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22. On Chasers ft. Amy Marvin
63 Plays3 days ago
Helen and Sarah sit down with Professor Amy Marvin, a philosopher who specializes in feminist philosophy and trans theory. We discuss the relationship between chasers, transphobia, and ruinous obsession, and ask how that intersects with stand-up comedy.
Amy Marvin's forthcoming book will be titled Trans Fascination, and you can also check out her work here: https://philpeople.org/profiles/amy-marvin
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Episode art and merch design by @canis_kunst on Instagram. Her work is going to be featured in a queer art exhibition on August 16th! You can find information about that here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cnc-creatives-not-censored-tickets-1991433216358
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Odium Symposium, a podcast about the production
Interview with Professor Amy Marvin
00:00:03
Speaker
of bigotry. This episode is an interview with Professor Amy Marvin. Marvin specializes in feminist philosophy and trans theory with publications on laughter, violence, hope, oppression, curiosity, care, film, community, and subversive humor.
Understanding 'Trans Chasers'
00:00:23
Speaker
We talked to her about trans chasers, those people with amorous intentions who fixate on and fetishize trans people. Trans people are very familiar with the chaser phenomenon because it turns out chasers are really common.
00:00:37
Speaker
On dating apps and so on, there's an endless supply of creepy guys who will ask you things like... Have you had the surgery? Or how big is it? The presence and availability of chasers is something that many trans people need to have a response to. What do you say to the guy saying these things in your DMs, messaging you on dating apps, or approaching you at a bar?
Impact of Chasers on Relationships
00:00:58
Speaker
This can also affect our relationships as we grapple with questions about like the lines between supposedly, quote, normal desire and the, quote, fetishization of the chaser. Is everyone who's into trans women a chaser? What would the non-fetishizing way of being into trans women look like? What's wrong with fetishization anyway?
00:01:16
Speaker
These are questions that have produced endless arguments, as well as online discourse and academic squabbling. But they can't be entirely ignored because the stakes in our lives are real.
Amy Marvin's Book: 'Transfascination'
00:01:28
Speaker
We talked with Amy Marvin about ways to short circuit these disputes as well as broader cultural implications that she analyzes in her forthcoming book, Transfascination, which focuses on the relationship between transphobia, attention, and ruinous obsession.
00:01:45
Speaker
It's a super interesting conversation. Before we jump into it, just want to remind you, you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slash odmsymposium for
Listener Perks and Merchandise
00:01:53
Speaker
$5 a month. We'll read your message on the show. You'll get early access to episodes. And we're going to continue to produce Connestor-only episodes from time to time.
00:02:01
Speaker
You can find Odium Symposium mugs and other merch at odiumsymposium.com. Designed by Quinny, who does the art for the show. Also, all listeners are welcome to join our Discord. And just one more plug, Quinny, who also goes by Canis Kunst, will be featured in the Creatives Not Censored art exhibition in l LA on August 16th, 2026. You can find links for all of this in the description.
00:02:27
Speaker
There's really nothing real. There is no real. And that's that's what's called the postmodern mentality. I couldn't receive the word racist remark. The adventure of life justifies its suffering. i don't want to see him having political succubus with goblins. Do it live.
00:02:42
Speaker
Is Trump going to have babies with a goblin? Do it live! And turn against us like Darth Vader. Do it live! listen, you can write a calling name on your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered. I was going to have a guest speaker, but the person I had invited in died.
00:02:59
Speaker
some level of masochism. Hi, we're so happy to welcome you on Amy Marvin. Thank you again for coming on our podcast. So ah we brought you on
Ethics of Chasers vs. Trans-Amorous Individuals
00:03:10
Speaker
here. Basically, we had an important question. and We thought we could settle it once or for once and for all.
00:03:15
Speaker
Chasers, good or bad? What do you think? So that is a joke, to be clear. We're not going to drag you yeah down into the deepest, darkest well of trans discourse, or at least we're not planning to. If that's where you want to head, that's fine.
00:03:33
Speaker
But you wrote this book, or you are in the process of writing this book about chasers and a broader framework of trans fascination that you see chasers fitting into.
00:03:45
Speaker
So we were hoping to have a conversation with you about that and illuminate things for our listeners. Thanks for inviting me. I guess a good first question, a real first question is, you know, in a lot of the discourse and people do argue about like, is there anything wrong with chasers? What is wrong with chasers, et cetera, et cetera. And there's this sort of distinction that has emerged between like being a chaser versus being trans amorous.
Historical Context of Trans Treatment
00:04:08
Speaker
I'm wondering if you could explain, like, what's the difference between those two things? Is there a difference? Yeah, i feel like so. So Jamie Hood has this good line that that the trans amorous man is often kind of like the gentleman's chaser or something like that. you know, I think the complicated thing is that it's complicated to love trans people. There's a really complicated politics around it.
00:04:28
Speaker
Often people don't love trans people very well. Right. So I think I think for me, I'm really interested in what are some ways that love between trans people and also like people in general, like I used to teach like a philosophy of love and sex course, like, how does that go well?
00:04:43
Speaker
How does that go wrong? And I think if we approach that in the context of trans love or people who are attracted to trans people, we can have like a pretty good conversation about it that doesn't go off the rails too much, or at least maybe goes off the rails to some interesting places.
Defining Trans-Amorous Individuals
00:04:59
Speaker
So there are some words associated with chaserdom, like objectification, fetishization, even manipulation. And so when you say the gentleman's chaser, is what you're suggesting that we have the quality of being particularly attracted to trans people, but perhaps those arguably negative qualities that I indicated like aren't present So the way that I see this is that there's a lot of anxiety, right, over like who is loving trans people well. And so sometimes people will be like, oh, well, I'm trans amorous because like I have this kind of attraction. I'm not like the bad kind of attracted to you or something like that. But just saying that doesn't like free you from that kind of complicated relationship. So I think if we look at like archives, if we look at accounts from trans people,
00:05:51
Speaker
you know, from like, from like the 80s, from the 90s, there's a lot of contexts where like a trans woman meets a guy, a cis guy, and and he's like, No, I'm like, kind of one of the good ones, I'm actually interested in you. And then he isn't. So I think the use the use of trans amorous is often and an attempt to kind of pose oneself as the more innocent kind of person attracted to trans people versus like the chaser, which I think tends to have more negative connotations. But I think that we need to sort of think a bit beyond the labels that we're just giving on to things and and think about like, what are people actually doing?
The Concept of 'Creepers'
00:06:25
Speaker
So when I look at the history of of the term chaser in archives, often what trans people are doing by using that term is they're describing various ways of being treated wrongly and the context of love, in the context of relationships and and dating and fucking. So for me, I end up kind of taking up the chaser as an example of of ways that that this goes wrong.
00:06:47
Speaker
And I think that the trans amorous person, i don't i don't think it's like inherently wrong to be and attracted to trans people. I think it can go fine. But I think also there's a bit of caution in sort of setting up like the good one versus the bad one.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the labels that you also examined that you sort of explained that I think is is really interesting to think about here. i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you mean by a creeper. So you say like, okay, so there's this more general concept, which is like not specific to being trans amorous, which is just like being a creepy guy, being a creeper. Like what exactly is entailed by by that Yeah, I'm kind of drawing from the work of feminist philosopher Bonnie Mann there.
00:07:24
Speaker
And the way that she looks at creepers is, and are you familiar with the phrase creeper? Yeah, definitely. People calling each other creepers. So there's this moment, I think, in the 2010s when people started not just like calling someone creepy, but referring to them as a creeper. And Bonnie Man's daughters were doing that. And Bonnie's like, what does that mean, right? When my daughters use this term. And the operative metaphor that that she kind of focuses on there is is sort of like a creeper vine. And I'm someone who likes growing houseplants. So like anytime someone throws in like a plant metaphor or something, I'm like, I'm there.
00:07:59
Speaker
Right. But the idea there is is sort of a vine that wraps around you and constricts your movements. And I was thinking that this is actually a really helpful framework for importing onto the ways that trans people haven't liked chasers, right? Because the chaser is often someone who views you in a way that you don't want them to view you.
00:08:21
Speaker
They're often someone who takes up your time in a way who you don't want to take up your time, right? Like I'm thinking about the experience of logging onto social media, you know you see like a DM request, uh-oh, there's like a dick pic, and maybe someone's saying something gross. right They decided that your time is about their sexualization of you. so i so I found that metaphor of the creeper really helpful for thinking about what are the ways that that the chaser tries to reduce trans people more broadly into a kind of sexualized, consumable object.
Sartre's Example of Power Imbalance
00:08:52
Speaker
One of the examples you give of a creeper is A philosopher who has not been a subject on the podcast before, but who has been pretty important to a lot of our discussions of bigotry, who is Jean-Paul Sartreau.
00:09:06
Speaker
And in addition to writing fluently about all kinds of topics, including antisemitism and bigotry, he also was involved in the sexual predation of students.
00:09:22
Speaker
So in particular, you cite this example where he's talking to a woman and she's giving very clear signals that she's not interested in taking the conversation in a sexual direction, that she's not reciprocating whatever amorous feelings he has going on. And he indicates that this is not like acceptable to him.
00:09:47
Speaker
for her to resist this structuring of the social situation. He doesn't accept that. And so after reading that, when I think of a creeper, the dominant thing I think is that this is a matter of control and this is a question of power.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you could say something about like how chasing and how it's understood by trans people relates to generally the fact that like cis men have a lot more power in social situations than trans people do, that they have a lot of power over trans people.
00:10:25
Speaker
I think it's absolutely related to power. And and that Jean-Paul Sartre example I find really helpful, like on several levels. One, I think we should be thinking about how creepy Sartre was. So what he's doing there is he's kind of unpacking his concept of bad faith.
00:10:41
Speaker
And his example is a man's pursuing a girl and the girl sort of starts kind of locking up and refusing his advances and then starts like, well, she's not acknowledging the situation. She's behaving in bad faith, which which isn't a good thing.
00:10:57
Speaker
Right. For her to be doing, or at least not the ideal thing for her to be doing, you know, to realize herself upon the world, to acknowledge what's happening. And an interesting thing that Sartre is doing there is he's also making theory about this situation.
00:11:10
Speaker
Right. So it's not just like he's sexual. He has this framework of like someone sexualizing the girl. The girl refusing sexualization then becomes a theory for his broader project. And I think it's this this this multilayered action of sexualizing someone.
00:11:26
Speaker
of reducing someone, and then also building cultural production off of this that I found to be a really interesting pattern, especially when we're thinking about like trans people, right? Because often, of course, there's this reductive way that cis person will have power over us and then kind of seek after us. Often, historically, this has happened in a context of poverty, right? Like a wealthier cis man kind of goes into a bar to find a poor trans woman to hook up with and then just kind of leaves.
00:11:55
Speaker
There's sort of like this pursuit and and leaving angle. But also started thinking about the ways that we're sort of disempowered in terms of narratives about our lives, in terms of of the theories that cis people make about us, the ways that we're pursued in media, the ways we're laughed about in comedy. And and thought I ended up finding this dynamic of creepers or or sort of this broader dynamic of chasing um to kind of go beyond like interpersonal relationships. So now we're also thinking about the power involved And, oh, you're just this thing that I can base my career off of. And I don't even need to give like a fuck about what that does to you.
00:12:31
Speaker
I think one of the interesting things there is the idea of the chaser and then more broadly, these behaviors as being a form of like knowledge production about trans people. That it's not just right. One of the steps moving away from thinking about this as like.
00:12:46
Speaker
deciding if an individual person is good or bad or deciding if an individual way of being attracted to trans people is good or bad, like describing this behavior as something which is actually producing knowledge about trans people culturally. And so connected to that, you sort of introduce, I mean, at this point in the chapter, a but I mean, this is what your book is about. You introduce this notion of trans fascination. And so i'm wondering if you could tell us, I guess, a little bit about what you mean by that and what trans fascination is.
Cultural Obsession: 'Trans Fascination'
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. So the way I came across fascination iss kind of through a mistake that I felt that I made in my earlier work. So we're jumping to maybe like late 2010s, maybe like 2017, 2018.
00:13:23
Speaker
twenty eighteen you know I was i was ah a PhD student in philosophy, and I had this weird experience where it's like, oh, like so like people are kind of studying me in these reductive ways, and I'm becoming this like kind of weird, divisive issue, while I'm also like a person in space around colleagues.
00:13:42
Speaker
that sort of thing. And I was kind of turning back to, so like my my aunt was kind of this quirky person who used to own like a mystery bookstore in New York City. She'd always have like all these little curios around, like she'd have like, you know, skulls on the wall, fake ones, you know, that I know of, but she'd have like skulls on the wall. She'd to have like quirky little stuffed ravens and all these like kind of curious objects. And i was thinking about the ways that cis people tend to reduce us to a curio to be looked at, usually from afar. right So there's this relationship of distance that like, oh, like trans people are this quirky thing I got to look at or hear about in a song. And they're just like this object that's kept apart from me.
00:14:28
Speaker
But then we kind of we get into like the late 20, 2010s and then into the 2020s. And I'm like, OK, since people are also having trouble staying distance from us because we have all these situations where where they just they start getting focused on us all the time.
00:14:47
Speaker
Right. So we have things like transvestigators. who who like that's, that's you know, they're they're people who are so interested in in trans people that they just like can't get offline. They start seeing like transness in everything. I think like right before this, I saw, you know Donald Trump opens this speech and he's like, you know, we used to have all these men playing in in girls sports who are ravaging our cities. And then the whole world was laughing at us. It's just like a total distortion. right There's not a huge reason for him to even mention us. So I think the failure I did with the Curio stuff is that it had too much distance. There's there's a real drama in how cis people get interested in us.
00:15:31
Speaker
And I kind of wanted to have a book where I unfold that drama. So the reason why I picked fascination is because it has a kind of etymological history with stuff like mesmerizing situations like bewitchment. So if we look at like the literature on fascination, our monsters are like sirens and gorgans. So I started getting interested like, how do we write some of the dramas about like how Cis people get obsessed with us, of course, like the effects that has on us, the ways that they sort of misunderstand us, but also like situations where it starts like ruining their lives or making them unable to do other things. You know, I'm i'm always like, do you have a hobby anymore? I'm always curious about this. Yeah, and I think it was really interesting to someone listening or just hearing the word fascination might think like, oh, fascination, like that means like sort of getting curious about something and then sort of investigating and learning about it. But there's really an element of sort of the opposite of that. And all these other figures, the the sort of the the Gorgons or...
00:16:33
Speaker
sirens, like there's this, oh, you're not really looking at it, right? Like there's this intense kind of curiosity, but then it's mixed with this myth-making that is they sort of not really related to what's actually happening and what's actually in front. and there are all these distortions.
00:16:46
Speaker
I was just thinking about how it is a very different type of obsession than you and I as people whose moms took a lot of Tylenol or used to experience and where we don't go down rabbit holes, that sort of thing. And so do so do they, but the rabbit holes that they go down are purely concerning cultural figures that don't exist. like we We as people are are hardly even relevant to the trans fantasy that they get obsessed with.
00:17:16
Speaker
Graham Linehan will look at a woman who by any conventional standards is extremely beautiful and be like, what what is this bestial man? like What is he doing?
00:17:27
Speaker
i I kind of wonder if he's like looking and seeing just sort of the cultural figure that is floating around in his brain as if it's almost like physically blocking his optic nerves.
00:17:39
Speaker
It kind of feels like like a lot cis people drew a bad picture of us and can't stop staring at it and then are mad at us about it. Yeah. You know, there's something much more menacing than just this obsession with something that's not related to us because it ends up being relevant to us sort of in a reverse fashion. so I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about who J. Michael Bailey is.
Controversies in Trans Perception
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah, so so J. Michael Bailey is a psychology professor at Northwestern. So that's over in Chicago. So he kind of made a big splash. 2003, he wrote this book, The Man Who Would Be Queen.
00:18:15
Speaker
And that's referring to us, you know, like we're we're considered in in this framing the men who would be queen and it's people, people still throw around this language, right? That's kind of through through sexologist Ray Blanchard of like autogynephillic transsexual and like heterosexual transsexual and it became like a typology. And Bailey is kind of the guy who wrote a pop psych about it and then made it popular.
00:18:39
Speaker
and And the way that I first actually heard about this was I came across someone's like copy of Rolling Stone in 2006. And they had ah they had an article on Lana Wachowski, who wasn't out at the time. And they did this whole like analysis of how she had the fit in like one of these typologies. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? So like so so Bailey is really like the guy who popularized like he's the reason why we talk about these theories in more popular context. And the reason why I find him interesting is it's kind of going back to the Sartre thing, right? Like Sartre's kind of a terrible, creepy misogynist who's then sort of like, oh, like I can make a theory about how women turn away when I want to be creepy towards them. Likewise, J. Michael Bailey has these really gross passages where he sexualizes the trans women who he's writing about as part of his work.
00:19:34
Speaker
So his sexualization of trans women then becomes like sort of a definition of trans women as inherently sexualized, which I think also like Julia Serrano has some good writing on this.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah. And it becomes, i mean, a form of knowledge production, not to say like, again, not using this to say knowledge as in something that is you know necessarily like a politically true about the world, but something that functions you know, trans women in various places trying to access medical care, for instance, might be forced to go through a process of typologizing, or there are all these other informal situations where you might be typologized by someone who has power over you into this sorting.
00:20:13
Speaker
And so in that sense, like this one guy's or, you know, group of people's like sexual obsession with trans women has become something that operates in how we have to move through the world. And at the time, there were a bunch of controversies that kind of did crop up about this because because trans people at the time did complain about it. But like he still has his position. he He's been giving like talks on trans censorship at various places. And he's also doing like a new adolescent, young adult gender dysphoria outcomes study.
00:20:44
Speaker
This is also at Northwestern where he's like recruiting young people. And he's working with like the people who are saying, you know, that like, young people are transitioning because of a social contagion called like rapid onset gender dysphoria. So he's like still very much in the game as well.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah. So he kind of, I think sits as like this bridging figure between this spectrum of chasing behaviors that you alluded to earlier, right? So you sort of say, if we have this idea of trans fascination and we sort of look at chasing in this framework, we can put chasing behaviors in a kind of spectrum from everyday chasing behaviors, you know,
00:21:17
Speaker
DMing trans women with dick pics or, you know, asking how big is it to cultural chasing, which are these, you know, either comedians who are obsessed with us or all sorts of other cultural products. So I mean, Sarah, you mentioned Graham Linehan already, but maybe we should talk a little bit about who Graham Linehan is, how he
Graham Linehan and Cultural Transphobia
00:21:35
Speaker
fits into this framework. Yeah, so Graham Linehan, I guess like if if you look up information about him, a lot of people say he's like one of the best comedy or contemporary comedy writers that the Ireland has has produced. So so he's he's a comedy writer. He did a bunch of sitcoms. so like
00:21:53
Speaker
One example would be the IT crowd. I think that that's one of the more well-known ones in the States. He also did like stuff like Father Ted. But what happened was he gradually sort of shifted from writing about comedy and doing his work to pretty much like a full-time situation.
00:22:12
Speaker
Or like if you go to his page on X or something like that, which I don't recommend, like all he does is post about like how evil trans women are, how gross trans women are, you know, trans women are ruining the world. He's supposedly working on something now with Rob Schneider. I guess he moved to like Arizona or something like that. But but but yeah, I think he's a really interesting case of of someone who used to do like comedy work.
00:22:37
Speaker
And now ah his his focus on trans people has pretty much ruined his life. And the thing that I have to kind of be careful with writing on Graham Linehan is defamation laws. So I was like, how am I going to write about Graham Linehan, you know, without running into trouble? And he wrote a memoir.
00:22:54
Speaker
you know That's supposed to be this like sympathetic account of how like the trans lobby ruined his life or something like that. So just cite his memoir and the things he says about his life. And what happened to his life? Well, he started getting more and more interested in trans people, posting more about us online, talking more about us all the time. People asked him to stop in various career contexts. And he said, no, I will not stop. This is what I do now. And eventually, like his his wife left him. So I'm like, this is just like a really sad situation of someone who is like kind of harming themselves being focused on us. and And I think that's the really interesting thing with trans fascination is that, you know, him doing like like posting all this awful shit about us is hurtful. But also I'm like, I'm like watching him kind of destroy himself. So it becomes a thing that also harms cis people as well. I think it's easy to look down on and pity him, but we should be a little afraid to find out that someone as obsessive and bigoted as Graham Linehan is conjoining with his powerful cultural force as Rob Schneider.
00:23:58
Speaker
Like, that's a real threat. What will they do? I have like learned about that and then forgot about it. And then I read about it. You write about it in in your chapter on the comedian. and And I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. The Rob Schneider thing. And then i again forgot about it, even though I read it again a couple days ago. like i It's such a weird pairing, like Grimlin and Rob Schneider. like What will they think of next? But but I think he was also like invited to do like some stuff in the context of the federal government you know and various like hearings about trans youth or or trans people more generally or something like that. So he's like he's obsessed with us and he's kind of lurking around the states more. And I'm like, can you go back or something like that? i don't know. Yeah, so it's interesting in this framework, you know, one naively could say something like, oh, you know, you have J. Michael Bailey, who seems to sort of be who seems to like trans people. I mean, we wouldn't maybe put it that way, but he he's sort of he seems trans amorous in some of his writings. That's putting it mildly. Yeah. versus Well, I don't want to.
00:24:56
Speaker
I don't want to be sued either versus Linehan, who, you know, straightforwardly hates trans people. And I think it's, you know, useful to have this framework where we can say, really, they're part of the same sort of process. They're they're on the same team in a way, even though sort of they function very differently. Yeah, I think so one one article that I really like teaching when I run Philosophy of Love and and Sex, it's by Bell Hooks. It's called Eating the Other, kind of like a classic article. She talks about this dynamic of fucking the other.
00:25:26
Speaker
so So there's ways where people just sort of reduce someone to a raw material for their pleasure. That's a problem in the context of love. And I think that J. Michael Bailey isn't really like someone who cares about us. and He actually thinks that we're sort of sinister now in the context of ah sort of all these panics about trans people in a very similar way to Linehan. So there's this interesting juxtaposition between like seeing us as this controllable sexual object in writing, but also really wanting to keep us very disempowered in the context of policies and and institutions. There's a lot to go off of in that response. One thing is that I think we should maybe emphasize for the listener that a lot of the history of trans healthcare has to do with trans people being under the thumb of doctors and gradually working our way out collectively. And we still have tremendous vulnerability to the whims of doctors, especially ones who relish personal power over us or relish epistemic power over us and this capacity of control of knowledge production. J. Michael Bailey and people like him are very much a key force and kind of trying to corral us back into place.
00:26:46
Speaker
You also mentioned this concept of transforming trans people into resources. And i thought that was very interesting. That comes up several times in your writing.
00:26:59
Speaker
and In a way, it's in contrast to something we've talked about on the podcast before, which is this model in which production of bigotry can be like production of paper clips, where it's a commodity.
00:27:14
Speaker
The individual items produced don't need to have like any really distinguishing properties besides generally having the right shape. You can use them to clip together other pieces of ideology.
00:27:27
Speaker
but Here, while you are moving beyond the personal and describing like chasers and trans fascination, still there is this extremely personal character.
00:27:40
Speaker
to all the interactions with trans people you describe these trans-fascinated types having. For example, you talk a lot about comedians, and here the trans person is sometimes identified with the heckler.
00:28:00
Speaker
And i wonder if you could talk a little bit about like what the psychodrama of the heckler is and like what that person is to a comedian and how that links up with trans people. So there's an interesting sort of double dynamic in the world of comedy, or or you could say like the mainstream production of of comedy, right? Because I think comedy is very much a capitalist production, right? Where you have certain figures who get money, who get circulated. If you go to an open mic, right? Like most of these people, like people aren't going to hear about them, even if they're doing it for years. So there's an interesting kind of relationship between comedy, you know, the production of value and also like the circulation.
00:28:39
Speaker
of of these various ideas that are going on. But so simultaneously, trans people are kind of a resource for laughter. And this is something like I've been doing a bunch of archival work and you can just find like all kinds of examples from the past decades about trans people being a source of laughter for cis people. and That's a pretty common relationship for them to have with us. So we have trans people as this interesting like resource and source for laughter. So comedians seek us out.
00:29:08
Speaker
But at the same time, we also have sort of this this framing of trans people as hecklers. or like the enemies of comedy, right? Like, oh, it's just a joke. Why are you complaining? Or like, why are there all these angry trans people when we're just telling jokes or just trying to have a good time? Or you know maybe some of them also like see us as ultimately silly and not worth paying attention to. And this is something, so so my partner and i in in my previous academic gig, we were practicing stand-up comedy and going to like open mics and stuff like that. And at one point, my partner had done like a set and we're both like kind of hanging out after the set and and and this this guy comes up to us. And actually, i should probably give you more information about this guy because it was kind of an interesting situation. So they started like this new open mic in the city.
00:30:00
Speaker
And part of what they were trying to do was make it a more welcoming open mic. So, you know, the idea of like, don't be an asshole, don't punch down too much, that sort of thing. And there's this kind of like older guy who who stood up at the front of the room. He was like one of the first people who who went to the open mic. And he had he had printed out like like with a color printer,
00:30:20
Speaker
he had printed out like an image of the trans pride flag. So he walks up to the mic and he's like, look at this. I'm not transphobic. And he's holding up like the trans pride flag.
00:30:32
Speaker
And then he does this like annoying dramatic pause. And he's like, but my jokes will be. and then I think like, In his set, he did like one joke about trans guys.
00:30:44
Speaker
I forget what specifically it was. it was i think it was just like about trans guys being upset. And then a lot of jokes about like his wife hating him and I think leaving him maybe. So there's this really interesting dynamic there. But then he like, after the show, he he comes up to us and he asks us, why don't trans people like jokes? so So there's this really interesting circulation of like trans people are kind of the enemy of comedy that's also like proliferating in open mics. But you'll see this a lot on, I think if you look at like YouTube comments on like trans jokes by Chappelle or various, you know, like forum discussions, like that kind of stuff on on like Reddit or or various places. And so the heckler is this is is sort of a term in comedy that people use for someone who interrupts comedy.
00:31:30
Speaker
And i was referencing kind of a friend of mine, actually, Steve Gimbel, who's a philosopher who also used to do stand up comedy. and he was really interested in like, what is the relationship between the stand up comedian and the crowd?
00:31:43
Speaker
Well, the crowd gives the comedian license, right? They shut up so that the comedian gets to say their thing. But also ultimately, the comedian's kind of subjected to the crowd's relationship, right? That's why it's like possible to bomb.
00:31:56
Speaker
But at the same time, if someone starts heckling and interrupting the comedian's time, that becomes an existential threat to the comedian, to their set, to their attempt to make the audience laugh or you know do do various other kinds of things comedians like to do with audiences. So they need to be like existentially destroyed. So so that's why I kind of invoke the term heckler, because it seems like our intervention into comedy, our complaints,
00:32:20
Speaker
um Us pointing out, you know, when someone does shitty hack material about us, it's sort of almost framed as like a threat to comedy, right? Like people are too sensitive nowadays. I can't tell jokes nowadays. People often frame us, I think, as like the death of comedy, when at the same time, they want to tell the jokes about us. So it's this interesting like attraction, repulsion, distortion relationship, which I kind of see again and again in the context of of fascination. Yeah, so that particular guy bombed his set, right? Oh yeah, nobody was laughing. it it was It was uncomfortable. Yeah, just to spell out some of the subtext here, it kind of seems like what happened is that he identified that there were trans people in the audience. And he then identified you with the hecklers.
00:33:07
Speaker
even though you hadn't said anything. So, you know, wonderful metaphor for our existence in society. all yeah I think it's it's this interesting way of like invoking us in order to push us away and also to distort us, but also in a way where often they can't stop doing it. Right. Like if you look at ah recent Chappelle sets,
00:33:28
Speaker
or not even recent Chappelle sets. If you track like, so I watched like every single Dave Chappelle thing I could watch. ah So that was interesting. but But if you watch Dave Chappelle from, let's say, 2017 to, you know, more recent, he just starts getting absorbed in the trend stuff more and more.
00:33:47
Speaker
And he's always complaining about like Hannah Gadsby. He's always saying things like, oh, Hannah Gadsby isn't funny. They just lecture the whole time. But like Chappelle's just lecturing about us. He's not even telling jokes a lot of the time. So there's this interesting thing where the more someone gets obsessed with us, the more often their their work starts to fail or they start just being didactic or they just start attacking us and assuming it's funny.
00:34:12
Speaker
Can I ask you a stupid question? And I feel totally comfortable calling it a stupid question because Helen wrote it. So is Dave Chappelle a chaser? Is Graham Linehan a chaser? And I don't mean that like, if there is there a non-sexual sense in which these people are chasers?
00:34:30
Speaker
I actually think it's a very astute question, Sarah. No, I think that's that's a really helpful one. Yeah. So kind of from the debates about, you know, like, is transamorousness a good thing or a bad thing? Or like, what's the relationship between trans people and chaser? Or like, or like, you know, there's a lot of debates about like, what is the threshold when someone becomes a chaser? The interesting thing I found from that is kind of people mapping, what are the ways that people pursue us that we don't like? And often this is sexual.
00:35:00
Speaker
especially like from directly coming from the chaser language, right? But I started getting interested in also this broader concept of cultural chasing. So we have like everyday chasing that tends to be sexual. People pursue us, it's reductive and it sucks. But there's also ways of like taking it, of, of, of, um,
00:35:18
Speaker
Right. Like if if if a guy is chasing you, you know, often that's helpful in a context where you're doing like sex work or something like that. So it's not like there's there's ways to kind of to kind of grapple with that. It's a it's a complicated relationship in in some cases. I think Mirasole Ross is like yapping out loud video, I think is ah is a helpful video for complicating some of those things. But then you have this interesting dynamic where sometimes you have someone who pursues trans people sexually or sexualizes trans people like J. Michael Bailey, but then is also doing knowledge production about us and probably will never stop.
00:35:54
Speaker
I don't think J. Michael Bailey will ever be like, okay, I'm done with trans people. i said my thing, like probably the rest of his life, his pursuits will be about us in terms of like, you know, trying to create academic knowledge or studies or that sort of thing. so So I was trying to identify a kind of cultural chasing. And I don't think that cultural chasing is always sexualized.
00:36:14
Speaker
And there's a bunch of other contexts where like there's this weird crossover you know between like everyday chasing and cultural chasing. I think like Lou Reed might be a good example of this. So someone who kind of had a series of kind of questionable relationships with trans women, but but was also like you know doing songs like Walk on the Wild Side.
00:36:34
Speaker
But I think there's also a context where people tend to chase us in all kinds of reductive ways. Sometimes we speculate if it's sexual or not, because I think it's pretty common. Like if someone's obsessed with us, we're kind of like,
00:36:45
Speaker
Do they, are they into us, you know, on this level as well? um So I think it's kind of interesting that we tend to think about that. But also often, I think sometimes it's just unclear, or they're just mainly pursuing us in a cultural context. So when I refer to someone as a cultural chaser, ah it could be a sexualized kind of situation, but it also might not be in terms of, you know, like their personal inclinations.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah, and I think there is often a real ambiguity. And I mean, even with someone like Chappelle, I wouldn't necessarily say like, oh, Chappelle is like big, like a sexual chaser in this in this big way. But I actually remember I went to go see Chappelle live like early in his like coming back from disappearing after Chappelle's show tour.
00:37:27
Speaker
And he had done like, I think one special where he had made a joke that people had complained about. So he was sort of early in this process. Yeah. And i went with a friend of mine like, oh, my God, we managed to get tickets like we managed to get like rush tickets somehow to go see him like at this big theater. And we were really excited. And then like a full third of his set already was complaining about trans people.
00:37:47
Speaker
And he tells this whole long joke about like being in a club and talking to this woman for hours and then finding out that she's a trans woman. And, you know, it being he's like, oh, you know, it's dangerous. Like trans women don't know that it's dangerous. Like we might find out that you don't have something that we think you should have or whatever. And it's like, I think it was just like a very weird, hacky joke.
00:38:08
Speaker
And then the punchline was like, oh, but I still fucked her. And I actually remember talking about the set with my friend afterward and being like, it's kind of a shame. Like he is just becoming transphobic now. Like it's kind of sucks.
00:38:21
Speaker
And my friend was like, yeah, but like he did say that he still fucked her. Like, it's I don't know, like it's not that bad. Like that was somehow like ameliorating how bad it was. And so there is this sense in which like, I don't know, there is something sexual about Chappelle's obsession because he does repeatedly tell these stories about, yeah about meeting trans women in clubs. I think definitely, you know, he often brings us up in a sexual context. So he's definitely sexualizing us. I think with Chappelle, you know, it's possible that that happened, but also he makes shit up about us all the time. So it's kind of in this like gray area where it's like, did that happen? Didn't it? He sure seems to bring it up a lot like that. That is one of the he eventually worked that joke into one of his recorded specials.
00:39:01
Speaker
So so it is something that that kind of keeps coming up for him. I think the worst thing he's done that I'm aware of is just lying about his dead friend and his dead trans friend and what caused her death.
00:39:14
Speaker
I think after you learn a little bit about that, you can never kind of take him at his word again. Yeah, that that situation where you know he's he's kind of like, well, she's actually a comedian, not mainly a trans person. She's mainly like part of my group called Comedians. And trans people caused her death because she defended me.
00:39:34
Speaker
feels very cynical, but a lot of people played it up as this like heartwarming thing or this way of like reconciling. and I think that Chappelle is often doing this posture of like pretending to reconcile with like trans people.
00:39:49
Speaker
oh you know you could I think at one point in like the chapter, he seems to think we're like some kind of like member of a model UN or something like that. is a great He's always like, you know I will meet with trans people or something, you know like as if like there's ambassadors or something like that. But he's often taking, like it's this interesting wavering between like him just sort of shit-talking us,
00:40:12
Speaker
sexualizing us, doing really low-hanging fruit about our bodies, and then kind of going back to well, I really want to be like the great mediator of the situation.
00:40:23
Speaker
and I think for me, it all falls apart when, i mean in addition to that moment, when he takes money to perform at Riyadh Festival and then like does jokes about killing a trans woman.
00:40:35
Speaker
I'm just like, okay, you're like you're in it for the money. You're kind of a hack. All this stuff about you being like, noble or like a real one, you know, the guy who quit comedy to avoid, you know, being a sellout. It's like, no, you are just a sellout at the end of the day. and we're just sort of a cheap resource that you act very high and mighty about. Because I think like the thing with seeing comedians again and again, and also like also comedians like Ricky Gervais, who are kind of like, are you offended?
00:41:03
Speaker
Are you offended? And then like people complain, and then gets really upset about it. Comedians are like this weird combination of like people who want to be edgy, but are also like very sensitive. So it's like this very strange dynamic. Yeah, it's really interesting because I definitely think there's also something to be said about, you know, this question of is he telling the truth about these stories? Is he not? Like, I find that when you start asking that about a comedian stand up set, it's like a sign that like they're not really doing comedy. Like I can think of plenty and actually early Chappelle specials like he tells lots of stories that you basically understand watching it. Like he's making these up. Right. The point is he's telling jokes. And so there's this sense in which he has transformed himself into this like lecture. it Right. as if As soon as you're worried like, oh, did this thing actually happen?
00:41:46
Speaker
I don't know. That just seems sort of antithetical to him having good craft as a comedian. Right. If it really hinges on whether this like specific set of events occurred and he's just lecturing about trans people.
00:41:58
Speaker
He's just becoming a hack. And I think this is one of the interesting things you also talk about in this chapter is it's not just a question of he's producing transphobia. He is sort of making trans people's lives worse. He is selling out in this way that is like bad for us.
00:42:10
Speaker
It's really bad for him, right? He is like but going from someone who was a skilled comedian into a hack. And we sort of see the same thing with... Linehan in a lot of ways that there's this like process of hackification, like maybe Linehan is further along because he really has like lost everything in some sense and Chappelle still has, you know, something.
00:42:30
Speaker
And there's some suggestion that like, you know, maybe he could still turn things around in some way, whereas like Linehan has, you know, it doesn't seem like that's happening. But yeah I think there's this like interesting way in which it it not only affects us trans people, but it like transforms the soul of the people who are producing this stuff. and i'm wondering if you have any more thoughts on that.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think one thing I'm i'm really interested in is sort of restoring the broader context and relationship through which cis people encounter us. Because I think, and this is maybe coming from philosophy, because like in philosophy as well, we get this interesting, a bit similar, a bit different framework of trans people as hecklers, right? Our complaints, our actions of referring to philosophers as transphobes,
00:43:20
Speaker
is just a cruel and abusive tactic. to prevent them from engaging in free inquiry and helping us move all our ideas along.
00:43:31
Speaker
And I think what's happening in that context is I'm like, like like I don't know, I think you know as someone who who who I came out as as trans like pretty early on, i kind of had this interesting sort of like like mostly stealth experience of being an undergraduate student in philosophy.
00:43:49
Speaker
and it's like, oh, like trans people were constantly brought up but only in these very reductive contexts, right? Like various thought experiments, you know, stuff like, I think I was in like an ancient Greek philosophy class and a student brought up like the subject of like, well, we're we're talking about like the ship of Theseus problem, right? so So the classic ship of Theseus problem is like, so if you have a ship and the planks are replaced over time,
00:44:16
Speaker
such that eventually all the planks have been replaced, is this still the same ship? And student in the class raises his hand and he's like, well, what if like a man has a sex change and becomes a woman? Are they like the same person?
00:44:32
Speaker
and and there just weren't that many trans people in philosophy because a lot of us like didn't enter it. A lot of us were were kicked out or got disenchanted over time. So I think it's very frustrating the way that philosophers are like, well, suddenly trans people existed and we tried to humor them and they were really rude to us. So they need to shut the fuck up so we can say what their lives mean. And if you interrupt that process, then you're the asshole.
00:45:00
Speaker
When I'm like, oh, there's like a longer history here of like, probably all these philosophers growing up with like very transphobic stuff on the television. Like I certainly saw a lot of transphobic stuff on the television. So I think the context where people were like, oh, you can't talk about transphobia. There's this interesting, i think, erasure of like,
00:45:19
Speaker
cis people's context and history and relationship with trans people over time. And that's kind of why I turn to a lot of archival work, because it's like, no, I can actually look at documents and things that point out you have this long history, for example, of ah considering like trans people freaks or something like that.
00:45:38
Speaker
Can I ask you, why are philosophers like that? like why It's my experience that philosophers, broadly speaking, suck ass.
00:45:50
Speaker
I'm sorry for putting it in such academic language. and And I don't mean you, you're one of the good ones. But why is this the case? Or perhaps I'm mistaken. So I think, okay.
00:46:00
Speaker
And then this has been interesting because because I have, so i think I think the chapters I sent over to you, are I sent you the chaser, I sent you the comedian.
00:46:12
Speaker
One that you didn't get is the bystander, which is sort of the history of like crowds of people laughing at us over time. So that's that's one that I have. The one that I'm like pretty much done with, but I might revisit with, is the philosopher. So I have a whole chapter on on the philosopher.
00:46:30
Speaker
And it's actually really difficult because I think there's a lot of ways that philosophers are kind of the worst. You know, I think there's some interesting like books. so So there's this book Time in a Ditch, which is sort of about the history of institutional philosophy and how a lot of Marxist philosophers and kind of more progressive philosophers got driven out during the Red Scare.
00:46:54
Speaker
you know, by McCarthy. And sort of we had this rise at the same time of a sort of like more abstract, distance, almost like like game-based kind of philosophy where people are, you know, like trying to theorize the world through like P's and Q's and stuff like that. But I think i think there's this interesting... Okay, i think I think with the philosopher, there's several components. One of these is I think arrogance is pretty common.
00:47:21
Speaker
Amongst philosophers, I think there's a combination of trying to think about the world while removing yourself from it. ah That often ends up quite arrogant. That also often distorts the world around you.
00:47:34
Speaker
And also just in general, like. The academy is often this class-gated area of knowledge production where people don't care about the effects of what they're doing on other people's lives, especially people who are like the ones to be studied.
00:47:48
Speaker
And you're like sort of the person who's supposed to determine like, okay, this is what your life means or something like that. So I think there's a ah few things going on with the philosopher. And also a combination where like the philosopher often is supposed to be like this clever figure who goes anywhere, but is also kind of weak and whiny in my experience.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, there's such an overlap with the way people talk about stand-up comedians for some reason, like... Well, i mean, isn't that how stand-up comedians are want to portray themselves these days? Yeah. They're the court philosopher, you know? Except actually, the court philosopher is the jester, because that was really the person who had that job back in the day, back in historically accurate Renaissance Europe. Yeah, there's there's some interesting, I think, with with having done open mics, I think there's a lot to say about sort of the the crossovers between comedy and philosophy, but also maybe some of the distinctions as well.
00:48:41
Speaker
that would be like an interesting book project if I ever want to write a book again. So question, what is the line you see between someone like Dave Chappelle or Graham Linehan and someone like Riley Gaines?
00:48:57
Speaker
So Riley Gaines, the former swimmer who famously lost to a trans woman during a swimming competition and became an influencer on the right, just obsessively talking about trans people. But she's like,
00:49:14
Speaker
very clear that all of this is like quite cynical and I don't know like what her actual feelings are about trans people but like it seems to me that there's some sort of qualitative difference between the way that she talks about trans people and the way that Chappelle talks about trans people Do you see her as someone who is producing trans fascination? Does the commercial aspect with her play into that at all? how do you see that?
00:49:46
Speaker
So I'd say, yeah, the common thing between them, I would think, is the political context that we're in of kind of mass spectacularization of trans people, where generally a lot of people are talking about us and the ways that they're talking about us are quite filtered and skewed.
00:50:04
Speaker
Right. so So there's this interesting shift where like earlier on, you'd have more, you know, when you had like so articles about trans people or media coverage about trans people, sometimes they'd even like interview a trans person or be like, you know, how does this impact you? And I think more and more, we're also like excluded from that kind of thing.
00:50:24
Speaker
So I'd say that what's happening here is different ways of leveraging this political context. So Riley Gaines, of course, um is sort of cynically wielding this mass fascination towards us and the different ways that media enables this and participates in this and also the ways that politics kind of rewards this. Chappelle is doing a bit of a different game, but also I think wielding us quite cleverly because he's able to shit talk us and then he's able to say, oh how dare these awful people shit talk my shit talking about them. And then that becomes part of the bit. So I think he's actually pretty clever with it, even as it sort of makes him a bit more hacky because he's just relying on these kinds of jokes. Graham Linehan, I think, is someone who's just totally lost the ability to work with this as a resource.
00:51:13
Speaker
And he's just kind of crumbled away in it. You know, I think i think a lot of it is also how people manage resentment. So Raleigh Gaines, of course, has the resentment of losing, even though I think she was like fifth place.
00:51:26
Speaker
So I don't think the trans woman actually like prevented her from winning. No, neither of them actually won the competition in question. And Riley was several spots behind. We talked about this because we talked about like Sartre's work on antisemitism in an earlier episode. And he exactly talks about like you know one of the functions of this kind of bigotry is like you see the people ahead of you. And even if you were to somehow eliminate all those people, like you still wouldn't make the cut.
00:51:49
Speaker
But somehow they've stolen the spot from you. It doesn't make any sense. right It's this like complete completely cynical. thing Why would I study for the exam anyway when like a Jewish person is going to take the spot? Yeah, why would I practice for my swim meet, right?
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's that's ah that makes sense to to juxtapose that with this context. Because i think I think, you know, part of what's going on is resentment, not just about like losing because the trans woman didn't cause her to lose, but but just that a trans woman would be there to begin with.
00:52:19
Speaker
And I think that Chappelle, when he starts kind of focusing on the heckler, we also have a bit of a resentment, right? Like the joke object is talking back to me. You need to stop that joke object.
00:52:31
Speaker
But then with with Graham Linehan, there's this interesting, I think having read his memoir, And I took like a lot of notes on his memoirs. I just have like a document of notes on his memoir. but but But I think what he's trying to do in the memoir is he's trying to frame himself as this heroic figure who was abandoned by his friends who kind of sold out, you know, to work for the trans lobby or shut up because it was convenient.
00:52:59
Speaker
And what what he really wants is redemption. He wants... you know He's resentful that that people haven't just acknowledged that, oh no, like the world has been taken over by terrible trannies and we need to cut that out. So I think he's very much looking forward to that moment of of redemption and that just throws him into a total pit of resentment that that he seems to not be able to escape from.
00:53:23
Speaker
I think the funny The funny thing with with Graham Linehan for me is he has this narrative of like, oh, I was the first, I was one of the first people, you know, to witness, you know, the the trans lobby, do all these crazy evil things.
00:53:37
Speaker
But the moment that really set him off, and I remember this because I used to read like trans blogs in like the 2000s, was he did this gag in the IT t crowd where a man beats up a trans woman kind of comically.
00:53:52
Speaker
And then some trans people online were like, hey, that sucks because a lot of trans women are beaten by their partners. And then that really seems like one of the moments that set him off. So I think sort of deep in there is also this kernel of resentment that people complained to him online. Yeah. And I remember also reading about the actor whose name is I'm forgetting that the actor who plays the guy in that episode, like later did an interview where he seemed genuinely regretful. Like he said, you know, that was not a good idea. Like i we shouldn't have done that scene. Like having thought about it more like that was a really bad idea. I'm sorry that we did that. And Graham Linehan got really upset that like this actor performed his skit, like apologize. Like what a you know, what a betrayal.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah, i feel like for Linehan, it's very much about how his friends betrayed him for this evil entity. And one day, they'll know he was right.
00:54:48
Speaker
It is really interesting that you bring up that redemptive aspect. It's a very core element of QAnon as well. This idea that the Great Awakening is not just like a movement, but like a specific event that will occur when all the doors of mystery are thrown open.
00:55:04
Speaker
And all the relatives who disowned you come crawling back and say, I see how right you were. i see how actually the storm came and Q was correct. And QAnon largely has been absorbed into the broader conservative culture in the US, but not all aspects of it. And in particular, that sort of millenarian aspect is not as much present, I think,
00:55:30
Speaker
But one area where I still see it all the time is anti-trans discourse. So for example, they talk about like peak trans, which is the moment where trans has hit like its absolute high water mark. And then suddenly it's all going to come rushing out like some sort of ah unnatural tide before a hurricane. And everyone is going to realize that all this trans stuff was total bullshit. And we'll go right back to the sort of gender conformity that they imagined we had before.
00:55:59
Speaker
I think another aspect that that's interesting here too is is the role of algorithms in the context of all these things. One interesting side effect of of the research that I do is like, so let's say I log onto to Facebook you know to see what my aunt is posting or or something like that, right? So I get on Facebook and I'm always gonna see like one short recommended to me that's like, oh, look at this crazy thing that a trans person said.
00:56:27
Speaker
And I'm going to get another short that's like someone talking about something like ah you know interviewing someone who who doesn't agree with like the trans lobby. But i think I think there's this way where, especially in the context so of algorithms, maybe there's a ah link we could make with like the sunk cost fallacy and gambling.
00:56:46
Speaker
right So it's almost like, OK, one more moment one more engagement with, with trying to show the light and prove that trans people are evil once and for all, you know, they keep, they keep repeating that and hoping that one day it's going to flip over and they're going to win big and everybody's going to redeem them. And, you know, I don't know, like, I'm always like, what is their plan? Like if they get rid of us, like, are they going to have like a party with a cake or something like that? Like what happens after that? So it's it's just like, I don't know. Well, you have the white family sitting on a blanket out on the lawn having a picnic and, you know, underneath, like there are all the bones and everyone's happy.
00:57:26
Speaker
That's it. That is an image, right? That that people share. um I've seen it before. I don't know how widespread it is, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think posting an algorithm is an interesting thing to talk about here, too, because Sarah and I were talking earlier today about like one of the other figures like I could fit in this framework of becoming a hack is like Elon Musk.
00:57:46
Speaker
because in some sense, like Elon Musk has always been like sort of a grifter and his promises, but his promises used to be these big things. We're going to build a colony on Mars. I'm going to solve energy by making, you know, fully electric, fully self-driving cars by, you know, 2015. OK, by 2016. OK, by 2017. And people kind of understood like this timeline is not going to happen.
00:58:06
Speaker
um But then he seems to have gotten really obsessed with like the woke mind virus and with trans people in particular. And I saw just yesterday he said he's going to like either get Grok or even just give a bunch of money to Mel Gibson to make a historically accurate Odyssey movie.
00:58:22
Speaker
which is like such a small claim, such a small promise relative to build a colony on Mars. He's still not going to do it, but he's just like become this like kind of sad hack version of the grifter that he used to be because of this obsession. And I think it is like a similar process of he started posting about trans people and the woke mind virus. And yeah, and it transformed him into this into this hack version of himself. Yeah, Elon Musk is definitely really interesting case in terms of trans fascination. I think there's also that that resentment angle there, right? that That doesn't just crop up in the context of trans people, but also like racism, right? They're resentful about the odyssey because it has Black people in it.
00:59:06
Speaker
and because it has a transactor in it. So they get very obsessed with trying to right that perceived wrong. And I cannot imagine that whatever they make is going to be a good product.
00:59:17
Speaker
I mean, they're just not going to make a product. Like he's saying, like, I'm going to get Grok to make a movie. But like, he's been saying that he's going to get Grok to do some big thing. And I just don't, I just don't see it happening. All right. Well, I'm going to put a bet on Kalshi against Helen. So we'll see. We'll see who comes out ahead on this. It's just, yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting. but I think there's a lot of doubling down that happens. So so the more you post about kind of anti-trans stuff or look at anti-trans material, the more it's served to you through algorithms, the more it seems like kind of something that's going to come true. And then you're just waiting for the moment where like either you finally destroy trans people or a group of your friends or, or you know, society finally achieves illumination and then gets rid of them all. So I think there's there's a lot of interesting dynamics that are going on there. But I also, I yeah just, I can't imagine like kind of going back to the like, what what are they going to do you know, once we're gone kind of thought experiment. I can't imagine Graham Linehan like would be happy.
01:00:21
Speaker
I can't imagine him happy. Absolutely. That Sisyphus is not ah that sisyphus is not making it to the promised land. Because the person who like Graham Linehan is, is like someone who does this focus on trans people.
01:00:35
Speaker
so it's like like, who would he even be anymore? It's like asking who would I be if I were cis. It doesn't make any sense. you know it's like I have a question about consuming trans fascination content, which is just like, are you trans fascinated while you're doing that? Like it it spreads, like if this content relies on trans fascination for its entertainment value in order to make it in gripping, like, can you experience it without being like trans fascinated yourself? I'd say in this context, it's helpful to kind of pivot back to attention more broadly. So I think there's some kinds of attention towards us that are fleeting, right? Like someone's going to see, know, the Facebook short video about look at this weird trans person and they're going to click
01:01:23
Speaker
And they might even get bored and stop watching. Some people will be a bit more distanced from it, right? So maybe it's just like this quirky little object that they encounter, but they're not like, they don't they don't go full throttle into it. And then I think the moment of of fascination for me is when people get caught up in the bewitchment.
01:01:41
Speaker
angle, right? So they click on this video, they want to see more videos. So then they click on the next video that that they encounter through algorithms. And then eventually more and more they've become absorbed in it. So I'd say i say that there's probably a varying amount of ways that people's attention are absorbed by trans people.
01:02:01
Speaker
But we're in a situation, a political situation, a media situation that makes that fire a lot easier to ignite. Yeah, I guess I have a sort of parallel question or related question, but it's sort of on the other side of things, which is like, it seems like there's this similar phenomenon where people consume things which you would expect like, or, you know, to have this kind of trans fascination character to them. So the specific example I'm thinking of is the most recent season of, I believe, White Lotus, like has a character who like is an autogynophile. Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
And I remember seeing, i think it might have been Ray Blanchard, like tweeting about like, oh, it's so good that this is finally making it into the conversation. is so scientifically accurate. And it's so good that this show is like explaining to people what an autogynophile is.
01:02:47
Speaker
And then I like knew a bunch of people who watched the show and I was like, oh, no, I like I don't want to watch it. And they were like, oh, why not? I was like, well, did you see this episode? And they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's you. It was like, yeah, no, like you're our autogynophile friend.
01:03:01
Speaker
It hadn't even like occurred to them that this was somehow like about trans people or that this was like transphobic or that this was sort of something that I might register as problematic. Like, despite being, you know, obviously participating in this thing. And so I'm wondering, like, there's a certain level of blindness, I guess, to people who are maybe not bewitched by this, where they can consume this and it just like, it doesn't process. And i'm wondering if, if you have something to say about that, or if if you thought about that kind of dynamic.
01:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, that dynamic, I think, has kind of a longer history, you know, so I'm thinking about like, Growing up, people put Jerry Springer on the TV. People put, I remember there was a episode of South Park that came out at one point called like Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina.
01:03:42
Speaker
and And at the time I had i had a boyfriend and and and I wasn't like out to his family. So we all watched that episode and it was just like this quirky little thing to them.
01:03:54
Speaker
um So I think that there's this interesting level where people don't like register. Right. it's It's just this quirky thing on TV. They're not even like their attention isn't even focused on like the trans aspect.
01:04:05
Speaker
um But that is a way people can kind of slide in all kinds of like complicated, nefarious stuff. I remember watching that that White Lotus clip because I yeah i haven't seen White Lotus.
01:04:18
Speaker
I feel like I've had philosophers tell me I should watch White Lotus. I don't even honestly know what it's about, but I watched that scene and it was like really strange. and just like It felt like you know they had just heard about autogynephilia and they're like, wouldn't it be quirky if a character was like this? And then they they just threw it in in this this almost like very surreal manner where I'm like, ah it didn't you know it was a bit of like a careless a careless way of of throwing in like a pretty noxious theory into this thing. So yeah, people do all kinds of like strange ways of invoking us, but also like kind of with not invoking us, but also with like digging in a lot of um kind of hurtful concepts. The White Lotus also has no idea what it's about. So I'd say you got the right idea. That sounds like very much a thing that they would do. It's just like... But yeah, I think this also ties into something you talk about in your chapter about chasing, which is like when you talk about fascination...
01:05:12
Speaker
you know, people might, again, you know, tied into this idea of it's not this like curiousness or this thing that, you know, we might talk about if we're fascinated by something where, you know, we want to learn more about it. Like, it's not this sort of apolitical neutral that is then being fascinated by this, like, you know, political figure of the trans person, right? Like all of this is already politically constructed. And so this is this way of like, oh, you're sort of sliding under the the apolitical radar, even though it's got all these noxious things going on.
01:05:38
Speaker
I think there's often an untold story about how trans people kind of enter the orbit of kind of cis people more broadly, but also specific cis people. And kind of the method that I pitched for my book is is doing a series of portraits.
01:05:54
Speaker
So when I write on someone like Graham Linehan, I'm going to look at like, okay, how did he encounter trans people? And like, what did that do to him? and and And how might that like be similar or different to like, maybe like J. Michael Bailey or like Dave Chappelle or some of the other like people who I tend to focus on. So I think often there's this interesting like story behind the fascination. And also I think it's kind of fun like to write a book on cis people.
01:06:22
Speaker
It you know feels a bit like turning the tables in this context. All right. Maybe that would be a good spot to close. Amy, would you like to share any projects you're working on or where should we look you up? That sort of thing. So there's this, this you know since we've been talking about how great philosophers are, so there's this website called Phil People. And i I post all the essays that I've written there typically. So if you want to like read anything that I've written,
01:06:48
Speaker
um but also not deal with academic paywalls. Typically, I upload those. The book deadline is November, and I'm screwed if I don't make that deadline.
01:07:00
Speaker
So hopefully that means like the book itself should have like a 2027 or 2028 release. so definitely look for that. And I wrote a really fun, I think, essay called Weathering the Comic Storm on Being Trans and Funny about my stand-up comedy journey. So so I would recommend checking out that essay if if you want to read my work. Okay. And maybe you can mention the title of the book again?
01:07:25
Speaker
Yes. And the book is called Trans Fascination, and it's coming out through Oxford University Press. Okay, great. Amy Marvin, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. There's really nothing real.
01:07:38
Speaker
There is no real. And that's that's what's called the postmodern mentality. I couldn't receive the word racist remark. The adventure of life justifies its suffering. i don't want to see him having political succubus with goblins. Do it live. Is Trump to have babies with a goblin? Do it live! And turn against us like Darth Vader.
01:07:55
Speaker
Do it live! listen, you right-blowing name. I'll in your goddamn face. You'll stay plastered. I was going to have a guest speaker, but the person I had invited in died.
01:08:08
Speaker
some level of masochism.