Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / ANDREW DOYLE on Satirising the Left

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ANDREW DOYLE on Satirising the Left · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and few pursuits are quite
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  as dangerous as poking fun at sacred cows which powerful elites think are beyond being
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  made fun of.
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  Andrew Doyle is a man who does just that.
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  He's a political satirist originally from Northern Ireland, but in the early days of
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  wokeness in the early 2010s.
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  He was a man who noticed something happening on the left that was worthy of satirising and
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  he created a parody account on Twitter, a fictional person called Titania McGrath.
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  This person soon acquired hundreds of thousands of followers for all of her insanely woke
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  social justice-y tweets, but they were just plausible enough to convince a lot of people
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  and there was some confusion about whether or not she was a parody account or a real human
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  being.
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  She describes herself on Twitter as an eco-sexual, radical intersectionalist poet with
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  variable pronouns.
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  She became legendary and so did Andrew as a result.
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  Andrew has also written for the parody character Jonathan Pie.
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  He's written plays, he currently has a panel show on GB Muse where he argues for free
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  speech and discusses culture, war topics, he's written a couple of terrific books.
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  One of them free speech and why it matters, the other, the new Puritans, how the religion
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  of social justice captured the Western world.
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  I was recently in London, this was just before the US presidential election which Donald
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  Trump won and I sat down with Andrew Doyle to discuss satire, free speech, the working
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  class, partisan politics, comedy, the future of the left.
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  Please enjoy the one and only Andrew Doyle.
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  So, someone's been calling you a white supremacist today.
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  It is a frequent occurrence.
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  Well, I mean, yeah, there are people, there are crazy people online who call me fascist
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  and far right and homophobic get quite a lot and yeah, so why not white supremacists?
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  If you're just making stuff up, you may as well go the whole hog.
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  Sure.
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  I think it's just, no, I got sent it, someone sent me this tweet saying, you know, it's
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  this person calling this and I just said yes, but people say people make things up online
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  and yeah, you know, that's there, but they don't think they're making it up to that.
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  They do, do they?
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  You can't be someone who is so consistently and openly against racism as I am.
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  You can't pretend that I'm actually the opposite without lying.
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  I think that's got to be a decision and that might be self-deception maybe.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, there's that interesting thing of the creation of folk devils online, the way
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  in which people mischaracterize.
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  I mean, a good example of what, you know, obviously, back in the day, all of my friends are on
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  the left and they used to talk about some people I know rather well now on the right
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  conservative commentator, they used to call them, they're months, these people are evil,
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  genuinely evil and they, and then now that I know these people, I realize it's the
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  precise opposite, they're very generous and kind and all the rest of it.
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  So, you know, there is a way, I suppose, that people, particularly in tribal groups, political
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  tribal groups, conjure an image of someone who doesn't exist and then, and then proceed
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  with that image.
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  Yes, it does.
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  It's an interesting psychological thing.
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  I mean, I'm not, I've got my expertise in anthropology or psychology, so I don't know
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  why you do.
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  In the sense of having been part of it, like, you know, I didn't know why they do the
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  things they do.
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  Because I mean, the generous way of interpreting a remark like what supremacist is the tribal
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  one, right?
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  Where they have, they believe that there's, that there are good sides and bad sides and
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  that, you know, there's dark, there are forces of darkness and you're, you have proven
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  you're, you've either failed to prove your bona fide is on being on the right side
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  of history.
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  Yes.
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  By, you know, there are things that you've not, you refrain from saying or there are things
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  that you've been willing to say, maybe, the only people in the tribal white supremacists
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  would say.
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  And very mind, you know, these are the same people who compared Lord Tony's soul, who
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  was the head of the commission on race and ethnic disparities to the, to Joseph Gerbos,
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  I believe, Ron, and they did that on the ground.
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  Only Gerbos.
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  Why not?
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  Why?
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  Maybe because he's black, they thought they couldn't go all the way.
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  Right.
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  But they were most of the way.
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  Yeah.
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  And all because he, you know, commissioned this report and ran this rigorous report into
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  the notion of systemic racism into UK institutions, including schooling, and found
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  no evidence of it.
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  Right.
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  Because it was like Gerbos to me.
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  But there was a bit of a fan of commissioning anti-racism.
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  He wanted to find out, yeah, about that kind of thing for the bottom of it.
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  Yeah.
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  Göring would be another good one.
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  Yeah.
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  I like sometimes people will call you Mussolini so they don't have to commit the Hitler
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  fallacy because Hitler's a bit lazy.
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  No, if it's Mussolini, you're like a sort of gateway to it.
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  So stay at your wards, but not quite all the way.
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  I think if people, I think if stupid people don't want to seem like they're reaching
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  for the lazy analogy.
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  Yeah.
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  I don't know how I'll be clever.
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  I'm not going to say Hitler because everybody said that.
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  Yeah.
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  I'll say Gerbos or say Mussolini.
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, he was a, he was a wrongman as well.
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  Which one?
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  Mussolini.
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  I'd say one of them.
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  I'm going to go with order.
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  I think you can say yes.
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  I think you can say if they say that.
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  Yeah.
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  My cousin in Italy wants to took me to Mussolini's grave, which is a, it's because
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  your cousin's a fursure.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Actually, the opposite.
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  I mean, he's, he, he, he was a complete, obviously, hated Mussolini and everything
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  he stood for.
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  He was fascinated by this weird place in Italy called Pradapia where Mussolini was born.
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  And when his body got, he got dragged all over the place and smuggled around the place.
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  And when it, it finally eventually ended up back in this small village, Pradapia, but
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  it's a weird thing.
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  It's got the big, two, big Mussolini head.
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  Oh.
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  It's normally guarded by a black shirt.
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  Thank God there wasn't one of them while I was there, but it's presumably a metal
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  head.
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  Not an aerosol.
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  Right after head of.
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  No, I'm going to be intrigued.
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  It was actually Mussolini's head.
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  I think that was gone.
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  I think that was the bits were torn off and all that.
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  Okay.
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  But that's an interesting village because the village itself is a tiny small village in
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  Italy.
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  But because of his influence, when he became leader, he went back and redecorated in this
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  grand art.
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  That goes style.
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  So it's a weird place, proper dodgy people, those, I'm not, obviously, smearing a whole
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  village.
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  No, I'm just saying, I do just some, you just say you're racist against Italians.
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  Now, I'm saying I saw a couple of shots there that were openly setting Nazi paraphernalia
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  and that, and that troubled me quite a bit.
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  Yeah, that's nice.
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  Yeah.
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  So you said that you have, you used to have a lot of friends on the left.
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  Yeah.
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  What does that mean?
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  I know.
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  I know.
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  I normally lose about three or four years of the ones that are remaining.
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  It's, it's, it's, it's friends you have.
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  I couldn't lose three or four years without doing, I'd run out, pretty soon.
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  I'm using friends in the, in the, in the, in the, in the kind of, um, broader term.
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  Right.
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  I would say maybe, say, era of acquaintance.
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  We could say acquaintances.
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  Um, yeah, that's right because they do say you're only really have, like, a handful of
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  rear friends.
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  Yeah.
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  Um, okay, but, but every now and then, if something will happen, someone I used to know
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  on the comedy circuit, who I knew pretty well would suddenly chip in online and call
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  me something awful and, and it was, oh, okay, but there's another one I'll delete.
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  His number.
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  What I'm mostly objecting to, like, where did the, obviously, is that the example?
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  Yeah.
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  Um, so a comedian who I, I've giggled with many times over many years, um, suddenly
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  reacted very badly to an article I'd written about librarians, uh, because I was pointing
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  out at the, uh, whatever this ideology is, you want to call it woke or critical social
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  justice or whatever, uh, that it has taken a particular hold in the sphere of librarianism,
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  which is objectively true.
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  And I have the evidence to prove that the fact that the British, the British library has
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  a, uh, decolonizing work in group that has even openly claimed that the, the main building
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  of the library is colonial because it, because it looks a bit like a battleship.
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  So that's the kind of people we're dealing with.
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  They, they created a watch list of the authors who had connections to the slave trade going
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  back centuries, um, including Ted Hughes, let's take him off when they realized that wasn't
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  true.
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  They just made it up.
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  Um, but, but I made this point about librarians and there is a weird thing.
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  There's loads of, um, not just anecdotal, but, but studies, which have shown that librarians,
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  staff in libraries are hiding books that they're deemed to be problematic or, or not stocking
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  certain book.
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  I think Helen Joy, that's the enlightenment spirit, isn't it?
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Helen Joyce's book, uh, trans was compared to, uh, my camp, uh, in one, uh, library
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  report.
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  See, that's the lazy Hitler analogy.
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  Yeah.
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  And again, you should find Mussolini's book, yeah, or Gerbaugh's book, compare it to that
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  more creative.
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  It must be right.
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  A full book.
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  Not sure.
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  He wrote a treatise on fascism, which was an essay with a philosopher called Gentile, I
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  think.
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  Okay.
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  Um, you know, I mean, a lot about European fascism in the 19th century now, I'm, I'm
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  placed in myself with my, yeah, that is right.
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  It's actually, I'll just pretend I know nothing about it.
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  Yeah.
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  So, and so you wrote an article about librarians that got you in trouble.
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  I mean, what's them came in and started saying, well, dare you, can I swear on your
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  podcast?
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  Yeah.
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  He came in and called me a cunt and, uh, out of nowhere, just straight off the bat,
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  uh, because I was making this point about librarians and, and he said I was being a reactionary
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  or this sort of, and then I was blocked on inevitably.
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  And then, uh, I thought, okay, you know, I wasn't close to him, I don't, you know, but
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  I thought it was weird because we got on really, really well.
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  Um, but that sort of thing happens every now and then, it's just another one.
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  You just say, oh, there's another one I'll have to delete then.
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  And I'm quite resigned to it now, you know, you know, I just, I just sort of accept it
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  in the fact of life now.
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  And we're also a bit depressing, you know, uh, maybe, although I keep being reassured
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  that people who behave that way aren't really friends, anyway, and they're just kind
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  of outing themselves, uh, for who they really are.
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  So what do you say to the people who say sort of the, the whole kind of cancel culture
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  of being is a bit, that what basically, you're beating a dead horse kind of like that.
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  Yeah, there was like a brief moment of kind of woke insanity in, uh, you know, in 2020
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  and 2021 and the left got one a bit crazy, but now people are generally sort of putting
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  the house back on.
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  And then, well, you're speaking as, you sounded like a historian from the 2050s.
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  You know, I don't think we're there by some measure.
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  Yeah.
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  And I know every now and then, people say, well, have we reached peak woke?
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  Is this it now?
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  What you're doing, I think, is seeing signs of people being alert to the problem now,
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  when they weren't a couple of years ago.
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  And that is true.
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  But you, what you still haven't rectified, not you, but society hasn't rectified, is the,
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  well, I haven't either to be fair.
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  Well, how could you?
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  Yeah, it's the way in which there, these things are embedded in all of the major institutions
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  to, to extreme lengths.
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  Germany has just introduced a self ID law, which will find citizens for misgendering,
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  find them 10,000 euros.
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  And, you know, they're effectively finding people for not using the language.
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  That's compelled speech.
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  I would have thought in a country where you're like Germany with a history of,
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  with its history.
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  Let's not go into it again.
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  Who do you want?
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  They know it's funny that you raised that country of all the countries who you're up.
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  It's just because I've been reading about it today.
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  Or is it?
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  But, exactly.
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  But they do now have, it's not coincidental that their history leads to their position on that,
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  because they do have an extremely anti-fascist sort of,
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  you know, ethos, which can itself become fascistic in the sense, in the sense that
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  they're a country where it's illegal to say Nazi-like things.
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  They're a country where it's illegal to fly a swastika.
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  They're like, we're not going to do any of that.
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  Yeah, we're going to be super nice.
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  And if you're not nice, we're not going to be nice.
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  And you're saying they sort of find another outlet for their fascistic tendants?
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  I mean, maybe that's an unkind way of putting it,
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  but make it your altitude tonic.
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  It doesn't feel close to it.
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  I would suggest that they're just following a trend that is pretty much broadly
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  growing across the Western world.
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  I don't think it is slowing down, particularly.
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  I think it has less support from the public,
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  but since when did the work movement require popular support to impose its values?
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  It's never has.
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  It's always a little bit.
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  Well, what it had was the acquiescence of the cowardly.
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  Sure.
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  And it may be that there's more of a quorum now of people who aren't cowardly.
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  Potentially, but what can they really do about it?
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  I mean, you know, it dominates the government in America at the moment.
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  And what is it more in common estimated only eight percent
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  of Americans fit into the category of what we would describe as work,
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  that ideology of tiny minority?
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  But they have all the power.
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  How do you describe it?
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  The ideology.
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  Do you want to follow the description?
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  I would say it is a movement that is grounded
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  in the postmodernist notion that our understanding of reality is wholly constructed
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  through language,
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  deriving from the Fricodian and French postmodernist of the 1960s,
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  in addition to a kind of mistrust of the message which is kind of drawn
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  from the Frankfurt School, I would say predominantly.
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  And that this identity-obsessed mania,
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  anti-working class, very sort of upper middle class movement,
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  has come to the fore with an obsession about language and an obsession about control.
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  I would say it's key characteristics are a belief in censorship.
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  The idea that we can control what people say, then you can control their thoughts
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  and you can create a kind of utopia.
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  I would say they have an obsessive notion of lived experience
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  or the idea of multiple ways of knowing, in other words,
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  the destabilization of the very notion of truth.
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  And ultimately, they, from Fricodia,
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  they've drawn this idea of power structures in society,
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  the idea that power dominates every human relation
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  and you can effectively divide humanity into two classes,
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  the oppressor and the oppressed.
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  And everything has to be seen through that lens
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  and through the lens of group identity,
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  which is why intersectionality is such an essential part of it.
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  Yeah, I'll buy the second and third ones,
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  lived experience and panel structures being dominant.
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  The censorship thing doesn't strike me as a preserve only of workness.
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  It's not as that all of the backlash to workness is deeply sensory as well.
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  This is something that I've been a pain to keep hammering away about.
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  It's that authoritarianism is an aspect of the work movement
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  but it is not an aspect that is exclusive to the work movement.
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  I would say that authoritarianism is embedded in humanity.
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  It's part of our instinct.
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  I think everywhere every child knows that when someone's hurting them
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  or upsetting them, they just want them to shut up and go away.
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  I really worry about this that there's now I'm seeing more and more people
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  on the right who in reaction to the excesses of the woke left
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  now think that authoritarianism is the way to deal with it.
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  So they'll say things like we should ban gay marriage.
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  We should never have had gay marriage to begin with.
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  They say we should ban pro-Palestine protests.
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  We should ban certain people from speaking on campus.
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  They're doing exactly the same that the woke do.
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  They don't have the institutional power that the woke have.
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  But they will tomorrow.
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  I mean, yeah, exactly.
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  There are some more.
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  I mean, there are governors in the United States
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  who are talking about withholding funding for educational institutions.
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  You can't put this into size.
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  I think the big misnomer about the culture is that people
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  have tried to understand it as a conflict between left and right.
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  And if you'll see it in those terms,
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  you're not understanding the culture.
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  The culture is a conflict between liberty and authority.
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  That's what's going on here is those who believe in liberty and freedom
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  and free speech and freedom of the prayers and freedom of assembly
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  and those people who don't.
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  And that's where the true conflict lies.
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  I mean, we've had obviously a lot of gender-critical feminists
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  have been on the anti-woke side,
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  but I've seen recently a lot of them talking about how we should ban
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  or discriminate against people who identify as trans
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  when it comes to housing or employment
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  or even people sort of insinuating that we should restore
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  the idea that cross-dressing should be against the law.
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  I mean, you know, when they raided the Stonewall Inn back in 1969,
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  and they were looking for people who were wearing more than three items of clothing
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  from the opposite sex because that would violate the state law.
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  You know, this kind of authoritarianism is not unique at all to one movement.
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  So when I talk about censorship being part of the work movement,
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  I really want to emphasize, I don't think they invented it.
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  Right. In fact, yes, they just seem to have jumped on to a bad word
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  and that the right had gotten very good at.
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  But the censorship... So what are we meaning by censorship?
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  Well, the example of Germany is a good one, isn't it?
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  Not just that goes beyond censorship.
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  That's not people saying you can't say certain things.
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  It's saying you must say certain things.
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  Right.
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  And that's very much a work idea.
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  I mean, it's people on that side of the argument
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  that are cheerleading the online safety bill in the UK,
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  that are cheerleading major multi-billion dollar corporations
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  to shut down certain forms of speech.
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  I don't see or colluding as it was when Twitter was colluding with the CIA
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  and the FBI to shut down certain opinions.
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  I don't see how you could see this as anything other than an attack on free speech and an attack on...
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  So, I mean, yes, so there's definitely that.
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  The reason why I'm pausing is because there's a backdrop to these conversations
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  that I feel goes unremarked upon too frequently,
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  which is that there is always a shifting vanguard of acceptable discourse.
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  You go back and you read newspapers from the 1950s,
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  a little under the 1920s,
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  and the way that they talked about black people and women
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  was just appalling, like those standards.
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  And the only way that that ever changed was by people who,
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  at the time, were perceived as being up-as-y wokesters,
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  imposing some kind of penalty for people who spoke that way.
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  And so, no, we've now got new standards about the way that we speak.
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  So, to some extent, I try to understand what's going on now
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  through the prism of not trying not to be one of those old guys
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  who was waving his fist at young people these days
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  and resisting change,
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  because probably some of the things that woke people over the past five years
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  have been saying we shouldn't do.
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  We probably shouldn't do.
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  Maybe, well, I'm a little bit of a YouTuber, okay.
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  I would disagree with the premise insofar as the most effective forms of progress
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  have been actuated through a process of protest, registering objections,
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  and a kind of gradual form of persuasion
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  that has meant that ultimately the over-term window has shifted.
• 17:07
  There's a broad consensus emerges over a long period of time.
• 17:12
  When change comes through force,
• 17:16
  it generally doesn't last very long.
• 17:19
  And it's certainly, I mean, to give the best example,
• 17:21
  the most effective engine of change in terms of any movement
• 17:25
  from the past 100 years has been the civil rights movement,
• 17:27
  has been the liberal project from the 1960s onwards.
• 17:30
  It is through that process of open discussion persuasion,
• 17:35
  the early years of Stonewall, what we're all about.
• 17:37
  We're not going to force.
• 17:38
  We're not going to say we're going to have you arrested
• 17:40
  for saying things about gay people.
• 17:42
  We're going to explain to you and talk to you about the fact that gay people
• 17:44
  are just the same as you.
• 17:45
  Get a conversation going, that's one way.
• 17:47
  The vast majority of people in this country now support gay rights.
• 17:50
  Not because someone said we're going to lock you up if you don't.
• 17:52
  And I think it's right.
• 17:53
  But carve off the question of state sanction,
• 17:57
  actually punishing people or finding people of the German example.
• 18:01
  You know, take the fact that you can't call people fags anymore.
• 18:06
  That was, well, the taboos, like social taboos.
• 18:09
  Yeah, I'm not talking about it.
• 18:10
  You're not supposed to do it.
• 18:12
  And the people who originally said,
• 18:14
  I'll come on, stop calling people that.
• 18:16
  We're seeing as being a little bit puritanical.
• 18:19
  Yeah, sure, that's right.
• 18:20
  That's how you have to take the risk.
• 18:22
  That's how change is affected.
• 18:23
  Well, people don't have to discover it.
• 18:25
  Isn't there a modern day version of that,
• 18:26
  which is the people who are saying like,
• 18:28
  the Liberals, it's people on my side of the argument saying,
• 18:33
  you shouldn't be saying that criticism,
• 18:34
  because criticism is part of free speech.
• 18:36
  I mean, I've had this recently over the past few days,
• 18:38
  there's all these people who identify gender critical feminists
• 18:41
  going online because they've had some horrible remarks by gay people,
• 18:45
  calling all gay people faggots and saying you're all disgusting,
• 18:47
  virus-written perverts and stuff.
• 18:49
  No, I'm criticizing that.
• 18:51
  And people are saying, oh, you're trying to shut us down.
• 18:52
  No, this is part of free speech.
• 18:54
  Criticism of that kind of thing to develop and redevelop.
• 18:57
  The social contract.
• 18:58
  Right. But 10 years ago, someone had said,
• 19:01
  you should call, personally, what's to be called,
• 19:03
  they, them, they, them.
• 19:05
  Wouldn't you have said, oh, it's a bit silly.
• 19:07
  What, 10 years ago?
• 19:08
  Yeah.
• 19:08
  Would I have said it's a bit silly?
• 19:10
  I mean, not you, but one would have,
• 19:11
  in the only way that it becomes a silly, eh?
• 19:14
  Well, no, I think most people now would do that.
• 19:16
  No, that must do for now.
• 19:18
  They would, would you say them?
• 19:19
  No, no, this is another example.
• 19:21
  The idea...
• 19:21
  You don't think most people know it was sex,
• 19:23
  when that's a person's pronouns?
• 19:24
  It hasn't caught on.
• 19:25
  The idea of they, them, as a singular pronoun,
• 19:26
  just simply hasn't caught on in the language.
• 19:28
  You find this, it's caught on within the,
• 19:30
  the captured institutions within the media,
• 19:33
  but you'll find that the vast majority of people,
• 19:34
  and they read one of those articles
• 19:35
  using they, then, for Sam Smith.
• 19:36
  But half of it through the article,
• 19:37
  they can't work out who, who is that, who they're actually talking with.
• 19:40
  But it doesn't, more sense.
• 19:41
  Journalism, because the person,
• 19:43
  I mean, presumably the person that hasn't explained it well,
• 19:45
  I put it down, I mean, it just came up to temple.
• 19:46
  It doesn't, there's not used trends, then.
• 19:48
  It may be that's, maybe we're still 5 or 10 years behind on that.
• 19:51
  No, no, but that's a fact.
• 19:52
  That's, you know, that's a good example.
• 19:55
  It was an attempt to impose,
• 19:56
  they and them as a singular pronoun
• 19:58
  on the population through force, through bullying,
• 20:00
  through threats of misgendering arrests.
• 20:03
  Some, some people have actually been arrested for that.
• 20:05
  And it didn't work.
• 20:06
  And the most time when you talk to people,
• 20:08
  it just hasn't caught on it, really, really hasn't.
• 20:10
  But the media will tell you that it has,
• 20:12
  because within their little world,
• 20:14
  I'm holding in too much of an elite circle,
• 20:15
  but I mean, it is understandable to me
• 20:18
  that when someone claims that they want to be called,
• 20:20
  they, them, that people generally respect that.
• 20:22
  But you may be right that that hasn't sort of beyond
• 20:24
  that respect.
• 20:25
  I think it's disrespectful to do so.
• 20:27
  Because what they're asking you to do
• 20:29
  is to completely bypass the way that our shared thing,
• 20:32
  which is language, the thing that we all share,
• 20:34
  the thing that we prevent us from elitism,
• 20:36
  is that we all have these standards of language.
• 20:38
  It's a really good thing that enables everyone in society
• 20:41
  to run on a level playing field.
• 20:44
  And they're saying, no, we want to change the way
• 20:46
  that everyone in society uses language,
• 20:48
  even though it's inelegant,
• 20:49
  even though it doesn't make sense.
• 20:51
  But what they're infusing is...
• 20:52
  I'm saying that that happens all the time.
• 20:53
  I'm saying that the no one's done it.
• 20:55
  Well, calling an actress and actor,
• 20:58
  like that worked.
• 21:00
  And it was by people saying, confused the language.
• 21:03
  Okay, but that's why I say that they,
• 21:04
  then, might be a bad example.
• 21:06
  You're all going to take, for example,
• 21:08
  the taboo against the end word, right?
• 21:10
  Which we all sort of know is a little bit silly
• 21:13
  that when I say the end word is the worst word in the world
• 21:16
  and you should never use it against anybody
• 21:18
  and you should never use it as a slur,
• 21:20
  that it's a bit silly for me to think
• 21:22
  that anyone would actually genuinely think
• 21:24
  that it's truly offensive
• 21:25
  if I had actually just said the word in that context.
• 21:28
  That we all know that there's a difference.
• 21:29
  That's very recent.
• 21:30
  Calling someone the word and me talking about the word.
• 21:33
  But nonetheless, people have successfully changed
• 21:36
  the norm around that to such an extent
• 21:38
  that I now do do that.
• 21:39
  And 10 years ago, I would have thought,
• 21:41
  I'm never going to have a person
• 21:42
  who's entirely agreeing with me,
• 21:45
  because I'm talking about the way in which language evolves
• 21:46
  through societal cooperation.
• 21:48
  But how exactly what's happened,
• 21:49
  what it doesn't do
• 21:50
  and what it doesn't tend to do, historically speaking,
• 21:52
  it doesn't evolve through threats, intimidation,
• 21:54
  and attempts to do that.
• 21:56
  I'm saying there were people at that time
• 21:57
  who thought that the reasons why we were changing
• 21:59
  were due to threats.
• 22:01
  Give me an example.
• 22:02
  Well, I mean, you know,
• 22:04
  it was due to a certain amount of threats
• 22:06
  and punitive action that people who used the end word
• 22:10
  were publicly dissuaded from using it.
• 22:12
  I don't think so.
• 22:13
  I think it was to do a number of high profile examples
• 22:16
  of people saying, you know,
• 22:17
  wait a second, did the person actually say it?
• 22:19
  Yes, then I would argue that those examples
• 22:21
  were not the reason that changed occurred.
• 22:23
  The reason that changed occurred
• 22:25
  is because there was a civil rights movement
• 22:28
  that explained to people and opened up this idea
• 22:30
  that we are all the same.
• 22:32
  There was also...
• 22:33
  No, I think you're being a bit cute there.
• 22:35
  I mean, there was...
• 22:36
  Well, what's more effective?
• 22:38
  Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech
• 22:40
  or some unnamed,
• 22:42
  because you haven't given me an example yet,
• 22:43
  some unnamed example of someone being incarcerated
• 22:45
  for using the end word.
• 22:46
  Mike Peska, you know, who hosted the daily podcast
• 22:51
  at Was It Slate was talking on Slack in like 2021
• 22:57
  about this case of the New York Times reporter
• 23:00
  who had been fired from the times
• 23:01
  for using the word with a bunch of...
• 23:04
  He was on a trip in South America
• 23:07
  and he had us talking to some younger people
• 23:08
  and he said, wait, again, like did she actually say
• 23:11
  and he said the...
• 23:12
  He wasn't being racist, he was doing racist.
• 23:14
  He was just talking about the word.
• 23:15
  And he got fired from the New York Times
• 23:18
  and then there was a conversation about whether or not
• 23:20
  it was appropriate to ever use the word in conversation
• 23:22
  and Mike Peska was saying on Slack,
• 23:24
  he didn't even use the word,
• 23:24
  but he was arguing for the legitimacy
• 23:27
  of using the word in conversation.
• 23:29
  So, isn't that the one I'm talking about?
• 23:31
  Well, where someone's been...
• 23:32
  Well, he's fairly treated,
• 23:33
  but I mean, I'm presumed most of the right thinking people
• 23:36
  didn't think that he deserved that.
• 23:38
  No, but none the layer.
• 23:40
  He has punishment made an example of him
• 23:42
  and made us all fall into line.
• 23:44
  So, I'm just saying...
• 23:45
  Like, I'm not saying it's a good thing that cultural was
• 23:47
  this way, but I'm saying that part of cultural progress
• 23:50
  involves the punishment of transgressors of a YouTuber.
• 23:53
  And I'm saying that when you do that,
• 23:54
  what you will get very, very quickly is a backlash
• 23:56
  and we've already talked about it, it's already started here.
• 23:59
  So, that kind of thing, the unjust principles
• 24:01
  of what we call cancel culture will not work.
• 24:03
  Ultimately, they work in the short term.
• 24:05
  I mean, you've just described a good example.
• 24:07
  I can give you a million examples of people
• 24:08
  who've lost their jobs and careers and yes,
• 24:10
  there are a lot of people who've gone through
• 24:11
  some terrible things because of that prohibitive
• 24:14
  and precisionist way of thinking about the world.
• 24:18
  But ultimately, it's not gonna happen.
• 24:19
  The backlash is already starting.
• 24:20
  You said it yourself.
• 24:21
  You're actually more optimistic than me.
• 24:22
  You think things are over by now.
• 24:23
  There will be a point.
• 24:25
  Maybe a lot of you ain't about...
• 24:25
  No, no, I didn't say that.
• 24:27
  I mean, I said, what do you say to people who do say that?
• 24:28
  Okay.
• 24:29
  Well, I think in a few years time,
• 24:32
  with if liberalism is restored,
• 24:35
  if the liberal project gets back on track,
• 24:37
  it will be considered ridiculous
• 24:39
  that someone could even be fired for that.
• 24:41
  It will be considered inconceivable.
• 24:43
  That example that you just described, I think,
• 24:45
  is one of those things that historians in 2030
• 24:47
  as we'll look back and say they went mad for a while.
• 24:50
  He's...
• 24:51
  Yes, I think that's probably true.
• 24:53
  The better example would be, as I say,
• 24:55
  Stonewall with the gay rights movement, right?
• 24:56
  And the gay rights movement, you can point to moments
• 25:00
  of, I suppose, violent resistance like Stonewall.
• 25:02
  Yes, although there was a self-defensive thing to be honest.
• 25:05
  And but that wasn't the thing.
• 25:07
  Stonewall in of itself actually didn't do anything.
• 25:09
  It's really overblown in terms of what those riots achieved.
• 25:13
  What really achieved change
• 25:14
  was the group of people the next year
• 25:16
  who decided to set up the Christopher Street Parade
• 25:18
  in commemoration of Stonewall
• 25:20
  and do it every single year, people like Fred Sgt.
• 25:23
  And that, the peaceful protest,
• 25:27
  gathering, the collective,
• 25:29
  the gradual persuasion of society,
• 25:31
  the realignment of society,
• 25:33
  the opening up of basic humanity
• 25:35
  and the understanding of what gay people are.
• 25:37
  That was what changed society.
• 25:38
  Not a few people throwing bricks at windows.
• 25:41
  So as this current moment began,
• 25:44
  this sort of woke social justice movement began,
• 25:47
  you, your character,
• 25:49
  you're on Twitter of Titania,
• 25:52
  became like, was it probably the first time
• 25:54
  that I ever noticed someone making
• 25:56
  a strong, satirical point about this phenomenon
• 26:00
  that we hadn't quite yet named?
• 26:02
  Yeah, but it was easy because it was anonymous.
• 26:04
  So I didn't get the abuse.
• 26:06
  And, well, I'm just interested now
• 26:08
  in pivoting to how that came about.
• 26:09
  Like, what were you seeing that others weren't
• 26:13
  and how did you invent it?
• 26:14
  I wasn't seeing what other people weren't.
• 26:16
  I, a lot of people were recognizing
• 26:19
  that this was absurd, that this was a problem.
• 26:22
  And a lot of people were talking about it,
• 26:23
  but just not in the professional comedy world.
• 26:26
  That was what was weird about it.
• 26:27
  That's what I thought was very odd.
• 26:28
  I see.
• 26:29
  I mean, there were a whole internet subcultures
• 26:31
  of people mocking this and attacking this
• 26:33
  and all of that was going on.
• 26:34
  You know, I didn't invent that.
• 26:37
  But what was weird to me is that, you know,
• 26:39
  if I made a joke that leaned towards
• 26:41
  that kind of thing on the stage,
• 26:43
  I would have other comedians saying,
• 26:46
  that's not you shouldn't be doing that.
• 26:47
  And so it was kind of,
• 26:48
  that was what I found very weird
• 26:50
  because comedians and satirists have always mocked
• 26:52
  closed systems of thought.
• 26:54
  They've always mocked people in power,
• 26:57
  I consider this a very powerful movement.
• 26:58
  But for some reason, this one particular thing
• 27:01
  was suddenly ring-fenced and that didn't make any sense.
• 27:03
  What was the thing at this stage?
• 27:05
  Like, how would you define it?
• 27:06
  Because it was a very different movement, I think,
• 27:08
  in those early days.
• 27:09
  Well, it was ultimately the same.
• 27:11
  And so far as it was,
• 27:13
  it was essentially self-saturizing.
• 27:14
  This is the thing.
• 27:15
  It was a group of people,
• 27:17
  largely middle class, as I say,
• 27:19
  largely very privileged,
• 27:20
  berating everyone else about privilege.
• 27:22
  So it's already quite funny.
• 27:24
  It's people who are determined to see fascists
• 27:26
  in every shadow, you know,
• 27:27
  study after study after study reveals
• 27:29
  that the UK has become more and more progressive
• 27:32
  over many, many decades.
• 27:34
  This is all irrefutable.
• 27:35
  And yet, and yet, they were saying
• 27:36
  we're effectively doing in the fourth Reich.
• 27:38
  So that kind of group fantasy, group hysteria,
• 27:40
  is already quite funny,
• 27:41
  except that these people were also gaining a lot of power.
• 27:45
  And it started creeping in then, didn't it?
• 27:47
  You have like,
• 27:48
  well, it was this, by the way.
• 27:49
  What do you, I reckon you could date all of this stuff
• 27:51
  from the sort of 2012, 2013.
• 27:54
  Yeah.
• 27:55
  And that certainly does tally
• 27:56
  with the sudden leap in certain phrases
• 27:59
  from the woke lexicon in the media.
• 28:01
  There's a way to search for this.
• 28:02
  I can't remember how it is.
• 28:03
  It's somewhere that, where it's all collated.
• 28:05
  You can see phrases like toxic masculinity
• 28:07
  or cisgender or whatever it might be.
• 28:10
  Suddenly spike at that point,
• 28:12
  lived experiences in other ones
• 28:14
  and all of those kind of slogans.
• 28:15
  And it happened around then.
• 28:17
  And it was this odd concatenation
• 28:20
  of queer theory and critical race theory
• 28:23
  and things to do with group identity
• 28:25
  all coming together.
• 28:26
  But whereas, obviously, you know,
• 28:28
  you had the civil rights movements,
• 28:29
  which were dealing with group identity,
• 28:31
  gathering in order to affect change
• 28:33
  for their own interests,
• 28:35
  what they weren't doing is, as I said,
• 28:36
  but they weren't doing it through authoritarian means.
• 28:38
  So the big difference with the woke movement,
• 28:40
  the reason why the woke movement
• 28:41
  is the antithesis of the civil rights movement
• 28:43
  is because the civil rights movement,
• 28:44
  all branches of it,
• 28:45
  women's rights, black rights, gay rights,
• 28:47
  all believed that it had to be through free speech
• 28:49
  at the core, through open discussion and debate.
• 28:52
  The woke movement didn't.
• 28:53
  The woke movement effectively took the ideals
• 28:56
  of the civil rights movement
• 28:57
  and kind of processed it through an authoritarian way.
• 28:59
  In other words,
• 29:00
  the kind or else.
• 29:01
  Well, I go on step further and say,
• 29:02
  there's another fundamental difference,
• 29:04
  which was that other civil rights movements
• 29:05
  were universalist,
• 29:07
  whereas they're having anti-universalist
• 29:09
  about modern social justice.
• 29:11
  In the sense that, you know,
• 29:12
  the feminist or black civil rights movements
• 29:15
  of the 60s or whatever,
• 29:16
  the argument and the gay rights movement,
• 29:18
  you know, subsequently,
• 29:20
  the case was founded on principles
• 29:22
  that are a large majority of people already believe in,
• 29:25
  which are egalitarian principles of like,
• 29:27
  look, all we want are the same things that you've got.
• 29:29
  We want to be able to rent houses without discrimination.
• 29:32
  We want to be able to get married to our loved ones.
• 29:34
  We want, you know, we all agree that these things are good.
• 29:36
  We all agree that all the people have created equals.
• 29:39
  So why can't we share in this as well?
• 29:41
  Whereas there's plenty of business.
• 29:42
  Yeah, exactly.
• 29:43
  Whereas more recently, it's been like,
• 29:45
  well, this group has traditionally had too much dominance
• 29:48
  and power.
• 29:49
  Therefore, this other group has to, you know,
• 29:50
  be enacted in a war against this over a finite pint.
• 29:53
  It all becomes rather antagonistic.
• 29:55
  And very, it's something of collectiveness.
• 29:57
  Seeing everyone nod as individuals,
• 29:59
  but through the group identity that they represent,
• 30:02
  it's really anti-human.
• 30:03
  I wonder sometimes whether that's why a lot of work
• 30:05
  actors use that phrase bodies, you know,
• 30:07
  they say, yeah, bodies of color or queer bodies.
• 30:10
  And so it's kind of reduced if you have to flesh to meat
• 30:13
  to something that isn't really human.
• 30:15
  It's interesting, isn't it?
• 30:16
  I've noticed that as well and tried to understand
• 30:19
  what that rhetorical move is.
• 30:21
  It's often used in terms of like, you know,
• 30:23
  the trampling of queer bodies
• 30:25
  or the crushing of black bodies.
• 30:26
  Yeah, a historical one.
• 30:27
  I find it really grotesque.
• 30:28
  It is quite, I mean, it's powerful.
• 30:31
  I'll grant them that.
• 30:32
  There are onto something because you have a sort of
• 30:34
  visceral reaction to like, well, I don't want to be part
• 30:36
  of some damages human bodies.
• 30:38
  So I think it comes from a dehumanizing stance.
• 30:40
  I think it comes on this idea of not really seeing people
• 30:42
  as people.
• 30:43
  And I mean, look at the reaction to Kenny Badenock
• 30:45
  becoming leader of the Conservative Party.
• 30:47
  I mean, I posted a, you know,
• 30:48
  and I'll explain to a non-Britz what you call it.
• 30:50
  Ah, yeah, okay.
• 30:51
  So Kenny Badenock is a black woman who has become leader
• 30:54
  of the right wing party in the UK.
• 30:57
  And this has riled up all the right people.
• 30:59
  So I mean, you know, the, I posted an article saying
• 31:02
  why I think she would make a good Prime Minister ultimately.
• 31:06
  And I speak as someone who's never voted conservative.
• 31:08
  I'm not a typical traditional supporter of that party.
• 31:13
  But I reposted this article and I have lots of openly racist
• 31:17
  tweets about her from Ethno Nationalist, White Nationalist
• 31:21
  far-right types.
• 31:22
  At the same time, I was seeing far-left people
• 31:26
  in the Labour Party, in the Labour Government,
• 31:28
  commentators, authors,
• 31:29
  basically being just as racist in a different way.
• 31:32
  I think one guy, one author called her
• 31:34
  the black face of white supremacy,
• 31:36
  red labour MPs, just basically saying how she's not really black.
• 31:41
  You know, I mean, which is a long call Tom.
• 31:42
  That phrase is so awful for that and coconut
• 31:45
  and all these sorts of things that people come out with.
• 31:47
  And you can see it.
• 31:48
  You can see the way that when you think collectively,
• 31:50
  when you think in terms of collectivism,
• 31:51
  whether that is from an Ethno Nationalist far-right background,
• 31:54
  or whether it is from an identitarian woke-left background,
• 31:57
  then what you are doing is you are dehumanising people.
• 31:59
  You're not seeing, they're not seeing her
• 32:01
  for her skills, her talent, her experience, her policies.
• 32:05
  They just see her face and her skin colour.
• 32:07
  And that's it.
• 32:08
  I mean, is it not also possible that they're
• 32:10
  criticising the collectivism of the Conservative Party
• 32:14
  and the identitarianism of the Conservative Party?
• 32:16
  How was zinnically putting her in power?
• 32:18
  I don't know why she was chosen,
• 32:20
  but if it were true that she was chosen
• 32:22
  because the Conservatives want to look less
• 32:24
  like the party of all white men.
• 32:26
  I mean, I haven't intentionally chosen one of the cars.
• 32:28
  I haven't seen that to be fair.
• 32:29
  I saw it about four or five years ago, whenever the,
• 32:32
  when was it the Tory cabinet was predominantly,
• 32:34
  I think, minority people for a short period of time.
• 32:37
  And I did see it then.
• 32:38
  I saw commentators saying,
• 32:38
  they're only doing this to cover the cases, right?
• 32:41
  But I think because that got such,
• 32:42
  it's such an obviously lame argument.
• 32:44
  You know, I mean, that's commitment, isn't it?
• 32:47
  To your cause that I don't think people are doing that now.
• 32:49
  I really haven't seen that with the, right.
• 32:51
  In my last name, it's not happening.
• 32:52
  I just haven't seen it.
• 32:53
  So I don't think it's very,
• 32:54
  a very mainstream approach.
• 32:55
  I mean, the idea that the Conservatives
• 32:57
  as a deeply racist, but this would be the theory
• 32:59
  that the Conservative Party is so racist,
• 33:01
  so white supremacist that they will actually
• 33:03
  have a black woman lead it in order just to cover
• 33:06
  and conceal their white supremacy.
• 33:08
  I mean, if they are racist,
• 33:09
  then they deserve some credit for going to those lengths
• 33:13
  to conceal it surely.
• 33:14
  I mean, your character during how,
• 33:17
  how intense their racism would have to be,
• 33:19
  it's, I mean, in the same way that,
• 33:21
  I mean, funkers, right? That's crazy.
• 33:23
  Well, I mean, we,
• 33:25
  isn't it one of those things where everyone just sort of
• 33:27
  knows what's going on, but we don't really talk about it?
• 33:28
  Like, I mean, the Kamala Harris being the vice president,
• 33:32
  you know, her being a woman and being a woman of color
• 33:36
  was obviously salient and we all knew it,
• 33:38
  but we sort of don't really,
• 33:39
  No, but that's difficult, because Joe Biden explicitly said
• 33:42
  he was going to hire a black woman.
• 33:44
  And he not said that we would still know
• 33:46
  that that comes into it.
• 33:47
  I mean, we might suspect it sure,
• 33:48
  but I mean, the fact that it was explicitly stated
• 33:50
  as a different thing, I would have thought that the election
• 33:53
  of that's very different because that's Joe Biden specifically,
• 33:56
  the individual Joe Biden picking a VP.
• 33:59
  That's not the same as the party membership voting for a leader.
• 34:02
  Right. That's to have a majority.
• 34:04
  Right. If the party is deeply racist,
• 34:06
  I'm sorry, racist people, you know,
• 34:07
  it's like the thing that when people mock you,
• 34:09
  if you say, well, if people someone says,
• 34:10
  I've got black friends and I say,
• 34:11
  well, that doesn't mean you're not racist,
• 34:13
  it's like, it sort of actually does.
• 34:15
  Do you, I don't understand why that's a thing
• 34:17
  that gets you into size?
• 34:19
  Well, I mean, this also brings us to the sort of perversion
• 34:21
  of language that has come about
• 34:22
  with what racist even means now,
• 34:24
  because we've gone from a world in which we were talking about,
• 34:30
  you know, don't have animosity towards people
• 34:32
  on the basis of the color of their skin.
• 34:33
  Yeah. Again, it comes back to this universalist conception
• 34:36
  of anti-racism, to a new form of anti-racism
• 34:39
  where it's actually not about antipathy towards the person
• 34:43
  because of the color of their skin.
• 34:44
  It's about exactly your complicity in a superstructure
• 34:48
  of white supremacy that sort of invades every subtle feel
• 34:54
  of life.
• 34:55
  Sounds religious, a little bit.
• 34:56
  Yeah, a little bit.
• 34:57
  And for things to flip to that extent, you know,
• 34:59
  the fact, you know, if you think about it,
• 35:01
  you know, we've got, at the moment,
• 35:02
  the major gay rights organizations like GLAAD
• 35:04
  and Americans don't want in this country,
• 35:06
  actively working against the interests of gay people,
• 35:08
  right, this has flipped completely.
• 35:10
  You've likewise got a what respect, just unpack that.
• 35:13
  Well, let me come back to that in a minute.
• 35:14
  That's a big, that will take a while.
• 35:17
  The other example I was going to give was the question of race.
• 35:20
  You have Robin D'Angelo, a white woman in her book,
• 35:24
  problematizing the notion of color blindness,
• 35:27
  most famous theorist bars by Dr. Martin Luther King.
• 35:29
  So what you effectively have is a black civil rights icon
• 35:33
  being called racist by a white woman who earns 12 grand
• 35:36
  every hour when she goes into a corporation
• 35:38
  to berate everyone for being evil and racist.
• 35:40
  That's flipped completely.
• 35:41
  The power has gone shifted back towards the white woman,
• 35:45
  right, in that situation.
• 35:46
  When it comes to a Stonewall friends,
• 35:48
  a Stonewall has explicitly redefined homosexuality
• 35:52
  on its website and promote promotional materials
• 35:54
  and said that homosexuality doesn't mean same sex attracted.
• 35:56
  It means same gender attracted.
• 35:58
  It means that gay men are attracted to other men.
• 36:01
  They're attracted to some inherent essence
• 36:03
  that kind of soul that that man has.
• 36:05
  In other words, and in fact, Nancy Kelly,
• 36:07
  who was the CEO of Stonewall for some years,
• 36:10
  she said that she compared lesbians,
• 36:12
  women who didn't want to date individuals with penises
• 36:15
  to sexual racists.
• 36:17
  So you have, and Grinder Grinder,
• 36:19
  which is a gay hookup site,
• 36:20
  now says that you're not allowed to filter out women,
• 36:23
  women who identify as men,
• 36:25
  but you're not allowed to do that
• 36:26
  because that would be bigotry, right?
• 36:27
  But men who don't want to sleep with women
• 36:29
  aren't bigots, they're homosexual.
• 36:32
  And you would think Grinder,
• 36:33
  which has made so much money off gay men
• 36:35
  and their sexual appetites,
• 36:36
  might be the first to understand that
• 36:37
  rather than the shaming people.
• 36:38
  I think all the people who are being pr...
• 36:40
  Who's claimed to be pro gay, shaming gay people for being gay,
• 36:44
  that's now really, really normal.
• 36:46
  And we just kind of accept that, and I don't know why.
• 36:49
  Right.
• 36:49
  Well, you do know why,
• 36:50
  because there's a taboo against being anti-trans
• 36:54
  and it's perceived as being anti-trans
• 36:56
  to assert that a trans woman is not a woman.
• 37:00
  I understand the logic.
• 37:01
  I don't know why that has in any way caught on.
• 37:04
  And you know, normally when it comes to these sort of
• 37:07
  curious belief systems, there's more skepticism.
• 37:10
  Well, why hasn't caught on the basis of your earlier skepticism
• 37:14
  towards my articulation of the way
• 37:16
  that social progress sometimes happens
• 37:17
  and there's sometimes it is punitive.
• 37:19
  And sometimes people do in that case of the end word,
• 37:22
  just get cowered into complying
• 37:24
  and then it becomes a norm and everyone goes,
• 37:25
  all right, well, I suppose it was all right
• 37:26
  that we sort of got cowered
• 37:27
  and there were a few eggs broken on the way to make nail.
• 37:30
  I wasn't disagreeing with some of his punitive.
• 37:32
  What I'm saying is historically speaking,
• 37:33
  we know that those punitive measures
• 37:35
  don't actually have long term effects.
• 37:36
  I like you saying that it is working now with the trends.
• 37:39
  Well, within, yeah, definitely,
• 37:40
  with it, this is another good example.
• 37:42
  Within these few years of lunacy,
• 37:45
  which historians will come up with a phrase for,
• 37:48
  I don't know what it'll be at the moment,
• 37:49
  we're living through it.
• 37:50
  So it's difficult for us to see it,
• 37:51
  but it will be like one of those crazy,
• 37:52
  what the hell went on there?
• 37:54
  Yeah, it's definitely working.
• 37:56
  I mean, and I don't know,
• 37:57
  I'm not qualified to say how it came about.
• 38:00
  I think intimidation certainly does,
• 38:01
  as you say, have an effect.
• 38:03
  People are really, really terrified.
• 38:06
  But similarly, I suppose sloganering doesn't offer a lot.
• 38:09
  You know, all of a sudden about seven years ago,
• 38:11
  you got to phrase trans women are women
• 38:13
  just being repeated as a mantra,
• 38:15
  even though that's factually wrong,
• 38:16
  and they can't be,
• 38:17
  because by definition, trans women are not women.
• 38:20
  They are...
• 38:21
  Well, we don't need to get into that,
• 38:22
  because again, it's just a linguistic trick, isn't it?
• 38:24
  I mean, I can say that it's true,
• 38:26
  or I can say it's not true,
• 38:27
  it just depends on what I mean by the word women.
• 38:29
  That's right.
• 38:30
  It's like trans substantiations,
• 38:32
  like saying, this is the body of Christ.
• 38:33
  You just say it, you just assert it.
• 38:35
  You don't need to prove
• 38:36
  that it does actually physically turn it into the flesh.
• 38:38
  But if the woman is something different
• 38:39
  from a biological female,
• 38:41
  then you can say that trans women are women.
• 38:43
  Yeah, okay.
• 38:43
  And if this table is a pigeon,
• 38:45
  then I now have my hand resting on a pigeon.
• 38:47
  But as you know, language and society can't work that way.
• 38:50
  We have to have agreed definitions of things
• 38:52
  for anything to be achieved.
• 38:53
  Everyone knows that what we mean by women,
• 38:55
  we know that it's a biological classification.
• 38:57
  And if you want to change that,
• 38:58
  that's gonna be a much bigger project,
• 38:59
  because again, it's one of those things
• 39:00
  that just hasn't caught on.
• 39:02
  Like everyone...
• 39:03
  You think that there's a...
• 39:04
  You can have a conceptual change
• 39:06
  on the basis of one minority asserting it's, you know,
• 39:09
  it's a different point of view about something.
• 39:11
  So, you know, homosexuals used to be perverts.
• 39:13
  That used to be a perversion.
• 39:15
  You say in sort of mental illness, right?
• 39:17
  It no longer is, because gay people said,
• 39:19
  well, hang on, we're not perverts.
• 39:20
  We're just a different type, you know.
• 39:21
  But it was like...
• 39:22
  But it was nice.
• 39:23
  No, I mean, the mistake there is that
• 39:25
  homosexuality was never a perversion.
• 39:27
  It was simply perceived as a perversion.
• 39:29
  So the fundamental truth of it hasn't changed.
• 39:31
  Maybe the case that the concept of womanhood
• 39:34
  can be divorced from biological femininity.
• 39:37
  No, what you would have to do to sort of redefine woman
• 39:39
  as the activists say they wanted to be an essence
• 39:43
  of male or female, you would have to prove
• 39:44
  that that is, in fact, the authentic truth.
• 39:46
  You would have to prove that there is such a thing
• 39:47
  as a kind of gendered soul that we have
• 39:49
  that can be divided from our body.
• 39:51
  Why wouldn't you just have to prove
• 39:52
  that there is a small cohort of people
• 39:55
  who insistently and persistently, you know,
• 39:58
  claim that they are born into the wrong...
• 40:00
  What does that say, it's body?
• 40:01
  Well, it proves that there's an existence of people
• 40:03
  who complicate or to use a worse term problematized.
• 40:07
  No, that's the idea.
• 40:08
  Yes, that's right.
• 40:09
  So the existence of transsexuals could give us grounds
• 40:13
  for changing the meaning of the word meant...
• 40:15
  Sure, you might have read and won't.
• 40:17
  But no one's arguing against perception.
• 40:18
  I mean, I take the liberal stance on all of this.
• 40:20
  I think anyone should be able to call themselves
• 40:21
  whatever they want and against by anyone.
• 40:24
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• 40:25
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• 40:29
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• 40:34
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• 40:37
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