Ken Jennings Says Speaking Out About Trans & Women’s Rights Is ‘Not Performative’

We’ll take Ken Jennings speaking up for human rights for forever, please. The Jeopardy! host appeared on a podcast where he said that what he tweets about is not performative. He just cares about other humans.

Jennings and Celebrity Jeopardy! Season 3 winner W. Kamau Bell talked about politics on Bell’s Who’s With Me? Podcast on September 9. A clip with Jennings talking about politics was posted to Bell’s Instagram page.

“I’m not trying to be inflammatory,” Jennings said. “Like there was a time when I was pretty much freelancing, and I could just go on social media and poke the bear.”

“Yeah, and you got some pushback for that,” Bell replied.

“Well, sure,” Jennings said. “Everyone was saying dumb things on Twitter in 2012, and I’m no exception.”

“It’s funny you say that because I feel like any tweet before, like, 2015 is kind of like, ‘We didn’t know,'” Bell said. “I remember when the idea of Twitter was sold to me by a few comedians, they said it was like an open mic. You can say anything.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell)

Jennings said that he should have thought more before he tweeted when he was younger. “Nowadays, I don’t say things to just piss off an imaginary villain who disagrees with me,” he said. “That’s a bad way to post.”

He went on to say that his right as a citizen is to post about which candidate the opposite party should nominate because we face these problems.

“It really means a lot that you say things about ICE and trans rights,” Bell said.

“The stuff that affects me and my family,” Jennings said. “Like law enforcement kidnapping my neighbors, that affects me. My trans friends and family, not having the same rights they did, that affects me. Women not having the same health rights they did for 50 years.”

“It’s not a soapbox, and it’s not performative. I’m just a person,” he ended.

Jennings has been very vocal in speaking up for the transgender community. In August, he wrote on BlueSky that there “isn’t an issue out there” that he “cares more about than trans rights” after he was blasted on the platform for playing a game on the New York Times’ website, which many fans and outlets claim has reported inaccurate information about the community.

The host has publicly been a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community for a long time. Jennings has supported transgender contestant Amy Schneider through her many accomplishments outside of the show. He has also discussed what his drag name would be after sharing a post about queer game show hosts.