You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 144. Nina Paley.mp3
Nina Paley:
Tribes of people, we naturally get really excited when we can boot someone out of our tribe, when we can have a common enemy from within the tribe. It's different than an outsider enemy. It's an insider enemy and ejecting that insider, the outside is so thrilling and satisfying for the people who do it. They get such a charge out of it. You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Today I'm joined by Nina Paley, who some of you probably know as co-host of Heterodorks podcast along with Cory Cohn. Her tagline is animator, director, artist, and scapegoat. She's a jack of many trades. the creator of an award-winning animated musical feature film, Sita Sings the Blues, as well as Seder Masochism. Some of you might have seen her animation and artistry without even knowing it was Nina behind the scenes. So today, even though I've been on heterodorics a couple times, I feel like you don't really know Nina, and I'm hoping to change that today. Thanks for joining me, Nina.

Nina Paley: Hello, thank you for having me.

Stephanie Winn: So I really just kind of wanted to know your story because we've spoken a few times before, but I know you've been through cancel culture and, you know, creative career turns and stuff like that. And rather than doing my research and actually like figuring out where you've already told that story, I figured I'd take the lazy route and just invite you on my podcast to have you tell it all over again.

Nina Paley: That's fine. So I used to be a fancy artist. I had my big breakthrough with my feature film Sita Sings the Blues. I released that in 2008. It was one of the first animated feature films made by a single animator. The technology was just barely available to do that. I animated it in Macromedia Flash mostly. And it was a critical success. It got fantastic reviews. It was a festival darling. It got tons of awards. I was considered groundbreaking. I also released it in a really unusual way in 2009. I became a copy left activist advocate in the process of seeking a distributor for my film. Copy left Yes, as opposed to copyright. I had my ideas about copyright turned on their head. It took a while though. And actually there are similarities with that and becoming gender critical. It's very similar that people will see things a certain way. They will have a perception of reality and there will be things pushing on this reality and they'll push back and not let actual information in until until there's like a complete flip and that happened with me and copyright. So I released it in a really unusual way in 2009. I rode the wave of peer-to-peer distribution instead of fighting it and that made the movie even more successful and I dedicated it to the public domain and I sold tons of DVDs even though it was a public domain movie. So I was an in-demand speaker mostly at college campuses, but also at festivals and conferences and things like that. And I would be invited to speak about animation and religion because it's sort of a comparative religion film based on the Ramayana, a Hindu epic. and filmmaking and copyright and copy left and free culture things. So that was actually my main career was speaking. And yeah, and then that all came to a crashing halt in 2017. when I, after a year of thinking about it, a year of wondering what the heck was going on online because Bruce slash Caitlyn Jenner was in the news, and I thought, you know, that's fine. That's fine with me if he wants to identify as a woman, but isn't this sexist? like these stereotypes that he's pushing and that photo of him on whatever it was, Vogue or something else, in a corset with his arms behind his back. I was like, this should not be lauded as womanhood. This is not what womanhood is. And people got all over my case saying I was transphobic. and that I should meet some trans people, talk to some trans people. They just assumed things about me that were not true because I'd had some trans lovers and I had many a trans-identified pal in my life. some before the little whippersnappers were born. So, uh, they made a lot of assumptions about me, but one thing I knew about trans identified men is that they were male and I was fine with it. I've incurred, I've put makeup on boyfriends. That was before I knew what autogynephilia was. Um, but, uh, yeah, I was, I was down with the trannies. And I was like, what is going on? How did this change all of a sudden? Why can you not talk about this right now? And when I said trannies, they were like, that's insulting. And I was like, but all my trannies friends called themselves trannies. There was a place in San Francisco called the Tranny Shack. And trans people used to have a great sense of humor. That's why I liked them. is because they were weirdos and they knew it and they went ahead and lived the way they wanted. And I thought that was fine, but I did not think they changed sex and they didn't think they changed sex either. And suddenly there was this mass of so-called progressives that were saying that they were changing sex. And I was like, what is going on? So I took a year to research and ponder and read, which is how I read The Man Who Would Be Queen by Michael Bailey and discovered the Reddit gender critical, our gender critical, which was since banned. And then I timidly came out on Facebook and pushed back on some meme that was going around comparing, uh, women's rooms to whites only drinking fountains. And I was like, this is so wrong and pushed back. And then I got canceled. I got banned from Facebook for the first time. And I got, I had been invited to a film festival to be a judge. And I was canceled from that festival for no reason. You know, they wouldn't give a reason. And I was canceled from everything else I was scheduled to go to. And I ceased being invited to anything. And I started When my name came up in social media, it was to be denounced as a TERF, and people were saying how disappointed they were, and how they used to love my work, but now Nina is a horrible person, oh my god, she's just a total garbage person. And then locally, people were lying about me outright, and I watched these lies spread all over social media. and It was terrifying and out of control and I'm not the only person who's been through that but it effectively ended my career and Yeah, I've been recovering from it ever since Did you know what you were getting into I could not, I had never seen people behave like that. So I knew some people would disagree with me, but I'd never seen cancellation like that. We didn't really even have the word, like the word for it was just sort of coming up at the time. And I had seen other women be persecuted, which is one of the reasons I did speak up, because I admired the women that had spoken out so much. Megan Murphy being one example. And it just reached a point where women were being persecuted and hunted and attacked. I thought, well, I need to say something. I need to speak up. Because just sitting here being silent is wrong. And if people just spoke up, everyone would be safer. And I did not imagine how bad that would be. But I think I probably would have done it anyway. I don't know. It's really hard to say. It made my head spin.

Stephanie Winn: Almost going to be my next question, but I appreciate that you sort of added that caveat, like I probably would have done it anyway. But it's really hard to know in retrospect, because I feel similarly. I think I underestimated how much it would change my life to go through that whole, my version of the process of what you went through. It must have had a huge financial impact.

Nina Paley: Yeah. Yeah, it did. On the other hand, I had moved back to central Illinois by that time. I moved back to Urbana in 2012. That's where I grew up. And it is so much cheaper to live here. Yeah, so yes, it has an impact, but I was not making a ton of money. I had acclimated to a lifestyle of low expenses and low income. So having low income is not that devastating to me.

Stephanie Winn: And when you say you've been recovering from it ever since, there's the emotional part, the reputational part of like finding new friends and new community. There's kind of like the worldview reconstructing itself. And then there's like recreating your career. So I feel like I know like little pieces of that. Right. You host Heterodork's podcast. You've got these gloves. Could you tell us about these gloves?

Nina Paley: Yeah, these are these are not a career move.

Stephanie Winn: Gloves are not for career. Those are some pretty funky gloves, though.

Nina Paley: I love my gloves. I thought that they were only going to take a couple days. And they ended up taking, well, I'm making them to this day. So they have taken almost a year now. I guess 3 quarters of a year. But let me talk about the gloves later. I am not going to remake my career. I have made my peace with the fact that that is never coming back. and what I had before is never coming back and that has been the the last and most necessary part of my recovery. I think for several years I was trying to get back what I had lost. And this last year has been the year of really working through this grief and going, no, I'm not going to. We can't bring the past back anyway. Lots of other things have changed in the meantime. I mean, I've aged eight years, seven years, eight years. It'll be eight years in a few months. Uh, So yeah, that's just not, it's not going to come back. Other things have happened, though. Life goes on. I mean, all these crazy changes. It's like now more people know me for the Hetero Dorks podcast than for my life's work, than for my very big and important animated films that I put so much of myself into. I don't put myself into the podcast like that. Podcast is just, you know, some chitchat every week or so with Cori. But these films, they were, you know, major life's work and required a ton of skill and thought and inspiration and being moved by the muse and faith. Yeah, but yeah, people know me from my gender-critical podcast. Some people know that I did the Gender Wars cards. I don't know if you've seen those. Do you know about the Gender Wars cards? A couple years ago, after years of doing other art, I just, like, went ahead and pushed on and did art despite the cancellation, which was really sad. I went, um, all right, fine. I'm, like, known as a TERF. No matter what I do, everyone just says I'm a TERF. I'm gonna just go ahead and make something TERFy. So, uh, these are the Gender Wars playing cards. I have to take off my gloves to… go through them. And they're, they're just playing cards with, um, you know, beloved and despised, uh, characters from the gender wars. There's Amy Hamm. There's Jermaine Greer. I didn't do her justice. Uh, and then there's like villains is Nicola Sturgeon. Oh, Dana Rivers, mass murderer. And these came about because I had friends who really had no idea what was going on or how to keep track of these characters that kept popping up. But we gender nerds knew all of them. And one of them jokingly said, can you make a deck of cards or something? And I was like, that's a great idea. So I did.

Stephanie Winn: There's just so many talented people on our side of the gender wars. I frequently feel like we're on the verge of creating some alternative economy or something, if you put all the minds together. Has anyone on our side of these issues ever reached out and asked you to collaborate on a project?

Nina Paley: Yeah, a few times, but it's not like there's been a ton of money. The, the most recent development in our side, which is, you know, our side is very fractured and contentious and has lots of infighting just like their side, everything is fracturing. But the latest development in terms of media and economy is Graham Linehan and, uh, Andrew Doyle are starting a media company in Arizona.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I heard about that. I think Rob Schneider is involved.

Nina Paley: Yeah. Yeah, so whole new media company. And, and that's really cool. And I heard them interviewed on Jordan Peterson. And listening, I was like, Hey, I want to do that. That sounds like fun. But then another part of me is going, it's 2024. It's almost 2025. There's a tidal wave rapidly coming towards us of AI-generated media, which is radically changing or going to change the whole media landscape in ways that there is no way to really prepare for. And so I don't really even know what it's going to mean to have a media company when audience attention is super saturated with what is called content. And it was already saturated, and it's going to be saturated beyond what we can even conceive of. So, I don't know. I mean, that's what I mean. Like, everything's changing. Everything's changed. It hasn't just been, it's not the same world, and I've just been canceled in it. It's a different world.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it's a valid concern. And when you describe that tidal wave of AI, it sometimes feels like the only way to stay afloat is to learn to surf big waves. I've been kind of learning how to harness AI in my own little pocket of the internet. You know, I use it to help writing my show notes and help putting outlines together and things like that. But with what they're up to, I have frequently heard the complaint that wokeness is destroyed comedy and that there's not a lot of good TV and film being made that's genuinely entertaining that, you know, doesn't treat these issues with kid gloves. So I do look forward to what they're going to create. But speaking of, you mentioned this whole copyright versus copy left issue. I've never heard of this before. All I've heard of is people violating copyrights and getting sued. And then I know certain things are created in an open source manner by choice. But explain your position to us because I don't think I understand it.

Nina Paley: Yeah, well, first you can look up a video I did, a TEDx talk called Copyright is Brain Damage, where I pretty succinctly got my thoughts in order. Where to begin with copyright? So, copyright is a subset of what's called intellectual property. And intellectual property is not property. It does not have any of the properties of property. It is an artificial monopoly on what? Technically, it's not supposed to be on ideas, but it basically is. It's on patterns. That's what music is. It's patterns, visual patterns. And It attempts to treat culture, which is what I would call anti-rivalrous. Culture is not a scarce resource that people have to fight over. It's actually an almost infinite resource when people have computers that can copy it almost endlessly. So it's this attempt to restrict access to it. And the way that is done is by putting restrictions on you and me, on our individual freedoms to make copies of things. Because now everybody has a computer. Everybody has the means of copying. We have more powerful machines in our hands than the printing presses were when copyright was invented. It's a very long story, and really the best way to shorten it is in that copyright is brain damage talk that I gave, but it's been years since I've been asked to give that talk, because I've been canceled. I've been canceled by the copyleft people especially, who used to love having me speak, but they all swallowed trans activist dogma, so they don't let me talk about that anymore. Yeah, I mean, like, where to begin? Like, people need to be free to process and share culture. We need to be free to sing songs that are part of our own culture. It is deeply troubling that there that culture we internalize it like when we read or see or hear something it goes into our heads and it knocks around inside of our own heads and we think about it and maybe it I mean I don't know about you but I'm one of these people that has music playing continually in my head no matter what all the time it's like a radio that never turns off and we need to express what is in our hearts and minds. And a lot of that comes from outside of us, but it is actually illegal for us to express a lot of that because of copyright. Like, if I want to sing a copyrighted song that's knocking around in my head, that's illegal. And somebody with lawyers or, you know, somebody for any reason could basically censor me. Like if I were to sing on your podcast, this podcast could be censored or shut down by the so-called copyright holder of whatever it was I was singing. And copyright, a lot of people don't understand the mechanism of copyright, but it is the right of copyright is the right to suppress distribution of other people's stuff. It is the right to censor. people think it's the right to make money, but you have the right to make money any old way. And I proved that with my distribution of Sita Sings the Blues, which I did with a now defunct nonprofit called questioncopyright.org, dedicated it to the public domain. And I made more money that way than I'd ever made with standard distribution, uh, clinging to the copyright model. So now it's not a right to make money. It's a right to sue and persecute people.

Stephanie Winn: I can think of arguments for and against your position. Like when you talk about singing a song from pop culture, you make a lot of sense. Funnily enough, the song that's in the radio in my head right now is Feliz Navidad. Like five minutes before we started recording, I saw that gooey video of the women dancing like chickens to Felice.

Nina Paley: Oh, that's a great one. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. Which I would like to think that that song has been around long enough, but nobody owns the copyright to it. I mean, there's so many versions of it. I would like to believe anyway. But yeah, I mean, it's like, so I've done karaoke where there was a certain song that I would sing at karaoke, and then I went back to the same, let's say, venue or the same YouTube channel or whatever, and every song by that artist had been revoked because of, you know, that artist's distributor decided to enforce copyright laws or whatever, and it's like, well, that's silly, you know? It's karaoke. So I, like, you know, certain examples that you gave, I think, are really relatable. And at the same time, I'm thinking, well, then, you know, if we banished copyright altogether, where would it end? Like, I was just reading Oliver Berkman. Would, you know, would you advocate for a world in which I could copy-paste Oliver Berkman's work and pass it off on my own? Or where do you think the lines should be drawn? It's so funny because

Nina Paley: Whenever people are new to this, arguing about it, the first thing they think of is plagiarism. Right? So the first thing they think of is, oh, like, you're not talking about copying it. You're talking about claiming that you made it, which is fraud. Like, fraud is a separate issue.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, so where is the line? Because the example I gave of, as you said, plagiarism or fraud is obviously a pretty ridiculous thing. Copying a whole book and putting my name on it is clearly far to one side of a certain line, but where exactly is that line?

Nina Paley: You mean in copyright law as it exists?

Stephanie Winn: I mean.

Nina Paley: Copyright law as it exists says that like, let's say, let's say you buy that book and let's say you want to make a copy of it, like on your device or whatever. It's illegal for you to do that. Now, it's also illegal for you to make copies and sell them, but it doesn't matter whether you sell them or not. And it doesn't matter whether you make one copy or a hundred copies. It's illegal for you to copy that book that you bought.

Stephanie Winn: So the example here would be that if I bought an e-book, which is not actually, I don't really read e-books very often. I mostly listen to audio books and occasionally read paper books. So I have an e-book and I managed to turn it into a PDF and email it to a friend and say, hey, you really ought to read this. That's illegal. And you think it shouldn't be.

Nina Paley: Yeah. Although people love, people love authoritarianism. So when I say it shouldn't be, it's like, you know, don't let me take your authoritarian system away. Most people just do it anyway, if they have the opportunity. And then, you know, one of the reasons that we, that the internet has turned into a, well, they called it a walled garden, but now it's sort of a walled hell hole, is because of copyright laws, is because, copyright laws are the justification for breaking the internet and it used to be a wonderful free place full of free expression and it has become very authoritarian, full of cancel culture. I do think that there is a strong correlation between cancel culture and authoritarianism instilled by the copyright industries in their education because they did a lot of, you know, education of children in the early 2000s. And these children came to believe in what critics call permission culture. They got trained to ask permission for everything. you know, can I say this thing? They're doing a homework project. Oh, am I allowed to use this? There are exceptions to copyright in the United States called fair use. And in their papers and projects, they can totally legally use copyrighted works, excerpts of copyrighted works in their educational projects. But their teachers, because they were reached by the copyright lobbyists first, who had education materials, the teachers trained them all to ask for permission. They asked me for permission before I was canceled. I would get so many inquiries from students, can I use this thing of yours? And I actually wrote a blog post saying, yes means yes. I dedicated this to the public domain. Please do not waste my time asking permission for something you already have permission to use. I have gone over backwards, giving everybody permission for this. Please stop asking permission for every damn thing. But they learned to ask permission for every damn thing. And that type of authoritarianism, I think, is very much related to pronoun culture, where it's like, oh, yeah, you should ask somebody before you refer to them. You should ask somebody else's permission before you talk about them in the third person. I think that that mindset is just that things are the same mindset, that somebody else determines what you get to say.

Stephanie Winn: You know what's funny? As you're drawing these correlations, which I love, because that's what I'm all about, is, you know, that sort of expansive thinking where you're seeing the connection between seemingly unrelated topics. And what was popping into my mind as you were saying that is how that contrasts with actual manners. like, just old-fashioned manners, which I personally wish we had more of. We had a holiday gathering here recently, and we invited a friend of my fiancé's, and he's quite a gentleman. And as he was, like, entering and taking off his shoes, he was introducing me to his kids, who I'd met before, but they needed to be reminded of my name. And he was like, is it Stephanie or Ms. Wynn? And I was like, oh, please, Ms. Nguyen is my mother. I grew up hearing her called that. I mean, she was a schoolteacher, so I heard that a lot. Like, please don't ever call me that. But there's that. There's please and thank you. There's like a certain type of old school etiquette that I felt like I never really got exposed to myself, but that I've seen relics of from the past that I feel like there's the etiquette that's missing nowadays. It greased the wheels of culture. There's just a baseline level of consideration, however superficial it might have felt, that ensured a certain degree of politeness that I've had an increasing respect for as I get older. Because I was a crass teenager. I had no regard for that type of socialization. I mean, if we're thinking about being polite or being respectful, it's just interesting that those types of manners, certain etiquette feels by and large like out of fashion, but there is this other etiquette that you view as authoritarian, you view as having to do with asking permission. I guess another connection here I see is like consent, this idea that sexual consent is like the end-all be-all of sexual morality.

Nina Paley: Do you have a question?

Stephanie Winn: I'm just kind of exploring ideas with you because it feels like what you're talking about, here's my elaboration on it, right? Is that What you're talking about, what you're describing in the culture could be framed as arguably a misguided effort at showing respect, at being polite, at demonstrating etiquette. And what is the purpose of etiquette? It is to create social order. and establish sort of some kind of baseline for how we're all going to treat each other to ensure civility. That's the function that etiquette serves in a culture. Now, what particular etiquette is expected is going to vary by time and place. But it feels to me like this thing that you're referring to as authoritarian is like an etiquette of sorts. And I'm wondering if it like, if it's replacing something that other forms of etiquette have served at other times and places. You know what I'm saying?

Nina Paley: So you're saying like one man's authoritarianism is another man's etiquette?

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, well, it's the, you know, so in the 1950s, it was, you know, by the age of eight, every child knew to call their friends, parents, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. Right. And in the 80s, if you wanted if you were a kid and you wanted to call your friend, hello, Mr. So and so, how are you today? It's Johnny. May I please speak with David? You know, if that was the etiquette that children learned to ensure a certain social cohesion that and you can see it like, you know, you can see it in different generations, people from different cultures. Like I noticed my mother who's in her 80s has a certain etiquette that feels like it's from a different time. You know, so I'm saying we need some kind of etiquette because it's like the social glue that if everyone in the culture knows how to do it, it sends the signal, I'm a safe person. We all belong here. And it feels like this whole like consent and asking pronouns and asking permission and like that is like almost like our culture's like almost like pathetic attempt at some kind of etiquette. And I'm going, maybe we should all go back to using Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so.

Nina Paley: Yeah, well, there's a couple differences in those scenarios. So I think what you're saying is that as we got so casual, and so informal, that we dropped etiquette, something had to arise to take its place. The difference between these two etiquette systems is that one of them had adults having authority and children having to respect that authority. And the other one gives the children the authority and the adults have to respect.

Stephanie Winn: Which one gives the children? Oh, you mean the pronouns? Pronouns.

Nina Paley: Oh yeah. Like you let a child dictate how you talk and it's, it's considered essential to let, you know, adults must, uh, uh, I don't want to word capitulate. There's a word for it. Submit. They must submit to the authority of the child.

Stephanie Winn: And isn't it because at the same time what's popping into my head is because when you talk about asking permission, I'm thinking about kids having to ask permission to go to the bathroom and like how unnatural that is because you should be able to regulate your own body and like know when your body needs to go to the bathroom, right? I understand in classrooms with 30 kids why you have to have asking permission to go to the bathroom. But on one level, kids are not given the basic authority to listen to their own bodily instincts or to operate in a very kid-like manner for that matter. If you look at how educational systems are run, it's not necessarily age or developmentally appropriate. So it's very much like kids being molded to conform into the adult working world. And at the same time, you're right, there's this inversion of power, there's this like idealization of the child as having some kind of mystical knowledge, as like being closer to God. I think that's the underlying unconscious logic for a lot of people. It's like, oh, children are from God, even if I don't think I believe in God. And so children know the truth. And so we must listen to what they tell us about who they are.

Nina Paley: Yeah. I do think humans are hierarchical. I do think people do seek authority. And when there's no clear authority, that leaves a vacuum. And there's a lot of covert authoritarianism on the left. I forgot the point I was going to make. But people will find it. Yeah. So as long as, as long as we default to hierarchies, I think we need sensible hierarchies. And I think that adults, there need to be adults in the room and all this cancel culture has been a consequence of adults not adulting. Like, there are these institutions that canceled me. And over and over again, this pattern happened. You know, I'd be invited to something. An activist would say, she's a bigot. She's a transphobe. She's a Nazi. She's a white supremacist. And the institution would capitulate to them. like almost instantly. First they would be like, what's going on? And then they would just be like, you know, Oh, well, we can't have anyone, you know, say anything like that. And they would have no courage and no spine. And I would be watching this and like, you need a spine. Like your job is to, you know, you're like the curator or whatever of this institution. You need a spine for this job. But they were not being adults. They were like little, little frightened children. And like one other person could say mean names and they're like, oh, they're going to call me a mean name too. And so we'll cancel her over and over and over again. That's not adulting. Like when you let little kids call you names and you capitulate to them because they're calling you names, that's cowardly and that's not how adults act. And I think that a lot of these young people on these cancel rampages were crying out. for boundaries, you know? They desperately needed somebody to say no. They needed the institutions to say no. They needed some adults to say no. And the adults just would not say no. And it got worse and worse.

Stephanie Winn: Well, and there's also this paranoia and like a fear of contamination and a connection to the sort of the disgust instinct. Because when someone says, she's a transphobe, they're saying she has dangerous beliefs. She has beliefs that are so dangerous. We can't risk getting infected by them So we have to quarantine and isolate and keep her in a completely separate bubble We can't breathe the same air as her. We can't step within 10 feet of her. So it's this like quarantining Instinct that's gotten so much more intense. I feel like since the lockdowns because the obviously right this what that what that did to us mentally obviously you experienced it before then now because Humans have this instinct to protect ourselves from contamination. So I think there's like paranoia disgust Some really like basic fears being triggered where it short circuits that ability to critically think. Because in order to critically think and do your own research, you have to have the time to think and to be in the unknown of, well, I actually have not familiarized myself with Nina Paley's ideas, let me take a moment to look into her ideas and get back to you. time to do your research if there's a wildfire spreading or a dangerous disease spreading like wildfire. And I think the mentality about these ideas that people are so afraid of is is really that like fear of contamination. It shuts off our critical thinking. It's I can't risk it. I can't risk exposure. Yes.

Nina Paley: What you said makes me think about my very own family and the fact that my brother still thinks that I am an existential threat to his children and their friends.

Stephanie Winn: I'm very sorry to hear that.

Nina Paley: Yes, is very sad. And he also has some emotional dysregulation. So he yells and is not reachable. You know, that's like, there is abuse, verbal abuse involved. And Yeah, I mean, I don't know exactly what locks people into this, but I'm related to him. If anybody should know a little bit more than just that I'm a horrible transphobe, you would think it would be a sibling, but he's into it. He's made it very big, my demoness.

Stephanie Winn: Well, you did say that you are a scapegoat. So does that family pattern go back further than this stuff for you?

Nina Paley: Why, yes, it does. Yes, it does.

Stephanie Winn: So the idea that he should know you better than that, it's almost like, well, maybe, no, he shouldn't. Because maybe he's or the family has been projecting this evilness onto you for a long, long time. It's almost like in-fitting with the existing pattern that you just, you conveniently, conveniently you're a transphobe, right? So now they can just, you like handed it to them, the reason to scapegoat you.

Nina Paley: Yes, that's probably true too. Whatever it is, I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't cure it. So every time it comes up, I'll be really sad and I'm just like, is there something I can do? And the answer is no, there is not. There's not anything I can do.

Stephanie Winn: When you were saying, I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and so on, I felt like you were uttering a mantra you've said to yourself hundreds of times.

Nina Paley: Oh yeah, that's a famous Al-Anon slogan. Okay. That's, you know, friends and family of alcoholics say that all the time. It's really painful when you have someone in your immediate family who is not well.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit rogdrepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code sometherapist2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's rogdrepair.com. So, scapegoating. Yes. I know we've, uh, you and I have like touched base before on this, just that it's, it's a, it's a common experience we share. Do you want to dive into it?

Nina Paley: I mean, uh, between 2017 and 2023, that really seemed like my job was to be a scapegoat and Had been in that role earlier in my family and definitely at school, especially junior high school and I had pondered it before I do think scapegoats provide a service we I people actually bond socially around us. In fact, in my town, a whole tightly knit community arose around scapegoating me. They considered me a threat and they formed a, you know, like a trans support organization around the threat of me living in this town and trying to… That's giving you a lot of power. Yeah, trying to give a talk in the library with Corey Cohn. When Corey suggested we do this library talk, they just absolutely freaked out and they made organizations to prevent it. And when I had a screening, I mean, my screenings all got canceled vocally, but finally a free speech person rented the most expensive theater in town, which is owned by the park district. So they couldn't cancel it actually, because it was a government thing. And there was a big protest against that and, you know, lots of organizing. So people, you know, they formed relationships and friendships and real bonding over having this common enemy. They really needed a scapegoat. And there I was. And that was not the first time in my life that I fell into that position. Of course, I've done lots of questioning, like, why does this keep happening? And can I stop it? And, uh, yeah. So I thought about scapegoats a lot. But my… My orientation to all of this finally changed at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, because I was starting to work on a project about Jesus Christ. I wanted to do a film or some project about a famous scapegoat of mythology. And I was like, who's the most famous scapegoat of all? It's Jesus Christ. So I did all these interviews with people about Jesus Christ, and I realized, listening to them, that people do not think of Jesus Christ as a scapegoat. They think of him as a sacrifice. And the original scapegoat story in the Bible, in the Old Testament, has two goats. Do you know about this?

Stephanie Winn: No, tell me.

Nina Paley: Okay, so the priest selects, or I don't know, like the tribe produces two goats, unblemished goats, and the priest draws lots. So randomly, one is assigned the scapegoat and one is assigned the sacrificial goat. The scapegoat has the sins of the community placed on its head and it is exiled from the tribe and driven off a cliff or left to die in the wilderness. The sacrificial goat is sacrificed the way a goat is sacrificed to the Lord, and is just a conventional sacrifice.

Stephanie Winn: You say that like we all know what a conventional sacrifice is. Well, it's all over the place. There's a major distinction that you're trying to make here between a scapegoat and a sacrifice.

Nina Paley: So yes. Yeah. So the sacrifice goes straight to God. I mean, it's killed on an altar, but it goes straight to God. And the scapegoat has a little tag on it that says, I think, for Azazel. for Satan or the spirit of the wilderness or the out there. And it's cast out. It's not eaten. It's just sent away. It's excommunicated. It's expelled. And I did notice when I was scapegoated, the the kind of thrill and energy it gave people in the tribe to do that. I thought, this is such a primal behavior. And people were undoubtedly doing this before the biblical scapegoat was invented. And I really believe that the biblical scapegoat was invented in order to prevent human sacrifice. because they sacrifice humans also. I mean, the story of Abraham and or the binding of Isaac in the Old Testament, you know, the story where Isaac, who I guess is the son of Abraham. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sorry, I'm not good with names. God tells Abraham, take your son up the mountain. And then he says, okay, time to this rock. All right, get your blade out. All right, kill him. That's what I want. Are you not devoted to me? And so he's like, ready to kill his son, because God told him to do that. And then there's a rustling in the bush. And there's a goat there, I guess a ram. And God says, All right, okay, you can put the knife down, I believe you, I believe you would do that. So I'm going to let you sacrifice this goat instead. And you can keep your son. And this was a big advancement in human culture, because it was the move from animal, from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice. Now you could use an animal instead of a human being. So a great step forward in civilization. But I'm sure that because it's so primal, tribes of people, just they get, we naturally get really excited when we can boot someone out of our tribe, when we can have a common enemy from within the tribe. It's different than an outsider enemy. It's an insider enemy and ejecting that insider, the outside, is so thrilling and satisfying for the people who do it. They get such a charge out of it. And it must have happened all the time. And these little you know, tribes, the thinking people in them probably went, you know, we can't really afford to have our best and brightest keep dying this way. We need some way to keep the people. So let's make a proxy scapegoat and let's have this ritual where they can do it to a goat instead of, you know, their own brother or sister. And I think that's how the scapegoat, the original scapegoat was created.

Stephanie Winn: So after doing all that, did you come to agree with people who viewed Jesus as a sacrifice or do you still believe Jesus was a scapegoat?

Nina Paley: Well, it's interesting that you have these like the scapegoat story is the story of two goats. And I had this, you know, Ken show experience. I had this light bulb moment eventually with a lot of tears. Um, it's like, these are twin goats. Why do we have both of them? Uh, and it's like, it's the same thing, right? They both die. They both suffer and die. One goes straight to God. One goes to hell, but they both suffer and die. And I was like, um, I was like, I could identify as a sacrifice instead. Like I could see my life as a sacrifice. And that just turned it upside down. Cause it went from like, oh my God, people are being so awful to me. Why are they being so mean to me? They're so terrible. But also there was nothing I could do to control it. Like they act like a force of nature. There were just powers so beyond my control. And it was like, I mean, I do describe my experience more and more in terms of God, even though I don't literally believe in God, I just find that a useful way to think about things. So it's like, God, why did me to sacrifice my career, you know? That was the most precious thing to me. And it went up in flames because I told the truth. Like, I bore witness to the truth. I bore witness to reality. I need to do that. That's, like, that is crucial to my mental health and my life, so I did that. And my career was sacrificed. And I was, like, clinging to it and really sad about it and going, why, why, why, why, why? But then I was like, oh, Why? Because. That's the answer. It's just because. And I finally accepted it this year.

Stephanie Winn: I love that reframe because it's taking something that is a source of so much pain. And I relate very much because I also fall into the scapegoat role, and it's also happened throughout my life in many iterations. And I've also been through the why's this happening to me. You know, to take something that is a source of pain that can be deeply connected to shame, because oftentimes those patterns go way back to some early experience that planted a seed of you are bad. You know, to take something that you feel that helpless about and recognize what choice you do have. Because as you were describing the two goats, I could almost see where you were going with it because I was going to that same place too. I was like, well, if I'm going to be one of these two goats and I'm going to die, which we all die eventually, I'm not going to hell. I'm going to heaven. You know, like I'm like, I'm going to be the goat that goes to heaven. I don't deserve to go to hell. I've done enough of a service here on earth. That's where I'm going with it. Right. So you found the part of you that has agency to take this thing that you don't have agency about, which is that for some reason we can go ahead and speak of God. God has assigned you to be one of a handful of scapegoats in your particular community. God has given me a similar assignment. You know, you could sort of view it that way. But to say, okay, well then, then I'll be a sacrifice. And to sort of find your agency amidst the lack of agency and to redefine the experience.

Nina Paley: Yeah, I think I finally said like, okay, take it. And I stopped seeing it as these individuals persecuting me and really a force of nature.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it really is. And, you know, I've had this happen in situations where it was not at all clear what I should do because the people scapegoating me. So I've been scapegoated by a handful of individuals in the gender critical community who others admire for their good works. and who I previously admired for their good works and said, I spoke no ill of these individuals until suddenly that force of nature was directed at me from them. And I was having a familiar experience with an unfamiliar person and somebody I wouldn't have expected it from. And these individuals who I don't point out by name, do good works that others who turn to me for help have benefited from, right? Because of the nature of my work, I help people one-on-one, one-on-two, with some incredibly painful and difficult issues, and those people are just looking to anyone who has anything valuable to offer on the subject. And so then certain names come up, names of people who, let's say, have created resources, like I have created resources to help these people, right? And it's my job in that moment to let it go completely over my head that, you know, this person is speaking in an idealizing way of someone who behind closed doors has treated me very painfully and attempted to damage my reputation. So the force of nature thing, Like when I've been in that position, I relate very much to what you're saying. It feels primal. It feels archetypal. It feels like something comes over. And again, going back to earlier, some of the behaviors you described people demonstrating towards you, which I framed as like fear of contamination. I think that's part of, I think because it's part of what's happening with scapegoating is it's projected shadow elements, right? We all have a shadow and then there's collective shadow stuff. There's what's in the collective psyche at any given time that's being repressed. And then the scapegoat serves this role of Like being the projection screen for all of that shadow that people are afraid to face in themselves or are misdirecting because maybe they have that energy towards someone else in their life, maybe somebody they actually know better. So all that projected shadow gets projected onto the scapegoat. And I think when you describe that tremendous amount of energy that comes out, it's like a misdirected attempt at healing energy. Because I think part of what's going on that makes this whole scapegoating thing so compelling is that it's this idea kind of temporarily takes hold. That if we can, as you said, eject this person from the community, we can also with them, rid ourselves of the poison that we have projected onto them, then we will be free of this thing that's been haunting us. Could be from within our own psyche, from within our own innermost relationships, our own inner conflicts, the part of ourselves we're most afraid to face. By getting rid of them, we can get rid of those parts of ourselves. That is an intoxicating feeling. It's like an enlivening feeling. It's like how I would feel if a doctor told me tomorrow that take this medication once and it will purge you permanently of everything that has been ailing your entire physicality for the last three years. I would be filled with energy. I'd be like, I'm going to take that medication. I'm going to take it so hard. Yeah.

Nina Paley: Yeah, and it is repeated over and over again. I just pulled out the Purity Spiral card from the Gender Wars deck.

Stephanie Winn: Ooh, tell us about the Purity Spiral card. It's an Ace of Hearts, by the way.

Nina Paley: The Ace of Hearts. So the hearts, the red suits in my deck are the gender critical ones. So most of the heroes are in the red suits. But there's some ambiguity and this just plagues gender criticals. And yeah, it's like, it's like pathetically any, you know, whenever I find a side, this always ends up happening is, you know, yeah, like you said, the purity spiral, which is very much related to contamination, and they'll find somebody, you know, enemy of the day, scapegoat of the day, and it keeps happening on supposedly our side. So when when this stuff started shaking out on social media, I just was like, I am anti-cancel. Cancel culture is bad. People need to be able to disagree. I'm OK interacting with people I disagree with. You need to be able to disagree with people without canceling them. That was like a fundamental thing. And unfortunately, the way sides have shaken out is there is no anti-cancel side. Each side cancels its own members viciously. But you know, it happens so often. You know, it's human nature. These are humans. This is what we do. This is what we do in groups. These are group dynamics that will always come up.

Stephanie Winn: And I want to speak to one part of the experience of being scapegoated that I've heard you allude to. And it's the recognition that once it starts, there's really nothing you can do. Because I think this is one thing that people who maybe don't have so much experience with scapegoating but are sympathetic to those in their lives who have been hurt in this way, sometimes they want to offer solutions. Like, if you just say this or do that or avoid this or that, then, you know, maybe that person will come around or, you know. And I think what people who say such things fail to grasp, at the risk of sounding pessimistic, as someone who's experienced this dynamic in such an intimate way, is that once that, as you say, force of nature takes hold, part of what happens is that the person who's doing the persecuting or the people who are doing the persecuting of the scapegoat they enter a mode that's kind of out of character, out of integrity or alignment with their kind of normal personal standards of conduct that they would expect of themselves. Because these could be people who, like I say, it's come to me from people who do good works. And I'm sure that in many circumstances in their lives, they actually have higher standards of conduct for themselves. But once that fear of contamination, that paranoia, that projected shadow element comes over and they've decided this person must be rid of the community, It's like a different state is entered. And in that state, they can justify cruelty that they would never normally want to even see in themselves. So the moment a person begins the process of rationalizing and justifying cruelty, it's very hard to reverse that process because they would have to recognize that they've treated an, I don't want to say necessarily like an innocent person, because I don't want to paint things in such black and white terms, but a human person, a person who's no more or less bad than they are, you know, a person with just as much feeling, just as much sensitivity as them, they've treated someone unfairly. And to have to look at that, right, to have to see how they violated their own standards of conduct would be to examine the shadow, which is the exact thing they're avoiding doing by projecting and scapegoating.

Nina Paley: Yeah, this is human stuff, which means that you and I do it also. Like, no matter how much we want to not, we're human.

Stephanie Winn: I try very hard not to.

Nina Paley: I try very hard not to also, and we probably do it less than less aware people, but we're still human, right? Like we still have these human needs and these tribal needs, so we can't be pure, you and I. And there's this line from the Bible that goes through my mind a lot, which is, forgive them, they know not what they do. We know not what we do also. We try so hard, right? But you and I are screwing up too, somewhere.

Stephanie Winn: I think the one thing that I know I can say, like, I won't say that I don't talk shit, because I do, and you've heard me talk shit.

Nina Paley: It's fun. I mean, that's the thing. I don't think we should be ashamed of talking shit because we're human beings and we need to do that.

Stephanie Winn: But you know what? I think I'm fair. I think I'm fair when I do it. What I don't do is I don't demonize people. I don't just say that is a bad person. I don't just project a moral corruption I think I try to, and I'm reassessing my relationship with gossip right now because I feel kind of torn. I'm very torn on gossip. There are some both religious and non-religious ideas about why people shouldn't gossip that I actually really resonate with and feel like there's a lot of integrity in that approach. And then there's also, I feel like from almost like from this evolutionary psychology lens, like, nope, gossip plays an important role. But I like to think that when I do gossip that I'm fair, you know, and yeah, I'll let my guard down around certain people. And I'll say this person really hurt me or really upset me. And I, you know, I think they've been unfair to me or whatever, but like, I'll always give them credit for the good and for the humanity. It's only a narrow subset of people with, I think, the potential to be really dangerous who have just passed up every opportunity life has ever handed to them to become more aware of how they're hurting people. It's like my tolerance goes down when you see that pattern of behavior.

Nina Paley: over a period of time. That's how my brother would describe me. He would describe me as someone that had every opportunity to be good and didn't take it.

Stephanie Winn: And how would you describe those same interactions?

Nina Paley: I mean, I've had every opportunity to lie. I've had every opportunity to submit to things I don't believe. I've had every opportunity to capitulate. But I'm not motivated out of hate or any of these motives that he assigns to me. I have a different relationship with reality and I am living with as much integrity as I can and people are just going to see me this way.

Stephanie Winn: Here's like a worldview clash or like an issue with like the vision of human nature that different people have because there are those who point the hate finger, right? And like hate is one of those words where nine times out of ten you hear it and there's obviously like projected shadow elements going on, right? How do you know that someone is motivated by hate? What is hate? And why are you so obsessed with seeing hate everywhere? You know, like I have a big red flag when I hear the word hate, because I actually don't think that hate. In any political context or devoid of political context, I don't think that hatred is a big motivator of much of human behavior, but I do think that there are some people who are very motivated by Andy.

Nina Paley: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of cancellation, I mean, certainly of artists. Artists have been, you know, so subject to cancel campaigns. And yeah, envy is rampant. And the people in my town that canceled me, they got very excited about it. They're sort of mediocre artists who were not thrilled about this highfalutin New York artist moving back to town. I think they got like extra excited about taking me down.

Stephanie Winn: See when someone, like to me, when someone accuses others of being motivated by hate, What I hear, what I see in the accuser is a shallow view of human nature and just not very well-developed capacity to mentalize, to put oneself in other's shoes. I think you sound like you subscribe to some kind of like theory that just blankets people. But I do think that envy is one of those shadow motivations that has some really nasty ways of cropping up. And sometimes it looks a lot like hatred. Sometimes it can compel people to behave in very hateful ways. But at least if we start talking about something like envy, I'm like, okay, we're in the ballpark of actual insight into human nature.

Nina Paley: You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know. I just know that, like, anything that I think about my enemies are things that my enemies are thinking about me. So, there's really no way that my mind… There's no way that… Uh, there's no winning this.

Stephanie Winn: See, I guess maybe I see differently because I… If I trusted that the people who have… the people who I experienced some antagonism with, to put it in the most neutral way possible, if I trusted that the way they see me is similar to the way I see them, I would actually feel relieved. And that's where I feel like I know that I've made a substantial amount of progress in integrating my own shadow. Because like I say, my view of human nature, even the people who've really hurt me, the people who I have some, you know, emotional entanglement with. Like, I feel like the way that I see them is fair. Like it takes into account their humanity. You know what I mean? And maybe I need to take what you're saying, which I do and don't resonate with, and like, OK, if I apply that thinking, right? Because I'm looking towards starting 2025 with that energy of levity. That's really important to me because I feel like As we get older, it's so easy to get bogged down with the things that hurt and weigh us down. I really want to maintain a spirit of lightness. And so this might actually be part of that. The people who have hurt me, if only their view of me was as holistic as my view of them is. You can't do anything about that. Like, why would you even think about how they're thinking about you? No, I'm taking your logic. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, you said that whatever… Oh, I see what you're saying.

Nina Paley: Right. If you think more positively about them, maybe that's being mirrored back.

Stephanie Winn: No, I'm saying, like, yeah. Like, if you say, like, whatever I think about my enemies, they're thinking about me. And I'm like, well, if I apply that same logic, the people who have been hostile toward me, Even in the places that hurt, I still feel like my view of them overall is holistic. I just wish that they hadn't taken out their particular shadow shit on me. That's the part that hurts. I don't view them as evil.

Nina Paley: Right. This is why people pray for their enemies.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah.

Nina Paley: Because it's such a burden to carry this stuff around, to like try to get in their heads and go, why, why, why? We're never going to know why. And it's just like, pray for them and eventually stop thinking about them.

Stephanie Winn: Well, you said that you don't believe in God in the formal sense, but that you find it useful to be able to refer to God in describing concepts. So is there, you know, the whatever version of agnosticism that is, like, is there a version of praying for your enemies that fits into your world?

Nina Paley: Oh yeah, I just do it anyway. My whole thing with God at this point is like, I'll do it anyway. It's like, I don't have to literally believe this. I think prayer is an excellent practice. I do it more and more. It's like, it does a really good thing to my mind to just, it's like, there's stuff I am never gonna figure out. Like I'm never gonna figure out my brother. And so I can have various theories about him, but I can't check those theories with reality. I can't test it. And it just hurts me to try to figure it out and figure him out. And so, you know, like prayer is a, it's a desire and a willingness to just release that.

Stephanie Winn: I would imagine as part of that, there's like, letting go of trying to make it your business to know what it all means, like letting that be God's business, like, and it kind of reminds me of the things that you said about the purpose that you've served as a scapegoat, right? That your role serves some higher purpose. And so in that way, it's almost like, you know, that saying, what others think of me is none of my business. Like, how can I know what role it played in someone else's life in terms of what's ultimately between them and God for them to project whatever this is onto me? I think the only reason that I personally even have like the emotional stability to be able to seek these relatively healthier ways of dealing with really painful interpersonal situations is that I am blessed with at least one important relationship in which I'm seen in such a positive light, you know? And I think people who find themselves in the scapegoat role are not always that fortunate. and sometimes can end up living really, really miserable and dysfunctional lives because the way that people see us and treat us affects our sense of who we are. It's like we're being mirrored. by those in our environment, and if all the mirrors that are being held up around us are painting a really ugly picture, then, you know, either we can create a narcissistic fantasy of a false self to escape into and be detached from reality and have no accurate sense of self, or we can believe I am bad, I am as ugly as the reflection that's being shown to me.

Nina Paley: Right. I had a boyfriend when I was being cancelled, the last boyfriend I ever had, as a matter of fact. And he was, you know, he wasn't cancelling me along with everybody else. He could acknowledge that it was crazy, but he did. it was a stress to him. And he did start saying things like, well, you knew this was going to happen. You know, you knew this. And also, he had very little sympathy for how much it hurt. And he did not understand, like my my friends who have not been canceled, cannot understand what it's like to be canceled. And I was desperate for that for several years. So I sought it out and made some friends that way. But we broke up more than five years ago and I have not had anyone since. I've been celibate since. And I think that's a relief. It's definitely preferable. to having, like you say, a mirror. a mirror in your life that doesn't get it. And what I don't think I'm insane. I think I'm doing I like celibacy a lot. Again, it's a gift of menopause. I no longer have the desires or needs that I used to have. And I think I was like I had I had these needs for support that were so big that I would imagine I was being supported when I wasn't really, because I just needed it so much. And I wasn't really getting that kind of support from men. They really could not understand what I was going through. And yeah, it's easier for me to withstand that without having a whole other layer of delusion, delusion in my life.

Stephanie Winn: He talked about him not understanding or sympathizing with how much pain you were in, and it makes me wonder how you show pain. Because in this context of just knowing each other as podcasters, I find you kind of difficult to read emotionally, and I wonder about what your experiences have been with either showing pain or trying to get others' attention to let them see that you're in pain. Because I think that when scapegoating is a role that you've repeatedly found yourself in, There can be kind of this like catch-22 with showing pain or vulnerability, which is on the one hand, you need to be authentic and congruent in order for people to care, in order to form genuine relationships, in order to get emotional needs met. But that experience has gone badly before and Sometimes when the scapegoat is showing pain, it can almost like egg on that energy that you talked about, right? Oh, yeah. So then the scapegoat learns like, On the one hand, maybe if I cry loudly enough, someone will hear me. Maybe if I show dramatically enough that I'm in pain, they'll stop the pain. On the other hand, this seems to be leading nowhere good, and maybe I need to conceal the fact that I'm in pain in order to not let them think that they can get to me, and maybe they'll back off that way.

Nina Paley: Oh yeah. I mean, and when it's your own family doing it, I mean, who the hell knows what was going on with me as a, as a child. But I will say that, uh, there are people that I trust enough to cry in front of, to cry with. And it takes a while, but, uh, yeah, it, it does happen. Happened this morning. Did a whole lot of crying this morning. Yep.

Stephanie Winn: What happened this morning?

Nina Paley: Oh, I, um, I was conversing with Corey, who I trust, and was talking about, uh, it's funny, I was talking about artificial intelligence.

Stephanie Winn: Emotional subject for many people.

Nina Paley: It is an emotional subject, yeah. And the super saturation of audience and the communion that I have enjoyed in my life with audiences, like that has been so profound to make a work. Sita Sings the Blues was It was the exorcism of pain. I recommend this movie. It's a good movie. And among other things, it's about the breakup of my marriage. And it took me a long time to get over that marriage. And I really made that movie as a way to work through this grief. And then I put it in the world and it was like my grief was carried off by thousands of people that watched that movie. And it was an experience like no other. And that was possible because it was a particular point in time where audiences had not fractured as much as they're fractured now. Audiences are about to be just sponged up with a tidal wave of content. I mean, it's already changed so much. There's already been a glut of content just produced by humans because we have tools that have made production vastly easier. So there's been more and more competition for limited attention. But the very little bit of attention that is available for humans is about to be soaked up by AI-generated content, which the sheer volume of it and the quality of it is It is vast. So I was trying to explain that my concerns about AI are not about artists. And also I'm in favor of AI. Like I think it's, you know, it is progress, culture is a living thing and this is the next phase of it. So I'm not opposed to it, but the difference it makes to audiences and the communion that I have had with audiences is a thing of the past. And it was already a thing of the past because I was canceled. So also I was very sad because I was thinking like, yeah, I had this communion with an audience and then they canceled me. Not all of them, but some of them, like people who really, uh, you know, really removed by my work, um, hated me. They just like, they denounced me and lied about me and condemned me. Uh, so that's already happened and that's painful too. So, you know, just, just like, I was just really in touch with, um, my experiences as an artist and the struggle of reorienting in this strange new world. But I don't know you that well, so I'm not crying and talking about it now. Just trust me, I do. I cry.

Stephanie Winn: It's okay. It doesn't happen every episode. I really I do find a certain satisfaction in, like, knowing that certain guests just end up feeling, like, so, I guess, like, verklempt. Like, I was just interviewing Harrison Tinsley, and that was this morning, although I'm not sure what order these episodes will come out in, and he had a moment where he was all, like, choked up, and I love those moments in my podcast, but I don't expect them every single episode, and I don't expect it of you. It's just good to talk about scapegoating dynamics with someone who understands from her own experience.

Nina Paley: Yeah, I just want to say Corey loves it when he can make a guest cry. He loves that. I'm not quite as thrilled about it. But yeah, that's just like his favorite thing as a podcaster. Beware, beware guests to hetero dorks. Corey wants to make you cry.

Stephanie Winn: Do you have any particular insight gained from your life experiences about what qualities in a person predispose them to being put in the scapegoat role?

Nina Paley: Mm-mm. Do you? I mean, you have to be willing. Well, no, people get scapegoated for all kinds of dumb reasons, too. Like there's awesome scapegoats, and then there's really sucky scapegoats. What do you mean? Well, I mean, anybody could be a scapegoat, right? Like you could have like a complete idiot be a scapegoat. Like when Me Too was happening, the Me Too movement was about scapegoating certain men. And some of those men had actually done shitty things. Ah, but there is something I know about scapegoats. Yes. The more status a scapegoat has, the more satisfying it is for the community to scapegoat them. This isn't my own experience. This is from reading about it. Kings are very desirable as scapegoats. Part of my healing this year was recognizing that, was recognizing that I was a popular scapegoat because people thought I had power. They thought I was more powerful than I was. And it was like, to look at it from that angle, it was like, whoa, yeah, I had no idea. Like they really thought a lot of me.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, yeah, that can be sort of like a consolation prize. I've comforted myself with that one as well. I remember thinking about a particular situation where it has been revealed to me that a certain person in a certain group chat was really like, we need to cancel Stephanie with, you know, and like thinking back on that situation, First of all, that there are multiple people in that group chat who liked and cared for me. And so that feeling of, you know what, I have. I have people everywhere. This world is not a safe and welcoming place, or at least it's not anymore to those who want to destroy me because no matter where they go, they're going to be in mixed company with people who think I'm pretty darn great. That feels like a protective mechanism for one. Then two, it was almost like seeing seeing that person who was trying to cancel me as like a regressed child, you know, seeing them in a child state of like acting out of like, her, it's all her fault, get her, you know, like, and what, like, vulnerability had gotten triggered in someone to regress to that level. And then, you know, three, the combination of A, I'm so powerful in this person's eyes that I need to be canceled. But B, or the other side of that is what's kind of funny about it is that I am powerful enough that I can't be canceled. Her throwing this hissy fit in this group chat does not, in fact, take away my ability to use the technology that exists to maintain this podcast that reaches thousands of people. No, you yourself, person who's trying to cancel me, are not powerful enough to unilaterally decide that nobody is ever going to listen to me again. So that was part of how I coped with that, right? Just like almost like seeing it in a humorous light, like a person momentarily losing their grip on reality, losing their adult personality, and regressing to almost this infantile state of delusions of grandeur to think that I was that powerful, but also that she was that powerful. It's all I like I like to be able to find that Perspective like when things are hurtful where you can get to the point where it's all funny from a certain angle for sure

Nina Paley: Uh, when I was working through this via a formal exercise earlier this year, I was like, really, I was, you know, laying it all out. It's like, I was canceled. How could these people do this? I don't trust anybody. Um, and it's like, I don't do this. I don't cancel people. And I was asked, well, really never, you've never canceled anyone. Like you've never, scapegoated anyone. And I was like, well, when I was a kid, and then I went like, oh, no, but also Donald Trump. Like I said, terrible things about Donald Trump, which I was free to do because he was so powerful. It was like, well, whatever I say about him, isn't going to hurt him. Like I'm powerless in relation to him and he's powerful. And that was this like light bulb thing. I was like, oh my God, these people doing this to me, like do they, I just had this moment where it's like they think that Trump. Well, yeah, they think that I'm, you know, like so powerful that it's that it's acceptable to do this because they, you know, people only do it if they think that it's if they think that they're punching up.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. It's like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the screen. You're just a little man behind the screen, right? Yeah. Your image is projected to be this huge thing, and you've been talked about. Dorothy and her friends have come all this way to see you, by the way. To cancel me. Yeah.

Nina Paley: But it really like it, it's a, it is the word diffuse. It neutralized so much in that moment. I felt a lot less like a victim. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, and it makes me wonder, like, in situations where there is even anything to say, because a lot of this, let's be honest, it happens online, asynchronously. It's not even, we're not talking about face-to-face interactions, right? Like, that's so rare, at least in my world, at this stage in life, it's so rare to have face to face interactions create that much drama. And in fact, anyone who's like, been hurtful to me in this way has not only have they been online, and has this been asynchronous, but it's been like people who really barely know me. Like, but I can imagine, you know, that being sort of like a a neutralizing thing, at least internally, to be able to say, wow, they must really see me as powerful. And then imagining these things actually playing out in real life, which they rarely do, but imagine just being able to say, wow, you must really see me as very powerful.

Nina Paley: Yeah, but you know, when we're really hurt by people and we put so much thought into them and try to analyze them and like what's motivating them, we're, we're giving them a lot of power too.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, that's a whole like, living rent free in your head thing. And that's where I am kind of looking for my own golden ticket. Like, like you have your mantra, you have your Al-Anon mantra. And I'm looking for like my like, quick and easy remedy whenever someone's like taking up space rent free in my head. You know, is there like some like little magic phrase I can utter that just, you know, but but that line of thinking gets so dangerous, too, because it's like, don't think about a polar bear. Right. It's like, hey, you know, you create that inner resistance and friction. And something I've I've learned is that a lot of times the best I can do when something gets under my skin is just. To give it a few days. Literally, if I had a splinter under my skin that I couldn't get out, I would have to wait a few days because my skin will eventually, you know, the layers will grow and shed. And figuratively, sometimes it just takes a few days for something to calm down.

Nina Paley: Yeah, this whole, uh, prayer thing, God thing, higher power thing. So, you know, I'm in, I'm in a recovery program where, uh, I am invited to have my own understanding of a power greater than myself. And one that I returned to again and again is time. I have so much faith in time. Time takes care of so much, but I, you know, what I need for that is patience. But yeah, it does. Time takes care of everything. Sometimes I call time she, mother time. But anyway, it's not like having a little mantra fixes everything and makes it perky. There are tools to help, but there's no way through this stuff without grieving. But I think I grieve better than I used to.

Stephanie Winn: And when you say grieving, what are some of the things that are grieved in the process?

Nina Paley: Well, like when someone hurts your feelings. It's like you, you have to accept that you're vulnerable, that you have feelings that get hurt, that other people will hurt them. You know, you have to accept your limitations in this world and that, and that you're hurt. It's like you hurt and it's, you know, you don't make it go away. It's like, you feel it. You feel your feelings basically.

Stephanie Winn: I think it's also grieving the unmet needs, too, because those are there. There's a longing to be seen, to be seen fairly in a soft light. When someone's seeing us in such a harsh way, then there's I guess maybe grieving the unmet need or grieving the fantasy of being seen or treated the way that we want to be seen or treated and that it's not coming from that person and it probably never will. But the good news is that we have the opportunity to have those experiences with other people.

Nina Paley: Yeah, I mean, or not. But a lot of times there's stuff that I grieve that just keeps coming up again and again. It's not like I grieve it once and then it's done. I have a lot of brother grief, family grief, longings from pre-conscious times that it's like, no, this stuff is never gonna get fixed. Probably. I mean, maybe it will, but it's, it's just highly unlikely it ever will. And, you know, I get, I get my wound triggered, my wound gets poked and it's like, oh yeah, I have that wound. I'm sad about that wound. There it is. Take some time to be sad about it. And then move on. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up. Life is worth it. It's worth it. It's, you know, there's this wise saying, life is suffering, and it is, but it's not only suffering.

Stephanie Winn: All right, Nina, well, where can people find you?

Nina Paley: Ninapaley.com, store.ninapaley.com. I have fabulous merch, including those gloves. Heterodorks.com. SitaSingsTheBlues.com, SaterMasochism.com, or just Google me. You'll find me. I'm not that canceled.

Stephanie Winn: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure.

Nina Paley: Thank you, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.