Gender Critical transphobes who claim to be feminists know what a monster Tucker Carlson is. But they embrace him when he goes after trans people

Tucker Carlson is doing that not-so-delicate dance again, inciting violence against his ideological foes without literally telling his listeners to beat anyone up in those exact words.

This time he’s accusing teachers who teach sex ed of committing “sex crimes” against children with their words, and imploring American dads to “give out instant justice” — by which he clearly means violence — “to anyone who even thought about sexualizing their kids” by talking about anything vaguely related to sex and gender in their vicinity. It’s really only a matter of time before someone takes Carlson’s implicit advice and does something terrible to a teacher.

This is who Tucker Carlson is. Anyone who has followed him for any length of time know he’s a bigot and a bully, a straight-up transphobe and misogynist and a committed stochastic terrorist who regularly lies about the assorted outgroups he hates the most and vaguely — deliberately vaguely — incites violence against them.

So-called “Gender Critical” activists like to think of themselves as feminists, and progressives of a sort. They’re well aware of what Tucker Carlson is. So why do so many of them set aside their reservations about the far-right bigot as soon as he says anything negative about trans people and their supporters?

Ok, yes, it’s because they’re bigots, and he’s a bigot, and in this case they all agree on the focus of their bigotry. But there’s still some cognitive dissonance going on, as I discovered by doing a simple search for “Tucker Carlson” on Ovarit, the Redditesque hangout for self-described Gender Crits. For some, the cognitive dissonence is enough to keep them from endorsing Carlson. In other cases, not so much.

In one Ovarit thread earlier this year discussing an appearance by anti-trans author Kara Dansky on Carlson’s show, GCers shared their strange and, to some of them, unexpected admiration for “TC.”

Gluhbirne reported that

I fell out of my chair when TC said he was ashamed of Republicans, and ashamed of their backing of big business. WHAT

He clearly has a lot of respect for Kara. He gave her an entire hour without pushing back or talking over her, looking for a gotcha. I have a kneejerk negative reaction to him, but honestly I can’t imagine more civil treatment of her and her ideas

Immersang replied:

Absolutely agree with this. I never would have thought I’d ever say this, but I found him quite likable in this. (I’m sure this will be the only context though that I feel that way.)

Added CharieC:

Thanks for posting! Good interview. Gotta say: my only reference for Tucker Carlson is his interviews with Kara (never even heard of him before she started appearing on his show), in all of which he comes across as a calm and respectful presenter — which is not something I can say about many of the supposed “leftist GC ally” men whose interviews with feminists on this issue I’ve heard. So, it’s always weird to me when everybody says that otherwise, he’s a complete monster. XD

XD! LMFAO! It’s so WEIRD you’re embracing a fascist!

In another thread on another appearance by Dansky on Carlson’s show, BogHag wrote:

You know liberals are failing women when it takes Tucker fucking Carlson to address a women’s rights issue.

A commenter called LunarMoose offered this bizarre appreciation:

I’m not a fan of his … But I will say – he’s always so respectful of feminists who appear on his show. I appreciate that.

Elsewhere in the thread, one commenter was less reserved in her praise.

I’m grateful to Fox News and Tucker Carlson for covering this. I also loved how she concludes by saying she’s not happy about Republicans being the ones to hold the line on material reality. Neither am I, but I’m still grateful.

In a thread with nothing whetsoever to do with Kara Dansky, a commenter called TheEthicalHedonist asked herself:

Why is Tucker Carlson the voice of reason?!? Why do I agree with Tucker Carlson?!? What is wrong with this world???

In a more recent thread, OneStarWolf suggested that Carlson’s support of their anti-trans crusade means it’s time to look less harshly on the right as a while.

This really has emphasized to me that society needs to be careful about categorizing groups of humans as either all evil or good, black or white.

The reality is people are complex, they can both hold good and bad positions and ideas at the same time. It’s all shades of grey, and we need to be careful to not demonize and dehumanize those who we may view as politically opposed to us.

Some GCers, though, still recognize that it’s self-defeating to get into bed with far right-wingers, Carlson included. As eyeswideopen put it in a thread on Ovarit a couple of years back:

I’m worried that too many of us are exhausted by essentially fighting this on our own in the U.S., and so we’re running to embrace “allies” that will make it easy to tar us by association (e.g., Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson). If we lie down with dogs, we -will- get up with fleas, and the GC movement will be dead before it gets off the ground here in the U.S.

In yet another thread about yet another appearance by Dansky on Carlson’s show, doloresonthedottedline offered a similar take:

I mean realistically it doesn’t offset how much harm [Carlson] does the rest of the time. He’s a trust fund kid who plays a buffoon on tv to sell self-sabotaging policies (that benefit the rich) to a right-wing audience and he invites people like Kara Dansky because there’s an opportunity to emphasize the depravity of the left (knowing his audience won’t count that people like her are also coming from the left and are against it). He doesn’t care about women’s rights, he’s 100% in this for the kind of partisan tug of war that helped create the environment where this is happening.

I am grateful for any chance for Kara Dansky to reach a bigger audience but Tucker Carlson isn’t even close to being redeemed by it. He’s still one of the most harmful media figures in the US at the moment, overall.

You don’t have to convince me about Carlson’s perfidy, delores.

But maybe you should ask yourself: If my friends and allies are suddenly cheerleading for a fascist, does that suggest that maybe there is something wrong with the ideology we share? I’ll save you a little time by just saying that the answer is “yes.”

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