John Oliver on trans athletes

[CyclingSam]

I saw this mentioned on another thread and thought perhaps it deserved its own.

That says "Video unavailable - The uploader has not made this video available in your country" for me, though honestly, I wouldn't have the stomach for it anyway at this point. But I am curious about one thing - can somebody who has seen it confirm if there was canned laughter, i.e., a laugh track (https://x.com/RoisinMichaux/status/1909153282653634826)? Or are people just saying that because it was more along the lines of "his audience will laugh at anything"?

Not for the first time, iirc. He has form for this so could hardly be surprised she’s calling him out again.

His researchers clearly didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to the women they asked for information from and will just dismiss JKR as a transphobe anyway. The male arrogance all over this just stinks.

It's very depressing, but by now I'm used to it. My expectations of men, particularly left-wing ones, are so low that it counts as a massive surprise if even one of them talks sense on the subject.

What really struck me about the questions to WoLF and their response was this idea that facts and statistics collected by a team of volunteers are worthless. The authorities refuse to collect the data, but when women give their time and energy for free to do the work, that somehow doesn't count? What are we supposed to do - manage without the data and therefore pretend there isn't a problem?

Women's liberation has always relied on women giving their precious labour for nothing. Women who already have job and/or family commitments have, for 150 years, spent hours each week writing letters, making banners, compiling facts and figures, writing speeches, attending meetings, going on demonstrations.

And now Oliver and his wokebro chums think they have the right to sneer at those women because they are generously giving up their free time to do, unpaid, what our salaried public officials are neglecting to do. I couldn't despise them more.

Exactly. No one else collates the information and this man uses women’s labour as a punch line.

Rather than point out the majority of the data set is recent, they focused on the edge cases. And neglected to appreciate that no other organisation is doing the hard yards of collecting.

The derision was so overplayed it was a comedy in its self. But the misogyny was palpable.

Just like Jon Stewart, David Tennant, Matt Lucas, Frankie Boyle etc etc, I bet it wouldn't take 5 mins of rooting through Oliver's 2000s material to find him making "transphobic" jokes. These guys are all trying to protect their own backs and prevent an old gag from killing their careers.

Thank you for this comment, you've summed it up brilliantly , the 'wokey blokie's' are even more misogynist than ordinary bloke's.

Jim Davidson missed a trick there. If he'd wrapped himself in a Progress Pride flag, he'd have a Guardian column by now.

I mean imagine if those little Britain skits had been by women. If not had those women would be bankrupt and living under assumed names on another continent by now

For me, the only mildly interesting thing about all of this is that people like Oliver are holding out when the tide of public opinion is clearly against them.

If you start from the premise that:
a) Oliver and the rest of them are talking obvious nonsense
b) they know, at some level, that they're talking obvious nonsense
c) the only reason they're talking obvious nonsense is because in the circles they move in, it's fashionable to do so

then at some point when it's no longer fashionable, they'll change their tune. So clearly, we haven't yet reached the point where this nonsensical ideology has stopped being fashionable in US progressive liberal circles. Two questions:

1. When will that happen? When will an entirely idiotic, irrational, anti-scientific worldview stop being fashionable and start being embarrassing? Why hasn't it happened already? Is it because no one wants to be seen to agree with Trump, or is it because no one wants to be the brave person who goes first?

2. When it happens, how will these people deal with the fact that there are receipts going back several years showing them endorsing an idiotic world view? Will they try to pretend that they never said those things, or will they just go very quiet and hope no one notices?

In a way, I don't really care. I am never going to forgive and forget. But I am curious to see how the reverse ferret is executed.

The Little Britain sketch I always find most interesting in a modern context is Daffyd. The joke was that he was still fighting for gay rights in a world where they had already been fully accepted and embraced, and he looked ridiculous as a result. Turns out he was way ahead of his time, it's actually now that the alphabet rainbow people claim to be super oppressed.

Maybe it's a bit different in the US, @RoyalCorgi ? The Trump factor seems so massive over there. Is there much evidence of reverse-ferreting actually happening in liberal media circles in the US, as we are starting to see to some extent here? I daresay Oliver will be able to get away with rolling his eyes, and cracking some jibe about JKR for a while yet.

The reason John Oliver lives and works in America is because British people's bullshit detectors are too acute. If he said this sort of nonsense in the UK most people would say, "You're chatting shit, mate", but say it in the US with a posh English accent and people will adore you.

I think you're right - it IS different in the US. But it's interesting that even amongst ordinary Democrats, polls show a majority opposed to letting trans-identified males into women's sports. It's just the educated, liberal-minded types - the people who work in universities and the media - who are still clinging to gender ideology. Surely, at some point, it will dawn on them that the progressive cause of allowing men into women's sports is doomed? I know some people are slow learners, but the penny has to drop eventually. Doesn't it?

'Ordinary' Democrats see it, like ordinary people do everywhere, the UK included, but it is the 'educated, liberal-minded types - the people who work in universities and the media' who run the world. I do see comments in US media along the lines of "the Europeans and the Brits are having second thoughts about this, perhaps we should pay attention to them", though, so hopefully pennies will drop eventually.

I'd say that the thing is, even after the 2016 election smart Democrats were saying, how could Hillary have lost the working class vote to a guy who lives in a fucking golden tower? There were plenty of pollsters - Ruy Teixeira has been banging on about this for years - who told them they needed to be less insane and try to appeal to the median voter.

But there were about 2 million Democrats who lost their minds. They preferred to double down on the insanity and cosplay as if they were dissidents in Nazi Germany. I quantify it as 2 million because I assume it's more or less the same people who watch Stephen Colbert. John Oliver's audience overlaps pretty heavily. Unfortunately that's the same people who are concentrated in the universities and media, and have outsize influence in the party.

I don't like Keir Starmer, but I see the logic of what he did when he became Labour leader. He did not say, what we need to do is appeal more strongly to people who watch Novara Media.

One of the places I go to catch up on US politics is the Morning Meeting on the 2way platform. That's got Mark Halperin (veteran non-partisan journalist) in the chair, along with party operatives Dan Turrentine (D) and Sean Spicer (R). They have good constructive conversations. Turrentine is a smart guy who worked on the Hillary campaign, and he's said repeatedly that Democrats need to stop digging themselves deeper on genderwoo. They don't need to reverse position completely, just to stop looking insane.

Another thing he often says: instead of just repeating Orange Man Bad, it might be worth thinking about why Orange Man is so popular with people who used to vote for us.

It's clear to me now, the trans issue having snapped me out of my bubble, how damaging this partisan mainstream broadcasting can be and has been in the US, going back to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. These shows, including all the late nights, make no secret of the absolute loathing they have for half the country.

Iremember a few years ago, here in Canada, seeing a terfy woman on a discussion panel lament how the CBC had become so partisan and unreliable and condescending.

A conservative guy in the discussion said - It's always been like that, you just didn't notice."

I think that's an important lesson that is best understood when you experience it.

I listened to an interview with Lauren Fleshman. She spoke about the difference in women's bodies, how women don't reach peak form until much later than men, about how badly sportswear companies treat women they sponsor... book out about how hard being a female runner is 'in a man's world'...then said sport is divided by gender not sex, that women participate in single sex sports to affirm their gender (!) and be part of that community, enjoy that social aspect, and TW have a right to that too. I was gobsmacked. Seriously couldn't see how women lost the very thing she'd just sung the praises of if they let men in, aside from the competative unfairness.
It's on Fi and Jane Off Air 30/01/2023 if anyone wants a reference.

A but off topic I know but I'm still angry 2 years later, and I'm someone in the only runs for fun and is never going to win category.

It's not dissimilar to the "men pretending to be women should be allowed in women's prisons so they can hang out with women and thus learn how to become more womanly" argument.

Not having a VPN I accessed it using Tor, which worked for 15 minutes before giving up, possibly also in disgust. To answer my own question, I don't think it's a laugh track (and google says it's a live audience), but I assume it's tweaked somewhat to best fit the pauses-for-laughter in his script. Maybe a weird thing to wonder about, but having grown up with canned laughter on TV, it's an interest of mine.

My ears perked up when he mentioned White Lotus. Obvs he didn't go to Malaga Airport...

Some YT comments:

Saying “it’s an obsession” is a tactic to try and shame people into consenting to your agenda. Not going to work. Would it be easier to just let it slide, and say “no big deal, it’s rare, has nothing to do with me personally” etc? Yes it would be easier in the short term. But standing up for your beliefs isn’t always easy. This isn’t about the short term or consenting to a very small adjustment. This is about a shift in culture that needs to be course corrected before it does affect all of us.

You think the stock market is more important than dismantling the rights of 50% of the population? Because it's not your 50% of the population Mr. Oliver? Give me one reason why a man should have the right to replace a woman in a tournament for women. And if you think it's not that bad because it's just a few would you think the same about slavery? Just two or three slaves per state wouldn't be so bad? You think nobody would care?

You think the stock market is more important than dismantling the rights of 50% of the population? Because it's not your 50% of the population Mr. Oliver? Give me one reason why a man should have the right to replace a woman in a tournament for women. And if you think it's not that bad because it's just a few would you think the same about slavery? Just two or three slaves per state wouldn't be so bad? You think nobody would care?

These are excellent points. The other obvious riposte is that, if it's not that important, then why are you banging on about it? Transactivists love accusing feminists of being "obsessed" despite the fact that they endlessly harp on about this shit themselves. And if it genuinely does no harm to women to allow a "tiny minority" of men compete in women's sport, then by the same token, it wouldn't do any harm to men to be excluded, would it? After all, it's only a tiny minority.

Yes. The hypocrisy of that line really did seem to escape him considering the length of the segment he did.

Talk about complete lack of self awareness.

Episode up on Twitter (love the username):
x.com/Skirt_Go_Spinny/status/1909324336306987068

I tried. I can't watch that shit.

Not surprised, tbh.
I stopped listening to the Bugle due to JO, JG et al.
It's just so....depressing.

In the same vein as "if a politician will lie about TWAW what else are they lying about?", if a John Oliver/Jon Stewart/other will do little to no research in the cause of not spoiling their jolly little rant about wimmin, don't assume they research any other features.

I don't think this is true, and he is normally very good on human rights. His show's deep dives into the prison industrial complex, and medical debt etc have been eye opening.

Have they though? Because for me, if he can’t get a simple concept like “men have sporting advantage over women” right, it makes me seriously question any of the other stories he and his team claim to have “researched”.