It's in the Code ep 154: “All Women Are Women, Pt. 3”
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In this final episode taking on Allie Beth Stuckey’s defense of transphobia, Dan looks at her appeals to the Bible and her claims that she is seeking to “protect” women and children. He shows how she selectively appeals to the Bible to support the anti-trans positions she already holds, and how her insistence that she is “protecting” women and children actually works to mask her efforts to actively target and harm transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Check out this week’s episode to hear this and more.
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Hey everyone, it's your two favorite horror podcasters, professors, and nerds.
We're so excited to tell you about a new series from Horror Joy called Meet Your Maker.
This is a series dedicated to horror creators, their words, and their worlds.
We'll be sitting down for 30-minute interviews with some of horror's best-known authors and some of the best authors you don't know, like Clay McLeod Chapman, Victoria Dolpe, Kat Silva, John Langen, Sadie Hartman, Mother Horror, Emily Hughes, Thomas Ha, Matthew Trefon, Jake Try, and so many more.
Whatever we do, we can both try to do so many more at the same time.
And so many, many more.
No.
I don't think that's working.
Our goal is always to find joy in horror, and this gives us the opportunity to introduce you to new authors and creators and to discuss new books, stories, and movies with your old favorites.
This also means that we'll be dropping episodes every week.
So, get ready, yins, for more horror, more joy, more horror.
joy!
Hello, and welcome to It's in the Code.
The series is part of the podcast, Straight White American Jesus.
I, of course, am Dan Miller, your host, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Excited as always to be here talking with you.
And as always, I want to just start by saying thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
Thank you for all the things that you do.
In particular, thank you to our subscribers.
And if you are not a subscriber and that's something that you would be interested in doing, willing to do, you support what we do, want to help us do more of it, I would ask you to consider doing that.
And as always, I welcome your insights and your thoughts.
This is a series that I think maybe more than anything we do on Straightwide American Jesus that is driven by you.
It comes from your feedback, your ideas, your comments, your criticisms, your concerns.
So please reach out.
I'd love to hear from you.
Daniel Miller Swedge, DanielMiller, SWAJ at gmail.com.
Always open to new series topic ideas, responses and reflections on specific episodes, ideas for new episodes, ideas for all of that.
Welcome that.
Discuss some of those in our bonus and supplemental material, but I'm also putting together a list sort of looking out in the future of topics and themes and directions that we're going to go.
So look forward very much to talking about those things and hearing from you.
Respond to as many folks as I can, but I do value the outreach.
Let's dive in here.
We are continuing with our exploration of the cultural religious rights war on empathy.
And we've been doing this by looking at Ali Beth Stuckey's book, Toxic Empathy, a book where she warns us about the evils of empathizing too much and how it will lead us into the lies that the right, excuse me, that the left and progressives tell you.
As I've said, all of the things she identifies as lies are positions I hold, and I want to continue to be clear about that.
But we've been looking at her second chapter where she outlines her opposition to trans inclusion, and really she does this by trying to just deny the reality of transgender identity.
This is a typical and standard move on the right, because of course they don't want to say that they're discriminating against anybody.
They want to say that they're targeting people.
So what they'll actually just do oftentimes is try to say that those people don't actually exist.
And so you try to delegitimize the existence of trans people and make that into something that's not real so that you can say that you're not actually targeting anybody.
That's what she's doing.
That's what we're going to finish up this week, her discussion of this.
And I want to consider a couple of final aspects.
One is her appeals to the Bible.
Just as a reminder, she insists that she is presenting a Christian perspective.
She says in the introduction that what she's putting forward is undertaken and presented through a biblical lens.
The subtitle of her book is How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.
She is ostensibly defending Christian compassion and distinguishing it from toxic empathy.
So we're going to take a look at what she actually has to say about the Bible.
And we're also going to look at one of the rhetorical moves of her discussion.
I know we've talked a lot about rhetoric in this section, but a lot of what she does hinges not on facts and arguments, but on the use of rhetoric to kind of slide around and position herself in certain ways and try to position us as the readers in particular ways.
And we're going to talk about one of those issues that I think really serves as the connective tissue, as it were, that ties together everything that she does in this chapter.
So let's start with that first thing.
Stuckey does offer a very brief, brief section outlining what she takes to be the biblical reasons for opposing the recognition and inclusion of trans folk.
And as with the previous chapter, again, I'm reading this book as we go.
I haven't read the whole thing yet.
I'm kind of going chapter by chapter and then sharing my reflections.
So this is the second chapter, second time I've seen this.
To know that she's putting forward a Christian position, to know that she says she's speaking through a biblical lens and so forth, it's a surprisingly thin and underdeveloped section.
It's about three pages.
It's in the section called Why God Made Us Male and Female.
It's about three pages, folks, out of a 27-page chapter.
And it doesn't come until 21 pages in.
So it's very brief and pretty late in the chapter.
I think it's worth pausing and considering this before we even get into the content of what she says.
And here's why.
I just, I find this so significant and frankly surprising, okay?
Or I did.
Stuckey, again, just she proudly proclaims that the views she's putting forward represent a biblical lens.
And in standard conservative Christian fashion, you know, what does she mean by that?
She's claiming that her positions are biblical.
She's claiming that they have their origins in the Bible.
I think if you sat down and asked her, she would say, I believe these things because I'm a Christian.
And as a Christian, I read the Bible.
This is what the Bible says and so forth.
This, from within her perspective, from within that thought world, this is what gives her views authority is that they come from the Bible.
And most Christians, like Sucky, would even say that the Bible should be their sole source of binding authority.
That their views are authoritative because they come from God as presented in the Bible.
And yes, she's going to appeal to biology and medicine and whatever, but the real source of her positions is supposed to be the Bible.
So for me, it's telling that she spends so little time actually talking about what the Bible supposedly says on this topic.
And I think that that's worth noting.
And I've got a few thoughts on why this is.
The first thought is this, and I emphasize this point a lot, but I think it's really important.
And I think it's important as we engage people like Stuckey.
The Bible underdetermines what most people claim to get from it.
In other words, what do I mean by that?
The ideas that people claim to have because of the Bible often don't originate from within the Bible.
They didn't go to the Bible and read it and then develop the perspectives that they have.
And one reason for that is that on most issues, the Bible does not speak with a single consistent voice, if it speaks at all.
Okay?
No, most people come to the Bible in order to defend a pre-existing view.
They already have something that they believe or feel to be true and they go to the Bible to look for support for that.
And so they find verses in the Bible that they need, that say what they need the Bible to say.
And often this process is not conscious or intentional.
People grow up in church hearing certain things, hearing that certain passages teach this and so forth.
They go to those passages.
They become sort of blind to the fact that there are other passages that say other things or to the fact that they've never gone to the Bible sort of from scratch to sort of define their own views and so forth.
Okay.
So when Stucky comes to the Bible, this is what she's doing.
She's coming to defend an anti-trans perspective that she already has.
And I think the structure of her chapter reflects this.
I think the structure of her chapter reflects a whole bunch of things she already thinks she knows about gender.
And I've talked about these and why she's wrong on those.
And the Bible's just there as kind of window dressing.
She doesn't need to find anything in the Bible because she already knows what she believes and therefore what the Bible says before she even goes to She doesn't need to spend a lot of time with it.
Second, and I think this point is related, she's writing for a friendly audience.
She's not writing for people like me.
If you're listening to this podcast, she's probably not writing for people like you.
She says, she says on page 56, I think I quoted this passage last week as well, or maybe the week before, she says, quote, when it comes to gender, we know what the biological and biblical reality is.
That's from the outset before she even gets into it.
Her audience is in the same boat as her.
They already know what's true.
They're just looking for Bible verses that they can attach to it to give them that, as it were, that biblical cover.
Okay.
So that's one reason.
A third reason why she doesn't spend much time is that there just aren't many Bible verses that anti-trans advocates can find that actually make the explicitly anti-trans arguments that they think they make.
And it'll be interesting, I think, when we get to her topic, dismissing social justice concerns.
I think it's the last topic in the book.
Because the Bible has orders of magnitude, more verses advocating for economic and social justice than it does verses dealing with gender identity and sexuality or abortion or something like that.
So I'll be interested to see what she does when the time comes to talk about that.
But there simply aren't many verses that deal explicitly with this.
So I think those are some reasons why, despite the fact that she's claiming to put forward a Christian perspective, despite the fact she says she's putting forward a biblical perspective on this, she spends almost no time actually doing that in these chapters.
So with that in mind, what does the Bible have to tell us, according to Stuckey?
Well, the first verse she cites as predictable is Genesis 1.27, which says that, or so right at the beginning of the Bible, which says that God created beings, quote, male and female, in the image of God.
So there it is.
Now, first thing, and I've discussed this a great deal, and if you're interested, go back and listen to the episodes on inerrancy and why it is that I think the notion that the Bible is what conservatives say it is just is incoherent and doesn't make sense.
I simply don't take the Bible as a reliable authority on issues of gender and sexuality or psychology or creation or anything else.
Okay.
I think humans have learned a lot in the past 2,500 years.
I think we understand gender and sexuality better than we used to.
I think we understand human identity and human psychology better than we used to.
The Bible's just not a good source for that.
So I'm not at all, I'm not all that interested in trying to, you know, quote unquote queer passages like this and trying to find ways to show the passages that seem to say one thing that's very, you know, cisgender or heteronormative, in fact, isn't.
That's just, that's not a strong interest of mine.
I think it probably is the case.
The communities that produce these texts, for the most part, were, by contemporary standards, quite cis heteronormative.
I think historically that's probably true.
And I have no problem with saying that they're wrong.
I have no problem with saying that, you know, whoever wrote this passage, if they were assuming gender binarism and so forth, yeah, they were wrong.
2,500 years ago, we've learned a lot more.
I know more about gender than the author of Genesis did.
I'm confident in that.
Okay.
But if one does want to get a sort of a queer or queerer reading of the Bible, in other words, if one is interested in tackling these verses and trying to find a perspective that says that they are not putting forward a cis-heteronormative view, there are good resources out there for doing that.
I invite you to go and take a look at those.
Okay.
But even on a surface reading, if I'm looking at this, even if that's not my primary interest, there are obvious ambiguities to a passage like this.
And when I talk about the Bible not speaking with one voice on a topic, this is a great example.
So for example, it's not my position, but if one accepts, even if one accepts a broadly binary conception of gender, this verse still doesn't explicitly address the issue of cross-gender identity.
And I understand being gender fluidity can involve a lot more than like cross-gender identity, but I'm just saying, even if somebody works within that framework, the verse doesn't actually say that it's impossible that somebody would identify or feel themselves to be a gender that's different from the one that they're assigned.
There's nothing explicit in that passage.
I would also pose the question, is it really clear that there are only two genders?
And if somebody says, well, it says male and female, it only lists those two.
It's like, okay, but there's these other weird things in the Christian tradition.
Like when it talks about the first humans getting married and having kids and things like that, Christians had to invent humans that the Bible doesn't talk about.
Otherwise, the whole human race is based on incest.
Because if only the first humans and their offspring reproduced, it means like brothers and sisters are having sex and that's the origins of the human race.
And so Christians have long said, well, you know, there were other humans that were created that God didn't talk about.
There's a whole tradition about Adam's first wife, Lilith, that has developed in the Christian tradition.
So there are these commonly accepted notions that maybe what the Bible says isn't everything that's possible.
So is it really the case here?
And then even if God's ideal was two genders, and to be clear, that is not a position I'm advocating.
That is not a position, a direction that I want to go.
Okay.
But even if somebody said, yes, God's ideal is two genders and so forth, the Christian tradition also teaches that all of creation has fallen, quote unquote, from that intended ideal.
So one could say, look, but creation isn't what God intended it to be, which means that maybe there are other gender identities and we need to be aware of that and so forth.
Now, I want to be really clear.
I don't like that interpretation because I think it pathologizes any gender identity that isn't cisgender identity.
Okay.
It's not a position I'm advocating.
All I'm trying to say is even if somebody accepts this verse and they accept it as authoritative, and even if they think that God does have a vision of two genders, this verse doesn't do the work that Stuckey wants to think that it does.
And more importantly than this, and I think that this is a much more significant point, relying solely on this passage ignores a prominent, ready-made illustration that disrupts a binary vision of gender in the Bible, and that is the category of the eunuch.
Okay.
Now, trans people are not eunuchs.
I'm aware of this.
And I'm not suggesting that they are.
What I want to make the point is that in the Bible, the eunuch represents an example of a person who is not traditionally gendered.
And there are key Bible passages where the eunuch is highlighted as someone who has a place within the kingdom of God as the people they are.
The inclusion of the eunuch within God's kingdom is used more than once as an example of the expansive and inclusive nature of God's love and acceptance.
So you have an example in the Bible of somebody who is not gendered male or female, who is fully accepted by God as they are.
Stuckey, of course, is going to mention none of this.
She's just going to cite the Bible verse.
So the point is that this one verse doesn't necessarily do the work that the Bible thumpers think that it should.
And again, if you want queerer readings of Bible passages, I invite you to go find those resources because they're there.
Okay.
She also grounds this account of the creation of humans as male and female in the command, you know, next verse in Genesis 1.28, that we should be fruitful and multiply.
If you've listened to me, you've heard me talk about this.
What she's saying there is the purpose of binary gender is heterosexuality.
The purpose of heterosexuality is procreation.
I'm not going to say much about this here, except to point out, again, that fairly recently I did a long series called We've Got to Talk About the Sex Stuff, where I tackled this idea and I gave my reasons for rejecting the notion that the purpose of sex is procreation and why I suggested that even within a conservative Christian framework, that idea is not actually that compelling.
So that's the first part of what Stuckey has to say.
God created humans, male and female, and the purpose of that is procreation.
I don't accept those, but those are the first two verses she gives.
What else does she have for us?
Well, it turns out that not a lot.
She highlights the passage in 1 Corinthians that says that the bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, which has nothing to do with gender specifically and is only circular reasoning if she thinks it's an argument against gender.
She highlights the divine promise that we'll be resurrected into bodies without sickness, pain, or decay.
Again, unless one is already presupposing that gender dysphoria is sickness, pain, or decay or something like that, or that being trans is problematic, this verse has nothing to do with it.
One could also argue that God therefore promises to resurrect people into bodies where they don't experience gender dysphoria, which means God would resurrect you into a body that matches your gender identity.
God will perform your gender confirmation at the resurrection.
You could make an argument against that.
At any rate, she cites a couple of verses that have nothing to do with this.
And then she gives us this gem.
This is maybe my favorite bad move that she makes in this chapter.
It's from the book of Isaiah, chapter 45, verse 9.
She says, though she doesn't say, the Bible says, woe to him who strives with one who formed him, a pot among earthen pots.
Does the clay say to him who forms it, what are you making?
Or your work has no handles?
End quote.
Her takeaway, in case you missed it, if you're like, why are we talking about pots?
This is her takeaway.
She says, quote, the prophet Isaiah urges us explicitly to accept the body God gave us.
That's her interpretation of this passage.
Except the text explicitly does no such thing.
The passage comes, the passage that that's coming from in Isaiah 45 comes in the context of God declaring that the Persian king Cyrus is his anointed, is his messiah, chosen to deliver his people from captivity.
That the Persian king is going to deliver the Jewish people from captivity.
And the verse that she quotes is actually one where the prophet is condemning those who would question God's choice of a non-Jewish Persian ruler for this role.
And basically, the prophet Isaiah is saying, God is choosing Cyrus, this Persian, who are you to question the wisdom of God?
It has nothing to do with gender or embodiment at all, not even close, not proximately, not in any way.
And it is amazing to me, remains amazing to me, that the people who claim to revere scripture, who claim to act according to the authority of scripture, who claim to take the scripture the most seriously, are incapable of understanding context at all.
Okay?
At any rate, those are the verses.
That's it.
That's her whole discussion, those few verses.
One verse that says God makes people male and female, and then a bunch of verses that actually have nothing to do with that.
That's it.
We get a 2,500-year-old myth about human creation and an analogy about pots that isn't even relevant.
That's it.
Folks, I would submit that's not very convincing.
That's not a lot of evidence.
It's not a strong argument unless you're coming to the Bible and you are already locked into an anti-trans position and you're just looking for some verses that can give you a biblical rationale for that.
That's exactly what Stuckey is doing.
So that's her biblical argument.
Her biblical lens, as it turns out, is very, very, it's very thin.
It's not very strong.
Okay.
It's the first piece I want to look at is her actual biblical argument.
Next time you talk to somebody and they bring these up, maybe that'll be useful.
I also want to talk then about this other discourse that she has that runs through her chapter, and it's the discourse of protection.
So if you go back a couple episodes, we've talked about Stucky's appeals to science.
We've talked about her appeals to the biological roots of gender, her appeals to testimonial.
I've given my reasons why I don't find those convincing.
We can now add her really weak biblical appeal to the list.
So this brings us to the last thing, which is this discourse.
And I think this discourse is significant because it's the, if you look at the structure of this chapter in particular, it's the sort of connective tissue that holds all of these different elements together.
It's like the glue holding all these pieces together.
And it's the discourse of protection.
And I think this is significant, again, because the reason we're looking at Stuckey is that she exemplifies a discourse that is common among those on the right, not just in relation to trans inclusion, but in relation to a lot of other issues as well.
And I did an episode a long time ago called Christian Health and Safety where I talked about this.
And my point was the way in which many of the cruelest, most oppressive policies advanced by the religious and political right are often justified in terms of protecting the safety of the vulnerable and marginalized.
And Stuckey taps into this discourse here in spades.
It's also another example of her appeal to emotions.
Again, in the introduction, she's really clear and says we need to be wary of appeals to emotion that rely on emotion and not evidence and reason and rationality and so forth.
This chapter seeks to tap into our emotions deeply.
So in particular, she positions everything she's saying as an interest in protecting women and children.
She would say, you know, we're not targeting trans people.
We're protecting vulnerable women and children.
This is an act of protection.
And I know I use the term Orwellian a lot when I talk about these things.
I often talk about Orwellian reasoning, but this is a great example of this.
Stuckey and those like her, they actively target and threaten and endanger one of the most vulnerable populations on our society, all in the name of supposedly protecting others.
And people buy it.
People reach out to me and say, why do they talk this way?
It makes no sense.
It's irrational, whatever.
The reason they talk this way is that millions of people buy it.
It works.
And on this issue in particular, it's because millions of Americans, they don't know much about these issues.
They might never or never knowingly have encountered a trans or gender non-conforming individual.
They're kind of a blank slate and they can easily be taken in by this.
And the language is effective because it's emotional.
Who doesn't want to protect women and children?
I have a family that includes a woman and includes children and I want to protect them.
I have friends and loved ones who are women and children.
I want to protect them.
Yes, I want to protect the men too.
But the point is that the language of protecting women and children works.
It resonates.
And so she speaks this way.
Except that it's only through the use of blatant misinformation and the exclusion of key facts that anti-trans opponents like Stuckey can even pretend to advance the interests of vulnerable populations.
So this language of protection runs throughout this chapter.
I want to look at sort of two specific ways that she moves through this language and that she uses it and two of the ways in which misinformation or a lack of information or masking data operates to allow her to carry this rhetoric forward.
And the first thing I want to look at is the language of choice and the second is the language of onslaught or threat.
So let's start with this, the language of choice.
Because Stucky, if you read the chapter, again, I'm reading this so you don't have to.
You can take my word for it.
But if you want to go read the chapter, you'll see this.
She routinely presents the trans-inclusive perspective as one that holds that genders quote unquote change, that people choose to identify with genders other than the ones they were assigned to birth, that trans people become people of different genders, and so on.
This language of changing and choosing and becoming runs throughout the chapter.
And the idea, I think, underlying all of this is that gender dysphoria and trans identity, it's a kind of choice.
It reflects a decision that someone makes.
And it's therefore important to, you know, to protect, quote unquote, to protect children from themselves when they think it's a choice that they want to make or from adults or peer groups who would force that decision on them.
It is important to protect women from people who would put this discourse upon them or legitimize their actions by appealing to it.
And here's where the misinformation comes in, is that trans people don't choose a new gender.
This is common knowledge among medical and mental health professionals, folks.
It just is.
And of course, Stuckey will not address any of that directly.
But those folks know this.
And this is particularly evident in the case of young children who identify with genders that differ from the ones they were assigned at birth.
Now, there's no one medical model of care in the U.S. We don't have a unified medical system.
But there are accepted standards of care when it comes to trans youth.
And one is that, and I had an endocrinologist talk to me about this one time, and it really stuck with me.
One is that trans identity is consistent, insistent, and persistent.
Competent providers aren't asking adults or children what gender they want to be or what genders they've decided to be or something like that.
They are listening, not telling, but listening for what gender identities those people feel themselves to be.
The persistent, consistent, and insistent sense of who they are.
Now, what does that mean?
It means that if they get a client, a patient, and they've got questions about possible gender identity stuff, and it appears that it has originated recently or that it does reflect something other than gender dysphoria, as in the example that Stucke gave us, the long testimonial we discussed last episode of this person who decides, does decide that she's trans and it turns out that she wasn't, a competent provider is going to listen for those things.
And if it isn't consistent, persistent, and insistent, is going to explore that and make sure that this is really the care that somebody needs.
Those steps are there.
They're in place.
Those are the protocols.
Trans individuals don't wake up one day and choose a new gender.
They come to an experiential awareness that there's a disconnect between what they feel themselves to be in terms of gender and what others have always told them.
And coming to that awareness, and this is a key for me, coming to that awareness and that expression typically comes with an exceptionally high social cost.
There often is no sort of external benefit to it.
People sacrifice their families.
They sacrifice their well-being.
They sacrifice deep relationships for what?
The right's going to tell us so that sometimes they can win athletic events or something?
It just doesn't track.
It comes at a huge social cost.
And I have heard the stories of children and adolescents and adults.
I have spent time talking to them and listening to them and hearing their accounts individually and in groups and in texts and different places.
And I have never heard an account of anyone choosing their gender identity.
Now, as a side note, if somebody says, well, Dan, it sounds like you're appealing to testimonials.
Last chapter, you were all over Stuckey for appealing to a testimonial.
Here's the difference.
The testimonials I listen to, the accounts of actual trans people and their experience of coming to that recognition of themselves, they're backed up by facts and evidence rather than ancient creation myths and stories about pots.
That's all Stuckey and her ilk have for us.
So trans and gender nonconforming people, they don't choose their gender identity any more than cisgender people do.
And a little, wait for it, a little empathy allows cis people who haven't experienced gender dysphoria to at least understand it.
And this is the exercise I do when somebody says, talks about somebody choosing a gender, I just ask the cis person, I say, when did you choose your gender identity?
And of course, they'll say, I didn't.
I've just, oh, I've just always been a guy.
I've just always felt like a girl.
I've just, you know, whatever.
And say, okay, that's exactly what the trans folks are telling us about themselves.
So take that experience of just feeling who you are and extend it to others.
And you've probably got a sense of what they're experiencing.
That's it.
Which is exactly why Stucky and people like her want to deaden our capacity to empathize because a little bit of empathy will bring us to a level of understanding that might threaten 2,500-year-old creation myths and stories about pots and their authority in our lives.
So any level of sincere engagement with the trans community reveals quickly that it is not harming children or women.
It is simply affirming individuals as the individuals that they are.
That's it.
So that's the first move, the first kind of language that Stuckey uses to lodge this discourse of protection.
The final piece of rhetoric here is the language of onslaught or threat.
And this is another favorite of the right.
If you've heard the right talk about any number of things, you know this.
When it suits them, people like Stuckey on the right will emphasize the numerically small proportion of the population represented by trans and gender non-conforming individuals.
When they want to take away their rights or limit them, they'll say, well, you know, hardly anybody, hardly anybody's affected by this.
It's no big deal.
But other times, I think this is the dominant discourse at present, at present rather, they present trans folk as an army marching on the cis world, taking away their rights and threatening their well-being.
They are a threat, a horde coming for us.
It's a horde of trans people that are going to use women's bathrooms or take over the sporting world or whatever it is.
Okay.
And we've already noted in prior episodes, Stuckey's citation of the quote-unquote exploding numbers of gender dysphoric children and so forth.
Here's the truth.
The truth is that trans folk do represent a small minority.
Now, numbers are hard to come by, but estimates are that about 0.6% of the U.S. population over age 13 identifies as trans or gender nonconforming.
And that number is almost certainly higher because people are closeted or unsure about their gender identity or they've had this experience of gender dysphoria, but they don't know what that is.
They don't have the framework for understanding that.
But the point is, numerically, yeah, it's a small group of people.
Here's the point.
It's not a population large enough to threaten the cis majority, even if they wanted to.
The fact that this is such a small population is why it's so easily targeted by the majority.
Yet, to hear the talk about it, to hear Alibeth Stucky talk about it, to hear Donald Trump talk about it, to hear people on the right talk about it, you'd think there was an army of trans folk marching on the cis world with pitchforks and torches.
And a perfect illustration of this, to use just one, we could pull out lots of cultural analyses.
We've talked about these on the show lots of times.
But let's just take the NCAA as an example.
NCAA, in response to one of Trump's executive orders, recently banned trans women from participating in women's sports, in NCAA sports.
And they presented this as an issue of fairness, as an issue of protecting women and their rights and so forth.
And Stuckey leans into this.
She specifically talks about this in her chapter.
But by their own estimates, the NCAA estimated that there were around 10 trans athletes in the NCAA, trans women athletes.
Folks, that's out of a total of over half a million athletes.
Half a million athletes quaking in their shoes and fearing the onslaught of 10.
Yeah, what an onslaught.
The horde is coming.
Just one example.
And there are other rhetorical tricks that Stucky and her minions depend upon, but these make the point.
This language of an onslaught, excuse me, and the language of choice.
She leans on these.
And in every case, the purpose is to use this kind of language and this kind of rhetoric to position herself as protecting women and children from a threat, protecting them from the choices of individuals that put them in danger, protecting them from the onslaught of trans people seeking to destroy them and their way of life.
And here's what I think is an issue, and I think that this is a sure sign.
Whenever I hear somebody on the right talk about protecting people, here's what I think is a clue.
If you want to decode the language of protection and see what's really going on, note this about the right.
Their language of protection is always about taking something away from some group or another.
Their model of protection is always punitive.
It's always about punishing and targeting someone.
To me, it's a clear sign that it's code.
It's code for something else.
It's not really about protecting people.
It is about targeting and attacking people.
We've got to wrap this up.
These episodes on Stuckey have gone long, and I realize this.
We could say a lot more about Stuckey's arguments, but this is going to have to do it.
We're going to move into her next chapter, which is on gay people.
Gay rights is the target of her next chapter.
We're going to move into that next episode.
Just to tie these pieces together from today, here are a couple takeaways, a couple lessons that I think we can have.
And here's the big one.
When someone claims to be offering a quote-unquote biblical perspective on something or the biblical perspective on something, beware.
When Uncle Ron comes from me and says, hey, you know what?
I'm just being biblical, watch out.
Because they are almost certainly using carefully selected Bible passages to baptize positions they already hold.
They are not developing those positions from the Bible.
And when those on the religious or cultural or political right claim to undertake some action in the name of protection, it's misdirection.
They're essentially sort of waving their arm around trying to get you to look in one direction so that you don't see or you ignore the harm they're doing to somebody else in another direction.
They're waving with their right hand while they punch somebody in the face with their left.
That's what the language of protection is doing.
It's misdirection.
And those claims to protection are about power and coercion and control.
And I think all of this is evident as we read through Stuckey's book.
I want to thank you again for listening.
I want to thank you for taking the time to do this.
Again, especially for our subscribers, if you're not a subscriber and that's something that you would be interested or willing to do to help support us, invite you to do so.
But to everybody, thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
Thank you for the feedback and the comments.
Again, keep it coming.
I want to hear your thoughts.
This is heavy stuff.
And I know that I'm not considering every aspect of what Stuckey is saying in particular.
And I know there are things I don't have time to talk about.
And I know that you have perspectives that sometimes I haven't considered or you have insights that I haven't heard before.
I love to hear those from you.
Please keep them coming.
Daniel Miller Swedge, Daniel Miller, S-W-A-J at gmail.com.
And in the meantime, and as always, please be well until we get a chance to talk again.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hey everyone, it's your two favorite horror podcasters, professors, and nerds.
We're so excited to tell you about a new series from Horror Joy called Meet Your Maker.
This is a series dedicated to horror creators, their words, and their worlds.
We'll be sitting down for 30-minute interviews with some of horror's best-known authors and some of the best authors you don't know, like Clay McLeod Chapman, Victoria Dolpey, Kat Silva, John Langen, Sadie Hartman, Mother Horror, Emily Hughes, Thomas Ha, Matthew Trefon, Jake Try, and so many more.
Whenever we do it, we can both try to do so many more at the same time.
And so many more.
No.
I don't think that's working.
Our goal is always to find joy in horror, and this gives us the opportunity to introduce you to new authors and creators and to discuss new books, stories, and movies with your old favorites.
This also means that we'll be dropping episodes every week.
So get ready, yins, for more horror, more joy, more horror.
