Hello everyone, and welcome back to people you want to know
podcast. In this episode of our go you
will enjoy season, you are literally seeing me talk to one
of my dream guests, Brianna Wu. Brianna Wu is a video game
developer, political commentator and former congressional
candidate known for her outspoken advocacy on
technology, online culture and free expression.
She Co founded the indie game studio Giant Space Cat and
became nationally known after being targeted during the
Gamergate controversy, which propelled her to broader
conversations around Internet harassment, media and politics.
In recent years, Wu has become a prominent centrist voice in
debates around progressive politics, gender, online
discourse, including appearances and commentary connected to the
Free Press. She's also run for Congress in
Massachusetts, and she remains active across tech, journalism
and political media. Brianna is a voice of reason in
this crazy time and such an incredible ally for us.
Back when the Free Press hosted debates on their podcast, I
eagerly awaited the debates between Brianna and Bhatia Anger
Sargon because it was so useful and interesting to make sense of
the world. We are going to see Brianna
accomplish so much. I really feel like she's just
starting. I have so much respect and
admiration for her, and I told her after we recorded.
I really, really admire her and her communication style is just
exceptional. You'll hear me ask a bunch of
different things. In this episode we learn about
Brianna's story, her take on the Democratic Party, her take on
combating anti-Semitism. I mean we cover so much terrain.
Truly one of my favorite episodes I've ever done.
Please enjoy. Hello Brianna, Welcome to PEOPLE
Jew Want to Know podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
It's really my honor. You know, I'm always so
thrilled, you know, when people reach out and want to talk to me
about my favorite subject, which is Jews in the United States
being increasingly unsafe and what we do about it.
So thank you so much. How crazy is that?
I imagine that, you know, you didn't picture this being the
way that your career kind of played out.
I will say it wasn't really the plan, but, you know, I think in
the last few years, no one in politics has really been doing
what we expected to be doing. You know, I grew up in
Mississippi, and, yeah, I feel like I've been kind of swimming
in, you know, the waters of hatred my entire life.
I remember seeing how, you know, black people and gay people were
treated in that state growing up and, you know, I certainly saw
anti-Semitism there. What I couldn't have expected is
for the rest of the country to follow suit on that, which is
incredibly disturbing. So yeah, love that for everyone
in America. It's great.
I was actually curious if you have an opinion on what happened
to us as America. I think there's an emotional
answer and there's a technical answer.
I'll give you the technical answer first, which is, you
know, there's been a long term project to turn the Democratic
Party against you and it has started.
I say this as a Democratic insider.
You know, they've been placing pro Islamist operatives within
our party working for free for the last decade.
I've been here, and I assume for before this, and they've been
basically introducing a alternative storyline about the
history of Israel and what the history of Jews in America are.
And for whatever reason people aren't willing to check it out
and see if it's true. And we are seeing the effects of
both political parties essentially having an organized
information warfare campaign against Jews is when the
shorter, more emotional answer is America has decided to betray
our Jews, like many countries before us.
And, you know, there's something really dark in human history and
the human character that I don't know why y'all are just the
first in line when society falls apart.
You're the first up against the wall.
And I didn't really understand this until I went to Jerusalem.
And I think you can feel, Yeah, I'm not a woo woo spiritual gal.
There's something there. There's forces of light in this
world and there's forces of darkness and for reasons I don't
understand as a Christian, Jews just sit really close to that
light. I don't know why, but it's it's
clearly the thrust of history in my view.
It's interesting that you talk about, you know, the rewriting
of history in terms of Israel. I feel that in the last, you
know, 10-15 years, American history has been rewritten.
The values that average Americans stand for have been
rewritten to the point where the average person supposed to be
not proud to be American, when the reality is that I I come
from Ukraine, right? I come from what was considered
a developing nation. There is no better country than
America for someone like me to live in.
And even our poorest people live better than the vast majority of
the world. And it just breaks my heart.
I'm curious, you talk about, you know, being an insider in the
Democratic Party. Do you think the Democrats, and
this is a very broad stroke statement, do you think they're
honest about this happening? Like is there a consensus that
this is happening or is your opinion considered like off the
beaten path if you will? So, you know, this doesn't make
me proud to say that I'm going to tell you the truth.
And the truth is the elites in the Democratic Party know
better. We do.
We know this is bullshit. And I have conversations every
single week about it. But the truth is they've made a
political calculus to betray. They don't understand how dire
the situation is. And look, I say this as a proud
Democrat. I I'm deeply proud of our party
and our healthcare policy. And I used to be proud of the
the way we stood behind our national security strategy when
it really mattered and the chips were down.
But there is something that is increasingly cowardly about the
Democratic Party and unwilling to stand up for what is right
because no one wants to be the first person shouted down.
What I'm about to say to you is as a transsexual woman, I
transitioned over 22 years ago. I am ultra pro trans rights.
You know, what is happening to people like they in this country
really disturbs me. But I think this is an excellent
example of what is going wrong in the Democratic Party because
20 years ago, people like me got our rights because we went
through a medical process. We had surgeries, we had
clinicians diagnosing this. And if we were changing our, you
know, sex legally, there's a long process that we went
through. Democrats helped get us those
rights. Today.
You literally have a process in states like mine where you just
declare your gender and you know predators are ending up in
women's faces. This is a horrible public
policy. No one I talked to behind the
scenes can defend it. But, you know, there's not that
willingness to stand up and say, you know what?
We screwed up. And this particular policy is
putting women in danger and trans women in danger because
it's driving a project to take away, you know, everyone's civil
rights. That same issue is happening
with Jews because this genocide slur has proven to have so much
salience. And there's this Death Star out
there that's prepared to controversialize any Democrat
that stands with Israel, and no one has the guts to stand up and
call this what it is, which is bullshit.
It's just a lack of moral character.
I I can't explain it or justify it.
Something that I really admire about you is throughout your
career, you have always been first to call on some of the
kind of Canaries in the coal mine, if you will, that are
happening in society. Because you're willing to be
honest, even if it's not pretty, even if it's not serving
somebody'd interests. Because you want what's best,
you know, in the long term, even if that means some pain in the
immediate. I think about that when I think
about how you spoken up for Jews.
Obviously, I remember, you know, Barry's show.
I would wait for that conversation that you would have
with Bot Young or Sargon every week or every other week to
hear, you know, a voice of reason on the Internet and with
the gamer community. This was your philosophy as
well. You were talking about
harassment online years before anybody took what's happening
within, you know, the gamer ecosystem seriously.
How do you think we can inspire others to be willing to speak
up? I.
Think I would be really honest to say there's no incentive
structure to speaking up. You know, if I put a dollar
amount on the amount of money I've lost standing up for Israel
as well into the six figures at this point, you know, and don't
get me wrong, I went and found other work.
I'm doing fine. But you know, there is a
financial cost and there's a social cost for me as a trans
woman, I get called a man literally thousands of times a
day by Free Palestine and the people associated with that.
It's, it's a very deep cost. I think for me personally, you
know, when I was the first student to ever transition at
the University of Mississippi 20 years ago, integrity had a very
high price for me to stand up in that culture at that school and
say, this is who I am, this is how I was born and this is how
I'm going to live my life. I lost my adoptive family to
have that integrity. And there's just nothing I care
about more than that integrity. And, you know, I just, I can't
sit by and say nothing as I see this really organized project to
expel y'all from not just American life.
We're seeing what's happening in the UK.
It's happening in the countries all around the world.
It is terrifying. And I just, I, I feel so
frustrated with the lack of integrity with people that I
know for a fact know better because I talked to them behind
the scenes. Congress people, senators,
elected officials in Massachusetts, school board
people over and over. They know they're blowing it,
but the price of of speaking up is just not something they're
willing to pay. Now that the dust has settled in
some part on Gamergate, if you will, are have you re engaged
with the gamer community at all? How are you feeling about it?
It's. A complicated question I just to
let people know Gamergate was at its core a discussion about how
women were treated in the game industry.
Now, there was a lot of crazy stuff that we advocated back
then, myself included things like really second guessing,
like sexualized character designs in video games, which,
you know, on second thought, that's free speech issue, you
know, let people make the art they want to make.
But there were some really important issues at play there.
The lack of like the difficulty women had and getting promoted
through their career, the maternity leave policies, you
know, even women employed in major journalism outlets to
review games, which certainly like effects how the work is
perceived if it has gameplay outlets that play appeal to
women. There were some really salient
important issues there. And I I 100% stand by that.
I don't think women are given a fair shot in the tech industry
to this day. That said, a deep extreme
regrets about supercharging this progressive movement.
So when we're watching the LA mayor's race have ADSA candidate
in there up against Spencer Pratt.
Yeah, I am giving you an honest man called.
I am one of the people back then that turned the Democratic Party
from a a smart vehicle to pursue civil rights into something
obsessed with culture war and morality and cancelling anyone
that dared disagree with it and and I helped turn our party into
them and deeply regret it. What I can say is it doesn't
work when you morally invert the hierarchy of oppression.
You turn organizations into something incredibly brittle
because it's never about how you ship a game or how you got
public policy passed. It becomes about this bitter in
fighting behind the scenes, about who's actually the most
depressed, who deserves a voice. It's not about treating everyone
working on a problem equally. It's about this kabuki theater,
about who's up this imaginary lab.
So, you know, there's the stat parts of I stand by, but I think
directionally I empowered something that is destroying our
country. I.
Was thinking about it recently because I was in college, you
know, 2015 to 2018 and back then the snowball was not running
down the hill so quickly so it was almost kind of hard to
discern what was going on. And it was well meaning people
who genuinely cared about rights, about equality, about
opportunity and success for as many people as possible.
We were feeling, you know, healthcare system needed to
reform, more diversity in the workplace.
These are conceptually wonderful things.
And the only time that my mind really shifted and suddenly I
was like, oh, shit, I cannot endorse this any longer was in
2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
I'm originally from Minneapolis. I went to the University of
Minnesota. I was a fresh grad at the time,
pretty much. I had moved to New York, but I
came back to Minneapolis because of Covad and when I saw people
on air saying, well, rather than criticizing us for looting the
Apple Store, you should be thinking about what conditions
drove us to loot the Apple Store in the 1st place.
Something felt wrong to me about that.
That's when the line had been crossed.
You know, seeing the mayor cry and pray in front of George
Floyd's golden coffin, the we had left, you know, the kind of
bracket of reason. And that was an irreversible
change of heart for me. And it means a lot to to hear
you say what you say because it gives me hope that the
Democratic Party can come around and it's people.
It's going to take people like you as hard as it is.
Going back to your upbringing in Mississippi and your story, how
did you what were your first experiences with Jews?
Well, the the first time I heard about a Jew was one moved onto
our block and we're sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and, you
know, all our relatives are over and people start talking about
them. It was the exact same way I'd
heard them talk about black people and it was with disdain
and hate. And you know, they're talking
about this weird religion. We're like, I don't believe this
to be clear, I'm just saying what they said of the, the
people that killed Christ that lived on our block.
And I remember sitting there looking at my, my parents and,
and just thinking like, I know y'all don't believe this.
I hope you don't believe this. Why don't they speak up like I
was, I was like 8 at the time. I'm not going to speak up to
like, all my my relatives. And, you know, it was my first
impression that, you know, when those chips come down, people
don't speak up and say what they believe and say what's right.
And I think what was so disturbing is, you know, I used
to think that was just Mississippi.
It's not. It's the rest of the country.
You know, on a more personal level, when I transitioned at
the University of Mississippi, I was the first student.
Jews were some of the only people that stood up to the
therapist that, you know, got me a diagnosis of gender identity
dysphoria. This was 22 years ago, back when
we had actual tough clinical standards to get through.
Yeah. He was a Jew in Mississippi.
He didn't have to specialize in this and go read books to
understand like the diagnosis for people like me.
They took the time to do that. He wrote a letter to my parents
asking them not to disown me, which was my fear.
They did. But, you know, my, my point is
the people that really had my back for the most difficult
thing I ever went through were Jews that, you know, if people
are watching the video and they think I, I look reasonably good.
It was a Jewish plastic surgeon, Doctor Spiegel, that did this
for me. He's worked with me for over a
decade on trans healthcare. So, yeah, when October 7th
rolled around, I really realized, yeah, due to those
experiences, I had a responsibility to pause and make
sure I got this right because I didn't know as much about the
conflict back then. What's surprising to me is how
few other, you know, non Jews seem to be interested in that.
You know, we seem to be really interested in just bleeding this
propaganda narrative that we got from social media.
And just one more thing, you mentioned you're from Ukraine.
And I find this so confusing because Democrat Party generally
speaking is able to identify this Russian disinformation on
Ukraine and all these false stories that are out there.
And I don't understand why we can't understand it when the
Islamists are doing the exact same to us.
Why are we so smart on one form of information warfare and so
susceptible to another? Are we just that eager to
believe anti-Semitic narratives? I don't get.
Thanks. For calling that out, I think
you can imagine my dissonance being a Ukrainian Jew,
especially because some of my relatives are not Jewish.
So it's just a weird spot to be in, especially with the rich
anti-Semitic resume that Ukraine itself has.
But I think they're coming around in some sense.
Both the Prime Minister and the president are born Jews.
They don't necessarily identify as Jews.
They identify as Ukrainians ethnically, but they are Jews
and they're part of the tribe regardless.
We're two, 2 1/2 years in. What do you think are things
that the Jewish community can do to make your life easier?
My life easier I'm. Not worried about me, I'm
worried about y'all. You know, I think the stats
coming out for violence against Jews, that's terrifying.
I think, you know, what would help is seeing Jews fight in a
smarter way. You know, I do believe y'all are
the Canary in the coal mine. I used to think that was just
hyperbolic bullshit that you told yourselves.
It's not. Go read a history book.
Like the way it works is they target y'all, they get a
foothold and they go after everyone else.
That's happened over and over again.
So what I need is for the Jewish organizations to wake up and
understand you're not fighting with a war you can win with
respectability politics. And yeah, you said you
appreciate me telling you the truth, so I'm going to tell you
the truth right now. I need these Jewish groups to
stop doing conferences where you talk to yourselves.
I need people to stop worrying about whose name is on what and
who gets credit for it. It does not fucking matter.
The mission matters. The information warfare matters.
And this isn't a time to feel special.
This is a time to fight for survival.
You can read about Israel in 1948 and, you know, stockpiling
weapons because you knew you were going to be under attack.
Your top mission is to stop doing the stuff that doesn't
make sense and feels good and start doing stuff that is
effective. I mean, full on information and
warfare back and we have the advantage of actually telling
the truth. We need to invest in influencers
that can actually put a narrative out there to push back
on all this horseshit the Islamists are selling.
We need to, you know, create an incentive structure for
politicians with the guts to stand up to this.
It's not just a check from AIPAC.
You know, it's got to be deeper than that.
You know, we need to start putting constituencies together
to understand the threat of Islamism.
And that means sane LGBT people working with Christian
conservatives, working with people, they're capitalists and
see the threat that this DSA mindset is bringing to our
economy and our country. We've got to do the hard work of
putting together a sane coalition in the middle to stand
up for American values. Because just being entirely
honest, I'm not sure Britain is going to make.
And I think there's still enough time for us to save ourselves.
But we've got to understand like we are frog in a pot and it is
boiling. Thank you for saying that.
It's it's so interesting to hear you say that because I subscribe
to newsletters of all sorts of people and I read things in the
Jewish community. They're like, should we
redefine, you know, Zionism? Should we focus on changing, you
know, what language and call it Jew hatred and whatever.
And I'm not going to say who it was, but I had a guest on the
show that off the record was like, I don't understand these
Jewish organizations. They are concerned with all
these things around Zionism and vocabulary and whatever.
If you want to stop anti-Semitism, you should be
lobbying to stop letting in Islamists into the country.
That's a foolproof way to ensure that there is no anti-Semitism.
Like go to the root cause of the problem.
Stop patching up the ship that's sinking and it sounds like anti
PC, you know, but he's he's right.
Unfortunately, we. Had in, you know, the days of
the Cold War, we were thoughtful about who we let into the
country and if they were, you know, working with the enemy
there, you know, this is just the truth.
You know, we've been ever since 9:11.
There's a very dangerous ideology that struck us on 9/11.
And they continue to want to hurt us.
We have a very porous southern border.
I'm sorry. I'm a Democrat, but that's still
the truth. You know, Israel's closer, so
they get attacked more. They're just as happy to kill
us. Of course, it makes sense to
update our immigration policy and be more thoughtful about who
we're letting in. You know, we'd literally just
had our Jewish brothers and sisters set on fire a few months
ago. We have, you know, this is such
an obvious move. And, you know, I do always feel
compelled to say, you know, religious freedom is part of
this country. I have no issue if someone wants
to practice Islam that is different than this theocratic,
you know, political project to dismantle the state and
institute religious law. And instead, yeah, I think we
need to be willing to say that. I don't get it.
Like I say this all the time about, you know, the Christian
right that wants to take away my rights as a trans, as a
transsexual woman. It's the same thing.
Like, why can't we be thoughtful about this?
Like they objectively want to kill us.
Even Hillary Clinton is over there looking at what the
effects of in mass migration on Europe have been.
She will tell you it's gone too far.
So you know it's I don't wake up every day asking myself how to
side with President Trump. He's dead on with this.
I've had a couple of different trans guests on my show, some
that would identify, you know, right of center, some would
identify left of center. And I can't get a good pulse on
what is actually happening in the trans community.
So, you know, I asked my friend who's right wing, like, are you
concerned about what are what is happening under the Trump
administration to the trans community?
And she's like, no, because if I care about my protections as a
Jew versus a trans person, I'm going to prefer and I have to
pick one. I'm going to prioritize Jew.
And then I asked my friend who's, you know, on the left,
how concerned are you about Trump's policies?
And she's telling me it's to the point where I'm scared to renew
my passport because I'm afraid they will force my passport to
say male instead of female. And it's very self-evident to
anyone who meets her that she is not a male after all the work
and investment she's made to feel comfortable in her skin.
What is actually happening to the trans community right now?
And how can we help so as? I sit here, I wish this the
stakes were just an M on my passport.
It is so far beyond that. And you know, the Trump
administration is getting more and more extreme on this.
You know, just a few weeks ago, Idaho passed a ban if I use the
bathroom there. As someone who has had
vaginoplasty, I'm legally female.
I've not even held a girl's hand romantically since
transitioning. I've got no interest in in
women. I've been married to a man for
18 years, for God's sakes. Even someone like me who I think
I'd pass reasonably well, you know, if I use women's bathroom
in Idaho, it's a felony and I go to jail for five years.
This is extreme public policy and I think y'all don't
understand what happens if I just merely go around, you know,
my life, outing myself. People look at you differently.
They it's a risk of violence. Men get weird when they're
attracted to you and you're trans Y'all have no idea.
Then you take a step further. It's incredibly degrading.
Yeah. I really am unsure if in five
years insurance is going to pay for any of the treatment that
made my life livable. And to be clear, I paid for it
myself. You know, this new generation of
girls, thank God, had coverage for all this surgery, which is
objectively so helpful. I think this is going to
disappear. And to be clear, I do blame the
Trump administration and the right wingers, but I also blame
this extremist political project by progressives that has put not
just the right wing against us, but normal sane people in the
middle that are looking at policies like they can clearly
see these identities are being marketed to their children that
don't have gender dysphoria and they want to push back.
So, you know, I am desperately scared if trans people are going
to have any future in this country.
And I have had discussions with people like, would you like, can
I stay at your place in Israel if we keep going down this path?
I'm not sure I'm going to have access to HRT at all in 10
years. I'm really worried about that.
And I think respectfully, I would tell your right wing trans
friend that came on your show to wake up because they just don't
have a good appraisal of this situation.
Is there? Anything that we can do, is it
voted out? Is it something else?
I think we need good people to stand up in the middle and
develop a constituency in the middle.
Because, you know, this is really the problem, isn't it, on
trans public policy? The way to push back on this
traditionally has been to vote for Democrats.
I can't blame a Jew for not voting for this version of the
Democratic Party. Look at what we're doing with
this Iran policy. It's so clearly International
Security interest, and we're trying to undermine our
president. It's absurd.
So, you know, I would love to tell you that to vote harder
from the Democrats would solve it.
But we're so far beyond that. Like both of us have got to
start carving out this same, you know, public policy pathway in
the middle and start rewarding people on both sides that have
same policy. Like it's so the stakes are so
much bigger. I, I want to be honest to say I
don't think Jews are going to be safe from the Republican Party
long term either. I think right now it's a better
home for you than the Democratic Party.
But like, unless all of you are planning on moving to Israel at
some point, we're going to have to do this hard work carving out
a senator again for my public policy and yours in supporting
Israel one. Of the themes of the season is
the understanding that when it comes to teaching about, you
know, anti-Semitism or Israel, it is a lot more effective when
done by non Jew. The non Jews are reliable
narrator in the way that the Jew apparently is not right.
And I'm curious, what do you think is most effective and
compelling non Jews to understand how things kind of
really are and to get them to walk back from this extreme
position they may have taken? Again, I'm going to tell.
You the truth. I'm not trying to be offensive
but I think when Jews talk about your history to non Jews, I'm
sorry it's a history lesson or ramping it up in the Holocaust.
Or it's assuming like I know about the six day fucking war
and all this stuff is assumed. So much knowledge.
You gotta set the stakes better. It's like look these Islamist
nut jobs fired 10s of thousands of missiles at civilians in the
last few years. You've got to be able to tell
this story more plainly and more emotional terms.
And you know, this is something I really wish y'all would do.
This show Israel kicking more ass like this is America we are
the country. The main Top Gun for one movie
in multiple decades. Yeah people going and defeating
evil by kicking some ass is a very American like storyline.
I don't understand why images in the IDF, y'all don't just
blanket the media with it. That beeper attack, you know,
against, you know, Hezbollah. That was one of the finest
operations like in human history.
Why are there not 8 movies being made about that?
You've got to be willing to to be less apologetic about who you
are and you've got to be able to tell a quicker, more emotional
story. It's it's just, it's so
convoluted. Normal people cannot make heads
or tails to it. I completely agree with what
you're saying and at the same time I'm worried it will
backfire so bad. Because if you look at some of
the reporting that the ADL has put out, for example, anytime
the Jew is portrayed as strong and Israel is portrayed as
strong, it only kind of backfires because then it's food
as like, Oh well of course you know those sneaky Jews are
getting America to invest and so they can be strong and bomb the
poor Palestinians. Like that becomes the talking
point I think. That's a fairpoint.
I I think it's actually very well said.
There's certainly a storyline out there.
The Jews are the impressors rather than someone you know,
some point 1,000,000, you know, Jews.
And then with the 2.3 million Arabs being targeted by the 400
million Muslim in the Muslims majority country in that era
region. I mean, I certainly agree with
you. That's the storyline.
But he's trying to like is portraying yourselves as weak
and the victim. Is that really working either?
It's like you're screwed either way so why not just tell the
truth? I think the problem here is no
one's just willing to say the truth.
And the truth is these Islamists.
I saw the secret October 7th video in an IDF paste.
They fucking loved dismembering y'all.
Like I remember this clip of an IDF soldier king like ripped to
pieces by a mom and this person like rips up the body part and
holds it over his head with the biggest was gleaming smile I've
ever seen. Lies covered in his blood.
They they fucking loved it. They weren't a great time.
It's disgusting and I don't know what we just can't say.
These are some people that are obsessed with killing Jews.
It's the truth. Do you?
Feel there are any Jewish organizations today or maybe
even non Jewish that are doing a good job in telling the story in
a way that's compelling and taking actions in a way that's
prudent Is there anything you've seen I.
Have friends at the ADL that work on, you know, say they're
digital extremist Group. They're doing great work.
And I'm not trying to blanket the ADL as a blanket
organization. They do a lot of good work.
It's controversial. I think J Street does some good
work in certain areas that I agree with.
I think the Jewish Federation does good work in like local
organizing. Like all these groups do some
good work directionally. And I would never like there's a
frustration. So I would never like put a
blanket attack on them. But I would respectfully say to
the ADL, here's a really good example that despite all the the
courting of Elon Musk that they did and pulling their punches on
him, he was blasting the ADL to hear him back on Twitter just
last week and none of it mattered.
I think that there needs to be a real awareness that this is not
the 1980s anymore. You are not going to win the
public hearts and minds by putting out a press conference
for CNN and going and doing some television hits with no
attrition. Respectful this is full on
information warfare need to be developing stars that can work
in that format my friend. You know like I don't understand
why Emily Schrader does not have her own Piers Morgan debate ship
that would cost what a few $100,000 a year to produce.
Like why don't you have here her over there producing viral clips
every week of her destroying this miss on these facts my
friend Elon left like why is he not blanketed on the airwaves
with a team of people mind he's attractive, he's smart, he's
well spoken. He appeals to both signs.
I just don't understand why you're not funding this
information warfare. That's got to be a top priority
of these leaks. So that's my view.
It's. Interesting because if only it
it seems like they're only doing the reverse, which is, you know,
Jewish specific streaming platforms and Jewish specific
publications. But this is a non Jews issue.
No, which you? Need to be.
Talking to people like me. Yeah.
I'm sorry. Like, I think your, your
greatest strength is your greatest weakness here.
Like, I, as a trans woman, really respect how Jews stick
together. And you have your own culture
and you have your Shabbat dinners.
We hang out with each other. Like you truly have each other's
backs in a way I deeply envy as a trans woman.
The problem is you'd love to talk to yourselves.
And you are low trust right now with the Goya, which I
understand. I get it.
We've betrayed you, but we're still the majority of this
country. You got to make some allies up
there. So, you know, like invest in the
Brianna Woos, invest in Emily. Like you've just got to move
beyond having conversations with yourself at glorious conferences
where you preach to the choir. You've got to get in the mix and
it's going to be dirty and it's not going to be dignified.
Like there's nothing dignified but going on.
Pierce Morgan I've done it multiple times, but you know, it
is unfortunately the way politics works in 2026, this is.
Super insightful and I'm grateful for your candor.
I'm grateful that I get to hear it from you.
It confirms some of the things that I think so that I feel I am
not a crazy person. As part of the segment Every boy
You Will enjoy it gets to ask me as you a question about anything
you've been wondering. You know your big thing is
integrity and honesty and so is mine.
So you can literally ask anything you would like and I
will tell you straight and if I don't know, I'll tell you too.
So I was wondering if there's any question you have for me.
I do. So, you know, I recently did
ADNA test and I want to ask you, how many generations back do you
have to have a Jewish ancestor that you're considered Jewish?
Oh. Did your DNA test said some
percentage Jewish? I I don't we get into that
publicly, but I will say it's a question on my.
Well, I think the halahic answer would be it's not about how many
generations, it's whether you're, I guess, one of your
grandparents for, well, this is where it gets really
complicated. How long you would say if your
mother's Jewish, right? I don't support that.
I support anybody who has, for example, a Jewish parent.
I'm a very big supporter of patrilineal Jews.
Birthright would say is if you have a Jewish grandparent and
that could be on the mother's or father's side.
I believe that it's not so much about how many generations, but
whether you feel you want to be part of a tribe and be part of a
community. And for everybody, that's a
different choice and that's a different comfort level.
I struggle with this because it's not like a person can wake
up and say, well, I'm Jewish now, right?
I feel like there should be some kind of either graduation
ceremony or there should be a process, just like there would
be a process for most commitments that you make in
life. So that I don't know from a
genetic standpoint that there is a clear numerical cut off.
I think it's more of a philosophical one.
It makes a. Lot of sense to me.
Yeah. I just want to say letting
anyone in the gate has not worked out super well for trans
people. So I support Jews in keeping
that bar very high. Have a very difficult process to
get in. It doesn't work out well if you
don't. But let me ask you this.
Like as I understand it, there's some reform people that let
trans people in, but Orthodox people would not allow someone
like me to convert to Judaism. Is that correct?
I. Believe that orthodox people
would not let you convert not because of your genetics, but
because you're trans and they don't support trans people,
which is a different issue. Reforms.
And they would also not recognize a reform conversion
either. So let's imagine a hypothetical
scenario. You're like, hello, I want to
become Orthodox. I commit to living my life for
the rest of my time as an Orthodox person.
They would be like, yes, that's fine, your conversion counts.
Now you come to them and you say all the same stuff, and you say,
and I'm trans. They're like then never mind,
OK. Is that how long is that in your
book? Like what's the reasoning behind
that? I.
Don't know that trans people are in the book at all, which is why
I have so much concern with, you know, the Orthodox understanding
of gender identity. I don't agree with it.
I would have to ask because I myself am not Orthodox.
So I have no idea because these things seem quite
straightforward to me as and for me.
Like if the more people there are that want to commit to a
Jewish life that are serious and intentional about it, the better
it is for us and the longevity of our community.
There is a component of this of wanting to maintain the Jewish
ethnic kind of DNA based lineage, but we also need to
raise Jewish children. So if that comes through
partnerships where one partner is not Jewish, but the next
generation will be Jewish, that's still a win because the
alternative is fully, quote UN quote, kosher Jewish kids that
do nothing Jewish and don't raise their own kids as Jewish.
And it's never an either or. But this matters.
It matters to raise Jewish children.
So if there are people out there that want to be part of the
tribe and are committed to ensuring the the next generation
is Jewish, that should be considered, you know, a green
light, all hands on deck. Those are the kinds of people we
want in our community. Well.
As much as estrogen and progesterone make me think about
about being pregnant, unfortunately I would not be
able to help with that much. But let me ask you this and this
is a super politically incorrect question so I apologize in
advance if I'm going to get cancelled.
But is I have been doing my work it is really hard for me not to
notice a pattern and that is people.
That have a tie to Jewish life and are actively involved in,
you know, their synagogue, their temple.
Like involved locally all share an opinion on Israel and share
concern about anti-Semitism. And it's really hard for me not
to notice that people that may have a Jewish parrot but don't
actively practice or live in the aspect of Judaism are the first
people to be out here saying as a Jew it's a genocide, Israel is
evil, blah blah blah. Is a is that assessment correct
and B is it OK for me to call that out?
Like, am I being anti-Semitic if I were to call that out in the
course of doing my work? Which?
Part What are you calling out about them that they're Jewish
and saying is? Look, you don't have any ties to
like, Jewish life. What are you doing here?
Like people that actually do seem to have a different
community. So does your kind of expertise
on Jewish life permit you to critique the community or let if
you have none at all, does that make you once again a reliable
narrator on behalf of the Jewish people?
I agree with you. I think if you're just happened
to be born Jewish and you know nothing about Jewish life, never
engaged, you are not a voice of authority on this matters.
You would say the same for anyone who claims to know art or
science or whatever. We all know how to paint.
It doesn't make us an artist. It should be evaluated on merit,
not by identity politics alone. So this whole like as a Jew is
not actually a qualification for a thoughtful opinion at all.
Doesn't matter what the opinion is or where it comes from.
That's why actually it like this is a on PC take from my side.
I was super against affirmative action when it came out because
I thought that the one where there would be like a
rudimentary quota because in the workplace, for example, or in a
college campus, your identity alone does not make you
qualified or more or less qualified.
Your application should be reviewed, your resume should be
reviewed, your experience at the same time, because there is
implicit bias. I believed in things like your
name shouldn't be on your resume so that people cannot infer your
gender or your race and make an assumption.
That's why those blind auditions for musicians into an orchestra
were so successful at getting women through the door, because
the implicit bias was removed. We should be evaluating opinions
and thoughts, philosophies on the merit of the idea, the
substance of the idea, not who it comes from.
The thing about like the as a Jew movement is it's very much a
product of this kind of backward inverted morality that you
talked about earlier of identity politics and somebody feeling
entitled just because they're a Jew or just because they're a
minority, just because they're oppressed.
And this contest of oppression, that population is increasingly
growing. And there's not a clear, you
know, there's not a neat answer as to why.
And more importantly, there's not a neat answer as to what to
do about it. So the one correlation that's
been made a parent is that kids that go to Jewish sleepaway camp
tend to not become as a Jew. So what I've seen Jewish
organizations say is you don't want to have an as a Jew kid,
send them to summer camp, Jewish summer camp.
I mean, yeah, no, I see. So many parallels here because
there's so many trans women that try to escape structural
oppression by just going stealth and never admitting it.
And I'm I'm so, you know, I didn't come out publicly as
trans until two years ago because I thought we needed some
sane leadership in this movement.
Something I've seen, and this is even with friends, but that
dearly respect is the way that they've navigated anti-Semitism
is to really de emphasize that Jewishness and to not practice
Jewish life and just move it into the background.
Yeah, they marry non Jews. They don't go to, you know, they
don't go to temple. And I get it, I really do.
I lived my life for 20 years, which is not thinking about
transsexuality as much as I I could.
But I think it's, it's different because there's no upside to
being transsexual. Like it's a, it's essentially a
disability in my view. And Jewish life just seems so
rich and interesting philosophically.
I don't know, there's just, it just seems sad to me to see
people I respect like denying parts of who they are to
basically to assimilate into the rest of the American project.
I just don't get it. They'll have.
The honor, I always say this, and this is so mean, I said.
They'll have the special honor of being on the last train to
Auschwitz when their time comes. Yeah.
That's what I. Say, this has been incredible.
Tell me, how can people connect with you and keep up with your
work? Yeah, look.
For me, on social, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm
on Twitter too much. I've got a big project coming up
that I'm sure people are going to hear about soon on
information warfare. Great.
So when that comes around to you, maybe pay some attention to
it. Are you going?
To run for something I would like to vote for you.
I I've. Thought about it, I don't think
my voice is at a point where I could do that for the 8 hours a
day. Yeah, but you know, I'm going to
do another session of another surgery on my vocal folds in the
next few months and we'll see if that keeps improving it.
So fingers crossed on that. I'm so.
Excited for you thank you for the privilege of having this
conversation. I'm team always meet your idols,
you know, or always meet your heroes.
People say never meet your heroes.
I always meet my heroes and I always have the best experience
ever and it's a privilege to add you to the list.
Thank you so much. I have to.
Push back on that. It makes me so uncomfortable
when anyone thanks me for for standing with y'all.
I don't think I I came back later and told some of the Jews
that helped me transition. That was meaningful to me.
But I don't think, you know, I never told my therapist, my
Jewish therapist, he was my hero.
He was just someone, a human doing a decent thing for me when
he saw that I needed it. It's all I'm doing for you.
Like I see my humanity reflected back in y'all.
And I'm so honored to stand with you and I.
I have to say one more thing. I have worked on countless
political initiatives. I got famous during Gamergate.
I've worked in Democratic Party. Me too.
You know, I've been in some of the biggest fights in this
country and I, I genuinely mean this.
I have never worked with a people whose humanity is
brighter, who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a
greater cause and just are as decent as the Jewish community.
And I think part of why I feel so strongly about this issue is
y'all are just fun to work with. So I'm I'm genuinely awkward to
be in this fight with you. Thanks.
So. Much.
This has been incredible. Yeah, Thank you.
Very. Much.
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