 why why do you open a heretics manifesto with an essay called her penis and what is the the main point that you're driving up there? Yeah so as soon as I thought to myself I'll do a collection of essays and call it a heretics manifesto I knew from the first day that the opening chapter would be called her penis and that the opening line to the whole book would be we need to talk about her penis because I find those two words fascinating I find that the way in which they've become accepted speech you see them in newspapers the Times here in Britain which is our newspaper of record the BBC you know renowned for its publication of vital information to people around the world those outlets will say her penis you hear that phrase in courts of law if a biological male is charged with rape or sexual assault and he now identifies as a woman he people will say she used her penis to do A B and C I'm fascinated by how a two-word phrase like that enters the mainstream enters the public consciousness how does that come about what are the mechanisms through which a phrase that would have made no sense to us 10 years ago become a part of everyday conversation and the argument I make in that chapter is that this is this speaks to the essence of the new culture of intolerance I think because I think one of the key problems today is the manipulation of language as a means of manipulation manipulating thought this is a point George Orwell made many many times 1984 is basically about this phenomenon that if you change language if you change the words people use and the phrases people use you can change how people think you can change how they relate to one another and how they engage with society itself so I use her penis as an example of a change in language that is designed I think to change how we think about sex gender and the relations between the sectors and I find it a bit slippery and a bit authoritarian so you find her penis a little bit slippery yeah um can I ask what what are the stakes with something like that because I you know I I agree with you the the kind of I wouldn't say manipulation of language but the insistence you know that certain phrases just you know enter the parlance and oftentimes you know it might come from an authority you know that is a cultural authority or a religious authority or a governmental authority and sometimes it's risible you know when you know the French Academy tries to police the use of English phrases in French and it just fails because ultimately you can't contain that in other cases you were talking about in the past where you know if you said certain things you would be put to death because even if it had no clear impact on the world because it's heretical or whatnot what are the stakes with you know acknowledging a trans trans woman's you know preferred pronouns I think the stakes are pretty high actually and I've had many arguments with libertarian friends of mine maybe we'll have an argument now which I love to do because it's a really good way of working things out because I don't see the trans issue as an issue of freedom and I think there's a number of reasons I would say that the first is if this is a civil rights movement if this is a movement for greater liberty which is how it's often presented why does it feel so authoritarian why is it so angry why is it so intent and determined on silencing women who have the wrong opinions and no platforming certain people and getting people sacked or shamed or publicly harassed for daring not to use preferred pronouns and instead sticking with what would have been the right pronouns a few years ago so why does it have that authoritarian streak I find that very interesting and it's particularly hostile to freedom of speech and freedom of dissent on this issue but then the other thing is I think it I often compare it or contrast it really with the movement for gay liberation in the 1970s which I do think was a movement for freedom and I talk about it in the book I think it was one of the great steps forward in Western society over the past few decades alongside the women's liberation movement the fight for racial equality and so on because I think with the trans issue what's happening is that sadly I don't think trans activists are actually calling for freedom they're calling for recognition they're calling for validation and they're actually enslaving themselves in some ways they're making themselves the psychic slaves of the modern state and the medical establishment upon whom they increasingly rely for validation so I actually think it's a movement that binds people into a closer more authoritarian relationship with the powers that be with power structures particularly medical structures of power rather than making the cry you know leave us alone the great cry of the Stonewall riots in New York City was get the hell out of our bars leave us alone let us do what we want to do this says something quite different yeah I think that's fascinating at the same time I'm thinking of you know in in American history and you know proclamations or demands for racial equality you have somebody like sojourner truth demands saying ain't I a woman she you know you have you know people like Frederick Douglass who shows up in your book a couple of times and who's you know just a phenomenal historical figure that everybody wants to claim because he's really great at articulating so much and I want to come back to him in a little bit but you know there there part of it is a demand to be left alone right like that the state does not have the right or or a religious community or your neighbors have a right to poke into you know what you're eating or what you're sleeping or what you're smoking or ingesting but part of it is a demand for recognition blacks in the civil rights era would wear sandwich signs saying like you know ain't I a man and things like that I'm black and I'm a man and they were insisting on recognition is recognition itself the problem or is it something more than that well I mean the first thing to say about that is that where that to the extent that that was a demand for recognition in the civil rights movement it was a demand for recognition based on universal truths ain't I a man yes you are ain't I a woman no you're not and and so that's that's makes it a very very different question because then we're talking about you know the guy with a sandwich board saying ain't I a man he is liberating himself from what we can all now agree were structures of racial discrimination and authoritarianism which made his life palpably worse than it should have been I think very often what trans activists and I do make a distinction between trans activists and trans people I think most trans people just want to live a nice normal life free of persecution and free of shame and they should be entirely at liberty to do that but I think what trans activists are often calling for is not freedom from oppression but freedom from truth freedom from the shared understanding and the shared language that makes life possible in a in a diverse society and can I can I push on that a little bit though because the truth and you know it's funny because you are I think either an still a Marxist or a recovering Marxist and I'm a libertarian post modern so we you know you know we've got some explaining to do to our own sides but isn't part of what is you know recognized as true is changes over time and you know there was a period of time where blacks in America certainly I think this is obviously also true the British Empire you know the blacks and to some degree Irish we we share in Irish heritage as well you know we're not seen as human or as fully human in a way and you know that the science behind that didn't change what happened was a political or a social or cultural and you know change happened and I guess when you say you don't you're you're not talking about being anti-trans like you're you're not against I'm assuming you're not against adults deciding to identify as or live as or have gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy whatever to live as whoever they want to be right I mean you're not saying like the you know because what has been creeping into at least in an American discourse is a kind of a lemon eliminationist rhetoric where it seems to start sliding from saying you know it's one thing to say I identify as a woman so now I'm going to compete in sport you know in female sports categories to you know and people being upset about that to saying like no trans people are the problem you're not in that camp are you no absolutely not and I mean I do make a distinction between hormonal interventions and surgical interventions in children which I think is an incredibly problematic thing even with parental consent it it's a very problematic thing and adults I think adults should be completely free to make alterations to their body to change just to ask people if they will use certain pronouns to change their names to wear whatever they want to to live as a woman as they understand it absolutely they must be free to do that the self-government means nothing if people are not free to define themselves yeah I think oftentimes when people get on a kind of high horse about pronouns and whatnot I or names for that matter I think there's you know a phenomenal moment in the 1960s when Muhammad Ali you know a boxer born Cassius Clay had changed he became a member of the nation of Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali and Floyd Patterson also a black boxer a former heavyweight champ fought him and refused to call him Cassius Clay or rather to call him Muhammad Ali he insisted and they had a fight and Ali pummeled him badly and was standing over the unconscious body of Floyd Patterson saying you know what's my name and that you know I think about that as an incredible act of reinvention and of you know kind of self-definition and self-liberation obviously there's a lot wrapped up in that and on some level I get uncomfortable and I'm not lumping you into this category with people who are like I will never either say or call or admit that this person is living as you know who was born a man is living as a woman or vice versa and that strikes me as problematic to say the least or you know in a liberal society you don't want to compel people to do anything or believe certainly believe anything they don't want but yeah it's also kind of like what is wrong with you that you cannot meet adults where they are I think there's a couple of issues here I think on one important fact I think is that the trans movement again distinguishing that from the from trans people the trans lobby I think overplayed its hand that's one of the huge problems here I think if we went back 10 years people were perfectly okay most people were perfectly okay with men who said they were women who wore certain clothes who had sex change surgeries you know there was a bit of a kind of a voyeuristic interest in those lifestyles but generally people were okay with it I think they overplayed their hand though because what happened subsequently is they said trans women are women you have to legally recognize that we are literally women otherwise you're a bigger otherwise you're someone deserving of cancellation they said we want to play in women's sports we want to go into women only areas we want to go into women's changing rooms we saw a case of like that in Los Angeles a couple of years ago a man with a semi erection in a woman's changing room in front of in a place where women and girls undress and that's the point at which I think lots of people said okay hold up what's happening here because what is presented as a movement for freedom looks increasingly like an encroachment into the hard-won freedoms of womankind and so that absolutely raises a question of a conflict of interest and I do think it falls down to the question of whose rights do we support do we support the right of a man a biological male most of whom are intact now sex change surgery is is less and less common right to go wherever they want regardless of the impact it might have on the women in that area or do we support the right of women to their own zones their own sense of safety their own sex-based rights that is I think a fundamental question and I do think it's important to stand with the women who are saying look we don't have a problem with trans people we just don't want biological males in our spaces yeah and at what level because this is something it seems that you know as heated as the rhetoric can be in the United States it it's much more sharp in in the UK and you know part of this is because jk Rowling is a you know is a British subject and has really become a kind of poster child for you know somebody who is just you know inexcusably retrograde to the to the degree I mean this is fascinating that you know literally the children who were in the movies based on the harry potter books almost with with that exception I mean I think the actor who played Draco Malfoy of all people was the only one who's like siding with jk Rowling so it's like okay you've got the punk of Slytherin house you know on your side what good does that do you when you know Harry and Hermione and Ron Weasley are denouncing you some of the you know from what I understand in the UK a lot of the people who get written off as terfs as trans exclusionary radical feminists are actually saying that it should not be up to the individual to simply designate themselves as female and hence they have access to all female places including prisons including dressing rooms including sports competitions but rather that there should be some policy that you know make sure that it's not simply men masquerading as women who have nefarious nefarious purposes is that accurate or is that off yeah that is accurate and I actually think I have said before that I think sometimes the so-called terfs I'm very supportive of terfs I think jk Rowling who I would disagree with on 95 percent of political questions especially Brexit I think she's been very heroic in this situation she could she could easily have a nice lovely billionaire's life but instead she keeps speaking out on the thorniest issue of our time she still has a very nice billionaire's like other than you know okay occasional twitter bombs and things like that but but yes I think um what those women are saying what I've said to those women rather is that I do think their emphasis on the potentially nefarious desires of trans women biological males I think they overemphasize that and I think a better argument is not the safety one although I perfectly understand why women make that case but it's the privacy one it's the right of people to a sphere in which you will not encounter the opposite sex for various reasons because it's a space in which you are going to be naked or in which you might have to sleep like a shared dormitory for example or in which you might be imprisoned and you have no way of getting out I think in those areas women absolutely should have an expectation of dignity and privacy and the trans movement does threaten that but you said earlier um about religious extremism being on the back foot um which is true I think to a certain extent although certainly in the west in Europe and the EU is worse than the US by far in all of these counts but yeah yeah of course and you know as as you guys know very well we have had executions for heresy by Islamist extremists here in Europe Samuel Patti Charlie Hebdo and numerous others um but the thing is you're right about that traditional religions the old world religions are not bossing people around in the way that they used to in the west but there are I think there are new kinds of religion and I must say I think the idea of a gendered soul the idea that all of us you me everyone has a soul whose gender might be different to our biological encasing to me that is a absurd religious idea it's one that is not based in fact it's one that's not based in any genuine attempt to understand the truth of human experience it has become a catechism that is and you you risk being a social leper if you don't bow down to it it has the feeling of a religious idea it has the impact of a religious idea in terms of wanting to restrict how people can deviate from it and question it and I think that's why the preferred pronouns matters because what some terfs will say is that when they are um cajoled or pressured or sometimes forced to use a person's preferred pronouns that's more than just being polite that is acquiescence to what they consider to be a modern day religion that they don't believe in and just as I don't think anyone should be forced to say I love the Quran or I worship Jesus Christ I also don't think people should be compelled to say she about someone who they think is male