I have a trans friend who's gen-X father sent them a link to the "JK Rowling Witchtrials" podcast.
My friend's father is a Russian guy who learned CS in Russia before moving to the US, and is very "techno-libertarian" in ways that I think overlap a lot with us. (Valuing self-hosting, small-communities, sysadmin, software-freedom kind of guy.)
As I understand, my friend's dad used to be pretty cool, but he has a lot of very Trumpy coworkers. Work being back in the office, as I understand, it's rubbed off on him a lot.
My friend is very concerned about this, because they put a lot of effort into improving their relationship with their father, and it pains them to see their father send them transphobic garbage.
He's very much an objective/rational/etc. type of guy. That doesn't mean he's actually good at thinking, but I'd bet Ben Shapiro appeals to him.
In all, I think my friend sees hope in getting their father off the radicalization pipeline.
Does anyone know what might appeal to the Type Of Guy who is my friend's father? Right now, Contrapoints and Philosophy Tube are the only resources which really come to mind. (and i understand why contrapoints is controversial)
devtesla wrote
The thing about JKR stuff is that he might not fully understand the transphobia involved. Is this an isolated incident, or is he not supporting your friend in other ways?
We're at a moment of reaction to trans rights, where opponents of LGBT people in general are looking for whatever hooks they can get to wind stuff back. That includes pretending that JKR was attacked out of nowhere, a sort of spiritual "definition of a woman" thing that is ultimately very conservative, and this targeting children thing that twists helping kids with abusive parents into something insidious. Your friend's dad is falling for that, because it's a specific message targeted at twisting his morals this way. All you can hope is that he loves his kid more than whatever this is.