The War on Trans People: Part 2, TERF Island

In part 2 we look at how an ex-eco militant turned conspiracy theorist helped turn the United Kingdom turned into TERF Island and meet a new international transphobic alliance.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome dick had happened Here? A podcast about the war
against trans people. I'm your host Christopher Wong. In February,
a camp of indigenous and ecological protesters attempting to stop
the Thacker Past lithium mine in Nevada was thrown into
chaos over an unexpected issue, transphobia. Two of the camp activists,
including a man who had volunteered to act as an

(00:26):
attorney for the group, revealed to be members of another
organization called Deep Green Resistance or DGR. Nominally, Deep Green
Resistance is an ecological organization dedicated to destroying industrial society
to preserve the environment through promoting the destruction of damns
and other infrastructure. Deep Green Resistance found little success on
this front, but they have been much more successful in

(00:48):
spreading the other core of their ideology, miligiant, ruthless and
fanatical transphobia. When the indigenous protesters at Thacker Pass discovered
the twos membership in DGR and the result in transphole,
they were furious. Falk, the d g R lawyer who
had offered to represent the protesters, was kicked off the case,
and the presence of the two d g R members

(01:09):
was used by Lithium America as a weapon against the protesters.
This is a familiar cycle for Deep Green Resistance. Soon afterwards,
founding in two thousand eleven, the group fully embraced radical feminism,
staking out a position in an old debate inside the
feminist movement raging since the nineteen seventies over whether trans
women are in fact women. These feminists, used the term

(01:31):
loosely here became known as trans exclusionary radical feminists or turfs.
Through heroes were people like Janis Raymond, author of the
vehemently Transphobicscreed the Transsexual Empire. Raymond, whose BaFL influence we
will return to next episode, was largely ran out of
the mainstream American feminist movement with the rest of her
TURF companions. A similar fate would befall Deep Green Resistance.

(01:54):
Ecological activists in groups like Earth First, Green Peace, the
i w W, and the a Green Anarchist Movement. Sists
and trans alike ran d g R out of the
ecological left for the transphobia and waged an incredibly successful
no platforming campaign against DRS founders Derrek Jensen and Leary Keith.
Driven from the left, so thoroughly. They were reduced to

(02:17):
slinking into protest camps in secret, only to be expelled
upon discovery. Members of Deep Groom Resistance moved right and
increasingly to other countries to seek an audience for the
transphobic bile. Leary Keith founded a turf organization called the
Women's Liberation French or Wolf. More on them later. This
brings us a turf extraordinaire, Jennifer Billock, but it had

(02:38):
been a member of Deep Green Resistance in charge of
booking appearances for Derrick Jensen. The successive and no platform
in campaign waged by the left convince her that trans
people were secretly backed by a conspiracy of billionaires. This
idea spread like wildfire across the UK and as well
discussed next episode Mexico. To understand what happened in the UK,
we spoke with christa Peterson graduate student at USC who,

(03:02):
at significant personal cost, confronted the rise and spread of
transphobia and the English speaking world. Krista, Welcome to the
show and thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you.
I guess I wanted to start with Jennifer Billick and
talking a bit about how how how she sort of
moved into increasingly increasingly transphobic territory, and I guess how

(03:28):
she started moving into the sort of follow the money
conspiracy theories that she's been peddling for the past several
years now. Yeah, So I give you her narrative of
this UM, which is that in two thousand thirteen, I
think she was supposed to be on a panel UM
about bank transpeople UM that was canceled because of pushback UM,

(03:55):
and then because of that she thought what is the
big force behind this and got into it from there UM.
But she has really I think you know that Deep
Green Resistance was kind of into UM focusing on trans
people for a while, but she really has gone from

(04:15):
an environmental activist as someone who's just solely focused on
treads people. It's basically all she is ever talking about UM,
and she's kind of she started as opposing this kind
of existential threat UM that was real, which was ecological
destruction to common UM, and she has kind of maintained

(04:37):
that tenor in the shift where now she's portraying this
as an existential threat but instead of quite a change,
it's trans people. So the way she got into the
money UM, she's just a very prolific, kind of at
home researcher um. And she kind of had this anti
corporate mindset going in from her background, and she she

(04:58):
produces a lot of research. There's not that many people
in the gender critical movement are really producing a lot
of original content, and so when someone is there's really
they can get a lot of uptake from that. Um.
Her main her first thing was actually a Federalist article
about who are the rich white men institutionalizing transgender ideology? Um,

(05:22):
And just by being a pretty big platform, I think
that got some big initial distribution and I think that
was how people initially started seeing her kind of beyond
the deep green resistance type audience. Yeah. And now, I
mean that's one of the things that that's been very
interesting to be studying this is that you see this
a lot. You see a lot of people who we're

(05:46):
sort of run out and left by their transphobia, like
pivoting really hard right and then using right wing media
platforms and using sort of also writing political backing to
start pushing this stuff. And I think, yeah, Bill looks
an interesting example to me because yeah, she is she

(06:06):
talking a bit about this more. I mean, she has
this weird because she she has two weird angles. She
has the weird trans humanism angle, and then she has
this like incredibly like when becomes like an increasingly anti
semitic angle. Yeah, so where she so she's following the

(06:28):
money is the original thing? Where she follows the money too,
is um trans rights are a conspiracy to usher and
trans humanism. Um. So her thing is she often says
transgender is an ad campaign for trans humanism. This is
a quote to get people comfortable with actual emerging with
machines slash air ai, there must be a complete dissociation

(06:50):
for biological reality. So I just you see this a
lot with conspiracy theories. I think where you have this
kind of like metaphorical goal right where it's all about
getting people to dissociate from their bodies. It's like not
very clear what that looks like when an actual causal level,
but that's that's the big goal, right, um, and they

(07:13):
need a big goal. It's there's kind of this mysterious
part of this supposed conspiracy um that is trans rights,
which is like what is this for? Right? They lots
of people now are accepting that there's like this big
dark money pushed behind it, um, which raises a question,
why what what is this doing? Um, and the answers

(07:34):
are kind of cookie right, So this one has caught
on more than I would have expected. It's really weird,
so they kind of walk into it slowly, right, They
start off and it's I think there's something weird with
trans rights, and they have it's very common for them

(07:58):
to think that their opponents don't really believe their beliefs.
Something is up for some reason. All these people are
supporting trans reads when they know it's bad that you
need you need something to go in there to explain why.
And this is a narrative that fits with Billick's worldview.

(08:20):
You know, you can see how some with her background
would get here. It's kind of unusual for all these
ladies from the UK now to believe that trans people
are trans human conspiracy, but they needed something to go
there as the goal. They picked it up. Yeah, I
guess I guess we should get into Mom's net a

(08:40):
little bit because most it's a really weird, like specifically
UK thing that I don't know if there's like there's
not really an American equivalent to it, Like I guess
it's like it's like it's like what if you took
the worst parts of Facebook ends next door I guess us. Yeah,

(09:01):
can you talk a little bit about like what Mom's
net is and how this stuff sort of sort of
seeping into it. Yeah, So this is part of this
bigger question, which is why in the UK has taken
off so much in the way it has a big
part of that story is Moms, that which is a
website for moms um to ask kind of parenting questions UM.

(09:23):
And it's really widely used, I think, especially amongst kind
of like white, upper middle class educated population. A lot
of people are on moms and it's kind of a
trusted website for a lot of familial type things like
advice about what to do when your kid has life,
things like that, and Moms has become just like the

(09:46):
main infection point I think in the gender critical movement
the UK with why it happens more generally, do you
have to look at it as kind of part of
this global resurgence and fascism around the same time it
it's like the mids on um, you know, like the
most obvious instances of that have the kind of traditional

(10:08):
fascist targets and ideals. UM. I think what's essential is
this kind of logic that you really see in the
gender critical movement also, which as you have this kind
of background climate of anxiety and fear, then you get
this narrative that's minorities are rising up against you. You've
lost something, your identity used to give you a special
status and now they're taking it from you and you

(10:30):
have to fight back. Um. And it's how they've kind
of switched out, like what the big identity is, who
the minorities are, what the special status is with this
more feminist thing, But it really does have that kind
of internal logic in the same way. Um. And I
think you just had this kind of moment globally where

(10:52):
you have the kind of background emotional state that was
ripe for fascism a lot of ways, and then this
aology it's just infectious in that way. And then in
Moms Night it was able to catch it really provide
right over this place where really grow into this kind
of unusual demographic group for a kind of fascist movement. Yeah,

(11:19):
I mean I think there's there's there's an interesting I
think there's the other interesting thing to me about it
is like I don't know, I've been thinking about this
a lot in terms of yeah, why why specifically the
UK and why the US doesn't have this? And I mean,
I mean, you know, I mean, I guess one one
explanation for it partly is like the US is so

(11:40):
much more religious than the UK is, and a lot
of these people sort of would have been evangelicals in
like in the US. But but yeah, I think the
months that angles interesting to me in that it really
seems like because there's so few people publishing anything that's

(12:01):
even remotely tangible, like a very very small number of
actors were able to very quickly radicalize people. And I think,
I don't know, and I think it's interesting that like
like people like Jesse Son gall like I think, wind
up being much more influential in the UK than they
are in the US, even til they're getting sort of
published in these US publications, because there's sort of I

(12:26):
don't know, I guess there's there's this like hunger for
it on Mom's night, like for for anything that sort
of supports his worldview in a way that there's kind
of wasn't in the US. I think part of why,
like the y UK question, there's some part of it
that's just kind of by chance moms that existed was
a place where it could really take off. I think

(12:47):
also to some extent, like you're a litt I think
kind of part of the relevant group in the US
is like a little more inoculated against this stuff. I
mean that it doesn't really have the same initial appeal
among women who would like to construe construe themselves as

(13:08):
feminists because many many Americans see anti trends stuff and
immediately um connected to like the religious right. So it
doesn't you don't really get the initial way into it
where you know, you come across this thing presenting trans
people as encroaching on your space and taking something from you.

(13:28):
And for us, we see that and it's like, oh yeah,
bathroom bill laws really just had this a few years ago,
and it was this right wing religious thing. We know
what this is. The UK has kind of had a
more prominent turf activision for a little while and that
Julie Bendel's kind of long ben a thing there, um,

(13:49):
but it wasn't really catching in the same way it
is now really caught. Yeah, I guess, I mean, what
are the other things that I was talking I had
an interesting conversation that sadly didn't wind up getting recorded.
But what was talking with some Mexican feminists like trans
feminist about this, and one of the things they were
saying was the way like talking about the way like
intersectionality is a framework and the fact that there is

(14:11):
there was an incredibly strong black feminist current in the
US insulated like the main line of of American feminism
from this stuff in a way that didn't really happen
in the UK because like the Black feminist movement there
is just not as strong and not as sort of mainstream,
and that has this knock on effect. I guess we're

(14:32):
like you get you know, without an intersectionality framework, is
it's easier to have this sort of like totalizing like
identity of like the woman as like a thing that's
just one object that you can like pin down to
biological barkers instead of having to sort of like look
at all of the different actual relations that are going on. Yes,

(14:54):
so my read on them is that most of them
are not really we're not pre existing feminists. Um, there
were not people who are very interested in women's rights,
And then kind of took this turn my pressures that
they're largely people who really started identifying as feminists once
that that could be a guys to kind of take

(15:15):
things out on trans people. Um and I think probably
why it was able to get so big on Mom's Net.
So eventually the women's rights for my Mom's Net, which
is just one of the sub boards, in addition to
all the childcare stuff, just became almost all anti trans stuff.
And so that is partially this stuff was popular. Um.

(15:37):
But I also I think that you know, normal mainstream
feminist stuff wasn't as popular, and they weren't getting a
lot of engagement on normal important feminist issues, um and
instead this was what their user base was really going for.
It's really striking I think how those exceptions. Um. But
in general, the big gender critical people talk very very

(16:00):
little about all feminist issues. This is d thing they
care about all the time. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a
pouting what turfs where it's like yeah once once once,
you're a turf, Like this is the only thing you
care about, Like you don't you don't do Yeah. I
mean I guess like one of one of the we'll
talk more about this in the next episode, but one
of the sort of big like flagship things in like

(16:26):
with the UK and Ireland was like a bunch of
the Turfs getting extremely mad at the at at these end,
at the at the pro like at the pro abortion
activists in UH in Ireland because they weren't being Turfs,
and so know, the Turfs were like, no, no, no,
we're gonna like try to sabotage this, the actual feminist

(16:48):
movement trying to get access to abortions because we're Turfs
and they're not. Yeah, they can be really vindictive against
women who they say are selling out women's rights by
focusing on anything other than the tiny present of the
population that is trands is v one issue you're allowed

(17:09):
to focus on. And if you say, like no, please
please leave us alone, we're focusing on something else, really
do not take that well. I guess the everything I
wanted to ask about was because I think that everything

(17:30):
that happened in the UK that only really started happening
in the US like pretty recently and even then was
kind of like it was an event in like a
way that I don't know how much it was in
the UK. Is the extent to which like people like J.
K Rowling and like the sort of the sort of
mainstream of British famous people and like the British British

(17:55):
journalists stuff like that, like like start started rallying around
this stuff. Yeah, this is It's been wild for me
seeing I don't think super highly of the American media,
but seeing how much worse the British media is really well,
they just have been publishing stuff things like The Times

(18:15):
of London have been the worst with more conservative Eletto
especially back but even you know, like The Guardian has
in some BBC since some uh, these things are just
kind of like demonstrably false coverage of transmit stuff. It
just gives a lot of credence to this transphobic movement. Um.

(18:36):
It's kind of this like near blackout of in serious
consideration of what trans people are experiencing, um and what
their actual position on this stuff is. It's just really grim.
I think I think part of it is maybe that
moms that did have this reach to a lot of

(18:57):
people who are like professionals. They're audience is pretty professional,
and it was it's kind of trusted website where this
got normalized a lot. The last thing I wanted to
talk about before um we go to break is do
you want to talk about Kathleen Stock and that whole
thing a little bit. Yes, okay, Also we should talk about, uh,

(19:20):
we should connect Billick too. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah we
should we should do that first. Yeah, and so that
is there was you know Mom's that started. Um. I
think the initial narrative was kind of trans people are
being really unreasonable, they're really demanding, they're infringing on our status.
This is the thing that was more localized about this

(19:43):
group that it was easy to cast as unreasonable. Um,
and they were able to take kind of a victim's
stance relative to them. And then it just kind of
kept escalating, right, it just kind of fu it too,
more and more of this kind of content and then
eventually there yeah, there really was a great site is
kind of anti trans content, and it just got increasingly conspiratorial.

(20:08):
I think so people at this point, I think almost
everyone in the gender critical movement thinks that there's dark
money behind trans rights and they think it's like some
kind of AstroTurf movement for who knows what. Lots of
them will say the goal is like selling you know,
hormones and surgery to people. What it's funding, you know,

(20:38):
a global conspiracy. It's like pretty expensive and how it's
like the most plausible way to get an audience for
this kind of thing. Um. But Jennifer Billick is what
a relatively few people get doing this kind of deep
research UM. And so it's just kind of of the

(21:01):
kind of thing they were looking for. And they have
pretty minimal bullshit filters about what they're willing to see UM.
And this is just pretty rare that they we'll see
a source that seems to be on their side and
be like, no, there's something wrong with us. Um. And

(21:22):
so she increasingly got fans and a lot of people
hear her stuff secondhand. I think they're not directivating her,
but people are repeating her on so much of her
stuff now is part of the just the background of
this movement. Like there's this woman, Martin Rothblatt Um who's
it's kind of a random rich woman who was she

(21:46):
was involved in kind of early trans rights activism UM
and I kind of moved on and got interested in
trans humanism stuff instead. She's like kind of a stratulating
um and she is interested in trans humanism stuff and
rich um and is not the architect of the transference movement.

(22:08):
But now you know, they just all, I think that
this person has central role UM and when you see
them talking about her, it is Jennifer Billock's influence, and
they just don't have they're they just don't have many
defenses against kind of increasingly radicalized stuff. And when I

(22:29):
started kind of looking into Jennifer and I started seeing
her and get you know, when you see people talking
about a conspiracy of people like George Soros, Jennifer Prinsker Jewish,
Roth Blatt is also Jewish. Ye, there there's a red flag,

(22:51):
and in conspiracy spaces just kind of tends towards anti
Semitism if you're not on the lookout for and if
you're not defend against it. And Billicks not and she
has gotten increasingly into the anti Semitic side of things
UM up to the point where she was boosting Keith Woods,

(23:14):
who is just a Nazi. His content that was largely
inspired by her work UM about the Jews behind the
transgender movement UM and just taking kind of going from
stet of non explicit anti Semitic conspiracy theory where you
have this group of people who happened to be largely

(23:36):
filled with Jewish people kind of orchestrating this global conspiracy
to explicitly naming the jew and saying no, this is
a Jewish movement. Um and yeah, and she just like
followed it all the way. Um. And there was some
and I started making a big deal about this. You know,

(23:57):
there's some pushback from the general critical of met um
but largely and they think I'm like a bad faith
acting right, I'm the enemy. It's they're not gonna take
anything I say really seriously. Um. But also it was
really struck by how some of them were arguing with

(24:18):
me about this Keith Woods video that was, you know,
about how this was just a Jewish pot and why
the Jewish religion would inspire you to do something like this.
And they say, no, this is ananti Semitic there's nothing
you know, it's just it's very interesting, it's about Judaism
because they already believed all the background stuff, right, they

(24:39):
thought that there was in fact this conspiracy that's populated
by people who happened to be Jewish, and so then
when you take the explicit step, it's they're like, well, yeah,
there's an interesting question, right, why are all these people
Jewish interest going all the way. But it's just and yeah,
it's just in general the movie is just really not

(25:02):
have good defenses against this kind of stuff at all.
And yeah, that's kind of conspiratorial stuff will take you
there if you don't have defenses against it. It's just
a very old road that comes in exactly that direction
and is ready for you if you start getting into
this stuff and aren't watching out for it. Yeah, all right,
so let' let's let's let's let's let's talk about Kathleen

(25:23):
Stock philosophies horror Child. Oh no, I mean not just Kathleen,
but you have. One of the things that is noteworthy
about the movement I think is you have these this
unusual prominence of academics, one of them being Kathleen Stock,

(25:44):
maybe the most prominent being Kathleen Stock, Um, but also
like Rosa Freeman and Selena's Odd and you have this
kind of academic face of it. And it's very interesting
I think how that works UM, and that these people
are in generally not doing kind of substantive research on

(26:06):
anything relayed to this UM. Instead, what I see is,
you know, stuff starts out in the community. Um, it's
like on Mom's ned, it's on Twitter, and then Kathleen
Stock picks it up, right, she is getting her stuff
kind of from mom's ned and stuff, and then just
legitimizing it. Right, It's like, oh, this is what these

(26:28):
fancy professors think. And then centrally their role is claiming
that there are all these serious issues, you know, on
the basis of their academic status, um, and saying that
trans people aren't willing to discuss it. You know, trans
people are shutting down debate, they're being silenced. Um. It
gives it this legitimacy that the movement I think really

(26:49):
capitalizes on. Yeah, which I think with Stock in particularly,
you know there part part of what's happening is like
the anti transmitment kind of like moves between different conservative
panics and so like like the modern one they're on
the state of the children panic. But when Stock was
sort of like getting big and you can see this

(27:11):
with the end of her career arc uh she'll get
to in a second, but she was big on the
whole sort of like like conservative callus canceled, like college
free speech crisis, like can't I guess, sort of cancer
culture also, but yeah, she was really big on the
on the whole, like, yeah, the conservatives are being silence

(27:32):
or like I don't even sort of like I think
she was kind of doing the like liberal centrist thing,
but but she was. Yeah, she she was doing all
these censorship claims and then turning around and just actually
censor people. And it was yeah, yeah, I gave a
talk at Sussex Cathlete University that I believe she tried

(27:57):
to have canceled. Come on. It was just kind of
interesting because I initially this talk was kind of scheduled
as a protest at the same time as one of
her as a talk she was going to give on
a related topic, um, And then she canceled her talk.

(28:17):
So I thought she might come to mind, right, like
free to bay, like ask me questions, and I was like, okay,
but of course she didn't, right. Instead, I tried to
just get it shut down. But I think this is yeah,
it's one kind of the cancel culture thing is kind
of one element, but I think it's really central and
a lot of their stuff, um, and that the kind

(28:41):
of in the background of other stuff is like, you know,
somehow the consensus has been controlled, and like it's the
result of like the truth not being heard and people
not considering all these important things that they need to
consider kind of from care for trans youth too, you know,
trans woman being able to the bathroom kind of across

(29:01):
all this, they're running this narrative that the truth has
been silenced and you know, trance people are being unreasonable
and have shut it down. I think that is a
pretty foundational and the other overall narrative they've built. Yeah,
and it you see this as like, this is one

(29:25):
of the ways they try to I guess, rest the
batchel of authority back from literally every actual medical group
who all agree that you should actually let kids transition
and you should let adults transition, and that this is
in fact good and like a thing that medically is

(29:47):
is like and then like I said, yeah, I mean
this isn't this is a huge deal. But so, like
Catholt Sock is a philosopher, right, and so she started
off her first thing was like, so thing is a
fund in academic philosophy. Academic philosophers aren't debating whether trans
women or women in the way that they should. This

(30:07):
idea that the debates being silenced in philosophy, you know,
like doesn't have really important consequences. I think the idea
that like all of mainstream research on trans healthcare and
like what is in the good and the best interests
of trans kids. Being able to diligitimize that is really serious, right,

(30:29):
that it just has these tremendous consequences. I think they've
been able to be pretty effective on that too. Yeah,
and that's been really scary in a lot of ways
because you see like the arguments of these people pioneered
and the sort of the techniques and the groups that
they're part of like wind up being core parts of

(30:52):
the anti trans push in both the UK and the US.
And yeah, that's extremely scary. It's really scary, right, I mean,
it's just it's just awful, Like these are their children
and for them to become the focus of this kind
of hate movement is just horrifying. And it's just often

(31:14):
the you know, the history of healthcare for general conforming
kids is really grim, and it's like they are just
pushing to kind of go back there and it's just ghastly.
It's really horrifying to see. Yeah, I guess I think

(31:42):
that's a that's a good point. We can Okay, this
is probly should probably be the second ad break, but yeah,
do you know what else's horrifying ads and we're back. Um.

(32:03):
What one of the scariest parts I think of what
was happening in the UK was the extent to which
I mean not just mainstream British media gets involved in this,
but I mean literally the BBC, which is which is
the you know this, this is this is the state
media organization right starts to just push unbelievably transphobic articles

(32:29):
out as just regular contents. Um. I think I think
the probably the most famous one is Yeah, in in October,
BBC publishes this article that's called We're being pressured into
sex by some trans women. That is just an just

(32:54):
just an absolutely appalling display of transfer be a. Um, yeah,
can you talk a little bit about that? And so
the this article was framed around the question is a
lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex
with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being

(33:16):
pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners. Um.
And so the the over arching perspective in the piece
that you get is that this is a significant problem
among lesbians. They're experiencing sexual pressure from trans women. Um.
The reporting strategy that the reporter used was you know,

(33:39):
just soliciting this one kind of particular narrative from lesbians
who said that they had had these kind of experiences
with trans women. Um. The people who are quoted in
the article who aren't anonymous are gender critical people, right,
They're like Rose of Don Debbie Hayden. And then there's
these anonymous women who we don't know who they are. Um,

(34:03):
but it's not they didn't go and approach you know,
normal mainstream let's be an activists or lesbian organizations to
see what they were experiencing the community. Right, there's kind
of no perspective just from any kind of mainstream lesbian
or at all. That that was one of the things
that like sort of haunting about this, Like this journalist

(34:24):
is working on this for age, like I think it
was like and like like she was specifically trying to
find this people, these people like people who like had
to experienced a specific thing and like no normal but
she couldn't find normal people because it's not a thing.
And so she she after like many many years, she
was able to find like a couple of examples, like

(34:47):
a few examples and mostly from yeah, just open transpops.
And the article is just like so conceptually sloppy that
it doesn't distinguish, you know, theoretical discourse about whether you know,
it's transphobic to just say out of hand you never
date a trans woman. It doesn't distinguish this from sexual abuse.

(35:07):
It just kind of takes for granted that they're just
saying in kind of an abstract theoretical context. Um, that's
some's like just saying that you won't ever sleep with
a trans woman. Saying that that is transphobic, is itself
treated as akin to pressuring someone into sex, right like that, Yeah,

(35:28):
journalism that doesn't distinguish between just a conversation about sexual
issues and sexual abuse is just disastrous. There's just something
serious about this piece, and it's just kind of throughout
it it's just yeah, like like one of your things
about this is so they found like a survey, right,

(35:49):
the journalists went looking for a survey about like like
what percentage of lesbians have like encountered this encountered this pressure,
and the only thing they could find was, well, okay,
the only thing they could find that would like support
their actual claim was this this pole from this group
called Get Out the l which is just like a

(36:11):
group that whose entire purpose is just being anti trans
people and trying to get rid of them. Yeah, and
it was just it was just like it was it
was like a Twitter poll, right, it was like they're
they're they're publishing as as statistical evidence for their claim
a Twitter poll from a from a turf group and
trying to like claim this is serious journalism, and it's

(36:32):
just yeah, I mean so literally, on the page of
the statistics they cite in this report, the report approvingly
cites Janice Raymond saying about all trans sexuals rape women's
bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact.
And so like, are we talking about metaphors here? Are
we talking about sexual abuse? It's just sick. And so

(36:57):
one of the people who was in a you in
this um was Lily Cade, who was an adult performer,
and again throughout this just a trans woman saying that
the way someone is treating her in a sexual context
is transphobic, is itself treated as sexually abusive? Um, So,

(37:20):
Lily Cade, you know, she refused to I think initially
she refused to be in a scene with a trans woman.
The later on also refused to um shoot a trans
woman at all Um when she was working as a
producer Um. So they kind of get a quote from Lily,

(37:42):
you know, saying something about women being pressured into sex
by trans women. And it turns out that Lily Cade
was pushed out of the adult industry because she's like
a serial rapist, right, So this is there source on
whether is this problem for assist woman is herself as

(38:04):
this woman who is a serial rapist, right, And they're
using this person to portray trans woman as the victimizers
and it's just so grim. Yeah, just much. It is
just like haunting. Like one of the other things that
came out was like part of the stories that they
said that like no prominent trans women would speak with

(38:26):
them for the story, and then a prominent trans woman
was like, no, you guys interviewed me and then didn't
include it in the article. Yeah. So this was one
of the people who really Kate had had a conflict
with was Chelsea Powe Um, another woman and portant who
had asked if Lily Um she could work really his

(38:46):
company and Lily said no because she was trans. So
they talked Chelsea was is a reasonably prominent person Um,
and they interviewed her didn't include her in the article.
She says that she told them that Lily had this
predatory past. They also didn't say anything about that. And

(39:09):
so we have the situation where we have this person
who is this this woman who the author has been
told is a serial sexual predator being presented as kind
of an authority on women's sexual victimization, supposedly by trans woman.
She is the victimized, and not only is she a

(39:34):
serial sexual predator, but she's like specifically attacked people in bathrooms.
But she's like the famous fearmongering transphobic thing is that
trans people are going to attack you in the bathrooms.
Your sources attacks people in bathrooms, and there's just very

(39:55):
little interest like how women are actually victimized and by who. Yeah,
and I think like that that's amused to disturbing party here.
It's like, this isn't just like a negligency of reporting
thing here. This is just malice. Like if if you
are told and the thing, it's like it's not it's
not like it was hard to like find out that

(40:15):
that you know, it's okay, So someone someone tells you
that someone else is an abusive, right, it's like okay,
Like maybe you're a journalist, maybe you're going to be like, oh,
I should check this out. Like Lily Cage assaulted so
many people and like rape so many people that like,
just scrolling through Twitter, I found multiple people who have
been abused by her, Like this was this was not

(40:37):
something that was like like she she'd admitted it in public.
This is not something that was like hard to find, right,
And and I just want to underline that, which is
that Willy Kay, after these accusations really got going, she
did like publicly and she did not deny, and then
she retired from porn. Yeah, and and and you know,
and this is something like the BBC does this. They

(41:01):
do this weird backtracking at this article comes out, everyone
gets exurely mad at them. But they they refused to
release the like the tape of the interview they had
to with Chelsea Poe, which you know, would have proved
that Chelsea Poe did in fact tell them that Lily
k was a rapist, and they published the story anyways,
and there's there's so much of this stuff was like yeah,
like the they the way they backtrack about it, the

(41:24):
way that also like so the two places where this
thing the story Ran was the BBC in Britain, and
they syndicated it out to Brazil and a few of
the places that were like that are incredibly transphobic, and
it ran like and this so just like right in Brazil,
like ran as a bunch of mainstream news headlines like
where like news stories and in the major newspapers like

(41:44):
ran this, and it was I don't know, like there
there's there's there's this extent to which, yeah, like you're
watching British state media decide that they actively just want
to go to war on trans people and they literally
just do not care that like they are, you know,
publishing little rapists. And then yeah, I just just the

(42:07):
BBC's policy, you know is when we interview those responsible
for ani social behavioral crime, it may cause distress to victims,
and we should contact victims and advise them of our plans,
you know what, are viewing criminals. Care must be taken
to minimize potential of stress this may cause to victims
of the crime. They they didn't see Lily as this

(42:30):
is applying to her, right, This is uh, this woman
who they have been told is a sexual predator. You
can find this information. I found it pretty quickly all
of these victims talking about it, her acknowledging it, and
they didn't identify this this woman as a predator with
victims who would be like very plausibly upset by seeing

(42:54):
their rapists treated as an authority sexual abuse, right, And
this is kind of pervasive, I think in the gender
critical movement right where if any of you are out there,
I'm sure you're thinking, women can't be rapists. Rape requires
a penis, which is in the UK, it's kind of
a you know, most femin is considered this a pretty

(43:16):
reactionary way to define righte where it has to be
um penetration with a penis, and this isn't reflective of
you know, how women experience sexual assault that it's just
kind of totally other category UM. And most countries feminism

(43:37):
consider it quite important that you don't kind of treat
this as this like categorically different offense um. But the
gender critical really pushes this perspective where it is literally
impossible for women too to commit ray, you know. And
this is they think that when they a brief period

(44:00):
where they thought that they had identified like that every
rape that was recorded as committed by a woman was
trans woman because they thought that it required ipdes and
they thought that that was the only way that's possible,
and so you can actually be convicted of it if
you were aiding and abetting. I think they thought that
they had all of these and they just have this

(44:22):
overall perspective where it is literally impossible for you know,
they say a woman meaning the assist woman to commit
a sexual offense, and in doing this they create cover
for sis woman predators. Like it creates this context where
that their victimization just disappears. People can't even acknowledge it.

(44:49):
And yeah, and like I think like the the extent
to which this whole movement is built on violence, and
it is built any and there are so many people
that that the general to go people work with your abusers.
There are you know, and I don't know, like I
want to come back to like the last piece of
the Lily Kid thing, which is that after this article

(45:09):
came out, the BBC initially basically didn't do anything right
even after the rape out. Yes, yeah, and then Lily
K published one of like one of the most transphobic
things I've ever encountered in my life, like a a
just this it gets called a manifesto, Like I don't

(45:34):
think like a manifesto. It was terrified. Yeah, like she
she's she she's explicitly like like like name specific trans
women that she wants lynched. Like there's a bunch of
stuff about the people she wants raped. She wants like
she wants all trans people to die. Uh, there's a
there's a bunch of there's like weirdly racist stuff. There's
like I mean, it's it's it's just it's it's it's

(45:57):
it is a document that calls for genocide. And the
part where it's calling for genocide probably isn't, like line
for line, the most disturbing part of it, because the
individual threats are like so graphic. And I was terrified
when I mentioned I was the person who, you know,
initially dug up the sexual abuse allegations. And when I

(46:19):
did it, I knew it would kind of it would
throw a match into her life. I thought that they
hadn't you know, they were there, they were visible, you
could find them. But when it had happened, she had
not really been in the mainstream. I and so I know,
if it's got an uptake, it would make it bigger.
And what had and I said, and then you know,

(46:43):
this woman is posting this terrifying manifest It read like, yeah,
she shooting someone. Now. It was just so it was
just terrified. It was like something to be written, you know,
immediately before someone goes to shoot someone. It was until
she's tweeting it and tagging the BBC in it. Yeah,

(47:06):
and like that that finally, like one of the most
disturbing things I've ever read in my life. Like that
was finally the thing with the BBC was like, uh,
maybe we should do something about this. It was just
so so little, right, this is they took her out
of the article. Um, they added an update and says,

(47:28):
we have updated this article published last week to remove
a contribution from one individual in light of comments she
has published on a blog post in recent days which
we have been able to verify. We acknowledge that an
admission of inappropriate behavior by the same contributor should have
been included in the original article. So this is yeah,
there's kind of erased her. Right, So they didn't acknowledge

(47:51):
that they had included this person in the article who
just published this genocidal ran. Right, So one of their
sources is the person who is advocating for killing trans people.
That is important, right, That is pretty to this narrative
they're pushing. And they also are not saying, you know,

(48:12):
they should have we acknowledged that an admission of inappropriate
behavior should have been included in the original article. It
really changes the overall narrative of the article. Right, if
you acknowledge this sis woman is a serial pro Right,
the overall picture is like six women are at risk
from trans women and it's a reality check, right to hear. No,

(48:36):
in fact, this woman who were presenting as like victimized
is one of the women who's preying on people, and
she's not a trans woman. And it's just they just,
you know, even after this responded in a way that
protected the narrative of the piece, right, they were they

(48:59):
weren't going to let in anything that acknowledge this. The
people they're finding with this position are transphobic. This person
was very red and that it just says, you've removed
the contribution in light of comments she has published. What
kind of what do they about? It's serious, right, it's

(49:21):
seriously not acknowledge that one of their sources is a
violent transfer. Yeah, this is how I found out that
she was alive, also them saying that they had been
able to verify it before that, I had been like,
she's not very online in a lot of cases. Um,

(49:42):
so I was really where I didn't know how long
it was going to be before you know, there's confirmation
that like in fact that like Kate had not just
shot someone and herself. Yeah, this was it was just
really it's manifest. It was terrified. I don't know, it's

(50:06):
just awful. Yeah, And I think you know, one of
the things that that's happening here is you get to
see there's a couple of like there's a couple there's
like layers at which this stuff operates. So you have
you know, you have your BBC running diligitimization, right, but
then you have the stuff beneath it, which is just
apritly genocidal. And I think, you know, and sometimes like

(50:29):
with the Lily caide, like if you're going to be
a turf lily kid kind of blew it right because
like you can't like okay, like that. You can be
really really transphobic in a lot of in a lot
of ways, but like you know, actively calling people to
get lynched is a thing that like even like transphobs
are are normally like wait what why are you? Yeah? Yeah,

(50:54):
but but I don't think like that. The mainstream church
movement is not in a place where you conduced off
like that. But in some ways I think, you know,
the stuff that's more moderate is more dangerous. The last
thing I want to talk about is a document called
the Decoration on Women's Sex Based Rights, which was was

(51:17):
put together by a bunch of URF activists, fairly prominently
featuring arch Australian turf Sheila Jeffreys. But yeah, can you
can you talk a bit about like what this is?
And yeah, so this is a document that basically all
of the gender critical organizations and that you people have signed.

(51:38):
I mean, it is extreme, right. It calls for trans
women to be banned from all women's spaces, including toilets,
which you know, if if we can't go to the bathroom,
they can't participate in society. Right. It's just like a
basic need people to have to exist in public um.
And that it bands all it has to be at

(52:00):
all internationally recommended healthcare for trans children. UM. It has
to legally protect deliberate mis gender ing, um, which would
you know allow you to be just treated with such
hostility at work, just in public. This is a just

(52:20):
kind of a threat assault on trans people's ability to
exist with dignity and society, just live normal lives. And
you know a lot of general critical people will say
will portray themselves, you know as only opposing advances for
trends rights, you know, as not wanting trends rights to

(52:42):
be rolled back. But with this document calls for is
like basically every right trans people have to exist in
their genders, in particular trans women and especially turgis trans women,
um to just take it all back right and leave
them with basically nothing. Yeah, yeah, like like they have
this whole thing but like basically like they want to
erase the concept of gender identity from law, which is

(53:07):
like the thing that does is it eliminates all trans
people from like, it eliminates trans people as a thing
that the law recognizes exists and things should have protections.
It's like it's it's it is, you know, like it
is the legal genocide of trans people like that that's
that's that's what it is. It's yeah, so they've basically

(53:30):
all signed this, you know, it is a yeah, it's
this is not at all. Uh. French document positions itself
as like, you know, the demands kind of of this
movement and it's extreme. Um. The organization's spokeswoman is Karadinsky UM,

(53:53):
who uses almost all of her public appearances. She has
a number of times been on Tucker Carl said, Um,
she boost Jennifer Billick all the time. She I think
it's her biggest supporter. UM and was formerly the chair
of Wolf, which is Lear Keith's organization. UM. So she

(54:15):
is front is what stands for it is a cool
name for an organ that sucks, and they should get
it back to someone better. Yeah. So this is I
mean general you see the American turfs kind of in
this more radical direction. UM also especially explicitly collaborating with

(54:40):
the right. UM. And here they've made this document that
just purports to and everyone has signs kind of purples
direct the overall agenda to one that just leaves trance
people with just no protections at all. Yeah. And I
think I think it's you know, the reason I think

(55:02):
this is in a lot of ways like what ads
silarly cave things. Again, it's in this like it's not
actually in legal ees because none of these people are lawyers,
and oh, Solay said, how how did an actual law
I mean, okay, I shouldn't be asking how did an
actual lawyer produce this because I've met lawyers and they're
they're not they are not as smart and above board

(55:25):
as they protect yourself to people. Yeah, like this stuff
isn't making legal arguments. Like one of one of the
things that they they've like I guess the whole sort
of gender critical like church movements invented is like this
this concept of sex based rights, which is not a
thing like yeah, like like like they all think that
there's like rights that you have because of your sex,

(55:47):
and no, this doesn't exist. They completely made this up.
They keep on like referring to it as if it's
like a concept that exists in the law. Like none
of this stuff like in terms of legally is it's
like it's not thing. It's it's it's, it's, it's, it's
it's a jumble of words. Yeah, I know. You really
see as the movements go, they really have really robust

(56:08):
movement discipline and kind of taking up these terms and
then saying them all the time as though it's a
thing everyone's familiar with. One of them is always like
women's sex based rights, women's sex based rights, like what
people's rights are based on their sex. This is kind
of like a whole thing we're doing with fetism. You know.
It was like, you don't have special rights based on

(56:30):
being a man, And it turns out that like supposedly
a law we've thought that you have special rights for
if you're a woman, to exclude whoever you want to exclude.
I guess it's yeah, it's just goofy. Yeah, but but
I think, like it's weird, but it's like it's also

(56:52):
it has this function, which is that the sort of
like and like okay, so like I don't My guess
is that most of the people who have signed this
document have not read it because you know. But but
you know, like I think the thing that it does
is it gives them this this legitimization. It gives their
goal of exterminating trans people this sort of legal jargon apparatus.

(57:14):
They can hide behind it like, oh, it's actually from
the u N and we're basing it on international law
and that. And the organization used to have this fancy name,
which was the Women Human Rights Campaign UM and they
have now dropped that, possibly for legal reasons, but it
sounds good, right. The websites polished and it seems like

(57:42):
feel thing. And the they really try to take this
phrase to and using it just kind of sneak everything.
And so they'll ask people questions like, well, what about
women's sex based rights? These are the thing I've never
heard about before in my life, and but people just
get on board and I don't really know what's happening.

(58:03):
And they've Another thing they do is they always portray
like bathrooms as sex segregated spaces, and every bathroom I've
ever been and since women on the door and it
seemed like female bathroom. But they're like, this is like
sentence is based on sex, not gender. Just making these

(58:25):
assertions and they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, yeah,
I think I think that's a good place to wrap up.
I guess they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, I
guess they've just underwriting again, what a serious kind of

(58:48):
attack on trans people's right. So this is right, and
this is calling for things that would make it very
hard for trans people to exist. And it's really scared
watch that. I think I watch it kind of progress
across this movement and be boosted. It's awful. Yeah, And
next episode we are going to take a much deeper

(59:10):
dive into some of the people who signed this document,
and we are going to see what happens when this
kind of bloodless but genocidal, legalistic rhetoric makes it into
the hands of people who are not afraid to do
physical violence. And it is worse. It is going to

(59:34):
go worse than you're probably imagining. Just to underline said
earlier that Jennifer Billicks stuff is, you know, just widely
now accepted within this movement, and her stuff is portraying
trans people and trans writs as existential immediate threat. Right,
she portrays she often says that doctors are like butchering children, right,

(59:59):
is there making children too slaves? It's stuff that, if
it was true, would call for kind of an extreme
level of resistance. And that's kind of what this stuff
functions to do. Right. If you are accusing people of
these really extreme offenses and of hurting and threatening all
of these people, what that motivates is extreme responses and

(01:00:22):
volive responses. And Billy herself is sometimes engaged in violent rhetoric,
but I think many of us who have been following
this movement are just kind of waiting afraid because that's
just where it looks like it's going in the US
and the UK too, kind of like hard to it's

(01:00:43):
just so scary, right and like you know, they're mapping
out where the gender clinics are and it's it's scary
because where rhetoric like this goes is to a violent
place and it's hard to see it letting up right now. Yeah,
and yeah, that is that is the subject of tomorrow's episode,

(01:01:03):
which yeah, in which a bunch of people will start
attacking gender clinics and a bunch of trans people are
going to get violently assaulted by turfs who are directly
affiliated with Sheila Jeffreys and our followers of Jennifer Billi
So Greg, Yeah, Krista, thank thank you for coming on

(01:01:24):
and doing this. Yeah, yeah, this has been It could
happen here. Uh you can find us at happened here
pot on Twitter and Instagram. We are also there is
other stuff that we do at the Cool Zone and yeah,
go go fight for the rights of trans people before
they ceased to exist. It could Happen here is a

(01:01:48):
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