#033 - Graham Linehan

I'm no tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website now.

Thankfully, Bluehost made it easy.

I customized, optimized, and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI.

In minutes, my site was up.

I couldn't believe it.

The search engine tools even helped me get more site visitors.

Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost.

With their 30-day money-back guarantee, what do you got to lose?

Head to bluehost.com.

That's B-L-U-E-H-O-S-T.com to start now.

Imagine you're a business owner relying on a dozen different software programs, each one disconnected, more expensive, and more complicated than the last.

It can be incredibly stressful, right?

Now, picture ODU.

Odo brings all the tools your business needs into one simple platform.

CRM, accounting, inventory, manufacturing, marketing, HR, and more.

all seamlessly connected.

Everything works together, giving you the peace of mind that your business is running smoothly from every angle.

Odo's open source applications are user-friendly and designed to scale with your business, saving you time and money.

Say goodbye to juggling multiple platforms and hello to efficient integrated management.

Stop wasting resources on complicated systems and make the switch to Odo today.

Visit odo.com, odoo.com, and discover how Odu can simplify and streamline your business operations.

Odoo, Modern Management Made Simple.

On this episode, we cover the Joe Rogan Experience 2361 with guest Graham Linehan.

The No Rogan Experience starts now.

Welcome back to the show.

This is a show where two podcasters with no previous Rogan experience get to know Joe Rogan.

We started out with it was zero Rogan experience, and now we're up to a hundred hours of Rogan experience.

And we get to know Joe Rogan, so you don't have to or his guests.

My goodness.

All right.

So this is a show for those who are curious about Joe Rogan, his guests, and their claims, as well as for anyone who wants to understand Joe's ever-growing media influence.

I'm Cecil Cicero.

I'm joined by Michael Marshall.

Today we're going to be covering Joe's August 2025 interview, just a couple of weeks ago with Graham Linehan.

So, Marsh, how did Joe introduce Graham in the show notes?

Yeah, so according to show notes, Graham Linehan is the writer or co-writer of several situation comedies, including Father Ted, Black Books, and the I.T.

crowd.

He's also a vocal figure in the ongoing public discourse regarding gender identity.

Sure is.

All right.

Is there anything else we should know about?

Well, actually, Joe's summary is pretty succinct here.

Graham Linehan is indeed the writer or co-writer of several sitcoms, though to a non-British audience, it's genuinely hard to explain just how big Linehan's shows were.

Like Father Ted is widely regarded as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time to come out of Ireland and the UK, sort of more generally.

Black Books, simile, massive following, cult classic with Dylan Moran, absolutely amazing, Bill Bailey in it.

He wrote for the legendary satirical show Brass Eye, the sketch shows Big Train and The Fast Show.

So some of the biggest sketch comedies in British history.

And then he wrote The I.T.

Crowd, which a lot of people really liked.

I've got to say, wasn't for me, didn't do anything for me.

But in terms of a comedy career, he was one of the most successful TV writers Ireland has ever produced.

He was also a very early adopter of Twitter.

He was an essential follower in the early days of the website.

And he was known at the time for taking up very liberal causes.

So he championed the right to abortion in Ireland.

He opposed misogynistic trolls attacking female video game designers and journalists in the Gamergate debacle.

Wow.

But those liberal views, as we're going to see in this episode, have shifted significantly in the last decade to the point where he's even completely, publicly reversed his position on Gamergate.

He's gone so far as put out an apology video to some of the right-wing trolls involved in Gamergate and declared that actually he does genuinely think it was about ethics and video game journalism now.

He genuinely thinks that's all it was about.

And the reason, I think, for the vast swing in his positions on those issues is that for much of the last decade, he's dedicated the majority of certainly his online life to promoting his gender critical views, which include, among other things, tweeting the word groomer at people he dislikes online.

And while he'll argue that he's doing legitimate journalism and he's touching on a topic that the media are just too scared to cover because they're scared of cancellation and upsetting people, I'd say it's pretty hard to deny that his approach has involved targeting specific people and then using Twitter to either initiate or amplify the abuse that those people are receiving.

And that has led to him being banned from the site at least once, a couple of times, I think, and also led to interventions by the police, which he says he's completely innocent and the police are overreacting, but it does happen on a fairly regular basis.

It's more than one case.

And how this swing came about, how this like big change in his views came about, it's quite hard to get to the bottom of.

But one thing we do know is that in 2008, there was an episode of the IT crowd, his sitcom, which featured a storyline where Matt Berry, the actor, his character in the show, finds out that the woman that he's dating is trans.

And that is a conversation that ends in the characters punching each other and having a brutal fight, initiated by his girlfriend in that scene.

But the whole idea with the scene was to demonstrate just how masculine she was,

this trans character.

And that episode and its writer, it was criticized for promoting very transphobic stereotypes.

And look, you could say this was 2008.

It's not forgivable, but transphobia was less challenged at the time.

These were tropes that were easy for people to fall into without really thinking about or examining their views.

Matt Berry has said that, for example, he said the scene is ridiculous and dated.

Nobody holds it against Matt Berry.

Nobody's cancelled Matt Berry.

Linehan, however, seems to have taken that criticism extremely badly.

And he's made pushing back against what he sees as trans activism essentially the mainstay of his personality for much of the time since okay well that brings us to the next question what did they talk about in this show trans people

a lot they talk about it for the majority of this conversation there's even points in the conversation where linehan sims seems to say things about trans people that even joe seems rather uncomfortable with and we'll we'll touch on a couple of those moments and there's points where they do talk like joe starts talking about something else talking about like comedy and films and ai but linehan keeps pulling the focus back to trans people does sure does they also talk about why for example linehan thinks the media came for joe over his covet views um why linehan no longer believes in climate change and why your phone puts a squiggly red line under certain words spoiler alert the explanation given in all three of these genuine cases is trans people sure is all right so before we get to our main event we want to say thanks to our area 51 all-access past patrons.

That's billionaire oligarchs, Lucy Cortez, Slarty Bartfast, KTA, The Fallacious Trump Podcast, Stargazer97, Scott Laird, Daleen, Tax-Free, Nuclear Beer Run, Stone Banana, Laura Williams, no, not that one.

The other one,

definitely not an AI overlord.

11 Gruthius, Grody is the end of all things.

Chunky Cat in Chicago says, no kings.

Blue Ridge True Crime Podcast.

Am I a robot?

Captch says no, but maintenance records say yes.

Cecil should know that a pint is two cups.

I do know that.

Fred R.

Gruthius, don't thank me.

Your show is just worth the investment.

They all subscribe to patreon.com/slash no rogan.

You can do that too.

All patrons get early access to episodes.

Special patron-only bonus segment each week.

And this week, we're going to find out who Graham's new writing partner is.

We will.

Check it out: patreon.com/slash no rogan.

But for now, our main event.

It's

time.

So a huge thank you this week to the veteran voice of the podcast.

That was Brian White, co-host producer of Bring Me the Axe, a horror podcast and the 99 Cent Rental podcast.

They were announcing our main event.

Remember, you can do that as well by sending a recording of you giving us your best rendition of It's Time.

Send that to no RoganPod at gmail.com as well as how you'd like to be credited.

So, yeah, the main event this week, we're going to be talking about trans people and Graham's gender-critical views, the views he would describe as gender-critical.

And so, yeah, once again, we're going to put our own biases up front here to be totally transparent.

We will think trans people deserve respect.

And I think it's pretty clear that despite what Graham will say when he's asked specifically about it, respecting people and respecting trans people isn't high on his list of priorities, nor is it high on Joel's list of priorities.

And that's going to be true in some of the clips clips that we're going to play here.

I think, and I think we both think there is value in listening to two people that we happen to disagree with, especially when they're talking in a place where they're not going to be challenged.

They're not just bringing up the things they would say to us, they're bringing up things they would say to each other.

Exactly.

I think that gives a really strong insight into what they really think and also what they're basing any of that on.

Not why they want us to believe it, but why they believe it themselves.

That being said, we're not going to spend the episode yelling at Joe or Graham here.

We're certainly going to try not to do that.

That isn't really what we want this show to be about.

It's not what we want to do.

And obviously, if anyone doesn't want to hear all of that, for example, you might hear plenty of that stuff just trying to exist in your day-to-day life.

Checking out and coming back next episode is 100% understandable.

You don't need to put yourself through that.

But if you've never really listened to or heard gender critical arguments before, you've never really looked into them, especially the points that they make to someone they think fully agrees with them.

I think this is a really instructive listen, as uncomfortable as it's going to be in a lot of places.

I think I learned a lot about these views listening to how they describe them here.

Yeah, they spend a lot of time misgendering people throughout the entire piece.

They're very, they bring up really old, really tired arguments I've heard about trans people that are, you know, decades old, that are, that are complete nonsense.

So a lot of, there's a, there's a good portion of this too, is just, is just sort of their,

there's sort of like, it's two grumpy old guys having a grumpy old time that's basically what most of this is and if you check out you check out but i think this is like you suggest very instructive to hear sort of what they have to say to each other when you know they they know somebody else is listening but there is like sort of a very uh they're they're very connected on this piece and we've we've also in many of our shows we've played some of Joe's transphobia because it comes up, I would say, maybe every other episode if it doesn't come up every episode.

But it's never like a huge chunk of what he's talking about.

And this is the first time we've ever

had an opportunity to hear Joe talk about it at length.

So we've decided to sort of put it all into one and to actually cover it as the main event this show.

And to be honest, even the even the gloves off segment isn't really about anything but trans people because that's all they talk about the whole time.

Yeah.

And I don't know how long this episode is, but rest assured, we could have made it twice as long.

The hardest piece of

doing the research for this show was choosing what to leave out because there is so much stuff in here that could have been the subject of a lot of analysis.

Absolutely.

Okay, so our tape starts early making trans attacks sort of all about women's rights.

Let me

go back into the story.

But basically, I was like

a very successful comedy writer, probably about as successful as a non-on-screen comedy writer can get in the UK.

I won something like six BAFTAs, I think, in the end, five or six BAFTAs.

I'm not being stupid.

I just genuinely can't remember.

And one of them they didn't give me the plaque for.

I must tell you that at some point.

But I won them, got a standing ovation at the Comedy Awards.

And then the moment I started talking about women's rights, they took everything, absolutely everything away from me.

Oh, my God.

So that's your, this is your version of it.

Yes.

Women's rights.

Yes.

And this is a version, this is why it gets real weird, you know, because as soon as you say there are some men that are going to use this, as soon as you say there are some men who we've known forever have been sexual deviants and perverts and psychotic creeps,

and you're giving them an out.

Yeah.

Instantaneously, you're letting them wear dresses and now they can't be touched.

That is a crazy thing to do.

Yeah.

And that doesn't deny the existence of trans people or in any way be transphobic.

It's not saying that a person can't choose to be whoever the fuck they essentially feel they are, their true self.

Well, I don't know how you feel.

I don't want to restrict you.

But as soon as you start allowing men in dresses to get into women's spaces and you frame it that way, you say this is about women's rights, then it's chaos.

Then there's no rational conversation when it should be totally rational.

Yeah.

With those factors, knowing that some men are creeps, knowing that women are more vulnerable, and you're going to allow these potential creeps to have carte blanche and just go into the women's spaces.

Like, yeah, that is an that you, the screaming at me and the calling me a Nazi makes me think I'm over the target.

So what's happening here is they're framing this as a conversation all about women's rights.

That's how

Graham frames this.

Now, note.

Actually, the vast majority of women do not agree with him on these exactly.

But framing it as all about their rights kind of hides that fact and omits that fact and makes it seem like all women are agreeing with him.

The vast majority of women do not agree with him on these on the way he sees these subjects.

Yeah.

And a lot of these anti-trans issues sort of they base themselves in protecting another community.

They use this other community as a shield to protect themselves and how they portray themselves as someone who's sort of fighting for the underdog.

And they try to out underdog an already sort of marginalized community.

There's a trait, a toxic masculinity involved in this too.

If you listen, there's sort of this paternalistic feeling like, I need, I need to protect women's spaces, right?

I need to be the one.

And they're also trying to like, they're exerting their will on a on a space they have no power over.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Joe even says, when you frame it as being about women's rights, it makes it seem so much more reasonable.

It's like, yes.

That is why they frame it that way.

Because if they framed it around other objections that they might have, which other people would say, well, that's, it's, it's more about bigotry.

It's more about rejection.

It's more about disgust and all these different things.

That seems a lot less reasonable.

But again, even in this bit of conversation right at the top here, I think Joe is saying things that show that he isn't as far out on these issues as Graham is.

Because Joe even says, look, this isn't about denying you the right to be your true self.

This isn't about saying who you feel you are.

Well, when you listen to Graham in this conversation, it absolutely is about that.

Graeme isn't saying, well, I know that this is who you really are.

That's your true self, but we just need to protect the, police the edges here where somebody could be abusive.

It's fundamentally that Graham does not believe in trans identity.

He'll say that very explicitly.

So we see kind of an initial divergence even from the start here.

Yeah.

And they're going to frame this sort of bathroom conversation is going to be a backdrop for much of what they talk about.

There's going to be a lot.

They're going to keep coming back to this because this is Joe's real point of contention.

He'll say this commonly throughout.

Like, this is, this is what, you know, there are perverts and these perverts enter into bathrooms.

And And then he'll talk about why they're perverted and how they're perverted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And he'll go on throughout this entire episode.

You're going to get an opportunity to hear it.

But this, I want to bring

very early on and mention that attacking someone in a bathroom, that's already an illegal act.

Like that's already something that's illegal.

We don't need a

special law very specifically about a group of people or a person who's impersonating someone.

None of that matters.

It's already illegal.

What he's saying is already illegal.

That's also, there's also studies out there, and I'll link one that say that this argument that they're making has no real basis in reality.

Here's a quote from that article.

There was no evidence that violent victimization by strangers increased as a result of transgender people having by law access to restrooms that accord with their gender identity.

So this is this is something that he brings up time and time again, and it's not happening in reality.

He keeps on saying like, this is the thing that can happen.

It's like, well, yeah, there's a lot of things that can happen, Joe, but this one isn't isn't happening.

And we need to make sure that, you know, people who want to just use the washroom can just use the washroom and feel comfortable using the washroom.

You know, and I also got to point out too, real quickly, in the scenario he's mentioning, these are not trans people.

No.

He's saying this is a man in a dress.

Well, a trans person isn't a man in a dress.

A trans person is a trans person.

They identify as that gender.

So he's saying that a person is pretending to be a trans person.

Well, that's not the trans person's fault that they're pretending to be them.

That's a male violence problem.

That's the real root of this problem.

So, if you're going to say, oh, you know, like it's a, this is a trans person, it's not a trans person's problem.

So, like, let's just leave them out of this and figure out the male violence underlying problem that we have.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just as much as any, anybody could dress as a janitor and pretend to be a janitor in order to access these spaces, but we don't ban janitors as a result of that.

We don't blame janitors for people pretending to be janitors, hypothetically.

This is this is not a a solid argument yeah you know like like there are uh you there's i mean if you could you could bring this out to the sort of logical extension and say you know there are people who could carjack someone and drive that car into a crowd so we shouldn't have people have cars or something like it's a silly argument to say that we oftentimes use uh we we say here's our security and here's our freedom right they should they should sort of meet up where you know we don't want to impinge on people's freedoms for our fear of security and we don't want to have a society that's so lax that no one has any freedom right there's that sort of push and pull about our society this is so far onto the security side that it impinges on a large group of people's freedoms and it hurts that group of people because going to the bathroom is a natural thing that everybody does yeah Last comment on this, I just want to say, because we're not going to, we're probably, there's so much tape we can't cover it.

Later, Joe's going to suggest that that progressives will defend people who commit crimes by pretending to be trans.

That's sort of a theme that comes up throughout this.

No one's defending crime.

People are saying don't blame, blame trans people for a crime they don't take, they didn't commit and don't take away their rights because others may kidnap their identity to commit one.

Yeah.

Now they're going to continue talking about trans people and they're going to start talking about surgery in this one.

Yeah.

And I mean, like, you know, this, I don't want to go too strong too early, but

let me take an example, right?

The word trans people,

I see people using it all the time as if it has,

as if it is a stable category.

And it's not.

It's not a stable category at all.

You know, when most people hear the word trans people, they think transsexuals.

But the number, according to, I think, a 2016 study, the number of men who identify as trans and aren't having any surgery at all is something like 90%,

right?

So you have a whole, whole group of people out there who are transvestites, okay?

To give them the actual word that refers to their condition.

Which it used to forever.

Yes.

Until it became a pejorative.

Well, then it just disappeared.

All the

transvestites just disappeared.

I think it's offensive now.

I don't think they like it.

They don't like it because they know that if you use that term, it reveals the truth.

And the truth is that 90% of these men are putting on a dress and expecting to be given every single right that women have.

And it's an absolute lie.

It's a delusion.

It's a mass delusion.

It's a cult.

It's like, and I genuinely don't think it would have existed without the internet.

So they're talking about surgery.

There is a surgery question.

To be clear, they're saying this as if neither of them ever have any issues with trans people who've had surgery.

The issue is that the 90% aren't having surgery.

The 10% who have surgery, by implication, they're sort of suggesting, well, that will be fine.

But

that isn't fine at all.

It's absolutely not the case with Linnehan.

We can find plenty of examples of times where he's talking about how, for example, in this conversation, they say top surgery is self-mutilation.

Yes.

They talk about castration and all these kind of things.

That is the surgery he would, he is here in this part of the conversation saying, if they had that, that would count.

The 90% who don't have it don't count in his mind.

So when someone's had the surgery, that's bad to Graeme Linehan.

When they haven't, that's also bad.

Yeah.

This isn't about surgery or not.

This is about not liking trans people.

And the thing is, Graeme Linehan and Joe Rogan and anybody, in fact.

not even trans people get to dictate what counts as trans.

It's an incredibly personal thing.

Surgery is not a small thing.

You can't say you can't be trans unless you've had surgery in these specific surgical procedures in this kind of order.

Surgery isn't a small thing, nor is it an inexpensive thing.

Like all surgery, it's going to come with risks.

People are going to weigh that up.

It also, it's going to come with waiting lists.

It requires health insurance.

Later in this conversation, in a bit that we're not going to include, Graham Linnen talks about people who are complaining about their trans surgery.

And when you watch what they're complaining about, it's that their health insurance doesn't continue to support them throughout it.

It's not about the surgery, it's about the health insurance.

So it's very much down to individuals which risks they want to take and for which benefits they're going to get from it, depending on how they feel about themselves.

It's not there to be gatekept by comedians who haven't got a dog in the fight, who aren't trans themselves.

And then they talk about transvestites.

Well, transvestites, or rather cross-dressing is often now called, isn't the same as trans people.

Transvestites are people of one gender who specifically like wearing the clothing of another gender, but don't see themselves as that gender.

And sometimes people can move fluidly between those things.

And the other thing I'll point out, they end here talking about how this is just a cult.

You know, it's a mass delusion.

It's a cult.

In a clip we didn't play, which came seconds earlier, they're talking about how anyone disagrees with them, just calls them names to shut down the conversation.

And we need to be having, they need to be able to say their things, but they get shut down for the names that they're calling.

Well, what else is it from their side here if they're talking about people who disagree with them being in a cult, a mass delusion?

This is just name calling to shut down a conversation here.

Great points, Marsh.

I think, too, there's a part of this where he mentions a study.

He says there's a 2016 study where a number of men who identify as trans

aren't having surgery at all.

It's something like 90%, right?

Is what he says.

Yeah.

So I did a search for this and I could not find this study.

It sounds made up, to be honest with you, but I tried to find it, couldn't find it.

I did find a study from 2023.

I'm going to link that study.

So here's a quote from that article.

Quote, the transgender population undergoing gender-affirming surgery is undoubtedly very different socio-demographically from the overall transgender population due to financial barriers and other considerations, like Marsh just mentioned.

According to the U.S.

Transgender Survey, only 25% of transgender people have undergone any form of gender-affirming surgery, with 42% of trans men and 28% of trans women and 9% of non-binary people having undergone procedures.

So I'll link it in the notes.

It doesn't sound anything like they suggest.

It sounds like he's making up a number to make it seem like the larger trans community is not, they're lying to you in some way.

Yeah.

And he may not be making up, he may be misremembering it.

But given that this is someone who spent so much of his life, over the last eight years, talking about nothing, nothing but this topic, and he's going on to one of the biggest podcast platforms in the world with a huge audience, it's incumbent on him.

He has a responsibility to come in with, if he's going to cite figures, to cite them accurately and to cite studies accurately.

And let me just say, too, he might not be making it up.

He might have found something somewhere, deep somewhere that confirms his biases.

And we're going to find that out throughout the entire piece.

That's true.

Okay, so more on women's rights and trans people trying to take them away.

Have you ever heard of the urinary leash?

Do you know this phrase?

No.

The urinary leash

was what was called when the suffragettes, before the suffragettes won the right to vote and single-sex spaces and so on,

the women of a household were not able to go too far from their house because there were no public toilets.

And all the public toilets, there were public toilets, but they were mixed.

So men

would be in them and they couldn't go into the toilets with the men.

So

you had a urinary leash.

You had a leash that kept you close to your home.

Jesus Christ.

And that was one of the ways that men were able to exercise such power over women at that time.

Wow.

And so now...

Urinary leash.

That's what they called it, yeah.

And now we have some...

some

we have members of this so-called civil rights group who are basically just trying to bring back the urinary leash you know so it's not safe for women to go into a space because they genuinely don't know if they'll share the space with a man.

So I think this is a really interesting point for Graham to bring up.

First of all, he's explaining here that

women previously weren't allowed into bathrooms and that was a urinary leash.

And what he thinks is happening now is women are too terrified to go into bathrooms because there may be a trans person in there.

Again, the majority of women do not agree with Graham Linehan on these issues.

The majority of women, study after study, show they do not have issues sharing a bathroom with trans people.

But think about what Graeme is suggesting here, because he recognizes how bad a urinary leash is, you know, not having access to public bathrooms, how damaging that is to who you are and how dehumanizing it is.

But

what he's proposing is to do precisely that to trans people right now.

Because if you're a trans woman, there is no way you could go into a male bathroom safely because they would perceive you as a woman and that would be a threat or you would immediately out you as trans and all this kind of stuff would become a threat.

So, and at the same time, Linehan's arguments here would make it specifically unsafe for a trans man to go into a women's bathroom.

While Linneh would say, there's no such thing as trans and you're still a woman, you would go into the women's bathroom presenting as male, and that would be seen as intimidating.

You know, regardless of how long your beard is, you still count as a woman.

So what Linehan is showing here is that he fully understands that a lack of access to bathroom in public life is an issue and that he doesn't care when it comes to trans people.

Yeah, that's exactly it, Marsh.

He knows that there's sort of this basic biological function that humanizes people, and he's suggesting that we dehumanize a group to protect another.

And neither of these groups asked what he thought.

Okay,

now they're going to, Joe uses a term here to categorize trans people.

And the worst thing about the internet is allowed them to all group up.

Yeah.

Whereas before the internet, it's a very small percentage of people that have autogynophilia or that, you know, fall into those categories.

And we've always kicked those people out of women's room.

So, we're talking about autogynophilia here.

This is something that Graham Linnehan brings up a lot in his

online presence.

He uses it actually to attack people all the time and say that you're not really trans, you're just an autogynophile.

So, this isn't something that we've heard Joe bring up too often.

So, actually look to see where did Joe learn this term?

Where did Joe come across this term?

Where did Joe first hear about it?

I checked, there's been 12 mentions in total of the word autogynophilia in all of Joe's podcast history.

Two of them are on this show.

But the first that I could find was in August 2020 when he had Deborah Soar on who introduced him to the concept of autogynophilia.

And I think we can hear that now.

Okay, so it's very, very controversial.

And before I say anything about this, I want to really make clear.

I do not want this information to be used to hold back trans people.

I don't want this to be used to support negative stereotypes about trans women in particular.

But for some trans and trans women their desire to transition stems from sexual arousal and the idea that becoming a woman is actually sexually arousing

real so i yeah so and i i chose to to write about this because i again i have so many people who reach out to me saying that they experience this and they don't know what it is and it's called otogonophilia which it translates that's a greek word to say love of oneself as a woman and it's a paraphilia which is an an unusual sexual preference.

And paraphilias were my research expertise when I was in academia.

So I really wrote, I wrote about this, and no one has really talked about this in the mainstream.

And because I want people who feel this way to be able to understand themselves and to know there's a whole bunch of information out there for you.

So this is where Jaw learns the term.

And so Deborah Saw is even saying here, I don't want this to hold back trans people.

I don't want to be used for negative stereotypes.

Whatever you think about Deborah Saw and her work, that's how she's prefacing it here.

But very clearly, this allows Joe to take on board the idea that, yes, some trans people are perverts.

That is the reason they are trans.

That's kind of the message that Joe's taking across.

Even though this is how it's introduced to him, is like, this is not to support some negative stereotyping.

That was August 5th in 2020.

Deborah Saul saying, no one's really talking about that.

Well, I assure you, they're definitely talking about it these days.

Even Joe is talking about it.

The most recent reference before this conversation was

in his conversation with Danny Jones in July 15th, 2025.

And listen to how Joel has taken that message on in those intervening five years.

Well, he was being attacked for things that are like openly discussed today, like the dangers of trans ideology, and that these are just men.

And a lot of these men are doing it because they're perverts.

And so they're autogynophilics.

And, you know, autogynophilia is a real thing.

It's men who get sexually aroused at pretending that they're women and they want to go into women's spaces and be sexually aroused.

You know,

now people are saying that openly, right?

So from first learning the term with the caveats of, you know, this is a small percentage and it's not something that you should be used to stereotype people or hold trans people back, he's now at the point of bringing up autoconophilia to do just exactly that, to stereotype people and to essentially hold them back.

And that is something that, as I say, Graeme Linehan does regularly in his online spaces between his YouTube video and his Twitter.

I'll link to a couple of his tweets if you want to kind of evidence that.

But he's not using this in the, as Deborah Saul put it, to help people understand themselves better.

He's using this as a way of labeling people and dismissing them as perverts in order to

engage this disgust mechanism rather than actually like engage who the person is or what they genuinely might think.

Yeah, there's a lot of mechanisms.

There's a protecting mechanism.

There's the disgust mechanism.

He's using both of these things in order to kind of prove his point or to show his point has worth.

The second clip, very specifically, he's categorizing, like you suggest, most trans women as perverts.

And he does on occasion, and even in this show, give a nod to people and say, well, there are trans people out there.

Those people exist, but most of them are people who are pretending.

And they are doing that very specifically because they're perverts.

He's heard this once.

And now he's taking it on to try to infect the entire trans community with it.

He's trying to say that for the most part, most of them are.

Yeah, sure, occasionally there's an actual trans person, but he keeps using it as like, as if there's a large swath of these people who are trans people are pretending to be trans people.

Yeah, because that allows him to be dismissive.

It allows him to, once you ride them off in that way, you can say what you like about them and you're kind of justified because these are perverts and deviants and all this kind of stuff that he wants to do here.

Exactly.

And that sort of reveals to me a problem with a lot that I think a lot of trans people have to deal with.

A lot of guys approach the world as something to either fight or fuck, right?

So they hear this and it doesn't make any sense to them.

And they have to place this person in either one of those categories.

And it gives them a lot of cognitive dissonance that has to do with sort of societal homophobia and transphobia.

So he's sort of like bringing this up as a sexual fetish helps him understand it better from his own perspective.

And so it turns, and then it has the benefit of turning all trans people into fetishists.

So it's easy to write them off as perverts.

And so that's what he's doing throughout this entire, entire episode.

And I just want to bring it back to this sort of autogynophilia idea.

He's suggesting that most people that are trans are doing this because

they're doing it for a sexual, a sexual reason.

But there's plenty of ways in which a person can do exactly what he's suggesting and not change their entire life to live like a trans person.

Trans people are not revered in our society.

I don't know if you noticed this, Joe, but they are not revered in our society.

They can't go to the washroom in a lot of places.

They're attacked online constantly.

They're attacked in person constantly.

They are living as a trans person is a dangerous thing to do.

So if someone could possibly have a sexual fetish that they keep somewhere and then never have to deal with all those things, I think they would probably do that instead of what you suggest, which is change and uproot their entire life.

Joe doesn't understand that that's how they feel inside.

He just thinks it has to have, there's some, there's some mechanism here.

They, they, they, they want to to try to flip some sort of lever instead of Joe just on trying to like wrap his head around the fact that some people feel differently than he does.

Yeah.

Nobody goes through the bureaucracy and red tape of changing their birth certificate for a sexual fetish.

That is not that is not a thing.

That's not a thing.

But he is bringing it.

He will bring it back to this over and over and over again.

So they're going to talk about how trans people have always existed, but it's just not like today.

And they've existed forever.

Well, you know, when they say,

but there has always been people like that in the world.

Sure.

But, you know, when you come to the current iteration of the word trans people,

what does it mean then?

Like, you know, when you're talking about just transvesticism.

Right, right, right, right.

That's where it gets squirrely.

Existed forever.

They wear each other's furs, you know, in the caves.

It's like it's just clothes.

Right, but there's been historical tales forever.

There was actually a famous one about from the old west about this guy that was married to this woman.

And then when the woman died, he was out of town.

And the doctor found out that this woman that he was married to was actually a man.

Oh, sure.

And then so then he committed suicide.

Oh, right, right, shit.

Because he couldn't let everybody know that he was banging a dude this whole time.

Yeah.

But my point is, there's always been people that identified as a woman, but there also has always been perverts.

And so to deny the existence of one while pushing the other, it's like, yes, yes, yes.

I agree.

There have been people that feel like they're in the wrong body and the wrong gender.

That's always existed.

It's a reality of human civilization.

Also, what's that?

Yeah.

That's a guy in a dress with a heart on.

Yeah.

Like this autogynophilia is a real thing.

Men get turned on by dressing up like women.

So this again is an interesting clip because Linehan here is explaining that

he said before that all trans people should have to have surgery to count.

If you're in the 90%, and obviously that's a misquoted figure from him, who haven't had surgery, well, that doesn't count.

But then he's saying, well, back in the day, before surgery, that didn't count either because all they could do was wear different clothes.

So what he's done is just define out of possibility any trans people in history.

Because if you existed before surgery was an option, you can't have been trans.

So, what was it then?

You weren't really trans.

And then, when Joe says, well, there were trans people,

well, there can't be because of his hey presto magic trick of this is the line in the sand that conveniently makes it impossible for any trans people to have existed before that, and therefore get rid of one of those arguments.

Um, I think this is more transphobic than Joe is comfortable with.

Yeah, because even Joe offers a counterpoint of someone in history pre-surgery pre-surgery who was living in as a different gender.

But because there is this gap here

and there is this

friction, Joe then comes right back to the common ground of perverts where they can sort of agree and things.

And even with then Joe is saying in the middle, you know, to deny the existence of one while pushing the other is false.

You know, and he's saying that to say, well, to deny the existence of perverts while pushing the idea of trans people is ridiculous.

But bear in mind in this conversation, Graeme Loonhan pushes the idea of perverts while denying the existence of trans people.

So he is doing the very thing that Joe is decrying as ridiculous.

All right, we're going to take a short break.

We'll be back right after this.

Take advantage of the EV lease incentive and leave the ordinary behind with an epic lineup of electric and hybrid vehicles at the ready.

And right now, qualified lessees of Dodge Charger Daytona, Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xE, and Wrangler 4xE may be eligible for a 7,500 EV lease incentive through Stellantis Financial Services to be factored into their lease calculation.

When leased through Stellantis Financial Services, not all lessees will qualify.

This incentive is is offered by a third party as a cap cost reduction and is subject to change without notice.

Lessee cannot claim EFI incentive on personal tax return.

Consult a tax professional for details and eligibility requirements.

Restrictions apply.

Contact your dealer for details.

Offer ends 930.

Want to stop engine problems before they start?

Pick up a can of C-Foam Motor Treatment.

C-Foam helps engines start easier, run smoother, and last longer.

Trusted by millions every day, C-Foam is safe and easy to use in any engine.

Just pour it in your fuel tank.

Make the proven choice with C-Foam.

Available everywhere.

Automotive products are sold.

Seafoam!

My phone just buzzed.

Another data breach alert.

It was a reminder that VPNs and encrypted apps can't fix what's broken at the network level.

That's where CAPE comes in.

CAPE is a secure mobile carrier built with privacy as its foundation.

It doesn't collect names, addresses, or personal data, so it can't sell what it never stores.

Use the code CAPE33 to get the first month of premium nationwide service for just $30 a month and 33% off the first six months.

Go to Cape.co.

Privacy starts at the source.

Each trip brings its own kind of energy, and your coverage should match it.

Insure My Trip lets you compare travel insurance plans to fit your VK vibes.

Whether you're chasing waterfalls or chasing Wi-Fi, no favorites, no fluff, just real reviews, expert help, and smart tech that makes it easy.

From adventure sports to missed connections, we've got your back.

And if things go sideways, our licensed agents are just a call away before and after your trip.

Your trip, your coverage.

Visit insuremytrip.com and travel smarter.

InsuremyTrip.com.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's jump right back in.

I can't preface this one.

This was just Graham going off the rails here.

Like, another thing that's happened is you got to understand, There's millions of things going on at the same time.

A lot of very bad men have been empowered.

Okay.

A lot of very bad men know they can walk into a female-only space and at least they may even get a fucking payout if someone complains.

Right.

Right.

But then there's a lot of

really lovely kids who are growing up and have been told, like boys who've been told that boys are evil and

they feel guilty because they think of women in a sexual way.

And, you know,

there's stories of boys being castrated because of that.

You know, they do not want to associate themselves with what they see as male toxicity.

So

anyway,

oh yeah.

And then there's other things.

There's like

people like that, Grifter, who said that about the baby grows.

There's all sorts.

It's like a gold rush.

If you create

a completely

senseless system that has no rules, that anyone can be a woman if they put on a dress and it's just complete free-for-all, It's going to be a gold rush.

So, again, as you say, there's so much kind of in here.

I note in there he talks about boys who've been told they're toxic, boys who've been told they're toxic and evil, and they don't want to feel that way.

I think this is a hint of something that we're going to talk about more in the toolbox, which is radicalization by sort of transmission of ideas, because I think a lot of the gender-critical spaces that Graham has found himself in are also spaces where people have more extreme views on other topics, and they would push back against the idea of toxic masculinity.

And I think that's what we're seeing evidence of, of that, those ideas sort of transmitting into George's worldview.

But he's saying here that there are boys who've had gender reassignment surgery just because they've been told they're evil and they feel guilty.

Cite some.

Tell me about some.

Find some studies.

You cite studies in other places.

You name people in other places.

You actually say, this person did this and this person is this.

This one here, which is a center pillar of

what his point is, that there are kids who are being pushed into these, into believing they're trans against their will for reasons that aren't genuine.

Give give me some examples cite some cases but he doesn't because this genuinely this does not happen there is nobody who is uh there are no children who are thinking of themselves as trans because they're too guilty about feeling sexual towards women yeah no that's it's literally fear-mongering he tells us that they're allowing this thing to happen which he doesn't prove so Now he can suggest sort of anything goes because he's created this thing that now he can say, well, if this is happening, then anything goes.

It's a slippery slope where he creates the slope and then he creates the slip.

Like he's doing the whole thing here.

Yeah, he is.

And I just want to point out too, this is one instance of this.

But, and we're not going to play a lot of these clips, but if you listen to this episode, there's multiple times in this episode that he claims things that I literally could not verify.

He will make a claim and I'll look it up.

And the only thing that happens, Marsh, is it directs me back to this very conversation.

It doesn't take me anywhere else on the internet.

In fact, the internet results are really sparse.

What happens is, is it takes me back to somebody who clipped out Graham Linehan on Joe Rogan's show and put it up as a short somewhere.

So that's really what's happening.

He talks about, he talks about how harmful these hormones are, how difficult mastectomies are when people are having children.

I couldn't find any of those things that he's talking about, not a single bit.

You know, he also talks too in this,

he says a thing where he says that In the UK,

you say shoot TERFs.

And I did a search on this as well.

And now I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

I couldn't even find, I couldn't even find a protest sign that says that, right?

I searched for images.

I searched for shirts.

I searched for words.

I couldn't find this anywhere except for.

a link that led me back to this very conversation.

I'm not saying it doesn't exist because anybody can say anything, by the way.

I just want to point that out.

That's a real important thing that you could just say things on the internet.

Yeah.

And that doesn't necessarily mean

that's the sort of feeling of this entire movement.

But even still, I couldn't find it.

And then he's also going to make comments later about trans mass shooters and hormones and all that stuff.

I found that stuff not to be true as well.

He's constantly bringing up all these little pieces of things that he's heard probably on Twitter that he keeps on saying and he keeps on repeating them as fact.

And there's no real basis for them in reality.

Yeah.

They're going to spend some time here talking about hormones and then they start looking at pictures of female bodybuilders.

So this is them scrolling through those pages on the internet.

Yeah.

Look at those arms.

But that's just, you know, that's just, you know, someone who's doing that for a competition.

That's, you know, and not pretending to be a man.

Right.

But my point is, like, if that

person did identify as a man and decided to start using the women's room because, you know, of their biological stress, that would freak some women out.

Yeah.

And to be honest with you, that's a kind of a gotcha that's often pulled out.

But in the end, the vast majority of the time you know.

There's not a lot of those.

Yeah, exactly.

So this is a gotcha that gets pulled out.

But his response is, well, you just know.

The vast majority of times, you know.

Okay, well, what if you don't know?

This is the no-tooth.

This is the wig fallacy is what it is.

I always know when it's a wig.

If it's a very good wig, you wouldn't.

So it's only the things that you think you have identified.

But even if it was the vast majority of the time, what you're saying is it's perfectly fine for some women who don't conform to female stereotypes to be attacked and to be categated as trans

women who are using, you know, men who are using women's bathroom, this kind of stuff.

They are fine collateral damage for your crusade against trans people.

Exactly.

Because the majority of time you know, and when you don't, well, whoopsie, it doesn't really matter.

But you don't know as well.

You just, you don't know.

You, you get this wrong all the time.

Not just Graeme Linhan, but people in this sort of gender critical movement get it wrong all the time.

And the people that they say they're protecting, which is cis women, they're the ones who get hurt by this.

So ask any lesbian or gender non-conforming woman how they feel about the scrutiny that's now on women's bathrooms about who should be in those spaces.

Do you look like you're meant to

be in those spaces?

And the thing is as well, in this bit, they say, well, you know, they're not doing that.

They're not thinking they're trans.

They're just doing that for a competition.

The woman, the bodybuild they bring up.

This is just a woman doing it for competition.

They're not saying they're trans.

Right.

But if that lady was to go into the women's bathroom while people like Graham Linehan are whipping up trans panic, she would 100% be called out as one of the men who shouldn't be in there.

And if she never sort of made a deal about that, the person calling her out would feel like they were right.

And this would be evidence that they were right and

that they were on the right track here.

And so Joe is actually right in bringing this up.

And Linehan just moves past it, despite it being completely disqualifying for a central part of his argument here.

So this next clip, there's a short story that Linehan tells about the internet and and sort of

dating app trolling.

Here's that clip.

Okay, here's another, here's another fun fact, right?

Okay.

Grindr, the gay men's dating hookup app, okay?

Trans men are going onto that app, expecting to be accepted by other, by gay men, okay?

And they're not.

And again, if the gay men complain, they get thrown off.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Gays, get a hold of your stuff.

Get a hold of your stuff.

Don't let them do that.

But here's what's happening on Grindr.

Well, here it is.

Here's what's happening on Grindr.

Straight men are joining Grindr to predate on those women.

On the trans men women.

Yeah, because

some of the women

haven't yet, the testosterone hasn't taken over.

Also, they're catching them while they're vulnerable.

They catch them while they're vulnerable.

They say, hey, I'm a gay.

Yep.

Hey, I'm a gay man.

Oh, my God.

That's so good.

And so they're predating

on these vulnerable, you know, confused young women who've been told that they are literally now gay men.

They're They're straight women.

What percentage?

I mean, how many numbers are we talking about where this is a strategy for getting laid?

I have seen a forum discussion between two guys who were just kind of sniggering about it amongst themselves.

This is remarkable.

Okay, so first of all, listen to the absolute glee from Linehan as he recounts this.

This is what I was talking about, how he has this kind of glee throughout when he's talking about the experience of trans people.

But his evidence here, when pushed by Joe Rogan, so he's bringing this up and like, oh, yeah, there are straight men who are joining Grindr in order to pick out vulnerable women who've been convinced they're trans men.

His evidence, you know, Joe Rogan is saying, what percentage, what numbers?

His evidence is, I saw a forum discussion between two guys.

That is the flimsy basis for this entire story of something that he says is happening on Grindr.

This is the thing that's happening now on Grindr.

Is it what you're doing here?

What he's doing is he's taken an unverified post that he found on an anonymous forum because he hasn't told us what the forum is.

He's assumed that's true.

And then he's portrayed it like it's widespread as what's happening on Grindr.

And then he's broadcasting it to the largest podcast audience in the world where even Joe Rogan is asking for figures because he can't believe that this is true.

Great points, Marsh.

I remember, I think it was maybe two or three clips ago where he said something about this stuff wouldn't exist without the internet, he had said.

But here's a guy who found something on a forum and that wound up radicalizing him, right?

So like he's constantly using all these little tiny pieces for things that wound up radicalizing him.

And then he will shit on the internet to say that this is what's causing trans people.

This is amazing projection on his part, I see, because if you listen to this, you will find there's multiple times in this conversation he does exactly this, which is he mentioned something that is a tiny little thing that happened on the internet.

And that has changed his entire perspective.

on how he views this stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

And as well, he's talking about Grinder here.

Earlier in the conversation, we didn't have time to play this clip on it, but he talks with glee about how for a laugh, he had a photo of himself photoshopped.

So he was wearing makeup and a hat to say that he was actually now a trans woman and a lesbian.

And he joined a lesbian dating app with that photo, pretending to be trans in order to see what would happen.

And he tells this story with absolute glee in his voice about how he looked.

Now he got his friend to do this.

Now he looked like his mum and all this kind of stuff and how he how he became a whole thing.

But when you think about that, who is that that for who's who's that for there because what he's doing is bothering lesbians in a lesbian only space yeah in the name of protecting women he is a man a cis man a straight cis man who went to a lesbian space to bother lesbians in the name of protecting women against men who are going into lesbian spaces or women's spaces These two stories, I would argue, demonstrate that there's something beneath the surface of his transphobia that also looks towards bigotry towards gay people.

And he would say that he has absolutely no bigotry at all.

He would say that there are many people who are gay who agree with him.

But the glee in which he's talking about straight people abusing these spaces for gay and queer people, I think this says that there's something else going on.

And I think this isn't something we'd hear if he was talking to someone he disagreed with, where he stays on the surface level of the outrage stuff he needs to sort of get them with.

That's the value of

listening to him talk to someone who is sympathetic.

Because I think they see his attitude towards gay people.

And speaking of his attitudes towards gay people, we've got a clip will actually kind of illustrate that in a moment.

Okay, so now they're going to like, like Marsh suggests, they're going to talk about the gay community and their feelings towards trans people.

Oh, one of the things we're trying to head off is the backlash against transsexuals and gay people who had nothing to do with this, you know?

Gay people in particular.

There's a lot of my friends that are gay that do not like any of this movement.

Yeah.

No.

They don't do not like any of it.

It's a homophobic movement.

Have you ever heard of anything that's more homophobic than a lesbian with a penis?

It's homophobia.

That's all it is.

And for some reason, people have just been held in this kind of, you know, tractor beam where they're just kind of like going along with it and they're not questioning it.

I guess they're worried that what happened to people like me will happen to them.

But there's increasingly less of an excuse now.

Okay, so is it that gay people all agree with Graeme Linehan, but they don't want to become the martyrs or pariah figures,

the sacrificial altar that he has.

They don't want to follow his example.

I don't think so, because there are statistics, there are surveys,

there is research into how gay and lesbian people typically feel about trans people.

And so there is a search, there was a piece published by YouGov that said negativity towards transgender people is more apparent now than it had been in previous years.

It's 25% of people are negative towards trans people, which is up from 16% in a 2021 study.

And it says in the study that this is perhaps unsurprising,

given that a separate study found that Britons have become less likely to support trans rights, which is why they're more likely to be negative.

It says there is more limited negativity towards transgender people among cisgender, gay, lesbian, and bisexual Britons.

Only 8%

of gay, lesbian, and bi-Britons profess to having a negative view of trans people, compared to 75% who have a positive view.

And then cisgender, lesbians, and bisexual women in particular are likely to have a positive feeling towards trans people.

84% of cis lesbians and cis bi women are

have positive feelings towards trans people, including 66 to 68% who said very positive.

And this mirrors national polling, which shows that women in general are more likely to hold pro-trans views than men.

So perhaps Graeme Lenahan doesn't really have his finger on the pulse of how lesbian, gay, and bisexual people or women feel about trans people.

Yeah.

And Joe doesn't either, because there are gay people that happen to be conservative, right?

Yeah.

And I think Joe might be attracting people to him that might have some very similar views that he does.

So Joe's estimation of, well, I have friends, gay friends, and they don't like trans people either.

And you're like, well, that says more about you, Joe, than it does about the gay community.

Yeah, the gay people who are very, very positive about trans people probably aren't going to be friends with Joe Rogan and Gray Love.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay, so now they're going to talk about a thing called Mermaids.

Mermaids is a charity that supports trans youth, and Graham is the one who brings them up here.

Mermaids used to be a good organization.

Dysphoria was very rare, and they treated it as you should, right?

With things like affirmation as a final step, not the first step, okay?

Surgery and drugs.

Final.

That's what it should always be.

And they were great.

And then they, a woman named

Susie Green came on board.

And Susie Green.

Does Susie have a penis?

No, but her son did.

Her son did.

And Susie Green took over at Mermaids, transformed it into a mental institution.

And

she took her son to Thailand on his 16th birthday to have him castrated.

You know?

And now, and this kid has been brought up since they were four or five years old because there's a famous TED Talk where there's a you got to see this ted talk she does this ted talk and she's got the you know the ted talk thing so she looks like an expert and she's doing the hand movements like they all do in ted talks right so you think this is someone who knows what they're talking about and she just admits that the kid liked playing with girls toys the husband didn't like it she decided it was really a girl and that's the ted talk there's no there's no no explanation of what trans is or or anything like that gay it just goes yeah exactly this is the reality that they don't like yeah

So, this is Graham talking about mermaids.

Note in there, he says, affirmation should be the final step, not surgery and drugs.

So, now trans people shouldn't have surgery.

Yeah.

So, again, we had before the ones who don't have surgery don't count, and also they shouldn't have surgery.

What are we doing here?

We're defining people out of existence by Graeme and Linhan's views.

Um, he also he's talking about this TED talk.

He describes this TED talk as hilarious.

I've seen this TED talk.

I wouldn't say that this is hilarious at all.

Um, it was removed by Ted after a backlash, but I did manage to find it.

It was on a Twitter account, I think, of essentially an account that was sharing it in a libs of TikTok way of look how awful this is.

But I watched the entire 15, 70-minute talk.

Linehan is completely misrepresenting this here, unsurprisingly.

So in it, she says that she told her kid that it was fine to be a boy and like girly things.

So was not trying to push them down any transition route.

She says specifically, it doesn't bother me.

It didn't bother her that her kid wanted to play with toys suited to a different gender.

She says children should just be allowed to play with whatever they want to.

So this isn't a trans ideologue deciding suddenly that their son

was a girl, not in the remotest bit.

She says that the dad,

her husband, the kid's father, blamed her for allowing their kid to play with girls' toys.

So when he says, oh, it's just because the dad didn't like the father didn't want it, that's why they went off and had surgery.

That is not what happened here.

So when their kid was young, the dad didn't like the fact that they were playing with girls' toys.

So they had couples counseling and they went, tried to work this out.

And eventually her husband just took control and threw all the toys away, at which point their kid became upset and depressed and was talking to their grandkid, their grandmother rather, about trying to smuggle girls' toys into their grandmother's house so they could still play with girls' toys.

That was for the entirety of the kid's childhood.

So when they say that this happened at 16, this was the entirety of the childhood.

I think they say at various points that it was either the age of two or the age of four.

They were saying from that age, mom, I'm a girl.

And they were consistent about that all the way through their childhood.

So Bray makes it sound like this is a spur-of-the-moment decision.

This was some ideologue who was already sold on these ideas, who was pushing their beliefs onto their kid.

As she makes clear in the TED talk, she knew nothing about trans people or gender dysphoria until she had this experience with her child.

That was her introduction to trans people.

Because a lot of people, especially going back 20 years, this just wasn't a thing that people experienced a lot.

So their kid,

she had been consistently saying she was a girl since the age of either two or four.

At the age of 12, she wasn't getting any medical treatment, but she took an overdose, the first of seven overdoses that she took between the age of 12 and 16.

Now, was that because she was being forced to live like a girl against her will or being brainwashed, as Grain might want to say?

No.

It's because of how much she was bullied when she went to high school.

Her primary school were fine about it.

And she talks about that being a good experience.

But then she went to a high school and the kids

relentlessly bullied her.

And that's why she started to feel even more depressed and had seven suicide attempts.

So that was the effect of bullying on her.

Bear in mind, Graeme is now misrepresenting her story to an audience of people primed to hate her.

So I'm sure that's going great for her.

I'm sure that's been a really positive thing for her mental health, and especially since this TED Talk became a big kind of thing.

This is not what Graeme suggested is at all.

There's even an interview in the TED Talk where they show

what she's like now as she's, I think, in her 20s.

And she talks about how hard it was feeling this way and not being accepted.

The acceptance is the thing that was kind of causing all of the depression and the upsetness.

And this was something that she always felt and was confused by because it just felt true to her that she was a woman, that she was a girl.

Graham is completely misrepresenting this.

Now, either that is because he doesn't know this case at all, but this is a case that's central to a charity that Graham tried to shut down.

He tried to shut mermaids down.

So either he hasn't bothered watching the TED talk and understanding enough to not misrepresent it the way he's doing here to Joel, or he's lying about it to Joe Rogan and his audience.

Because it's a 16-minute video.

Graham has spent most of his waking hours, as best I can tell, certainly his online hours, in the last eight years, talking about nothing but these issues.

And he tried to shut down a charity over these issues.

It's It's a 16-minute video.

If he cares so much about

these issues, rather, he could at least watch that video so that he could represent it accurately when he's talking to millions of people about a child's medical care, a specific name child medical care.

Absolutely.

So here's some more internet stories that Graham read somewhere.

One person at the Tavistock, one doctor at the Tavistock said that she was sure one of the parents who came in was a paedophile and wanted to keep their child in a state of arrested development so they could abuse the monker.

You know, this is doctors at the Tavistock.

And again, this stuff is not well known.

If it was well known, it would be over, you know?

Yeah,

our fucking news has failed us.

It really has.

So the Tavistock is the gender identity service in the UK.

It was kind of the only gender identity service.

It became a massive center point for this conversation that was happening.

There was some controversy over various practices that were going on there, and it eventually kind of shut down under a huge amount of pressure.

But leaving all that aside, the important thing to point out here, he's saying that a doctor mentioned this, a doctor who even says one person at the Tavistock.

So his evidence of this claim is that one doctor who worked at that clinic had a feeling that something was true.

And he's presenting this as if it was gospel.

Who was that doctor?

We don't know.

Where have they said these things?

We don't know.

For some reason, we can't use names here.

He's been consistently using names at other points of this interview for people who agree with him, but we don't get to know who this doctor was.

But this is just an anonymous story of someone saying something they thought was possibly true.

There's no evidence for this.

It doesn't say that the doctor found any abuse of any evidence of any abuse, let alone any evidence that they were trying to put their kid on puberty blockers to prolong that abuse.

There's no evidence for any of that.

But let's say it's true.

Let's grant this for a second and say this is a real story.

This anonymous story of something that someone felt was probably true.

Let's say this is definitely true for a moment.

Let's hypotheticalize that.

What we've got there is an abusive parent, which is awful, but it says nothing about the validity of trans healthcare.

Absolutely.

There are parents who have Munchausen by proxy, is what it used to be called.

It goes by different names now.

But they want their kids to have all kinds of unnecessary care because they, as parents,

need to crave the attention of being a parent of a sick child.

I found a story from the BBC of a mother who made doctors, who forced doctors to give her child stomach surgery they didn't need.

So is Graham Linehan going to campaign against all stomach surgeries on children in the UK, get all stomach surgeries banned so that abusive mothers like this lady couldn't use stomach surgery to abuse their kids?

No, he's not questioning the validity of stomach surgery here because it's not about the abuse that he's really focused on.

That's not his issue here.

Yeah.

This is another instance of that sort of confirmation bias.

I found a thing, and this invalidates this entire other thing that I want to campaign against.

I found one, what might even not even be a real evidence, but it's a sliver of evidence that he's using as a club to attack all trans people.

Yeah, an unnamed guy said a thing.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we should treat that exactly how you just said it, Marsh.

An unnamed guy said a thing.

Okay, I really don't care.

I want to bring our focus back to how Joe ends this clip.

Joe says, because he gets told this story and he says, our fucking news has failed us.

And Graham replies, it really has.

Look,

our news is actually doing a good thing by not reporting anonymous hearsay.

That's actually a good thing.

Joe is saying, our news has failed us.

What?

Our news should go out and find some

doctor that hasn't been identified to said a thing about one thing one time.

That should be news.

That shows you.

that Joe literally just uses news too to confirm his own biases.

And so that's basically what they're using all the sources that they find for.

They're finding them and using them to confirm their bias.

Yeah.

Excellent point.

All right.

So now they bring up the origin of trans research.

What's

the Institute for Sexual Research served as the world's first trans clinic by 1930?

It performed its first modern gender-affirming surgery.

So it's 1930.

Yeah, but I don't think that's the place that's being,

that, that I'm

talking about.

Yeah, no, that's Magnus Hirschfeld.

Magnus Hirschfeld, this is a big thing that trans activists say that there was all this the nazis destroyed all this all this trans history it's not true they they they they they they went after him because he was a jew that's why they went after him the idea that the first trans class if you look at the first few pages of google search results if you put in anything about trans you'll get three three or four pages absolute nonsense you know of of stuff that another thing fred sergeant i'm just remembering all the stuff i wanted to say to you

so yeah his reasoning for why trans people wrong about are wrong about the history of trans research being targeted by the Nazis is, I remember this guy called Fred Sargent who's got nothing to do with it.

And look, charitably, we could say that he's just kind of getting very worked up about a subject he feels incredibly emotional about, a subject he thinks about an awful lot.

And he's just spinning off in so many different directions about all the stuff that he's obsessed with.

And stuff that he says, even here, he came on here to talk about.

You know, he came on, he wanted to say to Joe Rogan.

He came on Rogan to say to Rogan's audience.

And he's just trying to make sure he gets it all in.

But practically what he did here was when he came across a point that was difficult for him to answer, he completely changed the subject.

And Rogan just goes with it.

At no point in this interview, do we come back to the Institute for Sexual Research?

We just don't.

In fact, we never at any point come back to anything that challenges Linehan's narratives.

But we will keep bringing up things like the two straight guys who someone told him one of forum talking about how they were cruising Grinder for vulnerable trans men.

That we will spend spend plenty of time focusing on.

I want to talk about something that we didn't play.

There's a part of this about 30 minutes prior where Joe says this.

I'm going to quote it.

It's all the same shit.

It's never been more difficult.

It's never been made more frightening to do your own thinking, to actually say, it's now a dangerous thing to do.

Well, you're literally told on the mainstream news, don't do it.

Don't do your own research.

End quote.

So he says that earlier.

Well, how can people do their their own research if you suggest that all the first seven pages of Google are wrong?

How can you do your own research if when you type something in, it's immediately wrong?

What you're talking about is confirmation bias.

You're scrolling past the things that disagree with you so you could find the one piece that does agree with you.

You're going to look, you're going to scroll past all this evidence out there that says that the first, the first, the, the, the Nazis went after trans people.

And you're going to say, oh, that's all bullshit.

That's bullshit.

The Nazis never went after all that stuff.

That, to me, tells me everything I need to know about your internet habits.

Yeah, he'll have the same approach to AI later.

I think we've got a clip in

the toolbox, I think, about how we've got the same kind of thing with AI.

All right.

So now we're going to talk about the things you can and cannot joke about anymore.

And again, the chain of trust is broken, you know, because like you comedians can't joke about it, you know?

Comedians are probably the last people that can joke about it.

Yeah, but I don't see it a lot, even over here it and the show tonight oh i will oh if there's a show i'll come but like the but the thing that i i tend to see is there's a sort of i saw anthony jesenek doing this he said something like we know so much more about trans people now i was like no you don't you know you know just as much as you did 10 years ago even less because there really is no such thing you know it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a non-stable category that's been applied to everyone from fucking criminals who are trying to get an easy time in prison to young girls cutting their breasts off.

Nothing connects these people, you know?

Nothing connects them.

So comedians are still on unsteady ground.

They don't really know how to talk about it, you know, because you're.

Yeah, I mean, I'll assure you, it does come up in comedy.

To say that comedians aren't joking about trans people is fundamentally disengaged from what's happening in the world right now.

And Graeme has talked about it being trans being a non-stable category.

But as you've seen, part of that is because he is defining the category out of existence.

it you know you're not trans if you've had surgery you're not trans if you haven't had surgery you haven't you weren't trans in the past you can't be trans now trans people don't exist but also he says his range

apply to a wide range of people his range of trans people goes from fucking criminals to young girls cutting their breasts off wonder where on that scale his many trans friends that he says uh he has wonder where they exist on that scale yeah okay so now they're going to talk about detransitioning

but that's the position a lot of these detransitioners or detransitioners are in they're all you know they've been castrated you know and richie tulip who who who said it was almost like a dream he was just being you know he he he he thought he was trans people were telling him he was and so on and he said he remembered just before the um

before the anesthetic took hold he remembered just before he closed his eyes like this is a mistake oh no oh god

Oh God.

Isn't it horrific?

Yeah, I mean, it is horrific because it's designed to be horrific as the way you tell that story here, Graham.

But the thing is, those cases, if they exist and if they're real, are going to be the ones that stand out.

So let's even grant that that is true, which is, you know, already kind of making a stretch because some people will want to be able to say that because it is such a horrific story and it has such a rhetorical kind of strength and value.

But let's grant that it's true.

Most trans people aren't having that experience.

Satisfaction with trans surgery has one of the highest rates of satisfaction of any type of surgery.

Why would that be if people were regretting it just before the anesthetic they hold?

It's because it's not doing that, because people aren't doing that.

When there are these one cases where someone thinks they've had that experience, you're going to bring it up, but you're not going to go on air and bring up the thousands of people who are trans who are absolutely happy with how their surgery went.

And there's thousands of them, tens of thousands of them to every one who might have regretted it.

Yeah,

the people who regret it too are certainly going to get a lot of talk show spots on the right wing.

They'll certainly be that token that they bring out constantly over and over and over again.

They'll get guest seats on all these other places.

So of course, if that's the media you're consuming, you're going to see them more than you would a regular trans person.

Yeah, I'd say gender critical people are probably more capable of naming detransitioners than they are of naming trans people, even though the numbers are wildly different.

Wildly different.

Yep.

Great point.

Okay, this is the last clip.

This is his last plea.

We're right, right near the end of this.

This is the wind down of Joe's show.

He isn't attacking all trans people here.

Just wanted to let you know that.

One thing I definitely want to make clear is when I'm talking about trans activists being evil and so on, I'm really not, I'm not talking about all of them.

You know, there's a lot of good people who are mixed up with this, and they see their trans friend and

their trans friend is lovely and they want to protect them and think that, you know, people like me are hateful and will never accept them as human beings and so on.

That's not the case at all.

It's the ideology.

It's the ideology.

It's a lot of trans activists.

But as for trans people themselves, that's a whole range of different people with.

Different everything else.

Yeah.

Quote, there really is no such thing as a trans person.

It's a non-stable category that's been applied to everyone from fucking criminals who are trying to get an easy time in prison to young girls cutting their breasts off.

Graeme Linnehan, 40 minutes previous to this.

Does he really have the respect for trans people, the lovely trans people, who it's not for the trans people themselves?

It's just about the ideology.

Is that true?

I would argue from the clips that we've shown here, it is not true that he has respect for lots of lovely trans people and it's just the ideology he has a problem with.

It's pretty clear that he has discussed throughout large parts of the rhetoric we've been playing here.

We're going to take a quick break and then move on to our toolbox section.

Don't miss the EV lease incentive ending soon.

And now, well-qualified current FCA lessees get an ultra-low mileage lease on the 2025 cheap Rango Sport S4xE for $189 a month for 24 months with $3,079 due at signing.

Tax, title, license extra.

No security deposit required.

Call 1-888-925-JEEEP for details.

Requires dealer contribution and lease through Stellantis Financial.

Extra charge for miles over 10,000.

Current vehicle must be registered to consumer 30 days prior to lease.

Includes 7,500 EV cap cost reduction.

Not all customers will qualify.

Residency restrictions apply.

Take delivery by 9:30.

Jeep is a registered trademark.

This is Bethany Frankl from Just Be with Bethany Frankl.

Here's my summer tip.

Don't overthink your dogs' meals.

My pups love Just Fresh from Just Food for Dogs.

Complete, balanced, fresh, shelf-stable meals that go everywhere from New York City to weekends in the Hamptons.

I mean, you can have real food ready to go for your pup anywhere.

No cooler, no hassle, just grab and go.

I've seen the difference.

Healthier coats, more energy, tails wagging at mealtime.

Biggie and smalls love it, and I'm all about stuff that just makes sense when life is busy.

Go to justfoodfordogs.com and get 50% off your first order right now.

No code needed.

L-B-D-E-N-B-Z.

Your night in just got legendary.

Legends.com is the only free-to-play social casino and sports book where you can spin the reels, drop parlays, chase the spread, and hit up live blackjack without leaving your couch.

Slots, sports, original games, Legends has it all.

Win real prizes and redeem instantly straight to your bank.

Legends is a free-to-play social casino void prohibited.

It must be 80 plus pay responses.

We visit Legends.com for full details.

Get in the game now and score a 50% bonus on your first purchase only at legendswithaz.com.

Wow.

So that's the tool bag?

And something just fell out of the toolbag?

So for the toolbox this week, we want to talk about radicalization.

There's a, I mean, this is a great bit of clips that we put together that really do show a radicalization on Graham Linehan's part.

Yeah, absolutely.

So as I mentioned, Linehan was a highly progressive and liberal figure.

He describes himself in this interview as formerly a left-wing twat is the words that he uses.

But over the course of this conversation, we'll see that he now holds not just a series of views that are pretty right-wing, but also that he believes in a whole host of conspiracy theory positions on a wide range of topics.

And I think we can see why when we look at the figures that he promotes is a good source of truth in this conversation.

He brings up James Lindsay, he brings up Chris Ruffel, he brings up Rob Schneider,

all of whom will probably get their own episodes of of this show in the future but i think this is a really good illustration of the process of of radicalization because linen linehan has some specific views on one topic trans people and then he's unwittingly curated his list of trusted sources to include only those who agree with him on that topic And then as such, he's way more open to trusting them on the other extreme ideas that they hold and that he starts to then take on.

And we see that through a number of these clips here.

All right.

So we're going to start the toolbox with a COVID clip.

Well, you know, I think I could be wrong here.

This is a theory.

You obviously know more about it than me, but like, I think that when they tried to get you for COVID, I actually think that that was sort of left over from you interviewing Megan Murphy and Abigail Schreier.

I think they really hated that you were giving them a platform.

Because when you think of it, no one else did.

I think this is incredible.

I think this is what happens when you get lost in monomania.

Everything becomes about your pet issue.

In this case, you know, Linehan thinks that Joe getting criticism for anti-vax views during a pandemic are actually really just about the time he talked about trans people.

And this also raised an interesting question then.

Does Linehan think Joe wasn't wrong about COVID?

If he thinks that the media attacked him over COVID just for the trans stuff, does Linehan think that Joe was right about COVID and that the media didn't have a legitimate point in there?

Yeah, that's a great point.

Yeah.

There's sort of like this, there's like this media is wrong about bucket that a lot of these people carry around and they just shove their pet issues in there.

And so when someone brings up a valid point about how horrible their positions are, they can wave this sort of, this, this in front of them and say, you can't believe the media.

You can't believe the media.

It's sort of a complicated bucket-based ad hominem that they have.

It's very strange.

It's sort of definition by opposition.

I saw it a lot talking about conspiracy theory.

And I'm not saying that this is something that either of these two men believe.

But when I talk to flat earthers, where they would they would have ideas that would completely disagree with one another, but they wouldn't disagree because they all agreed that the mainstream was wrong.

Yes.

And we sort of see this here as well.

We know that the media is wrong.

We are in opposition to the media.

It doesn't matter if we actually disagree with the bit that we're opposed to the media.

Exactly.

We can agree that the media is wrong.

Yeah.

Okay.

So Graham starts seeing that his actions are going to have consequences.

And here's that clip.

Like one of the things that happened when I was started talking about this is I started noticing like there was a magazine in England called Total Film.

And that was calling me a bigot.

And And all these different and my old magazines that I worked for were calling me a bigot.

And then you see photographs of the guys, and it's always, you know, they've always got black fingernail polish, and they think they're a new kind of human, you know?

It's like, you're not a new type of human being.

So now, apparently, wearing black fingernail polish as a guy is a sign of something.

These are just clues that Linehan has shifted to the right on more than just trans people.

What is he coming for about someone who's wearing black fingernail polish here?

It's expressing some pretty conservative views and we'll continue down this, down this road.

And now they're going to talk about the sort of

the famous police Antifa coalition.

So I think British police are using trans activists to scare women out of fighting for their rights because they know that

if women gather to meet, trans activists will definitely be there to hurt them or harass them.

Do you really think that?

You don't think that it's just they're scared of the trans activists?

No, because they've been advised for years by Stonewall, which was the big gay rights organization in the UK, that these women are bigots and that these women are actually far right.

And, you know, and the police believe this stuff because they've had it as training for years.

So their training is that these women that are fighting for women's rights, these women are bigots, and you should let the Antifa people have atoms.

Oh, they wouldn't say that officially, but I believe that's what's happening.

I believe they're basically using Antifa to control these women.

Okay, so now he's demonizing Antifa and talking about how evil and scary they are, which, first of all, not great, given what the far in Antifa are anti.

Yeah, he's defining himself as anti-Antifa.

Not great.

Yeah.

He starts out with, he's like, well, I believe, and it's like, okay, just stop there.

Just stop right there.

This is just general hearsay.

We don't need to hear the rest of what you're going to say here.

Yeah, exactly.

But his belief is that the police are using Antifa as part of a conspiracy to control women from asking for rights.

So he can't comprehend that it might be a legitimate protest against people he disagree with, by people who have a point, a large number of whom are women, in fact.

So instead, he has to posit this grand conspiracy against him where the police are working with Antifa against him and his colleagues.

Yeah, this is one of those genuinely unhinged moments in this conversation.

Oh, and they'll be trying to follow him.

There's going to be a lot more.

So now he's going to bring up somebody I literally forgot about until he mentioned him by name.

But, you know, I remember I even kind of was worried about you in the early days.

Like I used to be

a bit of a left-wing twat myself.

You know,

I famous, one of the most famous things I did was, do you remember the saluting pug guy who

got his, yeah, well, I kind of joined in on all that and I'm deeply ashamed of it.

And I actually apologized to him at his, I did a video and apologized at a roast

that he did.

Well, good for you.

Because, like, you know, I just, I, but I completely believe this is what I found out.

Did do it.

I completely believed he was a fascist because that's what every publication was telling me.

Right.

And I was trusting all these people who eventually came out against me.

And now I look back at it and think I was just lied to consistently for all these years.

So here he is explicitly saying he used to be a left-wing twat and now he's no longer left-wing.

And the other thing is pointing out is that

Count Dankula, a guy called Mark Meacham, saying that I used to think he was a fascist stuff.

Now, to be clear, Count Dankula is absolutely on the fascist end of the political spectrum.

He ran for UKIP, which is a right-wing party.

He ran alongside Sargon of Akkad, a guy called Carl Benjamin, and Paul Joseph Watson from InfoWars, all joined together as friends joining UKIP in order to do what they described as a soft coup of the anti-European party.

And they lost badly in those elections.

But if you are not a fascist, you don't join a fascist sympathetic party to run as a member of parliament.

And if you're not familiar with internet culture here, this is a moment where a guy filmed his pug doing Hitler salutes.

So he's doing, he's filming, this is that Count Dankiel guy, who I literally forgot about, is doing Hitler salutes with his pug.

And people were like, dude, that's fucking gross.

Like, what's wrong with you?

And they said it was fucking gross.

And then there was this big backlash over it.

Like, oh, you should be able to allow your pug to do this stuff.

And then there was this big sort of moment where people were arguing that this was, that this was something that you do.

And this is sort of like that Edgelord comedy.

It's like pretending to be a Nazi for lulz.

And I'm like, what's the joke?

What's the joke here?

What's the funny part of that joke?

Because like there was a ton of people when the, when Trump first took office, there was this group of people who were like Pepe the Frog people that they were called Kakistanis.

And they said that they were, I'm here making fun of the right wing and I have this big shield and a big club in my hand and I'm literally standing next to all these other people who are right wing and they're not doing anything except for standing next to them.

So if you're just standing next to them, what's the joke, man?

You're doing, you're, you're performing all the actions they're performing, but you're doing it quote unquote, ironically.

That's not funny and that's not interesting.

What you are is standing next to a Nazi.

So I don't understand what the the, like, what the funny part of all that was, but there was a huge movement of people back then who thought that that was really hilarious.

Yeah, absolutely.

I completely agree here.

And I think the real reason he's changed his mind on Count Dankula, Mark Meachin, is that Meachin also makes videos ridiculing trans people,

including talking about asking questions at Q ⁇ As that aren't about trans at all, asking, just going to random Q ⁇ As and asking questions about trans people in ways using very derogative language as a kind of a meme, essentially.

So that's kind of what he's,

the reason he's changed his mind in this position is because he agrees with Meachin on these things.

Nine months ago, he actually released a video

to his YouTube channel where he references how he's actually now mates with Mark Meachin.

And in that video, he also references that he was completely wrong about Gamergate.

The thing that he was passionately defending women in and that he thought he was defending,

he's changed his mind on that.

And the reason he says is because some of the women he thought he was defending turned out to be trans and weren't women at all.

So he wasn't actually defending women.

And he says, and therefore, Gamergate, it really was just about ethics in video game journalism.

And I'll link that video in the show notes.

He also, and this just shows kind of maybe a little bit of the

environment in which some of this messaging is putting out.

He spends that video sat at his computer shaving while explaining these things and cutting himself badly shaving because some of the people in his comments ridicule the fact that he's got stubble.

So he goes away and starts shaving while explaining that actually Gamergate really was just about protecting video game journalism.

It's a very strange video.

He brings up Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, who was on Joe's show.

And we do, I think, have to eventually cover this.

And in that show, I promise you, I will tell a story where my co-host from another show met Sargon of Akkad.

Sargon of Akkad tried to physically assault my...

my friend and by shoulder checking him and he bounced off and nearly knocked himself out.

It's a great story.

I'll regale you with that when we do finally cover Sargon of Bakad or Carl Benjamin.

Yeah, it showed Carl Benjamin's lack of good judgment before he joined UKIP.

It's like, this isn't a guy who has a good judgment in any given moment about what the best course of action would be.

Okay, so now they're going to talk about climate change.

And it's meant that I have to readdress.

things that I've spent the last 25 years thinking about.

But I realize now I wasn't really thinking deeply enough about them, like climate change.

I was always so terrified of climate change, you know?

Yeah.

And, and, you know, I've had about 30 years being terrified about climate change and nothing's happening.

Well,

so now he's even changed his mind on climate change.

And this is because of the company he keeps and the company his ideas keep.

Because he even admits, he said he's had time to reassess what he believes on lots of things because of his position on trans people to the point where now he believes there is nothing happening to the climate.

Yeah.

Because it's better to believe that in face of all of the evidence than to disagree with the people who already agree with them about how icky trans people are.

So there's some edits to this clip, Marsh.

Yeah, so this is a, we're going to be talking about detransitioners, and I think this is an important clip to play.

It would be a bit long, so we've made a few edits inside, but only where they stray off the topic to talk about things like iPhone versus Android and things.

There's a few bits in the middle.

We haven't clicked out anything of any importance, but if you want to check this for yourself, please do so.

It's at 1 hour 35.04 to 1 hour 3721 in the Joel Rorgan video.

So go ahead and check that we've done this faithfully.

But I think this is an important clip to leave in the length of this bit of conversation they're having.

And also, I'll tell you what else.

I have an iPhone, right?

And whenever I write the word detransitioners on my iPhone, which I have cause to do quite a lot,

it underlines it in red because it will not recognize the word exists.

But is it because it doesn't know the word yet?

Yeah, but how much?

Because it does it with cunt, too.

Yeah, but detransitioners isn't a dirty word.

People like want to go away and try it.

Try writing detransitioners and see if it underlines it.

But,

you know, but my point is that one of the

underlined it.

Yeah.

Motherfuckers.

There you go.

And that's what Wikipedia is the same.

Wikipedia is moderated by trans activists.

There was a war within Wikipedia, I believe, where all the

trans ally moderators won.

And now Wikipedia, my Wikipedia page has basically been vandalized for years, you know?

And if I complain to press authority that they call me anti-trans, they go, well, it says it on your Wikipedia.

And

we've tried to change it, but it reverts back within 15 minutes every time.

So if anyone would like to do a class action suit against Wikipedia, I'd love to be involved if that ever.

The trans thing has come up a lot as well from kind of manipulation by these tech uh uh guys who are who a lot of whom identify as trans so we're living in a world now where like the underlying detransitioner they are controlling what we think is normal and what we think is unusual

so just look at what this line of thinking is so everybody is in the pocket of big trends right down to iphone autocorrect which is under which is squiggling lines under the word detransitioner to put you off essentially and that the fact that he's also talking about well the guys who work in tech are autistic and therefore a lot of whom identify as trans.

So he's writing off all of techers as autistic people who identify as trans.

And that is why they're making your phone underline the word detransitioner in order to control what you think and make you doubt yourself.

This is a thing he thinks is happening, or at least is willing to say that he thinks is happening to Joe Rorgan.

I think he sincerely believes this.

And I think this is unhinged.

I think this is a sign of genuinely something of concern.

So now he's going to bring up a famous non-profit, a legal non-profit in the United States.

You know, the American Southern Law Center.

Have you ever heard of them?

They have named Chloe Cole.

You know, Chloe Cole, the detransitioner?

She's doing brilliant work.

They've named her as a

far right simply because she's going around telling her story.

Oh,

I think I'm far right too.

They say I'm far right too.

Oh, they say everyone's far right.

If you say anything that diverts from what a bunch of lunatics online have agreed is the truth, then you're far right.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can't.

Everyone's politically homeless.

We have to realize that.

So just be clear, there is no such thing as the American Southern Law Center.

I checked, I couldn't find any by that name.

I assume he means the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, which, okay, easy mistake to make.

He's Irish.

He's not American.

Very understandable mistake to make.

But I checked the website of the SPLC.

They mention Chloe Cole in five different articles.

I read all five of them.

At no point in any of those articles do they call her far right.

I couldn't find anywhere where the SPLC has called her far right.

So unless he means something other than the SPLC when he says the American Southern Law Center, I don't think this is true.

Now, what they do on the SPLC website is that they point out that she has partnered with people like Prager U, Dennis Prager, and that she did a rally with a group called Gays Against Groomers.

But again, the SPLC doesn't even call gays against groomers far right on that website.

Now, if you go to her wiki page, the only mention of far-right on her wiki page, because I thought if maybe if the SPLC had labeled it that way, the Wikipedia would pick up on that.

The only mention is, quote, in September 2022, Dawn Ennis, writing for the LGBT newspaper Los Angeles Blade, described Cole as the poster child for far-right politicians and religious conservatives working to ban gender-affirming care and to prosecute the doctors and parents who support their children's transitions for child abuse.

That's the only connection to far-right that I could find with Chloe Cole.

And even there, the Los Angeles Blade isn't calling her far right.

They're saying she's a poster child for far-right politicians.

So if Graham thinks there is evidence that the SPLC or whoever he thinks he's talking about here has called her far right, I can't see it.

And I spent some time really researching to try and find it.

I can't let this go.

He says, Joe at the end of this says, everyone's politically homeless.

We have to realize that.

Joe, you're not politically homeless.

You curled up on Trump and Vance's lap like a 13-year-old cat.

You got politically homeless.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now he's going to bring up Antifa and a very clever portmanteau.

It's allowed this to go on for 10 years.

It's, do you know about, did you see what Andy No's investigation into Trantifa,

this gang of, actually, Trantifa is a more general term, but there was an actual gang of trans-identified guys and women.

And

they went to this guy's,

this guy was, this guy was,

I think he was an old rancher or something, and they blinded him in an attack, you know, and then he went out to, he was going to testify at the trial, and they killed him.

They killed him.

So what we have with this group, I can't remember what they were called.

I wish I could remember.

But what we have with this group is because no one has been doing their jobs, including the press and not talking about this properly, an entirely for fake terrorist group that thinks it's a civil rights movement has formed out of nothing.

These are middle-class white guys, right, who normally would be, I don't know, going to gigs and stuff.

And this kind of violent civil rights group is formed for nothing.

It's not defending anyone.

It's not helping anyone.

It's simply there to get men into women's toilets, you know?

And it just, we've created it, and now we have to deal with it.

You know, this kind of mirage of a civil rights movement, you know?

Sorry, I'm not really being very clear but you know you are

so disturbing yeah

so yeah now we've got andy no coming up as a source so this formerly left-wing twat self-identified left-wing twat is certainly making an awful lot of ideologically odd friends at the bottom of this gender critical rabbit hole yeah so for andy no you know we will do i am i imagine he's on our to-do list he's been on rogan i imagine we'll do a show on andy no but he is not a reliable source he is one of these right-wing provocateurs, similar to Libs of TikTok, similar to Chris Ruffort and James Lindsay and the various other people, Mark Meachin, Sagan of Akad, the people that Braeme Linehan is citing in this conversation as reliable sources.

Okay, so now

where a lot of these right-wing conversations center.

uh when it comes to lgbtq plus rights is around pedophilia and that's where this conversation lies

well there's a lot of bad communities there's communities of minor attracted persons online.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's another thing that's kind of gradually getting chipped away at as well with all this stuff.

Because if a child can decide at 9 or 13 or whatever it happens to be that they're trans and thereby lose their future fertility and so on, then what other decisions can a child make?

You know?

And of course, those children aren't making those decisions.

The parents are making the decisions for them.

So very clearly here, he's comparing trans people to paedophiles, just straight out.

And he's trying to allege that this is a slippery slope towards paedophilia because if kids can think this, what else can kids consent to?

There is no link between paedophiles and trans people at all.

This is just a link that's forged in order to castigate trans people, going back to that idea of disgust and perverts and guilt by association when there is no association there at all.

This is straight out of a conspiracy theory playbook and a smearing playbook.

And yet, it's seemed to be pretty comfortable terminology for Graham to just dip right into.

Okay, so this next one here, Graham suggests that we need to protect women because they're easily manipulated.

Women as well.

Women fawn over trans-identified men.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is driven by women, you know.

Women are the ones fighting it, but also there's a lot of women involved in pushing it as well.

It almost seems to be like a kind of self-sacrificing, I'm so good that I don't mind if men come into my spaces, you know?

And they don't seem to realize that, yeah, you can agree for that for for yourself but you can't agree for that for everyone else you know um so and apparently women are on

you know when we're talking about the mimetic quality that that that that the human race has there's also a quality apparently that women have where they will

they tend to go along with the majority viewpoint whatever the majority viewpoint is and the reasons for that are quite understandable.

You know, you have a

part of the human race who is smaller, weaker, you know, they have to be more amenable.

They have to be more

accommodating, you know.

And that empathy is being weaponized against them, you know.

So, here what we can see is he just cannot even begin to understand the people he disagrees with, the ones he thinks he's protecting.

He can't imagine their motivations, he can't imagine what they feel.

And that's because he isn't listening to them.

For all the time he says he spends protecting women, he's not listening to women, the vast majority of whom, as I covered with a previous study, actually support trans people.

If he sat down and actually talked to a woman he disagreed with,

he'd understand what it is that they're saying, but he can't do that.

So he has to instead invent this other set of reasons.

Oh, they're being too good, they're self-sacrificing, it's martyrdom.

And

he's having to protect them because they're weaker than men, and therefore they're less able to hold their own views.

They can't express their own views.

Women just have to go along with what

anyone else thinks because women just aren't as strong as men, either physically or in terms of, I don't know, kind of moral fortitude, in terms of personality.

I'm not sure what ways else that they're weaker.

Says this defender of women's rights who seems to these days to think that men are just better at making the decisions that need to be made, including about the safety of women.

Yeah, great point, Marsh.

This is that paternalistic masculinity trash that Jordan Peterson was talking about when he's talking about, you know, crying babies and how women have too much empathy for crying babies.

This is the same exact thing.

Women can't make decisions for themselves.

They need to stop, look over to a man, and then make sure that they made the right decision if he nods or shakes his head.

That's what needs to happen in society.

This is paternalistic trash.

This is garbage.

And this is all this.

This, what I think, what I love about this clip is that it really shows that all this stuff rhymes.

All this stuff, it all is connected.

You know, there's all these studies that show that you can go from one sort of hateful right-wing talking point, six different TikToks to anti-trans stuff.

And there's all these studies that show that these algorithms lead you to it.

And this is us seeing that algorithm in real life.

It's all those connections coming in in real life.

Yeah.

And we're seeing it backwards because you can go from those talking points to trans issues.

Yeah.

What we're seeing very clearly here is that.

Graham Lenahan didn't start out, I assume didn't start out as someone who thought that women were weaker than men in terms of personality personality and things.

But he has these views about trans people.

He's now associating with people like James Lindsay and Andy No, and picking up from those ideas and picking up, and before you know it, you're internalizing misogynistic ideas because it's better to internalize those than to challenge that one thing that's incredibly core to how you're seeing the world.

And so these other ideological bedfellows just sneak in along the way.

And before you know it, you're protecting women by explaining how they shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about something as serious as their own safety.

The man can do that for them.

Okay, so in

this next clip, Graham is going to describe a recent conversation that he had.

Oh, yesterday I had a conversation with Perplexity, which is,

apart from this, a really good platform.

You know,

it has all the AIs in one search box, so you can switch between models.

I was arguing with it.

I've never argued with AI before, but I was actually having a full-blown full-blown argument with it because it simply would not give me back

the information I needed in a non-ideological way.

What was the question about?

I was looking into more history of what was known online about the con man who's come after me.

And it's so difficult.

It's almost like the AI was acting as his PR guy.

Really?

Yeah.

It was strange.

And it's because AI uses the information that's on the internet.

And the information that's on the internet is information that this guy and a lot of trans-identified fellow travelers who work in computers have managed to keep in the first

few pages of the internet.

So it's really interesting.

I found that an interesting exchange because for once AI wasn't telling me how brilliant I am.

He got into an argument with a non-sentient bit of code because it wasn't telling him the things he wanted to hear about the people he dislikes.

It was, I can't find the information that I want.

The nasty, the negative, it's not being negative enough about the people that I hate.

And the reason for that, according to Graham Linehan, is that the trans lobby has captured the AI industry, that the trans lobby behind it.

And he's talking about this AI that's an amalgam of amalgamation of all the different AIs.

Does that include Grok?

Does he think Grok is coded by, quote, trans-identified fellow travelers?

Last clip in our toolbox section,

this is talking about recent partnerships with the giants of the comedy industry that he has had.

Is there a way to live a normal life for you right now?

I mean, you're on this battlefield, this constant, consistent battlefield.

I mean, you must, I'm going to ask before if you felt like it consumed you, but I mean, is there a way to

transition with

better terms to the business?

I'm currently transitioning, yeah.

No, I, I, Rob Schneider, uh, who has just shown me incredible kindness and brought me over to uh work on a few projects for him.

Oh, that's great.

Something I always wanted to do anyway.

I've always enjoyed film rewrites and stuff like that.

So, yeah, so that's going to, and that's helped me out because it's getting me, my visa is three years, and my aim is to become so useful to the Americans that they won't let me go.

Well, hopefully, this podcast will help.

Hopefully.

So now he's been sponsored by Rob Schneider, and he's going to move to America to work with noted anti-vaxxer Rob Schneider.

I wonder if that might have any effects on Graeme's views.

Maybe we'll see some sort of, yeah, some transference of those views onto Graham Lennon as well.

Under this administration, we're trying to stop imports.

So I'm going to be one of the people who says, let's stop this import if we can.

Let's be one of the people.

I'll push against imports in this particular case.

I've also had the unfortunate experience to watch

Rob Schneider's comedy special.

And there is a...

not an insignificant portion of that where he just stands on stage and repeats phrases he said in movies.

I'm not even kidding.

That's literally his comedy special where he's like saying, you can do it from Adam Sand, an Adam Sandler movie.

I'm not even kidding.

That's literally.

So that's the comedy giant he's going to be working.

Probably not a difficult rewrite, I guess.

You can do it.

And I'm the last person that thinks I'm smart.

Trust me.

Okay, Marsh, here we are.

End of the show.

Woof.

Anything good in that?

Yeah, I looked to try and find, I want to try and be positive.

There's some good stuff around comedy.

There is some genuinely good stuff around comedy.

There's a bit where he talks about the advice that he got during the making of Father Ted and about how to try not to make it too zany, don't make it too self-parodying because people are going to love the characters and you can't be disrespectful to his characters and things.

I thought that was really interesting.

There's a point where he talks about the challenge of writing a sitcom.

There are constraints to writing a sitcom in terms of the set that you have.

And that challenge itself can make you more inventive to work within the constraints.

Sure.

I thought those are genuinely interesting insights among many into this conversation where they will have about the process of making comedy shows.

And as I say, Father Ted is one of the greatest comedy shows of all time.

There's some really interesting insights into the process of making it what it was.

So yeah, that's genuinely interesting and genuinely useful if you were a comedy writer who was listening to it, I'd say.

Yeah, but it's such a short amount of time.

It literally, and

during that portion, as I seem to recall, he's talking about it and he keeps on trying to go back to trans issues, even during that little piece, and then finally does go back and

pulls the conversation back to it.

So it's like there's a constant push-pull in this where Joe might want to talk about something that might be interesting, and there's nothing there.

Instead, he just pushes it right back to it.

I found the same portion of this interesting, but for most of it, I didn't know who this guy was.

And I'm kind of glad I didn't, to be honest.

All right, that's it for the show this week.

Remember, you can access more than a half hour of bonus content each week for as little as a dollar an episode by subscribing at patreon.com/slash no Rogan.

Meanwhile, you can hear more from me at Cognitive Dissonance and Citation Needed, and more from Marsh at Skeptics with a K and the Skeptic Podcast.

We're going to be back next week for a little more, the No Rogan experience.

If you love the show, please rate and share it.

If you want to get in touch with us, become a patron, or check out the show notes, go to knowrogan.com.

K-N-O-W-R-O-G-A-N.com.

I was sipping my latte when my friend gasped.

Her phone had just alerted her to a data breach.

Again, that's when I told her about Cape.

It's not just another app.

It's a mobile carrier built to protect your privacy.

No name, no address, no data collected.

Cape offers premium nationwide service for $99 a month.

First month, just $30.

Use code CAPE33 and get 33% off your first six months.

She signed up that afternoon.

And now, no more gasps.

Go to CAPE.co.

Privacy starts at the source.

So you're ready to release a new feature, but regression tests are slowing you down.

QA Wolf changes that.

QA Wolf is a fully managed AI-native AI-native QA service that builds, runs, and maintains your end-to-end tests so that your team can spend more time creating features and less time fixing bugs.

Engineering teams reach 80% automated test coverage in under four months.

All tests are run in parallel.

That means no flaky tests ever.

Feedback arrives in minutes, not hours, which means a faster release cycle, fewer production issues, and a team that's always moving at full speed.

With over 100 five-star reviews on G2, QA Wolf is trusted by companies like Salesloft, Drata, and AutoTrader to deliver reliable releases up to five times faster.

Go to QAWolf.com right now to squash your QA bottleneck and start shipping faster every single day.

That's QAWolf.com.