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Episode: Brianna Wu Says She Didn't Change. The Progressive Movement Did.

Author: The Free Press
Duration: 01:21:37

Episode Shownotes

It would have been unthinkable for Brianna Wu to have appeared on Honestly a decade ago (if the show had existed back then). But Brianna isn’t most people. I actually can’t think of anyone else quite like her. She’s a trans woman who advocates passionately for trans healthcare, but thinks

many trans activists have alienated women and feminists. She’s a progressive who once called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “one of the best politicians in America,” but is today a staunch supporter of Israel. She was cyber-attacked by an alt-right mob during Gamergate, but now thinks the political left acts just like that mob. Brianna says her politics haven’t actually changed. Instead, it’s the Democratic Party that has morphed. And she says they’ve become unelectable. But Brianna is not sitting idly by while it runs itself into the ground. She wants Democrats to get back to common sense, kitchen table issues, which is why she’s launched a political action committee and is fundraising big time in the 2024 election cycle. At The Free Press we cover a lot of people whose politics have shifted over the past few years. But very few have experienced that evolution in public in the way that Brianna has. On today’s episode, Brianna tells us how Gamergate changed her life, the story of her political evolution, why she is a staunch supporter of Israel, and a critic of niche left causes, and what Democrats risk if they continue to alienate voters. *** We are calling on all Free Press readers, listeners, commenters, and lurkers: We want to learn more about you and what you’re craving from The Free Press. Click here to complete a quick survey to help us make our work better. Plus: Everyone who completes the survey will be entered in a raffle to win Free Press swag. And if you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
Hi, Honestly listeners. We're always trying to give you more episodes that you will love. In order to do that, we need to hear from you.

00:00:08 Speaker_03
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00:00:19 Speaker_03
We've linked to a quick survey in the description of this episode to help us make this show more tailored to you. Plus, anyone who completes the survey will be entered into a raffle to win some amazing free press swag.

00:00:32 Speaker_03
I really want everyone, or as many of you as possible, to do this survey because I want to deliver what you guys are interested in. So thanks for listening to the show. Thanks for filling out the survey. Now onto the episode.

00:00:46 Speaker_04
What the fuck has happened to progressives, Barry? I thought we were the good guys. I really did.

00:00:55 Speaker_03
From the Free Press, this is Honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss. It would have been unthinkable for my guest today to have appeared on this show a decade ago.

00:01:04 Speaker_04
I'm going to be honest with you, before I came here today, I had friends that were telling me not to come down here and talk to you.

00:01:10 Speaker_03
But Breonna Woo isn't most people. Indeed, there's no one quite like her.

00:01:15 Speaker_04
We're training them to believe they're trans or non-binary at these young ages. And social transition is not innocuous. This actually has long-term consequences.

00:01:26 Speaker_03
She is a trans woman who advocates passionately for trans healthcare, but also thinks that many trans activists have lost the plot and are alienating women and feminists.

00:01:37 Speaker_03
She's a progressive who once called AOC one of the best politicians in America, but is also a staunch supporter of Israel.

00:01:45 Speaker_04
And for whatever reason, Barry, and I don't understand it, the Democratic Party does not seem interested in addressing this stuff and standing with Israel with their whole chest.

00:01:57 Speaker_03
She was a victim of an alt-right mob during the Gamergate scandal, but now thinks that the political left has become just like that mob.

00:02:06 Speaker_04
The way that progressives behave is toxic and evil.

00:02:13 Speaker_03
Brianna says her politics haven't actually changed much. It's the Democratic Party and the left that has changed, and it's making the left, she argues, unelectable. But she's not sitting by while it runs itself into the ground.

00:02:28 Speaker_03
She wants Democrats to get back to common sense, kitchen table issues, which is why she's speaking out and why she's launched a political pack that's fundraising big time in the 2024 election cycle.

00:02:42 Speaker_03
I know a lot of people whose politics have evolved over the past decade, but I don't think I know anyone who have lived out that evolution in public quite like Brianna Wu.

00:02:53 Speaker_03
To be honest with you, there's not a clear way to sell this conversation because it's so fascinating and wide-ranging.

00:03:02 Speaker_03
We cover everything from Brianna Wu's upbringing in a super conservative religious home, to her favorite video games, she happens to be a Super Mario champion, to Israel, to why she identifies as a Zionist, to politics today, to a hundred other things.

00:03:19 Speaker_03
I have to tell you, I've done a lot of interviews on this show. This stands out to me as one of the best. I love this conversation. I think you will too. Stay with us.

00:03:35 Speaker_01
America will soon hold an election to decide whether to turn communist or Christian nationalist. I can't wait to find out which option a few thousand people in Pennsylvania will pick for us.

00:03:45 Speaker_01
I'm Ben Kowaler, host of Ben Meets America for the Free Press, and I'm back with a new series, The Swing State Debates. Watch me host conversations with groups of Americans who reflect the electorate's passion, knowledge, and ambivalence.

00:03:59 Speaker_01
Sure, you might not align with the Democrats or the Republicans, but you can come here for a party. Every Tuesday till the election at vfp.com.

00:04:09 Speaker_00
Two timelines, one impossible mystery. Life is Strange Double Exposure follows Max Caulfield as she shifts between two timelines to solve a supernatural murder mystery after finding her friend Safi dead in the snow.

00:04:22 Speaker_00
In this parallel timeline, Safi is still alive and still in danger. With her new power, can Max solve and prevent the same murder? Buy Life is Strange Double Exposure, available now on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, and PC. Rated M for Mature.

00:04:39 Speaker_03
Brianna Wu, this is a long time coming. Thank you so much for joining me on Honestly.

00:04:44 Speaker_04
We made it. I was going through our DMs together before this and it's just constantly all the battles you've had with my friends on the progressive side over the years. I haven't looked back.

00:04:54 Speaker_04
It's constantly, it's just like, sorry my friends going after you. I'm really embarrassed by this. I want to apologize. This was really out of bounds. Oh, my God. That's so funny.

00:05:04 Speaker_04
But it's just like you have been under attack by people for the meanest, most unreasonable stuff for years, like talking like you're a white supremacist. It's insanity.

00:05:15 Speaker_03
I left my KKK hood at home. I'll put it on after this. That's good to know. I know we've been DMing for a long time. Yeah. You probably know better than me exactly when our online relationship began, but I always am excited when I meet a friend.

00:05:29 Speaker_03
It's like meeting my internet friend, meeting a pen pal.

00:05:32 Speaker_05
Oh, I feel the same way.

00:05:33 Speaker_03
And that's how I feel. And of the many reasons that I was so excited to talk to you today, I think the main one is that I think about you as someone that has had the courage

00:05:45 Speaker_03
First of all, because you and I are hyper online people, everything we've ever uttered or said has been captured forever and the misinterpretations of it.

00:05:54 Speaker_03
So I spent a little bit of time today before this conversation looking back on like where you were kind of like 10 years ago when you first came on my radar and where you are now. And the dramatic change, I don't think in your principles actually,

00:06:10 Speaker_03
But the dramatic change in many of your positions, right? Ten years ago, you were loving the squad. Now, definitely not so much. Yeah, I've got some problems.

00:06:18 Speaker_00
Right.

00:06:19 Speaker_03
Ten years ago, you were kind of the darling of the progressive left. Today, I don't even want to explain the kind of epithets that they're hurling at you. You're a piece of shit. You're a TERF. You're, you know, a Zionist shill.

00:06:31 Speaker_03
You're probably a member of the Mossad. I could go on and on. So I kind of want to frame up the conversation that way, just so people understand like you contain, I mean, we all contain many universes, you particularly so.

00:06:45 Speaker_03
And I kind of think the right way to begin and to ground the conversation about your political changes, if you would describe it that way, maybe your paradoxes, and I think I contain them too,

00:06:57 Speaker_03
is by telling people a little bit about the world you were born into. You were born in Mississippi in the late 70s. That's right. Take us back there.

00:07:05 Speaker_04
Well, I was adopted into a kind of fringe right Christian family, and we ended up in Mississippi. My dad decided to leave the Navy and go back to his birthplace.

00:07:17 Speaker_04
It's really interesting that I grew up in the poorest state in America, but my dad is like a rich surgeon who started a gynecology set of clinics when healthcare prices were exploding in the 90s. So, we are very, very well off, you know.

00:07:33 Speaker_04
I am a closeted trans child. So, I've kind of got that, you know, rebel spirit inside of me, but I'm going to church three times a week, right?

00:07:43 Speaker_04
You know, I think that, you know, I've had a lot of experiences over my life, and I think it's kind of given me a broad perspective that informs this subtlety that I think you see in my politics.

00:07:55 Speaker_03
So you're adopted and you're in Mississippi. Yes. Dad had been in the Navy. You're in a conservative Christian family. And you, as you just said, you've described yourself as a boy who desperately wanted to be a girl. That's right.

00:08:07 Speaker_03
Can you explain what that meant? Oh, gosh.

00:08:09 Speaker_04
It was really terrible. I have no memory of not really feeling at the core of my soul that I was I just wanted to be a girl. I don't have a better way to say that.

00:08:20 Speaker_04
And really early on, like, my body mannerisms or just the friends I wanted to make, my interests, I was just punished again and again and again.

00:08:29 Speaker_04
And, you know, when puberty hit and I started getting really intense crushes on boys, this is happening while, like, closeted gay men in Mississippi are trying to rape me. at the same time, and that's causing trauma.

00:08:43 Speaker_04
So it just, it took me a little bit of time to think through that and to be able to go on with my life, if that makes sense to you. When did you come out to your parents? Oh, gosh.

00:08:53 Speaker_04
It was right after the 2004 election, and I was just like, I'm done, you know. and they disowned me pretty much immediately. I think I saw him one more time after that, and that was it. So, it was really, really difficult.

00:09:07 Speaker_04
Like, think about it from my point of view, you're adopted, so you have one set of parents that throw you away, like trash, and then you've got a brother and a sister and a dad and a mom, and they throw you away, like trash.

00:09:22 Speaker_04
But, you know, I think the good part is, you know, years later when I got married, I've really taken that marriage seriously. I feel very lucky to have a husband and it's been the first most important thing in my life for 17 years now.

00:09:36 Speaker_03
I think a lot of people will hear the description of getting thrown away twice and think, how is this person? together, resilient, have a sense of humor, articulate.

00:09:48 Speaker_03
What were the tools that you had, either internal or people in your life at the time, that allowed you to be here now. Like, how did you get through that?

00:09:59 Speaker_04
Well, I think something I think about a lot is why did I end up okay when so many trans people are kind of neurotic messes? And I think something I would say to my parents' credit is despite being like far-right conservatives,

00:10:17 Speaker_04
they gave me some really important messages, like the no-victim mentality, you're responsible for your own destiny, life sucks, sometimes you need to... Like, these are Jewish messages to a certain extent, too, I've learned.

00:10:31 Speaker_04
And, you know, I think it's a formula for success in kind of putting the keys in your own hand. Like, I had to go through some really tough stuff. I was homeless for a while, and life goes on. You've got to deal with it.

00:10:44 Speaker_04
After you were able to transition, did you feel what? I just felt like myself. But, you know, I actually didn't talk about it. I tried to dodge it as much as I could through most of my career because I didn't want to be defined by this one thing.

00:11:02 Speaker_04
I just wanted to go on, live my life, I think one of the biggest mistakes trans people make is they make being trans the center of your life.

00:11:09 Speaker_04
And it's actually something your wife wrote that really gave me the impetus to move forward publicly in this book. So I was reading it and she's got a chapter in there about her issues with trans people, which I understand. I share a lot of those.

00:11:27 Speaker_04
And she was talking about the drop in gay rights, the drop in support of gay rights, largely because of the way we've behaved and kind of saying we need Ellen DeGeneres back in charge of the movement.

00:11:39 Speaker_03
Did she write that? She did.

00:11:41 Speaker_04
That sounds like her. And I was like, I was really thinking through that, how one of the core problems is my generation kind of went and transitioned and then just went on with their lives.

00:11:54 Speaker_04
as best as we could, some better than others, but to the best of our ability, we moved on. And we left the leadership to a set of people that, I'm just gonna be honest, I think they're frauds. I think they're immature.

00:12:09 Speaker_04
I think they are marching us off a cliff. I think they are turning cis women into our biggest enemies. They are creating TERFs right and left. They're using language to erase women.

00:12:21 Speaker_04
And there's- You're talking about like uterus havers and things like that. Uterus havers, and there's no mission to get to the basics, which is healthcare, housing, employment. There's no mission there to take care of the basis.

00:12:38 Speaker_04
Instead, we're talking about non-binary AFAB.

00:12:43 Speaker_03
I don't even know what AFAB is.

00:12:44 Speaker_04
You don't want to know?

00:12:45 Speaker_03
No, but there is a fixation on identity and on the most minuscule footnote issues rather than protecting IVF. That's right. Rather than protecting, you know. I mean, you've written very powerfully about what's at stake for you in this election.

00:13:05 Speaker_03
Maybe you want to talk about that just a little bit. Sure.

00:13:07 Speaker_04
When I go down to Florida nowadays, I have no guarantee that I can get health care. So if my husband and I go down to Florida and I need HRT, of which I just shut down mentally.

00:13:18 Speaker_00
What's HRT?

00:13:19 Speaker_04
Hormone Replacement Therapy. So it's just generic estradiol from the 80s. Not a big deal. For whatever reason, it just makes trans women function normally.

00:13:29 Speaker_04
It makes us able to feel emotions and think and feel connected to our bodies, and we break down without it. We don't know why, but it's something that happens.

00:13:39 Speaker_04
But if I go to Florida, I have no guarantee that I'm going to have access to that right now. So, you know, in my view, if Trump gets elected, this drug that I need, there are a lot of Republicans that want to take that away.

00:13:55 Speaker_04
And I think that if the trans movement doesn't grow up very quickly, and get our mind on the ball, I think we're going to lose everything in my view.

00:14:04 Speaker_03
Staying on your childhood just for a moment, really politically. So your dad is in the Navy. You mentioned he's a surgeon. You're going to church three times a week. What were your politics? It was a mirror of my parents.

00:14:16 Speaker_03
You were a mirror of your parents politically, right? So like if someone asked 12-year-old Brianna, Go Republican. Go Republican Party. Really? Yes. And what were the issues that you guys talked around your dinner table that informed you?

00:14:29 Speaker_04
You know, taxes, Reaganism, all that stuff. Bill Clinton is evil in the 90s.

00:14:35 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:14:35 Speaker_04
I'm sure you remember that whole era too.

00:14:37 Speaker_03
I do. You talked about sort of your transition. Yeah. Talk to us about your political transition. So you grow up, you're sort of going along with what your parents believe. Right. When did you move to the left?

00:14:50 Speaker_04
So Al Franken wrote this book called Why Not Me? OK. I realized after I started reading Al Franken's work that I was getting all my information about what Democrats believed from Sean Hannity. And I was like, maybe there's another point of view here.

00:15:06 Speaker_04
So I started reading all of them. Rush Limbaugh's a big fat idiot. Why not me? Lies and lying liars. And it was just like, oh, this actually makes a lot of sense to me. And I started talking to Democratic friends.

00:15:18 Speaker_04
And this is, we're going to return to this later. But when I talked to my Democratic friends, And I would ask questions about policy. They didn't morally hector me. They would say things like, a higher tax basis makes sense because of this reason.

00:15:34 Speaker_04
And then I noticed the Republicans were the ones moralizing everything. Well, women can't have the right to choose because it says so in the Bible, right? And that really turned it away.

00:15:46 Speaker_04
So I was like, let's go with the people that, you know, can make an argument.

00:15:51 Speaker_03
You didn't just sort of turn to the left. You got really involved in politics. What were sort of like the early issues? Was it opposition to the Iraq war?

00:16:00 Speaker_04
Very much. Mississippi has more people serving per capita than any other state in the country. So, yeah, I've had friends that went over there and died. in that war or came back and maimed. So, yeah, I was really, really opposed to the Iraq war.

00:16:15 Speaker_04
I remain opposed to it. I think it was a bad idea, but that was really my kind of birth into politics, if that makes sense to you. I think you've probably been vindicated on that issue.

00:16:26 Speaker_04
Yeah, maybe a little bit, especially post-October 7th, like, you know, kind of losing Iraq as a buffer state and letting Iran go free. I don't think that's worked out so well for the Middle East, in my view. Right.

00:16:39 Speaker_03
OK, so you leave Mississippi. Yes. You get involved in democratic politics and eventually you become a software engineer. Yep. Talk to us about that. I met my husband, we got married, I launched a game studio. Had you been interested in games growing up?

00:16:55 Speaker_03
Oh, 100 percent. What were the early games you played?

00:16:57 Speaker_04
So I'm the second fastest Princess Peach speedrunner in the entire world. What? Because I love her. I love her. I love her. I love her. And, like, she was the only really girl character on the NES, so I just became obsessed with Super Mario Brothers 2.

00:17:15 Speaker_04
So even to this day, I can run through that game, like, lightning fast. Yeah, I've had a bug up my butt my entire life about representation of women in games.

00:17:25 Speaker_04
Like, it really upsets me how often women are just the reward at the end of it and how often you can, like, have a cool girl character on an adventure that's not, like, Barbie or whatever.

00:17:35 Speaker_04
So, uh, when I started my game studio in 2010, I just wanted to make cool, kick-ass women, like, getting to be the heroes of some stuff, and that's what I did.

00:17:46 Speaker_03
So in 2014, that is the first time that I heard your name. Oh no. And I heard your name in connection to a brouhaha, a

00:17:58 Speaker_03
depending on who you are, a major conflagration or a tempest in a teapot, that in many ways I think was one of like the key culture war flashpoints of the 21st century. Yes. Known as Gamergate. Yes. Brianna, what is Gamergate?

00:18:13 Speaker_03
Because I know my mom is going to listen to this and she is not going to know what it is.

00:18:17 Speaker_04
Gamergate was the prototype for how we now argue online. You have been a victim of the Gamergate playbook. This is how it works.

00:18:25 Speaker_04
You take someone that you want to shut the hell up, and you go through everything they've ever said through their whole life until you find something to attack them with. And then you send waves of anonymous accounts out there to socially murder them.

00:18:40 Speaker_04
You do it again and again. So it involves death threats, it involves rape threats, it involves trying to get you fired, and it's a playbook.

00:18:48 Speaker_04
They ran it on feminists like myself in the video game industry, and now everyone is taking the same playbook and we all get to enjoy it.

00:18:57 Speaker_03
Well, okay, so I have experienced all of the things you're talking about. For someone who's unfamiliar, okay, let me try and summarize what I think it was about. Go ahead, sorry.

00:19:07 Speaker_03
A group of video game designers and programmers, yourself, there was a woman, Anita Sarkeesian, I think, Zoe Quinn, basically were targeted by a lot of men in the industry.

00:19:26 Speaker_03
And I want you to explain practically like what that period of your life looked like and why they were saying they were targeting you.

00:19:34 Speaker_04
So I have the crazy opinion that the video game industry, which I'm sorry to this day still has wildly sexist hiring practices. I was saying, guys, can we just like work on our HR strategies here and commit to bringing a few more women in the door?

00:19:50 Speaker_04
and kind of look at our promotion practices and make sure you're not just automatically promoting your bro. Like, can we just try to address this crazy gender imbalance?

00:19:59 Speaker_03
And you were saying that where? Like in op-eds and where were you saying that?

00:20:03 Speaker_04
Op-eds, online, on Twitter, at conferences, at Google, at Apple, on podcasts, everywhere I can. Like, Barry, this is the most moderate message in the world, okay? It's nothing other than, here are the stats,

00:20:18 Speaker_04
of our industry, here's what it looks like compared to the wider tech industry. Women are, what was it, 15% of software engineers. Here, we're 2% of software engineers. Maybe there's something wrong here. Maybe we should work on this a little bit.

00:20:34 Speaker_04
And for that, death threats, rape threats, going through everything I've ever said in my life.

00:20:39 Speaker_03
I mean, you had to flee your home at one point.

00:20:40 Speaker_04
I did. It was horrible. And what were these people saying to you? It was very, you know, I'm at the point where I actually have a PhD in death threats and the one she takes seriously and the one she laughs off and go cook dinner.

00:20:52 Speaker_04
And this was some really psychotic stuff, Barry. Like, it was taking pictures of the bushes outside my house and saying, I'm waiting there to slaughter you.

00:21:03 Speaker_04
It was people taking diagrams of my house pieced together from pictures online and sending me the dates at which they were going to come through my house, execute my dogs here,

00:21:13 Speaker_04
execute my other dog here, come into the back room and slit Frank and I's throats.

00:21:18 Speaker_04
I had someone that got so obsessed with me, they started writing a daily fanfic about kidnapping me and taking me and cutting the skin off my body and cooking it and force-feeding it to me, which is kind of a little bit crazy. So,

00:21:34 Speaker_04
It's just dealing with nut cases all day, every day. Like, were the police involved? Were the FBI involved? Police were involved. FBI were involved. This is back when they knew nothing about online harassment.

00:21:45 Speaker_04
It was like, I remember telling the FBI what Twitter was and trying to get them to understand. Catherine Clark, who's now the minority whip for the Democratic Party, she was great to me.

00:21:55 Speaker_04
She had a showdown with the FBI at one point, saying, look, one of my constituents is being targeted in a really serious way. I need you to take this seriously. Yeah, again, all this was shocking because it's 2014.

00:22:11 Speaker_04
Today, this is just being a woman with a career in the public eye.

00:22:15 Speaker_03
We all deal with this. You have talked about how Gamergate was kind of the birth of the alt-right movement. That's right. Can you explain that?

00:22:23 Speaker_04
Look at the figures that came from that. Steve Bannon became a household name from Gamergate. How was he involved in it? He was in charge of Breitbart, which wrote a bunch of the articles legitimizing it. Gamergate. Milo Yiannopoulos came from this.

00:22:36 Speaker_04
Believe it or not, Candace Owens got her start at the tail end of the Gamergate controversy.

00:22:41 Speaker_03
Really?

00:22:41 Speaker_04
So yeah. Lauren Southern, who I've become friends with in the years since, she got her start in Gamergate too, like finding herself this international celebrity at 19 years old.

00:22:52 Speaker_04
So it really was the start of all these people that went on to become famous.

00:22:57 Speaker_03
Looking back at Gamergate with the vantage point of a decade, I think it functions as this really powerful Rorschach test for the right and the left. And from the left, it's pretty straightforward, as you've just explained it, right?

00:23:13 Speaker_03
The world of gaming, beyond just the normal sort of like tech on balance is more male, it was like overwhelmingly male dominated. And finally, there were some women

00:23:24 Speaker_03
who had the gall to design and create and develop games, and men were freaking out, and men were being deranged and obsessive and stalkerish and abusive, and they sort of turned to white male identity politics. I would give you a caveat and say

00:23:42 Speaker_04
I don't think they were upset at seeing women working in games. It was the fact that we were advocating for feminist policies. That's what upset them specifically.

00:23:51 Speaker_03
OK.

00:23:52 Speaker_04
Yes.

00:23:52 Speaker_03
And would you agree that the left sees Trump as the Gamergate candidate? He was the- Troll? Yes. Right. He was the IRL, like the politics of Gamergate come to fruition in the real world. Of course. Okay.

00:24:08 Speaker_03
Now, I talked to some people ahead of this conversation who identify more on the right, who are not abusive stalkerish monsters, and who see Gamergate somewhat differently. From their perspective, it was

00:24:21 Speaker_03
A bunch of women getting upset that men and women have fundamentally, this is their view, different strengths and interests.

00:24:33 Speaker_03
and trying to sort of force these female-centric version of gaming or force parody of hiring for people who are not as qualified on an industry.

00:24:45 Speaker_03
And they see it as sort of like a hounding out of men's spaces like, you know, women like Barbie, men like gaming. What's the problem with that? You know, why do we have to have gender diversity everywhere?

00:24:57 Speaker_03
There are some things about us that are not the same, and you're not a sexist monster to admit that. So that's broadly how they look back at it. What is that view? And I hope I'm not caricaturing it too much. Sure, sure, sure.

00:25:09 Speaker_03
What is that perspective looking back on 10 years get wrong? Because you can see how, on the one hand, calling for more diversity in an industry seems normal.

00:25:22 Speaker_03
But if you take that to the logical conclusion, where a lot of people have taken it, which is, if you don't have exact parity of every single identity group in your company, you're a racist, sexist, misogynist monster.

00:25:35 Speaker_03
And they see Gamergate as sort of like the seed of that.

00:25:40 Speaker_04
And to be fair, there were people, I was not one of them, but there were people on the Gamergate side that did behave like that, and we've seen those people get louder and crazier over the years. So, I think that's a fair assessment.

00:25:54 Speaker_04
I'd love to widen that comment out a little bit. What I think is really going on with what you're talking about was the final thing you said, which is feeling like these male-only spaces, or under attack.

00:26:06 Speaker_04
And I think there's a wider problem with this generation of young men where they don't have an identity, they don't have a path, and they've found video games to be their world. And they love that. So when Milo Yiannopoulos came along,

00:26:22 Speaker_04
and was telling them the reason the girls were ignoring them was because of these dirty feminists, I think that supercharged something inside of them.

00:26:31 Speaker_04
And it's not because they're bad people, because I've had literally hundreds, maybe even a thousand gamer gators reach out to me over the years to apologize. It is that we are fundamentally failing our young men in this country.

00:26:47 Speaker_04
They are directionless, they don't know how to talk to women, they don't have a path to have a career for themselves to get started, and they are lost.

00:26:57 Speaker_04
And what I think the mistake feminism did was talking to them like the enemy and dismissing all of that. We should have been trying with the entire video game industry to bring them on as partners.

00:27:11 Speaker_04
and say, this will be a healthier industry if we can have a bigger player base. We should have been trying to work together and instead, I turned it into a culture war. A men versus women, left versus right culture war.

00:27:28 Speaker_04
And one of the consequences of this is no one got what they wanted. Just one quick example. Intel put out, I believe, it was well over $100 million for women in tech initiatives at the height of Gamergate.

00:27:42 Speaker_04
If I could go back in time, Barry, I would have deleted my Twitter account and I would have back-channeled like a mofo to get that money to causes that would actually make a difference for the women I knew that were trying to start studios doing the right thing.

00:27:58 Speaker_03
Where did that money actually go and where should it have gone?

00:28:00 Speaker_04
It should not have gone to the IGDA, for instance. What's that? The IGDA is this independent, indie, far-left... window dressing organization for game developers. It puts on conferences and doesn't do anything real, in my view. Sorry if you work there.

00:28:17 Speaker_04
Not trying to be mean. I don't think you do much. You know, we could have had real structural change and it went to window dressing. It went to lovely lunches. where women in tech got to talk to each other.

00:28:32 Speaker_04
They were catered, and we had beautiful cheese, Mary. It was wonderful. And we got to bitch, and nothing changed. That's the kind of thing that happened, and it didn't work. So I wish I could have stopped the culture war and worked on that.

00:28:47 Speaker_03
You later wrote about Gamergate. Yes. Gamergate gave me the ability to take a superhuman amount of criticism. If you're seeing me go into touchy cultural spaces that a lot of people won't, this is why. Yeah.

00:29:01 Speaker_03
I think a lot of people, they would have said, I'm out. Yeah. I want to have a nice life. and have some wine, have some nice cheese, be with my husband, be with my dog. I'm deleting my Twitter. Yeah. Why didn't you do it? Like, what's wrong in your brain?

00:29:17 Speaker_04
I don't know.

00:29:17 Speaker_03
There's something wrong with me. What is it? Yes, I don't know. Do you think it's, I mean, I'm just so curious about hyper resilient people. Like, do you think that was always a part of you or do you think that's like a muscle that got built up?

00:29:31 Speaker_04
I would imagine, you know, I've never said this to anyone, like, I was the first student to ever transition at Ole Miss, ever. No one had ever done that before me.

00:29:40 Speaker_04
I remember going to Sparky Reardon, who was the Dean of Students, and going like, hi, I would like to become a girl now on campus. And I'm like, What year was that? Oh my gosh, it should have been about 2004.

00:29:53 Speaker_04
So I think going through that experience... And what was the response? Oh, it was terrible. It was terrible. I had all the closeted guys there trying to fuck me nonstop. I had, like, there were some very sweet girls that helped me a lot.

00:30:07 Speaker_04
There was actually, you know, there was one Jewish professor that really tanked for me with the administration.

00:30:14 Speaker_04
I, at one point, I broke my glasses and I couldn't afford any and she reached into her desk and gave me a pair that was close enough to my prescription and I wore them for many years.

00:30:24 Speaker_04
So, there were a lot of people that reached out and helped me, but, yeah, there was a lot of death threats and rape threats and people treating me like garbage and, you know, if you're going to make it through that, you got to develop some resiliency.

00:30:37 Speaker_03
I think that if I got a diagram of the bushes, that is really, really scary. Was there ever a point where you just were brought really low by it?

00:30:49 Speaker_04
I'm sure there was. I mean, I had clinical PTSD from it. But I mean, I don't mean to be dramatic, but when you're trans, you don't expect to live to 30. So the fact that I'm still here, you just kind of get numb to the stuff.

00:31:07 Speaker_04
The time you have is the time you have, if that makes sense.

00:31:11 Speaker_03
So when people say this stuff to you now, does it not even kind of penetrate? No. Ever? I feel nothing.

00:31:20 Speaker_04
Really? I feel nothing. Someone sent me a death threat the other day and I put down my phone and cooked dinner. I sent it to the FBI and I cooked dinner. What'd you make? I made pasta. Primavera with shrimp. It was very good.

00:31:38 Speaker_03
After the break, Brianna and I break down the issues that have made her a target within her own political camp. Stay with us.

00:31:58 Speaker_02
This is the sound of your ride home with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes. Brought to you by the FDA.

00:32:25 Speaker_03
OK, well, let's go into some of these touchy cultural spaces, places, third rails that you're willing to touch that a lot of people won't. Sure. After Gamergate, you still remained on the political left.

00:32:36 Speaker_03
And in 2018 and 2020, you actually ran for Congress. This was like my next Breonna Woo flashpoint as a Democrat. I did. What were your key issues at the time? Why did you decide to run?

00:32:48 Speaker_03
I mean, it makes sense to me that you decide to run, but what were your key issues? And were you identified more as sort of like progressive left, center left? Tell us about it.

00:32:56 Speaker_04
I tried to take on Stephen Lynch, who is the definition of the centrist Democrat with the fringe left playbook. My politics were largely informed from, you know, Gamergate-style feminist politics. And look, I did well.

00:33:10 Speaker_04
I got, what was it, 22% of the vote. Not bad for a candidate that didn't know what the hell she was doing. Yeah. You know, enough to fill up a good part of Fenway Stadium with that number of votes.

00:33:21 Speaker_04
But ultimately, I was trying to take this playbook, and I got my butt kicked. One of the things that I learned running for office

00:33:30 Speaker_04
is you get off the damn computer and you have to go have not like one, not ten, not a hundred, you have to have thousands and thousands and thousands of conversations with actual human beings in your district.

00:33:43 Speaker_04
And you talk to people and their biggest issue isn't women in the video game industry. What is it? What's their school doing right now? It's what's going on with their roads? You know, can I afford a house?

00:33:57 Speaker_04
So you start getting reality bitch slapped into you by the legitimate political process. And, you know, eventually you're going, oh, Nancy Pelosi and all these Democrats have been critiquing for being too centrist.

00:34:11 Speaker_04
Maybe they know something that I don't. So, you know, it was very, it forces you to become a better version of yourself. Because, like, you have to look deep at all of your flaws as a person because they're really on display for people.

00:34:27 Speaker_04
You have to learn to meet people where they are and make a connection with them even if you don't agree with them.

00:34:33 Speaker_03
And what I'm hearing a little bit is like you're in this hyper online world. Yes. Where you're embracing a kind of like culture worry, feminist, progressive politics. Yes. And then all of a sudden you're getting smacked into reality. Yes.

00:34:47 Speaker_03
And what conclusions are you drawing? How is that starting to sort of shift the issues that you care about and the way you're approaching politics?

00:34:54 Speaker_04
Do you remember a few minutes ago when you said, I don't know what AFAB stands for?

00:34:58 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:34:58 Speaker_04
That's the reality I'm talking about. There's a shorthand we have for all this stuff and normal people just don't know what we're talking about.

00:35:06 Speaker_03
Right. Just like being normal. Yes. But so, like, did you start to, at that point, get some distance from that previous version of yourself? Yes. And what were the conclusions you started coming to?

00:35:19 Speaker_04
The conclusions I came to is if progressives are serious about power, we've got to play the game. And you don't get to sit there. It's really easy online to go, money should be out of politics. Don't take corporate donations.

00:35:33 Speaker_04
You know, that's easy to say, I urge you to go look at any progressive candidate out there. Spin the book, go look them up on Open Secrets, how much they've raised. I'll be thrilled if it's more than $10,000. We don't take fundraising seriously.

00:35:47 Speaker_04
We don't take events seriously. We don't take canvassing seriously. We're not serious operatives in political power. So the conclusion I came to is if we want universal health care, we need some goddamned adults out here

00:36:01 Speaker_04
they're willing to understand a thing or two about how the power structure works in this country and build some roads that progressive candidates can win on. And overwhelmingly, it has been disappointing.

00:36:14 Speaker_03
It is like working with children. I wonder if one of the other shifts that you started to experience was the identity politics. Yes. I think we can call it that, that we're informing like both sides of the gamer game. Yes.

00:36:27 Speaker_03
When did you start to realize that that was kind of a road to oblivion?

00:36:34 Speaker_04
I think it's like reflecting back at Gamergate and understanding the moment we started talking in identity politics turns, it's shut down, you can't get anywhere. But it's not just that, Barry. And I really hope you can hear me here.

00:36:49 Speaker_04
The way that progressives behave is toxic and evil. I can't say it any more plainly than that. It is a method of abusing people based on identity. Your wife writes about it brilliantly in her book.

00:37:04 Speaker_04
It's about narcissism and insecurity and it's not about public policy. It is a road that is not taking us anywhere in the public policy realm. And until we jettison this rotting corpse of an ideology, we're not going to be able to get anywhere.

00:37:22 Speaker_04
I face difficulties in my life as a woman and as a trans woman that are real, but the way to get that, the way to move forward on that is for me to see your humanity.

00:37:34 Speaker_04
You know, people like you are saying, there's some things the trans community is doing that's uncomfortable for me. I need to hear that and take that seriously. That needs to matter to me.

00:37:45 Speaker_04
And my humanity and my ability to go around by life that needs to matter to you That's how we move forward.

00:37:52 Speaker_03
It's how it used to work in this country When do you think it went off the rails?

00:37:56 Speaker_03
And why do you think it did like why have so many people embraced what to me is so obviously The ultimate way to shut down a conversation Is to sort of go to the logical end of identity politics, which is to say

00:38:12 Speaker_03
You can never understand or inhabit my shoes because you're not trans. You can never understand or inhabit my shoes because you're not gay, Jewish, upper, you know, whatever. That is just not a way to build bridges.

00:38:26 Speaker_03
It's not a way to political compromise. It doesn't allow for any kind of common ground. So why is it so in vogue right now?

00:38:34 Speaker_04
Because it's so lazy and easy to do, and it promises this utopia where you're going to be at the top of the pyramid, right? You don't have to do anything. You don't have to go raise money or run for office or advocate a public policy.

00:38:48 Speaker_03
You're just good based on your identity, or you're just bad based on yours.

00:38:51 Speaker_04
And if you don't get the reality you want, just wait. It's going to happen. Just stick to the plan. Trust the plan.

00:38:58 Speaker_03
It's insanity. I keep going back to Gamergate only because I think it's like a useful jumping off point. In that, you were the one sort of saying, this industry needs to be more inclusive. Yes.

00:39:09 Speaker_03
This industry needs to fling open its doors more to people like me. When did you start to see, I feel that inclusion came to mean something different. Yes. When did that happen and how did it begin to shift?

00:39:22 Speaker_04
So there's a difference in making an argument that I know you're probably not a gamer, but like Forza. I'm really not a gamer. There's a famous racing game.

00:39:30 Speaker_03
That's all you need to know.

00:39:32 Speaker_04
You used to be able to play it and you can only play as a male character. And somewhere along the line, someone I know fought a battle and let you select a woman avatar.

00:39:42 Speaker_04
So if you like cars and you want to play Forza, you can play as a girl and be referred to as that. And that is opening the door for a player base and saying, you can be represented here. That's good.

00:39:54 Speaker_04
It's the gaming equivalent of women getting the right to vote. Yes. I would say even more cynically than that, in an industry that is so financially unstable, if you can double your player base. Sure, of course. That makes sense to me, right?

00:40:10 Speaker_04
Like, if your only representation of women is chainmail bikinis, you're probably not going to have a lot of women playing your stuff. Where I think it gets toxic is when these identity politics get shoved into games and make them worse.

00:40:26 Speaker_04
I'll give you an example, because I know this person, I don't want to blast them, but they had a game come out, and they are famously ultra-progressive. And in the game, there were scenes of their mom saying some things to them that were difficult.

00:40:41 Speaker_04
So they had to re-engineer the game, so when you start the game, it goes, hey, just letting you know, Your mom's going to say some stuff to you. It could kind of be abusive. Do you want to see this? Yes or no.

00:40:53 Speaker_04
You have to select that at the beginning of it. Or gender sliders in games. There's very... What's a gender slider?

00:41:00 Speaker_04
It's where you alter the skeletal mesh and then you slide it back and forth depending on what you want your gender presentation to be and it alters the blend shapes. We're talking about that instead of making good games.

00:41:14 Speaker_04
The stupidest example I've ever seen is in Call of Duty Cold War, which is a game that came out a few years ago. When you select your character in Call of Duty, the biggest bro shooter on earth,

00:41:27 Speaker_04
Set in the 1980s Ronald Reagan is a character in this game. You can make your character non-binary as if historically Non-binary people in the 80s like serving in the CIA That's amazing. And at a certain point, it's just, it's comical, right?

00:41:48 Speaker_03
Yes. But I think that there's like, here's one way that I think about it. Yes. There's an inclusion version. Yes. Of like good identity politics. Yes. Which is like the version that says, hey, you know what? Everyone should get the right to vote. Right.

00:42:01 Speaker_03
Or hey, you know what? Anyone should be allowed to apply to university and we shouldn't like keep Jews out or we shouldn't keep African Americans out. Like that's the good version. Yes. It's the version that says these

00:42:14 Speaker_03
privileges or these opportunities should be afforded to everybody. Great. That's the good version. Yes. Somewhere along the line, we crossed into the bad version. Yes. And the bad version doesn't say, widen the tent.

00:42:27 Speaker_03
It says, I'm going to take a look at you. Yes. And I'm going to tell you whether or not you are bad or good, oppressed or oppressor, victim or victimizer, depending on the skin you were born into.

00:42:39 Speaker_04
Can I tell you about the trans controversy in cyberpunk? I mean, sure. Okay, this is such a good example of the freaks ruining the good thing, which is inclusion. So Cyberpunk comes out, and in this game, it's based on Cyberpunk 2077,

00:43:00 Speaker_04
And you can create a trans character in this game, Barry. Something I never thought, if you told me when I was a child, I'd be able to make a trans character, I would not have believed you.

00:43:10 Speaker_04
You can drive around Night City, and on these billboards is this, it's not my thing, but it's trans representation, these posters of a beautiful girl there, and you can see that she has a penis, like in this leotard.

00:43:22 Speaker_04
And it's like, that's everywhere, all over the city. And you would think that trans people would be like, oh, OK. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. You included us in the cyberpunk future.

00:43:33 Speaker_04
But no, it descends into, well, you didn't have a non-binary option here. No, you are morally impure because the voice sliders don't do this. No, there's no meaningful subtext for this. No, you can't go change your gender on a whim.

00:43:51 Speaker_04
This game is actually transphobic, which is something that actually happened. It is turning a good thing into a moral failing, and it makes enemies right and left. That's insane.

00:44:03 Speaker_03
That is actually insane. Yes, yes. That goes to a level that I did not know was possible. Oh, it's crazy. So taking us out of cyberpunk, although now I'm going to look up this game.

00:44:13 Speaker_03
One of the ways that I began to see that sort of bad version of identity politics that basically ultimately divides us all up against each other based on our group identity and I think is extremely toxic and ultimately really dangerous.

00:44:30 Speaker_03
I began to see that through the Jewish lens. Yes. Because all of a sudden, not only did I see all of Jewish history flattened to the point where it was like, oh, you're just bad white European colonizers.

00:44:43 Speaker_03
It was like, OK, where do you think we come from in the world? But it was like, there's only one, speaking of binary, there's only one choice, good, bad, white, black, victim, victimizer, and the Jews are all on the bad side of the ledger. Yeah.

00:44:56 Speaker_03
When did you start to see that aspect of it? Because I know you've spoken about how in 2018 and 2020 you started to see kind of like antisemitism being expressed in leftist politics.

00:45:09 Speaker_04
It has been a cancer that has been eating the progressive world alive. You know, I've apologized for this publicly.

00:45:16 Speaker_04
I think I had the credibility, if I'd spoken out more forcefully for it back in the Gamergate era, I think we could have stopped baby Hitler from coming to power in the progressive movement.

00:45:30 Speaker_04
But I think unfortunately, me and a lot of my friends, we said nothing. And it happened with the Women's March, where they aligned with outspoken anti-Semites, and we did nothing, and we said nothing.

00:45:45 Speaker_04
And this utterly false narrative about Israel has captured two generations of Americans now, and they believe it to the point that literally risks Jewish lives. It is this coding of Jews as oppressor in this country.

00:46:04 Speaker_04
And I think the most insidious thing is Jews have been there for the rest of us on all of this stuff. In Mississippi, civil rights movement, Mississippi burning murders, three people were killed getting black people registered to vote.

00:46:18 Speaker_04
One was black, two were Jewish. You look at the trans civil rights movement, some of the biggest people helping us with healthcare had been Jewish.

00:46:27 Speaker_04
Over and over again, they have stood with women and black people and queer people, and we've just betrayed them. And we did it by saying nothing.

00:46:37 Speaker_03
This is a culture, that particular microculture, in which microaggressions are called out. Like, the smallest of offenses are called out. Why was it so hard for people to speak out against that? I don't know.

00:46:52 Speaker_04
Like, do you see how I'm blanking here? I literally don't know. I'm thinking about the times that people did say something.

00:47:01 Speaker_03
Was it watching other people get punished for speaking out?

00:47:05 Speaker_04
Yeah, like, I'm remembering that definitely happened. I remember, like, some of the abuse you got and seeing friends justify it because you did X, Y, or Z in college. Like, it would be flipped on a switch to justify it.

00:47:22 Speaker_04
I think, just for whatever reason, the progressive movement does not seem interested in Jewish dignity, which is really terrifying in my view.

00:47:32 Speaker_03
So, if you sort of exploded into my feed in 2014 with Gamergate and then again when you were running for Congress, I think the biggest, wow, I can't look away from what Breonna Woo is doing and saying came after October 7th.

00:47:51 Speaker_03
And I want to read what you tweeted. You said right after October 7th, God, I'm fucking done. So many people I used to respect have really shown their whole ass since October 7th. Love the language. Who have I been standing next to for the last decade?

00:48:07 Speaker_03
That's right. What made you say that?

00:48:11 Speaker_04
It is seeing over and over and over again this project to turn the victims of October 7th into the perpetrators.

00:48:21 Speaker_04
And I am so familiar at this point with this propaganda apparatus to reality shift some history that, yes, is complex, but it's morally simple to blame the Jews for literally everything that happens to them.

00:48:37 Speaker_04
to justify genocide, and six wars have been committed trying to destroy Israel, and over and over again.

00:48:44 Speaker_04
And for whatever reason, Barry, and I don't understand it, the Democratic Party does not seem interested in addressing this stuff and standing with Israel with their whole chest.

00:48:56 Speaker_04
Kamala Harris doesn't, and I got some real problems with her about that. And the progressive movement certainly does not seem interested in it. It is a huge moral failing. We have betrayed one of our most loyal constituencies.

00:49:10 Speaker_04
And when I think about all the phone banking I've done in Jewish homes, and all the Jewish people where I've spent Saturdays knocking on doors in New Hampshire,

00:49:20 Speaker_04
And I think about the Jewish people, I know in the tech industry, they've been very generous to candidates I've worked to fundraise for. I don't know what to say other than it is, it's not just a betrayal, it is tactical suicide.

00:49:36 Speaker_03
There's a lot of Jews I know who are considering in this coming election either voting for Trump or not voting because of exactly what you just expressed. Do you understand that? Yes. I see it in the polling data.

00:49:50 Speaker_04
You know, I, with my job, I see things that don't always get made public, right? And I see data with Jewish communities that gives me tremendous pause. I talk to people like your friends every single day.

00:50:06 Speaker_04
There's a woman I know, like just flat out one of the smartest women I know, feminist, on board with trans rights, gay rights, like on board with everything. And she's just, she's not voting this time around. Because of this. Because of this.

00:50:23 Speaker_04
Because how can you expect a community to show up for you when you don't care enough about them to say they're trying to stop themselves from being genocided?

00:50:35 Speaker_03
I saw a sign yesterday right by our office.

00:50:38 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:50:39 Speaker_03
It was a group of people. There've been many such signs, but this one just really struck me in its bluntness. It literally just said on a Bristol board, they'd written it out. New York loves Hisbulla.

00:50:51 Speaker_03
Everyone there, I'm certain, identified as progressive, maybe anarchist, but definitely on the political left. No one there was a right winger.

00:50:58 Speaker_03
How do you explain how progressives who claim to care about human rights at the most basic level, openly celebrating terrorist organizations that murder people and are religious fundamentalists,

00:51:18 Speaker_04
I can't. Well, I think it's the purity spiral. So what started as a reasonable push in 2014, which was when progressivism really exploded, for, like, universal health care, right?

00:51:30 Speaker_03
Like, how do you get from universal health care to we love Hamas?

00:51:34 Speaker_04
Take me there. This is what I think happens. So you start with, say, we need to address Ferguson and the police violence. You've got deaths that we need a public policy answer for. That's reasonable.

00:51:46 Speaker_04
But then it goes to, again, as your wife really brilliantly wrote in her book, let's not look at the money for the Black Lives Matter super PAC because that could be racism, right?

00:51:58 Speaker_04
And then it becomes, oh, it's not just going to be, you know, we need some public policy changes, it's defund the police. And now areas of San Francisco police can't go into and crime is occurring.

00:52:11 Speaker_04
So then that devolves, and then it devolves into, oh, America is actually fundamentally an evil state. And then it goes into, well, Iran is correct to conduct terror across the entire world because America supports that and we are evil.

00:52:27 Speaker_04
There's no point in this. Like, when you were trying to pump the brakes on these bad ideas, look at the blowback you got. Look at the blowback I've gotten trying to wake the Democratic Party up to what we're doing to choose.

00:52:43 Speaker_04
It is so hard with the purity spiral to stop it. It can only just keep going down and down into infinity until you get to the terminal stage of the ideas. And that's why we're cheerleading House Full House. How do we stop it? It's just gotta die, Barry.

00:52:58 Speaker_03
That's the only thing that can happen. Well, bad ideas can take a very, very long time to burn themselves out, and they can burn a lot down with them. Yeah.

00:53:08 Speaker_03
One of the things I've been wanting to ask you is, you know, since October 7th, but really well beyond that, you know, in the tree of life shooting and my community and then things I experienced when I was a college student, I genuinely believe it when I say, because history bears this out, that the reason to speak out about antisemitism is because it is the surest sign that your society is dying if it's allowed to express itself.

00:53:34 Speaker_03
But I also speak out because I'm looking at my children and thinking, how can I allow them to live in a world where this is the direction things are traveling? Like, it is personal. You're not Jewish.

00:53:46 Speaker_03
And yet you have been so much more outspoken on this issue than so many nominal Jews that I know. And I wonder, where in you is that coming from? Why do you have such moral clarity among a sea of people that are so confused?

00:54:06 Speaker_04
Well, look, I am a Democrat, but I've always been 1000% Team America. When you look at my run for Congress, I was talking about cybersecurity policy and foreign policy, right?

00:54:18 Speaker_04
So I have no illusions that America is a great country and we need to defend it, and that means having allies like Israel. I'm under no illusions with that.

00:54:28 Speaker_04
But more than that, I mean, I don't want to be hyperbolic here, but October 7th, it was a planning of a second Holocaust, where you've got Hezbollah that's trying to continue that now, you've got the Houthis trying to continue that now, and this political project of 400 million people to slaughter 7 million people is in full swing.

00:54:50 Speaker_04
And I don't want to be sitting on the sidelines for that. I also was not sitting on the sidelines for Black Lives Matter. This is me being an actual progressive, someone that actually believes in this stuff.

00:55:02 Speaker_04
And I don't understand why everyone else is so interested in cosplay.

00:55:07 Speaker_03
In my more despairing moments since October 7th, and I would say fundamentally an optimistic person, I'm a little bit like, if this didn't wake people up, the barbarism of what happened that day, what catastrophe could possibly wake them up?

00:55:24 Speaker_04
I don't think that's fair. Okay. Because with 9-11, it was the towers falling, it was very clear we were under attack. I think it's very hard for Gentiles to understand this. I went my entire life just kind of vaguely going,

00:55:40 Speaker_04
Israel's in a lot of wars, and the Holocaust happened, and there's some stuff going on with Palestine. I don't know. Israel's great. I don't know. I'm not going to think about that.

00:55:52 Speaker_04
And then when you're trying to educate yourself, Barry, I must have read 20 books on history. of this region just trying to make sense of this.

00:56:02 Speaker_03
Since October 7th?

00:56:04 Speaker_04
Yes, because you read one book. Wow. And it's like you read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. You're like, that seems a little crazy. Let's go look at this. And you have to wade through so much stuff to get a sense of it.

00:56:17 Speaker_04
I don't think you should despair that ordinary Americans cannot get a clear view of this, and the media certainly is not helping them.

00:56:25 Speaker_03
Right. I think that you're right, that the ordinary American, it's like, they're worried that eggs are costing double. Yes. Like, this is a faraway conflict. There's a million faraway conflicts. Yes.

00:56:34 Speaker_03
I guess, is it more strategically sound to kind of ignore the really out there Hamas-supporting people who get a lot of the attention and focus on the sort of undecideds who don't really know very much?

00:56:52 Speaker_04
Can I tell you what I really think? I think I have worked with the ADL since Gamergate. I think they're a great organization. They've done more for women's rights than many women's rights organizations in this country.

00:57:06 Speaker_04
But I think them and a lot of these traditional Jewish rights organizations think it's still the 80s and think you talk to people through a press release and civility politics on CNN and through the New York Times.

00:57:21 Speaker_04
And I think the reality is you are in an information war. I think your enemies are funding it in ways that you are not. On TikTok, online, on Twitch. I think you've got stars like Hassan that are out there brainwashing. Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker.

00:57:38 Speaker_04
Entire generation of Americans. And I think for whatever reason, Israel and Jewish civil rights organizations in this country are not willing to go, we need to put $10, $15, $100 million behind this and get involved in this information war.

00:57:54 Speaker_03
I think a huge part of it also is, to be blunt, the big fight in America is race, right? It's the white-black fight. I'm being crude. The original wound. The original wound, right?

00:58:08 Speaker_03
And what's happened is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I think Jews more generally, have been slotted into the bad side of that ledger. Yes, yes. In the most sort of like crude and unbelievable way that completely denies reality.

00:58:25 Speaker_03
But anyway, that's where we are. Is there like an argument that you have found that punctures that lie? Yes. What is it?

00:58:33 Speaker_04
It's talking about the history of Jews being kicked out of countries. It's talking in plain terms. just what the reality is there. The Jewish story, at its core, is what I think Americans would really identify with.

00:58:48 Speaker_04
You've got unbelievable odds, all these people want to kill you, you come together as a country, all these young people are out there, mandatory service, serving their country, just trying to survive and having your culture go, and no one gives a flying fuck about you?

00:59:08 Speaker_04
And you have to go it alone and you get it done anyway. I think that is so beautiful. That is like, that is, it's such a great story. And I don't know why you can't get out there and tell them that more. Um, I just,

00:59:25 Speaker_04
I think my criticism of what I've seen talking to Jews since October 7th is I think you're so used to going alone that you're too cynical about people standing with you. I think you've got to change your paradigm.

00:59:42 Speaker_04
It's not that they hate you, a lot of us, it's that we don't know shit. And we need some help understanding some shit.

00:59:50 Speaker_03
I mean, I think a lot about the generation that had like Paul Newman in Exodus, like how that shaped a generation of Americans. And now, as you're saying, they're watching Hasan Piker and getting informed there. That needs to be changed. It does.

01:00:03 Speaker_04
I think about the things I got growing up that just taught me on a basic level, Israel matters, right? And it was in the CNN era. It was very different.

01:00:11 Speaker_04
I just don't think, I think it taps into a bigger problem that our country has, where we don't have a story that we tell ourselves about ourselves anymore.

01:00:21 Speaker_04
You know, I've thought a lot about this, Barry, and the story I'm committing to telling, you know, with you, you know, I think the way that we go forward as a country is we start telling ourselves a story that we're good enough to love our neighbor,

01:00:33 Speaker_04
and hear our neighbor and try to work things out. I think that's what we need to do.

01:00:38 Speaker_03
You know, if I look at what's happening on the far right in this country and on the far left, they're extremely united in their message, which is like, America is not worth saving. Let's burn it all down.

01:00:51 Speaker_03
Like all of the things that are the foundations of the lives that we leave are sort of corrupt to their core. And I just don't believe that. No. And I don't think the majority of Americans believe that at all. No.

01:01:03 Speaker_03
It's just the loudest voices are expressing that. That's right. And one side is expressing it with, you know, New York loves Hezbollah.

01:01:10 Speaker_03
And the other is, you know, you have Tucker Carlson going on stage the other week saying there's no country in the world that treats its citizens worse than America in a world that contains like China, North Korea, and Iran. Yeah.

01:01:21 Speaker_03
And it's just like this kind of moral relativism, post-truth, thing that needs to be demolished. That's the thing that needs to be burned down. Like, really, because it's eating away at, like, the most basic and doing a very successful fast job at it.

01:01:41 Speaker_03
At, like, even the ability to, like, have a conversation with somebody else. Like, the most basic tools that we use to live with each other.

01:01:50 Speaker_04
This is one of the dark legacies of Gamergate. that it stops us from being able to have conversations with each other. I'm going to be honest with you, before I came here today, I had friends that were telling me not to come on here and talk to you.

01:02:02 Speaker_04
It's like, oh, Barry, she's a white supremacist. She's a Nazi. She's going to vote for Trump. You know, she's this, she's that. And it's like the Gamergate playbook

01:02:13 Speaker_04
has been run on you to the point where the reality of who you are is you're a smart woman with moderate politics that doesn't like the way traditional big media has treated some things, and you've got a different idea about how to do it, and you went out there and you're building one of the few successful media companies in 2024.

01:02:33 Speaker_04
That's the reality of it. Your politics are very hard to pin, but they're generally very pro-institution and pro-moving us forward as a country.

01:02:44 Speaker_04
And then there's this dark version of Barry that's out there who's this transphobic, lesbian, angry person that wants to throw us into the arms of the right wing.

01:02:58 Speaker_04
And I think this is so destructive because you are clearly a very unique person that has a role to play in getting our country back on track.

01:03:09 Speaker_04
But all of us that are trying to do that have that kind of version of ourselves created that hurts our ability to make connections with people.

01:03:18 Speaker_03
There is like this puppet. Yes. Of me. Yes. Or of any of us really that are on the internet. For me, it was extremely disorienting at first. Because if you're an empathetic person to any degree. Sure.

01:03:31 Speaker_03
Like I think being open to criticism is extremely important. Yes. But then when the criticism that's coming at you is just the most intense hate, it becomes very, very disorienting really quickly.

01:03:45 Speaker_03
And you're like, wait, am I the bad thing that they're all saying? Like, did I secretly like— have some like outbursts, like a Tourette's, that have created this idea that I'm like a neo-Nazi when my synagogue was shut up by the Nazis. It's very weird.

01:04:00 Speaker_03
It really takes a lot of getting used to. I find a lot of younger people that are sort of starting out in journalism, especially women or people who want to be in the public in some way, all have to contend with this.

01:04:14 Speaker_03
And for those of them that are listening to this conversation,

01:04:17 Speaker_03
in the same way that there's a Gamergate playbook, is there a playbook for how to maintain your sanity and your normalcy in a world where people are going to erect the dark caricature version of you?

01:04:30 Speaker_04
This is going to sound harsh, but it's really true. You can be silent or you can have a voice and you're going to get damaged along the way. And eventually that damage is going to keep you safe. That is the truth that you have to accept.

01:04:46 Speaker_04
You know, I think the thing is, I know a lot of women in the video game industry have decided to stay silent for many reasons, and they're not happy.

01:04:54 Speaker_04
You know, they feel like they had to really give up their own agency and not speak out on something that was very important to them. They're filled with guilt about that. So I would say it sucks.

01:05:07 Speaker_04
It's not easy getting death threats and rape threats, but the alternative is not living up to your potential, first of all, but not having a say in where your country goes.

01:05:20 Speaker_04
And, you know, I was at a Friends of the IDF event on Sunday, and I'm sitting there and I'm literally listening to parents who their son died rescuing Noah. And their son gave his life.

01:05:35 Speaker_04
Like, that sacrifice, I think I can deal with a few mean comments offline.

01:05:40 Speaker_03
Well, Brianna, if there's one subject that's maybe more controversial than Israel, I think it's trans politics right now.

01:05:49 Speaker_03
And specifically, like, childhood trans-affirming care or transgender care, or there's not even a good language to talk about this without being divisive. Gender-affirming care for minors. For kids. Where do you stand on that issue?

01:06:06 Speaker_04
We're going to get technical. I don't know how much we want to get on that. Let me just break it down to you. Well, can I read something that you said?

01:06:12 Speaker_03
Because I think it's really thoughtful. I think we're over-medicalizing gender variance in children. But I strongly object to the idea that banning all gender-affirming health care for children is the right course of action.

01:06:25 Speaker_03
Children in pain should not be meat for a political machine that has not bothered to understand the science.

01:06:32 Speaker_03
I support better science, more transparency with parents, less hysteria that gender diverse children will kill themselves, and a far more sophisticated clinical protocol. But I wholly reject the all or nothing thinking.

01:06:44 Speaker_03
All sides need to step back from the extremism. Yes. Put a little bit more meat on the bones there about where you stand on this.

01:06:52 Speaker_04
So let me talk about first what the trans movement has done wrong. are introducing gender confusion into children in a way I am 1,000% convinced is creating trans people that will not be served by going through a medical pipeline.

01:07:13 Speaker_04
We are training them to believe they're trans or non-binary at these young ages, and social transition is not innocuous. This actually has long-term consequences.

01:07:24 Speaker_04
We are not being straight with parents about what we know with the science, which is truthfully very little. And we have overplayed our hand here.

01:07:33 Speaker_03
So just to be clear, to give a specific example, a child, let's say a girl that has male pattern play, like she's interested in trucks and not Barbies. 20 years ago would just be like, you're a tomboy. Yeah. Like, you know, that was Nelly, 100%.

01:07:48 Speaker_00
Yes, yes.

01:07:49 Speaker_03
And now, depending on the city you live in, the school your kid goes to, it might be, have you considered that your child is trans?

01:07:56 Speaker_04
That's right. Okay. That's right. For me, no one needed to tell me I wanted to be a girl. I knew that with every fiber of my being, from every thought I've ever had my entire life. It's never wavered for half a second, ever. Never doubted it, ever.

01:08:12 Speaker_04
I need to grow up to be that. I have no memory of this. So this idea of foisting this onto children, I think it's well-meaning, but I don't think it's helpful. And that's how I feel. If a child is not even aware of this,

01:08:27 Speaker_04
Let's say they become trans later. If they don't even understand they're in pain as children, is there any harm in the world in letting them figure out when they're adults?

01:08:36 Speaker_03
I also feel that there's something very regressive about limiting the idea of what it is to be a girl or a boy. Like, be a masculine girl. Sure. Be a girl that, you know, is a tomboy. Be a girl who wants to, like, wear boys' clothes.

01:08:55 Speaker_03
Like, to me, that's all, like, not just healthy, but in a fundamental way, progressive, because you're broadening the idea of what being a girl is. Right.

01:09:05 Speaker_03
And the thing that makes me uncomfortable beyond the medicalization at such a young age is, like, why are you telling me that to be a girl means to play with Barbies. Like, what are we talking about here?

01:09:17 Speaker_03
And the idea that that became sort of the progressive position just seems really strange to me when you like really step back.

01:09:24 Speaker_04
So two more things playing on that and this is critiquing the trans side. So first, testosterone is such a powerful drug, it will do plenty to you if you take it at 14 versus 20.

01:09:37 Speaker_04
So, if there's an argument for not waiting, it's just you're going to have a fine transition either way. So, don't see really how we need a culture to rush into this.

01:09:48 Speaker_04
Two, if you look at the stats, the people that are detransitioning are biological girls. It's just a fact. It's not really as much of a thing with people like me. And we need to be honest about that.

01:10:02 Speaker_04
But I want to give the other side of what this is like. I think far too many people go into the space and they're trying to like relive their childhood and stop their past person from getting hurt. That's not my mission here.

01:10:18 Speaker_04
I'm just giving you an example of public policy and an example of a child that is going to benefit from this.

01:10:24 Speaker_04
So, if you go into the DSM and look at the case studies for gender dysphoria in children, I had every symptom, top to bottom, it could not be a more clear case study. Major depressive episode, preferring to play with girls,

01:10:37 Speaker_04
Barbie says, you know, he's a girl, top to bottom. I went through a spiral. I had a family member tell me the other day, it was like watching the light drain out of my eyes every single day.

01:10:49 Speaker_04
I have cuts you can see on my wrist from trying to commit suicide repeatedly. Yeah, I had major trauma that screwed me up for a really long time.

01:11:01 Speaker_04
I was 22 years old and I am in rehab in the most extreme way from doing every drug I could get my hands on. It is a miracle I did not get AIDS or overdose or just fundamentally break my brain from all the drugs I did.

01:11:19 Speaker_04
Like, that is a big roulette wheel to spin. So I think that symptomology drives treatment. If you've got a child where every single case study here is 10 out of 10 pointing towards a thing, we've got stuff that often helps.

01:11:39 Speaker_04
where I think it has really gone off base is by over-medicalizing it. Like, do you realize for someone to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis, there are six criteria, and you've only got to meet two of them, and they are so weak today?

01:11:54 Speaker_04
Activists have taken over this entire thing. They've lowered the standards to the point anyone can get this diagnosis. So, if we're talking about children, we've got to raise the standards radically.

01:12:09 Speaker_03
You've said this. Yes. I didn't get into progressive politics to talk about trans women having periods. Yeah. I got into progressive politics to pass fucking health care. Yes.

01:12:19 Speaker_03
So we're either serious about course corrections on this cultural dead end, or Donald Trump and MAGA are going to win, and the pain for the Democratic Party is going to be extreme. Yeah.

01:12:30 Speaker_03
It kind of reminds me of the idea, like, don't run on boutique issues in a Walmart nation.

01:12:34 Speaker_00
That's right. Or a Costco nation.

01:12:35 Speaker_03
I love Costco. Yes. Do you see a course correction happening? And we're sitting here, I think, 40 days out from the election. How do you think all of this is going to play out 40 days from now?

01:12:45 Speaker_04
I think Kamala's going to win. I do. I think it's going to be close. But the polls I've seen, and particularly the Get Out the Vote strategy, I think we've got more energy. I think a positive message is going to win over a negative one.

01:12:58 Speaker_04
That said, I think Democrats are going to, again, learn all the wrong lessons from winning this time. This lesson about, you know, I was watching the Democratic Party put on like a Musicians for Kamala YouTube the other day.

01:13:15 Speaker_04
It's this superficial identity politics that you and I both loathe that's not talking about real issues Americans are facing. We're going to keep talking to elites. We're going to keep smelling our own farts.

01:13:29 Speaker_03
It's like Oprah, Chris Rock, Meryl Streep, Lillia Roberts. Election Palooza.

01:13:33 Speaker_04
Yeah.

01:13:35 Speaker_03
And we're just going to stay on this course. But the argument might be, Brianna, like, well, it's working. If she wins, like. Do you think the Democratic Party is working, in your opinion? No, I don't. Yeah. I don't. I think it's really clear.

01:13:48 Speaker_04
Yeah. We're going to lose Jews, or at least a good portion of them, for a generation, and that's a fact.

01:13:53 Speaker_03
But I think that beyond that, it's can you continue to win if you're the party only of the elites? Yeah. The answer is no. Right. Yeah.

01:14:02 Speaker_03
Who do you think are the voices within the Democratic Party or cultural voices sort of on the left making that case most cogently other than you?

01:14:10 Speaker_04
I know you have differences with them and I have differences with them on Israel. I know what you're going to say. Cenk is a good friend of mine. And he is dead on with Democrats needing to make the economic argument here. He's rock solid on this.

01:14:24 Speaker_04
And what I love about Cenk and the reason he's a friend despite our aggressive differences on Israel. This is Cenk. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks. He is willing to get out there and work within the system on public policy.

01:14:38 Speaker_04
He's never gotten credit for that. Yeah, I think it's really all these voices that are emerging. Destiny is another one. Stephen Bunnell, he is excellent.

01:14:50 Speaker_04
I think people are out there, and I think the Democratic Party needs to be smart enough to hand them a microphone.

01:14:56 Speaker_03
I think if there's like a common thread through a lot of your work and your advocacy, really, it's being averse to the mob. Like standing against the mob is one of the core through lines, I think, of your life.

01:15:14 Speaker_03
You said something that really stuck with me when you wrote, people used to think the alt-right Gamergate group were the assholes. But today, it's trans Twitter and socialist Twitter, terrorist sympathizer Twitter. It's us.

01:15:30 Speaker_04
Progressives have become Gamergate. We just have. We run the exact same playbook. You know, it is death threats, it is rape threats, it is taking people, using everything against them.

01:15:43 Speaker_04
You know, people I used to respect, you know, Emma over at the Majority Report runs the Gamergate playbook literally every single day. It's embarrassing to watch. It's superficial. It's not interested in truth.

01:15:57 Speaker_04
And can you imagine, really imagine this, Barry? 10 years ago, I put so much on the line. My game studio, my mental health, like something I put hundreds of thousands of dollars in trying to build, went up in smoke with the Gamergate culture war.

01:16:16 Speaker_04
And I thought I was doing it to stop the alt-right. And today, we are Gamergate. Today, trans Twitter is GamerGate.

01:16:26 Speaker_04
We just doxed, like, not even a crazy bad TERF, but, like, someone who is gender critical, but actually says some of the smartest stuff I've ever read in my life about women's rights, which is why I adore her. She has the username HollowEarthTERF.

01:16:43 Speaker_04
She's great. We doxed her. for saying stuff we don't agree with. This is straight Gamergate stuff. There's no part of this playbook where we take a step back and go, what are the standards that we hold ourselves to? What makes us better than the enemy?

01:17:01 Speaker_04
And the answer is, it's nothing. Anything they do, we feel double justified in doing.

01:17:08 Speaker_04
No matter how dishonest or the human cost it takes, or just if it causes you to sit in your basement like a freak going through every message board post someone has posted in the last 20 years, we will do that if it gives us the illusion of political power.

01:17:29 Speaker_04
What the fuck has happened to progressives, Barry? I thought we were the good guys. I really did.

01:17:36 Speaker_04
How many speeches did I give at Google talking in glorious terms about the future we were going to build for women and black people if we just changed some policies? and made it so we could get rid of these tactics. And what has happened instead?

01:17:56 Speaker_04
The people I was trying to build a better future for have just become the exact mirror of Game Arcade. It's like taking 10 years of my life and just throwing it in the toilet. I am so disgusted to have whitewashed this movement with my reputation.

01:18:13 Speaker_04
The signs were there every step of the way, and I looked the other way, and it was a character fault.

01:18:22 Speaker_03
Brianna Wu. Epic. Did not disappoint. Exceeded my expectations. Thank you so much. So lovely meeting you. You too. Thanks for listening.

01:18:39 Speaker_03
If you like this episode, if it made you think differently about Gamergate or the left's reaction to October 7th, about trans policy or about speaking up, then share this episode with your friends and family and use it to have an honest conversation of your own.

01:18:55 Speaker_03
Last but not least, if you want to support Honestly, there's just one way to do it. It's by going to the Free Press' website at thefp.com and becoming a subscriber today. We'll see you next time.