Ben Shapiro attacks trans people who identify with Spider Woman from Across the Spiderverse
Published
Citation From the June 6, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): It is another thing when there is a suggestion made -- and it's constantly being made that children's characters are members of sexual minorities when they clearly are not. Okay? So the latest example of this is the new Spider Man movie. I've not seen the new Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse movie. Into the Spiderverse is a fantastic film, the first Spider-Man movie. The reviews of this one are good but not great, I would say. So I'm interested in seeing it.
Here is the new idiotic attempt to hijack characters. So, the movie does include usual left-wing propagandistic sort of imagery. The biggest piece of propagandistic imagery is Gwen Stacy, who is Spider-Woman in an alternate universe, has above her door a giant flag that says protect trans kids. So she's obviously, at the very least, a left-winger. Right? Protect trans kids. That protect trans kids flag is only in the trailer. You know why that is, by the way? The reason why that is? Because they want international distribution, and you know where they're not super big on that kind of stuff? China. And then her dad's jacket at one point in the film also has a trans flag on it. He's a cop, and he has a trans flag on it.
Also, her color scheme is hot pink and blue. So this has driven a huge number of people on the Twitters and in the gay press to suggest that, actually, Gwen Stacy is a dude. Gwen Stacy is actually not a female. She's not Spider-Woman, she's Spider-Trans-Woman because of the color scheme. Now back in 2014, when this character was first introduced in the comics, my understanding is this was the color scheme that was used in the original comics also. So, that is just not true. Also, it would be kind of a weird moment when Miles Morales finds something he didn't expect to find if they end up getting together. That'll be kind of awkward. But the attempt to hijack children's characters and then propagandize them into completely different characters -- like, it makes kind of a difference whether Gwen Stacy is a boy who thinks he is a girl. That makes kind of a difference to the story. Does it not?
But apparently, the entire trans community has now latched on to this sort of stuff in the same way that the gay community spent years claiming that Burt and Ernie on Sesame Street would go -- like, why do you -- just, there are lots of gay characters all over the place. Okay? There's no shortage of gay characters in film and TV. And this character is canonically pro-trans. So why do you need to do that? And the answer is because seizing popular properties and then pretending they are a thing they are not is part of mainstreaming the idea. That is what it is. They have to take what is subtle in terms of the, sort of, trans messaging on, like, a little, you know, throw away graphic and they have to turn it into the center of the film.
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So, first of all, the idea that a person who announced a hidden identity is therefore trans is absurd. The entire basis of Spider-Man for literally all of Spider-Man's history -- and, by the way, the basis of pretty much all superhero comics, movies is someone has a secret identity and it gets revealed to someone does not mean that Superman is trans because he also masquerades as Clark Kent during the day. But this is where we have decided to go at least in this radical part of society. So there's that.