Joe Rogan criticizes transgender community in recent podcast episode

Joe Rogan is facing more accusations of transphobia following a recent episode of his immensely popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In an interview with…

By: Karim Zidan | 2 years ago
Joe Rogan criticizes transgender community in recent podcast episode
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Joe Rogan is facing more accusations of transphobia following a recent episode of his immensely popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

In an interview with comedian Jim Breuer, Rogan expressed criticism of the transgender community while questioning the motivations of those who transition, as well as the supposed adulation they are given afterwards.

“There are people who really have these thoughts,” Rogan said on his podcast, which airs exclusively on Spotify. “The problem is it becomes a protected subject and then you get praised for transferring your gender—for changing your gender. And then it gets exciting for people to talk about, and then you get chastised for even discussing it in any weird way.”

“And then people who were marginalized for being—like, generally dumb people, if they transfer over and become another gender, then they get praised,” Rogan added. “There are a lot of people who are idiots, but then they become trans, and now all of a sudden we think they’re amazing.”

Rogan’s latest criticism comes in the wake of pressure from Spotify employees who demanded the removal of several episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience, as well as editorial oversight over the show going forward. None of the demands were granted by Spotify executives.

Rogan has also been guilty of transphobic comments over the past few years, most notably when discussing trans MMA fighter Fallon Fox in 2013, whom he referred to as a “f***ing man.”

“She calls herself a woman but… I tend to disagree,” Rogan said on his podcast in 2013 (h/t Bleacher Report). “She used to be a man but now she has had, she’s a transgender which is (the) official term that means you’ve gone through it, right? And she wants to be able to fight women in MMA. I say no f***ing way. I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick. You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints. You’re a f***ing man. That’s a man, OK? I don’t care if you don’t have a dick anymore.”

Fox, a natal male who transitioned in 2006, had served in the Navy as a operations specialist 2nd class for the U.S.S. Enterprise to support her daughter. She was also forced to quit college and to work as a trucker in order to save money for gender reassignment surgery. Yet despite the fact that she had transitioned seven years earlier, she was still made the target of Rogan’s bullying campaign.

“She’s not really a she,” Rogan added. “She’s a transgender, post-op person.”

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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