# J.K. Rowling – Part One – Transformation | Origin Story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvkFPownS7A

[00:29] Hello.
[00:29] Hello.
[00:31] Welcome to Origin Story, the show where we take an idea, person, event, or institution from history, we explain its origins, and we discuss how it influences political discourse.
[00:38] I'm Dorian Linsky.
[00:40] And I am Ian Dun.
[00:43] This week, we begin the story of JK Rowling and how the world's most successful and perhaps beloved author became its leading opponent of trans rights and therefore, I suppose, its most divisive author.
[00:52] Ian, I'm very interested in this uh topic, but it was actually your suggestion.
[00:55] Why?
[00:55] Well, I'm just sort of in I just sort of want to know the answer really.
[01:02] Like I do want to know how that happened.
[01:05] It's just such a weird story.
[01:09] Like I I I can't think of anyone we've covered that has such a sort of the velocity of change and the steepness of the curve, you know, who's just so admirable and then just start and each there's bits because also I'm remembering my own history being like, no, hang on, you know, this is, you know, she gets to say this.
[01:25] She does.
[01:26] She gets to say whatever the whatever she likes.
[01:28] But it's just like you're
[01:29] just like, "Oh."
[01:31] And it's almost like year by year, slice by slice, you're like, "Oh, that's quite a bit less kind than you were the year before.
[01:35] Oh, that's really quite a bit less kind than you have ever been before.
[01:37] Until you just sort of see this like this thing left over and you and by the end of it, you sort of think like that is a proper story of our time.
[01:44] You know, this is like what happens to the human brain when it comes into contact with tribalism on social media and that.
[01:49] So by telling it, you get to tell a much broader story to a certain extent about all of us, but then also quite specifically about a particular kind of political movement and the way that a particular political debate has evolved.
[02:04] Yeah. Cuz this is not a history of trans identity or trans rights or the anti-trans movement.
[02:07] We obviously talk about all those things as context.
[02:12] I'm sure some people will think that in places we're too sympathetic and others will think we're too harsh.
[02:16] The goal, I think, is to explain.
[02:18] And in order to do that, you have to understand how she sees herself.
[02:24] Yeah.
[02:24] Because what's crucial here is that
[02:29] she still identifies as a liberal center-left feminist.
[02:33] It's very important for her to see herself as a good, compassionate, rational person, right?
[02:37] And it's true that she's not as extreme as as Graeme Linhan or Sharon Davis, who have simply become right-wing and in Lahan's case, just like viciously transphobic.
[02:47] She has she's not quite in that camp.
[02:49] Although I do think that she has become a lot meaner in the last few years you know that there is a hardening and we can look into the reasons why that is.
[02:59] The context here is that Britain on this issue is very unusual like in America and Russia the rest of Europe you know to me antitrans is a right-wing position.
[03:11] Yeah.
[03:11] That goes hand inhand with general kind of culture war hostility towards LGBTQ people.
[03:18] Yes,
[03:18] that was what it was like in Orbance Hungary, you know, Imper Russia for the Republican party.
[03:22] Here the push back starts with feminists um on the Guardian and the New Statesman.
[03:30] Yeah.
[03:30] Really.
[03:30] And she is she sees herself in that context.
[03:36] Now, of course, if the outcomes are what they are, does it matter who's been pushing it?
[03:40] But so much has changed and she represents a movement in the gender critical movement and also changes in just you know who who is endorsing this kind of view right?
[03:53] because it is no longer primarily feminists on the Guardian who are making these points.
[03:57] Yeah.
[03:57] Exactly.
[03:59] Although you still see the you know you see ultimate why does the British government currently have such an anti-trans position?
[04:03] It's because they think that it's a split on the left.
[04:06] It's a split in their electoral coalition.
[04:08] It's the kind of thing that you just I just don't want to touch it.
[04:11] So, we'll go with whatever, you know, whatever we think courts are saying.
[04:14] And that is a product of the fact that it is seen as an internal left-wing debate as well as a left-right debate.
[04:20] Um, and also generational in that context.
[04:22] And generally speaking, when you speak to people,
[04:25] if someone says they're a feminist, you're not going to get it right all the time by any measure.
[04:27] But if you know their age, you would basically sort of
[04:31] make a guess on which side they fall by virtue of it.
[04:32] You know, I look at it and I think there there are different explanations of what has happened here.
[04:35] And our typical thing on origin story is just sort of like, you know, doesn't really matter.
[04:39] You know, we don't really know what's going on in someone's head.
[04:41] You judge them by their actions and what they do.
[04:45] And that's the easiest thing you can do.
[04:48] Um, and also where you can look at the money because very often the money will give you a pretty good indication of what the kind of things that they want will come out of their mouth.
[04:52] Um, with her, it's funny because we we I think people do evaluations of her without realizing that they're mutually inconsistent.
[04:55] So, the thing you'll very often hear is that she's been radicalized online, which is exactly how it looks to me.
[04:58] Just sort of think it's a clearcut case of radicalization.
[05:00] But at the same time, you'll get the sense of like this is a very cynical political operation where the nicer version of her, you know, 2018, 2019, 2020 was actually just a sort of mask, a concealment for the sort of snailing politics that were underneath it.
[05:07] And that there was no real radicalization.
[05:10] That's not a radicalization argument.
[05:31] That's the opposite, right?
[05:32] As to say, there are always this way.
[05:34] And this was just like a very cynical ploy.
[05:36] Or there are other alternatives which is to say that people believe in certain propositions to do with the subject and are not prepared or unable to think through the consequences of what happens if they are enacted in law or if they're insisted on socially and are not prepared to grapple with the morality of what happens once that takes place and their own sort of tribal identity.
[05:56] So it's to me it's like teasing out those different explanatory strands and trying to see which one of them is more valid if any.
[06:01] And I think this is also a story about the internet, you know, and about polarization, free speech issues, extreme disagreement.
[06:11] You know, this is the first civil rights debate to play out on social media.
[06:13] It turns out that's a really bad thing.
[06:17] Um, and it's something that obsesses people that once I see a writer become obsessed with this issue, they cannot let it go.
[06:24] It becomes almost all they write about or they'll insert it into pieces about something else entirely.
[06:31] And yet we're talking about small
[06:32] numbers, maybe half a percent of the UK population.
[06:34] I think it's between half and 1% of the US population.
[06:39] So why does this consume so many people?
[06:42] I do find that very strange.
[06:44] And the other angle to look at this is obviously through her work, right?
[06:46] And it is unprecedented for somebody this well- reggarded whose work is this important to become so divisive.
[06:53] Right?
[06:55] So John Lithgo is playing Rald Dah in this play Giant about the um anti-semitism scandal around Dahl in the 80s right?
[07:05] but then Lithgo while he was doing this play was announced to play Dumbledore in the new HBO Harry Potter TV series obviously.
[07:12] you could do an origin story about that on its own.
[07:14] I know right and so people are drawing comparisons children's author controversial thing was like one interview in the New Statesman pretty much and I think an article that had preceded it very anti-Israel and then in the interview it becomes out as more anti-semitic.
[07:26] Right?
[07:28] It's basically that, right?
[07:30] Rald Dar was not talking about anti-semitism a lot for several years.
[07:35] He didn't use his royalties to fund anti-semitism.
[07:37] He didn't become the world's most famous anti-semite.
[07:40] They weren't protests when his books were turned into movies like when they made the Matilda movie.
[07:42] It wasn't like how could you be in this, right?
[07:44] That is not to say that Rowling's opinions are analogist to anti-semitism.
[07:50] I want to point that out.
[07:52] I'm talking here in terms of the controversy rather than the issue.
[07:56] So, okay, that's not a precedent.
[07:59] Like what is because now anybody who works on something to do with Harry Potter or the Corn Strike novels, they can't do an interview without being asked about her.
[08:10] Yeah.
[08:11] And so I think what we've got here, which is incredibly unhealthy, is a sort of proxy war over a celebrity.
[08:18] I don't think that every actor who appears in the show should have to speak about trans rights and I don't think it is helpful that trans rights is often seen now in terms of what do you think about JK Rowling?
[08:29] Yes.
[08:31] I mean that is a I can't again I can't think of any other time
[08:35] that that has happened where it is as if you know campaign for women's suffrage or civil rights was all about what you thought of like one very famous person.
[08:45] you know I don't think those two things should be entangled but they are inevitably.
[08:49] of all the ways there are to debate this issue doing it through the prism of one celebrity via the medium of social media may not be the most sensible way to present.
[08:58] no it's a recipe for unhappiness so Ian have you read the Harry Potter books.
[09:03] Uh I have well okay so I tried to read the first one a couple of times.
[09:07] I'm just like a couple of years too old for it.
[09:09] Three years probably three or four years too old for it and I haven't got kids.
[09:11] Right.
[09:11] So I'm I'm in that little I'm the ham in the sandwich that hasn't touched it, you know, on that basis.
[09:17] And because everyone talked about it, I tried to read the first one several times.
[09:19] I did get to the end.
[09:22] I did not think very much of it.
[09:22] I tried the films and I made it to the one that everyone says is good.
[09:27] Is it the third one?
[09:28] Askan.
[09:28] Yeah.
[09:29] And I thought I still didn't enjoy that and I'm out.
[09:31] Well, I've read the books with my kids and I've seen the films with my kids and one one of the arguments that I think just doesn't
[09:36] really land is the idea that she's just a writer and her work is rubbish.
[09:41] It's like obviously it is extremely popular.
[09:45] I think it is the the most popular and lucrative IP among millennials.
[09:51] Not among everyone but among millennials, right?
[09:53] And you know, I can say yes, she uses rather too many adverbs or she repeats certain terms.
[09:58] People can't just say something.
[09:59] They have to say it in a, you know, sharply or or whatever, right?
[10:04] You can certainly critique the pros, but I think to say like, oh, it's all just garbage and she was always bad.
[10:09] There is always that the always like this myth where you almost have to go back and go, there was never anything of value here.
[10:17] Oh, I think that's a bit mad.
[10:18] Yeah.
[10:18] And I think it's I think it kind of just avoids the reason why this is so difficult for people.
[10:22] It's a bit like just saying like, oh, you disagree with Morrissey and you go, oh, the Smiths were anyway.
[10:26] And it's like, well, they they weren't and that's why a lot of their fans are kind of torn, right?
[10:32] I did once read um The Casual Vacancy, which is the one sort of I guess
[10:36] Literary sort of, I thought it was really good.
[10:39] Like I really liked it.
[10:40] And I remember thinking at the time, your prejudices are mine.
[10:42] And it's very enjoyable to see me.
[10:44] She basically at that point, right, to clarify.
[10:48] Yeah. No, because it was basically because it's that sort of thing of like she just really doesn't like that kind of like mid-market tabloid reading middle class type, you know, like the adopted parents and Harry Potter of that type and they sort of there's there's a layer of the middle class that she detests that I also dislike and I remember getting a lot of pleasure from that and just generally thinking she was an empathetic writer who was interested in getting inside of people's minds.
[11:09] I cannot connect no that writer really with the person that I see online.
[11:13] So to finish the table setting, we have to talk about language.
[11:15] We're always interested in language and origin story.
[11:16] In this case, the terminology is is so contested.
[11:18] This is so much about the language we use.
[11:20] It's impossible to be completely neutral.
[11:23] I mean, it just is.
[11:25] Sometimes there are these competing terms, but I think it's just useful to turn to the OED, which we love to do, but I think in this case, it's sort of
[11:36] like, you know, let them do the work rather than than us, right?
[11:42] So I'm just going to run through some terms and which and I think also the first citations give you a good idea of like when people started talking about these things.
[11:50] So transgender designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond to that person's sex at birth or which does not otherwise conform to conventional notions of sex and gender.
[12:02] First citation 1974.
[12:04] The first citation for trans is a year earlier.
[12:07] But that's because of these older words.
[12:10] Transsexual 1949 and transvestite 1911.
[12:14] They're not the same thing.
[12:17] So transgender becomes the more common term.
[12:20] Right.
[12:21] Cisgender designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth.
[12:28] That is basically just the opposite.
[12:30] Yeah. Like first citation is on a Usenet group 1997 and it's popularized in the naughties.
[12:36] Still contend some people don't like
[12:38] this word but there it is.
[12:39] Yeah, it's described somebody who is not trans.
[12:42] Well, it's it's one of those annoying phrases that tends to indicate that someone comes from a particular tribe because it's used much more obviously by one side of the discussion than the other.
[12:51] But the thing is I was trying to avoid it in this you know in the script.
[12:53] It's like it's really quite hard to avoid.
[12:54] You end up just saying non-trans people.
[12:56] You know what I mean?
[12:57] It's less elegant than just saying it's a really valid and useful word.
[13:00] I know some people find it somehow insulting or something which is mad.
[13:02] Like we're both cisgender.
[13:05] It's like whatever.
[13:06] Uh gender identity.
[13:10] An individual's personal sense of being or belonging to a particular gender or genders or of not having a gender.
[13:15] Gender identity is generally regarded as distinct from biological sex or sex as registered at birth.
[13:19] You see, they've said or and those are the two.
[13:23] That's what I mean about you can't be neutral.
[13:25] Biological sex tends to be the more anti-trans phrase.
[13:26] sex registered or assigned at birth tends to be the the protrans phrase sorry
[13:32] in later use it is also often and for some commentators controversially the is getting sweaty now distinguished
[13:40] from gender as a socially or culturally constructed state and from its manifestation in gender expression or presentation.
[13:46] so the first citation is 1964 by American psychiatrist Robert Stler.
[13:51] you know he first develops it he's working with people who have differences in sex development or DSD.
[13:57] then also applies it to trans people.
[13:59] Uh, and he also proposed the idea of being non-binary.
[14:01] The word doesn't appear until the 90s, but this idea that you might, you know, not have a gender at all.
[14:09] Transphobia, this is just a straightforward one.
[14:11] Hostility towards, prejudice against, or less commonly fear of transgender people.
[14:15] I think the less commonly is because people go phobia means fear.
[14:20] I'm not scared of them.
[14:21] Yes, it is the answer. Bore in the pub.
[14:24] First citation 1993.
[14:27] Now, Stonewall's definition is much the same, but it adds including denying their gender identity.
[14:32] I see.
[14:33] Um, which of course is is very important, but also very controversial.
[14:37] Yeah.
[14:38] Gender critical.
[14:38] Second meaning,
[14:41] critical of the concept of gender identity or the belief that gender identity outweighs or is more significant than biological sex.
[14:47] First citation, 2018.
[14:50] God, it's very, very, very recent.
[14:52] Yeah.
[14:52] Existed before then.
[14:54] makes I think I thought it existed a little bit before then but perhaps not the movement I felt did but
[15:00] well definitely gender space people who do not believe in gender identity so I'm going to have to use sometimes the term anti-trans as a term means meaning anyone opposed to the movement for trans rights and the concept of gender identity and the problem is that there is no term that you can choose
[15:17] except the one they invented themselves that they will not find annoying
[15:22] it's kind of.
[15:22] So, I'm not going to say transphobic, but I think anti-trans as in a post-trans right is fair enough.
[15:28] It's about as neutral as one can get and we have to warn listeners that we will be quoting some potentially offensive statements
[15:35] as is one of those episodes, right?
[15:37] In order to show what people are thinking.
[15:41] So, we're going to tell a two-track
[15:42] story.
[15:42] We're going to go year by year.
[15:43] I think that's really important.
[15:45] I mean, particularly once we get to 2017.
[15:47] Yeah.
[15:48] Where where the kind of the real story starts.
[15:50] One is what Rowling is up to and the other is the political events and ideas uh that influenced her and indeed the science.
[15:57] Her interest in the issue becomes public in 2017.
[15:59] So we're going to start with uh her story uh up to that year and then move on to a sort of history of transexclusive feminism.
[16:24] So Joanna Rowling is born 1965 Glostershare to a middle-class family.
[16:27] Her father Peter's an engineer at the Rolls-Royce plant um in Bristol.
[16:29] Mother's a science technician.
[16:31] They met on a train from King's Cross, charmingly enough in a foreshadowing of her fiction.
[16:37] Her family live near the city.
[16:41] They moved to a place called the Forest of Dean when she's about nine.
[16:42] And she I
[16:44] think she feel I mean she basically says, "I always felt like an outsider."
[16:47] Clearly that movement, you know, at 9 years old, uh, made her feel really quite distant from the people she was around.
[16:52] She says, "My voice wasn't Forest of Dean, although it became Forest of Dean, believe you me, pretty damn quickly."
[16:57] Not really exceptional at this age.
[16:59] Like an English teacher at the secondary school says, "Uh, one of a group of girls who were bright and quite good at English."
[17:05] Okay.
[17:08] Um, and she wasn't really that happy as a teenager.
[17:10] She says, "Um, I think it's a dreadful time of life.
[17:12] Just having a pretty rotten go of it at that stage."
[17:17] So yeah, she said she was quite unhappy and she said home was a difficult place to be.
[17:18] And partly this is because uh her mom was diagnosed with MS when Rowling was 15.
[17:25] Quite young.
[17:28] I think that her mom had her when she was 20.
[17:29] And we should say actually Hermione in the books is a version of Rowling when she was young.
[17:36] Yeah.
[17:36] That kind of like very bright but kind of awkward and you know swatty and and uncertain.
[17:41] Um, but she also says that she grew up in quite a misogynist
[17:46] household and didn't feel particularly feminine.
[17:49] She brings this up in this essay, crucial essay we're going to come to.
[17:51] I wondered whether if I'd been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition.
[17:55] The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge.
[17:59] I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he'd have preferred.
[18:04] Now, the whole question of whether people are actually out there persuading kids to transition is something we'll we'll come to.
[18:10] But it's interesting that she had a sense that, you know, her her her mom is very ill.
[18:17] It's a very what's called a galloping form of MS.
[18:18] And her dad doesn't seem to like like her that much.
[18:24] No, I mean, her dad sounds dreadful.
[18:26] Continuing the tradition that we have of having awful fathers on on origin story, she says it didn't have an easy relationship with my father.
[18:31] We know that in December 2003, he sold his first edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at Sures for 48 grand.
[18:41] It was given to him on Father's Day 2000 by her with an inscription saying, "Lots of
[18:46] love from your first born.
[18:48] You're like, "Really, mate?"
[18:50] Like, that was worth that was worth a few grand, was it?
[18:51] My first born, she's got a sister, I think, two years younger, Diane.
[18:57] Um, now she didn't really talk about in all these early interviews she really doesn't talk about politics at all.
[19:00] But on this podcast, it's a very useful resource.
[19:02] The Witch Trials of JK Rowling came out in 2023.
[19:06] And I think because of the title, because it was produced by Barry Weiss's Free Press.
[19:10] Oh god.
[19:10] I did not listen to it at the time.
[19:11] I thought it'd be extremely biased.
[19:13] It's somewhat biased.
[19:18] Um, but it's just a very, very interesting resource.
[19:21] Huh.
[19:21] Um, it's presented by Megan Phelps Roper who used to belong to that horrible church that used to abuse people at funerals.
[19:27] Okay.
[19:27] Yeah.
[19:27] Yeah.
[19:29] The Western Burough Church
[19:31] and I think even though you can hear the bias in kind of the editing and some of the choices, the structure of it, I think her interviewing um in it is very good.
[19:39] And anyway, we find out a lot of stuff that was not talked about.
[19:42] That's fascinating.
[19:42] So Rowling talks there about reading when she was young
[19:48] these feminists like Kate Millette, Jermaine Greer, Simone Devoir.
[19:50] She says she was an idealist but never really an ideologue.
[19:53] So she was somewhat interested in I suppose the classics of feminism at that point but not enough that this ever came up in subsequent you know interviews.
[20:05] So 1982 she takes an entrance exam to Oxford but doesn't get in.
[20:08] So she goes to study French at Exat.
[20:10] She finds it very posh.
[20:12] Um, she sort of later says, "I was really quite glad I didn't end up in Oxford because if I could barely open my mouth in exit, like what would have happened to me?"
[20:19] You know, she says she reacted, quote, not with the rage of the revolutionary, but with the smoldering hatred of the peasant.
[20:24] This point, she starts wearing heavy eyeliner, listening to the Smiths.
[20:28] She's reading Dickens and Tolken.
[20:30] She basically sounds like all of my best mates at uni at this stage.
[20:34] Like, okay, that's very interesting.
[20:35] Doesn't discs.
[20:37] The Smith song she chooses is Big Mouth Strikes Again.
[20:40] Oh, wow.
[20:40] Now I know how Jon of Arc felt, but this was back in this was back in 2000, so it was unintentional musical foreshadowing.
[20:50] >> Um, when she graduates in 1986, she
[20:53] works briefly for Amnesty International
[20:55] in London. Uh, and then in 1990 on a
[20:59] delayed train between Manchester and
[21:01] London, she is overwhelmed by the
[21:02] thought of a boy who learns at the age
[21:04] of 11 that he is going to be a wizard.
[21:08] A year later, she has the year from
[21:11] hell. Basically, like her mother dies, I
[21:13] think 10 years after first realizing
[21:15] that she had MS.
[21:16] >> Yeah, she's 45. Rolling.
[21:19] >> Yeah, it's grim. Really grim. Um, she's
[21:22] in a long relationship that comes to an
[21:23] end. She was in a job. She gets made
[21:25] redundant. So, she decides to up her
[21:27] sticks to Portugal where she becomes an
[21:29] English teacher. In Porto, she meets a
[21:32] TV journalist and they marry in 1992.
[21:36] She becomes pregnant. She gives birth to
[21:37] her daughter Jessica 1993,
[21:40] >> named after Jessica Mitford.
[21:41] >> Oh, right. Okay. Who she's a huge fan
[21:43] of. Yeah.
[21:45] >> And then she breaks up. And now we know
[21:47] that this relationship um involved
[21:50] domestic violence. So in an interview to
[21:52] the Daily Express about the night of the
[21:53] breakup, the husband said she refused to
[21:55] go without Jessica. And despite my
[21:57] saying she could come back for her in
[21:59] the morning, there was a violent
[22:00] struggle. I had to drag her out of the
[22:02] house at 5:00 in the morning. And I
[22:03] admit I slapped her very hard in the
[22:05] street. Well, she later claims, like in
[22:07] the Witch Trials podcast, that he was
[22:10] also very controlling that she couldn't
[22:11] have her own house key. He would search
[22:13] her bag when she got in. Um, he hid her
[22:16] manuscript for the first Potter book.
[22:18] >> Jesus.
[22:18] >> And she was terrified he would burn it.
[22:20] So, she would sneak pages out a few at a
[22:22] time, photocopy them at work, so she had
[22:25] a whole other copy of the manuscript. Go
[22:27] just in case he held it hostage, you
[22:30] know, he destroyed it. And this stuff
[22:32] comes out much later. At the time we
[22:36] know that there was some violence and it
[22:38] was obviously a very bad relationship.
[22:40] Um but a lot of the other claims she
[22:43] keeps quiet perhaps do with her daughter
[22:45] perhaps because she doesn't want to
[22:46] become that to become the narrative.
[22:48] >> She does say at one point you know I did
[22:50] have to talk to my daughter before I
[22:51] talked about this stuff cuz it's not
[22:53] just mine. But also, I think it's fair
[22:55] to say that
[22:56] she is she's quite cautious about what
[23:00] she says, particularly about her own
[23:02] life. She's not someone that likes
[23:03] putting all of her own life out there.
[23:05] And this includes many of the things
[23:07] that she has done that are extremely
[23:08] kind of morally honorable. Like lots of
[23:10] the charitable giving that she's done.
[23:12] She literally gave so much to charity
[23:13] that she stopped being a billionaire.
[23:15] Really, she didn't make a big song and
[23:16] dance about any of that stuff. You
[23:18] actually have to look into it quite hard
[23:19] before you actually get lots of this
[23:20] information. She returns to the UK after
[23:23] the end of that relationship in the end
[23:24] of 1993 with her daughter and she
[23:27] settles down in Edinburgh which is where
[23:29] her sister is living.
[23:30] >> Exactly. Yeah. She says at this point I
[23:32] mean she is having an absolutely
[23:34] miserable time. She is clearly very poor
[23:36] at this point. She writes uh later this
[23:39] is actually when she was doing a speech
[23:40] to Harvard students. I had failed on an
[23:42] epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived
[23:44] marriage had imploded and I was jobless,
[23:47] a lone parent and as poor as it is
[23:49] possible to be in modern Britain without
[23:51] being homeless. The fears that my
[23:53] parents had had for me and that I had
[23:55] had for myself had both come to pass.
[23:57] And by every usual standard, I was the
[23:59] biggest failure that I knew. I mean it's
[24:02] like like there are other men I mean she
[24:04] was taking a post-graduate certificate
[24:05] in education. She became a teacher. She
[24:08] was on benefits in a period where
[24:09] benefits gave you you know a bit more
[24:10] than they do right now. She was working
[24:12] in a when she was writing she was
[24:14] writing in a cafe owned by her sister's
[24:15] husband. I mean, you know, this is
[24:17] probably not a full reflection of how it
[24:18] is, but she was clearly very very
[24:21] miserable and didn't have much money
[24:22] and, you know, had just left the
[24:24] relationship as a single mother. And
[24:25] clearly what what what goes into that
[24:27] first Harry Potter book is this grief
[24:31] because she comes up with the idea I
[24:32] think six months before her mom dies and
[24:35] this period of kind of this awful
[24:37] marriage and then this feeling of of
[24:39] having failed and you know it's it's
[24:42] it's interesting wonder how much that
[24:43] gives it this sort of that there is a
[24:45] kind of emotional heaviness
[24:47] >> interesting
[24:48] >> um to it. That's that's the context for
[24:50] writing it. H. So she finishes that
[24:52] Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone
[24:54] in 1995.
[24:57] It is published by Bloomsbury. She
[24:59] appears on the cover as JK Rowling
[25:02] because the publisher thought that it if
[25:04] she had a normal name there, it might
[25:06] put off the boys. Rowling said, "It was
[25:08] the publishers's idea. They were wary of
[25:10] me being a woman. I was so grateful to
[25:12] be published. It didn't matter to me."
[25:14] >> Yeah. Because she'd been re It had been
[25:16] rejected 12 times quite famously.
[25:18] largely I think because it was too long
[25:19] for a children's book.
[25:21] >> Oh wow.
[25:21] >> Traditionally I mean they you know you
[25:23] ain't seen nothing yet. They get longer.
[25:26] Um
[25:28] and the she doesn't have a middle name.
[25:29] I didn't know I didn't know any of this.
[25:31] So the K is partly because it comes
[25:33] after Jay and it's quite pleasing and
[25:34] it's partly a nod to her grandmother
[25:36] Kathleen. M. So that is her literally I
[25:39] know people bring this up in a kind of
[25:41] slightly snide uh ironic way but it is
[25:44] obviously a genderneutral name that she
[25:46] has chosen that she has been asked to
[25:47] choose.
[25:48] >> Yes. It's published 1997 with an initial
[25:51] print run of 500. Her first royalty
[25:53] check is for 600 quid.
[25:55] >> Right.
[25:56] >> Her second royalty check about a year
[25:57] later is for 1 million quid. Um she will
[26:01] never know poverty again. You know she
[26:03] >> much like much like the last time I put
[26:05] a book out. It's very
[26:08] very similar.
[26:09] >> It's extremely similar dynamic.
[26:10] >> Yeah. Well, she's been but she's already
[26:12] been like transformed because you know
[26:13] she gets this auction in the US for
[26:15] publishers. So it's $100,000 advance
[26:18] there.
[26:19] >> Immediate movie interest.
[26:20] >> I mean the deal isn't signed for another
[26:22] couple of years but the guy David Hayman
[26:24] who ends up producing the Harry Potter
[26:25] movies is interested almost as soon as
[26:28] soon as he's read the book.
[26:29] >> Right. So
[26:31] it takes off in a way that feels almost
[26:34] like is the publishing query like Beetle
[26:36] Mania.
[26:37] >> Yeah.
[26:38] >> It's so fast. It's so big. It's so
[26:41] unprecedented. Oh, it's just [ __ ] I
[26:43] mean, look, I was working in a bookshop
[26:45] in 2001,
[26:47] straight out of school, just before I
[26:48] went traveling. I think probably at that
[26:50] point about 40% of the books we sold
[26:53] were Harry Potter books. I mean, it was
[26:55] just everything. there was there was
[26:58] nothing else there. People were
[27:00] absolutely obsessed by it. She starts I
[27:03] mean initially she's publishing a book a
[27:04] year. Um she slows down. I mean she part
[27:07] of the reason she slows down is because
[27:08] actually the extent of the attention
[27:11] freaks her out. She's on a they sort of
[27:13] set up for the Goblet of Fire in 2000.
[27:15] This this sort of for the promo tour.
[27:17] They set her up in this sort of fake
[27:18] Hogwarts Express train in King's Cross
[27:20] station and it just sort of turns into
[27:22] chaos really. One of the organizers
[27:24] said, I mean, she she escapes through
[27:26] the rear of this fake train. One of the
[27:28] organizers said she loved bits of it,
[27:29] but I don't think any of us quite
[27:31] realized quite how freaked out she was.
[27:33] She was quite thin skinned about
[27:35] something that we thought was quite
[27:36] funny. I think she thought we'd put her
[27:38] in jeopardy. And then she just starts to
[27:40] put these layers of people around her to
[27:43] protect her, starting with the public
[27:45] relations team.
[27:46] >> Yeah.
[27:47] >> But the books keep on coming out and the
[27:48] books keep on being unbelievably
[27:50] successful. By the end of the series,
[27:51] she's receiving around 2,000 letters a
[27:54] week. She's almost universally adored.
[27:56] Like the left love her, they especially
[27:58] love the story of, you know, single mom
[28:00] on benefits in Scotland writing in a
[28:02] cafe. The right love her as a British
[28:04] success story.
[28:05] >> Well, uh, the the the first print run of
[28:08] the seventh novel, so if you got a first
[28:10] edition, I've got bad news for you. It
[28:12] was 25 million compared to 500 for the
[28:16] first. I mean Jesus.
[28:17] >> So a little a little less uh rare.
[28:21] >> So yeah to two really interesting things
[28:23] about her reaction to this one is that
[28:24] she really she says she never wanted to
[28:27] be famous. She found it very
[28:29] frightening. She didn't know anybody who
[28:30] was famous. She didn't have anybody to
[28:32] talk to. That that she talks about this
[28:35] a lot at the time.
[28:36] >> By the way, and I believe her
[28:38] completely. All of her behavior suggests
[28:40] that that must surely be the case.
[28:42] >> She seems quite scared. She really
[28:44] dislikes doing the publicity. She's,
[28:46] like you said, she's described as as as
[28:48] thin- skinned, uh, controlling, closed
[28:51] off, but this is all coming from that
[28:52] same impulse. She's, if you've if you've
[28:54] heard a clip of that Harvard speech,
[28:56] >> she's quite a nervous public speaker.
[28:58] >> She's good with children. Not so great
[29:00] with, you know, talking to adults.
[29:02] >> At this point, she's like the most
[29:04] successful author on earth talking to a
[29:06] bunch of students. And yet, she looks
[29:08] nervy, you know. But then also there's
[29:10] the fact that her ex-husband um turned
[29:13] up in her flat in Edinburgh. She had to
[29:16] get a restraining order.
[29:18] >> I didn't know that.
[29:19] >> Then in 1999
[29:22] uh he goes and speaks to the male and
[29:24] the express who she's already suspicious
[29:26] of the media. So there is a sense that
[29:28] he hasn't gone away and he's sort of
[29:30] come back to um [ __ ] up her life. And
[29:33] there's a really interesting thing in a
[29:34] in I think the New Yorker profile of
[29:36] Rowling where Ian Rankin fellow
[29:38] >> Yes. author. So, she is wary of
[29:40] situations you can't always control in
[29:43] the real world
[29:44] >> as opposed to in the novels where she
[29:47] can control everything.
[29:48] >> Um, so, so it sort of sets somebody up
[29:51] here who is quite
[29:54] >> who's very private and nervous and
[29:57] fearful, overwhelmed. They said she
[29:59] spends three years to write the fifth
[30:00] novel. Yeah.
[30:01] >> Which is the longest and probably the
[30:03] worst.
[30:04] >> You know, she's really discombobulated
[30:07] by it.
[30:08] Also, this incredibly intense fandom is
[30:11] the world's first big online fandom.
[30:13] It's fascinating that a lot of people,
[30:14] the first time they went online was to
[30:16] be part of a Harry Potter
[30:17] >> Oh, no way.
[30:18] >> Discussion, right?
[30:19] >> Attracts a lot of sensitive outsiders,
[30:21] including a lot of LGBTQ people
[30:24] >> because it's a story of a boy who fights
[30:26] these bigots and bullies and fanatics to
[30:28] find this more welcoming substitute
[30:30] family and become his true self. And
[30:32] that's that's the way that the way that
[30:34] they read it. And she kind of endorses
[30:36] that because at Harvard she talks a lot
[30:38] about empathy and says those who choose
[30:40] not to empathize enable real monsters.
[30:42] This is who she represents at that
[30:44] point.
[30:45] >> And funny the flack she's getting is
[30:47] from the Christian right.
[30:49] >> So around 2000 she starts being
[30:50] demonized by evangelicals in America
[30:53] including members of the Bush
[30:54] administration later for promoting
[30:56] witchcraft. Literally for promoting
[30:57] witchcraft. And I had no idea about
[30:59] this, but some of the legal battles over
[31:01] book bans set legal precedents that are
[31:04] now being used to protect LGBTQ books
[31:08] from being banned. Oh,
[31:09] >> really?
[31:09] >> It was like a major thing. So, she
[31:11] thought if she had any enemies in the
[31:13] world, it was extreme right-wing
[31:17] Christian evangelicals.
[31:18] >> Yeah. She has a like it's almost it's
[31:21] hard to imagine what it must be like to
[31:23] be this person. You know, the stories
[31:25] that you hear of when fans approach,
[31:28] it's basically saying, "Can I hug you?"
[31:29] Yeah.
[31:30] >> And then they'll hug and just say, "You
[31:31] were my childhood." She was, I mean, she
[31:33] probably is told
[31:35] dozens of times every day for years. You
[31:38] were my childhood. You've essentially
[31:39] formed all these human beings. Um, and
[31:42] that's how they see you and increasingly
[31:43] it might be how you see them. And yet
[31:45] you con no matter what happens that
[31:47] description of her character stays very
[31:49] very similar, right? So here's her her
[31:51] she has a second husband called Neil
[31:52] Murray. She meets in 2001. and they have
[31:54] two kids. He's a doctor. His only public
[31:56] comments about his wife caught by a
[31:58] documentary crew. Joe detaches herself.
[32:00] When she's very stressed, she'll detach
[32:02] herself and only trust one person and
[32:04] that's herself. So, everyone else gets
[32:06] blocked out and she becomes more and
[32:08] more stressed and less and less able to
[32:10] accept any help. It's also then
[32:12] pertinent to think that later on, I
[32:14] mean, she publishes a book called The
[32:15] Casual Vacancy.
[32:16] >> At one point, three characters read
[32:18] critical comments about themselves on a
[32:20] local website.
[32:22] accurate comments about themselves where
[32:24] they're, you know, critical and then
[32:26] completely fall apart in outrage. And to
[32:28] quote The New Yorker, the novel seems to
[32:30] treat extreme touchiness as a default
[32:33] psychological setting.
[32:34] >> I I I copied that down as well. That was
[32:37] a really interesting observation.
[32:38] >> Well, it's given that it's being written
[32:40] at a time, you know, half a decade
[32:42] before any of this stuff emerges.
[32:43] >> So, that's then followed by the first
[32:45] corn strike detective novel in 2013,
[32:47] which under the name Robert Galbra.
[32:49] Originally she goes out under the
[32:50] pseudonym and then it gets leaked and
[32:52] then hey it starts selling quite a lot
[32:54] more
[32:55] >> and it's not like she's unaware. She
[32:57] does speak about so she sort of says you
[32:59] know on those strike books she says I
[33:02] wanted to take my writing persona as far
[33:04] away as possible from me so a male
[33:05] pseudonym seemed a good idea. I am proud
[33:08] to say though that when I unmasked
[33:09] myself to my editor who had read and
[33:11] enjoyed The Cuckoo's Calling without
[33:13] realizing I wrote it, one of the first
[33:14] things he said was I would never have
[33:16] thought a woman wrote that. Apparently,
[33:18] I had successfully channeled my inner
[33:20] bloke.
[33:21] >> Again, I was sort of I wasn't sure about
[33:23] whether to include this. I just thought,
[33:24] is this just very superficial? But it
[33:26] it's just you're just like, how can you
[33:27] not make this fact? It's staring you in
[33:30] the face.
[33:31] >> So, she joins Twitter in 2014, which at
[33:33] the time, and this come this time
[33:35] capsule, calls it an unmixed blessing
[33:37] because you can just have a good chat
[33:38] with people.
[33:40] >> Very, very few people describe it in
[33:41] those terms now.
[33:42] >> And as she later explained, she gets
[33:44] very interested in online subcultures,
[33:45] particularly around Tumblr.
[33:47] which is very kind of it's young women
[33:50] very left-wing and she kind of gets
[33:53] involved in this sort of early anti-woke
[33:54] backlash around 2015. This this quite
[33:56] sort of that Tumblr tone which is quite
[33:59] shrill and sensorious
[34:01] um
[34:02] >> and to do with no platforming and cancel
[34:03] culture and things that are problematic
[34:05] etc etc. Um and I think that is how she
[34:08] frames trans people and trans rights.
[34:11] Yeah,
[34:11] >> it's sort of that because soon she's
[34:13] reading about uh it's not just
[34:14] right-wing trolls that are being no
[34:16] platformed, it's leftwing feminists. Why
[34:18] is that?
[34:35] So there is this idea that rolling and
[34:36] her allies like to push that that that
[34:38] her position is the feminist position,
[34:40] >> right?
[34:40] >> In fact, it has always been a divide
[34:42] within feminism.
[34:43] >> Yeah.
[34:44] >> Starts in second-wave feminism about
[34:46] transincclusion and who is a woman. So,
[34:50] do you remember for the New Left
[34:51] episodes the feminist Robin Morgan who
[34:54] uh published Sisterhood is Powerful?
[34:57] Um, now in 1973 at the West Coast
[34:59] Lesbian Conference, she denounces uh a
[35:02] trans folk singer and organizer, one of
[35:05] the organizers of the conference, Beth
[35:07] Elliot, she calls her an opportunist, an
[35:09] infiltrator, a destroyer,
[35:12] >> and she calls for a vote to have her
[35:14] rejected. Twothirds of the attendees
[35:17] vote no. she can stay. So, I thought it
[35:20] was quite interesting. This is 1973.
[35:22] Yeah. And you actually have a majority
[35:24] at this lesbian conference going, "No,
[35:26] >> yeah,
[35:27] >> she she counts."
[35:28] >> So, you've got these two different
[35:30] strands. You've got Janice Raymond's
[35:32] 1979 book, The Transsexual Empire. What
[35:35] a terrifying title. Uh describes
[35:37] transition as a form of rape and says
[35:40] the problem of transsexualism would best
[35:42] be served by morally mandating it out of
[35:44] existence.
[35:45] >> Wow. In 1989, Jermaine Greer publishes
[35:48] an article called on why sex change is a
[35:50] lie and says it doesn't matter if you
[35:52] pass or not. It doesn't matter if you've
[35:53] had surgery or not. Because there was
[35:55] some division here about whether or not
[35:57] you had medically transitioned.
[35:59] >> But Jermaine Gri was just like it
[36:00] doesn't matter.
[36:01] >> Okay.
[36:02] >> Then you've got this other tradition. So
[36:04] Katherine McKinnon, very important
[36:05] feminist years later says, "Anybody who
[36:08] identifies as a woman, wants to be a
[36:09] woman, is going around being a woman, as
[36:11] far as I'm concerned, is a woman."
[36:13] Crucially, in 1990, there's Judith
[36:15] Butler's book, Gender Trouble, which is
[36:17] a key text in queer theory and gender
[36:19] studies.
[36:21] >> Her position is still quite radical. She
[36:23] says it's not just gender that's
[36:24] socially constructed, but sex is as
[36:26] well. Um, most people would actually
[36:28] make a distinction still between sex and
[36:31] gender.
[36:32] >> I mean, I'm taking no position on this.
[36:34] I'm not expert. I'm just laying out just
[36:36] trying to survive
[36:37] >> laying out the terms here. So there's
[36:40] this thing that happens in the late '7s,
[36:42] early ' 80s called the sex wars, uh,
[36:44] which kind of breaks up secondwave
[36:46] feminism. Mainly what they're arguing
[36:47] about is issues like pornography and
[36:49] prostitution.
[36:51] >> The trans issue is actually relatively
[36:52] small part of that. Then in the early
[36:55] '9s, you get third-wave feminism, which
[36:57] is generally more sex positive on those
[37:00] issues I mentioned and also inclusive.
[37:04] Uh, and there's a kind of famous
[37:06] disagreement at the Michigan Women's
[37:08] Music Festival about whether trans women
[37:11] should be allowed. There's a brilliant
[37:12] John Ronson things fell apart podcast
[37:15] about this. We interviewed some people
[37:17] who were there.
[37:18] >> I don't need to go into the details. The
[37:19] important thing is is that in 2008, a
[37:22] feminist called Viv Smay was writing a
[37:24] kind of online glossery of feminism.
[37:27] She's writing about what happened at the
[37:29] Mitchan Women's Festival and she needed
[37:32] a way to describe the anti-inclusion
[37:34] position without saying transphobia.
[37:38] >> So she consults with feminists on, you
[37:40] know, with different points of view and
[37:42] they sort of agree together
[37:44] transexclusionary radical feminist
[37:47] abbreviated as turf. Smay said it was
[37:50] meant to be a deliberately technically
[37:52] neutral description of an activist
[37:54] grouping. Right. Okay.
[37:57] OED says, "A feminist whose advocacy of
[38:00] women's rights excludes or is thought to
[38:02] exclude the rights of transgender women,
[38:03] also more generally, a person whose
[38:05] views on gender identity are or are
[38:07] considered hostile to transgender people
[38:09] or who opposes social and political
[38:11] policies designed to be inclusive of
[38:13] transgender people. Now, there's
[38:14] something about the abbreviation turf,
[38:16] which means it has become very
[38:17] derogatory and it sounds quite hostile
[38:19] when shouted out.
[38:21] The only way in which this is inaccurate
[38:23] is that a lot of these people are not
[38:24] radical feminists. But transexclusionary
[38:27] radical feminist was not meant to be an
[38:29] insult. It was meant to be like how do
[38:30] we describe these radical feminists who
[38:32] are transexclusionary.
[38:33] >> Yes. Yes.
[38:34] >> So it's sort of weird the way it's
[38:35] treated like a slur and yet it's not
[38:37] factually inaccurate.
[38:38] >> No, it's it's about how onatopic
[38:42] >> the acronym is.
[38:43] >> It's got nothing to do with the content.
[38:45] It's just to say that that once you turn
[38:46] it into turf, it just sounds like a bad
[38:49] thing. And then of course it's taken up
[38:50] by one and now of course I think it's
[38:51] sort of basically been almost completely
[38:53] reclaimed by by the other. And it's sort
[38:55] of like if you even come into brief
[38:56] contact with this thing you just think
[38:58] that's one of the words I will try never
[39:00] to use because it's going to do
[39:01] absolutely no good to have any kind of
[39:03] sensible discussion.
[39:04] >> There's a lot of language wars uh going
[39:06] on. So the point I'm I'm making here
[39:08] there is a genuine divide in feminism as
[39:11] there is among gay men and lesbians. It
[39:13] is largely but not exclusively
[39:15] generational.
[39:17] And yet some gender-ritical feminists,
[39:20] you know, really argue that they are the
[39:21] only real feminists and that the
[39:23] trans-inclusive feminists are then are
[39:25] naive. They're deluded. They're
[39:26] treacherous. They're handmaidadens is a
[39:28] term from, you know, handmaid's tale.
[39:31] >> Uh, one of them, Victoria Smith, says,
[39:33] "I think this particular belief, gender
[39:34] critical, is a prerequisite for being a
[39:36] feminist. Not holding it is
[39:38] anti-feminist."
[39:39] >> Right?
[39:40] >> In fact, the most anti-trans demographic
[39:41] is, of course, straight men. And there
[39:44] are huge numbers of feminists who do not
[39:47] hold that view. You know, that's really
[39:49] really important because there's such an
[39:50] effort to go trans, you know, Judith
[39:53] Butler's just going, it's not trans
[39:54] people versus feminists.
[39:56] >> Mhm.
[39:56] >> If you have to see it in versus terms,
[39:58] it's trans people and some feminists
[40:00] versus some other feminists. Yes.
[40:03] >> As you might imagine,
[40:05] >> to get us to 2017, right, it actually
[40:07] starts with the European Court of Human
[40:09] Rights. There's a nice little
[40:10] >> Good call back. Yeah. here in 2002 rules
[40:14] that a trans person's inability to
[40:15] change their sex on their birth
[40:16] certificate is a breach of human rights
[40:18] and they should have full legal
[40:19] recognition
[40:20] >> straight away. This is 2002. Some
[40:23] British clinicians write an open letter
[40:25] to paper arguing the decision is a
[40:26] victory of fantasy over reality.
[40:28] >> Right. Very against this. So as a result
[40:31] of this ruling,
[40:33] the UK has to introduce the Gender
[40:35] Recognition Act in 2004.
[40:37] >> Yeah. It's actually one of the most
[40:39] restrictive systems in Europe. You can
[40:42] obtain a gender recognition certificate.
[40:43] Three things. If you provide evidence of
[40:45] a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from
[40:48] your doctor, if you've lived in your
[40:49] acquired gender for two years, and if
[40:52] you make a statutory declaration, you
[40:53] intend to live in your acquired gender
[40:55] for the rest of your life.
[40:58] >> At the time, some feminists uh are
[41:01] attacking this. It was not
[41:03] uncontroversial. I'm going to kind of
[41:06] quote this piece, this viciously
[41:07] transphobic piece by Julie Bindle in the
[41:09] Guardian. It's quite unpleasant, but
[41:11] just to disprove the idea that it
[41:14] started as very moderate and
[41:15] compassionate and then got angry because
[41:17] of toxicity of social media and all that
[41:20] lot.
[41:20] >> Right? So, it's called gender benders
[41:22] beware. I don't have a problem with men
[41:24] disposing of their genitals, but it does
[41:26] not make them women in the same way that
[41:28] shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your
[41:30] 501s does not make you a man.
[41:32] >> Okay?
[41:33] >> It's pretty ugly uh stuff. there's a lot
[41:37] of obsession uh with genitals going on.
[41:41] Uh then you've got the Equality Act 2010
[41:44] obviously very important later where
[41:46] there's quite a lot this sort of
[41:48] dangerous ambiguity about sex and gender
[41:50] which of course a lot of people are
[41:51] using interchangeably right yeah
[41:54] >> it wasn't like a big debate oh this
[41:55] distinction it's not like Judith Butler
[41:57] was
[41:58] >> drawing it up
[41:59] >> then in 2015 the charity Stonewall
[42:01] becomes trans-inclusive 2014 we got the
[42:04] Time magazine cover transgender tipping
[42:07] point with the actress Leverne Cox
[42:10] what's telling saying is that he
[42:11] mentions a lot of advances in the piece
[42:14] to do with sports, restrooms, youth,
[42:16] healthcare, all of which become these
[42:18] battlegrounds.
[42:20] >> And Jillian Bransteader from the
[42:21] American Civil Liberties Union says that
[42:23] what trans people experienced in that
[42:25] moment was visibility without protection
[42:27] that the visibility moved so fast
[42:30] that it couldn't really build this kind
[42:32] of very solid public support and it nor
[42:34] the organizational strength to fight the
[42:36] political and legal battles that were
[42:37] coming. felt like, oh, we've been
[42:39] accepted. We're no longer stigmatized as
[42:41] like,
[42:42] >> you know, character assignments to the
[42:44] lambs or whatever. You know what I mean?
[42:46] >> Being accepted, but underneath
[42:49] inevitably there's this backlash brewing
[42:53] and it gets wrapped up with attacks on
[42:54] DEI, abortion rights, gay marriage in
[42:57] America. Right. So in 2016, Jordan
[43:00] Peterson,
[43:01] >> he's our old friend,
[43:02] >> if you remember, he first gets
[43:03] international attention for proposing a
[43:05] new Canadian bill protecting gender
[43:07] identity,
[43:07] >> of course,
[43:08] >> and he says it is a proposition of
[43:10] radical social constructionists and must
[43:12] be met with outright conflict. Going in
[43:14] pretty hard. The same year, a North
[43:16] Carolina bathroom ban causes massive
[43:18] uproar and boycott. Literally, there I
[43:21] think Bruce Springsteen wouldn't play in
[43:22] North Carolina because of this. 10 years
[43:25] ago this which is now being
[43:29] you know on the verge of happening
[43:31] possibly in the UK was considered
[43:33] completely beyond the pale of course
[43:34] looney Christian right stuff
[43:37] >> in the UK it's really different it
[43:39] starts like I said with feminists who
[43:41] see this sort of clash of identity
[43:42] rights and they and it's totally wrapped
[43:44] up in the free speech issue they feel
[43:46] they can't talk about it without being
[43:47] abused
[43:48] or no platform 2015 Jermaine Greer is no
[43:51] platformed at Cardiff university
[43:54] and you get these anti-trans groups
[43:57] forming like transgender trend. There is
[44:00] still a sense that avert transphobia is
[44:02] wrong. I'm not sure if you remember this
[44:04] but um this is what I wrote that that
[44:06] blog post about 2013 the observer had to
[44:08] delete a column by Julie Burchill in
[44:11] which he called trans women a bunch of
[44:13] dicks in chicks clothing and compared
[44:15] them to black and white minstrels.
[44:17] >> Right.
[44:17] >> And there was a massive backlash across
[44:19] the board almost like nobody thought
[44:21] that was acceptable. There was also a I
[44:23] mean because I've been back reading
[44:24] loads of these sort of like 2019
[44:27] tweets from people
[44:29] and you sort of what what's notable is
[44:31] that the what is your starting
[44:33] assumption when you write a message
[44:34] >> on social media and a lot of the time if
[44:36] your starting assumption is I could you
[44:38] know I could potentially end up under an
[44:41] a mountain of abuse here and I could
[44:43] lose my job you know so you have to
[44:46] couch things in a very careful attempted
[44:50] collegiate just asking questions kind of
[44:52] way. Now, it could just be because
[44:54] that's really how you want to talk about
[44:55] it and then you're later radicalized by
[44:57] the response and you become much more
[44:59] sort of rigid and fierce. Or it could
[45:01] just be that you sort of cynically just
[45:03] think this is the way to introducing
[45:05] these ideas into the bloodstream, you
[45:07] know, all happy and then later, you
[45:09] know, we'll do what we really think. But
[45:11] one way or another, the tone of the vast
[45:13] majority of critical messaging at that
[45:16] point is polite and inquisitive and
[45:19] broadly intellectual. So sort of
[45:21] following this kind of debate which is
[45:22] sort of heating up. There's a network of
[45:24] bloggers and mainstream journalists
[45:26] begins to form. Um and these discussions
[45:29] produced the term gender critical.
[45:31] There's a piece called the oral an oral
[45:32] history of the gender war. And in it one
[45:35] of them Sarah Ditim says it was an
[45:37] alternative terminology by which to
[45:38] reject being branded anti-trans or
[45:40] turfs. I and the women I shared
[45:43] intellectual ground with were not
[45:44] against trans people. We were critical
[45:46] of gender as a concept.
[45:49] But
[45:51] it's very hard to separate those two
[45:53] things considering that without gender
[45:54] identity,
[45:56] you know, how do trans people make
[45:58] sense, right? How do they see
[46:00] themselves? Right? You are you I don't
[46:01] think you can separate the people. One
[46:04] of the people in this piece compares the
[46:06] redefinition of women by gender rather
[46:07] than sex to gaslighting and abuse. It's
[46:10] very hard to not feel therefore that you
[46:12] are criticizing the people. So this
[46:15] activism solidifies in 2015 around a
[46:17] report recommending self ID by Maria
[46:21] Miller, the Tory chair of the Women in
[46:22] Equality Select Committee. And self ID
[46:25] is basically reform of the the gender
[46:27] recognition act. Yeah.
[46:28] >> To remove that that that gatekeeping of
[46:31] the medical checks and and so on. Backed
[46:34] in 2017 by Theresa May, we have laid out
[46:37] plans to reform the Gender Recognition
[46:39] Act, streamlining and demedicalizing the
[46:40] process for changing gender because
[46:42] being trans is not an illness and it
[46:45] should not be treated as such. A
[46:47] consultation is held in England and
[46:48] Wales with 100,000 respondents and finds
[46:52] that a majority are in favor of removing
[46:54] most of the requirements. just seems
[46:56] like a sort of broadly popular change
[47:00] being introduced by um not the most
[47:03] left-wing government we've ever had.
[47:05] It's extraordinary to think of like the
[47:07] the speed of change on this issue
[47:10] >> that Theresa May was saying that stuff
[47:12] when you and I were working together
[47:14] some distant period you know
[47:16] >> but during the consultation process on
[47:17] self ID you get this activism
[47:20] coordinated to oppose it in groups like
[47:22] women's place UK which is rooted in the
[47:24] trade unions
[47:26] >> and also on the feminism board at
[47:27] Mumsnet which becomes what Vice calls a
[47:30] toxic hotbed of transphobia
[47:33] organizes against the girl guides
[47:35] becoming transclusive, gender
[47:37] recognition reform, but also, you know,
[47:40] lots of dead naming, misgendering,
[47:43] abuse, some women wear badges saying
[47:45] radicalized by mum's net.
[47:48] Um,
[47:49] >> wow, what a thing.
[47:50] >> It got pretty nasty.
[47:53] And one of the women that said she was
[47:56] troubled by the concept of self ID on
[47:59] the grounds of safety was JK Rowling.
[48:02] >> Right. And this is where we get the
[48:04] first evidence of her interest in the
[48:06] subject.
[48:22] So 2017 and 2018 she starts to like
[48:28] posts that are critical about trans
[48:31] issues. Until now, she really doesn't
[48:33] tweet that much at all. It's not
[48:35] particularly active on social media and
[48:37] it starts in dribbs and drabs and then
[48:39] it picks up momentum. So, one of the
[48:41] tweets refers to trans women as quote
[48:42] men in dresses. You'll notice this
[48:44] language is pretty much always the same
[48:46] throughout this sort of period. It
[48:47] always has that kind of cartoonish
[48:49] slightly vicious quality to it. Her
[48:52] spokesperson comes, I mean, there's
[48:53] obviously like a little uh her and
[48:55] spokesperson comes out and says, "I'm
[48:56] afraid JK Rowling had a clumsy and
[48:58] middle-aged moment." And this is not the
[49:00] first time she has favored by holding
[49:02] her phone incorrectly. She later said,
[49:06] "When I started taking an interest in
[49:07] gender identity and transgender matters,
[49:09] I began screenshotting comments that
[49:11] interested me as a way of reminding
[49:13] myself of what I might want to research
[49:14] later. On one occasion, I
[49:16] absent-mindedly liked instead of
[49:18] screenshotting. That single like was
[49:20] deemed evidence of wrong think, and a
[49:22] persistent low level of harassment
[49:24] began." Well, she says later that
[49:27] starting in 2017,
[49:29] I mean, she was immersed in this debate.
[49:33] She says, "I've met trans people and
[49:35] read sunundry books, blogs, and articles
[49:36] by trans people, gender specialists,
[49:38] interex people, psychologists,
[49:39] safeguarding experts, social workers,
[49:41] and doctors, and followed the discourse
[49:43] online and in traditional media." M
[49:46] >> weirdly she says that one of the motives
[49:49] for doing this was that there is a a
[49:52] female detective in the strike novels
[49:54] who is a rape survivor and that she
[49:56] would be very interested in this
[49:58] subject.
[49:59] >> Right.
[49:59] >> It's quite an odd thing to drop in
[50:01] there.
[50:02] >> Yeah.
[50:02] >> That somehow it was sort of like book
[50:04] research
[50:06] and
[50:06] >> gone wrong.
[50:07] >> The book research gone gone wrong. And
[50:10] then she sort of admits actually of
[50:12] course that it wasn't absent-minded.
[50:14] I mean maybe the like was but the
[50:16] reading of it
[50:17] >> no obviously not obviously
[50:19] >> you know and then she sort of frames it
[50:21] as that she was you know basically she
[50:23] wouldn't say radicalized but she becomes
[50:25] more fierce about this because of this
[50:29] aggressive activism and this disruption
[50:31] of of uh you know gender critical
[50:34] events.
[50:34] >> Yeah,
[50:35] >> that's that's the way that she's sort of
[50:37] framing it. And this is also the year
[50:40] 2018 that Graeme Linhan first takes an
[50:42] anti-trans position and is banned from
[50:44] Twitter for harassment.
[50:45] >> Right.
[50:46] >> I forgot that was so so long ago. I
[50:48] still remember having friendly
[50:49] engagements with Graeme Lyn.
[50:51] >> I mean to be honest I I I I've had
[50:53] friendly engagements with almost
[50:54] everyone that we're mentioning in the
[50:56] story on any side of whatever like you
[50:58] know this is this is like a an area
[51:00] where social connections and blah blah
[51:02] blah blah blah including her. I mean, I
[51:03] remember she would retweet me in a
[51:05] positive way on Brexit stuff and every
[51:07] time it did, obviously, you do gang
[51:09] busters. I remember going on holiday
[51:10] with my f my my Latino family and my
[51:14] younger cousin just basically looking at
[51:16] me with a level of respect that he'd
[51:17] never had before in his life because JK
[51:19] Rrowling followed me on Twitter. You
[51:20] could see the thing, you know? I mean,
[51:22] it I remember that sort of stuff. And I
[51:23] remember Graeme Linham, it would be so
[51:26] good for our traffic on politics.co.uk.
[51:28] He was brilliant on like prison reform.
[51:30] Whenever we did articles on prison
[51:32] reform, like just classic old liberal
[51:34] stuff, he would retweet it, take it to a
[51:36] new audience. It get movement behind it.
[51:38] It's really hard to get attention on
[51:39] that subject. You know, that feels like
[51:42] a completely different era.
[51:44] >> Well, there were people who were very
[51:45] interested in politics and very online.
[51:47] I mean, you know, there we go. Um,
[51:50] couple of things worth mentioning in
[51:52] 2018. One is um a transw woman and
[51:56] convicted rapist Karen White assaults
[51:58] multiple female inmates in a prison that
[52:02] leads to a change in policy immediately
[52:04] and then eventually the law. And I think
[52:06] that was one of those ones where however
[52:08] trans-inclusive you are. It was it was
[52:10] quite hard to go that that somebody who
[52:13] like a rapist
[52:14] >> who then transitioned would just be put
[52:16] in there without
[52:17] >> any kind of like
[52:18] >> was completely insane
[52:19] >> consideration. that was and so but
[52:20] obviously that that got brought up a lot
[52:23] also health care for gender questioning
[52:27] uh teens becomes becomes a big issue.
[52:29] There is a Atlantic magazine cover story
[52:31] by Jesse Single who writes has written
[52:33] about a little else ever since called
[52:35] when children say they're trans
[52:37] >> and Dr. Lisa Litman um publishes a paper
[52:40] on a contentious theory she's been
[52:42] floating for a while called rapid onset
[52:44] gender dysphoria which you're going to
[52:46] explain later but this sort of idea of
[52:48] sort of social contagion that sort of
[52:50] that something is weird is going on the
[52:53] reason why they think oh something weird
[52:56] and scary is going on is because during
[52:59] the 2010s
[53:01] just to take the UK for a minute there's
[53:02] a huge increase in referrals to gender
[53:04] clinics like the gender identity service
[53:06] at the Tavveristock clinic which is the
[53:07] only one in the UK, right? And something
[53:10] similar happening in the US and for the
[53:12] first time more of them are assigned
[53:14] female at birth and there is no clear
[53:17] explanation for why there are suddenly
[53:18] so more gender questioning kids, right?
[53:20] And you could just say there's more
[53:21] awareness and people are just, you know,
[53:24] who were it's like why are there more
[53:25] autism diagnoses? Are more kids autistic
[53:27] or are more kids who are autistic
[53:29] getting recognized as such? Right? We
[53:32] still don't really know. But anyway, by
[53:33] 2015, GIDS, as the gender identity
[53:36] service is called, is getting
[53:38] overwhelmed. Waiting lists are up over 2
[53:40] years. It's causing some sort of
[53:43] problems there. It's the numbers. If you
[53:46] actually look at the Jesse Single piece,
[53:48] the people he frontloads are
[53:51] dransitioners, people who regretted
[53:52] transitioning and anxious parents, not
[53:56] so much satisfied transitioners and
[53:59] their families. Yeah. It's very much
[54:01] like as the as the flavor of a moral
[54:05] panic. Yes. That it's going
[54:07] >> suddenly in the royal numbers and this
[54:09] is something that you should be worried
[54:10] about. And the fact is that more you
[54:13] know uh girls are going in there.
[54:17] This creates almost another front. This
[54:19] is the thing. It's almost like there are
[54:20] different sort of um not necessarily
[54:23] connected issues that that are grouped
[54:26] together. Right. So
[54:29] trans women are are called misogynists
[54:31] for invading women's spaces, right? But
[54:34] trans boys and men, well for they're
[54:35] only transitioning because of misogyny
[54:37] and they've been taught to hate
[54:39] >> being female. So it's misogyny,
[54:40] misogyny. It's all misogyny, right?
[54:42] >> Um and these distinct issues, sports,
[54:45] which we're going to talk more about
[54:46] later,
[54:47] >> trans girls and women and and women
[54:49] sports, single sex spaces, and youth
[54:51] healthcare. And they're different
[54:53] issues. It would be perfectly possible
[54:55] to be very concerned about women's
[54:56] prisons and actually think and not
[54:59] really mind about the Tavvertock clinic,
[55:01] but they get grouped together and what
[55:03] yokes them together is the implication
[55:05] that there's something unsafe
[55:08] and dangerous
[55:10] >> and anti-woman about this. It all sort
[55:12] of comes it all comes as a package.
[55:15] >> This is all the stuff that's sort of
[55:16] swimming around uh as we go into 2019.
[55:20] So she becomes at the beginning of 2019
[55:22] like a bit more confident. So she
[55:24] follows a self-professed transphobe
[55:26] YouTuber who makes videos with titles
[55:28] like there is no such thing as a lesbian
[55:30] with a penis. Again, it's pretty much
[55:31] exactly the same language as we talked
[55:33] about before.
[55:33] >> This is Magdaline Burns.
[55:35] >> That's right. Yeah. Um Ryland calls her
[55:37] an immensely brave young feminist and
[55:39] lesbian who was dying and of an
[55:40] aggressive brain tumor. And she said she
[55:42] did it because she wanted to contact her
[55:43] directly. But it's pretty clear at this,
[55:45] you know, there's not a huge amount of
[55:46] of quality really necessarily to the
[55:48] kind of rhetoric that's been expressed
[55:49] there.
[55:51] But it's in December of 2019 that she
[55:53] takes a really big decisive step into
[55:55] this space and she does it over a woman
[55:57] called Maya Foretters, a tax specialist
[55:59] who lost her job at a think tank after
[56:01] tweeting critically about trans issues.
[56:04] Kind of thing she writes, I mean loads
[56:06] of the stuff that she writes is not, you
[56:08] know, is is is not as aggressive as
[56:09] this. In fact, mostly at this period, as
[56:11] we were saying before, it's now would be
[56:14] considered incredibly polite given the
[56:16] the kind of tenor with which it is
[56:17] discussed for lots of that social media
[56:19] output. She's a bit more cautious here.
[56:22] She's saying things like she's talking
[56:23] about the credit Swiss senior director
[56:24] Pip Bums who identifies as gender fluid.
[56:27] She calls them a white man who likes to
[56:28] dress in women's clothes. She files a
[56:31] lawsuit against her employer under the
[56:33] Equality Act on the basis of being
[56:34] unfairly persecuted for her personal
[56:36] beliefs. the what the first judge will
[56:38] throw out the case saying her views are
[56:40] quote incompatible with human dignity
[56:42] and fundamental rights of others. She
[56:44] appeals and she eventually uh wins the
[56:45] employment appeal.
[56:48] What's interesting about Rowing's
[56:49] intervention here is that for the first
[56:51] time she is completely explicit. There's
[56:54] no more of that sort of dissembling. No
[56:55] more of the sort of disingenuous I was
[56:57] just screenshotting. I've got no real
[56:59] interest in this subject. I'm just
[57:01] asking questions.
[57:02] >> No longer clumsy thumbs.
[57:03] >> Yeah, no more clumsy thumbs. I'm glad to
[57:06] hear that her thumbs recovered their
[57:08] full capacity at this stage.
[57:11] >> Uh, and her thumbs tweet, "Dress however
[57:14] you please. Call yourself whatever you
[57:15] like. Sleep with any consenting adult
[57:17] who have you. Live your best life in
[57:18] peace and security, but force women out
[57:20] of their jobs for stating that sex is
[57:22] real. # I stand with # This is not a
[57:26] drill.
[57:26] >> This is not a drill, by the way. The
[57:28] name of a blog post by Kathleen Stock.
[57:31] Oh. Is that where it comes from?
[57:33] >> Yes. who is a very uh prominent agenda
[57:36] who will reappear in the story. So yeah,
[57:38] that's what she's um referring to there.
[57:41] So I mean it really isn't a drill
[57:43] because this is the starting gun on the
[57:46] rest of her life. You know, from this
[57:48] point on, there's really no other
[57:50] version of her that we get to see.
[57:52] There's almost no other subject she ever
[57:53] seems to wish to talk about very much. M
[57:57] >> for the first time an extremely
[57:59] prominent mainstream figure um on you
[58:02] know on the left in Britain with big
[58:05] publicity
[58:07] has come out and aligned themselves to
[58:10] critical commentary about trans people.
[58:13] It's arguably the first step towards the
[58:15] mainstreaming of the anti-trans
[58:16] attitudes going from you know Theresa
[58:18] May hopelessly right-wing on immigration
[58:20] loves it to where we are now where even
[58:22] those who are pro- immigration many
[58:24] would be opposed. Kathleen Stalker said
[58:25] that he said this is what gave you know
[58:28] the sort of gender critical or
[58:29] anti-trans feminism credibility in
[58:31] politics in this yeah this literally
[58:34] this intervention and then and then
[58:36] obviously more that what Rowling went to
[58:37] do but that this was the kind of break
[58:40] >> also
[58:41] >> you know there is quite a lot of
[58:43] criticism you know by amnesty where she
[58:46] used to work
[58:48] um by muggle net which as you could
[58:50] imagine is a Harry Potter fan a fanite
[58:52] many potter fans completely completely
[58:54] heartbroken and baffled cuz they go,
[58:56] "Well, this isn't what the book is
[58:57] about." There's a piece in the New York
[58:58] Times called Harry Potter helped me come
[58:59] out as trans, but JK Rowling
[59:01] disappointed me and says, "The tweet was
[59:03] like a punch in the gut." It was like
[59:05] real pain because of people's investment
[59:09] in these characters and this world.
[59:11] >> Well, she later says, "I knew perfectly
[59:14] well what was going to happen when I
[59:15] supported Maya. I must have been on my
[59:17] fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I
[59:19] expected the threats of violence, to be
[59:21] told I was literally killing trans
[59:23] people with my hate, to be called a and
[59:25] a [ __ ] and of course for my books to
[59:27] be burned. Well, I mean, look, look, the
[59:30] thing is I have to say, having been at
[59:32] the bottom of I don't know, a few sort
[59:35] of pylons. I I have to say I can't even
[59:37] imagine what a pylon is like at this
[59:40] level of fame, you know, on any kind of
[59:41] issue. It must just be so completely
[59:43] all-encompassing. And then the thing is,
[59:45] it's not just the sort of quantitative
[59:47] nature of your fame. It's the
[59:49] qualitative nature. So because of that
[59:51] thing of that was my childhood, people's
[59:54] sense of betrayal was almost biblical,
[59:56] right? Um on this front
[59:59] >> and I think with lots of these cases, I
[01:00:01] think you can see the same with Lenm,
[01:00:02] you can almost see you can almost
[01:00:04] imagine them sort of like at 2 a.m. by
[01:00:06] the laptop in the kitchen reading all
[01:00:08] these messages and like in the furnace
[01:00:10] and the fire of that kind of indignation
[01:00:12] and and emotional response. It's almost
[01:00:14] like it burns off the front layer of
[01:00:16] skin and this new personality is left
[01:00:18] over.
[01:00:19] >> I love to say I'm not on that level uh
[01:00:21] of uh by those people, but um you know
[01:00:24] I've had this a few times and the last
[01:00:27] time was actually on this issue
[01:00:30] >> and I was being attacked by uh
[01:00:31] anti-trans people and I know that a lot
[01:00:35] of the messages were like I'm very
[01:00:37] disappointed in you. Why aren't you
[01:00:39] supporting women? Oh, you're just, you
[01:00:42] know, virtue signaling or whatever. Um,
[01:00:45] like not abusive. Not great, but not
[01:00:47] abusive. The ones I remember, the ones
[01:00:48] that were calling me a misogynist, a
[01:00:50] pedophile, a groomer.
[01:00:52] >> Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh
[01:00:54] my god.
[01:00:55] >> I apologize about those, by the way. I'm
[01:00:56] sure I said sorry afterwards.
[01:00:58] >> They were all coming from one sock
[01:01:01] puppet account. I did notice that.
[01:01:03] >> That's what Incognito is for.
[01:01:07] >> Cheeky DNS.
[01:01:09] Um but but yeah so obviously that is
[01:01:12] quite short and on and on that scale and
[01:01:15] it steps up. I think what happened there
[01:01:17] is in the same for a long time this was
[01:01:19] a story about free speech and it became
[01:01:20] a story about abuse
[01:01:22] >> and it's like online abuse appear cuts
[01:01:25] in all different directions right it is
[01:01:28] um it is horrendous particular I mean
[01:01:30] the m misogyny no doesn't matter how
[01:01:32] much you disagree with her uh threats of
[01:01:35] violence
[01:01:36] >> I mean it goes without saying like not
[01:01:40] moral not helpful horrific for her to
[01:01:42] experience um but that almost becomes
[01:01:45] the story. There wasn't that much about
[01:01:48] what she was saying, the implications of
[01:01:50] what she was saying. And I guess because
[01:01:52] for a while it wasn't that clear. She
[01:01:54] this was like this was like one tweet
[01:01:57] and it's interesting that she the way
[01:01:59] she talks about it in the witch trials.
[01:02:01] This tweet she wanted to join the
[01:02:02] conversation much earlier, right?
[01:02:04] >> But she'd been advised against it by
[01:02:06] people close to her.
[01:02:08] >> Well done.
[01:02:10] >> She'd actually warned her management in
[01:02:11] advance before this tweet. Wow. the last
[01:02:13] time she would ever do that, according
[01:02:15] to her says, "I was living in a state of
[01:02:17] real tension, similar to when I'm
[01:02:18] planning to leave my ex-husband. I feel
[01:02:20] like the right thing here is to try and
[01:02:22] force this conversation on behalf of
[01:02:23] people I'm seeing shut down who do not
[01:02:25] have my insulation." So, the way that
[01:02:27] she frames it is she thinks that
[01:02:29] transact activism
[01:02:31] is this dangerous authoritarian,
[01:02:33] illiberal, is created a culture of fear
[01:02:35] and there are a lot of women who do not
[01:02:37] have the financial insulation to be able
[01:02:39] to speak out. So, she is doing it for
[01:02:41] them. So this is her explanation for why
[01:02:45] she decided to kind of wade in because
[01:02:48] she was sort of financially protected.
[01:02:51] Whether she was psychologically
[01:02:52] protected
[01:02:54] is a whole whether it was a good idea on
[01:02:56] that level
[01:02:57] >> is a whole different thing. But I mean
[01:02:59] maybe she should leave it because this
[01:03:00] was so seismic, right?
[01:03:02] >> Yeah. This was so important and this is
[01:03:04] the point at which you know it becomes
[01:03:07] harder to talk about JK Rowling as just
[01:03:09] the creator of Harry Potter.
[01:03:11] >> Well, she has turned the page and
[01:03:13] nothing that comes afterwards will bear
[01:03:15] very much resemblance to what came
[01:03:17] before. You know, she will go from being
[01:03:19] an incredibly beloved children's author
[01:03:22] and an inspiration to lots of people to
[01:03:24] being an allout political warrior using
[01:03:28] language which is increasingly vicious.
[01:03:31] Um, so yeah, this is this is the
[01:03:33] absolute turning point basically. This
[01:03:35] is this is the moment of her origin
[01:03:37] story. I should end every episode we do
[01:03:40] like that. How is that the first time
[01:03:42] I've ever done that? I mean, obviously
[01:03:43] cuz it's, you know, [ __ ] but like but I
[01:03:46] think that that works quite well.
[01:03:47] >> It was No, it was amazing. You should
[01:03:50] just lower your sunglasses like the guy
[01:03:52] in CSI who would go and I guess that was
[01:03:56] her origin story.
[01:03:59] Well, thank you for listening and
[01:04:00] supporting work and quality observations
[01:04:02] like that. Um, all our sources, many in
[01:04:06] the case of these two episodes are are
[01:04:07] in the show notes. Um, if you'd like to
[01:04:10] support us in doing that work, then uh
[01:04:13] you can tell your friends, you can rate
[01:04:15] us on iTunes or wherever ratings occur.
[01:04:18] Or you could back us on Patreon.
[01:04:20] >> That would be lovely. Uh, we rely on
[01:04:22] Patreon support so that we can do the
[01:04:23] research that goes into these things.
[01:04:25] Um, patron supporters get access to our
[01:04:27] online community, get access to the book
[01:04:29] club that we do after the episodes
[01:04:31] talking about the reading that we did
[01:04:32] and what it was like. They get first
[01:04:34] dibs on live show tickets. We're doing
[01:04:36] quite a lot of live shows at the moment
[01:04:37] and they also get a pretty hefty amount
[01:04:38] off those tickets. Uh, and our special
[01:04:41] episodes that we do occasionally with
[01:04:42] Q&As's uh, with people where we sort of
[01:04:44] have a chat backwards and forwards where
[01:04:46] we answer questions on things like
[01:04:48] dating advice and favorite music
[01:04:49] selection. Actually, we've never done
[01:04:50] that. These are the kind of things I
[01:04:52] want to be asked, but they're not. We
[01:04:53] always get asked about what do you think
[01:04:54] about Harold Laskk's view on latestage
[01:04:56] communism which is far less interesting.
[01:04:59] >> Yeah. No, we do need lighter questions.
[01:05:02] Anyway, we'll see you next time for part
[01:05:04] two of JK Rowling.
[01:05:05] >> Bye guys.