You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Speaker 2 (00:00.056)
The core beliefs that get you labelled on Earth are that first one, which is core belief one, women are a materially definable category of human being. The second one is that on that basis we have rights and laws and needs just for us. And the third core belief is that women should have unfettered right to

freedom of speech and assembly on matters that affect us profoundly. So if you look at all of the houndings that have ever been done of any woman, whether it's Sal Grover, whether it's me, whether it's yourself, no matter who it is, we have tripped the wire on one of those three very ordinary core beliefs. For me it was core belief three because I said these women, regardless of if you agree with them or not, have the unfettered right to meet and discuss the law.

You must be some kind of therapist.

Speaker 1 (00:48.334)
Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Lindsay. She is a Scottish poet and writer and the author of Hounded Women, Harms, and the Gender Wars. Today we're going to talk about cancellation specifically in the arts and the ripple effects that Jenny has witnessed as a writer and poet, or as she calls it in her book, the secondary harms, not just the direct harms of gender identity ideology on the people who have been physically victimized by it.

but the ripple effects in society when people who have things to contribute, such as poets and writers, aren't allowed to express their views. So Jenny, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me on.

All right, so before we started recording, I was talking about sort of my way of framing this issue, thinking about how there are the people sort of in the center of the harms of gender ideology, the ones who have themselves been physically harmed and those who love them, right? And then rippling out from there, there's sort of this tear in the fabric of reality when we let in this idea that a man can literally be a woman, for instance.

And you're somebody who's in the arts, who's been canceled, and you wrote this book about women, particularly your community in Scotland, being as you call hounded for their beliefs. So I'm wondering if it would be helpful to start with a personal story or more your sort of philosophy on these ripple effects.

Speaker 2 (02:19.852)
Yeah, so the reason that I came, so for those who don't know, used to be described as one of Scotland's leading performance poets and events producers. So I used to be really involved in the arts, in poetry and in live literature. And that all stopped in 2019 when I tripped the wire, as it were, on gender identity ideology, not by discussing the issues, but by...

opposing the violence of the activism. So there were a bunch of women who were trying to meet to talk about proposed changes to the law. And people around me were calling them TERFs. They were turning up and banging pots and pans at their events. And I'd watched all of this happening in the States and in Canada for years. And when it arrived on my doorstep, I was like, I have to say something about this. So I didn't even talk about the issues themselves. I talked about the violence of the activism.

That was the only thing I did. And I got cancelled over a series of different events, which I won't go into just now. But, you know, long story short, a few years later, it did take a few years, I was approached by Polity Books because I'd written an 8,000 word essay about my own cancellation, which got, astonishingly, ended up getting a lot of media attention because it was in 2020 and a lot of this was

still quite new for a lot of people. So I wrote that essay and it went down incredibly well and it also made my situation even worse in the arts. I was hoping it would improve my situation in the arts but it did not because I had to explain the issues at that point and explain what gender identity ideology was, what TERFs are, I had to go into that kind of thing. But off of the back of that, Polity Books basically scouted me, which is great, to write a story.

as you see about this phenomena of women being hounded. People say cancel culture, but it's far too slight. Cancel culture is just one part of a hounding. But hounding in the gender wars is psychological, social, economic, and I argue democratic. Because as you see, what is happening to women who speak about this issue or who speak against gender identity ideology

Speaker 2 (04:44.494)
is the secondary harm of the ideology. The ideology itself, yes, in my opinion, it harms the people who go along with it. It harms people who love them, as you say, and it harms and it does deep harm to the women, particularly, who speak out against it because for us, it's an existential issue, which is why I focus purely on women in my book, even though some men have been hounded and cancelled over this.

For women, it's an existential thing which contributes to the psychological damage that's done to us when we speak out about this. But until people understand A, what the ideology is, what its actual core tenets are, and B, what our core beliefs are as well, and I set out three in the book, until people understand what our core beliefs are and the consequences that flow from them.

And until they know the depths of what is being done to women, they can't say whether they support it. So my book is trying to, I suppose, whistle blow about what it is like to be hounded because until that social cost comes down, which will require everyone putting down the pitchforks, until that social cost of speaking about these deeply important issues comes down, we can't even

get to the primary harms. contrary to our opponents beliefs, we actually do deeply care about what has been done to young people in particular, but even older people who are living in a state of unreality, which is deeply unhealthy. And I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm saying it because it's degrading to live in unreality and it must be deeply painful as well.

So yeah, that was a very long sort of meander through.

Speaker 1 (06:49.994)
Well, I like that because I hear you extending a bridge to people who may not be fully caught up to speed on this and giving them the benefit of the doubt that even if they think people like you and I are maybe on the so-called wrong side of history that well, maybe they're maybe they don't quite understand. Maybe they do believe that, you know, women should have rights or that freedom of speech is important. And so

I hear you started giving them the benefit of the doubt saying, okay, let's explain it to them. So let me ask you to break down a few of those things. So for one, you said, for women, this is an existential issue. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, so I mean, all of this can be summed up really with that one core question, what is a woman? And I don't know about you, but when I have seen politicians and some cultural leaders stumble over answering that question, it has been utterly appalling because it's an easy question to answer. It has a very simple answer, which is adult human female.

And because that's become a dog whistle, which is not our fault, and not even being able to articulate that women are a materially definable category of human being with our own needs, rights and concerns. I mean, that is the history of the women's movement wiped out in one fell swoop. That is women's rights, nevermind women's liberation, wiped out in one fell swoop. And so it is deeply existential.

for us to be able to have that category definition. And I will mangle Confucius if I try and remember his exact quote, but basically as Confucius almost said, if you mangle with category definitions, the sky falls down, things go horribly, horribly wrong. And we need that category definition to only be about adult human females. That's existential for us. And because we're deeply harmed if men are included in our category, you know?

Speaker 2 (08:52.77)
This used to be so, this used to be well understood and because it's been turned in its heads and also because it's now been turned that we as cisgender women are all powerful. I mean, it's just, it's such an inversion of reality and it's so damaging. So that's the existential part.

Well, and to piggyback off of your attempt at quoting Confucius, and I don't know what he said either, but I think of it as a tear in the fabric of reality. And this is the one thing I would draw hard lines on. I'm pretty moderate and open-minded on most issues, but like I was saying to some colleagues the other day in the mental health field, this is where I draw the line because you cannot allow a tear in the fabric of reality without unforeseen ripple effects. It's sort of like an atomic bomb. I mean, an atomic bomb,

has the potential to exponentially ripple out, destroying the structure of actual atoms and molecules. That is a tear in the fabric of reality. I feel like psychologically, when you let in these untrue ideas, not as metaphors, but as facts, and write them into law, and allow them to drive policies that govern fields like mine, the mental health field, or medicine, it's just completely untenable. So I agree on the existential.

threat there. And then you also mentioned that some people may not understand the core tenets of this ideology and that your book aims to help them understand. So how do you break those core tenets down?

Yeah, so the three core beliefs that I set out in my initial chapter in the book are actually our core beliefs because the book's centering hounded women. So I'm asking the reader and I say at the start, you know, I've got an ideal reader in my head who's kind of aware that something's happening but isn't really sure. Exactly, but it's quite curious. So it's to get over that hold, there's no smoke without fire.

Speaker 2 (10:55.562)
issue that we have with houndings actually because you know that that label turf has become so powerful that some people don't even realize what it means you know they're like no gosh you shouldn't be a turf, terfs are evil and it's like do you actually know what that means? So the core beliefs that get you labeled a turf are that first one which is core belief one women are a materially definable category of human being the second one is that on that basis we have rights and laws and needs.

just for us. And the third core belief is that women should have unfettered right to freedom of speech and assembly on matters that affect us profoundly. So if you look at all of the hindings that have ever been done of any woman, whether it's Sal Grover, whether it's me, whether it's Jane Clear Jones, the philosopher, whether it's yourself, no matter who it is, we have tripped the wire on one of those three very ordinary core beliefs. For me, it was core belief three, because I said these women

regardless of if you agree with them or not, have the unfettered right to meet and discuss the law. That was enough to get me hounded. But when you break it down and you say, well, these are the three, so which one of these core beliefs do you disagree with? What you'll usually get people saying is, I agree with you on core belief three, that women shouldn't be facing violence for having meetings, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it is actually a bridge. It's a really useful bridge. What's quite frustrating is that people will equivocate still on core belief one and core belief two.

But usually by that point, they've agreed you're not a Nazi. So that's quite good. So lots of people will respond to Corbyleaf One and say, oh, you say that women are a definable category, but can't we just open it up a little bit? then so you show them the consequences of what happens when you do. And usually they're like, oh yeah, the lesbians have penises thing is a wee bit weird, suppose. So you can start to sort of slowly but surely sort of...

deprogram this sort of all-terfs-are-evil and they want to harm people. Because actually, there's no... No one of those three core beliefs actually has any negative impact on people who identify as trans. Not one of them. They exist in my head. They don't determine how I will treat somebody. They don't determine how I will hire someone or how I will...

Speaker 2 (13:20.718)
greet them in employment or whatever. There's nothing inherent to our beliefs that is negative towards trans-identified people as human beings, as our fellow human beings struggling with life. But it does mean that we don't view them as literally the opposite sex. But that is a very, very new demand. That was not the demand that I thought we were being asked about 20 years ago. I thought it was...

I'm trans because I have a horrible condition called gender dysphoria and it's really awful to live with and so I need to present as if I'm the opposite sex. And I was like, okay, well, you know, that sounds pretty difficult, fair play. I wouldn't be horrible about it, you know? But that story has changed. It's changed a lot.

You said that in Scotland you were watching these things unfold across the pond. So what did it look like for you over there? Because here I am, an American.

I've lost your minds. I mean, it was terrifying. It was terrifying because I'd already clocked on that there was this set of ideas and that this set of ideas was already starting to rumble in Scotland from about 2013 was when I clocked it. But it hadn't manifested in the way that it had in the States and Canada. And so I'd be watching like YouTube clips of, you know, libraries being vandalised and

sort of learning about the Vancouver Rape Crisis Center. And I was just like, oh my God, this is terrifying. So I was really hyper alert to that type of activism manifesting. it did in about, I think it was like in a mainstream way. I mean, this has been going on for years and years, but in a mainstream way where everybody was talking about it. mean, think it was 2017, 2016, but 2016 was the year I started to get.

Speaker 2 (15:20.576)
genuinely frightened by this ideology rather than just like, some people have strange ideas on the internet, you know, like, yeah. And so it looked to me, I mean, all countries, the way that gender identity ideology has mainstreamed in different countries is very country specific. So in Scotland, which is often called the Canada of the UK,

It managed to get a stranglehold because it piggybacked off the back of the Scottish independence movement. So it was very caught up with the Scottish nationalist agenda, which has always been, Scotland is so much more amazing and progressive than the rest of the UK. So Nicola Sturgeon, who was the new leader,

after the referendum, after we got the no votes and, you know, she really went hell for leather with this pushing it in law. She was a useful idiot for these lobbyists who've been working since the nineties in Scotland to push gender self-ID. So, and it's piggybacked on different things in Australia and different things in Canada, but yeah, so I knew it was going to be very Scotland specific how it manifested here.

but it has been incredibly intense because Scotland is tiny. We've got a population less than London, not even six million people. So it's been really intense.

Well, what you just described about piggybacking sounds a lot like the parasitic quality of the so-called trans rights movement that many people have pointed out, parasitizing feminism, parasitizing the gay rights movement, sort of parasitizing whatever it can. And I'm thinking about the way some parasites operate by taking over and hollowing out their host. And that's...

Speaker 1 (17:21.965)
paralleled in what we see happening to institutions, know, this radical ideology taking over formerly reputable, respectable liberal institutions and gutting them, essentially changing the nature of their character, keeping some things about their appearance the same, but completely changing their mission and purpose.

Yeah, absolutely. mean, we see that in Scotland with Scottish Pen. So obviously Pen International is supposed to be a freedom of speech organization and yada yada. The project manager at Scottish Pen in 2020 signed an open letter against me. And when I wrote to them and I was like, excuse me.

took way too long for them to realise, yeah, yeah, we maybe shouldn't be getting involved in hounding a poet. I was like, what the hell?

Open against an individual. I just have to name open letter against an individual. That's crazy.

Well, they were very sneaky, my hounders, in 2020, in that they didn't name me in the open letter, but it was incredibly obvious that it was about myself, another poet called Maggie Gibson, and a friend of hers who's a writer. And it was complaining to the Scottish Poetry Library, who had put out a statement after witnessing people mocking my suicidality.

Speaker 2 (18:49.102)
trying to get me fired from conferences. So this was in early 2020, just as COVID is rumbling towards us. And it was also what was going on in 2020 in Scotland at that point was, I don't know if you'll have heard of the British television presenter, Caroline Flack, not sure. Anyway, after a sustained online smear campaign and some really quite brutal

have Lloyd coverage and Caroline Flack took her own life in February 2020 and.

People who were watching my online, the online part of my hinding started to get really worried about me because I wasn't a very confident Twitter person and I was not coping at all well with it. Behind the scenes, Scottish Poetry Library got wind of this and they put out a statement saying, we will no longer ignore the attempts by poets to no platform other poets. It's causing a fractious rift in our industry. Blah, we will not do this.

It was a totally fair statement. And in response, the people who were doing it were like, institutionally transphobic. And they write this appalling open letter and trying to take down the Scottish Poetry Library for institutional transphobia because they were basically saying, please don't hang that woman to death. know, it was ugly. was so ugly, Stephanie. was disgusting to go through. And I'm over it now. It's fine. But.

Wooft, yeah, so when you talk about parasitical, a lot of the people who are pushing this ideology, they're willing to destroy entire institutions, entire sectors even. I mean, the publishing industry is awful. my days, it's so awful. They're willing to destroy like...

Speaker 2 (20:47.702)
Yeah, everything. It's because of that core belief, because they're going against reality. If their core beliefs, are everyone has a gendered soul or whatever, were true, they wouldn't need to act this way. Because we'd all agree with them because it would be real, but it's not real. some of us, yourself included, me, Helen Joyce, we can't go along with

unreality for whatever reason. I for me I can't because I studied Orwell and I know what happens so I'm just not doing it you know.

Well, we've talked about the parasitic nature and you're describing the psychologically abusive nature of this hounding. And I'm recalling this documentary I watched maybe 20 years ago. I think, and don't quote me on this, I think it might've been called The Corporation. Does this ring a bell? It was a documentary.

Was it a Bic as well?

Yeah, maybe. So here's what I recall about this, and I'm probably going to butcher it because it was so long ago, but if you've seen this, feel free to leave a comment correcting me politely, please. It was a documentary saying corporations in the United States are treated as people. that, know, first of all, that's wrong, right? Just like men aren't women, corporations aren't people.

Speaker 1 (22:18.978)
and they're given rights associated with human rights, but they're not held to the same standards as humans are held to in civil society. And okay, so if we operate from the assumption that a corporation is a human being, let's go with that and let's analyze what kind of human being it is. And then they analyze the behavior of corporations and the conclusion they come to is that corporations are sociopathic.

and that they meet all the criteria of humans with cluster B personality disorders. One thing I've talked about a lot on this podcast and that is sort of a focal point for my program, ROGD Repair, which is the program I offer any concerned parents of trans identified or gender questioning youth, is that you have to consider cluster B personality disorder type traits and behaviors

if you are to understand the nature of the beast that we're dealing with here. Now, people are going to interpret that uncharitably to mean that I am diagnosing people who aren't my patients, to which I say, you're not listening carefully and you're hearing what you want to hear. I'm not diagnosing anyone I haven't met yet, but I am looking at the nature of the problem. I'm looking at the traits and behaviors that we're seeing. And I attribute it not to the individual, but to the nature of the social contagion, the nature of the

brain parasite, if you will, right, the mind parasite. So even people who, know, because when I talk to parents about their kids, sometimes some of these kids were pretty gentle, loving people before this took over. But it's like there's this whole personality change that comes once they accept the social contagion, once the mind virus gets in, and they become...

not so pleasant to be around, right? They become bullies. They become entitled and self-centered, entitled, you know, in the case of what you're describing to disrupt the fabric of reality and demand that everything bend to their will. So I think that's what we're looking at here, right? Is this sort of sociopathic, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline personality type

Speaker 1 (24:39.02)
that is behind some of these movements, their traits and behaviors and how they operate.

Yeah, funnily enough, I'm now a weekly columnist for The Scotsman, which obviously shows that I'm starting to be uncancelled. And my column today, this Monday, I wrote about how dealing with gender identity activists in the literary arts is like trying... the emotional side of it is like if you've ever had anti-social neighbours and they give you a little bit of...

quiet and then they start back up again. That's the sort of emotional jolt that you have to go through and you're like so angry but you have to like diligently respond to it and you have to be calm. It really is so emotionally damaging. But one thing that I do want to just sort of clarify I think is that, so in my book, In Hounded,

I am clear that there are different levels of hounder, know, so the people who get involved in the houndings and all the rest of it. But one thing that I'm very clear on from the very start is that, the problem is gender identity ideology activism. So some of the most ferocious gender identity activists don't identify as trans, they identify as cisgender. So I'm always quite clear to say.

When I'm talking about houndings and when I'm about hounders, I'm talking about people who identify as trans and hold gender identity beliefs, and people who identify as cis and hold gender identity beliefs, because they can be amongst some of the most vicious. And they don't even need to be the people who maybe have understandable reasons for becoming that way. Perhaps they've got a trans identifying child or partner or whatever. I mean, a lot of

Speaker 2 (26:31.768)
Some of my most vicious hounders nowadays are gay men, some of them. And they just, they have this set of ideas about, well, to be honest with you, some of them I don't even think do have the set of ideas, but they love hounding women. So it's quite complicated when I'm talking about the hounders and the houndings, because there are many reasons to get involved in hounding a woman.

over this issue and not all of them are even about the issue but this movement as you see this sort of sociopathic movement that at its heart is a combination of sort of male desire narcissism kind of self-hatred and self-loathing but deep self-obsession as well all i mean it's my days i mean it's such a huge issue isn't it it's like geez

There's something about that set of ideas that attracts that kind of behaviour, that like the people who just want to destroy you, or the people to whom this is all just a hilarious game to own the turf, to destroy their lives. I mean it's... Yeah, it's quite something to go through, it really is.

think of those characters as the flying monkeys and you're right, they can be worse. They could be even worse. And I analyze it through the lens of the drama triangle of victim, rescuer and perpetrator. And I think they really are getting high on their own supply of self-righteousness, perceiving themselves as the rescuer. And this is why understanding the shadow is so important because I think we...

all have it in us somewhere if we're not careful to, you know, if we don't question our beliefs and our behaviors and hold ourselves to some sort of moral standard and, you know, have some kind of practice that humbles us, then that tendency to feel self-righteous and to be so confident that we are correct and then to allow that to snowball into

Speaker 1 (28:45.484)
Therefore, I am correct in bullying someone. I am correct in essentially demonizing other people. I think we all have that potential within us. that's why shadow work is so important. I mean, I really think that these people see themselves as champions of the underdog. I think they see themselves, a lot of them, as very compassionate.

And there's a lot of projection as well onto people like you and me, right? They're not seeing us as people. They're seeing us as like forces of evil incarnate that they are righteous in attempting to defeat.

Yeah, I mean, one of the ugliest things about my own hounding and actually what got people's attention about it was that a lot of the people who were involved in my hounding were people that I knew. They were friends. were people that I, you know, I built up a great reputation in the Scottish arts as somebody who was like a brilliant inclusive programmer. used to run like live cabarets and blah blah. I mentored loads of poets and all of their names were on that bloody open letter.

And so a lot of people, they, like watching that close up, when you know that it's people who know that I'm not the type of person who's, I mean, one of the things that was insane about My Hounding was some of the writers who got involved with it, they would post tweets and send me emails and things like that saying, it's just such a shock coming from someone like you, you've booked trans people for years for your cabri's. I was like, yeah.

because there's nothing discriminatory about my core beliefs. Just because I don't think that Mildred is literally a woman does not mean that I don't think Mildred writes good tunes, you know? But they couldn't separate, they could not separate the, don't think they're literally the opposite sex from the fact that I'd never treated anyone badly in my life. They didn't understand that, because to them, if you trip the wire on any one of those three core beliefs, you've got to be made evil.

Speaker 2 (30:55.5)
because what you're saying destroys that sense of reality they have. So you have to be made evil, even if there's no evidence of it whatsoever. But what you were saying about watching yourself for that sort of tendency to maybe want to destroy your enemy, it's something I've had to keep an eye on in myself. I'm not gonna lie. And I don't think I've always got it right over the last six years that I've been going through this.

I have never personally named any of my hounders, which I'm not gonna lie, really, really difficult. However, a couple of them have become identifiable and loads of people know who they are. And I do sometimes find myself going, Jenny, step back, because actually some of what people are saying about them is stepping over a line.

Because it's just natural. These people try to destroy my life. So it's quite nice sometimes where they get a bit of comeuppance, but I've got to watch that tendency. I know I do because the whole reason I didn't name my hounders is I don't want to be in the mud with these people. And getting dragged into that mud is actually one of the worst things about this. And nobody believes me, but I'm really not naturally as confrontational as I have had to become, you know?

I like getting on with everyone and just having fun and I used to run amazing fun events and I wish I go back to that world in many ways but I like to find the funny side of things. mean here I am laughing about, they tried to destroy my life. I don't like this. I think it's unnecessary which is why I keep speaking out because I'm like look there's nothing wrong with our views, could everyone just calm down and can we have a chat? Come on.

I relate very much to all of what you were just sharing. I can also be a very fun-loving, open-minded person. think people who haven't put themselves out there think that you and I are fearless. And I get the worst heart palpitations in stressful situations. This stuff hurts. And you shared about how it impacted your own mental health quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (33:13.492)
So there's an interview that as of this conversation hasn't been released yet, but by the time this actually comes out for my audience, this other interview will be out. And it's with Natalie Martinek. And she has some great insights into the role that unconscious envy plays in some of the things that you were describing. And that would be sort of my first guess when you're talking about your former friends and acquaintances, people who...

I'm imagining maybe you even did some favors for them. You organized events, you gave them a voice and they turned against you. I can't help but to think without knowing these people, right? I'm just speculating, but I cannot help but to think that on some level they looked up to you, that they idealized you. And along with idealization comes envy and an unconscious desire to cut someone down to size. And I can...

Imagine that even if they were very nice to you, even if consciously they thought of themselves as liking you, still unconsciously there might have been some envy, competitiveness, and greed under the surface. And that when you had some fall from grace in their eyes, you committed some social sin according to the current value system.

that again, that unconscious part of them is like great, an opportunity to cut that tall poppy down and feel like I've leveled the playing field and elevated my own status because of this person I looked up to who did things that I couldn't have done. I didn't see myself as attractive or charismatic or.

eloquent or well connected enough to do what she did back when she was organizing those events. But now if I can police her, if I can put her in her place and tell her what she did wrong, then I am equal to or greater than her. And that makes me feel better about myself. And I really think that that's the sort of thing that goes on under the surface for people who engage in this type of behavior. Yes.

Speaker 2 (35:19.662)
going to correct you on any of that because I can see it. with a lot of them, I mean, this is it Stephanie, because I've not named them, I've been very careful about making them not identifiable. I've actually not really spoken about the extent of my hounding, my own hounding. I've written a book about the pattern of harms that happens to any woman. But you my own story isn't centered. I wrote that one big piece, but it only takes us up to 2020.

What happened in the years between that and Hounded, I've never massively gone into, but I've started to talk about it and I think it might be important to. These people are still, they're not identifiable. know, one of the reasons that I didn't name a lot of them is, to be quite frank, some of them are writers in the way that I'm a chef when I make a pot noodle, you know. But others have now become like quite big status and

So, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:17.422)
You know, there was one woman that I mentored to a really high level, which is now very successful in Scotland in the arts. And we were... I genuinely thought we were friends. Like, not all of them were friend friends, but this woman was. You know, we used to stay up discussing this issue and seeing how worried we were about it for young people, blah, blah. And then...

When I started getting hounded, she started getting all panicky because she's associated with me and she was in the cusp of breaking into like theatre and everything. And so our friendship ended after I left Edinburgh and moved to Ayrshire because I noticed her starting to get involved in the hounding of JK Rowling. So after JK Rowling spoke out in the summer of 2020, which is after my hounding started.

And this woman obviously was getting crap behind the scenes from our very small literary world and we were probably putting a lot of pressure on her to denounce me like everyone else had. And so what this woman did, knowing I had an 8,000 word essay coming out, is a few weeks before, I think it was maybe like a week before actually, a week or a fortnight before my essay comes out, she writes this blog, well, it was an essay for this.

Scottish online magazine about how she as a woman of colour had been treated badly by white mentors and I was just like, whoa, what? It was like, right, okay, so you're doing that now, you're going to make out that I'm a racist as well as a turd, Jesus. And there was this stuff in it about, you know, empathising with trans kids and I was like, holy crap. So this was a former best pal, just totally.

throwing me under the bus to save her own height. It was so obvious. It was disgusting. And there's been other things as well, like honestly, mean, some of the people who've gotten involved in my hiding, there are people I, men I've sexually rejected, you know, or people, as you say, that, you know, the envy thing, the tall poppy syndrome in Scotland is such a thing as well. Like Scotland has this weird cultural

Speaker 2 (38:40.91)
cringe about itself and you know, don't get above yourself, we're all equal here and it's like, so in Scotland if you get too big for your boots there's going to be loads of people who'll come along and try and know, chuck your head off. So that did play a part in it too, which I hadn't realised. But then it was really funny because when I was writing Hounded I was occasionally still seeing a lot of their tweets and stuff because they thought I was dead, they didn't know I was writing a book, they didn't know I was...

part of a best-selling, I was going to be part of a best-selling anthology that included J.K. Rowling the next year and they're putting these tweets out about me about how I'm a fail and the reason that I'm such a failure is because I was envious of other people and I was like this is a of this, this is very mad projection I'm seeing here and but they didn't, didn't, obviously I didn't say I'd rarely if ever respond to them.

That's interesting. I love

Speaker 2 (39:40.152)
things like that, publicly, because it's just funny, it's so obvious. I'm like, you, darling, are a failed crime writer. What are you talking about?

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even when they're adults. Visit rogdrepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST2025 at checkout to take 50 % off your first month. That's rogdrepair.com. When you were telling me about your friend, it was like, she took the low road. She took the bait. She took the temptation that was offered to her. I mean, viewing is that...

this through spiritual terms. I don't know if you consider yourself a spiritual person, but you know, I think evil kind of lurks in the shadows waiting to see are you going to take the high road or you're going to take the low road. And you describe so many instances of taking the high road yourself. You were personally hounded by people who wanted your head on a plate and you maintained a personal standard of integrity to not do the same thing to them, but to take those experiences

and learn from them, metabolize that suffering into something of value, tell a story that can benefit other people without harming those who tried to attack you. That's taking the high road. Your friend took the low road. She saw an opportunity to play the race card when race had not been a factor in your friendship. I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:33.55)
Yeah, I mean, it's just all of that stuff is so ugly, the personal nature of all of that stuff. And I don't even know how to start dealing with that side of it. mean, like a lot of women who've been hounded, my trust levels are quite low and they weren't exactly sparklingly high to start with. it's all of those personal things. How are you supposed to deal with that? I don't know how I'm supposed to.

process that one, you know, it's an ongoing harm and unfortunately this particular woman has radicalised herself now, she's a true believer in gender identity ideology.

Your former friend, the one who dreamed against you. And you remember the days that she was in private in the comfort of your friendship that she was expressing concern about it.

Yes, and also initially expressing utter disdain for my hounders, who she now paly palies about with and does creative collaborations. I'm just like, jeez. Yeah. So that one was one of the most brutal parts of all of this for me personally. And I've never written about that anywhere. never, yeah, I've not really spoken about that before. So I think I'm getting to the point where I almost need to somehow. Yeah.

It's hard to consistently take the high road and not name people, but you want to be able to share these stories. I think there's a lot that we can learn from new stories. that I think part of the moral here is we all have so many different parts of us and we don't want to stories like this.

Speaker 1 (43:18.176)
make us paranoid or unable to trust anyone because here you're telling a story of someone you thought you had a solid friendship with that you thought you were having these earnest conversations about your shared concerns about social dilemmas. And then she turns against you. She perhaps weaponizes her knowledge about you to harm you. She takes the bait that she was, she was given an opportunity to step on her friends back in order to get a leg up for herself socially. And she took it.

And I don't want to use stories like that to make anyone paranoid that any friendship could fall apart like that.

But I guess, yeah, I mean, that temptation is always there for all of us if we're not vigilant about our own selfish desires for social approval or to be able to climb the ladder or.

I think it's particularly, I say this in the book actually, in the economic harms chapter is one of the reasons that houndings in places like the arts are so, so vicious is because in the arts, your reputation is everything, you know? So we're all working in this precarious reputation-based slash talent-based slash luck-based industry that we're all scrabbling around in. I felt I'd got to...

position where I felt fairly secure as in the work I was doing in the arts and in my events and my education work in the arts and my own writing and performances. I got to that magical place where I had a great reputation. I was good at what I did and I pleased freelance clients. So I was, you know, well respected in the arts. And this woman was trying to get to that point. Being associated with me.

Speaker 2 (45:14.336)
stopped being useful. As soon as I spoke out about this ideology and started getting handed, I stopped being useful. So she obviously, it might not even have been a conscious decision, but she knew she had to distance from me somehow.

Well, you bring up a good point. I the arts are not known for being a financially reliable path to pursue. It's very unstable. It's feast and famine. And it's become clear that the arts reward identity politics. And that actually, I think, leads nicely into

what's been going on in Edinburgh, which I think you used to live there, you got hounded out of there. And you were saying that the last week, the last month or so has been especially crazy with their arts festival. I think the piece that I've seen a lot of going around on X is that clip of the trans comedian who won the Comedy Award for mocking women for not wanting him in our bathrooms.

Do you want to tell us what's been going on there?

Yeah, mean, Edinburgh is a very, very special place for all of this madness. It's like, it's the capital city, obviously, of Scotland. It's the centre. It's the political and cultural centre of Scotland as well. So a lot of the sort of like literary houndings and the arts-based nonsense and all of the policy, all this stupid policy crap that's come out in Scotland about pronouns and everything, it all started in Edinburgh.

Speaker 2 (46:51.726)
But I mean, the trans comedian, you know, that was just the cherry on the top of what has been an absolutely appalling month. So I was saying to you earlier that the column of mine that came out today, I sort of based it around this idea of sort of having to deal with anti-social neighbours who just won't let up. So I mean, I need to give you a little bit of backstory, I suppose. so Edinburgh in August is the

Edinburgh International Book Festival, it's Edinburgh International Festival, there's sort of lots of the fringe as well, obviously, so it's like the massive artistic gathering of the year, you know, and it's where some people can like make and break a career. And the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I used to do lots of freelance work for them. I used to chair literary events, I used to run their big nightly cabri and their big spiegel tent. So that was my old life that I used to do.

Gender critical writers, so Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel. There has been no gender critical writer at the Edinburgh International Book Festival since 2019, which is the last year I was there. And I was booked before I started getting hounded. And they were nervous about having me there in August because I'd been, started getting hounded for a couple of months at that point. And that was for my poetry book. So my last poetry book. Now, this year,

2025 is the first year that they could have featured Scotland-based gender critical writers. Now given, in Scotland, it was three women, four women Scotland, who fought the Scottish government all the way to the Supreme Court and won. So we have won in law. We are so, so lucky in the UK that we are Tarff Ireland. We have won the legal arguments, hands down, in law.

Women is women, man is man. And that's it. We have to have single sex services. And it was four women's Scotland, three women, two of whom are raised in Edinburgh, who fought that all the way to the Supreme Court for women's rights. So you'd think the Edinburgh International Book Festival might want to have a discussion with people like myself or the editors of this anthology that was written called The Women Who Wouldn't Weasht.

Speaker 2 (49:18.286)
which was a Sunday Times bestseller, right? So, and my book has sold very well. It's more of a sort of a slow burner than a runaway pop hit, but you know, it's really not badly at all for a debut rookie. You'd think that the book festival would recognize that if you don't have us there this year of all years, there's going to be questions about it. So what makes this even worse, Stephanie?

is I wrote to the director last year because she's a woman that I've known in the arts for donkey's years and I said, okay, see if there's no gender critical writers at the festival next year, I think you're going to get some really bad press because... Yeah.

It's like, can sense the public moods. I can sense it, you know? I don't live in their bubble world anymore. I know how angry the public are at the treatment of me and the women who wouldn't wish. So I emailed her and I said, listen, I'm not an idiot. I know it'll be difficult because you will probably get a bit flack. Let's have a chat about how best to do it. How about I chair the women who wouldn't wish book and then that takes it out of your hands and I'll do it. She didn't even bother replying.

So I was like, oh, fair enough. But sure enough, know, as soon as the programme came out, there was absolute uproar that I wasn't there, that the women who went to priest were weren't there. And what makes it worse, Stephanie, is do you know who was there? Do know who is there?

some of my most prominent hounders. So a trans identifying poet who opposed the Supreme Court judgment by taking to the streets of Edinburgh with a megaphone, shouting, give us wombs, give us titties. He's there. He's there for six events, in fact, and also a Creative Scotland literature officer who tried to get my book de-stocked from an Edinburgh bookstore. She was there. So the optics were just...

Speaker 2 (51:20.474)
Absolutely appalling. the director of the book festival, who I had a lot of faith in to do the right thing, has had a very bad month herself because the columnists of Scotland are just like, it gets worse, sorry, it gets even worse. The theme of this year's festival was repair.

Speaker 2 (51:42.252)
So was just, I mean, what a story. It's like Edinburgh Book Festival director, you know, anyway, it got worse because a member of the public got in touch and totally randomly and sent us a reply she'd had from the director explaining why we weren't there. And the director was basically saying, well, there aren't any suitable, reparatory books out on this subject. If there are in future, I'll consider them. And she repeated that on the BBC.

I mean the column writers of Scotland at this point are like... I mean it's so insulting.

How about we repair the tear in the fabric of reality as a starting point?

I'd be up for that. And then so that was that was what just one part of this appalling mess in Scotland. But it shows the nature of a hiding because obviously being a freelance writer, I need book festivals to book me. I need the distribution. I need the the appearance fees. You know, so it's it's that ostracization is really bad, not just at the level of we need to discuss these things. But as an individual writer, that's economic detriment. That's economic sabotage. What she's done there.

So what else happened this month? So there was the book festival. there was this awful stoogey with this LGBT book prize and all these writers got their knickers in a twist because John Boyne, who's a gay man, very successful novelist, he was long listed and all of these appalling writers were annoyed about that because he's gender critical and they harassed the prize to the point that it's basically shut down now. So there was that too.

Speaker 2 (53:25.09)
And then the National Library of Scotland, after a freedom of information request was put in by the Women Who Weasht editors, they discovered that our book, The Women Who Weasht, was supposed to be included in this exhibition they've got going on at the library just now. And it turned out, it was a public vote that put it there. But it turns out that the chief executive of the National Library of Scotland basically allowed herself to be lobbied by

some staff members who told her that they would disrupt things if she kept her book at the exhibition. So she pulled it and we only found out because we put in freedom of information requests, which we're lucky we can do. So there was that as well. So it's just been a month. It's been a bit of a month having to constantly respond to all of this anti-social noise. And as I say, this is just, this is the secondary harms of the ideology again, you know, this is what's been done to women who are trying to talk about it.

and trying to talk about it reasonably, you say, taking the high road, as you say. And this is the treatment we're getting. I mean, it doesn't matter whether you're calm or funny or witty about it or whether you're more confrontational like Posey Parker, you get the same treatment regardless, you know? So, yeah.

seems like the bullies just keep getting their way. And I keep thinking about what else that doesn't even have to do with this issue we are missing out on when free thinking people are not allowed to speak. Like for instance, with the tenor of the whole dialogue around racial justice in America in the last decade, one thing that I feel like we've lost out on

is people of diverse backgrounds bringing their unique perspective and expertise on things that don't have to do with race, because everyone is so damn obsessed with race, you know, and then they lead with that. And it's like, okay, but what else you got, right? And I remember back when I was still trying to be woke before it completely fell apart. And I asked a group of woke therapists,

Speaker 1 (55:43.246)
in a social media chat, asked for book recommendations from therapists who were so-called people of color, but that weren't specifically about race, because I wanted a diverse reading list, and I didn't think that reading all about race is the way to treat...

people of diverse backgrounds because they also are humans with interests and skills and knowledge bases. And what was really interesting to me is that nobody had anything to say to that. So all these virtue signaling woke therapists who are supposedly reading all these books by all these diverse writers, well, they're all just about the same issues. So I guess that's sort of an analogy that I'm thinking of. Similarly, when we are spending so much energy

trying to repair this tear in the fabric of reality, trying to assert that men aren't women and getting hounded for it, there's an opportunity cost there. That time and energy being spent having those conversations is time and energy not being spent having other conversations. And the people who are being silenced because they know what reality is,

their knowledge base extends beyond knowing what reality is. So I feel like there's just so much else that we're missing out on here. And I'm wondering, as you are so well connected in the Scottish arts scene, if you have a sense of what are some of the, I guess, cultural riches and pieces of knowledge that we are missing due to the silencing and, as you say, hounding of people like yourself.

Well, there's a couple of things that I'll touch on there. The first one is that I actually point out in my book, a young feminist who now works for Sex Matters called Nicole Jones. She's in her late 20s now, but when she started getting involved in all this, she was only like 18 or something. So she is the epitome of baby turf. And she's somebody who grew up with this ideology, but just never bought it. Never.

Speaker 2 (57:54.712)
So she had school friends who bought into it she's like, never got into it. But she said to me that watching the hounding that was happening of women, and she was looking at the types of women who were getting targeted, and it's all women who are like at the top of their game in their specific field. And she said to me a great quote that I managed to get in the book, was that the, what was it? The war on, the war on gender critical women.

is actually a war on competency. And she's so correct, because look at the women that they go for. Rosie Kay, the dancer, top of her field. Helen Joyce, amazing mind, economist, top of her field. Maya Forstater, know, tax expert. They go for the competent women and try and get them out of the way. And myself, even though I was big fish, small pond in the Scotland literary work, Scotland live literature scene, you know, I was at the

top of where you can really get with life poetry for God's sake. It's not like the world's most lucrative art form. So yeah, it's an attacking competency. But the things that are being missed, I will say as well, mean, because I might as well say it because I'm in trouble already. The importing of the American race dialogue to Scotland has been absolutely insane as well.

So Scotland, for those who don't know, is 96 % white.

Speaker 2 (59:28.226)
We don't have the history of the things that you have in America to deal with. We simply don't. But there have been people who have been really, again, as you say, like pushing this kind of thing to the detriment of the other kind of things. I remember the first time that somebody, was a young black American, Edinburgh University international student having a massive go at this white male poet that I know on Facebook.

and saying that because we did live poetry, performance poetry, that was cultural appropriation of his culture. And I was like, dude, Scotland has a massive tradition of live poetry. We had a thing called flighting, which was basically arguing in verse. That is a Scottish tradition. No, this is not us stealing your culture. So that...

kind of narrative now exists in the Scottish literary world and it is so damaging. mean, the last... Some things are funny, like for example, there was this guy who pulled out of the Highland Book Awards because there was no black person shortlisted it I was like, okay, 4 % of Scotland is non-white. In the Highlands? That's even less. So it's just...

It's like this performative madness. I'm like, we're not America, guys. We're not America. Stop it. And that's been a real problem with the gender wars as well, because obviously Trump is very, very divisive and people are like, we're going to end up with Trump. You support Trump. I'm like, we're not America. Trans people are fully protected in law in Scotland and the wider UK. We're not America. Full discrimination laws. Totally fine. You know, stop it. But...

Yeah, what we're losing is, I mean, obviously the sort of like kill your mother's aspect of young feminists trying to like get older feminists out of the road as well. So we're losing a lot of sort of intergenerational conversations in the arts, you know, a lot of these sort of younger, very activist based, identity focused writers, like trying to get rid of the wisdom of the older writers who are like,

Speaker 2 (01:01:53.442)
darlings, put down your pitchforks and focus on your craft please. I mean, I honestly don't know where some of these writers get a chance to write because they're constantly fomenting activist things like trying to... There was this ridiculous and utterly stupid campaign called Fossil Free Books.

just so stupid. There's a bunch of writers who set up this group called Fossil Free Books demanding that all of the book festivals divest their sponsor, which was a company called Bailey Gifford, who are an investment fund, who have happily funded all of the Scottish book festivals with hundreds of thousands of pounds for the last like 20 years.

And nobody said anything about it because they're actually a very ethical investor, but they've got like 2 % of their investments are in fossil fuels or companies associated with Israel. So this group of activist writers basically set up this campaign to force the book festivals to divest from their sponsorship arrangement with this company or these activist writers.

would pull out of their events at the festivals and they would disrupt things and blah blah blah. And all of the bloody book festivals caved to these activist writers. I mean, all of this stuff really scares me because why are we giving in to children who are stamping their feet and being very silly? Like, I'm a former events programmer. My response, if I programmed a massive, brilliant festival with an excellent ethical sponsor,

and a bunch of the people I'd invited to perform and be paid to perform at my events. If they were threatening to disrupt, I would say bye. Because there are more writers than there are spaces. Just say bye. Bye. Go away. So yeah, there's loads of ugly, ugly things happening.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51.02)
Well, that's part of the response that needs to happen, right? Is to say, if you want to be part of this, you got to play by the rules. You bring a baseline of respect, dignity, and cooperation. Otherwise, you don't belong in this space. what should events organizers and others in a position of power in the arts or in any field really, what should they be doing with these threats? Because like you said, where you originally got started with this was,

commenting on the violence of the activism, whether that's physical violence, threatening to disrupt, silencing people, screaming at them. I mean, one of the things that piqued me back in 2020 was learning about what happened to Brett Weinstein at Evergreen in 2017. That level of where they had the professor cornered and holding him hostage, essentially. I mean, given

the violence of the activism and their incredibly manipulative tactics. Do we need to invest more in private security? mean, what needs to happen for people to be a little bit bolder around saying that events will go on and books will be published and people will get to give their speeches.

and people are gonna say things that you're not gonna like and you're gonna deal with it. What needs to happen?

Yeah, I mean, just that kind of cultural leadership, I think. And that's one of the reasons I was so very disappointed with the new director of the Book Festival, because I thought that she was going to show some and she hasn't. so what you definitely shouldn't do is what the new director of the Book Festival has done, which is all of the activists, well, not all of them, but a bunch of the people who were involved with this fossil free books campaign last year, who lost her, her sponsor of 20 years.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51.81)
have been booked for her festival this year. No way. Anyone involved in destroying that relationship should never be invited to a book festival again. I don't mean that they shouldn't publish, I don't mean that they can't do events, but they destroyed a beautiful thing that other people built so they don't get to have part of that again.

And I know that it's frightening because it was 2015 that people started jumping into my inboxes and saying, oh, I can't believe you booked such and such, blah, blah, blah. And I had to find the courage to go, well, no. And I think that was what got a target my back quite early on, actually, because I refused to cancel other women who'd been labeled TERFs. In fact, I went out of my way to book them, to be honest with you. mean, it's not like they were using their poetry to attack anyone. They're just writing brilliant poetry.

I like, well, I'm going to book them. Other people are being evil to them, so I'll book them. Yeah, so that's one thing that needs to happen. think as well in the literary world, as it pertains to the literary world, anyone who's ever signed an open letter against a fellow writer trying to get them cancelled should never again sit on a literary judging panel, as far as I'm concerned.

I think if you've tried to destroy a fellow writer's life and livelihood, you don't get to in judgment of their work because you've shown yourself incapable of doing so. And that's been a real issue in the literary arts too. And although I do focus a lot when I talk about this on the literary arts, the way I've always seen it is my hiding in the small world of Scottish poetry was a useful microcosm for understanding

the problems with the wider literary world in Scotland. The problems in the wider literary world in Scotland are a useful microcosm for noticing the problems in Scottish politics. And Scottish politics, Chris, you're so tiny, has been a really useful microcosm to understand how this ideology operates wherever it lands, which is pretty much everywhere. So it's like noticing, as you see, like noticing the patterns and just trying to like...

Speaker 2 (01:08:09.166)
So whatever happens in the Scottish literary world has to be happening in the business world as well and the engineering world and you know, the world of think tanks like everywhere because we need to get back to sense basically. So if you're in a workplace and there's a bunch of office workers trying to bully Annie out of her job because they found out that she owns a

Jenny Lindsay book and they're making her life hell and they're like harassing her when she's in the corridor, you sack them, get them away. know, like gender critical views are totally legal, ordinary, and they are actually the law of the UK as well. So, you know, we have to start getting back to sense. And I'm really glad, as I say that I live in Turf Island because I think because of our size, we might be able to become a useful example.

of how you get rid of gender identity ideology. I really hope so, because I'm knackered.

It sounds like you are feeling hopeful that things are on the mend.

Well, I mean, on a personal level, I need to be careful that I'm not being overly optimistic simply because my own situation is improving. So my own situation is improving because I'm now, you know, I'm writing columns. know, people really, really value my writing in their newspapers and their magazines and stuff, which is great. That wasn't my life plan, but you know, it's working out fine. The book's done well, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49.675)
I don't see a way for me back to the arts. But I think in terms of the future, I mean, it is really gutting because when Four Women Scotland won at the Supreme Court, that should have put an end to all of this overnight. And instead people, because they're so indoctrinated, they've been saying basically that they're going to defy the Supreme Court. they don't seem to... Stephanie. They don't seem to realise that that does not make them good people.

when you're saying I'm going to defy the Supreme Court of the land. And they are openly saying they're going to defy it and that's so frustrating. basically we're going to have to continue winning in the courts, which we will because it's UK law under the Equality Act 2010, women means women, man means man. I mean, who knew? Come on. So I am hopeful about it on a legal sense because we've already won the legal arguments. Unfortunately, we're going to have to keep winning them.

On a personal level, things are better for me than they were, although, you know, it has changed me forever, all of this, it really has. It's been a, woo, it's been quite a journey. On a cultural level though, I'm still worried, because it's still in our schools. It's genuinely very upsetting for young people, because they don't understand that our views aren't, we don't hate them, because they've been told by all these activist groups,

yeah, those evil women, they absolutely hate you and if they misgender you, you'll want to kill yourself. I mean, how irresponsible is all of this? So I'm really worried about that side of it. And I think a lot of people in, I don't know, 10 years, 20 years, they're going to have to reckon with what they've been part of. And good luck to them because, I mean, people have said to me, you're so resilient and brave for speaking out. I'm like...

How can you not? How can you not? I could not have lived with myself if I hadn't spoken out about this. I mean, the activist that I called out in 2019, which when I started getting hounded, had published a column in a local arts magazine justifying incitement to violence against lesbians at a crime march. I call this out, I get treated horrendously by everyone around me, and four days later,

Speaker 2 (01:12:11.902)
attempted to assault Julie Bindle outside the University of Edinburgh and instead of saying yeah Jenny had a point didn't she they doubled down. I am not the baddie in this story. Crikey. So yeah it's just appalling, it's unjustifiable what's been happening so yeah we have to just keep going and hope for the best.

That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37.48)
really feels like there's this parasite eating people's brains and the process to mix metaphors here is like the metaphorical frog in the pot that is slowly being boiled. And sometimes when I'm talking to parents who are reporting the insane things that their young adult children say about this, one of the interventions I occasionally recommend is just really slowing it down and reflecting back

what you heard, right? So that might sound like, okay, let me see if I understand this correctly. You believe that lesbians should be assaulted because they only want to be intimate with other women. Am I understanding you correctly? Because I think that something has to be done to trigger that

heart of the person whose brain is not working right. To alert them, right? Because once you're high on that supply of really thinking that you are morally righteous, right? It's an emotional thing and it's driving extremely irrational behavior. And I feel like it really needs to be slowed down, not threatened or attacked if you're trying to reach someone that you care about, but like, okay, so am I understanding correctly?

that you believe that violence is sometimes a good thing, including violence against sexual minorities. Am I understanding this correctly? I am passionately optimistic that tools like this can maybe break through some people. don't wanna believe that people are really that far gone. Some are, but not everyone.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you one thing that does give me hope. I have the rarest of all rare things, which is, quote, from the other side endorsing my book. I mean, I don't know how hard Polity had to look to find someone even willing to do that. But I mean, I mean, it's still an endorsement, but it's somebody called Caroline Heldman, who's at Occidental College.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58.24)
And I don't know this person, I've never met them, no idea what their work is generally about. But obviously if you're from that kind of activisty, lefty, academic world, which I'm presuming that Heldman is in, it's actually very frightening to even endorse someone of the opposite side. So she's been very good with how she's done it, because she says, it's something like, I don't have it to hand because it's on Amazon, but it's something like,

She says, while I vehemently disagree with Jenny Lindsay and other gender critical feminists on trans rights, we don't need to be on the same side to recognise the terrorising effects of this type of activism. Hounded is a wake-up call to the silencing forces on the left. And I was just like, that is amazing. Because that's somebody who apparently disagrees vehemently with me. I don't know what about, really.

but disagrees with me vehemently, but is willing to say, no, but we don't do houndings. I mean, the fact that I'm taking that as a win, might show how insane the situation is, but that's really what I want to do with the book, because until we get this activism out, until it is possible for us to get back to the liberal democratic principle of

I hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Until we get back to that, I don't know what we're going to do. I mean, obviously there's a huge free speech crisis in the UK at the moment in general, not just on this issue. And I don't think that's quite as, I wouldn't say that was quite as bad in the States because you've got an actual constitution. So, yeah, it's, mean, it's dire. It's really dire.

Well, I was feeling optimistic up until that point. was feeling like it's a good place to wrap up. I I see your point and why you're grateful for that because we do, you know, as much as people like you and I can roll our eyes at how absolutely batshit insane these ideas are and how deeply they disrupt everything because we understand consequence.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18.988)
I think you're right to point out that we do need to separate the issue of whether someone believes that men can become women, a person can be born in the wrong body, that so-called gender-affirming care is a net positive. We can disagree over those issues without resorting to emotional abuse tactics, as well as physical violence.

separate the beliefs from the behavior. And I think that's going to be a hard sell for a lot of people because as I explained before, my way of approaching this issue is I frame it as the trifecta of social contagion that gender identity ideology operates in combination with cluster B personality type behaves, excuse me, cluster B personality type traits and behaviors.

and with woke beliefs about social justice. I see those as really intertwined. That being said, they are distinct entities and we're going to have to draw better boundaries around the abusers before we can debate the ideas.

So my whole thing is that, I mean, I actually, think the, I mean, the situation in the UK is different from the States again with the sort of gender affirming care because luckily we have the NHS and it meant that we could challenge it and get it removed, but there's still an issue with it. I mean, I think all gender affirming medicines and cares need to be scrapped entirely, but in terms of the reason that I take the view that I'm doing is I know that there's a bunch of folk I'm never going to reach ever.

in my lifetime. So those are the true believers, the gender identity believers, the ones who identify as trans or the ones who identify as cis. So I know I'm never going to convince them, but I can convince that ideal reader, that those bunch of ideal readers who are the people who are sort of sitting watching all of this going, don't really know what's going on. mean, yeah, it's nice to say trans women are women.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28.056)
think, but hang on, I'm not sure about that swimmer guy, you know, so we can reach those people. And I think once we reach a sort of a map, mean, generally, when people who are not as in this as we are, realize what's going on, they agree with us, you know, which gives me so much hope. It's just, it's been very, very difficult to actually explain that this isn't just a case of being kind to someone who's struggling, you know, that

very successful narrative that gender identity activists have had. That whole, born this way, be kind, we're the same as gay people in the 80s, that has been such a powerful marketing tool, but it's absolute horse shit. you know, and once people realize that, as you say, it is about all these other things, they do tend to come around to a way of thinking. But in the meantime, my God.

My god, I would like to have a sensible arts and publishing scene back. I would like doctors to stop doing crazy things. I would like people to calm down and I would like to have some peace.

Sounds nice. So on that note, Jenny, where can people find you?

On Twitter, far too much, at MsJLindsay I've also got a sub stack called the Schism Ring which you are... everything is free but I am a struggling cancelled writer so if you would like to become a paid subscriber I explore the different aspects of houndings on there in a kind of more funny and sort of quirky way than I can in my weekly column. Yeah, I've got a weekly column in Scotsman which I think you can read everywhere. I also occasionally write for the Daily Mail and the Spectator now.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12.711)
And yeah, you wouldn't find me at any book festivals though.

And your book is on Amazon and we'll put all those links.

Yeah, it's on Amazon and think various other places as well in the States too, so yeah.

Great, well thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. 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 Pecorero 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 Aerman,

Speaker 1 (01:22:26.69)
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.