Nightmare Pairing Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh Compared Transness to Being in a Cult
Contrary to Walsh’s seeming belief that there is an all-powerful trans cabal preventing him from spreading his lies, the notion that trans women are merely fetishists is one of the oldest kinds of transmisogyny. Some of the most critically-acclaimed cultural touchstones of our time are predicated on the myth of the insane fetishistic trans woman, like Silence of the Lambs and Psycho, among countless others.
Agreeing with his guest, Rogan claimed that transness has “always been a psychological condition. It’s always been known as being like a psychiatric condition, like it’s a mental health issue.” Although “gender identity disorder,” much like homosexuality, was once pathologized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it was removed in 2013 and replaced with “gender dysphoria,” to separate the mental repercussions of existing as a trans person without access to care from gender identity itself.
Rogan added, “It’s just this rigid adherence to ideology is so cult-like. It’s so fucking Handmaid's Tale.” The irony of this statement, considering that the Handmaid’s Tale is about a theocratic fascist society in which women are reduced solely to their reproductive capacities, is obvious. But it’s additionally wild considering that Margaret Atwood, author of the Handmaid’s Tale, has gone on record decrying journalists who are (transphobically) obsessed with trans people.
Despite all of the above, Rogan claimed that his comments were not intended “to deny that there’s people that are trans.” In a bizarre comparison, Rogan said that transness exists in nature, saying that “occasionally guys will shoot a buck and they'll find out that it’s actually a female with antlers. Nature'’ weird, right?”
“I think nature does make humans, for whatever reason, that really feel like they should have been born a female or should have been born a male,” Rogan said. “But that’s not all of what's happening. And in our desire to be compassionate and to have care for these people and to love these people and respect these people, we’re opening the door to all this chaos.”
Personally, we’ve never thought of Rogan or Walsh as particularly compassionate, caring, or loving, and certainly not toward any kind of mythic “true transsexual.” But referring to himself as such just proves that Rogan and his ilk are truly delusional when it comes to trans people.
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