Is the video game developer, computer programmer, GamerGate veteran, and aspiring politician “based” for recent statements against antisemitism? To find out, the Dorx invited Wu for an interview that lasted 2-and-a-half hours and is therefore broken into two parts (if you listen to only one, make it Part Two):
PART ONE:
A friendly conversation about eyebrows, makeup, Zionism, antisemitism, GamerGate, WPATH standards, trans civil rights, binary vs. nonbinary, philosophical questions, the TERF-Tranny Alliance, JK Rowling, holocaust denial, India Willoughby, illiberalism, Media Matters, and the Harry S Benjamin Standards of Care.
PART TWO:
An increasingly contentious discussion of Jesse Singal, journalistic standards, changing sex, allies, public policies that are cruel to trans people, identity, dehumanization, tolerance, prejudice, the N-word, swastika flags, fringe opinions, cognitive dissonance, cancellation, and the value of trans experience. It’s a long listen, but we think this episode gives a definitive answer to the title question.
CRINGE!!! You two are masters of composure. BW is not base (as I understand the term today). I survived listening to the whole thing, partly because I needed to know how you would exit this conversation. Is there an Oscar for composure? You’d get it.
Oh god I’ve never felt the need to comment before but this episode made me SO uncomfortable. Well done for letting us hear the whole thing, it’s amazing how reasonable people can seem for a short while and then slowly unravel into clearly being insane.
I felt similar watching the Piers Morgan interview with Fiona (aka the real stalker from baby reindeer)….
If she believes she’s the reasonable end of the TRA continuum then there can be no accommodation. Dialog is impossible. If as I believe she’s just a ‘my party; right or wrong’ person then it’s easier to dismiss. Sometimes the party is the dems, sometimes it’s the Trannies, sometimes it’s the Juice. She’s irrelevant as she has no substance her enthusiasms are arbitrary.
My favorite part was when Brianna said: “You have some esoteric comments about some spiritual journey you’ve been on… it’s not how most people feel and it’s a terrible public policy.” I feel like Brianna needs to take that and look inwards.
Ugh! Everything Nina said was subject to being accused of her using some discourse technique in bad faith or something, and then Brianna would proceed to use the very same technique! The hypocrisy and self righteousness she came with really stopped any meaningful conversation. You guys were amazing though, patient and tried to be gracious and find common ground.
This was an amazing episode. I appreciate the incredible forbearance it took for Nina to maintain the calm demeanor she did, but I especially admire Corinna’s insightful rebuttals to some of Brianna’s less cogent challenges and her stalwart attempts to inject nuance into viewpoints that Brianna couldn’t seem to grant any legitimacy to. Brianna gets credit too, for appearing on a forum that she knew would not be favorable to many of her viewpoints, and for maintaining a respectful tone throughout. It was a model conversation for civil discourse and hashing out ideas in an open forum.
Thank you all for your efforts.
I am also in awe of your composure and patience. This episode is up there with the Grace Lavery one in terms of just allowing the guest to expose their own incoherence.
JK Rowling a holocaust denier? Laughable, if not libelous. If Wu’s belief that not letting trans people falsify documents is cruel, does that mean that I can knock 10 years off my age on my license? It would align my inner self with my outer self. Especially since Wu pointed out how most trans women understand they are male (even called them ‘broken and despondent’). So if official records should honor their identity over the facts (that even they recognize), how is changing my age different?
Maybe Wu hasn’t paid attention to the parents of ‘children who are extreme cases of gender dysphoria’ and their attitudes toward gender nonconformity, or the Tavistock whistleblowers who joked about there being no gay people left because they’re all getting transed. Nobody has the right to prevent another person from reaching maturity, and we know that puberty blockers do much more than change appearance. Wu refusing to ask Corinna about the same issues Nina was grilled on (‘I feel like you’re asking me to be a monkey’) exposed the hypocrisy.
Leaving aside the fairness in sport issue, to me the most jaw-dropping response was when Wu finally and exasperatedly said “I don’t know” in response to Nina’s simple and reasonable question: ‘What is trans’?
Much gratitude and admiration from a 60-yr old gay male (though I pass for 50). Now I know I can’t donate to Wu’s PAC, despite agreeing with its stated aims.
THIS… this is the perfect crystallization of the absurdity of the trans activist arguments. Brianna Wu show herself to be a serious bully. Wu has no rationale arguments. She falls back on: if you don’t agree with my position , you are cruel and a bad person. There are serious consequences to pretending that reality is not reality. No amount of hurt feeling or “basic respect” will make 2+2 = 5. Wu dismisses the serious consequences on Nina’s cancellation; here Brianna shows her cruelty. When Nina or Correa’s describes harm or challenges, Wu’s argument is “well I think I’ve had it x10 worse.” How does that address the harm?
Wu is simply irrational and clearly mean spirited.
No matter how often I witness it, it is still remarkable how obviously highly intelligent people repeatedly fail to take in the simplest and most obvious gaps in their own reasoning. I recognize the Brianna Woo name (no doubt because I frequently listen to Blocked and Reported too); but was unfamiliar with the full range of positions this person takes on the issues of the day. So I was all prepared to listen to the conversation with an open mind, and my usual craving for harmony due to the discovery of common ground. But Woo’s insistence on dismissing barenaked material facts as “cruel,” and blaming the messenger is such an obvious glitche in “her” arguments that it was like watching you two attempting to fill a bottomless bucket with water. I, of course, wanted to contribute some clarifying rhetoric to the mix, as usual, shouting fruitlessly at my cellphone “Ms. Woo, it’s REALITY that is cruel, not Nina! How is your attempt to emotionally blackmail everyone around you to stay quiet about reality a good long-term strategy for anyone’s flourishing?”
well said.
This episode was the first I felt like commenting on, and I’ve listened to just about every episode for about two years now.
On the one hand, I am amazed and impressed by your composure and civility. On the other, I feel like it would have been nice to see you call Wu on her manipulations more often. Corinne did so more often, and I don’t know if that’s because of personality differences or because Wu has such affection for trans people – Wu just didn’t attack Corinne the same way she attacked (repeatedly, dishonestly, and cruelly) Nina. Those are words Wu kept saying, “dishonest” and “cruel,” as she herself was dishonest and cruel.
That last question brought it into stunning relief: “What sex am I?”
Wu hemmed and hawed and one hand other handed, squirming like a child caught out.
“Brianna, what sex am I?”
“I truly don’t know…”
How can Wu have wasted so much air calling Nina dishonest when that answer is a flat-out lie? She knew, just like she knows – and her trans friends know, exactly what sex they all are.
…”This is the true answer…”
No, it wasn’t. There wasn’t anything true or truthful in Wu’s answer, only her desperate desire to avoid saying the truth. But Corinna kept at her until
“Yup. You’re a biological male, obviously.”
“Yeah, well, well that’s what Nina said.”
“But the difference is…”
The difference is that Wu will lie about if if she thinks you want her to, and Nina won’t. And because Nina won’t lie about it like Wu will, Wu says she’s cruel. (And dishonest).
We have all learned so much about what Brianna Wu today. Thanks for that.
You can’t force trannies to misgender each other. Of course AFAB people want their innate biological and moral superiority to be recognized. But trannies have to live in constant cognitive dissonance, and they have to find an optimal compromise between total denial and total shame, even if that’s “intellectually dishonest”.
OMG, what an episode has this been! I need a follow up episode with your takes on this. Nina and Corinna, you have been so patient…
Don’t know how the hosts maintained. These two episodes should be required listening for mental health students in their study of personality disorders. I am of two minds about the episodes. I hate that he was allowed a platform, yet he did perfectly personify every obnoxious trait associated with a stereotypical narcissistic tranny. Nina, Corinna, and those of us who listened deserve our own special recognition in identity politics as Wu victims/survivors. We need our own name and a support group!
I think this (and part 1) were the best episodes of the podcast yet. You had a guest on who didn’t suck up to you, and yet didn’t just rant at you either – it was a really good discussion between people who had some very real disagreements. It was wonderful to listen to. She wasn’t afraid to call you out on (what she thought was) your shit, and vice versa. And nobody was being a jerk.
All three of you were coming from a pro-science perspective, and drew different conclusions, which intelligent people can do. And it was great hearing different perspectives. I hope you get more guests like Wu on the show.
I’m old, and I hate it. It’s a bummer when I become aware that someone sees me as old because being old comes with all kinds of negative baggage. Although I dislike being perceived as old, I do accept that is my reality. So I do not think service workers are cruel when they offer me the senior discount. They are simply perceiving reality.
I can only echo the responses above who praised your self-restraint and candor, Nina and Corinna. Listening to the podcast was an all too rare exercise in seeing a person reveal all their self-righteousness and egoism in real time. I’d love to hear you two do a postmortem on it.
Hey, have you considered doing an Ask Me Anything sort of podcast (if you haven’t already)?
Welp, you did it again, Nina and Corinna–remaining the only GC podcasters to get contentious trannies to come on and show their cheap nylon slips.
My god, I thought I was going to bust a vein. Nina, I was intensely frustrated for you, though you kept your temper admirably. It was almost comical how differently Wu spoke to you and to Corinna. Despite waxing lyrical about how much empathy the trans journey teaches people, he clearly does not identify with women at all. He knows who’s worth listening to and who deserves respect: the men in the room. His assessment of Nina and Nina’s position was classically misogynistic–“You’re mean! You’re irrational! You can’t reason!” Then, as quickly as possible, he would turn around and try to crawl up Corinna’s ass.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for putting yourselves through this and sharing it with us. You take a lot of flak from virtually every direction, and I think that’s a sign you are doing brave, important work.
Two years ago I thought using preferred pronouns was the low-hanging fruit — that we have much to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. I believed preferred pronouns were compassionate, as Wu said in this interview. Wu’s shockingly insulting conduct, toward Nina Paley in particular, drives home to me the folly of that position. Preferred pronouns are the thin edge of the wedge. When women commit to the false slogan “transwomen are women,” they deprive themselves of any logical basis for rejecting the onslaught of further falsehoods from the gender cult. For example, If transwomen are women, then transwomen can be lesbians. And if transwomen can be lesbians, then lesbians must accept transwomen in their dating pool. If they don’t, they commit the cardinal sin of reminding transwomen that they’re men, and they’re deemed bigots and sometimes even kicked off lesbian dating apps. Imagine that – lesbians kicked off lesbian dating apps if they say they only want to date women. If transwomen are women then they should be allowed in women’s sports, where the truth of their sex-based competitive advantage can’t be acknowledged, and any woman who complains about unfairness is deemed a hater, and is sanctioned for speaking up. Acquiescing to the falsehood that sex is a fiction, even the deceptively innocuous fiction of preferred pronouns, sets women down a pathway where we are emotionally manipulated, socially coerced, and punished if we resist any and all falsehoods that help trans-identified males deny the reality of their sex. Worse, all our major institutions are joining these men in the effort. Listening to this interview was painful, as I heard Wu demonize, insult and guilt-trip Paley because she refused (rightfully and respectfully) to be his handmaiden of affirmation. Her egregious offense was her anodyne belief that sex is real. Her measured tone, and exceedingly gracious departing words, showed me that Paley fights fair. Wu is a scoundrel.
the N-word was a good analogy. it isn’t “inherently” offensive either, and it describes a biological reality too, but it’s racist because only the most racist people want to use it, for racist purposes. because everyone else is ok with not using it because of its connotations. same with using the three or four-letter M-word on trannies. if “dispreferred” word usage is so important for you, you must have hostile motives.