Hadley Freeman often goes back and forth, in her head, about Israel and Palestine. On the one hand, Israel has killed more than 57,000 Gazans; on the other hand, can you trust those figures when they come from Hamas? But what other number can you trust, if Israel refuses to allow in international reporters? Then again, can you even trust outsider news media anyway, or are they blatantly biased?
And on, and on.
This internal dialogue formed the basis for a compelling new article she wrote in The Times in the U.K, entitled, “A conversation every Jew I know is having“. In it, Freeman quickly unpacks the inherent nuance and historical lens that Jewish onlookers—especially in the Diaspora—bring to a conversation dominated by loud, reductive activists.
Freeman returns to The CJN Podcasts to discuss this piece, making the internal debates external, with Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle.
Transcript
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Hi, this is Phoebe Maltz Bovy. You’re listening to The Jewish Angle, a podcast from The CJN. Was that enough Jewish for you there? I’m very happy to be here with the extremely brilliant Hadley Freeman. She is a columnist for the Sunday Times, the British Times, that’s the British one, and author of many books, most recently the memoir and investigative work “Good Girls,” which she came on to a different Canadian Jewish News podcast to chat about once. But I’ve been looking for a while for a pretext to have Hadley back on a podcast here. And then she went and wrote a really fantastic, if upsetting, but fantastic article also for the Times called “A Conversation Every Jew I Know Is Having.” And I thought, okay, here’s a Jewish angle if I ever did see one. Hadley, welcome to The Jewish Angle.
Hadley Freeman: Thanks for having me, Phoebe. I really appreciate it.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Your article is, as you describe it, a version of the conversation I have have I’ve had every morning in my head for what now seems like forever. So do you want to talk about how it came about, that article?
Hadley Freeman: Yes. I mean, it literally was just the conversations I realized I’ve been having in my head every morning while I read the papers. And also, so it was about the Israel and Gaza war, and I wrote it before there was suddenly a new war in Iran. So this was entirely focused on Israel in Gaza, and it had been a week when there were a lot of terrible news stories about, you know, the IDF soldiers sort of shooting people at the food stations and, you know, targeting hospitals in Rafah or other places in Gaza. I was just listening to the conversations around me, and they seemed to be very one-sided. On the one hand, there are my WhatsApp groups that were saying, well, of course, they’re targeting the hospitals. It’s because that’s where the tunnels are, and that’s where the fighters are hiding. And on the other hand, there were other people I was hearing just going on about how evil Israel is, and, you know, Israel targeting civilians and Israel will never be forgiven for this. I was sort of fascinated and almost admire people who can be so one-sided and partisan about it. Because, to me, I just think, I don’t want to be one of those boring both sides people. But I… You can’t help but think, wow, that’s terrible. You know, look at this, the story about the IDF shooting, you know, however many number of Palestinians at a food station. Okay, yes. And then there was also this story, and yes, there’s the hospitals. Yes. But they did also find the tunnels underneath with the fighters in them. On the one hand, I look at this and say, well, of course, Israel has to go after Hamas. Look what Hamas did. Hamas’s original charter is about destroying the Jews. And yes, on the other hand, I wish Israel would stop killing so many civilians and stop occupying the West Bank. So you just go back and forth.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I completely related to this, and I really liked your stylistic choice and that you were allowed to do this. That’s great, having it be that you’re like in dialogue with yourself. So I could relate. But what I was thinking about though is the headline, and I know headlines, you know, I don’t over dwell on headlines, but like a conversation every Jew I know is having. So I’m thinking like, I’m just wondering. And you also talk about, to use your expression, hand-wringing liberal Westerners.
Hadley Freeman: Yes.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I’m wondering how many Jews, let’s just stick with Jews, are hand-wringing in this way and having these internal sort of debates all the time, and how many are just clear on that it’s one thing is right or the other.
Hadley Freeman: Well, I think the loudest voices are always the most certain voices. And there are definitely Jews I know and Jews I read who are very much on one side or the other. But my more typical representative group, I think, is a group of Jewish parents I end up having brunch with every Saturday after we drop our kids off at Ramah at the Hebrew school down the road from where I live in London. Obviously, what the grown-ups are supposed to do after dropping the kids off at Hebrew school is go to synagogue. Instead, what we do is go around the corner and have bagels and smoked salmon.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: That sounds lovely. That sounds lovely.
Hadley Freeman: Well, I feel like this is our way of worshipping and we just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. We all live in North London, which is, I don’t know what the equivalent in Toronto would be. In New York, it would be like Brooklyn.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It’s similar to the bit of Toronto I’m in, I think Roncesvalles, it’s similar to a Park Slope type.
Hadley Freeman: Exactly. You know, kind of.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think I may have even DMed you a picture of our local bookshop window once or something.
Hadley Freeman: Yes, exactly, exactly. And there’s a lot of liberal hand-wringing at the brunch. So I’d written this column on the Friday night, then met my friends for brunch on Saturday, and I said, oh, I’m doing this column, so debating the war thing. And there was this kind of sharp intake of breath. Oh, my God. But have you seen what Israel’s done? And we have to be, you know, careful and da, da, da. Oh, my God. Have you seen the pictures of the Palestinian children? So there’s definitely those Jews. And on the other hand, they’re, you know, friends who I have, who write for, for example, the Free Press, who are very adamantly on the pro-Israel side. I just feel like, you know, I don’t follow any sports teams and I, I can never be really all on one side or another, at least in this argument. I feel like I can see both sides. I think the interesting thing with Israel, which was something that I really wanted to get into in terms of Israel and Palestine, is just the history of it. You know, the fact, you know, Yasser Arafat, the Oslo Accords, you know, what was happening in 1967, what was happening in 1948. I feel like a lot of people who follow this war as though it is, you know, the World Cup or the World Series or whatever have no sense of all these stories before it. And that’s all feels kind of relevant.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I’m not saying it. No, I think it. I think it is. And, and we will, we will get into that. I definitely think it’s. It’s relevant. But I was wondering, so have you, you find yourself having this kind of internal dialogue before October 7th? Like, was this a topic you much thought about? I mean, I know you’re knowledgeable about Jewish history, of course, but, well.
Hadley Freeman: Oh, thank you. Well, a little bit. I do have cousins who live in Tel Aviv, and I have a cousin who’s back in America now who had done a lot of work in Israel when he was younger, working for Seeds for Peace. And so we do have these conversations, and they’re our conversations. I think I talk about it more in Britain than I ever did in America. I think there’s definitely a much more of a sense that what happens in Israel, what Israel does, affects Jews in Europe more maybe than it felt like it affected Jews in America pre-October 7th.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Yes, that is. That is interesting. And that actually I’m going to leap ahead to my last question because it’s actually kind of one of them, because it’s about that, which is just that I wonder. I mean, I’m thinking about, like, I had thought that not just in Europe, but also Canadian, that there had been this way. That there had been this kind of American exceptionalism for Jews where, like, the American government was so pro-Israel that, you know, this didn’t really come up. And the whole, like, I feel like I’m somebody who, even though I grew up in the States, I did a PhD in French, I just know a lot of Europeans. I have a Belgian husband, whatever. Like, I. I know enough Europeans that, like, I would always be getting, like, so Israel, huh? You know, from people from continental Europe, from British people, from Australian people, some whatever. And Americans just seem not so interested until very recently. And I’m just wondering, like, how much of this. It does seem like, whether it’s the globalizing of the intifada or just globalization generally. Does America, do you think, seem more like Europe now in that regard?
Hadley Freeman: I think America, I think. I think for me, growing up, certainly Jewish in New York and, you know, you tell me your experience, maybe I just really thought of being Jewish as, you know, a very, you know, cultural thing, a very New York thing. And then when you come to Europe, you realize there’s a lot of more painful history and there’s less sort of Woody Allen shtick going on here. There’s a lot more people talking about pogroms in Poland and grandparents who wouldn’t talk and stuff like that. And therefore there’s a lot of people here who have family in Israel. I don’t know any British Jew who doesn’t have family in Israel. And so there’s a much stronger consciousness that what Israel does is seen as a reflection on us as European Jews and. Yeah. Is America now more aware? I think so, definitely. And particularly because the Palestinian cause has been sort of taken up as part of the Left Omni cause. You know, whether it’s trans rights and environmental stuff and now pro-Palestinian stuff. So therefore, Jews in America have to be aware of it, because there’s something. All these kids on Columbia campus.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Greta Thunberg, yeah. So I was wondering, that internal dialogue, though, does it change? So I’ll speak for myself, like, I feel like mine changes a lot. Like, I can’t even. It hasn’t been, like, a consistent thing since October 7th. I feel like it’s the arguments I make with myself change tremendously, depending, like, which week it is. Which month it is and all of that.
Hadley Freeman: Yes. And I wanted to do it a week when it felt like the public mood had really turned against Israel. While all. And like I can see why I, I get it. Like, I see the violence, I see the casualty numbers, although yes, they come from Hamas, et cetera, et cetera. But I also still think Israel has a just cause, just not necessarily, it’s not necessarily proportional. And there’s that argument. And then there’s also the history that this all could have been spared, you know, in a dream world if Yasser Arafat had just gone along with the Oslo Accords and the Camp David meeting and everything. So.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, it also could have been spared if Europe had been okay with letting its Jews stay put, which is something that I rather a lot. But I wanted to. Yeah, so rather than just talking about your article, I want to also talk about, like, the sort of meta topic, which is just, I feel like maybe part of the problem with the discussions today of Israeli military actions in Gaza is that the conversation seems to be led by people who kind of want these points for prescience for having responded to October 7th immediately, not by talking about the horror, the horrors of what had just happened from the Hamas attacks, but rather by the horrors of what Israel would do probably in response. And without that sort of pausing to say, look what’s just happened here, without even, you know, and I think, I wonder if some of the issue is it’s just so hard to separate out these specific and often I think, and it sounds like you also think, you know, valid criticisms of specific Israeli actions from just this general anti-Israel movement that’s just fundamentally unhappy with anything Israel does that isn’t self-destruction. So yeah, and that seems to be like who’s leading it. So then it’s like, it’s hard to say, like you’re right, but it’s like right about what? You know what I mean? Like is that maybe some of the issue.
Hadley Freeman: Yes, I think so. But also I just cannot stand how everyone, well, not everyone, but like the people that we see on social media, a lot of Western journalists and commentators are just so desperate to be proven correct. Like that’s how they’re looking at this. Like whatever my reaction was on October 7th has now been validated. Like that seems to be the desire, and it’s really made me just not do anything on social media about this issue. And in fact, I’ve tried not to write about it too much because there’s too much self-serving narrative. I think that’s going on in the West. But there had been a whole bunch of columns that I found really interesting in the weeks before that I’d read by Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic or Thomas Friedman in The New York Times that I thought were very interesting and balanced and also took a lot of the history in. I mean, they’re both written by people who know a lot of the history and aren’t just see Israel as a colonialist, white imperialist, you know, you know, oppression, blah, blah, blah, is kind of Greta Thunberg sort of word salad, but rather someone who understands the Middle East. And. And that’s more of an interesting argument in my head and also more reflective of the experience of people who live in Israel. I mean, I don’t want to speak for people in Palestine, but when I email with my cousins, you know, they have been through this for a long time, and I don’t think any of us can really imagine what that’s like. You know, all of us were just sitting on Twitter waiting to be retweeted for our latest hot take. I mean, that’s just not very relevant.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, it’s not the same as being in a bomb shelter.
Hadley Freeman: No.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I was thinking, though, did you read the New York Magazine cover story about that basically says that Israel is the worst of them all of all time.
Hadley Freeman: I saw the cover and thought that is something I don’t need to be arguing with in my head, because I’m already arguing with myself, because I had.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Wondered if that was entering into your thinking at all. I mean, I don’t remember the timing of it all, but, yeah, I think.
Hadley Freeman: It was all about the same time. There was this huge. I just saw a lot of the narrative being like, well, Israel, and suddenly this kind of general agreement that, you know, everything that Jeremy Corbyn or whatever had said 10 years ago, oh, look, he’s right. See, Israel is evil. And this sort of collective amnesia about October the seventh and who Hamas actually are, which doesn’t make Netanyahu, therefore the good guy.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: No, totally, totally. I mean, I was. I guess I was thinking, like, things seem to have reached a point in the war itself where even people who support Israel generally are wondering, like, what. What is going on? I guess would be. I don’t know how better to phrase it. And I’m thinking especially of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert categorizing some of Israel’s actions in Gaza as war crimes. It’s getting a little bit written up as like. And he’s like, you know, and he’s done with Israel. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. But, but yeah, that is a big thing though. And I guess what I’m thinking is, like, there was a time when I found it easier, or it seemed easier, to attribute negative reports about IDF actions or things like that to some sort of AI-generated thing. It’s misinformation, it’s a photo of another conflict, you know? And I do still see people on Twitter, not so much on Blue Sky, certainly posting along those lines. I think that’s a harder case to make at this point. But what I keep coming up with is, like, I don’t know if this makes any sense, but I think when a Jew and a non-Jew see identical images from Gaza, it’s not that the Jews are unmoved and are some kind of sickos who are like, oh no, that’s fine. And yes, there are a few people who will be like, oh, that toddler’s a terrorist anyway. I don’t think that’s a commonplace position. I’m just going to say I don’t think so.
Hadley Freeman: I think it’s a loud position.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It is a loud position, but not so. I think everybody’s equally upset. I think the difference, if I may generalize, is just that Jews can’t leave it at saying, like, and see, Israel’s the meanest meanie of them all, because there’s always this kind of, and then what? I think it’s more just that, like, for me, when I see these images, I think, okay, let’s say you say, yeah, fine, Israel’s really mean. What are we going to do now? Are we going to get rid of Israel? Are we going to get rid of the Jewish people? Are we going to—you know what I mean? Because I feel like there’s this kind of missing… And then what happens to Jews next?
Hadley Freeman: But also, I just feel, I mean, yes, okay, the IDF are doing terrible things. Netanyahu is continuing this war in a very self-serving way. But, like, let’s also look at Hamas. There are terrible extremists on both sides. And actually, after my column ran, there was this really great piece in the New York Times by Patrick Kingsley, who used to work with me at the Guardian, who’s now the Israel correspondent for the New York Times. So he has clearly gone up in the world since leaving me. But he did this amazing piece where he was in Gaza, and the IDF took him down to show the tunnels that they had unearthed since bombing some hospitals. And I think those hospitals were the ones that we saw the videos at, where you see little girls running through the flames in the hospitals, all incredibly upsetting. Patrick did this piece basically showing both sides, saying here, you know, the IDF are genuinely saying they bombed the hospitals because here are these tunnels where the fighters were. And then he went off and talked to the military in Palestine, in Gaza, and they’re saying, yeah, okay, fine, but there are other ways to get to those tunnels that don’t involve blowing up hospitals. And I just thought, you know what? You can see, like, I can accept that both sides are making these arguments in good faith. Like, I get it. Like, I can see that from, you know, for the Gaza side, they’re like, why are you blowing up our hospitals that are full of women and children, you monster? And Israel’s like, well, we have to get to these tunnels. And why aren’t you putting your women and children in the tunnels? Like, it doesn’t need to be that one side is all bad, one side’s all good. There are bad guys on both sides is how I feel.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. And, I mean, I also think. Just. Sorry, go on.
Hadley Freeman: No, no, no. And I just felt like to have a piece where you see, this is what Israel sees, and this is what Palestine sees, and it’s the same picture, and it’s very different experiences for both sides. I thought that feels to me like an honest depiction of what is happening in some ways.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right. And it is tricky now because nobody wants both sides, right? Nobody wants that.
Hadley Freeman: Everybody wants the simple narrative. Like, you know, it’s so much easier talking about Russia and Ukraine because everyone knows what side they’re on, right? What I can’t stand is when people make jokes saying, oh, well, now it’s anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel. And I understand. No, it’s not. Maybe to some people it is, but that is not the issue here. The issue is, are you holding Israel to a higher standard? Do you not understand why Israel exists, why Israel was founded? Do you not understand what Hamas wants to do to Jews? And that’s not me defending what the IDF is doing. It’s just kind of like giving the context.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: What I keep coming back to is if after October, I feel like Israel gets, certainly from the US, military support, but I feel like Israel just gets so little moral support. And that there was this moment internationally after October 7th where it was like, well, they kind of had that coming. You know what I mean? And I think this then, and it becomes this kind of horrible cycle where this, in turn, empowers the extremists within Israel to say, well, they’re going to hate us whatever we do.
Hadley Freeman: Yes.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: You know, and, and they’re not wrong.
Hadley Freeman: In some ways, like, yeah, there are people who are going to hate you whatever you do, but it’s still horrible.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It is, it is. And yes.
Hadley Freeman: Yeah, yeah. I mean, what’s weird is I was in New York When 9/11 happened, just by chance, as was I. And a lot of the people who are writing these pieces now saying Israel had it coming, wrote at that time in British newspapers, America had this coming. So I’ve seen this for a while and you can go back and forth on the arguments, but ultimately those acts of terrorism are completely unjustifiable and response was inevitable.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: On the America note, thank you for giving me the perfect segue. I love when that happens. It’s so special. But although it’s going to be bleak, what I’m going to talk about, so brace yourself for some bleak. But another thing I’ve been thinking about, though, since Trump came into office. So you’re American as well, right? You’re British and American and I’m Canadian and American. But is just since Trump has come into office, just all the ways that the US has gone in illiberal, authoritarian type directions. And a big one that comes up is this cutting off of foreign aid. And I’m just going to read a passage from a New York Times Michelle Goldberg op-ed from May 25 that really crystallized something in my head that I was trying to make sense of. And okay, so here I’m quoting from Michelle Goldberg. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts, the cuts to aid from Musk and Doge, have already resulted in about 30,000 deaths or not 30. So many. 300,000 maybe. Clear. This is important. 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year, end quote. So I thought about, I sat with this for a while because that’s a phenomenal number of deaths. I do not have the research skills to know. I have not done due diligence on that exact number. But Trump has not been in office that long. These cuts are pretty new. I’m American. I’m also more recently Canadian. I grew up in the States. I feel very American. I still have to deal with the IRS and so forth. I’m not Israeli. And I was thinking, like, why is it that I do as you do with this hand-wringing about Gaza every day, but complicity wise, shouldn’t I be feeling a whole lot worse as an American? You know, and I was wondering what you make of that, because I have some thoughts, but I was wondering if you could relate or what you make of it.
Hadley Freeman: Yes, I mean, I’ve been through this in a way. Like when George W. Speaker A: When [Bush] was in office, there was this huge anti-American feeling in Europe. So I have been through this of being berated for being American and just going around saying, I didn’t vote for him. And, you know, then Obama, thank God, and then Trump, oh, we’re in there again. So, yeah, I would say it’s not a great time to be an American Jew in Europe where it feels like everybody on your side hates you. On the other hand, what I do feel about America is I really can genuinely say I didn’t vote for them. In Israel, obviously, I’m not voting; I’m not an Israeli citizen. But somehow, because I have less power, I’m doing less to prevent Netanyahu, you do somehow feel more culpable in a way. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: That’s interesting.
Hadley Freeman: But certainly with Trump, I mean, I obviously didn’t vote for him. I’m happy to reveal my ballot on air.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Yeah, the complicity thing though, I mean, I do feel like there’s something different though with Trump than with George W. Bush, because I was in college, I guess. What was this? Yeah, I would have been in college at the time and studying abroad. I remember in Paris at the time and I remember the Canadian flags on backpacks era and so forth. But it felt different because it seemed like everybody hated America because of George W. Bush. And while he was not to my political tastes, I didn’t feel this personal, like what is going on level, visceral sort of horror at it. And I don’t remember, you know, like, but maybe that’s just me and evolutions of my own politics.
Hadley Freeman: Well, I mean, I probably felt it more because I was already working at The Guardian.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Ah, well, there you go.
Hadley Freeman: In Europe. And I mean, obviously, people were very sympathetic in the vast main when I came back from this trip to New York during which 9/11 happened. But there was a feeling America brought this on itself from its foreign policy. And then when, you know, the crazy war in the Middle East started, just because of Europe—I think the proximity made it feel closer—and there was this idea, look at these evil stupid Americans. That kind of real Team America type of vision of, you know, the US Government at that time going in and killing all these poor, you know, Muslims or digging up these Arab countries for no reason, for bombs that don’t even exist. And also the fact that Bush had roped in Tony Blair and basically destroyed his reputation and career. I think there was really strong anti-American feeling then. With Trump, the difference is, it’s not so much anti-America; it’s more like a total loss of respect for America. At least with Bush, there was still the hope that the American dream existed. With Trump, it’s just like, look at you, stupid, fat, you know, country. You’re, you know, massively in decline now.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, it seems like there’s an intentional making-America-less-great that’s happening, like, but like the plan, like that seems to be like this encouraging brain-drain type thing that I don’t remember from that era.
Hadley Freeman: America first, you know. Trump doesn’t want to be in charge of the world, whereas Bush still did want to be in charge of the world. So that was a different thing. You know, Trump is isolationist and all that.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So you write about, for people who do not know, although I’m sure many will, you write about many topics, including pop culture, including gender, not just about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would say hardly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Something that I’m always trying to figure out, these rifts within feminism and all of this, my sense is that there’s a divide, sort of, I guess, between trans-inclusive versus gender-critical feminism that plays out very differently in the US and in the UK, with Canada being a bit like the US left of 2018, kind of permanently. And what I want to know is, are things just bundled differently in the different countries? If you are somebody who does not—this may be a two-part question—if you’re somebody who does not take a maximally “it’s okay to medically transition when you’re eight” type position, are you considered right-wing in the…
Hadley Freeman: UK if you say that’s wrong.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: If you say it’s wrong. Or are these things just bundled differently? Because, I’m just… yeah, sorry.
Hadley Freeman: Yeah, I think it’s much less divided along left and right lines in Britain than it is in America. And I—this is for a Canadian, Jewish…
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Yes, yes, Pod.
Hadley Freeman: So I can insult America freely. I think you and I both grew up in America in the 90s. And I think what I’ve really realized, particularly being in Britain, is how poor the American feminist movement is these days. It’s just kind of almost non-existent. The fact that American women still don’t have, you know, mandatory paid maternity leave is just revolting to me. I just cannot bear it. And I am shocked at how silent feminists were about the rise of gender rights, which to me has always very clearly been a backlash against the MeToo movement. Like the fact that it came right after the MeToo movement and suddenly women were being called bigots and screamed at for saying they didn’t want men in women’s prisons or in women’s changing rooms or whatever. To me, that’s the opposite of what the MeToo movement was, which is that women were allowed to define their own spaces and to say what makes them feel safe or not.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: By men you mean males, people biologically male, but who identify…
Hadley Freeman: Yeah.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Sometimes more thoroughly than other times as women.
Hadley Freeman: Indeed.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right.
Hadley Freeman: But whereas in Britain, it’s a much more collectivist, socialist political background here. So you get the kind of hardcore, left-wing socialist green and common lesbians like Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich, Kathleen Stock—well, she’s more academic—but those people. And then you get the middle-class newspaper columnists such as me and Helen Lewis, Janice Turner, Sarah Ditum, Susannah Rustin. So it’s a, it’s… and we’re all very much on the left, like all of us were born and raised on the left. Whereas I don’t see that in America. I don’t see, you know, academics and left-wing universities or columnists on liberal newspapers being able to talk about gender.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Honestly, in a way, do you think it has to do with the fact that, I mean, I’m just thinking about the way things are bundled in the States where… so I, I have like… nobody has ever cared less about sports as a topic than me, which may need to change if I have kids who care about sports, but that’s to be the difference.
Hadley Freeman: I reckon it’s a good way not to have to go watch them.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Okay, fair enough. So I have not personally been thinking much about who’s on which sports team, but what strikes me just in the States is that you have a position that’s not a particularly out there position. I would think about like the biology would matter for who’s on a sports team. Something like this, again, a position I… a topic I don’t personally much think about, but a position that’s not so out there is bundled with this, let’s be gratuitously nasty to anybody gender non-conforming, whether trans-identified, or not, or gay, or gay or, or just eccentric or whatever it is, you know what I mean? And it’s all so bundled in the States that I think it really polarizes things and makes it kind of impossible to have discussions about specific policies or, you know what I mean? Like I don’t know if it’s easier in Britain or if it’s just polarized differently.
Hadley Freeman: It’s definitely easier. And a lot of that is because of left-wing old-school feminists like Julie Bindel, who’ve been, you know, pointing out the misogyny and the homophobia within the gender movement from the beginning. So that this issue could not be a simple ‘left is entirely pro-trans, right is entirely anti-trans’ issue the way it is in the U.S. And I think that is tragic that, you know, liberal feminists, second-wave feminists, third-wave feminists in America weren’t brave enough to do that from the start. It’s very disappointing to me. So yeah, it is much less of a partisan issue. We have a Labour Prime Minister here, which is essentially analogous to a Democrat President, and at first, he was all pro, you know, the maximalist trans arguments. And now he has come back from that, and that’s not seen as a betrayal of the left; that’s just seen as evolving as, you know, things have evolved. So yeah, it is easier here, but I think that’s really a sign, like I say, of a failure of American feminists.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Hadley Freeman, this has been fantastic. I could spend the whole rest of the day talking with you about this and so much more, but I know you and I suppose I have very important places to be, like the splash pad. Thanks so much.
Hadley Freeman: Thanks so much, Phoebe.
Show Notes
Credits
- Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
- Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
- Music: “Gypsy Waltz” by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective
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