine history. I mean, I always supported Israel just in the sense that my idea for American power is having as many partners as possible and Israel is a very powerful country. And I think there’s value in an alliance there, they’re the only democracy in the Middle East. But other than watching peace deals fall apart and seeing news about these rocket attacks, it just hasn’t been something I’ve really had to think about that much. So, after October 7th, and just seeing so many progressives say stuff that was just crazy, like claiming the music festival rapes didn’t happen, which—that would be a first in the history of warfare that someone starts a war and no rape happens—I really started digging really deeply into this. And look, I can’t say the entire history since 1948 in a sentence, but I can summarise it that generally speaking, Israel has been attacked by an anti-Zionist project that believes in slaughtering everyone there and ethnically cleansing them and they have defended themselves. Have they gone too far at times? Of course, but directionally Israel is defending itself. And any view to the contrary that is just simply ahistorical in my view. So I have to tell you, once you see progressives lying to you about this, I just couldn’t stop speaking out about all the things I think progressives have not been honest about, like trans healthcare policy. And just being straight with you, it has been like setting a blow torch to a lot of my friendships. They’ve kicked me out of their little club.

I’m Palestinian but I Don’t Hate Israel: Quillette Cetera Episode 28

A conversation with British-Palestinian peace activist John Aziz.

QuilletteZoe Booth

II: I’m so sorry. I’m not laughing because it’s funny. I’m laughing because it’s absurd, but also awful.

How characteristic are the noisy people I see on Twitter of people on that side of politics in general in your view?

BW: How much of progressive political professionals have the same opinion as Twitter crazies? Is that the question? Most of them.

I want to tell you in good faith, I have spent 10 years trying to get these people to stop the moral posturing. And when I lost my election in 2018, I took that as a learning lesson about some ideals, but I’d never run for office before. I didn’t know NGP worked. I didn’t know what a voter file was. I didn’t know what a universe was. I had no idea how to do FEC compliance. I didn’t know what the maximum donations were. I didn’t know what GOTV was, even though I participated in it. I went through the process from the beginning of the campaign to the end of the campaign. I learned a lot. And I wanted to take that experience of what progressives did not do and what I didn’t have, and I wanted to take that and move forward and do better. So I’ve spent 10 years behind the scenes talking to progressives like, “We need a data infrastructure plan. We need a fundraising strategy. We need to rally around all these more popular causes. We need to focus more on local candidates, even though it’s a compliance nightmare.” There’s so much bread-and-butter, completely unsexy stuff that if you’re interested in progressive policy that no one is working on. And I’ve got to tell you, behind the scenes, it is a circus of narcissism and mental illness and drama and people that can’t act like adults. And it has drained the life out of me day by day. And some stuff happened last year where the abuse that I put up with was so extreme. With one political project I went to … I’m in my 40s. It was so damaging to me, I spent three months in therapy from that. It was from trying to babysit these children and their emotional state and having them like question your motives all day long or go through the moral purity or trying to walk them through basic stuff when it’s just like, “Look, we’re going to do this because I’m the fucking adult here and I’ve done this before, and you haven’t.” These kids are just … the entire project top to bottom is unserious. And it’s just at a point now where it’s bad enough to lose elections and to waste donors’ money, but when the political project is now veering over into explicit antisemitism, causing Jews to leave the party, when they’re such a core part of our operation, as far as canvassing, phone banking, donating, candidates, the community top to bottom, when progressivism is damaging one of the most important constituencies we have, someone has got to start speaking out about this. I’m sorry I’m so upset about it.

II: Yeah, yeah. That’s okay. I feel quite invested in the US election, although I’m mostly interested in foreign policy, and I am concerned that whoever gets into power may not support Israel and I don’t trust Trump’s promises to support Israel at all. I think Trump is fundamentally—inasmuch as he has a policy, because I find him just a complete chaos of a person—but it’s isolationist. His intuitions are isolationist. And I want to see the US government supporting Ukraine, supporting Israel, and continuing to shore up the liberal world. I think that’s extremely important. I absolutely think that another Trump presidency would be a disaster. And I’m very concerned about what would happen in Ukraine. I’m concerned about emboldening Putin, emboldening Xi. I’m concerned about actual global consequences of this election. So, I very much want people on the US Left to get their act together. And I don’t see it happening, unfortunately. I feel Kamala is doing a good job, but …

BW: When you say, “the Left,” do you mean the mainstream Democratic Party or progressives?

II: I mean the progressives. I’m concerned about the party making too many concessions to progressives, and I’m concerned also about progressives torpedoing the electoral chances of the party.

BW: I don’t disagree with that. One of the really big problems you have is so many of the young staffers, they tend to be really young and idealistic. And I’m sure you know enough about Washington to know sometimes that’s an outsized voice at times. So yeah, I definitely share that view. I understand it’s an aggressive metaphor, but I think when it rises to the point of talking about Iran as though they were a good guy and talking about your own country and your own president as though he’s quote unquote, “enabling a genocide,” when it’s not a genocide, it’s just a war. I really think that this is a viewpoint that needs to be excised like a cancer from our party. It is a dead way of thinking.

I hope this is not too much of a tangent to go into, but my political views were a lot more extreme progressive in the Gamergate era. And something I realise now in hindsight is it was amped up by a cult, a cult that enforces a certain worldview and holds these purity tests and is uninterested in actual results. It’s all about your inner moral journey that you’re taking. And it really turned me into a worse, much less happy version of myself. So I think there’s frankly a contagion issue to a lot of this extremism. That’s not to say the policy is wrong. The policy is not wrong. It’s the culture that’s completely broken.

II: And politics should be about making compromises, getting buy-in from the other side so that you can actually get stuff done, being willing to settle for not what you would ideally want, but some of the elements of what you would want. We don’t live in a one-party system, and I wouldn’t want to live in a one-party system. And that means that no matter who is in power or no matter who you support, you have to look for some minimum amount of common ground with other people. And if you have an idea that you want to put through, you have to sell it to people. And there seems to be an unwillingness to do that on the side of so many activists. I do see this on the Right as well, but I expect it from them in a sense. I think the culture on the American Right is quite disastrous too, but in different ways. But the disastrous culture on the Left is more important to both of us and especially to you because it’s your work and your calling is to improve that culture.

BW: That’s right. I think you’ve got that exactly right. And I really want to be honest with you too and say reaching out to Republicans and making friends with more moderate Republicans is really actually deeply rewarding. I really encourage people to go visit and talk to your Republican friends in good faith because there’s a lot we agree on.

A Republican that understands NATO should exist is someone I have more in common with on foreign policy than the fringe leftists. A Jewish person that’s going to vote for Donald Trump, who’s swung conservative, we’re not going to agree on a lot of stuff like trans rights, but we’re going to agree on things like our foreign policy.

So I think that what I have found, in the last two years that I’ve been able to shake myself from this cult worldview, is that something makes me really effective at my job as a political operative is the ability to go talk to people I disagree with in good faith, look at some bills on the table, and try to find a way to get the money or the support or the constituency behind the scenes to get stuff across the finish line. This is actually really, really rewarding. So I think if anyone is interested in actual progress in this country, at some point it’s got to involve talking to each other and working together. If you’re waiting for this future where we have all the power and there’s no Republicans in power anywhere in the country and we just jam our agenda through, you’re going to be waiting for your whole life. So let’s see what we can get done in the meantime.

II: And that would be disastrous anyway. Ideas need to be stress tested and particularly political ideas. It’s very important to have people on the other side of things who are going to hold you accountable and call you on your shit. It’s very important and also to have a perspective that you might have overlooked. And even if they’re wrong, as I said, to be wrong in interesting ways can also be helpful.

I find it interesting that that, on the Right, on the one hand, they are very good at rallying around the flag, creating the Big Tent, etc. but at the same time, they seem to attract some absolute nut jobs who end up being major figures in their media or running for election. Republicans have run some out-and-out absolute crazies. So maybe that is a side effect of this slight just slightly more forgiving and commodious culture that they have, which is, “You’re a bastard, but you’re our bastard.” And it does seem to me that Kamala is doing quite a good job of creating a Big Tent feeling and uniting people.

I’m not a fan of hers. I’m not really a fan of many politicians.

BW: You shouldn’t be.

II: But she’ll do. I’d really like to see a Kamala victory. And a lot of the ideas that were very highly prevalent, especially in around 2019, 2020, I just want to see them die.

BW: Any one in particular?

II: “Defund the Police,” the whole idea of “settler colonialism,” the obsession with racial identities. I would like all that stuff to just go away and people to come to their senses.

BW: This is the twentieth time this has happened in the show, but I come to the same policy and come to it for a different reason. I grew up in Mississippi. I’ve seen the legacy of slavery, the aftermath of integration, play out in public school policies and a whole bunch of other things. I want this obsession with race to stop because it doesn’t allow us to win when we lean into identity politics. If it worked, I’d be cheerleading it. Let’s go back to Gamergate. I fought a very high-profile culture war for women to be treated with more respect in the workplace in the video game industry. We did that by essentially starting a war that was men versus women if you really get down to it. Can I point to a single policy in the video game industry that improved because of that? I can look over at journalism and say, “Okay, there are a lot more women working today and there are a lot more games with women characters and that’s good.” But the material conditions of the workplace that I was talking about—can I point to something to show this is objectively better? No, because every study shows that it’s not. The thing that I wanted was better policy and for there to be a better pathway for women to have careers in the game industry the same way that men get to have. And for whatever reason, we just completely failed to make that happen. These identity wars don’t work. What does work is going to the table. If I could go back to those years, I would sit down with those men and say, “Look, this is a situation. We need some better candidates here. How can we make this a fair situation for everyone?” When Intel pumped $100 million into the game industry for women in tech initiatives, I wish we could have sat down and looked at ways to actually make that improve our hiring policy instead of blowing it all on some dysfunctional nonprofit to hold conferences that don’t do anything. There’s so much more we could have done, and we blew it. So I feel I have a front row seat to tell you this stuff doesn’t lead to better policy. It leads to social media engagement, but it doesn’t lead to better policy.

II: It becomes a kind of sport. When you make it about identity, each person can cheer on their identity, like football teams, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

BW: That’s right.

II: Brianna, is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you wish I had asked you or that you hoped you would get to talk about?

BW: I do actually. I’ve got a few minutes before the debate. I want to ask you, so media is in really bad shape right now in the entire country. I don’t know what it’s like in your market. But it seems to me that the media that seems to be doing really well right now is media that is like … Quillette seems to be doing—at least I don’t know your finances are like—but the mind share, from the mind share you seem to be doing okay.

II: We’re doing okay, yeah.

BW: The Free Press seems to be getting some impact. So do you think that this is evidence of a media ecosystem starting to be born that I frequently disagree with, but it’s non-ideological in nature and willing to pursue truth even if it pisses people off. Do you think this is signifying more of a shift towards the centre or how do you read the fact that y’all are doing okay, while everything else seems to be failing from where I sit.

II: Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m really bad at market stuff, at telling what’s going on. I leave that to Claire.

BW: I love her.

II: Me too. I’m just the first officer on this ship. I’m really happy that I don’t have to decide which wars we engage in, where we sail. Maybe I should stop this metaphor because it’s going to get ridiculous any minute now. There are not too many weevils in our biscuit as yet. I think it’s a real struggle for all media enterprises. People are not reading as much. There’s simply that. And people are also accustomed to not paying for what they read. I think that is changing because I have noticed that more and more articles are being paywalled. And I myself of course ran a magazine which basically went bust financially so I folded Areo Magazine. People ask me about it all the time, so I’ll just briefly say I folded the business in November of last year and the archives have been purchased by Quillette and we’re going to be publishing, with the authors’ permission, we’re going to be publishing pieces from the archives in Quillette. But I think there is certainly an appetite for more thoughtful and not explicitly partisan media. You could certainly detect certain tendencies within Quillette. We would probably not publish an article that was justifying Putin’s invasion, for example. There are certain things that you could predict about us, but that is different from being a partisan outlet. We do have right-leaning and left-leaning and even a few communists, out-and-out Marxists who write for Quillette.

BW: Really? I’ve never seen those articles. My goodness.

II: Ralph Leonard, for example. But not in defence of Marxism, so that’s the difference. I think that there is an appetite for independent thought, especially among people who are mildly right-leaning, dissident leftists, former leftists, centrist and centre leftists and even among some progressives, there is an appetite for a bolder approach, in which you’re not self-censoring, i.e. you’re not refraining from saying something which you think is important and true because it’s politically incorrect to say it, but is nevertheless not just contrarian for its own sake and ready to be captured by the most zany ideas, which I have seen a lot of, too.

BW: That’s right. I think the censorship is almost a red herring, to be honest with you. I think the axis of conflict here is: both sides, the Right and the Left, default far too often into moralizing things. Like, we were talking earlier in this podcast about puberty blockers for children, right? And the Left is going to come in here with their moral high horse and say, “It’s a right, how dare you do that? You’re a transphobe if you don’t agree.” And then the fringe right is going to come in and be like, “You’re mutilating children,” blah, blah, blah. The interesting conversation is when you can put aside the moralising everything and actually engage the argument on its merits. And this is what I think people are really thirsty for. And this is what I think progressivism currently has no muscles to provide to anyone anymore, in my view.

II: Yeah, I think I’ve personally sort of gone through a bit of a shift, which is I used to be very firmly on the Left, however, the kind of things I was most concerned about culturally was woke excess. And then Trump’s election happened, the COVID anti-vaxxers and various other crazy movements on the Right—Tucker Carlson, the pro-Russia right. But most of that craziness is in America. Most of the right-wing craziness is in America. I live in Australia, and we have a somewhat saner right wing than you do. That’s a low bar, but we do. So I’ve become more concerned with craziness on the Left again. And I think that’s largely because a lot of the stuff that leftists are fighting for in the US, like universal healthcare, gun control, public transport, public education, infrastructure and stuff like that are things that we already have in Australia and also just take completely for granted. That’s not even up for debate. That’s not what the arguments are about. So that has shifted my position a bit, but I am much more interested in American politics than any other politics, because it’s just fascinating. It’s just a train wreck that I can’t take my eyes off.

BW: Thank you, I appreciate that. That’s very rewarding. Oh my goodness.

II: It’s just a fascinating soap opera, but also the US is the world’s most prosperous and most powerful country.  

BW: That’s right, we are.

II: And I want that to remain the case. I’m very, very strongly in favour of a powerful US because the alternatives, the alternative powers that would like to come in and take up the slack if you guys let go of the reins, I don’t like the look of them at all. We’re talking China and Russia and … yeah, no thanks. I prefer Pax Americana.

BW: I fully agree with that. Yes! America’s awesome. Even though we’re a train wreck, you’re counting on us, so better hope we get our stuff together. I got a debate. So I got one last question for you.

BW: And I’m sorry to show my extremely feminine male side with this, but I love to ask this for everyone in Australia: What is your favourite Kylie Minogue song? Because I love Kylie so much.

II: Wait, who is interviewing who here, by the way? “I have one more question for you.” What? You’ve hijacked this interview.

BW: I know. But I’ve just got to know. It’s Kylie time!

II: I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I can even remember any Kylie Minogue songs.

BW: What? You have the best pop star in the entire world, and you don’t know any of her songs?  

II: Yeah, I’m really sorry. I’m just not in touch with my inner gay man. I think I don’t have an inner gay man.

BW: Oh my God. Oh my God. Kylie is amazing. This is the best thing Australia has ever created in my view. 

II: We’ll have to cut this part, or I will be deported.

BW: Wow. You will get exported, yes. You failed your country, I think.

II: Well, I do like kangaroos, and I have Vegemite and toast every morning. So if anyone from immigration is listening, please let me stay.

BW: There we go. I’ve never had Vegemite.

II: Brianna, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on. I thought that I would enjoy talking to you and I have been following you closely really since October 7^th, actually. I didn’t follow Gamergate, so I actually don’t remember you from back then. You have a clean slate with me. I only know you from since 7th October.

BW: Thank God.

II: I think I’ve agreed with almost everything you’ve tweeted and where I’ve disagreed, it’s a question of emphasis. I wouldn’t go as far as you’ve gone in some specific directions, but in general, I think that we’re very aligned politically. And I also really appreciate your sensible take on trans issues. I think that is very badly needed indeed.

BW: Thank you. Well, stay tuned on that because I’m going to be doing some big stuff on this. I’ve of the opinion that if we don’t build a trans centre working on public policy, we’re going to lose the entire thing. And I need HRT, so we’ve got to do something. Thank you for having me on. This has been so lovely.

II: Well, that’s something we both have in common since I also need HRT. Yeah.

BW: Aren’t hot flashes the worst? Oh my God. They’re so bad. Oh God, I’m not going through that again.

II: All right. Thank you so much, Brianna. And thank you for listening, everyone.

BW: Bye!