TRANSpanic! is hosted by C (he/him).
C.: Hello and welcome to the first episode of the TRANSpanic! podcast. We are sitting down with JUNlPER, who is a Twitter poster and host on the podcast Western Kabuki. Welcome, JUNlPER!
JUNlPER: Thanks for having me.
I’m really excited to get to sit down today and have a chat about the Internet, about Twitter, and to just [chat] about being transgender in public – what that’s like for you, and how that impacts the posts that you make, how it impacts your presence. How big are you on Twitter these days?
It’s bizarre, because for a long time – up until maybe a year-and-a-half ago – I didn’t have an Internet presence in any capacity. I mean, when you get to a certain point, it’s weird to say, but you are a brand. Like, even if you don’t make money from posting, you’ll become a brand if you are known for something.
Before that happened to me, I was just posting on Facebook – annoying my family members about politics. That was what I was mostly doing. I was just annoying my acquaintances in real life about my politics for so many years. And then I was like, you know, I should probably stop annoying people that probably want to like me that I’ve known for like over a decade, so I’m just going to go semi-anonymous on Twitter. And then, over time, it just kind of snowballed into where I am now. I think I just recently hit like 240,000 followers, which is kind of a lot.
Wow.
It’s very bizarre as someone who didn’t really have that. I mean, since I’ve been on Twitter I’ve always slowly been gaining followers, but in the last year-and-a-half is… You know, it started with goblin mode. I don’t know if you’re familiar—
Yes!
It kind of started there, and then it really snowballed in a massive way with, just a month later, the Snickers dick vein. I was in bed, sick with COVID, and I made a stupid post just barely a month after goblin mode, and all of a sudden a ton of people were like, “Who is this person? How do they keep doing these weird media things?” I went from like 20,000 followers to nearly 65,000 in like a week.
Oh, my goodness.
It’s funny. Obviously, I’m very far left, and for a long time I always would shit on journalists, because of course. That’s part of my bit, that I’m like a New York Times journalist. But, for a long time, I would shit on New York Times journalists, especially for their role in the Iraq War. It was a weird thing where all of the sudden journalists were trying to talk to me about this stuff. And it contributed to my growth.
You mentioned earlier the idea of having a brand on Twitter. Is that what you would say that the JUNlPER brand is? Harassing journalists?
I don’t know if it is anymore. It definitely was. I mean, I still harass people. I think I’m nicer or just smarter with my targets, especially since I have such a huge platform now. Like, when you have a Twitter account of like 700 followers, you can kind of just say shit, you know? It doesn’t really matter what you say because you only have 700 followers. Like, no-one’s going to be mad at you and you can just say shit. But when you have over 100,000 followers, there’s a part of your brain where it’s like, “Do I really want to piss off this other person that has slightly more followers than me?” I don’t respond to people with 700 followers being weird to me. But I would respond to, like, Tim Pool with a million followers responding to me. People are more willing to be like, “What the fuck are you doing?” if you have a lot more followers.
Would you say that this kind of walking-on-eggshells feeling, almost, of choosing your targets; would you say that that’s amplified because you’re outwardly trans?
I think to an extent, yeah. You know how it is to be trans. I mean, people will lash out at you more over things that cis people wouldn’t always face backlash for. I don’t really have a good example off the top of my head, but I feel like we’ve seen a lot of examples of a cis person saying something and then a trans person saying something very similar, but people [will] just be pissed off at the trans person. So, I think, to an extent, yeah. It’s weird. There’s a lot of dynamics at play, I suppose.
Have you ever attracted the attention of one of these large transphobic voices, like Matt Walsh for example?
Surprisingly, not too many. It’s really weird. Like, I try to get some of these people’s attentions – because I just like messing with them. Like Jordan Peterson or Catturd. They’re funny to me. There’s right-wingers I kind of fear. I don’t really want to attract Matt Walsh’s attention, but I would love if Jordan Peterson responded to me because he’s just so fascinating.
In my head, I categorize the right-wing media sphere in two different ways: there’s the super evil people… They’re all evil, especially the way they’ve been doing the transphobic narrative for the last couple of months… But Matt Walsh and Catturd are totally different levels of evil in my mind. They both mostly believe the same things, but Matt Walsh relishes… He just wants to ruin trans people’s days. Like, that’s what gets him off, you know?
And… I don’t know. It’s a hard thing to talk about. So, I’ve been doxxed twice.
Oh, my gosh.
First, by Kiwi Farms. This was nearly a year ago during the whole Kiwi Farms-Keffals era on Twitter. During that, I was pretty publicly backing up Keffals. I would be in her replies, I would retweet a lot of her stuff, and Kiwi Farms took note of that because I was one of the bigger other trans accounts that was, like, being an activist against Kiwi Farms. There was only a couple of people on Kiwi Farms, but they ended up doxing me by going on my alt account, finding a picture I posted that I took in college where there was, in the corner, a magnet of where I went to college–
Oh, my God.
They didn’t know what year it was, but they knew the college. But they found out the year and everything else about me by… There was a specific can of Monster in the other corner of the picture that [had] just [come] out. So, they doxxed me from a magnet and a Monster can, which is just… I don’t know. I think about that. Like, it sucks that it happened, but it’s kind of funny to me. I don’t know. It’s like, I was doxxed because of a fucking energy drink. I don’t know. It’s kind of silly.
But then I was doxxed again. About a year later, probably 2-3 months ago, [Antifawatch.net] – Andy Ngo, it’s adjacent to him – they ended up finding me through a different image I posted even longer ago on my original account that they were able to dig up, and they doxxed me that way. Then, Andy Ngo posted about me and retweeted it. Ever since that dox, people have been using my deadname in my replies a little bit more, which does suck.
So, I have gotten really negative attention that I didn’t want to ever come my way. Which is why, for a while, I didn’t really post my face. But now, I’m past the point where I can protect my identity from these people.
While you tell these stories, you laugh a little bit, but that sounds genuinely pretty terrifying. What’s it like to have your online persona bleed into your life like that?
It was really, really terrifying at first. For a long time, that’s why I tried to protect my identity. There’s nothing I really have to hide. I’ve lived a pretty normal life. Like, if these people had something on me, they would have posted about it a year ago when they first doxxed me. They find me pretty boring, from what I can tell. All I’ve really posted about on social media that they’ve been able to find is just, like, political events I’ve been to and stuff about family and friends.
For a long time, I was kind of scared, not for any other reason than I didn’t want my family and friends to be harmed by what I say on Twitter because right-wing maniacs want to hurt me or whatever. That’s always what I feared most, especially as my platform grew. I knew being trans online, there was going to be an ever-growing target on my back for a lot of these maniacs. I mostly just wanted to protect people in my personal life. Especially seeing what people did during the whole Keffals ordeal. People, if they’re motivated, they’ll be vicious and awful.
At this point, since I’ve been doxxed twice, I’ve built up that internal wall. You’re right, I was laughing. It’s not funny to me, I suppose, but at this point it doesn’t really bother me. I’ve somehow built up a really big fortitude or will to not really be bothered by too much.
I’m sure you know, being trans online, we face a lot more shit than a lot of other people. And when you grow a platform – it’s sad to say – but you kind of just have to get used to it. You have to not be bothered by that stuff if you want to keep growing. It’s not for everyone, because it hurts sometimes. It really does. But I just try not to let anything bother me.
I’ve always been like that. People who have known me since I was a kid, there’s two things [they] would tell you: that I always laugh about anything, and that I’m always kind of happy. That’s just how I am.
Despite how negative the world can be, and how [it] makes you feel foolish for being optimistic, I’ve always been an optimist, or a hopeful person for a better world. And I still do think that, despite everything going on right now.
And there’s a lot going on right now, huh?
Yeah, there’s a lot. The Daily Wire crew has made it their personal vendetta to – and I hate to use the language they use – Michael Knowles, “eradicate transgenderism.” That’s their goal right now.
I don’t know how you feel, but it feels like it’s kind of dying down a little bit. Being transphobic still plays a lot, but it doesn’t feel like the same fever pitch it was, like, 2 months ago. I don’t know if I’m just not paying as much attention to these people. I’m just kind of, like, over it, you know? Not to say it’s not a problem, because it is a problem that these people are still terrorizing trans people, but to me, it seems like it’s not as much of a fever pitch it was a couple of months ago.
It feels maybe like transphobia isn’t selling as well as it used to. Especially with this whole Bud Light thing, the weird hatred of Dylan Mulvaney that was kind of everywhere for a hot second and is still going on—
Absolutely. And I’m sure it’s still affecting her personal life too.
It’s like you were saying: you have to have this thick skin. You have to know who you are and to be confident in it. And you also have to have this really academized, high-level knowledge of gender and sex theory, which is always the funniest thing. You know, trans people just working their everyday jobs, but they have this incredibly complex working knowledge of gender, right?
Yeah, that’s the funny thing. People will ask me – people who are trans and haven’t transitioned yet – because I’m pretty visible… I wouldn’t say I’m the most knowledgeable, but I have a couple of friends in real life that are trans and [they are] some of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met on specifically trans issues. So, through them, I have learned via osmosis a lot of this stuff, and it’s helped.
Maybe this will sound bad, but it’s made me realize that trans people know more about transitioning and what happens to trans people’s bodies more than doctors will know. Trans people are very smart about this stuff. So, when right-wingers will talk about how trans people are lying, it’s like talk to any trans person that’s – especially in my experience – DIY. They’re going to know more shit than doctors will.
And what we keep seeing over and over again is cis people trying really, really hard to talk about being trans. The most recent example that I wanted to chat about is The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian, who has gone over to the dark side. [She] has fully embraced transphobic rhetoric, argumentation – whatever word you want to use.
Ana “Jesse Singal isn’t transphobic” Kasparian.
Yes!
Oh, my God. I can’t believe she admitted she’s been reading [Singal’s] Substack for, like, over a year, and listens to his podcast and pays money for it. That’s when I knew it was so over. She’s totally gone. There’s no recovering her. She hasn’t gone down the Matt Walsh rabbit hole yet, but it’s the first step. It’s the J.K. Rowling pipeline.
[They’ll] be like, “I support trans rights.” They’ll say all the right ally things. They probably do believe it, I’m assuming. But they don’t think too deeply about it. Then they listen to, like, Matt Yglesias be like, “There’s this one de-transitioner who started transitioning at 16, so we have to listen to this person.” Even though less than a percent of all trans people started transitioning at the age of 16, we have to listen to that 1 percent of people.
I don’t really what it is, but for Ana Kasparian, it just kind of took root. She got really upset about the phrase “birthing person.” Which as far as I’m aware—
Yes. And “bonus hole” as well.
I think it’s even more ridiculous that she got mad about that. But specifically with “birthing person…” Like I said, I’m not the most knowledgeable about gender theory type stuff, especially as it pertains to trans people, but as far as I’m aware, “birthing person” is a purely academic word, right? That’s a word for hospitals and academia. That’s not what people are saying. I have never heard a trans person in my life – and I know mostly trans people in my personal life and online – no-one. No-one outside of academia uses “birthing person,” because it’s an academic term. It’s not a term used to de-humanize cis people.
I think that what’s really fascinating is that these little arguments over language are what get people started into the transphobia pipeline. It’s always a simple question like, “Should trans women be in sports?” “What if they have a medical advantage?” “I’m just asking questions.”
That is always how it starts, which is why I called it the J.K. Rowling pipeline. It always starts with a seemingly innocuous question. It’ll be an “ally” just “asking a simple question.” I feel like we’ve seen this enough at this point that I feel like it’s a slippery slope.
Trans people, we know where this is about to go. We’re like, “Hey, we know what’s about to happen. Stop. Listen to us. Listen to what we have to say.” But then there’ll be Ben Shapiro in the replies, and all of his reply guys love-bombing – validating what [Kasparian’s] saying. You’re more likely to listen to people love-bombing you than people like us. I’m not saying [confronting Kasparian] was a bad strategy, because I don’t think there was anything to be done. I’m not trying to say we did anything wrong. Like, this is totally on Ana Kasparian. But she was in a mindspace where she was more likely to listen to people validating what she had to say than us that have seen this happen time and time again warning her like, “What’re you doing? We know where you’re going with this.”
I don’t want to say it’s inevitable. I don’t think this brain rot is inevitable. But when it takes root, it seems almost impossible to prevent it.
The other day I saw she’s now pro-War on Drugs… I suppose?
I did see that also. She was talking about Portugal and how it’s a “drug-infested hellhole.” I think they legalized most drugs there. Last I heard it was going pretty well. A lot of the problem with drugs in America is that a lot of it’s illegal, so people won’t seek help if they are having problems or if they’re overdosing, because they’re scared they’ll get arrested. I’m not a Portugal expert, so don’t take my word for it, but I think a lot of it is designed in a way to make it so that people won’t essentially be arrested for instances like this.
She’s been very reactionary in a lot of ways. The two other instances I can think of are… I think it was in the Los Angeles mayor election. It was Karen Bass vs. Caruso. Caruso was a Republican running as a Democrat. He was a lifelong Republican, but of course in California and L.A. especially, you can’t win as a Republican. So, he ran as a Democrat, and his main thing was, “We have to fix the streets. We got to do something about the homeless people,” but in a very reactionary framing. And Ana was basically endorsing this Republican.
This is not the TYT that I have known. I got in a little spat with her. It was the first time she acknowledged me coming at her, which was very bizarre. For me, as someone who grew up in 2012 watching The Young Turks’ election coverage, it just feels like such a bizarre turn. Like, they’ve always had their problems. They’ve always been kind of racist. All of them have straight-up said the N-word and trans slurs. They’re not great. I’m not trying to ignore that. But they were never like this. They were never framing things in a right-wing reactionary type of way.
Well, there’s a pretty big gap still that exists between the likes of Ana Kasparian and J.K. Rowling, who’s— we might say —really, really far off the transphobia deep end. As we move away from Ana Kasparian and more towards the J.K Rowling types, what are your preferred methods of dealing with these mean-spirited people?
I think on some level there is a way with people like Ana Kasparian. They’re not so far deep where they can’t be salvaged. In my head, I logically know there’s probably not going to be a way, but I think it’s still more likely than a J.K Rowling.
[With] Ana, I was being very genuine in my replies to her when she quote-tweeted me. I was being very argumentative. A little mean. I was a little mean because she called me an “absolute moron.” She was insulting, so I was pretty insulting back. But I was also giving my genuine take like, “I grew up watching you and you were not like this before, what’s going on?”
But with people like J.K. Rowling and the absolute psychos that populate that realm – I would say basically the Nazi-adjacent type of transphobes… I don’t think [Rowling’s] necessarily a Nazi, but she surrounds herself with people like Posie Parker, who is a Nazi, and [Rowling] calls her her friend. So she is Nazi-adjacent at the bare minimum.
Hatred of trans people, I believe, is of course never justified, but these people don’t even have a reason.
They have no internal logic for it. I think, for a lot of these people, they are deeply unhappy and insecure – trying to find a purpose. This isn’t even just a symptom, I think, of transphobia. I think that a lot of online behavior, trying to find a purpose is through getting attention and being hateful towards people. Because, of course, it sells to be hateful. I think you know Oli London—
Yes.
That dude paid for a ton of surgeries to make himself look Korean. He even called himself non-binary at one point, but he ended up – as he calls it – ‘detransitioning.’ He is now no longer part of the “woke, gender ideology.” Now, his whole thing is just being the biggest trans hater of all time. Even though he spent money to become Korean? I don’t know.
He tapped into what a lot of these right-wing grifters know – that it sells to be hateful. People like Oli – people who make money off these grifts – there’s no point engaging them logically or even rhetorically in any capacity. They’re not doing it for any reason other than they can make money off of it. They know this. That’s what they’re doing. They are stoking hatred because it makes them money.
Occasionally, I’ll get a reply from a transphobe like, “You’ll never be a woman.” And it’s just someone with, like, 7 followers. They don’t have Nazi memorabilia in their profile picture – maybe they have an anime profile picture or something. For people like that, I’ll occasionally – and this has happened once, I’m not making this up. I made a post about it. I got a reply like that. Just some basic transphobia that [any] day-one trans person will experience. I said something to the effect of, “After saying this to me, do you feel more personally fulfilled in your life? Do you feel happy after what you just said to me?” I don’t always go back and check, but this person deleted their reply and I went to their profile, and they made a post to their less-than-a-dozen followers saying like, “I’ve kind of been a jackass, this isn’t me.” This person was basically like, “Yeah no, I’m kind of an asshole.” As far as I saw – I checked in like 2 days later – he wasn’t making transphobic tweets anymore.
Wow!
I don’t want to say I de-radicalized him. I don’t think he was radical in the sense that J.K. Rowling is. I think a lot of people just get mixed up in the attention that can come from being a jackass. There are some people that aren’t in it because they genuinely believe a lot of this stuff that Posie Parker or Matt Walsh says. There are a lot of those types, sadly. But I do genuinely believe there are people who, if you just ask them, “Are you happy?” Basically humiliating them. Ignoring what they say and just telling them, “Reflect on what you’re doing dude…” I think there are certain types of people that can be turned off to what they’re doing [by] cutting through the discourse and talking to them as just a person beyond a Twitter post.
If we wanted to say that it’s some kind of “goal” of ours as trans activists to de-radicalize people, do you think that it is more valuable to be compassionate towards these randos who are harassing trans people on Twitter, or should we shame them?
That’s the thing that’s tough. I’ve been visibly trans long enough online that in my mind I have different classifications of types of transphobes. There’s the Matt Walsh, J.K. Rowling types where it’s a grift. They are doing it because they genuinely believe it, and because it also makes them money.
There are the people that genuinely believe and are followers of these types of people, but they’re not grifting. They’re not making money from it, but they actively support these people.
And then there are, of course, just the straight-up grifters. Which are kind of indistinguishable from the people who genuinely believe it too. I would say, like, Oli London. I don’t know if he truly believes what he says, but he knows he can make money from it.
In terms of the types of people I would be compassionate to, it’s the people that are clearly… Maybe this is a bad comparison, but do you know LeafyIsHere?
Yes.
I think he kind of does believe all the shit he says, but he’s doing it for attention. That’s why he’s saying a lot of this stuff. He might believe it, but ultimately it’s very clearly for attention. If you respond to these types of people like, “What are you doing? Are you happy with yourself? Do you put down your phone, look in the mirror, and are like ‘I am happy with what I’m doing with my life?’” Those are really the only people I would actively try to de-radicalize. The Leafy types – desperate for attention, desperate for some sort of validation.
I don’t know. I hope I don’t sound crazy right now.
No!
I don’t have a word to any of what I’m saying, but it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I think it’s genuinely a waste of time to talk to people like Matt Walsh. There’s no purpose in that. But with the people who I believe are just miserable in their personal life and just trying to get some sort of validation? I think those could probably be more valuable to try to win over. And maybe shaming is the method. I prefer to just straight-up ask if they’re happy with themselves.
There are a lot of evil transphobes on the Internet, and they love to crowd into your comments and be fucking mean. Like you were saying, [deadnaming] you, pulling up all of this old stuff, shaming you… What keeps you coming back? What keeps you logging back into Twitter every single morning?
When you put it that way, it kind of sounds like, “Why are we doing this? There’s all these awful people, but we still keep coming back.”
But my honest answer is, despite all the shit that gets thrown my way, even since being doxxed, I’ve always had just a lot of fun making posts, trying to make people laugh. And of course the community that I’ve fallen into and all the friends I’ve made from Twitter that have subsequently translated to people that I talk to off of Twitter or that I’ve even met in real life… I’ve probably met close to 20 Twitter mutuals in real life, and some of them are some of my closest friends. They’re just so very dear to me.
I’ve never felt so much community. So I think what keeps me coming back is, despite all of the shit, there is just so many wonderful people.
I genuinely believe that because I’ve met these people. I’ve met so many of these people that are just profile pictures and names, and in real life they’re just lovely people.
Like I said before, I’ve always liked making people laugh. I was never the class clown, because up until my adulthood, I was always very shy. I was never really good at taking center stage. Despite that, I’ve always tried to make people laugh. I’m just glad I have a platform to be able to do that. I get a lot of DMs from people saying like, “You make this website bearable.” I always feel weird being like, “Yeah, all these people are praising me.” But it’s nice to know you make people happy, you know?
I think that about wraps up our time today. Thank you so much for joining me, JUNlPER!
Of course. Thank you so much for inviting me. This was a pleasure. I had a really good time.
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TRANSpanic! is an independent blog written and produced by @cabinworm on Twitter. TRANSpanic! is not funded nor endorsed by any large private or public donors (unless otherwise publicly disclosed). TP! is made possible by readers like you! Thank you. — C.
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