What happened to JK Rowling?

In April this year the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a “woman” excludes trans women. Then — apparently celebrating her years-long TERFdom — JK Rowling tweeted an image of herself on a yacht, smoking a cigar, and captioned it with “I love it when a plan comes together.” The question we’re looking at today is: was it Rowling who changed or was it the world that changed? Matt Bernstein joins us to trace Rowling’s radicalization journey, and discuss how we’ve ended up with a bunch of British women who want to brand themselves as liberal, but are socially regressive in basically every way. Our guest Matt Bernstein can be found online @mattxiv. He hosts A Bit Fruity, out anywhere you listen to podcasts. You can also check out Ryan’s recent appearance on the show, in this episode about alpha males and loneliness (naturally). Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Broderick?

  Matt, welcome to my show this time.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. I don't think I've ever been on a straight man's podcast before. I'm thrilled.

• 0:08Ryan Broderick?

  You know, it is bound to happen eventually. There's a few of us podcasting now. There's a few straight guys in the podcasting world. I think it was always gonna end this way.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yes, I guess really with the podcasting thing, it's me infiltrating your domain.

• 0:22Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, we have Shane Gillis on next. So then after that, we got Theo Von, all the great guys.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  No, tell me you're kidding.

• 0:32Ryan Broderick?

  I am absolutely kidding.

• 0:51Ryan Broderick?

  Matt, I want to kick this off with, what Hogwarts house are you? What are you typically sorted into on online quizzes?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  You know what? I haven't done one of those quizzes since childhood, and I think-

• 1:03Ryan Broderick?

  Hold on, I want to stop for a second. The fact that online Harry Potter quizzes existed when you were a kid?

• 1:09Ryan Broderick?

  Cut to my core. That actually hurt me physically for you to say that.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  We've talked about our age difference. We've talked about our age difference.

• 1:16Ryan Broderick?

  I saw a picture the other day of someone that was like, "This was my grandfather's," and it was a picture of a Game Boy Color, and I wanted to kill myself.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  But I think as a kid, I always really wanted to be a Ravenclaw. I really like over identified with Cho Chang in the movies because I thought she was pretty.

• 1:36Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And the truth, I don't know, I'm probably a Hufflepuff at the end of the day.

• 1:40Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting. I have never taken one of those quizzes and not gotten Slytherin, which should be not a surprise to anyone who's listening to this show. I'm a double Scorpio, and I'm always sorted into Slytherin in online Harry Potter quizzes. My name is Ryan Broderick. Sometimes you'll be hearing our producer Grant Irving pop in from time to time when I unmute his mic and allow him to speak. This is Panic World, a show all about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And today we want to try to figure out, did J.K. Rowling change, or did the world change? Yeah, we're gonna go with that one. And in the process, we're gonna try to figure out what happened to all the British ladies who seem to have entered into a generational war where they want to call themselves liberal while also being regressive in every single conceivable way.

• 2:25Ryan Broderick?

  Joining me today to untangle all of this is everyone's favorite Gen Z or someone who's very kind to me on his podcast, Matt Bernstein. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. Wow, that was such a lovely introduction. And in fact, I want to relay the message that when you went on my podcast a month or so ago, I got so many Spotify comments from my own listeners being like, of all the straight guys you could have gotten, Brian was a really great choice.

• 2:54Ryan Broderick?

  Hearing that is like staring at the sun for me. Like, I can't focus on that too much, or I'll go crazy. But like, that's really nice and beautiful.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I should have given you that gratification.

• 3:03Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I can't have that. I can't have that kind of... Yeah, our producer Grant is shaking his head, no, I can't have that. So let's move on. But thank you. Thank you, Matt's listeners. Anyone who's followed him over to the show, thank you very much. It's very important to hear. Did you read Harry Potter growing up? Did you have it read to you growing up? What's your familiarity with Harry Potter?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I... Oh, my God. I read all the books. I was... In fact, I actually... Do you remember those SkyMall magazines? It was like when... It was like basically like a catalog that was in all of the seat back pockets on planes. And one thing that I saw over and over and over and over and over again in the SkyMalls, anytime I was on a plane as a young person, was they would sell the wands. They would sell Ron's, Harry's, and Hermione's wands. And eventually, after like so much kicking and screaming, I begged my parents to get me Hermione's wand. I was always a dainty little... Like, even in my Harry Potter obsession, I was like, I want the girl wand. But I had the wands. I

• 4:04Speaker 01

  was like in my backyard practicing the spells. I loved Harry Potter. I really loved Harry Potter. Because I think like so many queer kids did, which is part of what makes her turn even like more of a twisting of the knife. Because it was like Hogwarts felt like a place that you could go when like the real world rejected you, you know?

• 4:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I totally get that. I fell off Harry Potter after Goblet of Fire. I don't know why Cedric Diggory's death affected me so, but it did. I think I also discovered like music around that time. And I was just like, I think I'm done with books now. I think I'm gonna go play in like horrible punk bands in freshman year of high school or whatever it was. But so... What we're talking about is sort of what you, what we're gonna open with is what you mentioned there, the sort of slow turn towards radicalization that happened with J.K. Rowling. And you know, just for an example of where she is with this stuff now, in April of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman needed to exclude trans women.

• 5:06Ryan Broderick?

  And J.K. Rowling tweeted a photo of herself on a yacht, smoking a really pitiful-looking cigar with the caption, "I love it when a plan comes together," which is just absolute cooked behavior. And then shortly after, she started an organization to fund legal battles that are for, quote, "women's sex-based rights," which, you know, um, is definitely like a term you have to specify for the right reasons. But what I wanted to sort of start with is some really interesting reactions from people who are dealing with the exact thing you're dealing with, the idea that they're watching

• 5:49Ryan Broderick?

  this author kind of fall apart in real time in front of them. So, um, Kason Kalender in Them wrote, "When I accepted the Stonewall Book Award for Hurricane Child early last year, I gave an emotional speech, telling a roomful of strangers that J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series had saved my life. Isolated, bullied, and feeling zero hope for the future, I'd been planning to die by suicide as a child. I never believed, I never planned to live past the age of 16. There were multiple reasons I didn't fall through with my plan. I was afraid to die, I was worried how my family would feel, and as silly as it might seem now, I told myself that I couldn't die yet because I needed to know how the Harry Potter series would end. Harry Potter at times offered the only light I could see in years spent within a vortex

• 6:34Ryan Broderick?

  of depression and anxiety. I hadn't begun to fully understand my queer or trans identity yet, but in retrospect, the books offered the foundation I needed to love myself at a time when I hated everything about me."

• 6:46Speaker 01

  It feels like an almost universal experience with queer people, which is, I mean, like I said, it's why what has happened feels even worse because so many people, and you know, I won't speak on behalf of trans people, but like, I remember, I believe the age that Harry Potter was when he was like, got his Hogwarts letter originally was like 12, somewhere around there. And I remember like being in like fifth and sixth grade and being like, why has my letter not come? Cause I thought it was gonna come. I was like waiting and then when it didn't come, I was like, oh my God, I guess I actually have to live in this world. Doesn't that suck? And in fact, it does.

• 7:24Ryan Broderick?

  It does. It does suck. I, I think JK Rowling, maybe in spite of herself, maybe because she was less insane, we'll, we'll get to that in a second. There is something universal about the Harry Potter story and you do have to sort of like, I, I think it's very cool to bash Harry Potter right now, especially like on Blue Sky or whatever, like leftist, and it's fair, bash it all you want. Adults probably like don't need to be totally obsessed with it. But there is sort of a universal story in there that I do think like particularly kids who feel like they're living some kind of double life or sort of don't understand why they don't fit into the world that they're in, that is extremely relatable. And, and you can't remove that from, from the story, I don't think.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. And regardless of whether the books are like good or not, it's like the way that you felt about them as a very young person with like a very malleable brain, you know, like that kind of stays with you forever, I feel.

• 8:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Like, actually, wait, I remember, I gave up on the Harry Potter series because I got very invested in a series of unfortunate events because my parents had gotten divorced and I needed something darker and edgier. And that guy who wrote him, I think he's a creep too. So, you know, like it just goes to show you, uh, you really can't find good children's fiction anymore. Or at least, okay. So, let's get into the timeline here of like how JK-

• 8:40Speaker 01

  What a tragic conclusion to reach on that topic. Moving right along.

• 8:43Ryan Broderick?

  Moving along. Don't talk along that. The only good one was Roald Dahl. Never, no-

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:49Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think that's true, Grant. I'm not quite sure that's true about Roald Dahl. I think he was a real weird guy. But yeah, let's, um, let's get into the, our timeline here. Cause I do want to sort of figure out at what point does JK Rowling lose the plot and sort of go off the deep end. So in 1999, Harry Potter comes out, it's a massive hit. And it was heavily protested. Do you remember this? Do you know about this?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  No, I was one years old.

• 9:12Ryan Broderick?

  In 1999?

• 9:16Ryan Broderick?

  Hold on, this thing came up last time. Do you, do you remember 9/11?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:25Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, right, okay.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  He brought me on this podcast just to make me feel small. This feels unfair.

• 9:31Ryan Broderick?

  That's what all of our guests say. I have, I have to be a better host. I have to.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I have one follow up. Do you feel like you missed out? Cause you didn't, you don't remember?

• 9:38Ryan Broderick?

  On 9/11?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  I, I, I hear this amongst the youths that they feel like they missed out on like the cultural touchstone.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I mean, I mostly.

• 9:46Ryan Broderick?

  Do you FOMO about this?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Like, no, like Brittany's self-titled album came out that year and I feel more FOMO about like not being conscious. Yeah, like I'm a slave for you. Like I wish I was around for the release of that.

• 10:00Ryan Broderick?

  Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, that is a really good album. Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a really good album.

• 10:05Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, okay, right.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  So yeah, I, I think I missed like that more than I missed 9/11, but.

• 10:09Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so if you had to, if you had to guess, like who would be protesting Harry Potter? Like, who do you think?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Conservatives.

• 10:18Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, yes.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I mean, just because like.

• 10:21Ryan Broderick?

  Christians.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like they're, I don't know, there would be something like in early form of woke in there. Or like, or, oh, is it, are they accusing it of being satanic?

• 10:32Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly, yes.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

• 10:35Ryan Broderick?

  So there's a full-on satanic panic over Harry Potter in the late 90s. Uh, this is from the Denver Rocky Mountain News in November of that year. Sherry Ogden's son Carson, Carson Ogden, what a name. Sherry Ogden's son Carson came home from third grade Thursday and told his mother a story she could hardly believe. His teacher at West Ridge Elementary had stopped reading the class Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. She decided to err on the side of caution after a parent at another Jefferson County public school raised questions in reference to sorcery in the New York Times bestseller.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 11:12Ryan Broderick?

  America has always been this way. I love that.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  It's it has. It has. And like, I don't know, the Satanic Panic is like, kind of, like, the original Satanic Panic from the 80s is kind of like the, I don't know, I feel like you can trace everything in culture right now. It's like to that.

• 11:28Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's shocking how it has just sort of evolved and re-evolved and re-evolved. This is from a 2000 article in Christianity Today. "I have an idea for a wonderful series of children's books. I'm imagining a delightful fantasy world. In my world, there's a secret tucked away on the upper shelves of every home as a product that, when used the right way, can make children's dreams come true. Common rat poison, when mixed with orange soda, turns into an elixir that's out of this world. When you drink it in one big gulp, not only does it taste heavenly, it also makes you happy, beautiful, and for 24 hours, it gives you the power to accomplish one wish. One shy, picked-on, but highly intelligent boy has discovered the secret,

• 12:12Ryan Broderick?

  and he intends to use his new power to help the world. What? Parents would worry that this innocent fantasy might spill over into the real world? Someone might actually try mixing rat poison and orange soda in real life? Though the parallels are hardly exact," which is doing a lot of work there. "This is what we're talking about regarding the Harry Potter series. We're talking about something deadly from our world and turning it into what some are calling merely a literary device. Regardless of how magic is portrayed in the series, we need to remember that witchcraft in real life can and does lead to death, the forever and ever kind."

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I always wish that the things that these types of people, decade over decade, say are happening and are going to happen, like, I always wish that they were actually happening. You know, like, when they're like-

• 12:57Ryan Broderick?

  Like, magic was real and dangerous?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, but like, even today, when it's like, because it's the same people who are like, the teachers are like, turning the students gay. I'm like, I wish I could. I'm trying. I've tried. I've tried. And there would be a lot more gay kids if I had the power that you think I have, you know?

• 13:14Ryan Broderick?

  Actually, we did an episode last year, kind of debunking, or bunking, maybe. We couldn't really decide if it was true or not. The idea that Tumblr turned kids gay. And our guest, do you know Vira Drew, the director of The People's Joker? Have you heard of The People's Joker? Great film, but she was talking about how, she was like, "Yeah, I did put in stuff in the movie to hopefully turn kids trans, or at least realize they're trans. Of course I did."

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Totally. Well, I mean, did Tumblr turn people gay? Not to get too far off topic, but like, the first person that I ever came out to was a stranger, was a guy, though, that I was kind of like flirty texting with as like, you know, we were 15, on Tumblr, that I met through Tumblr. So I can't confirm or deny that from my own personal experience.

• 14:02Ryan Broderick?

  That's kind of where we ended up with that episode as well, which is just like, it was a useful sort of vector for those kind of conversations. Much in the same way that Harry Potter was a useful sort of way to kind of think about what your dream sort of other world would look like. And apparently for Christians, it was a total nightmare that scared the absolute shadow of them. And it went on for years. And the extent of this mayhem is important because I think it really shaped Rowling and reveals something about her, as we'll see later. But one last example, so you can really appreciate the hysteria here. In 2006, Father Gabriel Amorth, a Vatican official, and this is true, "The Pope's Exorcist," which is a real-

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Wow. Wow. What a job title. What do you put in your LinkedIn to apply for that one?

• 14:49Ryan Broderick?

  "Pope's Exorcist" is sick. What a job. The Vatican also has a DJ, and I would think I'd prefer to be the Vatican DJ, actually, because that's fun. Anyway, so Amorth, in 2006, says that Harry Potter is satanic, which I guess "The Pope's Exorcist" like, would be the guy you ask about that. And he called Harry Potter "the king of darkness and the devil." And do you have any idea, do you have any guesses of like how J.K. Rowling was dealing with all this at the time?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Hmm, dealing with it like publicly?

• 15:22Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, cuz like a lot of people were sort of saying like, people are saying that your books are satanic and evil and and teach children evil magic.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Well, so I have no idea what the answer to this is, but based on what I know about her personality, I know that she does not concede anything. And so I feel like she would probably be like, fuck you guys.

• 15:44Ryan Broderick?

  You know, it's interesting. I also thought that I I cuz I I was sort of thinking through reading through what we pulled for this episode, and and we're gonna get deeper into this like.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:55Ryan Broderick?

  I sort of assumed that J K Rowling's anti-trans bigotry was based on kind of like a sub like a

• 16:03Ryan Broderick?

  uh like an anti-authoritarian kind of bent, right? Like the typical conservative who thinks that they're like waging some kind of holy war. I'm now kind of wondering if that she is just like someone who's addicted to like the the status quo. Like so like a deeply neoliberal person who's like, nothing should ever change. And I started to wonder that one with this where she was asked by the BBC about this because her books were being burned in New Mexico, like in the early 2000s. And she just sort of didn't seem to care much. She just said, I have met thousands of children now and not even one time as a child come up to me and said, Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.

• 16:45Ryan Broderick?

  That's that was that was the extent of her sort of being at the center of a massive culture war panic, which I think is kind of telling in a way.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Hmm. What do you think that's? What do you? What do you think that's saying about her at the time?

• 16:58Ryan Broderick?

  I I don't think she's actually very politically curious in a way.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Hmm. I mean, I have my own theories about why she became the way that she became and like, not to get too far ahead, but I think it comes from like.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Real anger that a lot of cis women feel with patriarchy and then that just being totally misdirected and punching down instead of punching up. But she, I was just thinking about this podcast and the optics of it, and I know she's gonna be like, "Two misogynistic males." Like, you know, she has a very specific way of deflecting any criticism.

• 17:35Ryan Broderick?

  I think our theories go together. There's a lot of anger towards patriarchy, but when you start to be critical of something that large, it also leads to questions about upending how the world is familiar to you. There's always that impulse to become more reactionary, I think, when you start to become more revolutionary. So instead of the anger that's directed elsewhere towards something that is challenging what's normal, which I bet, you know, is especially hard if you're used to people loving everything you say, you end up putting that anger on more vulnerable people. And that is where we're headed, right after the break.

• 18:14Ryan Broderick?

  So, we're now sort of in the peak Obama era. And what is really interesting about the peak Obama era for J.K. Rowling is that she is held up as this sort of liberal hero, but her behavior does change. She goes from publicly, you know, fairly reclusive to being extremely online. And this either does something to her, or it reveals something that's always been there for Rowling. We all begin to see that she's a person that likes to, uh, she likes to make decrees, you know? And we started to notice a pattern with Miss Rowling as she started to get very popular on the internet, which is that she started to basically just sort of write fanfic about her own books and continue the story.

• 18:58Ryan Broderick?

  And it seems like social media was like, kind of egging her on.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:03Ryan Broderick?

  And the first big example of this is in October of 2007. When she drops the bombshell that Albus Dumbledore is gay.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  I remember this so well. Sorry, you did not give me an opportunity to speak there. I just

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I just, I remember this really well. And it felt like, I actually can't believe that that was as far back as 2007, because I guess she just like kept this little thing up like for a while with her sort of, sort of conceding all of these like fanfiction type things to her fans. But it was, it almost became like a meme very quickly in my mind, when I think back to how I felt about it, like then, like every, it felt like every week she was like, oh, and this person was gay, and this person was gay. And it felt like, oh, like, but that's actually kind of cool, because it was also like around the time that we then started to talk about gay marriage on a national scale. And it felt like she was this like ally, you know? And then it obviously came

• 20:00Speaker 01

  crashing down like really quickly. But it was one of those things where when she became so fervently anti-trans, and it felt like that had happened really quickly, even though I think we'll determine that it wasn't that fast for her, that it had been fomenting for a while. But it felt like a wild heel turn, because this was this woman who was like inventing all of this like homosexuality in her characters, you know? And then it was like all of a sudden, oh, wait, actually, she hates us, you know?

• 20:27Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. Or, yeah, it, it seems like she kind of realized this thing that we just sort of talked about in a previous episode about Kanye West, where you could talk to people and be super mega famous. And Kanye West is like getting yelled at by the entire planet, and he's yelling back at them, I'm the most special person on earth. JK Rowling is having a different but similar kind of dynamic, where everyone is holding her up as being like, the hero of progressivism, because, you know, she wrote this massively popular book series that now the adults who read it as children are sort of leading the world. Racism is over, gay marriage is legal, like, everything is happening. It's all coming together in the late 2000s, early 2010s. And

• 21:10Ryan Broderick?

  what was crazy is if you go back and you look at some of the blogs like the Mary Sue that are covering this stuff at the time.

• 21:17Ryan Broderick?

  All of these tweets of hers are being taken as news. So,

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:22Ryan Broderick?

  You know, she

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Dumbledore comes out.

• 21:26Ryan Broderick?

  Right. Massive, massive story, huge story. This is the time period where she's confirming that there was a Jewish wizard at Hogwarts named Anthony Goldstein.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 21:35Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, he's also, I think Ravenclaw.

• 21:39Ryan Broderick?

  I guess.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Stupid.

• 21:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, someone says, my wife said there's no Jews at Hogwarts. I'm a Jew, so I assume she said it to be the mad, the only magical one in the family thoughts. And then J K Rowling replied, Anthony Goldstein, Ravenclaw, Jewish wizard, to everyone asking whether their religion, belief, non-belief system is represented at Hogwarts. The only people I have never imagined there are Wiccans. I don't know what that means. Is that a joke?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  I don't know. Wiccans?

• 22:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, like, like a pagan, like real, like people who, I grew up in North Carolina, Massachusetts. So like, it's a real community of people who believe that they are, not believe that they're pagan. They, I can't, I don't want to, I don't want to get into the weeds on this one.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 22:20Ryan Broderick?

  Cause they can curse me and I don't want that. Well, yeah, this is

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The whole, the whole naming system with her characters too. I mean, I know this is like frequently joked about online, but it's absurd. Like the, I think the one black character she has in Harry Potter is Kingsley Shacklebolt.

• 22:36Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, you brought up Cho Chang at the top of the, of the episode.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Cho Chang, the one Asian wizard. Crazy.

• 22:42Ryan Broderick?

  Crazy. Um, I also saw like a map that she made for Pottermore of like where all the Hogwarts regional variants are. And I think there's only one for the entire African continent. It's like stuff like that. It's like peak, just like 90s liberal brain, right?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:57Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So there were signs that loving Rowling as this like progressive, supportive mum figure was not the case. But once we are all really on Twitter, she starts giving her two cents on politics. Her first true foray into politics, at least publicly, was in 2410 when she votes no on, do you know anything about the Scottish independence movement of the early 2000s? Basically Scotland kind of thought they had oil and they thought they'd be able to break away from the UK and become their own country and then join the EU. It was a whole thing. She donated a million dollars to the no side and voted no.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:36Ryan Broderick?

  She also in 2016 was anti Brexit. She wrote in a blog post, I'm not an expert on much, I'll say, but I do know how to create a monster. Hannibal Lecter, Big Brother and Lord Voldemort, oh my god. Are all simultaneously inhuman and superhuman and that is what frightens us most. We are being asked whether we wish to remain part of the European Union and both sides of this campaign have been telling us stories. They have not been afraid to conjure monsters, calculated to stir up our deepest fears. And yeah, she is anti Brexit, which was a right wing political concern in the UK.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:12Ryan Broderick?

  But even there, I think it's fascinating that she comes to like the both sides. Like she still finds a way to be like, but both sides are crazy. Which is kind of her MO, at least at this point, where she's like, got that kind of like,

• 24:27Ryan Broderick?

  you know, end of history, kind of like, everything's crazy. We should just slow down, you know, it's all a bit much, isn't it?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so Bill Maher brained.

• 24:37Ryan Broderick?

  It's exactly Bill Maher brained, yes. It's the same people who are like, I'm not conservative, they just change what liberal is.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, we could make this whole thing about centrism, which I think in the case of Jacob Rowling, there's like more to talk about than that. But it's just like, if you always, you know, position your politics as like in between what the current center-left and center-right are, and it drifts rightward, like you're gonna move right too. Which is like what happens with people like Bill Maher. I hate him so much, I just love talking about how I hate Bill Maher.

• 25:08Ryan Broderick?

  His podcast just got cancelled.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Nice, I didn't see that. Wow, wow, small wins, small wins.

• 25:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that win, that rules. Before we go any further, our researcher Adam, who I think hates Jacob Rowling. Yeah, his name's Adam, he's delightful.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Wow, this is a whole fucking operation, so cool.

• 25:26Ryan Broderick?

  I told him to go for the jugular with today's episode because he hates Jacob Rowling so much. And this was a real joy to read his research and kind of work on it. And he said that this has nothing to do with transphobia, but he wanted me to mention.

• 25:42Ryan Broderick?

  That Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, uh, the play, uh, which was not really done with anything to do with J.K. Rowling. She kinda just slapped her name on it. But the music, uh, was done for the show by Imogen Heap. And the song, "Mm, What You Say," is in the play, which I did not realize. And Adam just wanted us to mention that. He thought that was really good.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Wait, I did not know any of that. Wait, I love her and I love that song, but does this mean that she's collaborating with J.K. Rowling? Like, what's the technical?

• 26:12Ryan Broderick?

  No, actually, we're okay. The guy who wrote the play, uh, most of it, um, wrote Adolescents, the Netflix show.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. But like, is J.K. Rowling, like, making money from those?

• 26:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. I think we gotta cancel Imogen Heap.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  No, like, that's the thing, is like, I love her.

• 26:33Ryan Broderick?

  You know what they, you know what she say?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  What, what, what, what, what did she say? You like that? You like that, Ryan?

• 26:44Ryan Broderick?

  I did like that. That was really good. Okay, so in November 2016 is what, kind of, I think, an important moment, uh, here, which is the release of The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The surprise twist of that movie, spoiler alert for a dogshit movie that, like, you should only ever watch someone else watch on a plane, is that the villain in the movie is Johnny Depp's character. Fans get really angry at that. But broadly, people are looking past this. She's still fighting right-wingers on Twitter and liberal churn media is just thrilled each time. They're taking everything that she's doing and turning it into posts on their website. For example, remember Tommy Lahren?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that queen. I was just talking about her with people. I was like, she's a rare, rare right-winger who really did get,

• 27:35Speaker 01

  uh, eaten by her own. And I believe that that's because, I think that she was like, a little too pro-choice.

• 27:41Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's what happened, yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  But, yes, I do, I do remember her.

• 27:44Ryan Broderick?

  But this is like, peak content world, right? So like, when she's fighting with Tommy Lahren, Glamour writes it up with a very 2017 headline, which is, "J.K. Rowling had the perfect response to Tommy Lahren's anti-trans tweets," which is very interesting.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  BuzzFeed era.

• 28:00Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  So great.

• 28:02Ryan Broderick?

  So this article reads, "Even though she lives across the pond, J.K. Rowling is full of biting commentary about American politics, from calling out Trump for acting like words don't matter, to pointing out the misogyny of Trump supporters, her tweets are always spot on. On Thursday, she hit the nail on the head once again with a takedown of conservative commentator Tommy Lahren." Tommy Lahren tweets, "President Trump dedicated to putting radical Muslims in graves, whereas President Obama was dedicated to putting men in the ladies' room." And then J.K. Rowling responded, "Truly, who amongst us can forget Trump's ordering the killing of Bin Laden, or Obama bragging about banging in on naked beauty contestants?" So she's not pro-trans here.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Ryan Broderick?

  Which is important.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  It's just, it's so interesting because now, like, the Tommy Lahren tweet sounds like something that J.K. Rowling would tweet. Like, she's now so, obviously openly, anti-trans, but then also, a little less openly, so racist, which is imbued in her anti-trans views that, like, this just kind of sounds like a tweet from J.K. Rowling now.

• 29:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. Um, so, in 2017, back to our Rowling timeline, Rowling ti- if I say Rowling timeline, it gets confusing, uh, our J.K. Rowling timeline-

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Rolling along our timeline.

• 29:15Ryan Broderick?

  Rolling along here. Um, rolling, rolling, rolling. Um, this is, 2017 is when she takes some odd stands about Me Too.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:31Ryan Broderick?

  She defends a journalist named Sam Chris, I remember when all this kicked off, actually, um, who had kind of been canceled, yeah, for, like, Me Too stuff, writing, "The demonization of Sam Chris and his completely ordinary, horrible behavior, sex, the left, and gender identity." And it was like a median piece all about it. In that piece, it argues that Me Too should actually go after trans people. Um, and the piece reads, "So many men on the left refuse to accept women's concerns about how the new gender identity law that will allow any male to access women's sex segregated spaces regardless of presentation, or hormon-" oh, my, Turf writes so poorly. It's like, it's, they can't, it takes them five sentences to say one sentence.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:15Ryan Broderick?

  It's so boring.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:17Ryan Broderick?

  But basically, you get the idea, is that they just think that, like, Me Too should, should go on and go after them. And what's super interesting here, though- Because the tweet has like, uh, J.K. Rowling's tweet that she's sort of shared, doesn't have a lot of, a lot of engagement. Like, no one kind of noticed.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:31Ryan Broderick?

  Um, in 2017, it's announced that Dumbledore won't be explicitly gay in the Fantastic Beasts movie. People get mad at J.K. Rowling about that.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:39Ryan Broderick?

  Um, they think that she's sort of caving for like Chinese box offices. And 2018, she likes a transphobic tweet about men in dresses getting more brochelist solidarity than I ever have.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Is this the one that then people called her out for liking it and she said that it was like someone was on her account and it was by accident?

• 30:59Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Grant, Grant is, Grant, producer Grant is nodding. Uh, once we, once we get to the Twitter timeline, this is where I'm like really, I think-

• 31:07Ryan Broderick?

  You're locked in.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  I'm locked in. Yeah.

• 31:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, her reps told, uh, Pink News that, uh, she had a middle-aged moment.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Yes, the middle-aged moment. Oh, who among us?

• 31:18Ryan Broderick?

  It's fascinating to see how drip-droppy it is. And in 2019, this is when we all should have known that she's probably gone too far because there's one more Harry Potter decree right before she loses the plot entirely. Matt, do, do you know what I'm talking about?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Remind me.

• 31:35Ryan Broderick?

  So, according to Pottermore, which comes out around 2019.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:41Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, Hogwarts didn't have bathrooms for centuries.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  No, what?

• 31:46Ryan Broderick?

  And the wizards just pooped on the floor and then used magic to disappear it. And that's just how, that's, that, that is sort of, I think, the pinnacle of the J.K. Rowling, uh, fanfic, if you will.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 31:57Ryan Broderick?

  And that same year, we hit the point of no return. In December 2019, there's a prominent UK legal case, uh, Maya Forstater sues after being fired for transphobic tweets, which I'm gonna read here. "Everyone's equality and safety should be protected, but women and girls lose out on privacy, safety, and fairness if males are allowed into changing rooms, dormitories, prisons, sports teams."

• 32:24Ryan Broderick?

  Um, the judge rules against her and JK Rowling tweets in her support of Maya Forstater, writing, "Dress however you please, call yourself whatever you like, sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you, live your best life in peace and security, but force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #I Stand With Maya, #This Is Not A Drill."

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I'm also just, on the, on the note of Me Too while we're doing this, I mean, so much of what JK Rowling talks about now is like, we have to hate trans people because it's like a danger to women, like she, she, to cis women. She really positions herself as the savior for cisgender women against the battle of gender violence by men.

• 33:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And JK Rowling has a history of supporting abusers, of, of supporting cis male abusers, which is just kind of like one of the many things that makes her argument that she claims is why she's doing all of this fall apart. She, obviously she's had this longstanding personal and professional relationship with Johnny Depp, who is an abuser. Um, she also, she sent flowers to Marilyn Manson. So it's just kind of ridiculous.

• 33:49Ryan Broderick?

  What do you think that is? Like, what do you, what's your read on like the cognitive dissonance there?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  It is hard to apply logic to someone whose politics are not consistent with logic. Um, so, you know, I think there is a lot of inconsistencies between what JK Rowling thinks she is doing and says she's doing and what is, she's actually doing, obviously. And I think at the end of the day, one through line for her is that like,

• 34:20Speaker 01

  In her fight against abuse, in her fight against gender violence, like she decides what is gender violence and who commits it. And she decides like who the problem is and who the problem isn't. And so it's like, I don't know. I think she accuses, obviously, like a lot of trans people of being like violent men just by virtue of them being trans, but then also decides that like people with years and years of documented court tried abuse, like Johnny Depp, like Marilyn Manson, are not because like she, she, she can decide, you know, it is, it is strange. She has a very, um, I do think she has like a godlike belief about herself, um, which is evidenced also in the way that like she can never be

• 35:05Speaker 01

  wrong about anything. I don't think she's ever, even when she's, she's tweeted patently, provably false shit about trans people, like she's never walked anything back. I mean, when she led the war on Iman Khalif during the Olympics last year, this claim that this cis woman boxer who just like was too tall and strong and good at boxing. And so then they all bought into these conspiracy theories about how Iman Khalif was a man, which was disproved. She never walked any of that back, even while Iman Khalif ended up suing her. She never walked any of it back on Twitter.

• 35:40Ryan Broderick?

  I think you're right. I think, I think it's like, she can admit she's wrong and she also doesn't seem to have a great social or political awareness of any kind. I was living in the UK during the TERF takeover, which was very creepy. And, and it was spreading throughout like London media in a way that was very odd. And I asked a friend at the time, I was like, what's the deal with the TERFs here? Like, what, what is it? And she said it was two things. One, like there is such a massive, massive, massive history of sex abuse in the UK, particularly from like rich, powerful men. And there is also

• 36:20Ryan Broderick?

  like an, there was an opportunity for rich women to create like a demonized other to, to get working class women on their side.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, scapegoat.

• 36:32Ryan Broderick?

  Right. So it's like, it's like the, the powerful women that came out of the, the sort of like second wave feminism of the UK, they all got media jobs as like columnists in newspapers. And they settled on.

• 36:45Ryan Broderick?

  Trans people as the scapegoat to make working class women buy their newspapers, buy their books, follow them on the internet. And it's in this time period, the first Trump era, where Rowling goes from beloved figure to tragic figure, or at least like deeply annoying figure. All the while saying she hasn't changed, she's just taking a stand. Meanwhile, wizards are pooping on the floor.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  I don't mean to go like on too much of a tangent, but I, we should talk about here how J.K. Rowling is a survivor of domestic abuse. And

• 37:18Ryan Broderick?

  Actually, then I'm gonna stop you because we have that in the next section.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 37:22Ryan Broderick?

  The thing, I love when our guests do it. You've made the transition for me. Thank you very much. Right after, a word from our sponsors.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Uh, Hogsmeade.

• 37:37Ryan Broderick?

  There you go. Perfect.

• 37:41Speaker 03

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• 37:46Speaker 04

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• 37:57Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, we're gonna get back to our timeline in a moment, but you brought this up, and I think it's important in how the rest of this will go. So let's talk about the essay now. By June 2020, this is really where the tide had fully turned. She was getting shit from former fans and did the only reasonable thing, of course, which is write a really long essay that will convince everyone she's right. A thing that has always worked.

• 38:21Ryan Broderick?

  In it, for the first time, she makes the link publicly between her feelings about trans people and domestic abuse. The Guardian writes at the time, in her essay Rowling writes of her own struggles with sexism and misogyny and her adolescent sense of being mentally sexless, adding that reading accounts of gender dysphoria by trans men had made her wonder, if I be born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. She also reveals that she is a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor, citing this alongside freedom of speech and other reasons why. So yeah, like, what's your, what's your kind of read on that?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I will say, I have seen so much discussion online referring to the specific passage of that goddamn essay called Turf Wars, which I will never be able to stop talking about, which nobody will ever be able to stop talking about. The damage J.K. Rowling did with Turf Wars, but the passage where she was like, Had this gender craze been going on when I was a kid, I may too have transitioned. And I've seen a lot of people speculate. It's like, wait, hold on.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  And I don't want to get on here and transvestigate Joanne Rowling, but it is- Let's do it. Let's transvestigate J.K. Rowling. Let's do it. It is just like, I think what she's trying to say is like, I was like what they'd call a tomboy, and now they're transing all the tomboys, which is like so stupid. But also if you take what she's saying at face value, it's like, wait a minute. But I think the thing that is really interesting to me here, and something that she kind of still talks about all the time today, is that she is a survivor of domestic abuse. And this just, this is so upsetting to me. Because you see this a lot, and I've talked a lot with Kat Tenbarch, who writes about this sort of, about gender violence and about sexual abuse all the time.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I talk about this with her on my podcast, A Bit Fruity. But it can be really hard to know, it can be really hard to know what to do with trauma in general. And when you don't like therapize it correctly, it can be, I think, really tempting to blame the wrong person. And I think what you were describing earlier with like, there was this movement to blame people for gender violence. It's like, we know who to blame for gender violence. It's like the system of patriarchy that perpetuates it. But that's hard, and that's really big, and that feels like almost unconquerable, right? What do we do about patriarchy?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I mean, it almost reminds me of like those like 2010s memes about like, smash the patriarchy. And it's like, okay, but what, how do we do that beyond like buying this mug? Or something, you know? You gotta buy the mug. Step one, buy the mug. Step one, we buy the mug from Etsy. But what J.K. Rowling does, obviously, is she's like, well, gender violence would be stopped. The kind of gender violence that I faced in my abusive relationship could be stopped or lessened if we like stopped letting trans people into the bathrooms that align with their gender.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Now, we know that's not true. We know that there is no evidence that trans people will abuse cis people in bathrooms. And in fact, the opposite is true. Trans people who are forced into the wrong restrooms that

• 41:38Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  are, you know, that align with their sex assigned at birth are more likely to be victims of violence in those situations. Not that J.K. Rowling cares about facts. Like I said, it's hard to apply logic to someone who's, um, who's, who's entire belief system is not rooted in logic.

• 41:53Ryan Broderick?

  We'll get to this in a moment, but this leads to her doing the thing that bigots do where they fictionalize their fears to reinforce them and create evidence to justify them. And in her mystery series, which she writes under a man's name, fascinating, uh, little trans coded there, isn't it, J.K.? She has a killer dress up as a woman before murdering, you know, which is reinforcing this idea that is not based in reality, right?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I just think it's sad because even today, you will see her respond to criticism on Twitter by being like, how dare you talk to a survivor of abuse like that?

• 42:29Ryan Broderick?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  And she thinks that because she was a victim of abuse, she does not have the capability of also inflicting harm on millions of other people, which is what she's doing. She kind of just, she doesn't like perceive herself to be as powerful as she is, and she doesn't perceive herself as anything except a victim. She, she thinks she's always punching up and she, I think she refuses to believe that she's punching down, which is all she's been doing for at least five years.

• 42:56Ryan Broderick?

  Speaking of the last five years, shockingly, it becomes a shit show in 2020 where it seems like people start to lose their minds over and over, which is the oddest coincidence, isn't it?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:05Ryan Broderick?

  By May 2020, we've gotten to the point where newspapers can run the headline, "J.K. Rowling Likes Another Transgender Tweet." That same month, she releases a kid's book, has kids illustrate the story, and that somehow results in her publishing a transphobic joke where a trans wolf, I guess, is threatening to beat up TERFs. June 2020, the next month, she gets mad at an advocacy group for using the language "people who menstruate," and her tweet, uh, reads, "People who menstruate. I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Womben? Women? Woman?" She's like doing like a bit. Fall 2020 is when she releases the book with the women's clothes-wearing killer.

• 43:48Ryan Broderick?

  2022, she writes a book about an author being harassed by evil fans who have turned against the character for being transphobic. And that book is 1,000 pages long, which definitely means you're not mad. And all the while, she's maintaining being the reasonable, accepting one with her queer friends. And she has apparently no hate in her heart.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  She does kind of sometimes like over-identify with like the cis-gay community even now. She'll be like, you know, she talks a lot about how like, oh, but the real danger with trans women is that they're invading cis lesbian spaces. And then, of course, you have cis lesbians online who are like, we're fine. We love trans people. Like, fucking relax.

• 44:29Ryan Broderick?

  A lot of it is cleared, though, by like the British conversation, which I think gets scrambled. And I'm, I am, I am not speaking for all British lesbians right now. I want to make that really clear. I am not doing that. But I am saying that there are high-profile, particularly older lesbian writers in the UK who do believe that the trans community is an extermination movement against lesbianism. Like, I have seen that, and that is a thing. And I know that they know J.K. Rowling. I know those conversations exist.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It's a thing, but I always, when this comes up, I feel the need to interject with the fact that like studies over and over again show that like the majority of cis lesbians, and I know you know this, so I'm not, I'm not arguing, but I'm just...

• 45:14Ryan Broderick?

  I just, I just need to be really clear for my own, I just want to be real clear. Like, I don't, I don't believe that. I want you guys to know that. I don't believe that.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I know you don't.

• 45:21Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, you can cook now.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  I just interject because it's like the overwhelming majority of cis lesbians, actually more than like almost any other demographic, are super trans-friendly. And so J.K. Rowling is one of these people who amplifies the small amount of cis lesbians proportionally who are TERFs and then takes up the mantle of like, and we must protect lesbians, even though lesbians are, you know, all over the place, just being like, you're making us look transphobic. Please stop speaking for me. So I feel the need to say that because I would feel frustrated if I was a cis lesbian being spoken over by a transphobe.

• 45:57Ryan Broderick?

  I would also, I would imagine that would be, that would be very annoying. And I believe that that is something that J.K. Rowling does not think about because I think, yeah, I mean, my takeaway from this whole sort of story we've been telling today is that like, she is someone who clearly is a Twitter addict, an internet addict. She is addicted to the feedback loop of attention you get from the internet. Like, like, transphobic or not, like, she's been like this.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:23Ryan Broderick?

  She also is someone who loves to play the victim card when it goes wrong. I mean, you could even go so far as back to like her, like, really fuzzy origin story where she claimed that she was like on welfare and had to write Harry Potter to like save her family when it's actually, she like went on benefits to get money to write Harry Potter.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:43Ryan Broderick?

  Like, it was the other way around. She went on a, like, a UK benefit scheme to give herself a break to write the book.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was sitting, she was always sitting in her cafe in Scotland.

• 46:56Ryan Broderick?

  She has those stories where she's like, you know, scribbled it down on napkins and it's like-

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yes, the napkins!

• 47:03Ryan Broderick?

  Like, it's burning in my brain.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Billionaires need to self-mythologize. It's like, I've never, I've never talked about a billionaire who like doesn't have some sort of self-mythology.

• 47:13Ryan Broderick?

  She, she has always been someone like this.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, her usage of Twitter is so, so crazy. It's actually like among the worst I've ever seen. And this is someone who spends a large portion of every day on Twitter. But like, this actually felt really relevant to me again when I was thinking about coming on to make this episode with you. Because just about a month ago, there is a guy I know in New York, who's just like a gay guy that I know, like a friend of a friend, who has no significant social following. Certainly not on Twitter, his name is Tim. And he had responded to one of her tweets, basically just being like, "Why are you so transphobic?", sort of thing. And it had zero likes.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  And she chose to put him on blast in a quote tweets, which led to like, of course, days of harassment from her fans, calling him like misogynistic male, whatever, whatever. But it's just interesting because, not that I feel left out or anything, but like I have criticized J.K. Rowling so many times-

• 48:13Ryan Broderick?

  Ah, I'm sorry bud.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  To the tune of hundreds of thousands of likes. And she has never addressed me. She only addressed me once when I appeared on someone else's podcast, so maybe today is the day again. But- It's just, she has a pattern of going after like, people with literally zero followers, I mean literally zero followers.

• 48:34Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  In tweets that nobody, that otherwise nobody would see and like, I have a much smaller platform than her, but it's big enough that even I know that like, when some person who disagrees with me, comes at me and they have no following, it's like, I cover the name. Sometimes people get mad at me. Sometimes they're like, you shouldn't cover the name. But like, I cover the name because even in my smaller following, like, I know the power that yields and the harassment and like,

• 49:02Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Even when people disagree with me, like, I know that sending harassment from my audience won't actually do anything productive. And so, it's just, it's crazy that she does that. It's crazy that she does that. And I had to reach out to this guy and I was like, I'm so sorry that that happened. Like, that's, it was crazy. Your tweet had zero likes. I mean, when she did, I don't know if this was in your outline, but she did a little Holocaust denial, about a year ago, where

• 49:31Ryan Broderick?

  She did.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  People were like, you are aligning yourself with Hitler. And, you know, the Nazis who, who went after Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research, which was in Germany, in Weimar Germany, it was the first like library of early like, trans-affirming medicine research. And the Nazis burned it. And she, which is just like so easily Google-able. Like, it's, it's, it's very much like public information. That was the first book burning. And she just went on Twitter and she said, that never happened. And the person that she, that, that sparked that tweet from her, that denialist tweet from her, it had zero likes. Like, she just, it's crazy. She like finds

• 50:14Speaker 01

  the things that she wants to find to respond to and it's just like from nobodies. It's, it's so bizarre.

• 50:20Ryan Broderick?

  The Holocaust denial thing, I think, is really, really illustrative of this thing that is true for a lot of people like her. Where like, if you become obsessed with something like transphobia, if you become obsessed with sort of a hateful, exclusionary ideology, whatever it may be. You will eventually become like a hardcore eugen- like, the path is always to fascism. Always.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:45Ryan Broderick?

  And so that's where we know it ends with her. But to loop back to our thesis, you know, the question that we put at the top, did she change or did the world change? I think the beliefs and the vocalization are new, but I do think her perspective is somewhat the same. And this is what I mean. She probably always was this person, whether or not that was specifically about trans people, I think she always had this in her. But the, the, the poison pill of, you know, too many people on the internet, loving everything you say and attacking your detractors, is why the volume gets turned up here and cannot back down. Because as we said, she is obsessed with attention and being right all the time.

• 51:28Ryan Broderick?

  And that's always been a constant when you look across her entire career. This view that she's quite reasonable and the norms of civility must be maintained and, you know, never challenged. So to, to close out with one final bit of evidence for this, I want to talk about a little podcast series called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:46Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I saw you, I saw your whole body shiver when I said it.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Meghan Phelps Roper.

• 51:54Ryan Broderick?

  She's the host.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm happy she left Westboro Baptist Church. I do not think she needs to be leading conversations about trans people or human rights.

• 52:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, she was the host and the other people involved, well, it's, it's really a star-studded production. It was created by Barry Weiss's media company also, The Free Press.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Another, Barry Weiss.

• 52:13Ryan Broderick?

  Another genius. Uh huh. It was also produced by Annie Mills, who was the lead producer of the New York Times podcast, The Caliphate, which was definitely an ethically run production that had no problems. And beyond that, you can also check out the piece in New York Mag's The Cut, which reports at length on his treatment of women in the workplace. Once again, J.K. Rowling really knows how to pick them, assemble in a great team here. Might as well tap Russell Brand, you know, let's, let's bring all the good guys in.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 52:44Ryan Broderick?

  So it's, you know, it's all kinds of the best people, right? But here's one, here's one passage I wanted to read to sort of take us, take us to the, the end here. The question was, when you see these people burning your books, this goes all the way back to the Satanic panic. They're really burning them. Trying to get them banned and remove them from schools and libraries. How did you understand what was going on inside of them? And she was, JK Rowling responded, "Well, I think this is something I explore in the Potter books. A sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things." Really telling herself there.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:21Ryan Broderick?

  You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many, many, many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves. This is, this fucking rules so hard. "Many, many, many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness, believed they were doing the right thing, felt themselves justified in what they were doing. I suppose for me, book burners by definition, predictably to me, have placed themselves across a line, across a line of rational debate."

• 53:54Speaker 01

  The thing is, like, what she's saying there is true. She just doesn't realize she's talking about herself.

• 54:00Ryan Broderick?

  It's awesome. It rules so hard. I love that.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  But like, I also think that that, to me, like, I really agree with what she's saying there, and I think she actually says it really well. And I think thinking about her through that lens is like the most helpful, because like, I don't think there's anything we can do about JK Rowling. But it's just, I think a lot of it just comes back to like misunderstanding the violence of patriarchy and like,

• 54:27Speaker 01

  JK Rowling thinks that she is doing a good thing. Now, I'm not interested in like giving her any sympathy because she thinks she's in the right here. Like, she's doing so much harm. But it's important to know that like, she thinks that she is fighting on behalf of women. And it's just unfortunate because she's not, and all we can do is like, I feel like explain over and over again why she's misdirected and why she's actually punching down in a very useless and damaging way for a lot of people.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Let me jump in here, because I think I have a takeaway that can loop this all together. She likes to see herself as extremely reasonable.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  The way that the witch trials structured itself narratively, I think, really gets at this. They started by talking about people burning her books.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  And then eventually they got to people overreacting from her tweets is like, is like the framing. It's like the inability to have a reasonable discussion is when people are then extreme. And that's when, that's when things go wrong. I kept thinking like, this is just bad for her bottom line. Why would she decide to do this? She wasn't an edgelord before this. What, what was the attraction here? It's that I think she thinks there's something morally courageous about being sort of like, having a mannered voice and tone when talking about things. It's all a bit much, isn't it? It's all a bit much. What's wrong is yelling and making her feel uncomfortable. Right.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  And I think that and like, like that is rooted in the lots of trauma and anger towards patriarchy is also the sense of like, norms must be maintained.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  That was basically a podcast series done about, quote unquote, the witch trials of J K Rowling, which is such a ridiculous premise. But it was done by Meghan Phelps Roper, who grew up in the famously homophobic Westboro Baptist Church and then defected from it in adulthood. And then very shortly thereafter produced this podcast series. She's also basically made a career. I think she follows me on Twitter, so.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Way to brag.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  No, I think she, I think, well, I think she's gonna hit me with the unfollow after I say this, but she, which is fine. Meghan, go with God. But I think she, she's, she's made a career out of speaking about like, leaving the cult. And I think one thing that she does, and one thing that's really imbued in this podcast series is like, anyone who, like, the Westboro Baptist Church was bad because it was a group of people who like, clung to orthodoxy and repeated dogma and like, believed firmly in it. And so, anyone who believes strongly in anything must also be in a brainwashed cult. And it's like, actually, no, like, I believe very strongly in human rights. That's very different than

• 57:16Speaker 01

  believing in a homophobic hate cult. But she applies that logic to the J K Rowling situation where she's like, the people burning your books for Satanism and the people burning Your books because you have spent five years spewing hate to 14 million people about trans people are the same in the sense that they are both burning your books. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's such a ridiculous premise. And it's like, actually, no, some things are good at, are good to believe in strongly. And that's why I think Megan Phelps Roper should never have made that series and probably shouldn't make a career out of leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.

• 57:52Ryan Broderick?

  Right. The, the point you made earlier about sort of like not wanting to face the enormity of patriarchy, I think is dead on. And it's, it's something we talk about a lot when we do episodes about right wing political factions where I do think like, for the most part, politically radicalized people are thinking rationally in the sense that like they are identifying real problems. Like if you read a lot of like far right literature, not the race science stuff, but like a lot of the, like the entry level stuff, they're pointing out real issues because that's how you recruit people. You can't recruit people with like, the Caucasian cranium can fit more brain in it or whatever. You have to start with like, things look bad, right? Well, here's the answer.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:37Ryan Broderick?

  What you said is totally true, which is that you can't fix the patriarchy just by identifying that it's, it's a concept and it exists. You have to like do genuine hard work to figure out what the small steps are to try to make it better. But that's hard and it's not, doesn't play very good on social media also. And so the easiest solution is to find a very vulnerable group and just hammer them because no, like you know, you can get away with it and you know it's a simple solution.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  And I think it also could be helpful for people to think about this like a conspiracy theory. Central, central to so much transphobia now is this idea that trans people have way more power than they do. There's, there's a formula for punching down and there's a formula for that to feel good. And so blaming, you know, the Jews, blaming the trans people, blaming, you know, all of these persecuted minorities, that's going to feel good and it's also just easier to do. It's, it's wrong on a moral and ethical level, but it's also incorrect. It will not help you solve the problems that you, you claim to be fighting for.

• 59:43Ryan Broderick?

  Also, by punching up, you lose your access to power.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:47Ryan Broderick?

  And I think for Summer Night JK Rowling, that's very important.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:50Ryan Broderick?

  Which is that she is status quo number one and everything else number two.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, she loves her friendship with Johnny Depp, you know?

• 59:59Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly.

• 1:00:02Ryan Broderick?

  Well.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  So uplifting.

• 1:00:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that was a pretty good place.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Land the plane.

• 1:00:10Ryan Broderick?

  Land the plane.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Ryan Broderick?

  This was, this was a blast, as always. If people want to follow you on the internet, Matt, where can they do that?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for having me, Ryan. It is such a joy when I get to do my straight white guy D E I podcast tour. Thank you so much for having me. My podcast is called A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. You can follow me on Instagram, @mattxiv, like 14Y, because I was 14 when I made the account. That's why.

• 1:00:44Ryan Broderick?

  I wondered that. I thought maybe you were like the 14th of some, like the 14th Matt or something.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I come from like aristocracy and I'm like the 14th Matt. No.

• 1:00:53Ryan Broderick?

  I always wondered that.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was 14 when I made the Instagram, which is probably another thing that you're gonna have like a generational freakout in front of me for, but.

• 1:01:01Ryan Broderick?

  I'm holding it together. I'm holding it together, the idea that you were 14 when Instagram existed, but I'm gonna just hold that one inside. That's okay.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, thank you for having me, Ryan.

• 1:01:12Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstedt is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected]. Lastly, here's my advice for you.

• 1:01:55Ryan Broderick?

  Chill out and touch grass while you still can.