The trans panic has reached an alarming stage: transphobes, most notably Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, have escalated their rhetoric and become more obvious about their stochastic terrorism, with Tucker Carlson broadcasting the names and faces of board members of Vanderbilt Hospital, which offers gender affirming care to children. Bill O’Reilly gave the same sort of “publicity” to a prominent abortion doctor years ago; the doctor was murdered by an anti-abortion fanatic.
But for a lot of those on the right today, the war on trans people is as much a source of amusement as it is a regular provider of righteous indignation. Consider former Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s treatment on her podcast of a trans teacher in Canada who showed up for school wearing enormous fake boobs.
The teacher has been a source of continual outrage on the transphobic right in recent days, making headlines in publications ranging from the New York Post to LifeSiteNews.
It’s basically this in action:
So Kelly brought the story to her Sirius XM podcast on Wednesday, and managed to sound quite outraged about the whole thing. “Take your fetish behind a closed door and do not shove it in my kids’ face,” she declared.
“There’s something wrong with this guy,” Kelly continued, deliberately misgendering the teacher.
He’s trying to turn somebody on. He’s probably turned on. Honestly, it probably turns him on to rub his weird little fake nipples or to have people see them. …
I don’t want him getting off near my kids and I don’t want him getting the nipples near my kids and I don’t want to have to think about anybody’s sexuality or boobs when my kid is in shop.
But Kelly’s performative outrage isn’t the whole story. If you actually watch or listen to this segment on her podcast, you see that she’s laughing — sometimes so hard she cries — during much of the segment, as she trades dumb jones and double entendres with her guests, who are also laughing hysterically the whole time.
You can watch the segment here; I’ve got it cued up to the appropriate point.
How can you be legitimately outraged by something if you also seem to think it’s the funniest thing in the world? Why would you consider this teacher’s actions to be equivalent to a sex crime — as one of her guests seemed to suggest at one point — if you can’t stop giggling?
“We have to laugh about it but then we have to talk about how how effed up this is,” she insists at one point, seemingly having to remind her guests that the whole topic is “deeply serious” to her. Is it? She and her guests manage to sound appropriately somber for a time, but soon they’re all laughing again.
The current trans panic is driven by hate. But it’s also driven by boredom, and an endless search for new things to at least pretend to be outraged over. In some ways, given that what’s at stake is the ability of trans people to exist in public, that’s as chilling as the outright hate.
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Another thing I noticed in the video is the misogyny / stereotypical gender roles. It sounded like the oh-so-wise commentators were hinting that a woman teaching a carpentry class was somehow deviant, whether trans or cis.
I’ll admit, in the first picture they showed I thought the woman’s breasts looked exaggerated. (Not so much in the video.) But I don’t know the context, and Kat is right. Singling out an individual, esp. a non-famous one, for harassment by bigots is super dangerous. Ask yourself: would they do the same to a cis woman?
(I’d direct that to Lars too, but @Elaine the witch and @Crip Dyke already did an excellent job of pointing out the inconsistencies/lies from that corner.)
Donald Jr. has weighed in on the situation and the Daily Mail (aka the Daily Heil) is all over it:
Donald Trump Jr. posts risque joke using ‘wheels on the shopping cart be like’ meme that features his SISTER Ivanka and Canada’s notorious trans teacher with huge prosthetic breasts
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11243483/Donald-Trump-Jr-posts-risque-meme-using-SISTER-Ivanka-Canadas-notorious-trans-teacher.html
@Brony:
Maybe consider CHILLING and stop looking for a fight.
I’m on your side, I’m a trans man, and until 2 months ago I also had DD BREASTS. And even leaving aside the dysphoria, their size made them a pain in my neck and back in a VERY literal way, which is yet another reason why I’m AGOG that this lady would ever want something like this. I know she didn’t choose to be a trans woman, but being that these are PROSTHETICS, SHE CHOSE THE SIZE OF HER BREASTS, just like I got to choose the size of my packer.
Are you happy now?
@Seth
My happiness doesn’t change your choice to react to breast size with gozangas.
If you feel a fight that matters, but doesn’t change it either.
@Brony
You’re honestly reminding me why I left MLP fandom.
Please never interact with me again, thanks. I don’t care for your hostility.
Honestly, if the left are going to crucify each other and start assuming the worst over a playful, stupid term for breasts like “gazongas” – especially as used by those of us who have or HAVE HAD breasts (and hey, maybe people shouldn’t ASSUME a guy hasn’t, yanno??) – we might as well start lining up for the fascists’ firing squads right now.
@Seth
It’s criticism. Not crucifixion.
If I think you are participating in bullying I’ll say something but I can leave you alone otherwise.
No assumptions were required to recognize your mockery.
What Crip Dyke said.
People of whatever gender get to choose what to do with their bodies. Do they want XXXL cleavage? OK, sure. Do they want no breasts at all? Fine. Anything in between that, also fine. Same with penises.
It is ever-increasingly creepy how much her male blood relatives treat Ivanka as a sex object. Right up there with the photo of tween Ivanka being held by Epstein and looking terrified.
@David: I think Lard-brain’s all outta candy and we can get rid of him now.
Especially now that he’s admitted how deeply he cares about underage children’s genitals, and thinks minsters/rabbis/imams/court clerks/Elvis impersonators/your college roommate who got ordained online need to be checking the happy couple’s underpants areas before performing a marriage ceremony.
@chase, you have the liberty to be here guarding the comment section of a niche blog so you obviously have some free time on your hands. And since you’re still posting I can assume you’re alive. You’ve got an internet connection and expectations of a high standard of living (where gender transition is a “human right”) You are by privileged by global standards and you shouldn’t pretend that you aren’t because Some Other Trans Woman got killed, any more than Im oppressed cause women in India are starving.
@whomever “we are the moderates” 😂 fuck no you aren’t. You’re the left of the left; who think they are moderate.
the breasts were said to be prosthetic in news coverage about this weirdo. She has the ability to take them off. But even if she couldn’t, the expectations would be the same as those for women with big natural breasts: put on a bra and cover those jugs up. It’s called dressing professionally and it’s not sexist or transphobic to require someone to do that.
trans people make up 1% of the population. The Democratic Party spends ages banging on about issues that affect a tiny sliver of the electorate and it alienates the rest of us who don’t view wearing comically huge prosthetic breasts to be a human right. And this is why we are losing elections – 1% will never carry a race.
thx
@kat
Since David has the time to write articles condemning Megyn Kelly for covering the trans teacher who chooses to dress like a stripper in class, it’s silly of you to blame me for not paying more attention to The Important Issues. We’re all here for this so it’s evidently more important to us than say, climate change and wildfire.
Also we can debate whether this is “harmless but ostentatious behavior” (Imo if her giant silicone paste-on prosthetics with nipples protruding 1” makes the students uncomfortable it’s not harmless) but she’s also a walking advertisement for why teachers shouldn’t dress like they’re going to the nightclub when they are going to work. It’s unacceptable no matter the sex and gender identity of the person doing it. Being trans isn’t a free pass to doing shit that would get a cisgendered woman written up by HR
Behold the breasts and ask yourself: is it reasonable to wear these to work the way this person is doing?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11243855/School-board-implement-dress-code-force-trans-teacher-ditch-prosthetic-breasts.html
@Margaret
You are dramatically missing the point.
Earlier you insisted that we condemn that teacher. The question is why, and whether you have any idea how much like the Islamaphobes you sound, the way that after every bad action by any muslim there was an immediate demand that every muslim (or at the very least a representative from every mosque) condemn that muslim and their actions.
NO ONE here has advocated wearing giant prosthetics to school.
I expressed confidence that this can be handled locally, not that there’s no problem at all.
We understand your complaint. The question is do you understand that this is a local problem to a specific area of Canada that doesn’t actually require denouncement from every single trans person on the internet?
Further, do you understand that while the teacher’s behaviour is a local problem, the behaviour of Megan Kelly is not a mere local problem **because of the size of her platform and the number of people she can therefore influence**?
But even though it is not a “mere” local problem, Megan Kelly’s behaviour is “local” to me because of the very highly public nature of her show and the fact that she’s guaranteed to have audience near me.
The teacher’s behaviour is not local to me.
Yet here you are insisting that not only random commenters but also a political party in what, last I checked, was a completely different country from Canada need to distance themselves from one Canadian teacher?
How the fuck do you distance yourself more than **that’s not even in this country and it’s not my problem**?
You’re blaming supposed Democratic failures in the USA on the fact that trans people in the US haven’t sufficiently condemned a fucking Canadian in Canada.
That’s just plain delusional. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that no US political race ever was decided on the basis of how vociferously Democrats and trans people condemned that Canadian teacher.
On the other hand, your behaviour, which would make random trans people on the internet accountable for sufficiently denouncing other completely random trans people for their bad decisions on pain of being responsible an entire tens-of-millions-strong political parties electoral successes & defeats (and whatever punishments come with that responsibility), is absolutely atrocious.
Go ahead. Make the ethical case for why I need to condemn a teacher. What is the nexus that makes me responsible for her behaviour?
Go on.
We’re trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. Give us some explanation other than mere prejudice on your part.
@Margaret
Perspective time.
With all the stuff going on in this world, you’re freaking out about 1 trans woman with an inadvisable prosthetic and arguably bad dress sense?? REALLY? Even at “just” 1%, that means there are literally about 80 MILLION of us trans folks worldwide – which means there are more trans people in the world than people in the entire British Isles! In fact, we’d be the 20th LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD if we were our own country! and yet you’re trying to brush us off as if we’re NOTHING?
Yet despite 80 MILLION, you’re fixing all your attention on THAT ONE TRANS WOMAN acting as if she’s some kind of predictive monolith for the rest of us, or proof why we don’t deserve consideration?? ONE PERSON, in a population larger than most nations! How fucking dare you. Grow up, you weak troll lmao. Every group of people has their inadvisable weirdos. 80 million means that we’ll have a good number of them too – at least as many as a nation of that size. And people are capable of caring about MANY things at once, but trans rights is important because it also strongly ties into women’s rights and the general right to exist as you want with whatever gender presentation you prefer – we’re not the ones making butch lesbians’ lives miserable, after all, chasing them out of bathrooms for not looking feminine enough, that’d be those trans exclusionary radical fascists doing that. So maybe you need to sit down and SHUSH for a bit.
@crip
Im not “freaking out”; you are. And I didn’t ask you to condemn “every trans person on the internet”, not did I ask trans people in general to explain themselves because of this woman.
I asked David Futrelle to acknowledge that this specific trans idiot is in the wrong.
Now you want to know why: because it made her a students uncomfortable, and she just carried on anyway. It’s not too much to ask that this person be held to the same standards as anyone else. But the liberal media outlets that do cover this (like DF) just gloss that over part of the story and pretend this is about an innocent trans woman being discriminated against.
Now, what does that have to do with US politics? It has to do with politics when liberals and leftists close ranks, support this ridiculous behavior, and suggest that it’s transphobic to hold trans people to normal expectations. Then right wing media like Megyn Kelly will pick it up and mock the party as a whole for being totally out of touch, and she isn’t even wrong.
@Seth well that’s one perspective. A hopelessly warped one, but i live in the land where ridiculous things can be called such without suggesting everyone is a clown. Stay mad, bro
Ps if you’re reporting me to David cause you disagree with me you’re being petty
@Margaret
You do realize that protecting a minority and doing things to benefit the majority are not mutually exclusive, right? And that they often intersect? Esp. when that minority is mostly working poor, contrary to the lucky Caitlin Jenner types who the media focuses on? “Democrats need to throw an oppressed minority under the bus if they want to win” is a morally abhorrent take, and it’s also demonstrably wrong.
@Brony
When someone says they don’t want to interact with you, stop replying to them. Boundaries 101. And don’t reply to me either please.
@Margarget: what percentage of the population does a group need to be for defending their rights as a matter of principal becomes worthwhile? And how many of these groups rights can be sacrificed to placate fascists before they will be satisfied?
@Margaret
If you or anyone else is going to refuse to vote for Democratic candidates because they support trans rights, then I’m pretty sure that the Democratic Party doesn’t fucking want your support any more than they want the support of Nazis or Klansmen.
Bigotry is bigotry, and ever since the 70s and 80s, that hasn’t exactly been part the Democratic brand. Sounds like you’d be happier with those fuckers who want to keep you barefoot in the kitchen, pumping out babies and shutting the fuck up.
Have fun with that.
@Gaebolga
Sadly the Democrats have not been unified on this at all. There’s a significant subgroup who want to avoid doing things specficially for minorities, keep to center economically, and pivot right on social issues in general. They claim (as usual) that this is the only way to win over fence-sitters.
Stuff like this has been the case for liberals (and TBQH for leftists as well) in basically every social justice fight ever that wasn’t purely economic. I think a lot of them don’t even believe their talking points either, they just want a slightly gentler status quo where they still have power over others.
@Cyborgette
That’s both depressing and unbelievably stupid.
As a cis-het white man, I guess I’ve had the privilege on not noticing more than the occasional outburst on that front.
Humans suck.
@Cyborgette
And the bullying?
When there’s aggression it’s convenient to ask to be left alone.
It is also convenient for you to ask the same if there’s bullying.
I will not respond after this, but the bullying topic matters and I won’t let a 101 reference push that away.
That trans women was bullied by the internet as far as I’m concerned. I came from nextdoor to only less intense nit-picking over anatomical choices, without a hint of predatory behavior. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but leave someone alone to an irrational social dominance display?
I’m not doing this to be mean.
@Gaebolga
Nah, humans are cool. The power structures we’ve created? Those suck.
@Brony
No, stop. Seriously. Stop.
Margaret, I think the teacher is being inappropriate; the prosthetic boobs are made of rubber and appear in the pics I’ve seen to be cartoonishly large, I would say larger than humanly possible even with implants, but there may be fetish models/porn stars with breasts that big, I don’t know. But it’s not a good look for a teacher. She should have known it would be distracting.
I think this falls in the category of someone getting distracting body modifications — a horn on the forehead or a garish face tattoo to make them look like a lizard.
This might also be considered similar to a male teacher (cis or trans) put ting a giant cucumber in his very tight pants to make it look like he had a giant penis.
At the same time I don’t think this deserves to be an international incident or that random trans people need to answer for it somehow as if this reflects on them.
There are really more important things to worry about, like whether someone gets killed because of Tucker Carlson’s attack on hospitals that offer gender affirming care to young people. And any number of very real dangers the trans community faces now from bigots and literal fascists.
Parker Molloy has said some things on this that make sense to me. It’s definitely grossly hypocritical for Tucker Carlson to be going on about the prosthetic boobs given that he’s defended cis teachers who’ve literally given male students lap dances. and fondled them. Tucker is one of those “oh, the boys are lucky to get the sexual attention of a hot teacher” types.
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1572612702425554944
@gaebolga and Seth and others:
You seem to have confused the Democratic party with a religion. So maybe I can clarify this for you: politicians don’t campaign for issue that could cost them elections. Those same people might be in a position to help if they’re in office, but if they’re not then they’re just Joe Blow. They won’t gamble on a 1% of the 1% issue that alienates a good 45% of the rest of the electorate.
Whats worse is that none of the normal TRA hectoring; i.e. describing opinions as “literal violence against trans people”, deriding those who disagree with your rabid single-issue politics as Nazis and Klansmen, or framing edge-cases like varsity trans athletes and this big-titty shop teacher as a blanket denial of the human rights of trans people… you realize none of this will convince anyone who wasn’t already on your side, right? That it makes you look silly?
Here’s the deal: Keep the stick up your asses, and whichever party has the poor sense to pander to you is going to lose elections. Figure out how to work with other people and you might actually get somewhere!
Margaret, civil rights are civil rights. it’s not a popularity contest. Jews make up 1% of the population in America but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about antisemitism for fear of alienating voters. TERFs/the right are basically trying to make it impossible to live publicly as a trans person. That’s an enormous issue regardless of the number of trans people.
@Margaret
I never said you were freaking out, but if you think that I am, why don’t you quote the bit from my earlier comment in which you detect my womb wandering?
You’re demanding that people here condemn that one trans person in Canada when we have no relationship to that one trans person in Canada.
And you have repeatedly insisted that failing to criticize this teacher is the same as declaring a “right” to engage in that behavior. I quote you from this very comment (I don’t even have to go back to previous comments b/c you’re repeating yourself):
But David (as a “leftist”) wasn’t supporting this ridiculous behavior. He was critiquing (or if you’re so inclined, “attacking”) Megyn Kelly and staying silent or voicing an agnostic stance on the teacher’s behavior.
The is because individuals who are not public figures do not need a massive internet pile-on condemning them. The people at the center of this can figure it out without literally hundreds of thousands of condemnations flooding in from everywhere across the globe.
The teacher is doing this. Students are uncomfortable. They’ll handle it. You are the one engaging in disproportionate behavior **unless and until** you also demand “leftists” or “rightists” or whichever relevant group condemn literally every other action any teacher ever takes that makes students uncomfortable.
I doubt you’ve been doing that. I doubt you have the time. Therefore this looks like a special and disproportionate focus on attacking on trans people to me. Maybe I’m wrong though. Please feel free to drop in a few links about other communities you’ve demanded publicly criticize a different teacher for making kids uncomfortable.
Oh good gracious. You’re not reading others comments at all.
I am not asking why you think the teacher’s behavior was wrong. I’m asking why that’s David’s responsibility to condemn.
Why do you believe that the local principal and school board can’t handle it and vociferous internet outrage is required?
We’re not saying you’re ridiculous for disliking the teacher’s behavior. Feel free!
We’re saying that making behavior that rises to the shocking level of …[checks notes]… making children uncomfortable probably doesn’t need a random blogger in an entirely different country to sort out.
We actually have faith that people who live in Canada (where I am a permanent legal resident despite my birth in the USA, so I have some knowledge of this) are not so intellectually challenged that they can’t handle this.
Internet bullying actually harms people. Massive condemnation from far too many people to ever read all the condemnatory messages take a terrible toll on mental health **even when their intent is not to bully**. Such internet pile-ons of average people who do something stupid or not-good or even just misunderstood have happened many times, and for good reasons experts have discouraged us from engaging in them. This actually argues even against pile-ons targeting Megyn Kelly, but for Kelly who has a large media presence she has the opportunity to get new, positive waves of internet response every day. The result of criticism for Kelly is qualitatively different than for someone like this teacher. I don’t think we have to refrain from criticizing Kelly, but I don’t mind if you were to voice the opinion that there’s too much negativity and we should at least think twice before criticizing her. On the other hand we sure as hell have to think twice before joining a pile-on of that teacher.
So it is this for which I’m asking.
Not a justification for thinking the teacher’s behavior is wrong. Justifying an internet pile on for a private individual. This kind of thing has been known to lead to suicides — yes, even in tiny Canada! We tend to remember that kind of thing when it happens to our neighbors.
So why should David or anyone else here contribute to a phenomenon that increases the risk of suicide for that teacher?
Will our condemnation do anything to solve the problem of students feeling uncomfortable?
What? What is it that justifies your demand for our condemnation despite the known risks?
Or we could pretend that it doesn’t matter whether the person is innocent.
We could pretend that Megyn Kelly — AND YOU — are deliberately trying to drum up internet outrage and relentless public condemnation of a private person whose behavior pre-internet would have been handled just fine by locals.
Megyn Kelly’s behavior is worse than yours, of course, because she has a wider reach, and because you have reason to believe that no one here would send threatening or dehumanizing messages directly to the teacher. Kelly is directly encouraging a large group known to include bullies. You’re just demanding people who aren’t bullies to add our voices to a massive tide of condemnation in a manner that has the effect of emboldening those bullies.
I still don’t like what you’re asking.
You actually previously said that Democrats lose elections because of this kind of thing.
But, again, is the party out of touch when it lets Canadians handle things in Canada.
Tell me honestly: do you believe that the democratic party has to have a position on the actions of a single teacher in Canada whose behavior is — at worst — making students uncomfortable?
is there no teacher in the USA doing anything worse than making students uncomfortable on which the Democrats could focus their PR? Hell, is there no teacher in the USA who is making students uncomfortable?
And which other countries’ teachers must we condemn? Do the Democrats need someone focussed on education in Fiji or China or Bulgaria just in case there’s a teacher there in one of those countries who makes students uncomfortable?
I mean, there probably isn’t going to be one in those places any time soon because making students uncomfortable is so incredibly rare that there’s only one teacher in the world doing that right now.
But still.
Maybe.
Just in case.
Tell me: which countries’ teachers should the USA’s Democrats stand ready to condemn? And what crimes by those teachers should rise to the level of US Democrats notice?
You obviously have well-reasoned thoughts on these topics. I’ve sure you’ve figured this out already. Please. Share your wisdom.
@margaret
we’re not framing any isolated matter as a blanket denial of our rights. we’re correctly arguing against the use of isolated matters *that have nothing to do with the average trans person* to justify bigotry and harm against us. i won’t even get into your equating the matter of this teacher’s breast prosthetics with athletics because they are not the same thing. we’re not the ones that need to get a grip here.