Scenic Route, Social Change and Mental Health Conversations for Perfectionists
You’ve outgrown perfection, but not your desire to grow.
This is the place where high-functioners, deep feelers, and quiet rebels come home to themselves.
We explore:
- Mental health wisdom (minus toxic positivity)
- Social change (that starts from within)
- System critiques (with actionable solutions)
- Inner wisdom (over external validation)
- Mindfulness for minimalists (no crystals required)
Join Jennifer Walter, sociologist (MASoc UCC) and recovering perfectionist, for weekly conversations that blend critical thinking with oh-so-much compassion.
If you’re questioning everything – or just trying to stay grounded in a chaotic world – this space is for you. We make room for your inner critic and collective action. Because personal healing and social change go hand in hand (with a side of potty humour).
New episodes drop every Tuesday.
The longest way round is the shortest way home – and that's exactly why we're taking the Scenic Route.
Ready to walk the scenic route?
The view here is *chef's kiss.*
Scenic Route, Social Change and Mental Health Conversations for Perfectionists
What Makes a Woman (And Who Gets to Decide?)
In this fierce and timely episode of The Scenic Route, we unpack the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that redefines “woman” based solely on biological sex, excluding trans women from legal protections, political representation, and basic recognition.
But this isn’t just a courtroom debate. It’s a culture war dressed in legal robes. We follow the funding behind the ruling, expose the billionaire feminists fueling the backlash, and dismantle the persistent myths about biology, gender, and identity.
This episode asks hard questions: Who really benefits from the binary? Why do so many defend it so violently? And what does it mean that we wreck Teslas, but not Harry Potter books?
“If you want to burn Teslas but not Harry Potter books… ask yourself why.”
We draw insights from Judith Butler, bell hooks, Laurie Penny, Simone de Beauvoir, and others to examine why trans women are not a threat to womanhood: they are its most powerful proof.
In this episode:
- Why the UK ruling matters far beyond Britain
- JK Rowling, Elon Musk, and the weaponisation of wealth
- Why biological sex is a spectrum, not a binary
- How gender is assigned, performed, and punished
- The role of evangelical power and purity culture in gender politics
- 10 takedowns of the “biological women only” myth
See you on the Scenic Route, because sometimes the long way is the shortest way home.
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What makes a woman? Not many questions are wrapped in centuries of control and just recently have been resurrected in a courtroom and wielded like a weapon what makes a woman? In the wake of a UK Supreme Court ruling that reduces womanhood to chromosomes and gatekeeps identity through law, this episode rips into the mask of the binary, the billionaire feminists and the biology myths still haunting public discourse, from JK Rowling's war on trans lives to the far-right's obsession with purity. This episode we all together will follow the money, expose the ideology and celebrate the radical truth. Trans women are not imposters. They are the future of feminism. And spoiler biology isn't binary, gender isn't fixed and trans women aren't fred. They're the front line of the fright for freedom.
Jennifer Walter:There's a different way to think about mental health, and it starts with slowing down. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home, and that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route podcast. Think of me as your sociologist, sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together, we're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together. We need to talk about this and sadly we still do. But here we go.
Jennifer Walter:So the UK Supreme Court last week, rubbed in the illusion of neutrality, decides that the term woman under the Equality Act means biological sex, not identity, not experience, not the pain of living misrecognized, not the courage of transition, just chromosomes fixed at birth XX, xy, no exceptions. The ruling is precise and clinical, but which, granted, are something admirable in legal texts, but its implications are far from it. It sends a signal, one that echoes far beyond legal textbooks and parliamentary chambers. It tells trans women you do not belong here, not in the legal definition, not in diversity statistics, not in the women's shelters, not in the story at all, really. But law, like gender, is not immutable. It is written by those in power and rewritten by those who dare to challenge it. So I'm not a legal expert, so we're not going to go into detail of this ruling, but we're going to look at it by sociological manner and everything that is behind, because this is crucial, and one part of that is, we follow the money right.
Jennifer Walter:The legal campaign behind this ruling wasn't spontaneous. It was funded, well organized and branded. Behind the curtain there's a network of think tanks, lobbyists and anti-trans pressure pressure groups many, many with ties to far-right ideology and like they're. This is really something we need to fucking emphasize. And their currency is fear. Right, their strategy is division. They're like us, them. We want to make women feel safer If there are no men dressed up as women in bathrooms, so they wrap exclusion in the language of feminism and women's rights, supporting women in college protection.
Jennifer Walter:And then there are people like JK Rowling, once a storyteller beloved by many, who is now a figurehead of the gender-critical movement and one of the poster turfs. I think she herself revealed that. She funded that. She put a lot of money behind this legal case in the UK and, and recently I think, she has gained more headline attraction for her runs on X than anything else. And she claims to speak, of course, for all women, but in fact, what she's doing is no different from Elon Musk weaponizing X against the vulnerable. Both use their wealth to punch down at vulnerable communities. Both claim to be silenced while commanding global platforms. Both use their wealth to punch down at vulnerable communities. Both claim to be silenced while commanding global platforms. Rowling weaponizes her credibility as a storyteller and Musk does it with tech-pro-libertarianism. It's the same fucking game and different fandoms. So if you're ready to burn a Tesla, but not your Harry Potter books, really ask yourself why that is, but not your Harry Potter books, really ask yourself why that is. And again, both do whatever they're fucking doing and it's not about safeguarding womanhood or anything. It's about owning the narrative and so and again.
Jennifer Walter:I feel this again needs to be said because apparently I don't know people. So let's be clear biology, biological sex, is not binary. It has never been right. Intersex people do exist. It's about 1.7 percent of the population. Granted, not that many percentages, but still a lot of lived experiences. And just to kind of give you an idea, that's about the same percentages for total population.
Jennifer Walter:As there are redheads and chromosomes in biology aren't limited to strictly xx or xy. There's xo, xxy, like I mean again, not a biologist, but this is like basic knowledge. Come on, people, um, androgen insensitivity, hormonal viruses, sex, as many biological things, is a spectrum, not a switch on off. So gender is not sex. Gender is cultural, historical and performed. How else would you explain how gender means so many different things to different cultures? Biology wouldn't? Biology remains the same, cultural, neutral. The other, sex is a complex biological system with many, many variables, and modern biology and modern medicine acknowledges variation. And here's the key.
Jennifer Walter:Only ideology insists on neat categories, on the binary, because I mean, if you think of it right to reduce womanhood to a uterus, it's not science, it's ideology. Because what would happen with women who are born, um, with uterus, that are malfunctioning, that aren't function as they're supposed to, right, who can't bear children, or menopause women? To exclude trans women from from it's not feminism, it's fear. And I always think sociological perspective to this is very interesting, as sociology has always called gender performance. Uh, I mean, of course we have, uh, simone de beauvoir, who famously said one is not born women, one is grown to be a woman. We have judy butler, um, but also we have male sociologists like irving goffman, who kind of like all understood that gender is something you grow into, that you act out or you need to act out. You need to perform to survive within Right. So you're not born into it, you're assigned it. You're assigned the gender women, woman and then you're punished or rewarded, depending on how well you're fucking performing, and that goes for a lot of other roles.
Jennifer Walter:The last podcast episode was on the performance of mother and motherhood, and one of the the same voices of our generation, laurie penny, writes that trans women are not the end of womanhood, they are its vanguard. They do not threaten femininity, they embody it. Right, because think about it when you risk everything your home, your safety, your family, your employment, your very life to be seen as who you are, what could be more fucking real than that? And they know what it means to perform as woman. One could argue they even have, they have to meet even fucking higher standards. So trans women are women, and this is a fucking hill I'll die on.
Jennifer Walter:And of course, black feminist scholars, like well-known expertise shell collins shows race in class and are interwoven into this performance. Right, feminism is intersectional and the black trans woman's experience experiences gender quite differently from a white cisgender executive. Yet both move through a world that assigns them value or disposability based on gender scripts. But then why? Or why does?
Jennifer Walter:The binary must be defended at all costs. Conservatives have always loved the binary because it's easy, right. It organized the chaos, the mess. It puts clear lines in the sand. Man, woman, leader, nurture strong, soft, pure, pure. From this, this fake clarity is needed to build hierarchies. They legislate power. They justify the unpaid labor of women and the unpaid suffering of anyone who doesn't fit.
Jennifer Walter:So the gender binary is not a truth, it's not a revelation, it's a tool. Revelation, it's a tool. It's a sorting mechanism, a cage disguised as order. It turns bodies into categories and categories into destinies. It says you belong here, you don't. You stay fucking silent and don't ask questions. It's the logic of locker rooms, right? The justification of gender violence, the architecture behind wage gaps and dress codes. It's the mechanism behind why fucking razors razor blades that are blue are cheaper than the pink ones. It sells power to one group and obedience to the other. It upholds a system where inequality can be disguised as biology, as nature, as something that has always been and therefore is right.
Jennifer Walter:And to those who feel powerless, especially cis men, lost in a world that no longer centers them, no less their poor hearts, the binary offers comfort, right, certainty. It represents a hierarchy where at least they're not at the bottom I, I mean. This is, of course, why it appeals to incels and other disaffected men. It promises control. It gives them something to blame instead of looking inwards and realizing well, maybe I did some bad things in my life. But the binary has a not just social component, it has a spiritual component.
Jennifer Walter:Right, if you look at the us and modern churches and the rise of the rise of mega churches, right, they have become factories of gender essentialism. Evangelical power structures depend on very strict roles submissive wife, the masculine leader, head of head of the table, the obedient daughter. Their vision of God is authoritarian, male and white. Their gospel is a hierarchy dressed in holiness, like we call it, as it is right. This fusion of theology and patriarchy is evangelical totalitarianism. And it's not just preaching as policy, it's in school boards, courtrooms, bathrooms. It spreads through purdy culture, trans panic and the sacred myth of real womanhood and I hope you can hear in my voice the there are quotes in this thing and trans women destroy that illusion by merely existing. They prove gender can be fluid, they choose. The cage is not there. They resist, they make visible the scaffolding that patriarchy tries to hide. They break the tool which makes them a threat and, accordingly, why they must be erased, silenced, discredited, not because they're wrong, but because they're right, and that threatens the whole machinery.
Jennifer Walter:So I often some uh, there was a a TikTok once I did on a similar topic and that was like oh, but um, can I like have like what are like rap, like arguments that for to like, can I make a case that women are women, so, first and foremost, actually like look at if, if the person you're engaging with online or offline, but most likely will be online, is there in an argument in good faith, like it's really there for or like I mean, why are people having an argument To kind of like expand your like, why you should be having an argument to kind of expand your knowledge and your way of thinking and be like oh, maybe I've been wrong. Okay, now I'm going to think differently about it. But this is not why 99% of people online are argument going into arguments. Percent of people online are argument going into arguments. So like, really make sure if this is worth your time before you just kind of go argue with people online. But, um, I put together, um, some rapid fire, um arguments to shatter the binary illusion. So so here we go. Maybe it serves you, who knows? So, myth one there are only two sexes XX and XY. Truth biology doesn't care about. Need categories. Intersex people exist. Chromosomal variations like XO, xxy and androgen insensitivity prove sex is a spectrum, not a binary.
Jennifer Walter:Myth two trans women aren't real women because they weren't born with female anatomy Truth womanhood isn't defined by anatomy. It's defined by how society treats you. Trans women experience misogyny, exclusion and gender-based violence because the world reads them as women. Myth If you can't give birth, you're not a woman Truth Many cis women don't give birth or can't give birth. Does that make them any less real? Tying womanhood to reproduction turns bodies into functions and feminism should know better before. Gender is a fact of nature. True gender is a cultural system. It shifts across time, place and politics. The binary is a recent intervention, not an ancient truth. Myth.
Jennifer Walter:Myth five fifth math myth five trans women are men trying to invade women's spaces. This is a head scratcher. Trans women flee the violence of masculinity. They risk everything to live as themselves, not to access a bloody fucking bathroom, to be a threat to other women. The real threat to women is patriarchy, not trans existence.
Jennifer Walter:Myth number six Allowing trans women in feminism dilutes the movement. It's actually the other way around. Exclusion is the dilution. Feminism that ignores the most vulnerable trans women, poor women, black and brown women serve patriarchy, not liberation. Myth number seven the chanery, the gender binary, protects women. It's true. The binary actually justifies violence as the root of control, not safety. It says woman must be small, silent, straight and everything else is punishable. Myth number eight trans women are impersonating women truth. No one is risking housing, job, family, safety and their life to impersonate transition is truth, and truth threatens systems built on lies. Myth number nine it's about protecting women's rights. Funny, though, how the loudest protectors of women's rights often stay silent on rape, culture, domestic abuse or economic inequality. They conveniently only show up when it's about to police, when it's about time to police. Gender, not protecting women. Myth number 10 trans women erase biological women.
Jennifer Walter:Trans women expand what womanhood can mean. Inclusion is an erasure. It's not taking anything away from your womanhood, and if your womanhood feels threatened by someone else's existence, womanhood feels threatened by someone else's existence. I would really look at what it means, what womanhood means to you. So maybe they serve you, maybe they don't take from it what you will. These are my 50 pence anyway. So so the truth they cannot erase.
Jennifer Walter:To be a woman is not to have a body that meets someone else's definition. It is to survive in a system built to harm you, to break you. It is to know your worth when no one else will say it out loud. It is to make yourself real and a world that wants you invisible. Trans women are women, not because they mimic something real, but because they are something real. They are real women, fiercely, fully and unapologetically. No ruling, no fantasy author, no billionaire funding campaign can change that. And if they're threatened by that truth, maybe it's high noon. They fucking were.
Jennifer Walter:And just like that we've reached the end of another journey together on the Cine Group podcast. Thank you for spending time with us, curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode. Visit us at cinegrouppodcastcom for everything you need. And if you're ready to embrace your Cine Group, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my Cine Group Affirmation Card Deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your Scenic Route Affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead? I certainly am. Remember, the Scenic Route is not just about the destination, but the experiences, learnings and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.
