John Oliver recently covered the right-wing obsession with transgender women competing in sports on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The full 40-minute video can be found on YouTube.
Oliver makes a lot of really good points as someone who—in my “woke leftist” opinion—rarely has any bad takes when it comes to topics he covers on his show. However, this video in particular is his most disliked, with it having over 127k dislikes compared to the 71k likes as of writing.
Culture, unfiltered
Our newsletter will bring you the pulse of queer culture, from the tastemakers to the groundbreakers.
Related
“They’re more woman than you will ever be. They had to fight for their life in order to call themselves one,” TikToker Alexis Rose explained.
The comment section is even worse, and it’s especially hard to read as a trans woman. John Oliver has covered trans rights in the past with not nearly as many dislikes. For instance, here is a video from 9 years ago with 167k likes compared to its 18k dislikes
So, what’s changed?
Well, unfortunately, quite a bit. For years, the GOP has strongly been pushing anti-trans propaganda, with President Trump making a large portion of his re-election campaign focused on attacking the trans community and spreading misinformation about trans people. This was met with very little resistance from Democrats, who mainly avoided the topic altogether, and because of that, it was allowed to become what it is today.
There’s a theory afloat that JK Rowling sicced her transphobic army on John Oliver in a practice known as review-bombing. This is a sadly common practice on the right, with some right-wing influencers like Chaya Raichik of LibsofTikTok taking things a step further, often sending hate mobs to threaten individuals and institutions that support trans rights in the form of bomb and death threats.
Tragically, transphobia has become so rampant on social media in our connected world to the point where I had to stop using Twitter because of how damaging it was to my mental health. To constantly hear people parade the abnormally high trans suicide statistic like it’s a trophy while being accused of the worst crime a human could commit just because of who you are isn’t something anyone should have to go through.
As trans people have been saying forever, it doesn’t take much for an extremist stance to become written law, especially when you’re an already at-risk community struggling to obtain basic human rights.
Sign up for the INTO newsletter and get your twice-weekly dose of stories that shape the queer experience, culture, and lifestyle.
