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| Joe Rogan should invite people with expertise on trans issues to his podcast. |
In case you haven't been noticing, the anti-LGBTQ industry has new scapegoat. Spooking people about LGBTQ folks in general and rights such as marriage equality are still popular, but doesn't get as many hot and bothered reactions as spinning lies about the trans community.. And because of this, many on the right are seeking to add their voices to the cacophony of misinformation in hopes of notoriety and big bucks.
Media Matters spotlit once such example.
In an episode of his show uploaded to YouTube, podcast host Joe Rogan and his guest, Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier, spent nearly two hours spreading misinformation about trans youth, including claiming that being transgender is a contagion comparable to having anorexia, “demonic possession,” and joining a cult. YouTube has policies banning content that claims groups of people are “mentally inferior, deficient, or diseased” and has taken down content similar to the interview in the past.
Rogan is one of the most influential podcast hosts in the world. He recently signed an exclusive licensing agreement worth more than $100 million with Spotify, where his show The Joe Rogan Experience will begin streaming on September 1. In a press release, Spotify said the show “has long been the most-searched-for podcast on Spotify and is the leading show on practically every other podcasting platform.” It continued, “Bringing the JRE to Spotify will mean that the platform’s more than 286 million active users will have access to one of culture’s leading voices.”
During the July 16 interview, which has been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube at the time of publication, Shrier promoted her new anti-trans book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughter and, alongside Rogan, encouraged parents to reject the identities of their trans kids. Rogan has previously used his podcast to oppose gender-affirming health care and to lead a crusade against trans mixed martial arts fighter Fallon Fox, including calling her a “fucking man.”
Joe Rogan is a former actor whose podcast obviously exploits the talk radio technique - talk shit because you don't know shit. Just make your voice loud and ultra macho sounding and people think you're some type of expert. Abigail Shirer sounds like the latest dime-a-dozen predatory parasitic right-wing "writer" feeding off of an LGBTQ issue and counting on the extensive conservative network to buoy her on podcasts, talks shows, and other speaking engagements while buying bulk copies of her book to shoot her name up best seller lists.
We've seen this before so many times when it comes to LGBTQ issues, most infamously marriage equality. It's a simple pattern - attack an issue which many people aren't educated about, push highly improbable and unprovable conspiracy theories via anecdotal stories. Use junk science and/or cherry-picked science:
Throughout the interview, Rogan and Shrier repeatedly claimed that being transgender is a “social contagion,” equating it to anorexia, cutting, demonic possession, and other disorders or afflictions that are affected by peer pressure or social influences. Rogan specifically compared young people identifying as trans to joining “suicide pacts” and a “crazy radical cult.”
The idea that being trans is a “social contagion” is central to Shrier’s thesis and comes from a flawed and since-corrected study by Brown University researcher Dr. Lisa Littman which suggested that trans youth -- primarily trans boys -- are rapidly identifying as trans due to “social and peer contagion.”
Littman’s study has been described by a colleague as “below scientific standards,” as it relied on “survey responses from parents who had visited sites promoting anti-trans views” and did not actually survey trans youth themselves. However, The Wall Street Journal has given Shrier a platform to repeatedly promote the study’s flawed concept of so-called “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” spreading dangerous misinformation about gender-affirming health care to millions of its readers.
Last, but most importantly, throw in a spin about how children are "targeted" or "recruited" and will end up hurt:
. . . Rogan and Shrier suggested that young people do not have the capacity to determine their own gender identity and that parents should not affirm them. Rogan also mocked Caitlyn Jenner for receiving gender confirmation surgery, questioning why she needed the surgery if “she was completely woman, all woman, before that,” claiming, “We’re in la-la land.”
In reality, gender affirmative health care is the best practice that is widely supported by medical professionals and yields long-term mental health benefits. Moreover, a recent study found that both cisgender and transgender children sense their gender identities at young ages, and another study found that gender-nonconforming kids “who go on to transition do so because they already have a strong sense of their identity.”
In addition, as Vox’s Katelyn Burns has noted, “Transitioning is a slow, deliberative process for minors, and only adolescents who are insistent, persistent, and consistent in their gender identity over long periods are recommended for medical intervention.” Despite these facts, right-wing media and anti-LGBTQ groups often attack the benefits of trans-affirming, best practice health care and provide fodder to lawmakers across the nation trying to ban it.
. . . Shrier also posited, without evidence, that there are “two types” of transgender people: “One who’s genuinely suffering gender dysphoria and always has since childhood, and another who discovered it on the internet with her friends.”
No matter how loud he gets or how "macho" he sounds, Rogan doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And it sounds like Shrier knows even less. In another time of LGBTQ history, she would be making up the same lies about gay adoption or gay teachers, or marriage equality. The formula of scapegoating never changes. Just the targets. AND the low-brow vultures willing to victimize said targets.
There is too much of a desire to nauseate and a reluctance to educate. And that has to change.
Editor's note - check out the entire Media Matters article about Rogan's podcast.
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