This Fox News Segment Perfectly Illustrates How Off-The-Rails The Right-Wing Anti-Trans Attacks Have Become
The right freaked out about the Joker being made trans in a new comic. They didn't read it.
Hello. Everything is so dumb. Everything is so, so dumb. [inhales]
Okay, so, let’s talk about comic books. I love comic books. To say I am a fan of the medium would be an understatement. Every so often, my love of comic books collides with my obsession with the news media. This is one of those times, and, as is so often the case, it’s really, truly dumb. But as dumb as it may be, I’m fascinated by it.
First, some basics that will help the rest of this make sense:
Last week, DC released the fourth installment of The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, written by
. The backup story (a short, separate story put at the back of an issue) in this book was an eight-page story called “Knocked Upside Down," which was written in the style of the Joker during comics’ “Silver Age.”
The plot of “Knocked Upside Down” is as follows:
The Joker, Jackanapes, and Gaggy have just finished “stealing all the water from the Gotham River,” where the Joker is making a romantic pass at Zatanna, who is a stage magician with actual magic powers. Zatanna casts a spell on the Joker, causing him to fall down in the former river bed. He accidentally ingests a bunch of mud.
The next day, Joker wakes up with a giant stomach. Gaggy says, “I think you’re pregnant,” and Joker responds, “I think you’re right. Do we have a good OB-GYN we use?” The next panel shows the Joker in gynecology stirrups. The doctor is Doctor Phosphorous, a supervillain. “Is this going to hurt, doc?” asks the Joker. Doctor Phosphorous responds, “Well, I don’t even know where the baby is going to come out from down here, so probably,” and tells the Joker to push.
After a bit of banter, the Joker vomits up the mud he swallowed at the river. “Guess you weren’t pregnant after all,” says Doctor Phosphorous. The villains all chase the mud creature (which has now sprouted legs and started running). “Twenty unproductive minutes later," the group sees two arms raised in the air. “What the hell… did I eat?!” asks the Joker. The creature emerges. It is a miniature clone of the Joker. Both Joker and his small clone think, “He’s so handsome.”
The final page fast forwards to “several weird weeks later.” The Joker approaches Zatanna after one of her magic shows to introduce him to the mud-creature-turned-mini-Joker-clone. “We did it, Zatanna. We have a son!” he says. The end.
The entire story is played for laughs. The main story in the book has the Joker in a violent face-off against Red Hood inside a hospital. The backup story is supposed to be a silly throwback to the Silver Age comics that played the Joker as silly/funny rather than the more familiar homicidal maniac.
Now that you understand the basics, let’s understand why I’m writing this.
Please enjoy this Fox News segment about the comic I just walked you through:
From the January 9, 2023, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends First:
TODD PIRO, Co-Host: Joe, I wanna get your thoughts on this. There is a bizarre new Batman storyline that has the Joker becoming pregnant and giving birth. This is a statement you literally could not say ten years ago, but this is the world in which we live now.
Look, we’ve had comic book fans on this very show saying, “No one is buying this drivel.” So why instead of reading the market and sort of stopping the woke garbage strategy, they’re doubling down on woke!
JOE CONCHA, Fox News Contributor: No longer the Joker; now he’s the “Woker,” right? I mean, this is what we’re dealing with at this point. Apparently, he got pregnant because somebody that he is in opposition to cast a spell on him. So, it’s not like the Joker became transgender; it’s because… who knows and who cares, right? I mean, it seems like everything now has to be impacted, including comic books, which is like the ultimate escapism for children and even adults, alike.
But instead, as we’ve seen with Disney, as we’ve seen with so many movies, we have to go down this route where we inject this sort of stuff into otherwise… what usually used to be a safe zone. No longer the case. Ashley, Todd.
ASHLEY STROHMIER, Co-Host: I’m sorry, but if you saw those images — I mean, it’s disgusting to me to see this. I mean, I understand it’s a comic, but at the same time, like you said, Joe, it’s every single place we turn to now. It’s like we cannot escape it!
CONCHA: And you talked about Randi Weingarten before with Dr. Saphier, and, as far as the teacher’s unions and everything that has gone on since COVID began. And one thing that happened, for instance, in Florida, was a law called the Parental Rights in Education bill, which was called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill even though the word “gay” wasn’t in it whatsoever — but the bottom line is that as young as kindergarteners are being taught about sexual orientation, gender identification, and Ron DeSantis said “enough! We’re not dealing with this at that level with teachers teaching kids this.” So, that’s where we are at this point. Even in our schools, we can’t escape just… not doing the basic blocking and tackling we should be doing.
I found this segment to be absolutely fascinating, and I’ll explain why.
And sorry for doubling up on the transcript, but it’ll make the play-by-play easier.
Right from the start, Pirro comes barging in like the Kool-Aid man with a number of flat-out false statements.
TODD PIRO, Co-Host: Joe, I wanna get your thoughts on this. There is a bizarre new Batman storyline that has the Joker becoming pregnant and giving birth. This is a statement you literally could not say ten years ago, but this is the world in which we live now.
This is not a Batman comic; it is a Joker comic. Yes, Joker is a Batman villain, but this was in a standalone Joker comic. The Joker does not give birth in this comic; he vomits up a mud creature.
And one has to be fairly oblivious to say “…but this is the world in which we live now,” to describe the fictional DC Comics universe. It is quite literally not the world in which we live. The Joker isn’t real, and there aren’t sorceresses who cast spells that make people vomit up mud-creature clones. But, you know, it’s either obliviousness or Piro’s just playing his part as a malicious cog in a right-wing propaganda apparatus that uses moral panics to keep viewers in a frothy rage. One of the two, and maybe a bit of both.
PIRO: Look, we’ve had comic book fans on this very show saying, “No one is buying this drivel.” So why instead of reading the market and sort of stopping the woke garbage strategy, they’re doubling down on woke!
I sent emails to Piro, Strohmier, and Concha, asking them to explain what, exactly, they meant by “woke” throughout this segment. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I have not received any responses. I will update this piece if they do get back to me. Moving on to Concha’s portion.
JOE CONCHA, Fox News Contributor: No longer the Joker; now he’s the “Woker,” right? I mean, this is what we’re dealing with at this point. Apparently, he got pregnant because somebody that he is in opposition to cast a spell on him. So, it’s not like the Joker became transgender.
Again, without explaining what he means by “woke,” Concha dives right in with it. Unlike Piro, Concha seems to at least somewhat understand the comic’s basic plot. Now, of course, it’s a bit funny that as Concha straight-up says that “it’s not like the Joker became transgender,” the chyron below him read, “NEW BATMAN COMIC DEBUTS PREGNANT TRANS ‘JOKER’.”
CONCHA: So, it’s not like the Joker became transgender; it’s because… who knows and who cares, right? I mean, it seems like everything now has to be impacted, including comic books, which is like the ultimate escapism for children and even adults, alike.
But instead, as we’ve seen with Disney, as we’ve seen with so many movies, we have to go down this route where we inject this sort of stuff into otherwise… what usually used to be a safe zone. No longer the case. Ashley, Todd.
And let’s address “…it’s because… who knows and who cares, right?” I don’t know, Joe, you’re the one on TV talking about this story, and you seem completely and totally unable to articulate what the problem with it is. If you read the (very, very short) comic — he at least read part of it, since he knows that the plot of the story does not involve the Joker becoming transgender — you would know that it had nothing to do with trans people and that the whole gag was part of what’s known as a joke.
Concha’s “it seems like everything now has to be impacted, including comic books, which is like the ultimate escapism for children and even adults, alike,” comment is baffling. What does he mean? “Impacted” by what? And how is a story that involves a magic spell that makes a villain vomit up a mud-creature clone not "escapism"? In my email to Concha, I asked him to clarify but did not hear back. And what’s this about Disney? What does he mean by “this route” and “inject this sort of stuff”? We may never know!
Strohmier’s portion of this is more confusing. While Concha and Piro sounded like two guys who couldn’t figure out if this was something they were doing a segment about because they were outraged or if the point of the segment was to ridicule the comic, Strohmier sounded genuinely angry about this. Like… verge-of-tears level angry.
ASHLEY STROHMIER, Co-Host: I’m sorry, but if you saw those images — I mean, it’s disgusting to me to see this. I mean, I understand it’s a comic, but at the same time, like you said, Joe, it’s every single place we turn to now. It’s like we cannot escape it!
“It’s disgusting to me to see this” is such a funny reaction to this joke, which, again, has nothing to do with transgender people or men giving birth or anything like that. It. Was. About. The. Joker. Being. Cursed. And. Vomiting. Up. A. Clone. Of. Himself.
“It’s every single place we turn to now. It’s like we cannot escape it!” is such a vague point to make! What is the “it” that is “every single place we turn to”? And what do you mean by “It’s like we cannot escape it!”? I really wish that one of the Fox News personalities would have responded to my email clarifying what they meant by, well, any of this. Alas, no response…
So I reached out to an anchor at a different right-wing media outlet that covered the story as an example of how “Hollywood loves to make everything trans.” I asked what the outrage was about and received a message that explained that this particular host is a libertarian who doesn’t “care a bit what anyone identifies as… or wants to dress like… or sleep with AS LONG AS THEY ARE ADULTS AND NOT PUSHING THEIR CHOICES ON CHILDREN.”
I explained that the comic had nothing to do with LGBTQ people, had nothing to do with gay people, had nothing to do with trans people, and so on. Then I shared the image where Doctor Phosphorous says, “Guess you weren’t pregnant after all.”
I followed that up by explaining that this particular title was not even marketed to kids. It has a rating of “T+ (teen plus),” which is specifically for “readers age 15 and older” as it “may contain moderate violence, mild profanity, graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes.” The other ratings are “E (everyone),” “T (teen),” and “M (mature).”
The response I got was “It’s the marketing toward kids content. That’s honest[ly] my only issue,” which, just… [screams into the void] it’s impossible to deal with these right-wingers who freak out at the mere thought that a character might (but isn’t, in this case) be gay or trans.
That’s what the people at right-wing outlets who treated this like a legitimate story seemed to think (though it sure would have been nice for the Fox News crew to respond): that the story involved the Joker being trans, and that the existence of a trans character in a comic book (I cannot imagine that anyone commenting on this knows what a backup story is) was something worthy of outrage. Obviously, that’s not true, but even if it were true that a comic that the hosts at Fox News almost certainly didn’t even know existed had a trans character in it, this is an absolutely over-the-top response that needs to stop. Now.
I’m pretty sick of the reactionary right’s decision to treat the existence of LGBTQ people as inherently scandalous.
LGBTQ people exist, and we have as much of a right to be a part of society as everyone else. Look at the level of freakout they brought to a story that doesn’t actually have anything to do with trans people just because they incorrectly believed that it did. Even if the very next Joker comic was titled, “The Joker: Yes, I Am Trans Now, And This Is How I Will Be Forever Portrayed In Comics And In The Movies,” it wouldn’t warrant this absolutely nutty response. (And obviously, that won’t happen.)
The right is getting increasingly comfortable in its attempts to frame the mere existence of LGBTQ people in public as obscene and/or something that children cannot or should not be allowed to see. Florida passed its “Don’t Say Gay” law, which, despite guys like Concha doing their best to continue with the “You see, it has nothing to do with gay people!” line they’ve been trotting out for months, has had a severe effect on LGBTQ people (teachers, students, parents, authors, members of local communities, etc.). And, because they’re not getting a whole lot of pushback (especially when it comes to framing trans people as deviants, which outlets like The New York Times often join in with absurd and disproportionate regularity) in the press, Republicans are just running with it and seeing just how far they can push things.
As I’m writing this, Nebraska Republicans just introduced a bill that would “prohibit an individual under nineteen years of age or under twenty-one years of age from being present at a drag show as prescribed.”
First, look at how they define “drag show”: “a performance in which … The main aspect of the performance which exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers; and … The performer sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.”
This language makes it clear that the purpose of this bill goes far beyond just making it illegal for people under the age of 19 (which, yes, includes 18-year-old adults) to attend drag shows. That would be bad enough, but notice how this bill (and other bills like it, which I’ll get to in a moment) specifies that this is based on whatever one’s original birth certificate says. The clear goal is to ensnare trans people — not just drag queens — and restrict their ability to participate in society.
Here’s how absurd and over-the-top that language is: the bill is written in such a way that this video of Kim Petras (a trans woman who sang a verse on one of the most popular songs in the world last year), seen here wearing a giant coat while singing one of her songs a few years back on Good Morning America would be considered a “drag show” for anyone who happened to be in the audience (and, according to the bill’s supporters, would therefore be inappropriate on the basis of who was singing the song and not what the person was singing, wearing, or doing).
That’s where things are with the right’s wild-ass attacks on LGBTQ people (and specifically trans people).
Unfortunately, rather than cover these attacks as threats to free speech and the ability to participate in society, mainstream media outlets like The New York Times seem more interested in covering meaningless scandals to support their absolutely nutty OMG! Trans people are the ones attacking free speech! narrative because some dumb transphobe had his poem rejected from a festival and the flood of concern trolling pieces about “the trans debate,” where they take something that doesn’t actually need debate (for instance, see the paper’s “just asking questions” piece about bone density in trans teens who use puberty blockers — there’s no need for “debate” on that specific issue, as the answer is that people on puberty blockers and/or their parents should talk to their doctor about possibly taking calcium supplements) all so they can do a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge to their actual “debate”: whether or not trans people should be allowed to exist.
The news media doesn’t care. The right-wing media will churn out phony outrage about things like the Joker, inventing a fake trans backstory; the mainstream media will churn out the “OMG, the transeseses don’t want us to be having this debate, but I, random cis dude staff writer at a big magazine, am going to write this piece anyway!” type stuff. I keep saying this, but it’s true: this is not how mainstream news outlets in 2023 would talk and write about any other group of people.
Because it’s trans people, they think it’s fine because they truly do not see trans people as people. The New York Times opinion page has just hired a man who has called for something verging on the genocide of trans people by saying society should push for an "end... to transgenderism," bringing the paper's stable of anti-trans columnists to at least four, but it lacks a single trans columnist. The same goes for the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and, well, every major newspaper. All of these places devote a disproportionate amount of time and energy to “the trans debate,” but actively exclude trans people from being a part of it.
Meanwhile, there is relative silence from the “free speech" brigade as states introduce bills that would make it illegal for someone like Laura Jane Grace to play an all-ages concert, or, as a new North Dakota bill would do, make it illegal for teachers to refer to trans students by the names/pronouns they go by. It’s literally a mandatory misgendering bill. No “free speech” outcry there? Not even from the people who’ve repeatedly screamed “free speech!” when defending teachers’ “right” to misgender students? It sure seems like they only care when it’s in one direction (even though one of these is much, much, much worse than the other).
It’s all been weighing on me so heavily, and it’s taking a real toll on me. I just want to live my life. I am so tired. Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you. Please consider sharing this on social media or forwarding it to a friend.
The fascinating thing to me is when they get all the facts so completely wrong to the point that their coverage is nonsense the second you get any context, why do they even bother starting from something real in the first place?
Why did they wait for a Joker comic to come out with this content? Why didn't they run a segment on a completely fabricated trans stripper abortifacient batman or whatever? Clearly they have no qualms with making things up or getting the information completely wrong. I honestly don't understand what's stopping them. There's functionally no difference.
OMG What about ALIEN (1979) Where Kane gets pregnant???