Speaker 1: We live in a world constructed around gender, like not
Speaker 1: around biological sex, very clearly around gender and gender presentation.
Speaker 1: We're not, you know, checking biological sex at bathrooms, We're
Speaker 1: checking gender presentation. So I think it's silly to sort
Speaker 1: of take the position that there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: gender or no such thing as being transgender. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Psychology Podcast. The following episode is part
Speaker 1: of the Making Sense of Sex and Gender series on
Speaker 1: this podcast. In this series, we try to make sense
Speaker 1: of the distinction between sex and gender and cover trans
Speaker 1: issues in a very thoughtful and nuanced fashion. We have
Speaker 1: balanced discussions from multiple perspectives, including scientists, activists, and a
Speaker 1: leading feminism scholar. This series will hopefully expand your mind
Speaker 1: and help you make sense of the current heated debates
Speaker 1: surrounding the distinctions between sex and gender as well as
Speaker 1: transgender issues. The aim is to turn down the temperature
Speaker 1: on this very heated topic and in increase understanding and
Speaker 1: integrate truth with love. I hope you will listen to
Speaker 1: this entire series with an open mind and an open heart,
Speaker 1: and as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback
Speaker 1: and comments on our website and on the YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: So that further ado, I bring you this episode within
Speaker 1: the Making Sense of Sex and Gender series. Today, we
Speaker 1: welcome Aaron Rabinowitz and Calli Wright to the podcast. Aaron
Speaker 1: is a lecturer in philosophy at Rutgers University. He hosts
Speaker 1: the Embrace the Void and Philosophers and Space podcasts. He
Speaker 1: specializes in ethics, meta ethics, and problems surrounding AI and personhood.
Speaker 1: He earned his MA in philosophy from Colorado State University.
Speaker 1: Calli is a freelance audio producer and the host of
Speaker 1: the Queer Spleening podcast. They are a non binary trans person.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I talk to Aaron and Kelly about
Speaker 1: gender and trans issues. When it comes to transgendered folk,
Speaker 1: we tend to focus on extreme examples that are are
Speaker 1: far removed from reality. Some people think being transgender is
Speaker 1: entirely a social contagent, while others reject the reality of
Speaker 1: gender altogether. Calli shares how transitioning has allowed them to
Speaker 1: become their most authentic self. Aaron sheds light on the
Speaker 1: issues of consent, autonomy, identity, and medical ethics. Both Cali
Speaker 1: and Aaron recognize that specific topics can negatively skew public opinion,
Speaker 1: which is why addressing misconceptions and highlighting the lived experiences
Speaker 1: of trans men, women, and non binary individuals are crucial
Speaker 1: to the conversation. So, without further ado, I bring you
Speaker 1: Aaron and Calli. I'm really glad to welcome Aaron and
Speaker 1: Calli on the show today. Thanks for coming on the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks so much. Now, look,
Speaker 1: I want to say I enter this conversation with all
Speaker 1: the humility in the world because there's so much I'm
Speaker 1: trying to understand about this swamp of a discussion and
Speaker 1: all these topics and you know, and what are all
Speaker 1: the I' hoping you too will teach me today? One
Speaker 1: of the most triggering things I could you know, people
Speaker 1: could say things to like foster conversation without triggering people,
Speaker 1: you know, And how can this be productive? So if
Speaker 1: I do say anything stupid today, please please correct me
Speaker 1: and let me know what I have done wrong because
Speaker 1: it is unintentional. Yeah, that's aught. We could start with
Speaker 1: both of you interest introducing yourselves and telling me what
Speaker 1: are you all about? Why do you interest in the
Speaker 1: kind of things that you're interested in? Okay, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm Cali I'm a non binary trains person. I guess that.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't normally introduce myself that way, but
Speaker 1: that's like relevant to the discussion that we're having, so
Speaker 1: figure it makes sense to just kind of like name
Speaker 1: the position that I'm in socially here. I just turned
Speaker 1: thirty eight. I've been making podcasts for like ten years
Speaker 1: or so, and I kind of have a knack for
Speaker 1: communicating with folks and helping folks understand things and something
Speaker 1: that I seem to kind of have the capacity to do.
Speaker 1: So I like having these sorts of conversations where people
Speaker 1: are engaging in good faith because I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lots of unknowns about trans folks, right, Like the
Speaker 1: convert the broader mainstream conversation around trans people is still
Speaker 1: relatively new, and there's a lot of people very invested
Speaker 1: in spreading misinformation and disinformation about trans folks and like
Speaker 1: what that life experience is, like what it even means
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, And you know, people who
Speaker 1: engage in good and bad faith. I just I tend
Speaker 1: to not mess with that because it's frustrating and rarely
Speaker 1: bears fruit. But people engaging in good faith, like I
Speaker 1: think it's important to just talk to folks and let
Speaker 1: people know, like this, this is what the real thing is,
Speaker 1: because I think part of the reason that the propaganda
Speaker 1: against trans people has been so effective is that there's
Speaker 1: basically there's just like a void of information that people
Speaker 1: are filling as opposed to, you know, like a well
Speaker 1: understood cultural idea that people are trying to change. It's
Speaker 1: just like you start with a question mark and then
Speaker 1: you get to fill it in with whatever you want.
Speaker 1: And people tend to be a little biased, I think
Speaker 1: towards like the first thing that they hear about something,
Speaker 1: and so like it just creates this uphill battle for us,
Speaker 1: and so I like to I enjoy having conversations like
Speaker 1: these because of that. Cool and Aaron, introduce yourself before
Speaker 1: I start with a bit of questions. Sure, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I since we're laying all of our identity cards on
Speaker 1: the table, right, I'm assis hit half Jewish passing white dude.
Speaker 1: I you know, come from like a fairly boring middle
Speaker 1: class background, and you know, got very interested in philosophy
Speaker 1: from an early age, even before I knew that that
Speaker 1: was what it was. And I'm into a lot of
Speaker 1: things I won't list all of the weird things that
Speaker 1: I spend my time on, but this sort of common
Speaker 1: theme is moral education. Like Callie, I really enjoy communicating
Speaker 1: ideas to people, and especially I've found that I really
Speaker 1: enjoy teaching about ethics and helping people think through really
Speaker 1: complicated ethical topics. I find that a lot of the
Speaker 1: folks that I talked to have never gotten any kind
Speaker 1: of proper moral education. Either they got like a religious upbringing,
Speaker 1: or they got you know, whatever secular culture has for
Speaker 1: moral education these days, which is almost nothing, and so
Speaker 1: they just feelt feel like they have any of the
Speaker 1: language that they would need to deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of issues. So it's a real fun experience. I'm particularly
Speaker 1: obsessed with the issue of luck. And that's the only
Speaker 1: time I'll say that word that hopefully in the next hour,
Speaker 1: because I just spent the past Yeah, I writing about it.
Speaker 1: For qual examples, conspiracy theories, especially anti Semitic conspiracism, is
Speaker 1: something I'm very interested in, and you know, misinformation in general,
Speaker 1: and also ethics leads to you know, concern about things
Speaker 1: like LGBTQ rights obviously, but also I come from a
Speaker 1: lifetime theater background, so I grew up even though I'm
Speaker 1: sis around a lot of individuals who were gender nonconforming
Speaker 1: before we knew what that word meant. And like, I
Speaker 1: know multiple people who have vastly more than the like
Speaker 1: normal average people who have transitioned from living in theater
Speaker 1: or who are in some ways non binary. I care
Speaker 1: a lot about them and their experiences, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to make sure that they
Speaker 1: are getting what they need in this world, while also
Speaker 1: you know, addressing the concerns of people who, like CALLI said,
Speaker 1: are coming to this new and fresh, because you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the beginning that like you're you know,
Speaker 1: call you out if you get anything wrong, like everybody
Speaker 1: gets things wrong. I have misgendered people. I still missgender people.
Speaker 1: I probably sometimes accidentally miss gender Callie, because it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, we we do these things and friends with
Speaker 1: each other. So that's that's awesome, right, And the important
Speaker 1: thing is that you don't do it intentionally. You recognize
Speaker 1: when you've done it, you acknowledge it, you apologize, or
Speaker 1: you'd get better at it because you become more aware.
Speaker 1: I've just switched us. I use they more and more
Speaker 1: frequently with individuals unless they specifically ask otherwise just because
Speaker 1: it's it's functional to some degree. But yeah, I care
Speaker 1: about this for a lot of different reasons, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to chat about you know, I also think
Speaker 1: it's really important to like try to turn down the
Speaker 1: temperature on this conversation while also taking seriously the you know,
Speaker 1: the various challenges that trans individuals are facing. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about genuine concerns about treatment, especially in for
Speaker 1: profit systems stuff like that. So let me start off
Speaker 1: CALLI just understanding you a little bit more and your
Speaker 1: interest in this topic personally, I want to learn more
Speaker 1: about your own personal experiences. So what sex were you
Speaker 1: identified at birth? I was assigned male at birth, and
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just say, like it's an important thing
Speaker 1: to know that, Like I am super super open to
Speaker 1: having those kinds of discussions. Not all trans folks are so,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was. I was assigned mail at birth
Speaker 1: when I was twenty eight ish, so actually coming up
Speaker 1: on ten years or so ago, I you know, I
Speaker 1: just figured out for sure that that wasn't what felt
Speaker 1: correct to me in terms of the way other people
Speaker 1: treated me, in terms of you know, whatever messaging I
Speaker 1: got about like what that is supposed to mean for
Speaker 1: a person's life, Like, none of that made sense to me,
Speaker 1: And I had not really met or been exposed to
Speaker 1: the idea of non binary folks. And so I think
Speaker 1: what was going on at the time This wasn't explicitly
Speaker 1: what I was thinking, but I think what was happening
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, well this box doesn't feel great, so
Speaker 1: of course the logical thing is to like jump into
Speaker 1: the other box. And so and so I came out.
Speaker 1: She her trans woman, and you know, there's there's an
Speaker 1: interesting social pressure that can happen when when you come
Speaker 1: out in that way, because often you end up feeling
Speaker 1: very pressured to immediately jump into all of the other
Speaker 1: gendered stereotypes. And there's like a super deep discussion to
Speaker 1: have about gatekeeping even within the trans community, and the
Speaker 1: idea of respectability politics that like people are only going
Speaker 1: to take you seriously if you try your best to
Speaker 1: like look and act quote unquote normal. And I think
Speaker 1: I was feeling a lot of that pressure. And then
Speaker 1: maybe four five ish, I don't what's time anymore. I
Speaker 1: just started to figure out that like gender neutral seemed
Speaker 1: to be the thing that actually resonated the most with me.
Speaker 1: And so that's the short version of how I came
Speaker 1: to be where I am been taking hormones for eightish years.
Speaker 1: I had bottom surgery six years ago, so I had
Speaker 1: a vaginoplasty, and you know, both of those things are
Speaker 1: you know, easily in the top five of the best
Speaker 1: things that I've ever done for my own Like comfort
Speaker 1: with my body, the way that I relate to people,
Speaker 1: like romantically, intimately, sexually, all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, I feel like, approaching forty, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of comfortable in the ways that I see most folks.
Speaker 1: I guess if there's an average of like, I'm generally
Speaker 1: okay with who I am as a person, except being
Speaker 1: the I guess, quote unquote normal adult problems. I feel
Speaker 1: like approaching forty, I'm finally like there in life, having
Speaker 1: gone through all of that and figured all of that out.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other things that I don't think
Speaker 1: are directly related to being trans, but have sort of
Speaker 1: come as a result of things that I've learned along
Speaker 1: that journey. Polyamory, non monogamy, being very open about being
Speaker 1: a very sexual person, being very open about I mean
Speaker 1: almost being a hedonist. I guess if that's the way
Speaker 1: to go. To be clear, Like, none of those things
Speaker 1: are explicitly connected to being trans, but in doing a
Speaker 1: lot of the unpacking about the things that I've learned
Speaker 1: about gender and you know, the things that make me
Speaker 1: feel the most comfortable versus the societal messaging that I
Speaker 1: got growing up about what's correct and what's not correct,
Speaker 1: sort of unpacking what was what in my head for
Speaker 1: that and figuring out where I sat, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of that was sort of like a secondary journey and
Speaker 1: figuring out gender stuff for me, It just led me
Speaker 1: to unpack so many other things about my life. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's kind of what what's got me here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. So within the trans community, I
Speaker 1: don't know the statistics, so maybe can inform me is
Speaker 1: non binary trans in the minariti? I would assume it is?
Speaker 1: But is that correct? What do we know? Sort of
Speaker 1: are you kind of marginalized even within or the minority,
Speaker 1: even within and already existing minoriti? Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: probably true. I don't know that there are actually good
Speaker 1: statistics about that to be able to say for sure,
Speaker 1: but I think anecdotally I would say probably that's the case.
Speaker 1: Just based on my own experience and the experiences of
Speaker 1: folks that I know and have heard talk about it,
Speaker 1: I would say that's probably true. Cool. So my research
Speaker 1: topic is self actualization, and so I'm all about helping
Speaker 1: people in any which way they can possibly be to
Speaker 1: feel as though they're able to live their most self
Speaker 1: action life. Do you feel like the decisions you've made
Speaker 1: in your life have allowed you to have more alignment
Speaker 1: between multiple areas of your life and multiplayers within you
Speaker 1: as well. You know, the idea of alignment, you know,
Speaker 1: within a self actualization context is about you're aligned with
Speaker 1: your environment, You're aligned and internally you're aligned with how
Speaker 1: you see yourself. There's there's a hundred ways we can
Speaker 1: talk about in alignment. But do you feel like you're
Speaker 1: maximizingly solving for x X being alignment? Yeah. Honestly, at
Speaker 1: this point in my life, I feel like, aside from
Speaker 1: mostly unconnected like mental health problem is like, I'm a
Speaker 1: pretty anxious person. And I think some of that is
Speaker 1: sort of the like the low grade trauma of like
Speaker 1: going through your life being very different from the people
Speaker 1: around you. I think some of some of the anxiety
Speaker 1: comes from that, but I also think some of it
Speaker 1: is maybe inherent to who I am, and so like,
Speaker 1: there's little things like that that I'm working out. But
Speaker 1: in terms of feeling like I am the most actualized
Speaker 1: version of myself, I am one hundred percent there, And
Speaker 1: I think the things that got me the most I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say one hundred percent there. I've never met anyone
Speaker 1: in my life who said that, So I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: as close to one hundred percent, we need to study
Speaker 1: you more closely. Yeah, as close to one hundred percent
Speaker 1: there as I think someone could reasonably be. Wow, the
Speaker 1: ways in which I'm trying to figure myself out now
Speaker 1: feel pretty average. Like if I'm talking to the people
Speaker 1: around me about the things that I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out my life and the way that I relate to
Speaker 1: the world, I don't feel like those struggles for me
Speaker 1: are outsized in comparison to the average person. The way
Speaker 1: that I used to and what got me most of
Speaker 1: the way there each time, was was figuring things out
Speaker 1: around gender and then secondarily to that, figuring out the
Speaker 1: way that relationships make sense to do to me, Like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of a relationship anarchist and that's like
Speaker 1: a whole other discuss but the general thing is that
Speaker 1: I'm polyamorous, and I have romantic and sexual relationships to
Speaker 1: varying degrees with other people, and there's no like hierarchy
Speaker 1: within that. I don't have like a primary secondary partner
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And I think all of those things,
Speaker 1: kind of put together, have put me in the place
Speaker 1: where I feel I feel I've arrived at being mostly
Speaker 1: average in terms of the problems that I have along
Speaker 1: those lines with like self realization. Wow, you're like everything
Speaker 1: that Matt Walsh stands against, like his uh pretty much
Speaker 1: probably would explode hearing everything. Not just I don't mean
Speaker 1: to just pick on one person, but let's say like
Speaker 1: the Christian right, you know, like or any set of
Speaker 1: humans groups who are committed to as traditional you know,
Speaker 1: as can be, would hear a lot of what you
Speaker 1: just said in their heads will just explode. My avatar
Speaker 1: for that is my very very Pentecostal grandma. I was
Speaker 1: her favorite grandkid growing up. And then once I started
Speaker 1: down this journey, it was basically like every time I
Speaker 1: took a step towards like, oh, this is a thing
Speaker 1: that makes me feel good about my life was like
Speaker 1: a step into something that she absolutely unequivocally hated, and
Speaker 1: that's like a different pain point. And I'm lucky and
Speaker 1: that there's I've only had two relationships like flame out
Speaker 1: like that over gender stuff. But yeah, that's that's pretty much.
Speaker 1: That's pretty accurate. Yeah, and I want to explain why
Speaker 1: I think that's a little relevant. And don't worry, Aaron,
Speaker 1: we will get you into the don't feel excluded, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I also am hated by the right for many similar reasons.
Speaker 1: I don't feel left out. We'll bring you in this second.
Speaker 1: But I think this is irrelevant because these kinds of
Speaker 1: conversations are so hard to have as a scientist because
Speaker 1: you start to realize pretty soon that everyone's kind of
Speaker 1: committed to a certain ideology that it's almost like once
Speaker 1: you start pushing it enough, even if you start saying
Speaker 1: some things there. I'll give you a stick example because
Speaker 1: I did see a talk at where someone challenged Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh on talkie gave and they said, well, actually, the
Speaker 1: statistics you just said are not true, Like, let me
Speaker 1: tell you about some scientific findings, and they kept pushing
Speaker 1: and pushing, pushing, and it finally got to the point
Speaker 1: where Matt just simply said, you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about your scientific findings. There's never any
Speaker 1: scientific finding that will convince me that it's okay to
Speaker 1: be trans. And I thought that was revealing. Look, I
Speaker 1: thought that was revealing. And I'm sure there are instances
Speaker 1: that a lot of people can point me to where
Speaker 1: they say, well, we see that among the trans community
Speaker 1: as well, where if you try to give them some science,
Speaker 1: they'll say, well, okay. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I don't really care. There's no nothing in the world
Speaker 1: that convinced me that a trans woman is not a woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would push back a little bit
Speaker 1: against that because for me, it's I mean, it's literally
Speaker 1: just my everyday life, right. It's not really a matter
Speaker 1: of ideology as much as it's a matter of like
Speaker 1: these like, this is the life that I live and
Speaker 1: who I am as a person, and I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it's possible for there to be science to
Speaker 1: convince me that I should I should have a different
Speaker 1: experience of my life and the way that I relate
Speaker 1: to the world that I do, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's a lot of times where the conversation gets lost
Speaker 1: is like, like, I mean, what what scientific information are
Speaker 1: we even looking for when we talk? Because I think
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to throw out terms like science and
Speaker 1: biology and that kind of stuff, But the question I
Speaker 1: think really is like what are we looking for in
Speaker 1: that right? Because I can tell you that everything about
Speaker 1: my life and my emotional wellbeing feels better when I'm
Speaker 1: on hormones versus when I'm not, or when I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Everything about my intimate sexual life feels better post bottom
Speaker 1: surgery than it did before. So like, I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure how you would apply science to say that those
Speaker 1: statements could be wrong, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't even think it's necessarily the right framing if
Speaker 1: I can piggyback on that, like I do think there
Speaker 1: are like two kinds of things where people can either
Speaker 1: disagree or agree, and one of them is like empirical claims.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the effects of puberty blockers? You
Speaker 1: know what? You know how to what degree are they
Speaker 1: quote unquote reversible or not? Those are empirical debates for.
Speaker 1: But then there are philosophical debates, moral debates about you know,
Speaker 1: what is the right ethical balance for informed consent for miners.
Speaker 1: What is what is a woman? Right? That's not a
Speaker 1: scientific question. You can say what is a biological female
Speaker 1: might be a scientific question, but the idea of what
Speaker 1: is a woman in the gendered sense is a philosophical
Speaker 1: debate that involves social constructs and a bunch of complex issues.
Speaker 1: And so don't I don't think you could build a
Speaker 1: machine that could answer the question what is you know,
Speaker 1: what truly actually is the essence of a woman? I
Speaker 1: think that's sort of point part of the point, right
Speaker 1: of like the second wave of feminism and so, but
Speaker 1: I also think that, like, it's not true that everybody
Speaker 1: is Matt Walsh. I think most people actually aren't Matt Walsh.
Speaker 1: I think Matt Walsh a particularly extreme, you know, zealadous person.
Speaker 1: I think if you came to Cali or I with
Speaker 1: a study that said, look, here are really, really really
Speaker 1: severe harms from using puberty blockers, that we would take
Speaker 1: that seriously. It'd be part of our ethical calculus in
Speaker 1: assessing what is the right treatment. We might still think
Speaker 1: that the right treatment ultimately is going to be a
Speaker 1: decision between patient and doctor. But it's not like we're
Speaker 1: going to be you know, totally in denial about it.
Speaker 1: There are certain people who will say things that I
Speaker 1: think get towards science denial about you know, the difference
Speaker 1: between post pubescent bodies or the role of distosterone, stuff
Speaker 1: like that, where I think that there's some some like
Speaker 1: wishful thinking on the science side of things. But I
Speaker 1: think for the most part, activists and non activists mostly
Speaker 1: just want people to have a good quality of life,
Speaker 1: and they want them to get there by not being
Speaker 1: sort of duped or or you know, sucked into something
Speaker 1: that isn't true. But like, we don't really have a
Speaker 1: perfect grasp on issues like gender and sexuality. We're still
Speaker 1: learning about these things quite a bit. And the part
Speaker 1: of the way that we learn about it in a
Speaker 1: liberal society is that we let people live their lives
Speaker 1: in a way that might seem like it's harmful to
Speaker 1: them from our perspective, but we think that they should
Speaker 1: be you know, free to harm themselves in those ways,
Speaker 1: and that could even be true for under individuals. Sometimes. Well,
Speaker 1: that's very controversial, and I think where the discussion often
Speaker 1: goes as straight too is like this the weight that
Speaker 1: is given to certain questions, right because I think for
Speaker 1: a fair amount of people who have the conversation from
Speaker 1: the right wing side of things, when we talk about
Speaker 1: letting a trans kid be a trans kid, what they're
Speaker 1: thinking is surgery and hormones and puberty blockers and all
Speaker 1: of that sort of stuff. What is actually happening most
Speaker 1: of the time is like a different haircut, a different toy,
Speaker 1: maybe different name and pronouns, different clothes, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like stuff that you can literally just say words and change.
Speaker 1: Like that's what's happening most of the time, and anything
Speaker 1: else is in most cases already like you have to
Speaker 1: go through so many different hoops and so many different
Speaker 1: barriers and gatekeepers to get any further than that. You know,
Speaker 1: I would never say, like there's no possible world in
Speaker 1: which we could have a conversation about uh, problems that
Speaker 1: are that are caused in that way. But like, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about the vast, vast majority of cases, like
Speaker 1: people are focusing on the thing that happens, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: the least amount of the time, it's late term abortions.
Speaker 1: It's just right, it's not the central concern. Yes, And
Speaker 1: in fact, I was going to make a similar point
Speaker 1: in distinguishing different talks of topics of conversations. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of start with the most general, which
Speaker 1: is just having dignity and respect for people who say
Speaker 1: that they're trands. I mean, it's just the most basic
Speaker 1: sort of human dignity level without going with and I
Speaker 1: want to cover all the more niche topics later on.
Speaker 1: I refuse to be pulled into the deep end just yet.
Speaker 1: But I refuse refuse. It's all deepend So just pick
Speaker 1: your all deepend Oh man, that's fair. Yeah, okay, let
Speaker 1: me just step back a second. I really like something
Speaker 1: that Aaron talks about a lot in his writings. I
Speaker 1: don't know I'm talkingalking about you, Like I said, you're
Speaker 1: not in the room right now. But there's I like
Speaker 1: something that you put in your writings at all, which
Speaker 1: is that you often talk about Look, do the benefits
Speaker 1: outweigh the disadvantages? Okay, what really are the disadvantages? For Like,
Speaker 1: let's say someone who was identified at birth as a
Speaker 1: male decides that wearing dresses and asking people to call
Speaker 1: them their pronouns, she what is the disadvantage to us
Speaker 1: treating that person how they wish to be treated in
Speaker 1: a way that helps them feel self actualized in a
Speaker 1: way that feels they're their best they're living their best life.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's that hurting what they're doing now? So
Speaker 1: I'm going to just ask that question, do do you
Speaker 1: see any disadvantages there? The most outsized harm that could
Speaker 1: come from that is actually the transphobia that person will
Speaker 1: experience from their peers, Like I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's even something that is inherent to that person being trans.
Speaker 1: I think it's inherent to the cultural position in that
Speaker 1: transnis occupies. In a lot of places like That's it's
Speaker 1: definitely changing. There are pockets where it's changing, and it
Speaker 1: turns out to not be that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: But I think if we're talking about the highest risk
Speaker 1: of harm coming to that person actually comes more from
Speaker 1: transphobia and gender essentialism than it does from any other thing,
Speaker 1: which is like, That's the conversation I ended up having
Speaker 1: with my mom when I came out. She was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, I was so ready for all of
Speaker 1: the arguments that she was gonna like try to throw
Speaker 1: at me, and she was just like, you know, I
Speaker 1: just worry because like people are really mean, And I
Speaker 1: was like shit, that's the only one. I don't have
Speaker 1: anything because you're right, well, yeah, And the answer, of
Speaker 1: course is like, you're better off being who you are,
Speaker 1: and even if society mistreats you than hiding who you
Speaker 1: are in that kind of way. I will, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll step in for the people who would object more
Speaker 1: strenuously and say, the real problem here is this is
Speaker 1: a social contagion. So this is the view of lot
Speaker 1: of gender critical individuals who believe that, like the substantial
Speaker 1: increase in people identifying in these kinds of ways is
Speaker 1: the result of a culture that is for in various ways,
Speaker 1: in doctrinating young individuals to think that they are trans,
Speaker 1: to think they you know, it makes them special, it
Speaker 1: makes them popular, whatever. It's a weird kind of actually
Speaker 1: the exact opposite of what Kali was just saying there,
Speaker 1: which is that like this view that individuals can build
Speaker 1: up a bunch of social cred and capital by being
Speaker 1: trans or non binary, and like, you know, to be fully,
Speaker 1: fully honest, I believe there are spaces in our society now,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's a good thing where being
Speaker 1: trans in these kind of ways will get you treated
Speaker 1: better in some ways than other individuals, and that's like
Speaker 1: people trying to correct for all of the other mistreatment
Speaker 1: and all of the other places. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: ultimately what's going on. And I think very much like
Speaker 1: the concerns about gay panics before this, you know, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of individuals who are expressing these things are
Speaker 1: you know, working through what they are genuinely feeling. They're
Speaker 1: not just trying to build social capital and that you know,
Speaker 1: what they're really concerned about is they're going to get
Speaker 1: so indoctrinated early on when they're just wearing dresses and
Speaker 1: getting haircuts that then they're going to want puberty blockers,
Speaker 1: which are going to sterilize them and have a bunch
Speaker 1: of other negative side effects, and then they're going to
Speaker 1: want surgery, and then they're going to be lifetime patients
Speaker 1: at the you know, the whims of the financial you know,
Speaker 1: medical state essentially. That's the like, the most extreme concern
Speaker 1: that I see people presenting is that they think, genuinely
Speaker 1: some of them think that like giant billionaire transnationalists are
Speaker 1: like pushing the trans agenda for the sake of their
Speaker 1: own transhumanist goal and to get rich off of consumer
Speaker 1: body modification. That's the most extreme fear. Yeah, I chuckle
Speaker 1: a little bit. The idea of gay panics, it's just
Speaker 1: from a many perspective, that's pure comedy to think like
Speaker 1: lavender panic is the correct term. I suppose it's like
Speaker 1: heterosexuals are suddenly panicking, Oh my gosh, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be become gay. Oh no, But I mean that doesn't
Speaker 1: tend to be the case. It tends to be that
Speaker 1: gay people are like, I'm gay, Like I know I'm gay.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I feel like that. The idea
Speaker 1: with trans folk, I notice you use the word transfolks.
Speaker 1: I'm gona use the word that same phrase. It seems
Speaker 1: like transfolk seem to know that they're transplant, like they
Speaker 1: feel it inside them, and it's, uh, it's not something
Speaker 1: that and it happened tends to happen pretty early. And
Speaker 1: I know that that's that's controversial because people say, oh
Speaker 1: that there's this panic or this social contagion in the schools,
Speaker 1: which is why it's early. But it could also just
Speaker 1: be that they people are starting to identify who they
Speaker 1: are earlier and and kind of recognize understand it more.
Speaker 1: That's that's an alternative hypothesis. Anyways, the idea of gay
Speaker 1: panic is interesting. Yeah, it is a product of our
Speaker 1: society moving slightly in the direction of being affirming of
Speaker 1: trans folks, recognizing that we exist, and saying that like,
Speaker 1: whatever it is you need in pursuit of feeling okay
Speaker 1: is actually a positive for your life, right, Like society
Speaker 1: is in some ways at least moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, I think it makes a lot
Speaker 1: more sense that if you have a kid who is
Speaker 1: growing up in a far less oppressive environment around gender
Speaker 1: norms and stereotypes, that you're going to find kids are
Speaker 1: more likely to express the ways that they don't fit
Speaker 1: in with those kinds of with those kinds of stereotypes
Speaker 1: and boxes and stuff. And I think that just feels
Speaker 1: incredibly logical to me. And I think the fear that
Speaker 1: you're talking about, I think that's really what it is.
Speaker 1: It's fear. And you know, there's a base cultural idea.
Speaker 1: I guess that you know, the idea that other people
Speaker 1: can live out gender dynamics in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't is somehow a threat to the way that I
Speaker 1: do things. That's like a very pervasive cultural idea, and
Speaker 1: I don't and I certainly don't want to paint like
Speaker 1: everyone in the trans community is somehow being beyond that,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I mentioned earlier, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of gatekeeping within the trans community. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to be as progressive as it takes to
Speaker 1: get to the point where I'm okay, but anyone who
Speaker 1: goes outside of that box is the problem, right, And
Speaker 1: that's a sort of respectability politics you see play out
Speaker 1: in the trans community, where a transman a trans woman
Speaker 1: will do their best to appear outwardly to be sis
Speaker 1: and completely blend in. And anyone who doesn't do that
Speaker 1: is actually the reason why, you know, trans people can't
Speaker 1: get the respect that we deserve in society. And so
Speaker 1: the problem is other trans people, not transphobia. And that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an entirely other tangent to go down.
Speaker 1: But that is to say, I think it's a basic
Speaker 1: cultural idea that we sort of have baked into us
Speaker 1: growing up that and I do think that reaction is
Speaker 1: often based in fear, fear of that specifically, And when
Speaker 1: we say fear, I want to be careful because I
Speaker 1: think people when they hear oh, your actions are based
Speaker 1: in fear that's like a dismissive You're not being rational
Speaker 1: and that's bad. It's not at all that. And when
Speaker 1: I talk about moral panics, you know, when I describe these,
Speaker 1: I really do try to emphasize I think the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people involved in a moral panic are concerned
Speaker 1: about something that's genuine, whether that's the well being of
Speaker 1: children or something there. They may have a disgust reaction
Speaker 1: towards trans individuals, but I don't think they are like
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh for the most part. I think most of
Speaker 1: them are just genuinely worried that, like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: doctors are pushing, you know, treatments on patients that they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be, or you know, their excesses, or not enough
Speaker 1: gatekeeping or something like that, and they're real concern is
Speaker 1: that they just want to make sure that, you know,
Speaker 1: people aren't experiencing harms. One difference between the lavender panic
Speaker 1: and the anti trans panic is, you know, people will
Speaker 1: argue if you come out as gay when you're a
Speaker 1: teenager and you you know, are gay for a while
Speaker 1: and then realize you're straight, there's no irreversible medical treatments
Speaker 1: that go along with that. Whereas you know, and this
Speaker 1: is why there's the big debate happening right now about
Speaker 1: the use of the word irreversible with puberty blockers, is that, like,
Speaker 1: there is a reality and there's a different ethical cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis to be made when it involves medical treatments
Speaker 1: in this way. And that's why we need and we
Speaker 1: don't have good enough data about how many people are
Speaker 1: detransitioning or you know, desisting, or there's different debates about
Speaker 1: the terminology all these kinds of things. And even if
Speaker 1: you know, I think Kelly and I probably both believe
Speaker 1: that like new data is mostly going to affirm that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people are positively benefited from the treatment,
Speaker 1: and that much like any medical treatment, there are some
Speaker 1: people for whom this is not the ideal treatment, and
Speaker 1: there may be some trade offs involved there. But I
Speaker 1: definitely think that it's reasonable to talk about gatekeeping and
Speaker 1: people not profiting off of the suffering of others, And
Speaker 1: then there's this whole unreasonable world that essentially is going
Speaker 1: to say I think people like Matt Walsh really have
Speaker 1: to get to a point where they enforce rigid heteronormativity,
Speaker 1: because if you're going to say no men, you know,
Speaker 1: no biological men in women's restrooms. Right, You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to harass anybody who doesn't fit what is the accepted
Speaker 1: standard norm of what looks like a woman, And people
Speaker 1: like Kathleen Stock have acknowledged that. That means that, you know,
Speaker 1: non conforming lesbians are going to get harassed for using
Speaker 1: restrooms stuff like that. So I don't see how their
Speaker 1: approach can can get what they want socially in terms
Speaker 1: of protections for women's spaces and things like that without
Speaker 1: rolling back way more than just puberty blockers for precubescent individuals.
Speaker 1: Something that makes this so much more complicated is that,
Speaker 1: like Aaron said, I agree with what Aaron said about
Speaker 1: like where the average person is probably coming from in
Speaker 1: this conversation. And there is what the average person thinks,
Speaker 1: and then there are what the people who actually have
Speaker 1: the power to enforce those things think, right, Like the people,
Speaker 1: for example, in US government. Right, I don't actually think
Speaker 1: that most of those folks have that kind of genuine concern, Right,
Speaker 1: people like Matt Walsh, for example, He's obviously not a
Speaker 1: government person, but he's someone who has a lot of
Speaker 1: social power. Right, I think with a lot of things.
Speaker 1: It's a calculated way to use their platform to push
Speaker 1: whatever they want to get from the culture war, to
Speaker 1: try to political and moral agenda. Yeah, exactly. And that's
Speaker 1: what I think makes it so hard is because I
Speaker 1: do think the average person probably does have that sort
Speaker 1: of genuine, understandable concern, But the people who are actually
Speaker 1: passing these laws and affecting this change, I don't think
Speaker 1: really do like it adds an extra layer of complexity
Speaker 1: to trying to talk about these issues, because it's really
Speaker 1: easy if you're not super super specific, it's really easy
Speaker 1: to substitute one group for another in the discussion. And
Speaker 1: for me, what I I'm usually talking about are the
Speaker 1: people who have power to actually change the way that
Speaker 1: I live my life, Like you know, my down the
Speaker 1: street neighbor, like QAnon conspiracy, Like I don't like that
Speaker 1: he thinks that way, but he doesn't really have any
Speaker 1: power over me. And as long as he's not going
Speaker 1: to like come to my house and kill me, like
Speaker 1: do whatever you want, man, I don't care though, to
Speaker 1: be fair, there just today the Patriot one of the
Speaker 1: Patriots squad groups, was out in front of a drag
Speaker 1: Queen story Hour that got canceled. If you want to
Speaker 1: talk about like escalating violence against trans community because of
Speaker 1: the panic there it is, I'll just bookend that with
Speaker 1: saying that's what makes it hard is because some people
Speaker 1: do end up usurping that kind of power that aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily lawmakers, but they take it upon themselves to threaten
Speaker 1: violence or even like threaten threatening with violence, like like
Speaker 1: a two steps removed, sort of like well, if these
Speaker 1: people don't chill out, things are going to get bad.
Speaker 1: Like that's not a direct threat, but it kind of
Speaker 1: is a threat. And like those are the kind of
Speaker 1: like it's all of those things at once that we're
Speaker 1: all trying to navigate. I appreciate bringing up a lot
Speaker 1: of these examples. I've often found that we can be
Speaker 1: much easier to point to egregious errors among our our
Speaker 1: group than within our own in group. So, just for
Speaker 1: the sake of nuance, are there instances where you think
Speaker 1: that some people within transactivists have gone too far in
Speaker 1: your eyes? Cali in a similar way that you could
Speaker 1: criticize the people that you just criticized. I'll give you
Speaker 1: one example. I read this tweet that said a note
Speaker 1: for parents if your child tells you that they are transgender.
Speaker 1: You have two choices, one have a trans child, to
Speaker 1: have a dead child. It really is that simple. For
Speaker 1: so many of us, the ability to live authentically is
Speaker 1: a matter of life and death. When you read that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, it's not statistically true, but it seems
Speaker 1: to be exaggerating something in order to make a political
Speaker 1: point or to get more power within that community so
Speaker 1: that they can get the things that they want. How
Speaker 1: do you interpret it? I mean, it's a little hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: but it's only a little hyperbolic. I think I don't
Speaker 1: know what the utility would be of like parsing out
Speaker 1: that and dissecting that, because I think hyperbole, especially on Twitter,
Speaker 1: is a thing that is kind of accepted. But also
Speaker 1: sure it's not statistically true. Okay, I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that really matters so much, because what they are pointing
Speaker 1: to is a very very real phenomenon in which, you know,
Speaker 1: there is a very very high percentage, comparatively high percentage
Speaker 1: of trans folks who either commit who die by suicide,
Speaker 1: or try to and then removed from that is the
Speaker 1: lifelong psychological and emotional trauma that can come from having
Speaker 1: family that don't affirm you and the and I don't
Speaker 1: have the numbers in front of me, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the mental health issues that as
Speaker 1: a whole the trans community deal with, like everything is
Speaker 1: compounded by having parents who don't affirm who you are.
Speaker 1: And that's not the same as saying your parents can't
Speaker 1: like ask you quest questions or have conversations with you.
Speaker 1: But if a parent is just gonna fundamentally deny who
Speaker 1: this kid is, I don't actually think that tweet is
Speaker 1: hyperbolic in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, Like
Speaker 1: I think it's obviously an exaggeration. I think basically anyone
Speaker 1: could see that, But I don't think it's an egregious one. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do the moral panic stuff. I often
Speaker 1: get people coming at me like, well, aren't there moral
Speaker 1: panics on the left? Is this a moral panic on
Speaker 1: the left or that. I would say that sometimes the
Speaker 1: language around what we could call like transgenocide rhetoric does
Speaker 1: stray sometimes into that moral panic space in a similar
Speaker 1: way that I think some of the conversation around police
Speaker 1: shootings can can stray into that space and get farther
Speaker 1: away from I think the statistical reality then is actually helpful.
Speaker 1: But I think what Cally's pointing to is the difficulty
Speaker 1: of assessing how much is that a real genuine moral
Speaker 1: panic when you're dealing with a marginalized community that is
Speaker 1: experiencing serious mistreatment, right if you know. For me, the
Speaker 1: concern about the overemphasis on police shootings is that it
Speaker 1: underemphasizes like the real statistical evidence of you know, significant
Speaker 1: mistreatment at different levels of you know, physical violence that
Speaker 1: isn't just shootings. And similarly with the trans stuff, the
Speaker 1: focus on suicide, which look, there are higher rates of suicide,
Speaker 1: so it's not again there is a truth to this idea,
Speaker 1: but I think the focus on it is because it
Speaker 1: is particularly scary sounding, and we're just desperately trying to
Speaker 1: get people to accept their loved ones so that they
Speaker 1: can be in healthy relationships. You know, would it be
Speaker 1: better if we focused more on you know, people who
Speaker 1: are alienated from their family members, people who experience depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety, and you know, all these sorts of other
Speaker 1: things that would probably be you know, potentially helpful. But
Speaker 1: I also think it's understandable why people point to the
Speaker 1: extreme but like sometimes common reality that people you know,
Speaker 1: get pushed towards hurting themselves because they don't see any
Speaker 1: other way out. And I think the other thing to consider, too,
Speaker 1: is when you're quoting like things that people say. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to consider the power dynamics in play, right,
Speaker 1: because a person on Twitter being sort of hyperbolic does
Speaker 1: not have the same social cultural impact as someone like
Speaker 1: Matt Walls, who has millions of followers who like, we
Speaker 1: know that his voice is very influential. People are going
Speaker 1: to believe what he says and that it's I think
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to draw a line between something
Speaker 1: that he says and a material harm that ends up
Speaker 1: coming to people than someone tweeting something that's a little hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: like I think you would have a hard time drawing
Speaker 1: a line between that and a real world material that
Speaker 1: ends up coming to a person, then you would someone
Speaker 1: who has a large platform, someone who has a lot
Speaker 1: of social cultural influence. I think there's a very clear
Speaker 1: difference in the power dynamics at play there. I think
Speaker 1: what you were asking for were examples where we feel
Speaker 1: like people take extreme positions, and I would say I'm
Speaker 1: not as concerned about that tweet, but I can give
Speaker 1: you examples. So I think claims empirical claims that there
Speaker 1: is no difference between men and women when it comes
Speaker 1: to sports biological men and women seems implausible to me.
Speaker 1: We can have a debate about what fairness requires for
Speaker 1: trands athletes, but that has to take into account some
Speaker 1: of these other kinds of factors, and being kind of
Speaker 1: denialist about that, I think is not helpful to that discussion,
Speaker 1: even though I also think the sports stuff is ultimately
Speaker 1: a wedge issue, but other things are Like you know,
Speaker 1: there there was a person who argued for a little
Speaker 1: while that having genital preferences is anti trans or is transphobic.
Speaker 1: I do not believe that is the case. I do
Speaker 1: not think that your genital preferences. That is not to
Speaker 1: say that you can have an interesting conversation about the
Speaker 1: ways that our sexual preferences are shaped by transphobia and
Speaker 1: racism and all these other kind of factors, But in
Speaker 1: and of itself, I do not think that having preferences
Speaker 1: for certain genitalia amongst your sexual partners is itself transphobic.
Speaker 1: And then there was let me say one other one
Speaker 1: would be in the area of treatment. There are folks
Speaker 1: who believe that there should be no gatekeeping whatsoever for
Speaker 1: access to hormones or something like that. I lean towards
Speaker 1: thinking that it should be coupled with some amount of counseling.
Speaker 1: I think that arguing and like that one I'm very
Speaker 1: sympathetic to, because going back to Calli's point, when you're
Speaker 1: concerned that your gatekeepers by and large have a relatively
Speaker 1: anti transposition, it's reasonable to be against gatekeeping full stop.
Speaker 1: But I think the ideal world would be one where
Speaker 1: individuals get appropriate counseling and help in making these kinds
Speaker 1: of decisions, and that they work through it in a
Speaker 1: step by step process in a way that like is
Speaker 1: an onerous for them, right, doesn't require them to, you know,
Speaker 1: act as if they are X for a certain amount
Speaker 1: of years or something before they can get treatment. What
Speaker 1: ends up being problematic, I think, is that it always
Speaker 1: seems like we have to like there's so much nuance
Speaker 1: in all of this, right, and in order to lay
Speaker 1: out the full reality of the situation, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're coming up on forty five minutes and we've barely
Speaker 1: scratched the stars. Sorry, but it's but it's so easy
Speaker 1: for people fighting against those things to ask gotcha questions
Speaker 1: that seem very reasonable from the outside. And that's like,
Speaker 1: that's the hill that we are continually forced to climb,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, like we have to become experts
Speaker 1: on biology, on indochronology, on social and cultural issues of gender,
Speaker 1: Like we have to become experts on all of those
Speaker 1: things to be able to argue passionately with nuance, like
Speaker 1: just to get someone to the stage of like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I should be able to go like get
Speaker 1: hormones after an hour long doctor appointment, the way that
Speaker 1: I might get treatment for the flu or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, like that's there's a there's a very strong
Speaker 1: imbalance in that conversation, and I think that's something really
Speaker 1: important to name too. Yeah, I really appreciate. I appreciate
Speaker 1: when there are a nuanced discussion. I'm not really here
Speaker 1: to take much of a stance on most of this
Speaker 1: because I want to focus on your perspectives and your
Speaker 1: point of views. But I will take one stance, and
Speaker 1: I think that that tweet I just read, I do
Speaker 1: see that as a moral panic of the same magnitude
Speaker 1: as moral panics you see on the other side. And
Speaker 1: and you can think of it from a perspective of
Speaker 1: a parent who, let's say that their five year old
Speaker 1: says their transgender and the parents says, you know, what
Speaker 1: do I do about this situation? What are my options?
Speaker 1: I am an advocate of gender affirming care in the
Speaker 1: sense of having a team of psychologists, doctors, and parents
Speaker 1: who are all working together to help understand and help
Speaker 1: the child understand what's going on and what might be
Speaker 1: best for that child. But there's no one size fits
Speaker 1: all approach. And to say to a parent that their
Speaker 1: only options are have them betrands or you're going to
Speaker 1: have a dead child, that puts an awful lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on an awful lot of people. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have sympathetic to your concern here, No, I mean I
Speaker 1: do think that, like I understand why some advocates use
Speaker 1: that kind of rhetoric. If I was talking to a parent,
Speaker 1: that would certainly not be the way that I would
Speaker 1: approach the conversation at all. It's kind of emotional blackmail,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's what we should be doing here.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, the more reasonable version of
Speaker 1: that is the same conversation that people had to have
Speaker 1: with their families about being gay, which is like, this
Speaker 1: is who I am. You know, you can be loving
Speaker 1: and accepting or you can fight it. Now again, this
Speaker 1: goes back to the social contagion thing. If you're one
Speaker 1: of these parents who thinks that your child has been indoctrinated,
Speaker 1: then you're in a different situation. But I also think
Speaker 1: I think the point of the tweet is essentially like,
Speaker 1: if you want your child to healthy and happy, be
Speaker 1: affirming of what they say they are, whether that means
Speaker 1: getting them a therapist or what. Like if you were
Speaker 1: if your response is that's not real, gender isn't real,
Speaker 1: you're a boy, shut up, like, yeah, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to increase their risk of various psychological harms. A big
Speaker 1: problem that I see in the conversation often is like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's obviously the way the person words things
Speaker 1: in that tweet is not how I would approach the
Speaker 1: conversation either by any stretch of the imagination. And if
Speaker 1: somebody was saying that to me, like in a person
Speaker 1: a person thing, I'd be like, well, let's like, let's
Speaker 1: take a step back for a second. But I also
Speaker 1: worry that like saying all of that, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what is served by focusing so much on like a
Speaker 1: tweet like that, when I don't know that it in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things really matters well tonight, idea
Speaker 1: that I see propagated and among a lot of transactivists
Speaker 1: there is another option though, So this is you know,
Speaker 1: they present just two options, either firm that they're trans
Speaker 1: or expect a dead child. But there is another option,
Speaker 1: which is an option a lot of the so called
Speaker 1: turfs are fighting for. And I wanted to get your
Speaker 1: thoughts on that option, which is saying, look, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with saying and teaching your child you are a boy,
Speaker 1: but you may have feminine interests and there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that whatsoever. You should go your whole life, you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, fighting for the right to be a
Speaker 1: non typical of your of gender stereotypes and fighting gender stereotypes.
Speaker 1: So how would you react to someone who says, well,
Speaker 1: that's a that could be a valid option. My first
Speaker 1: response is to wonder if that person actually believes that right,
Speaker 1: because those are the same people saying that, like I
Speaker 1: know who belongs in what bathroom by looking at them.
Speaker 1: So when that kid grows up and says like, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a boy, but I like to wear dresses, but
Speaker 1: I go into the boys bathroom, I'm wearing a dress, Like,
Speaker 1: how is that person going to react in real life?
Speaker 1: And that's always my first question is when people say
Speaker 1: something like that. In all reality, that is the world
Speaker 1: that I would love to end up in, where people
Speaker 1: grow up free of pressure regarding gender roles of any kind.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I also don't believe that those folks
Speaker 1: genuinely think that. Rit large because their behavior towards trans people,
Speaker 1: I don't think demonstrates that they actually think that. And
Speaker 1: let me just add, like, you know, to me, it's
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from saying, oh, well, no, Timmy's not gay, he's
Speaker 1: just you know, different, he's just he just likes theater
Speaker 1: and you know, dance and stuff like that or something
Speaker 1: right like maybe, but like if he's actually gay, then
Speaker 1: he's gay and you shouldn't try to say, you know,
Speaker 1: being gay is wrong and God hates it and you
Speaker 1: should try to be straight. And I think the difference
Speaker 1: is these people believe that there is such a thing
Speaker 1: as homosexuality, but they don't believe there's such a thing
Speaker 1: as transgender because they don't I don't think believe there's
Speaker 1: such a thing as gender, which I think is I
Speaker 1: think is just implausible because we live in a world
Speaker 1: constructed around gender, like not around biological sex, very clearly
Speaker 1: around gender and gender presentation. We're not, you know, checking
Speaker 1: biological sex at bathrooms, we're checking gender presentation. So I
Speaker 1: think it's it's silly to sort of take the position
Speaker 1: that there's no such thing as gender, or no such
Speaker 1: thing as being transgender. So if that's, you know, if
Speaker 1: that's the view they're taking, that's false. And if the
Speaker 1: view is there is this thing, but it's harmful and
Speaker 1: you should avoid doing it, I think that's also false.
Speaker 1: And there isn't sufficient evidence to support that either. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we don't like to some extent,
Speaker 1: we allow parents to be abusive towards their children if
Speaker 1: they're religious enough about it, and I think that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: But I think for anyone who genuinely cares about your child,
Speaker 1: like telling them that they're just a feminine or they're
Speaker 1: just a lesbian or something like that to help try
Speaker 1: to dissuade them away from this thing that you think
Speaker 1: is bad, is probably not helping them. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably projecting onto them parts of your own insecurities that
Speaker 1: aren't healthy, And I think there is a conversation pursuant
Speaker 1: to that that is valid to have and to say.
Speaker 1: You know, if a kid comes to you and says like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think I'm actually X, Y or Z, to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is it that makes you feel that way? Like,
Speaker 1: talk to me in depth and specifically about your feelings,
Speaker 1: like what are the things that make you feel that way?
Speaker 1: And you might dig in and find that that's actually
Speaker 1: what the kid means. Right, Because regardless of what we
Speaker 1: learn at home, we also get a lot of ideas
Speaker 1: from the culture that we grow up in, especially when
Speaker 1: we start going to school, we start watching a lot
Speaker 1: of TV all of that sort of stuff. So you
Speaker 1: may find that someone's like, oh, I think I'm a
Speaker 1: girl because I want to wear dresses and that's what
Speaker 1: being a girl means to me in my five six
Speaker 1: seven year old view of what gender is. You may
Speaker 1: uncover that and in that case like cool, whatever. But
Speaker 1: I think that's a very very different thing than saying no,
Speaker 1: actually you are this and here's why you think what
Speaker 1: you think you do. I think it's entirely valid to
Speaker 1: dig further into why people feel the way that they do.
Speaker 1: But that's a very different thing from saying no, you
Speaker 1: are this. So what does it feel like to be
Speaker 1: a man who is a trans woman, who's a legit
Speaker 1: trans woman, like to be a man identified as birth?
Speaker 1: I should say, who is a trans woman? What is that?
Speaker 1: Because that feeling is not standardized. It's not like you
Speaker 1: take everyone who is a man identified at birth and
Speaker 1: identifies as trans woman and say what does that feel like?
Speaker 1: And they it's objectively all exactly the same characteristics and
Speaker 1: mental things. So what's confusing to me is it seems
Speaker 1: like there's no standardization of that. And that's and so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand it's all legit, right, Like you
Speaker 1: would never say there's no there's like an illegitimate trans woman, right,
Speaker 1: you would never say such a thing. I mean unless
Speaker 1: someone legitimately says, like I call myself a trans woman
Speaker 1: because I think it's cool or because you know, my
Speaker 1: friends think it's like for like obviously disingenuous or dishonest reasons.
Speaker 1: But like that's also just largely not a thing like
Speaker 1: we talked about before, is it Because there's a feeling
Speaker 1: of such a mismatch somehow this is how I see Sometimes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll first give you the I guess, like the little
Speaker 1: bit of of my personal experience, and then I'll kind
Speaker 1: of zoom out a little bit to what I understand
Speaker 1: talking to lots and lots of trans people. Over the
Speaker 1: course of however many years, for me, it was a
Speaker 1: very discreete sense that like in fifth grade, like ten
Speaker 1: eleven years old, when you start to get the sort
Speaker 1: of like basic sex edd conversations like your body is changing,
Speaker 1: here are the ways you can expect it to change.
Speaker 1: It may have started already, et cetera of those sorts
Speaker 1: of very basic puberty conversations. And I started to realize that,
Speaker 1: like I was uncomfortable during puberty in ways that a
Speaker 1: lot of people were not. And you know, at first,
Speaker 1: it was just like, Okay, well, not everybody talks about
Speaker 1: these things. Maybe that's just you know, people are talking
Speaker 1: about those things because that's what the teacher told us about.
Speaker 1: And so now we're comfortable because we know that's like
Speaker 1: a common thing, right, Puberty is weird, because puberty is
Speaker 1: weird for basically everyone. And you know, over the course
Speaker 1: of however many years, I just kept having feelings that
Speaker 1: like pointed me back in that direction. And sometimes, I
Speaker 1: would say most of the time, for me, it was
Speaker 1: that sort of visceral discomfort that we generally call gender
Speaker 1: dysphoria about not only my body, but also the way
Speaker 1: that I interact with the world, the way that other
Speaker 1: people interact with me. And sometimes it was more euphoria
Speaker 1: that It's like, I get a lot of not just
Speaker 1: running away from the bad feelings, but chasing the good
Speaker 1: feelings in a way that says that our like the
Speaker 1: construction of gender that I was handed is not the
Speaker 1: one for me. It doesn't make sense to me. And
Speaker 1: embracing that is what led me to come out and
Speaker 1: take all of the steps that I've taken. And I
Speaker 1: think there is you know, you ask a hundred different
Speaker 1: trains people, you're going to get a hundred different answers
Speaker 1: of you know, what they feel like that says to them,
Speaker 1: I am trans And I think that is what often
Speaker 1: makes the conversation difficult is because it is very subjective.
Speaker 1: There is no one size fits all, there is no standard,
Speaker 1: and I think the journey, I think has to be
Speaker 1: just like coming to comfort with that and understanding that
Speaker 1: that's like the actual reality of it is is that
Speaker 1: there are so many different paths to get there, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it is that visceral discomfort that dysphoria. For a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it's understand like like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't hate myself. I'm not uncomfortable, it's not I'm not suffering.
Speaker 1: But my life gets so much better over here if
Speaker 1: I do these other things, if people treat me this way,
Speaker 1: if I do these sorts of things, And that's a
Speaker 1: lesser part of my experience, but I know lots of
Speaker 1: trans people here like that's actually how they figured it out,
Speaker 1: as they were more chasing euphoria than running away from dysphoria,
Speaker 1: which was mostly what my experience was. Thank you for
Speaker 1: telling me about your experience a little bit, and can
Speaker 1: let me just follow up with this Aaron, and I
Speaker 1: really want to hear even more experiences, so people listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, please reach out to me. I want
Speaker 1: to know what it feels like because I obviously am
Speaker 1: not a trans folk, but I want to know what
Speaker 1: it feels like to be a I want to know
Speaker 1: what that's like, and I really value and the dignity
Speaker 1: of that. From a child development perspective, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I see, you know, I think about five year old
Speaker 1: six year olds say they go to their their mom
Speaker 1: or they go to their friends. They say, let's say
Speaker 1: it's a boy, and the boy says, I am a
Speaker 1: girl because I like wearing dresses. That's all they say.
Speaker 1: Do you immediately legitimatize that? You could see a sense,
Speaker 1: you can see the argument from certain what they call
Speaker 1: turfs saying, well, we you know, feminists have been fighting
Speaker 1: for so many years against such gender stereotypes. You can
Speaker 1: you can you can see that perspective in certain cases.
Speaker 1: So I'm just wondering what your thought is about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the entry to a conversation like
Speaker 1: any other. I think, if you're trying to explain to
Speaker 1: a kid, like the way that society looks at things
Speaker 1: and the ways that that doesn't match with my values
Speaker 1: and sometimes even the ways that like that doesn't match
Speaker 1: with reality, I mean, I think that's just the opening
Speaker 1: to a bigger conversation about what gender looks like in society.
Speaker 1: Because if someone said specifically, I think I'm a girl
Speaker 1: because I like wearing dresses, I would be like, well,
Speaker 1: wearing dresses does not necessarily make you a girl. Is
Speaker 1: that the only reason? Like, it's just an opening to
Speaker 1: talk more in depth about why they feel the way
Speaker 1: they do. I don't want to start going down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole then what is a woman? I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. But I find myself in the way
Speaker 1: that I think scientifically wanting to know where the lines
Speaker 1: are in some way, you know, like if it's not
Speaker 1: you know, okay, then what is it? Like Aaron gone, well,
Speaker 1: let me help you, Scott. You're you're your scientist. I'm
Speaker 1: a philosopher. This is my job, right, Like, let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation about philosophy of gender for a second, and
Speaker 1: identity more broadly, because I think, you know, there is
Speaker 1: a concern that, well, if gender is or gender identity
Speaker 1: is subjective fundamentally, then we can't legislate it properly, or
Speaker 1: we can't you know, have social norms around it, or
Speaker 1: you know, like what even is it? And I understand
Speaker 1: that concern. It would be much nicer if we had
Speaker 1: a chart and we could just quantify all of this
Speaker 1: stuff and it was very easy and functional. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's ever going to work that way, but I
Speaker 1: also want to highlight it doesn't work that way for
Speaker 1: any gender identities, right, like, what is it? You know?
Speaker 1: You could say, asked him question, what does it feel
Speaker 1: like to be black? What does it feel like to
Speaker 1: be gay? What does it feel like to be half Jewish?
Speaker 1: Right Like, I've never any I don't do any Jewish things.
Speaker 1: I have a Jewish cultural background. It's complicated. Right, So
Speaker 1: all identities are, to use the technical term here, empty signifiers. Right.
Speaker 1: We have this concept, and we have various things that
Speaker 1: for us, we connect to that concept. So CALLI could
Speaker 1: potentially tell you things about what they associate with different
Speaker 1: kinds of gender or something like that, and those things
Speaker 1: are a mix of our own personal feelings, desires, intuitions,
Speaker 1: a mix of the way culture shapes are understanding around gender.
Speaker 1: And it could certainly be the case that if you
Speaker 1: were living in like a really heavily patriarchal society, which
Speaker 1: to some extent we are, some amount of individuals could
Speaker 1: internalize that patriarchy and think that that means that they
Speaker 1: should be men or something like that. That is, that
Speaker 1: is I think part of the complexities of human psychology.
Speaker 1: But I don't think you can solve this either by
Speaker 1: pretending that gender is fundamentally objective and quantifying it in
Speaker 1: some way or by throwing it out because it's too subjective.
Speaker 1: We need it in society. We have to have identities
Speaker 1: in these kinds of ways. We have to, and we
Speaker 1: have laws about race, we have laws about sexuality, even
Speaker 1: though like if you you know, if I claim that
Speaker 1: I'm gay or something like that, it's not like I
Speaker 1: can prove it to anybody. There's no set of behaviors
Speaker 1: that I could engage in that would make it absolutely,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent true that I'm really definitely gay. So
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think there's a unique problem here
Speaker 1: for gender. I think it's okay that gender is fundamentally
Speaker 1: subjective in this kind of way. Can you explain to
Speaker 1: me then, why to explain to me the fundamental difference
Speaker 1: between that and why we don't allow racial identity changes.
Speaker 1: So a woman tried rachel something, and black women in
Speaker 1: particular got very very upset at that. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like you can't just you know, you go through a
Speaker 1: whole life of oppression and kind of what it is
Speaker 1: to face us. And in a way, they were like
Speaker 1: the turfs of the transgender movement in a way, analogous
Speaker 1: turfs are demonized, whereas black women in that case are exalted,
Speaker 1: and we all kind of agree with them with their point.
Speaker 1: And so can you explain the difference to me between
Speaker 1: racial and daddy and gender daddy? Well, I think there's
Speaker 1: no difference, is what I'm going to say. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: fundamentally gender and race are the same in this kind
Speaker 1: of way that if you identify as one of these things, you,
Speaker 1: I think fundamentally are that thing. Right. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I know people who are very very light skinned who
Speaker 1: identify as black, who are you know, accused of, you know,
Speaker 1: like not being actually black, even though they come from
Speaker 1: a black background or a black culture or something like that.
Speaker 1: So there's always going to be this kind of gatekeeping
Speaker 1: around these identities. Now, you could make an argument potentially
Speaker 1: that in our current situation, what someone like Dola's. Let's
Speaker 1: assume for the sake of argument, that like Dolazol is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent genuine. It's not a con to I
Speaker 1: get the sense she is genuine. You know, she her
Speaker 1: whole life, she has really identified more with African American
Speaker 1: community than like community. I think if she really truly
Speaker 1: is genuine, she should be allowed to identify as black.
Speaker 1: I just I think there's ultimately no value in forcing
Speaker 1: her not to. Certainly people can say I'm not going
Speaker 1: to you know, I'm gonna have difficulty respecting that, or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I think I think there is fun.
Speaker 1: I think here's what I would say. Our goal should
Speaker 1: be a society where there are no imbalances of power
Speaker 1: or marginalization, such that an individual who wants to change
Speaker 1: their gender or sex or race or whatever can do
Speaker 1: so and it doesn't matter, Like it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: That's just they just get to play with a new identity.
Speaker 1: I'm very sort of identity anarchist in that kind of way.
Speaker 1: In our current reality, it's more complicated. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't agree with that, but I mean
Speaker 1: I respect your opinion. Right, isn't there something to be
Speaker 1: said that there's a great privilege there to be able
Speaker 1: to just say you are something. And there's someone who
Speaker 1: may have gone through twenty five years of like constant
Speaker 1: sort of systemic oppression due to certain immutial characteristics they
Speaker 1: were born with, So you can see it from the
Speaker 1: other perspective as well. Right, Well, I think this is
Speaker 1: where I come in with like, I get the philosophy
Speaker 1: side of things, but the way that my brain works
Speaker 1: is so much more about like how, you know, how
Speaker 1: do these things actually end up playing out in real life?
Speaker 1: Because I think what's important to name is the sort
Speaker 1: of gatekeeping around certain kinds of identities and why that
Speaker 1: gatekeeping exists, because most of the time it's about a
Speaker 1: perceived security in that in group. Right, Like, if I'm
Speaker 1: in a room with a bunch of other trans people,
Speaker 1: there is a level at which my transnist statistically is
Speaker 1: safer in that space than it might be if I
Speaker 1: was in a room where I was the only transperson, right,
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that everyone around me is a
Speaker 1: great person, but just like, on balance, I can be
Speaker 1: a little bit more comfortable in my transness if I'm
Speaker 1: in a room full of other trans people. And that's
Speaker 1: where that sense of gatekeeping around identity comes in. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's important to name in this
Speaker 1: conversation that, like, there isn't a black person here to
Speaker 1: speak from that perspective, and I don't think that we
Speaker 1: can meaningfully have that conversation without a person coming from that.
Speaker 1: What matters, I think is there's a level of good
Speaker 1: faith that we have to take into account and people
Speaker 1: who are trying to sort of like usurp power or
Speaker 1: gain the sort of like coolness, like whatever perceived coolness
Speaker 1: they have from that, Like this is a big thing
Speaker 1: in like vocabulary that starts out on black Twitter, for example,
Speaker 1: being more widely adopted, and you know, at first it's
Speaker 1: this silly, unsophisticated internet language, and then when white people
Speaker 1: decide it's cool, then it's fine. But it's like we
Speaker 1: invented it, right. And I think there is a difference
Speaker 1: in the cultural context between race and gender that I
Speaker 1: don't I'm very comfortable saying that difference exists such that
Speaker 1: they are different problems. But I also am not enough
Speaker 1: of an expert on racial identity to be able to
Speaker 1: have like a super nuanced conversation about that, And so
Speaker 1: I don't, like, I think in a practical sense they
Speaker 1: are meaningfully different enough such as to not really belong
Speaker 1: in the same discussion, because that's just not really a
Speaker 1: thing you see in the trans community, like don't I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever met a trans person who is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I transitioned because there's some perceived benefit to
Speaker 1: me aside from comfort in my own body, in my
Speaker 1: own life. Right Like, I'm not gonna like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: trans because that gives me some sort of social cred
Speaker 1: or some sort of social power that I didn't have
Speaker 1: before in a certain community. And I think in the
Speaker 1: cases where that happens, at least in my experience, you
Speaker 1: end up generally being able to suss that out pretty
Speaker 1: well just by like seeing how those folks behave and
Speaker 1: the way that they talk. And so I don't know
Speaker 1: that even like gatekeeping around that identity is even the
Speaker 1: way to do it, right, Like, because if I suspected that,
Speaker 1: like in a hypothetical world where I thought someone was
Speaker 1: like faking being trans to get some perceived cultural benefit
Speaker 1: because they wanted to like run this nonprofit and get
Speaker 1: whatever power comes from that, right Like, there's not really
Speaker 1: any benefit to me like questioning that person's trans identity
Speaker 1: where I can just be like, well, like you're saying
Speaker 1: and doing these things that tell me you haven't done
Speaker 1: the work. You don't actually understand the cultural context that
Speaker 1: all of this is happening in, and so you're not
Speaker 1: qualified for this. And I don't like have to litigate
Speaker 1: whether they're a real trans person or not, right, Like
Speaker 1: I just I think they are meaningfully separate discussions for
Speaker 1: like all of those reasons. Well, the sports world relevant
Speaker 1: to this though, because a lot of people do accuse,
Speaker 1: you know, trans women of trying to gain the system
Speaker 1: in some way, and that you know, maybe that may
Speaker 1: be a moral panic, right that may be incorrect, could
Speaker 1: also be correct, you too, Tell me what the correct,
Speaker 1: what is correct? Tell me what is correct. I can
Speaker 1: speak to this because I play a contact sport. I
Speaker 1: play roller derby, sport of gender non conforming individuals. From
Speaker 1: what I can tell in my wildest hypothetical world, I
Speaker 1: guess I could maybe see that happening. But the idea
Speaker 1: that someone would transition and take hormones and go through
Speaker 1: all of the other bullshit that trans people have to
Speaker 1: go through in life to pursue like living your life
Speaker 1: as a transperson, that someone would pursue that to to
Speaker 1: like get to the top of like, that's just a
Speaker 1: really really silly idea to me. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe this this might be shaped by the sport
Speaker 1: that I play, because there are things about roller derby
Speaker 1: that say that like being physically stronger and bigger does
Speaker 1: not necessarily give you an advantage because of specific dynamics
Speaker 1: about roller derby. But like, and I know this is anecdotal,
Speaker 1: but I just think of like all of the times
Speaker 1: physically smaller not necessarily stronger CIS women have absolutely rocked
Speaker 1: the shit out of me because they have a lower
Speaker 1: center of gravity than you. Like, Yeah, Like in theory,
Speaker 1: I should be able to show up and just clean house,
Speaker 1: right if I had some sort of inborn advantage that
Speaker 1: was so big that I don't even belong in that space,
Speaker 1: right Like, I would imagine that I should be able
Speaker 1: to show up there and clean house, And like, that's
Speaker 1: just not what you see happening time and time again
Speaker 1: across all of the different sports that trans folks are
Speaker 1: allowed to play in, right, Like, it's just not a
Speaker 1: thing you see. Transfolks don't generally dominate those sports that
Speaker 1: we're allowed to participate in. And the one case that
Speaker 1: it does happen is the one that can generates so
Speaker 1: much attention. Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting place. I do
Speaker 1: think there are like reasonable versions of a lot of
Speaker 1: the concerns that you're raising here, Scott, So I've listed
Speaker 1: a couple of them. It could be the case for example,
Speaker 1: that trans and we're almost always only talking about trans
Speaker 1: women and women's sports because for the most part, nobody
Speaker 1: thinks that like trans men have any kind of substantial advantage.
Speaker 1: It could be the case that, like, nobody is actively
Speaker 1: trying to cheat, but they're still creating an unintentionally unfair situation.
Speaker 1: And that's an empirical question and an ethical question that
Speaker 1: you have to parse as a society. What are the
Speaker 1: range of you know, acceptable differences that we want people
Speaker 1: to compete with, Like do we switch to you know,
Speaker 1: weight classes or something like that. Like, there are different
Speaker 1: debates to be had there on an applied level that
Speaker 1: I think are perfectly reasonable to have, especially once you've
Speaker 1: accepted that, like trans people are what they are and
Speaker 1: we're gonna let them live their lives while we also
Speaker 1: talk about the details of sports. Other things that I
Speaker 1: think you've brought up that are genuine concerns aping identity stereotypes. Right,
Speaker 1: if this is really like someone who pretends to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a different race or something by adopting a
Speaker 1: bunch of stereotypes about them, then that would be a
Speaker 1: significant problem. That's been a long standing accusation against drag culture,
Speaker 1: even before everybody got really concerned about trans culture. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's complex because part of your
Speaker 1: identity is going to be tied to social expectations, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you're going to invert them and sometimes you're going
Speaker 1: to adopt them. Two other things would be threats to
Speaker 1: people in safe spaces. So it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want them to be in there because we
Speaker 1: don't think they're women, but also like we're concerned that
Speaker 1: somebody might, you know, if it's subjective, they'll claim to
Speaker 1: be this so that they can get into a you know,
Speaker 1: a rape crisis center or something like that. Again, these
Speaker 1: are vanishingly small. When when these do, when something like
Speaker 1: this does happen, it's incredibly rare and wouldn't be solved
Speaker 1: except by a really, really draconian alternative, where the solution
Speaker 1: is just I think, provide proper care. And then finally,
Speaker 1: like the stealing valor or advantage stuff, right, which are
Speaker 1: slightly different. Right, There's one thing is future benefits. One
Speaker 1: thing is taking credit for being a member of a
Speaker 1: marginalized community, right, And I think you know, there can
Speaker 1: be some concerns there, but I also think it ultimately
Speaker 1: at the end of the day trying to police people
Speaker 1: out of these communities because you see, you know, marginalization
Speaker 1: status as a limited resource that can't be spread around
Speaker 1: in this kind of way. More. I just don't think
Speaker 1: I understand understands the problem, but like I understand why
Speaker 1: people have these unfairness reactions, and it's worth coming to
Speaker 1: them and addressing them honestly, because not everyone's using them
Speaker 1: as a wedge issue. Even if Matt Walsh's my question
Speaker 1: with those things always ends up being, you know, if
Speaker 1: these are genuine fairness concerns, why do they only come up,
Speaker 1: or at least mostly only come up when trans people
Speaker 1: enter the conversation. Right? The classic example that folks point
Speaker 1: to is Michael Phelps. I think it is objectively true
Speaker 1: that he has a biological advantage over other people in
Speaker 1: his sport, you know, because and specifically because his body
Speaker 1: naturally produces less of the chemical that makes your muscle
Speaker 1: sore when when you exert them. Right, I forget the
Speaker 1: name of it, but I don't remember any large conversation
Speaker 1: about whether or not it was fair for him to
Speaker 1: participate in that sport because he had that biological chemical
Speaker 1: advantage over other people and you know, like I can
Speaker 1: every sort of perceived advantage that someone might like me
Speaker 1: might have in a sport that involves physicality, Like I
Speaker 1: can point to CIS women who have those same characteristics,
Speaker 1: but there's not really been a large conversation around keeping
Speaker 1: those folks out of participation. And what it comes back
Speaker 1: to at the core is that people don't believe that
Speaker 1: trans identity is real. They don't think trans people exist,
Speaker 1: that we're faking it somehow to gain some advantage. And
Speaker 1: you know, in some hypothetical world where being trans becomes
Speaker 1: no big deal and like there's not really any great
Speaker 1: hardship in life associated with being trans. I guess in theory,
Speaker 1: I could see someone like, yeah, let me let me
Speaker 1: you know, let me let me go do this so
Speaker 1: I can so I can win at sports. But I
Speaker 1: just think, like, I think those concerns are plausible in
Speaker 1: some hypothetical world, in some hypothetical world that we are
Speaker 1: so far away from such that I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure that it's a conversation that's worth spending a
Speaker 1: ton of time on. If that makes sense, Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So do you think there's no debate to be had
Speaker 1: about whether at the most elite level of sports, we
Speaker 1: should let in trans folk. Do you think there's no
Speaker 1: debate to be had there at all? No, I don't
Speaker 1: think there is. I think if we want to talk
Speaker 1: about what constitutes fairness in sport in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't single out trans people, sure maybe, but that's just like,
Speaker 1: that's not the conversation that's being had because because like
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember any of this being a
Speaker 1: concern until there started being conversation about chance people in sports. Right, Well, me,
Speaker 1: just I just had another example, right, you mentioned Michael Phelps.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember when Michael Phelps was competing, there
Speaker 1: was like a very brief discussion about the fact that
Speaker 1: because he was an American, he got to use a
Speaker 1: one off swimsuit that like makes you know, gives you
Speaker 1: a slight advantage that costs twenty thousand million dollars or
Speaker 1: something like ridiculous amount of money for a swimsuit, and
Speaker 1: that's perfectly legal within the sport, even though everyone acknowledges
Speaker 1: that it gives some amount of advantage and that not
Speaker 1: every you know, person coming to that competition has the
Speaker 1: same resources at their disposal for training, and all these
Speaker 1: other kinds of things, like the idea that sports is
Speaker 1: remotely fair is absurd. It's clearly driven by income and
Speaker 1: a variety of other factors. You know, if you want
Speaker 1: to start, like I think Callie's right, if you want
Speaker 1: to have a conversation about genuine fairness in sports, have
Speaker 1: a conversation about all of it and not just this
Speaker 1: one tiny issue. Which look, if I think if you
Speaker 1: said we're going to allow trans women in women's sports
Speaker 1: at every level as openly as we can, you would
Speaker 1: see a tiny number of individuals competing and they would
Speaker 1: have not a significant impact. But there's also a stupid
Speaker 1: catch twenty two here, which is trans women in sports
Speaker 1: end up having like meaning in this place where if
Speaker 1: they win, then they cheated, and if they lose, then
Speaker 1: they were throwing the game. In order to show that
Speaker 1: like it's not actually a problem so we can sneak
Speaker 1: more trans women into sports. There's literally no way for
Speaker 1: a trans woman to compute compete in sports without being
Speaker 1: accused of doing something wrong. So I think that's clearly
Speaker 1: a problem unless they quote stay in their lane, and
Speaker 1: that's a horrible phrase, but I mean they could make
Speaker 1: but they're not allowed to there's a trans individual who wrestles.
Speaker 1: It's a trans individual, a trans man, and that's why
Speaker 1: you don't know about it. Who wants to wrestle against
Speaker 1: men down in Texas and wasn't allowed to the law
Speaker 1: prevented him. He had to wrestle against women. And then
Speaker 1: of course the anti trans people took pictures of that
Speaker 1: and said, look, this is what the trans advocates want
Speaker 1: because he looks mannish and he's wrestling a woman, right
Speaker 1: when in reality it's the exact opposite. It's their rules
Speaker 1: that are preventing individuals from doing this, but because it's
Speaker 1: a trans man, nobody cares. And I also think there
Speaker 1: is a somewhat unspoken misogyny in the debate. Like I
Speaker 1: specifically remember talking to a roller derby team made of
Speaker 1: mine that I was getting to know, and she is
Speaker 1: someone who is just like physically small in almost every way,
Speaker 1: but just an unbelievable skater, like super, super talented skater,
Speaker 1: and she was telling me how upset she gets over
Speaker 1: it because it's a lot of ways people telling her
Speaker 1: that she is weak and needs to be defended from
Speaker 1: people like me, and it just completely moves past all
Speaker 1: of the training and the work that it takes to
Speaker 1: get good at a sport, right, and so I end
Speaker 1: up in this place where I spend you know, two
Speaker 1: three four years working really really hard to get good
Speaker 1: at my sport, to learn how the game is played
Speaker 1: on a strategic level, to build up my physical endurance
Speaker 1: and my physical strength to get good at that. And
Speaker 1: then when I'm good at that, I end up being
Speaker 1: put in a position where to look reasonable, I have
Speaker 1: to argue for my own mediocrity, right, Like I have
Speaker 1: to justify my presence by saying, like, no, I'm actually
Speaker 1: not that good at this, like despite the fact that
Speaker 1: I spent Like the reason I'm good at this is
Speaker 1: because I worked really really hard to get there. And
Speaker 1: I also have you know, I had the financial advantage
Speaker 1: that I you know, had time to go to practice,
Speaker 1: you know, and there are may be things about my
Speaker 1: physical makeup that make me more predisposed to athleticism than
Speaker 1: the average person. But the conversation, you know, like the
Speaker 1: conversation never turns to that, and people don't want to
Speaker 1: hear about, you know, how much mouscle mass I lost
Speaker 1: when I started estrogen. You know, like those sorts of
Speaker 1: things like if we're if we are really truly to
Speaker 1: have a conversation about fairness and sports, the focus on
Speaker 1: trans people makes zero sense. The idea that these conversations
Speaker 1: writ large didn't really happen until trans people entered the picture,
Speaker 1: I think is very telling of what the actual motivation
Speaker 1: is personal. I'm sorry to hear about your experience there
Speaker 1: that I can imagine that would be incredibly frustrating. So
Speaker 1: I can one hundred percent transport my mind into your
Speaker 1: mind and see what that would be like for all
Speaker 1: your hard work to be discounted. That would suck. That
Speaker 1: it's not great. Yeah, yeah, absolutely suck. Do I think
Speaker 1: there is no debate to head I'm not there. I'm
Speaker 1: not there with you. That we should have stopped that discussion,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't think Kelly's saying we
Speaker 1: should stop the discussion. I think Kelly's pointing out that
Speaker 1: the hyper emphasis on one tiny piece of the fairness discussion,
Speaker 1: I think is a legitimate concern that like you are
Speaker 1: focusing on a tiny, tiny issue and saying that your
Speaker 1: real concern is fairness broadly speaking in sports, and that
Speaker 1: gives the impression that, like, if not for the existence
Speaker 1: of trans women in sports, it would be a perfectly
Speaker 1: fair meritocracy, which it's just not. Now you can say, well,
Speaker 1: you don't want to add any more on fairness, and
Speaker 1: then we absolutely have to, in which case I agree
Speaker 1: we should have as little unfairness as we possibly can
Speaker 1: while respecting everybody's right to engage in sports. And if
Speaker 1: you want to tell me what your approach is for
Speaker 1: letting you know, trans women, you know, engage in sports
Speaker 1: in a way that seems fair, I'm happy to hear
Speaker 1: like a variety of options. But if the answer is
Speaker 1: going to be they can't transition, or they have to
Speaker 1: you know, v men or something like that, then I
Speaker 1: think I think you're creating an unfair, you know, an
Speaker 1: inequitable system in that direction, and I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any substantial benefit to that, right. I think it's worth,
Speaker 1: you know, educating people about the complexities of sports fairness,
Speaker 1: so the conversation is worth having, But I also think
Speaker 1: it's worth acknowledging a on a meta level, it does
Speaker 1: seem like there is a hyper emphasis on a particular
Speaker 1: group who is also Again, this is how you tell
Speaker 1: something's a wedge issue, that like, this is a group
Speaker 1: that is being attacked across the board right now in
Speaker 1: a way that suggests that the emphasis on sports is
Speaker 1: just an acknowledgment that people care about sports, and it's
Speaker 1: an easy target to start people on the path to
Speaker 1: not believing in trans people. I totally hear you, but
Speaker 1: I also think this stuff is so And I know
Speaker 1: you think this is stuff is complicated to us, You're
Speaker 1: not going to disagree with you, And I say this
Speaker 1: stuff is complicated, but some people could argue like, okay,
Speaker 1: but they are rightly attacked. You could see someone being
Speaker 1: on the show right now and taking another perspective and saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty forty years ago, a man trying to
Speaker 1: sneak on the woman's team would be attacked, and rightly so.
Speaker 1: And it's because the way they're thinking about the issue
Speaker 1: is they're not in agree they're not one hundred percent
Speaker 1: with you that trans women or women. We kind of
Speaker 1: jump in the deepen. We didn't even get through some
Speaker 1: basics like is sex a binary? I had questions here
Speaker 1: in my thing, like, you know, just like basics things
Speaker 1: to see, like are we all in agreement on certain things?
Speaker 1: And so that's why this stuff gets so tricky because
Speaker 1: people are coming at this from just fundamentally conceptualizing a
Speaker 1: human in a different way. Well, yeah, and again for me,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the focus, like Aaron was saying,
Speaker 1: Because you know, I look at like all of the
Speaker 1: people talking about fairness and women's sports. My next question is,
Speaker 1: who's your favorite women's sports team? Like, right, why is
Speaker 1: it that your concern for women's sports only started to
Speaker 1: exist when trans people entered the conversation, Like I have
Speaker 1: to be suspicious of someone's motivations, if that's the truth, right,
Speaker 1: And so at that point, like we're not having a
Speaker 1: fairness in sports conversation, we're having a transphobia conversation. That
Speaker 1: and that's not to say to the earlier conversation. That's
Speaker 1: not me accusing everyone of entering the conversation of being
Speaker 1: consciously disingenuous. I don't think that's the case at all.
Speaker 1: I think people really do good faith have that concern.
Speaker 1: But I think those folks have been I guess, like
Speaker 1: pushed in one direction or another without without the full picture.
Speaker 1: I think people people with bad faith are taking advantage
Speaker 1: of people with good faith, if that makes sense. Oh,
Speaker 1: moral panics work a lot of the time, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think actually that this has been really valuable. Like,
Speaker 1: I know, you feel like we haven't gotten to some
Speaker 1: of the basics. I don't think we need to have
Speaker 1: a chat here. I mean, like biologists can have a
Speaker 1: chat about the binary nature of sex. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's actually crucially part of our conversation here. I think
Speaker 1: we would probably agree that, like the vast majority of
Speaker 1: individuals cluster to you know, to particular polls. But does
Speaker 1: binary mean literally everybody or you know, how do you
Speaker 1: take about you know, the other percentage of intersect individuals,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But it's not important, Like, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not our concern here. I think our concern here is
Speaker 1: I think it's a little important. Well, let's say is here.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think what matters is downstream questions
Speaker 1: about is it harmful to women in sports if trans
Speaker 1: women are allowed into their sports, is it physically dangerous
Speaker 1: to them? Or is it unfair to them? Right? And
Speaker 1: the question of whether or not sex is a binary
Speaker 1: doesn't address that, right. What addresses that is conversations about
Speaker 1: different capacities, about the effects of testosterone on puberty, you know,
Speaker 1: about the limits of what we will consider acceptable or
Speaker 1: unacceptable advantages within sports, you know, so like it's better
Speaker 1: for us to be having these more deep end I
Speaker 1: think conversations because I think those like you know, is
Speaker 1: sex of binary? How do you define women? Those are
Speaker 1: often not intentionally but sometimes intentionally use as these kind
Speaker 1: of thought terminating cliches where the goal is to get
Speaker 1: hung up on biology or metaphysics, when the real question
Speaker 1: should be who's allowed to use which bathrooms without being harassed?
Speaker 1: And the answer should be everybody right like to be
Speaker 1: allowed to use the bathroom you identify with. And we're
Speaker 1: not going to police you on this. Look, if you
Speaker 1: do something criminal, then we will, you know, deal with that.
Speaker 1: But I gotta be honest with you. If I want
Speaker 1: to harass women, I don't have to dress up as
Speaker 1: a woman and go into women's bathroom to do it.
Speaker 1: Like that's like in sports, Like it's just not the way.
Speaker 1: Too much effort in order to try to do the
Speaker 1: thing that society already lets me do. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: in a way like the Benjamin Button of interviews, because
Speaker 1: I kind of want to like end with a discussion
Speaker 1: of the difference between sex and gender. If we should
Speaker 1: have started with that shit maybe you haven't an opinion,
Speaker 1: and both of you seem my opinion. Maybe that's irrelevant
Speaker 1: to all these conversations. I think it's like really important
Speaker 1: for these conversations. It's not not irrelevant, just just not
Speaker 1: I think I think the starting place of Calli's experiences
Speaker 1: is a better starting place than a philosophical debate about
Speaker 1: sex and gender. Then I'm happy I started with that. Then, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was absolutely the right choice. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would agree with that. Yeah, okay, good, you know what,
Speaker 1: Then I'm happy that we did that. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would also say I don't think it's irrelevant, but I
Speaker 1: think it's something that requires a lot less attention than
Speaker 1: it's often given. That's interesting because because there I feel
Speaker 1: like they are different. Within the trans camunity, there's different
Speaker 1: conceptualizations of the isomorphism sort of get really nerdy there
Speaker 1: between sex and gender. So some make it very clear
Speaker 1: that trans is having a gender identity that is really
Speaker 1: at odds doesn't match your sex, and they can separate
Speaker 1: the two things. Some I start to see these things
Speaker 1: get conflated in a way where I start to I say, okay,
Speaker 1: transgender women, okay, transfer when are transgender female? You know,
Speaker 1: like male female tends to be sex labels and women
Speaker 1: men tend to be identities. I think there's a disagreement
Speaker 1: there within the trans community exactly, you know what that is.
Speaker 1: Some I will talk to like, no, no, we acknowledge
Speaker 1: that trans women are women, but we still acknowledge that
Speaker 1: we're biologically male, and where others may say no, they're
Speaker 1: the same thing. So I didn't even ask where you
Speaker 1: think about? What do you think about that? Keli? The
Speaker 1: reason that I am uncomfortable with questions like that is
Speaker 1: because the way that those questions are often presented ends
Speaker 1: up being presented in such a way as to diminish
Speaker 1: transidentity in one way or another, right, like like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're a woman, but you're like really a male,
Speaker 1: right Like, And I know this is just anecdotal, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I have personally ever been asked that
Speaker 1: question in a way that I felt like wasn't in
Speaker 1: pursuit of that, because my question is in the broader
Speaker 1: societal sense, in terms of how we treat people, what
Speaker 1: rights we give access to people, what rights we give
Speaker 1: people access to, Like, I don't think that matters, you know,
Speaker 1: Like if we're trying to answer, you know, a question
Speaker 1: about the scientific reality of what human beings are in
Speaker 1: one sense or another, like what you know chromosomes look like,
Speaker 1: what sort of like hormones people have and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Sure, I mean, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: have as much information about biology and all of that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff as I can. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that is the conversation that we are actually ever having, really,
Speaker 1: And I think there is a complex relationship between those things,
Speaker 1: because I think gender is very socially constructed. I think
Speaker 1: it is socially constructed around at least superficial realities about
Speaker 1: the way biology ends up playing out what you know,
Speaker 1: like what is most of the time. But I also
Speaker 1: think it's worth pointing out that, like, there are roughly
Speaker 1: the same number of intersect people as there are redheads
Speaker 1: in the human population, right, Well, that statistic is not true. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's that's that. Yeah, And I can say I'll send
Speaker 1: you okay, I'd be interested in your sourcing. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: But like that is to say that, like, even if
Speaker 1: we were to acknowledge that things are like mostly binary,
Speaker 1: they're not as much as we really think they are.
Speaker 1: But then I also have to come back to why
Speaker 1: does that matter for the purpose of the discussion. It's
Speaker 1: the latter part there that I'm with you. I'm with you,
Speaker 1: you know, why does it matter from the perspective of
Speaker 1: the dignitian worth of a lived experience? I would be
Speaker 1: so so on the same page with you there, right,
Speaker 1: But from the sense of yeah, for getting like biology right,
Speaker 1: Getting biology right that's in its own category is important.
Speaker 1: I totally agree with everything is Kelly is saying there.
Speaker 1: As a you know, from the philosophy side, I will
Speaker 1: always be willing to jump in and talk about conceptual distinctions,
Speaker 1: but I you know, I will preface it by saying,
Speaker 1: I think politics and the well being of individuals should
Speaker 1: be the defining decision maker, not you know, definitions, partly
Speaker 1: because look, at the end of the day, there's no
Speaker 1: true definitions for words. I think this is a problem
Speaker 1: that some people get lost on, which is there's no
Speaker 1: correct definition of woman. There are more or less useful
Speaker 1: definitions of women, right, and the same thing in biology, right, Like,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the definition of sex. Is the definition
Speaker 1: of sex purely related to chromosomes? Is it a mix
Speaker 1: of chromosomes and phenotypes? So like Sometimes people will tell
Speaker 1: me that it's just chromosomes, and then I'll say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, then let the person do all the other
Speaker 1: sort of stuff and they'll say, well, no, but that
Speaker 1: they you know, it's also phenotypes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You know. So what I think is there is something
Speaker 1: that there is to be biologically male when biologically female.
Speaker 1: It has to do with chromosomes and distosterone. And there's
Speaker 1: a spectrum of you know where you you know, what
Speaker 1: mix of those properties that you have, and it's important
Speaker 1: to know that. I think you're one hundred percent right.
Speaker 1: I would say bimodal not a spectrum, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: in by spectrum. Like some men have low testosterone, some
Speaker 1: men have high dystosterone, and it's actually not the case
Speaker 1: that there's an easy correlation between those things and body strength,
Speaker 1: for example. It's more complicated than you'd think. That is
Speaker 1: not to say I don't I do think that tran
Speaker 1: that like distosterone, has an impact on things like muscle
Speaker 1: mass development, et cetera. But the point is I was
Speaker 1: just trying to make I think it's important to distinguish
Speaker 1: between sex and gender because when a trans individual goes
Speaker 1: to a doctor, their doctor should understand their medical history,
Speaker 1: which includes that they were born a particular biological sex
Speaker 1: and transitioned at some point that can impact the way
Speaker 1: that they need to be treated medically, absolutely, right. And
Speaker 1: then gender, so we have gender and gender identity, right,
Speaker 1: So gender is sort of the outside in approach where
Speaker 1: society constructs your gender through gender norms and things like that.
Speaker 1: And then gender identity is the subjective how you experience
Speaker 1: your own gender from the inside out. And all three
Speaker 1: of these things are interconnected in every individual to some extent,
Speaker 1: but they are separate things and we have to treat
Speaker 1: them separately because again, right, you're not checking chromosomes at
Speaker 1: the bathroom door. You're checking do they look like XYZ
Speaker 1: or not? Right, you're checking gender and gender identity because
Speaker 1: they're real, and that's what makes them real. Like they're
Speaker 1: social constructs, but they're social constructs that consistently impact a
Speaker 1: person's life. If you don't fit your gender norms, you
Speaker 1: have a different experience in life than if you do
Speaker 1: in a gender normative society like ours. So it's clearly real,
Speaker 1: and what becomes interesting there is like, there are some
Speaker 1: ways that I actually think the medical profession would do
Speaker 1: well to pay more attention to those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: because you know, we often talk about how, you know,
Speaker 1: making medication decisions for example, right, like what what your
Speaker 1: hormonal makeup is affects the way that you react to
Speaker 1: certain medications, for example, Right, So like that's one reason
Speaker 1: why it would be at least somewhat important for a
Speaker 1: doctor to know, like the circumstances of your birth, if
Speaker 1: you're on hormone, if you're on hormonal treatment of some kind,
Speaker 1: even outside the even outside trans folks, like if you
Speaker 1: if you were born with a hormonal imbalance where you know,
Speaker 1: you have a certain number of chromosomes, but your body
Speaker 1: reacts to hormones differently, which is like what a lot
Speaker 1: of intersex conditions are. But also like a lot of
Speaker 1: doctors just assume a lot of those things without ever
Speaker 1: checking them out right, And so that's what ends up happening.
Speaker 1: Is like, if the focus really is the well being
Speaker 1: of trans folks, we would actually be having a different
Speaker 1: conversation because if we were talking about people's actual well being,
Speaker 1: the conversation would be No, actually, a doctor should know
Speaker 1: all of this stuff about you from the jump, because
Speaker 1: it affects the way that your body might absorb certain medications,
Speaker 1: but the medical profession as a whole likes to just
Speaker 1: assume certain things, like you've got M checked on the box,
Speaker 1: so I know that I can prescribe to you X
Speaker 1: medication because people with M and this box react to
Speaker 1: this medication in this way. Right, But that's like not
Speaker 1: really the conversation that ends up happening writ large, Right,
Speaker 1: the conversation is it looks entirely different because the basis
Speaker 1: of the conversation is not actually that. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really good point, and I would yes, and that let's
Speaker 1: say that within the field of psychology, if the specific
Speaker 1: topic is what is the how queen maximum as the
Speaker 1: well being of transfolk, I think that it's a very
Speaker 1: woefully understudied topic within psychology, and we actually don't have
Speaker 1: the answers that are definitive along those lines. I would
Speaker 1: strongly disagree with that. Talk to me why you think
Speaker 1: all things point to a certain direction. I think it's
Speaker 1: very very clear that affirming someone's identity to the extent
Speaker 1: that they feel it necessary to, you know, hormones or
Speaker 1: surgeries or whatever like. I think it is very very
Speaker 1: clear that access to those things is and that's not
Speaker 1: to say that all transfolks want those things. A lot
Speaker 1: of trans folks don't. In fact, a lot of trans
Speaker 1: folks don't feel it necessary for their own well being.
Speaker 1: I think it is very very clear that people being
Speaker 1: affirmed in their identity to that extent is it's just
Speaker 1: very very clear that that is the right answer. Let
Speaker 1: me just jump in and preempt a potential concern. I
Speaker 1: know some folks will be thinking, you know, what's your
Speaker 1: sign tipic evidence for that, And I do think we
Speaker 1: don't have enough like really really good longitunal data, yeah
Speaker 1: about about any of this, because it's very hard to study.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to even sample. So like a lot
Speaker 1: of the studies about trans individuals are bad because they
Speaker 1: sample specifically, you know, de transitioners in radical anti trans communities,
Speaker 1: or they sample specifically, you know, pro trans individuals who
Speaker 1: are like part of like a Trevor Project activity, Like
Speaker 1: you're not You're not getting an unbiased sample, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. A lot of folks will cite Jack Turbin's
Speaker 1: studies to you know that like that they show that
Speaker 1: like the vast majority of gender affirming care works out
Speaker 1: well for people, and his studies have selective selection problems
Speaker 1: as well, So I think I think we should you know,
Speaker 1: we need more data, right, and the absolutely that's all
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Well, I was just gonna say, the best
Speaker 1: way to get that data is continuing to provide this
Speaker 1: kind of care while also studying the impacts will also
Speaker 1: destigmatizing it, because I do think we have enough evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that this is a treatment that helps a
Speaker 1: significant portion of individuals and they should have access to it.
Speaker 1: And the question is how big is that portion of individuals.
Speaker 1: How do we assess which of those individuals get this treatment,
Speaker 1: and how do we minimize individuals who get this treatment
Speaker 1: when it wouldn't be the ideal treatment for them. Look, sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, let think about people who deal with any depressants, right,
Speaker 1: how many different types of antidepressants they go through, some
Speaker 1: of which have really, you know, potentially significant side effects
Speaker 1: before they find the right treatment. Like, sometimes people are
Speaker 1: going to, you know, try transitioning to some extent and
Speaker 1: it's not going to help with their issues, and they're
Speaker 1: going to try something else. I don't think we should
Speaker 1: see those people as being victims of medical malpractice. I
Speaker 1: think that's a very different story. From somebody who just
Speaker 1: gets shoved into hormone treatment or something because ideologically the
Speaker 1: doctor thinks that this person is trans and they should
Speaker 1: be pushed that way. And I think it's really important
Speaker 1: to interrogate the reasons why too, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people end up pursuing transition related things, whether it be
Speaker 1: hormone surgery anything like that, and they desist not because
Speaker 1: it was the wrong thing, but because they can't handle
Speaker 1: what it is to live in society as a transperson.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking specifically of there was a I think a
Speaker 1: sports broadcaster who ended up dying by suicide, not because
Speaker 1: being trans was the wrong thing, but because she was
Speaker 1: just entirely unprepared to live that life, experiencing like personal
Speaker 1: and systemic misogyny, right, And so I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to ask those kinds of questions too, Like we
Speaker 1: have to dig a little bit deeper, you know, Like
Speaker 1: anyone I know who has regrets around surgery, for example,
Speaker 1: it's not because they thought the surgery was wrong. It
Speaker 1: was because the surgery did a bad job, or you know,
Speaker 1: some other reason like that, not because the thing itself
Speaker 1: was the wrong decision. Within psychology, maybe I'm wrong, but
Speaker 1: I have this principle that there's no one science fits
Speaker 1: all approach, and there is such pressure from a lot
Speaker 1: of people psychologists to be trained to immediately affirm every
Speaker 1: patient who comes to them as who says that they
Speaker 1: potentially might be the opposite gender they might be that
Speaker 1: is mismatched to what they were identifine as birth. And
Speaker 1: it's almost like taboo for a psychologist to be able
Speaker 1: to just say, Okay, let's explore this, let's see what
Speaker 1: might be right for you in the sense of maybe trans.
Speaker 1: There's kind of like an encouragement to affirm them as
Speaker 1: trans as opposed to figure out other and maybe other
Speaker 1: psychological ways for them to do it. Yeah, this seems
Speaker 1: in conflict with the stories that I hear from trans individuals.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that is that is count that
Speaker 1: is counter to so much of what I hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again it's because all three of us are probably
Speaker 1: bringing our anecdotal experiences to it, right, and so like
Speaker 1: it's obvious that our experiences would be a little different.
Speaker 1: But this isn't to say that, like, my anecdotal experience
Speaker 1: is worth more than other folks. But I will just say,
Speaker 1: like I know a lot of trans people, and like, universally,
Speaker 1: the problem is fine finding one finding a therapist who
Speaker 1: doesn't like push back and fight against someone's trans identity,
Speaker 1: and then also someone who doesn't want to tie every
Speaker 1: single problem in a person's life to being trans. And
Speaker 1: this is actually an issue that I'm dealing with right now,
Speaker 1: Like I want to have a therapist because I need
Speaker 1: coping skills for ADHD and an anxiety and going through
Speaker 1: a divorce. Being trans actually is really not anything causing
Speaker 1: any problem in my life right now. I have to
Speaker 1: find a therapist who is like cool with me being trans,
Speaker 1: but also doesn't want to make every conversation about that,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: in the trans community, the problem is actually that finding
Speaker 1: affirming therapists isn't even a problem. It's finding like transcompetent therapists.
Speaker 1: Like what does that even mean? Right? Like I know
Speaker 1: so many people who have had to educate their mental
Speaker 1: health and medical providers about like what it even means
Speaker 1: to be trans, like let alone, you know, affirming them
Speaker 1: or like helping them through that journey, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if someone I mean, if someone comes to
Speaker 1: a therapist and says like I think I'm trans and
Speaker 1: this is, you know, the source of some conflict or
Speaker 1: problem for me. Like, I think it would be a
Speaker 1: bad therapist that didn't dig into that right. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a there's a very big difference from saying like,
Speaker 1: let's talk more about this and let's like dig through
Speaker 1: those feelings and explore that there is like there are
Speaker 1: different ways to approach that right, that right that don't
Speaker 1: cause harm. If I can also share secondhand, somewhat vaguely
Speaker 1: story because I know a lot of people are concerned
Speaker 1: about this, specifically with regard to children, that children are
Speaker 1: being over supported in this sort of thing, which hopefully
Speaker 1: will allay some people's concerns. So I know several individuals
Speaker 1: who transition to a variety of different ages, including an
Speaker 1: individual who transition and pre puberty. Now what do I
Speaker 1: mean by that? This is an individual and like I'll emphasize,
Speaker 1: this is an individual who lives in a place that
Speaker 1: is anti trans. Her her biological father is anti trans.
Speaker 1: She has faced serious conflict over this for her entire life.
Speaker 1: But she's also persistently identified this way for her entire life.
Speaker 1: As far as anyone can tell. They tried to like
Speaker 1: pressure it out of her in all the kinds of
Speaker 1: ways that you could imagine didn't work right. And so
Speaker 1: what she has experienced is, you know, first what Kelly
Speaker 1: was describing the kind of social transition, and then you
Speaker 1: don't start taking puberty blockers until puberty starts to set in, right,
Speaker 1: and the ideas at that point you make a medical decision.
Speaker 1: And what this individual experienced is not you know, here's
Speaker 1: here's your drugs off you goo, right. It was a
Speaker 1: persistent process where they worked. You know, they met with
Speaker 1: counselors and medical essionals who were very candid about the
Speaker 1: potential you know, uh, I don't I don't love the
Speaker 1: term harms, but let's you know, like side effects of
Speaker 1: hormone replacement things. You know, the reasons that I think
Speaker 1: it's probably best not to say that hormone replacements are irreversible.
Speaker 1: I think that's too strong a claim. What I think
Speaker 1: we can say is an individual of that age can
Speaker 1: be given sufficient information about things like potential sterility, potential
Speaker 1: impacts on bone density, et cetera, such that they can
Speaker 1: make an informed consent decision. I think that is very
Speaker 1: possible for someone even at that age. And you know,
Speaker 1: what that person experienced was what they call sort of
Speaker 1: careful waiting and watching or something like that, or you know,
Speaker 1: like they had to be persistent, insistent and consistent in
Speaker 1: their demands to transition, right, so it you know, that's
Speaker 1: how they kind of I think, weed out this idea
Speaker 1: of this person as maybe being socially pushed in this direction,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just experimenting or something with someone who, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is really really core to their their
Speaker 1: identity in this kind of way, in a in an
Speaker 1: immutable kind of way that you know, they had conversations
Speaker 1: with their parents, with the doctors and everything essentially ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to get the treatment. And I think that is good. Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's what we should want. When I share
Speaker 1: that story with gender critical people, they tend to call
Speaker 1: me their lid. I was just going to say, but
Speaker 1: I think that's absolutely Like, that's how medical ethics works,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, Like medical I like I teach medical ethics.
Speaker 1: Medical ethics is very messy, yeah, and it's it is
Speaker 1: a It is a complicated situation where often there are
Speaker 1: no perfect answers. There are only answers again with trade
Speaker 1: offs and benefits and I would argue that young people
Speaker 1: should have bodily autonomy and the ability to make medical
Speaker 1: decisions as long as they are given adequate information and
Speaker 1: are at an age where they can sufficiently understand that.
Speaker 1: And I think this person was at that age. I
Speaker 1: will I will play double out of can here in
Speaker 1: a second to Kellia, do you do you largely agree
Speaker 1: with with Aaron's perspective there entirely? Yeah, okay, not just
Speaker 1: largely entirely. Okay. We can have a conversation about whether
Speaker 1: or not the current level of gatekeeping is a good
Speaker 1: one or not, but I think it's important to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the reality that basically, in all cases that I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: like the level of gatekeeping is extraordinarily high for kids
Speaker 1: to access anything medical, anything outside of you know, the
Speaker 1: previously discussed like you know, different clothes, haircut, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, puberty blockers, hormones, surgery. I actually I agree
Speaker 1: with Aaron that calling it irreversible is too much, But
Speaker 1: also I think it goes a little far in the
Speaker 1: other direction. Like your first dose of estrogen you have
Speaker 1: like irretrievably changed your life in huge ways. And my
Speaker 1: thing is, like we don't even often start from the
Speaker 1: reality that this is often so difficult to access for people. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in child development or medical ethics
Speaker 1: like Aaron and so like, I hesitate to offer a
Speaker 1: really strong opinion on like specifically what the level of
Speaker 1: correct gatekeeping is, but I do think it is important
Speaker 1: to start from the basic reality that right now, the
Speaker 1: barriers to accessing that are huge, and there are medical
Speaker 1: professionals and mental health professionals involved at several stages along
Speaker 1: the way over a long period of time before anything
Speaker 1: like that happens, and like we have to just start
Speaker 1: from that reality, like, this is not a thing where
Speaker 1: you know, a seven year old walks into a doctor's
Speaker 1: office and walk out with puberty blockers. Like, that's just
Speaker 1: not a thing that happens. Well, that's something that helps
Speaker 1: over the temperature to do that, to make that very
Speaker 1: clear that this is It's like, even within the trans
Speaker 1: committee's considered a big deal when a twelve year old
Speaker 1: or sorry, yeah, well I guess twelve year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want their puberty at twelve. That where a twelve
Speaker 1: year old takes a testosterone blocker, for instance, that's not
Speaker 1: like the most common outcome Yeah, the story I told
Speaker 1: you is the only story I know of an individual
Speaker 1: who like didn't start to deal with this stuff sort
Speaker 1: of mid or post puberty. Yeah, And I will say
Speaker 1: one of the like one of the premier trans kids
Speaker 1: programs in the country is in Cincinnati. It's a Cincinnati
Speaker 1: Children's Hospital. Like, people come from very far away to
Speaker 1: come to Cincinnati Children's for their for their trans program
Speaker 1: and so like I've been to a lot of events
Speaker 1: where the folks who run that clinic talk about what
Speaker 1: the process looks like, and like it exhausts me just
Speaker 1: hearing about it, honestly, like the level of I mean,
Speaker 1: these are like enthusiastically trans affirming care providers that still like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's there's lots of therapy, lots of medical evaluation,
Speaker 1: lots of consultations with parents and the kids and all that.
Speaker 1: Like there's so much that happens before any any like
Speaker 1: actual medical intervention happens. And let me let me just
Speaker 1: add something. There's a burden issue here in our ethical
Speaker 1: trade off debate, which is a any amount of gatekeeping
Speaker 1: is going to come at a cost to the individual
Speaker 1: who's trying to get medical care because they you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an orerous burden to get multiple appointments,
Speaker 1: all these kinds of things. It may be a necessary cost,
Speaker 1: but there is the additional cost of being in a
Speaker 1: for profit system. I we even talked about the capitalist
Speaker 1: as you want, you wanted to talk about that. I
Speaker 1: have a note that you wanted to talk about that
Speaker 1: two hours ago, and partly and part you know it's
Speaker 1: you know, Matt Walsh a little while ago released an
Speaker 1: edited clip of someone talking about the costs of transitioning,
Speaker 1: claiming that that, like this is proof that this is
Speaker 1: all just a big for profit money making scheme for
Speaker 1: doctors or something like that. You know, I don't believe
Speaker 1: it is. Look, you know, I don't think that there
Speaker 1: should be profit and capital or like, you know, no
Speaker 1: more than all of medicine is to make money. I mean, interestingly,
Speaker 1: those arguments are functionally identical to anti vaxxer arguments in
Speaker 1: the sense that they're just claiming that this is a
Speaker 1: profit driven treatment instead of an actually beneficial treatment. But
Speaker 1: setting aside that conspiratorial side of things, individuals who want
Speaker 1: medical care in our society, who don't have good health
Speaker 1: care have to pay a lot. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can curse on the show, because I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: a whole lot can like a fucking ton of money. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you say you have to meet with this
Speaker 1: many doctors this many times to get this treatment, you
Speaker 1: are saying transitioning costs. This, this is the baseline cost
Speaker 1: for you to be allowed to have access to your
Speaker 1: medical rights. So that's a problem. I think the problem
Speaker 1: for that is not get rid of gatekeeping, but is instead,
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of for profit medicine. But if
Speaker 1: you are in that particular reality, you could be much
Speaker 1: more sympathetic to the idea of black market hormones because
Speaker 1: people can't afford to go see a bunch of doctors,
Speaker 1: but they can afford to buy hormones on the internet.
Speaker 1: Because importantly, the hormone treatments that trans folks get largely
Speaker 1: were hormone treatments that were invented versus people who have
Speaker 1: hormone balances, right, that's right. The regimen of hormones that
Speaker 1: I was initially put on, like my doctor told me,
Speaker 1: like this is like it's not identical, but functionally this
Speaker 1: is like the same treatment that postmenopausal sis women get,
Speaker 1: and even like falloplasty operations that trans men get to
Speaker 1: surgically constructive penis vaginoplasty, Like all of those surgeries have
Speaker 1: roots in solving problems, not for trans people, and they're
Speaker 1: just being applied in a different way. And so like,
Speaker 1: this is definitely not an invented industry simply to make money,
Speaker 1: because like all of these things were not invented specific
Speaker 1: for trans people. Like they're obviously applied in slightly different ways,
Speaker 1: but they certainly don't exist just for us. Sure, No,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, it's very true. Well, okay, well
Speaker 1: I did say I was going to push back a
Speaker 1: little bit, diner the idea of whether or not a
Speaker 1: twelve year old should ever be in a universe where
Speaker 1: they consent to that. Well, I guess the point there is,
Speaker 1: doesn't the parent have to consent as well? So what
Speaker 1: if the child wants to do it and the parents
Speaker 1: don't want it to happen? What happens in that case?
Speaker 1: Out of curiosity? I mean, so what if a twelve
Speaker 1: year old's pregnant and wants to get an abortion and
Speaker 1: their parents are fundamentalists, right, I don't think that the
Speaker 1: parent gets to decide. I don't think that the law
Speaker 1: should be allowed to prevent the child from getting the
Speaker 1: abortion because the parents are against it. So I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree that there is at least one
Speaker 1: case where parent parental rights lose out to child autonomy. Okay,
Speaker 1: someone can say that's a false analogy. Well say, the
Speaker 1: second part is is this situation sufficiently like that situation? Right?
Speaker 1: And I would say the answer is yes. You know,
Speaker 1: I would say there are some differences, but they are
Speaker 1: not morally relevant differences to me. So I guess maybe
Speaker 1: my mind is more not made up than yours on
Speaker 1: this topic. Because I had a very interesting conversation with
Speaker 1: Carol Hooven, who's an evolutionary biologist at Harvard who will
Speaker 1: be part of this four part series upon which you
Speaker 1: two are featured as the first ones. But I had
Speaker 1: a very interesting conversation with her because she studied the
Speaker 1: She studies the science of testosterone and the role that
Speaker 1: it plays and sexual dimorphism and it's evolutionary origins, etcetera.
Speaker 1: She wrote the book T that is correct. It's a
Speaker 1: good book. I actually enjoyed that book. I recommend it
Speaker 1: the folks. Excellent, excellent, you know, And and I asked
Speaker 1: her to walk through the science for me. She she
Speaker 1: made it very clear that taking Testosa Baker's right before
Speaker 1: puberty is irreversible in this sense. She says, it will
Speaker 1: make you sterile, and it also will make it so
Speaker 1: you will never be able to experience an orgasm your
Speaker 1: entire life. And those seem to be things that that seems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, that second part is much more questionable than
Speaker 1: the first thing. Yeah, question that you might give questions,
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, please reach out to her and email her
Speaker 1: after you hear my chat with her. Maybe I didn't
Speaker 1: one hundred percent quote properly. No, it's a claim I've
Speaker 1: heard before. It's a claim that you know, I hear
Speaker 1: the people saying that like trans people can no longer
Speaker 1: experience sexual pleasure, stuff like that. If right before people
Speaker 1: they do do one of these kind of medical only
Speaker 1: in that case, Yeah, right, she made a case why
Speaker 1: that would be the case biologically, And I guess I
Speaker 1: mean that's that those are pretty big deals and I
Speaker 1: would just really would want to I would really want
Speaker 1: that twelve year old to know they've never in their
Speaker 1: life probably have experienced orgasms. So it's not like they
Speaker 1: can do the thought experiment and make that lifelong decision
Speaker 1: whether or not to go down one path or another.
Speaker 1: They won't ever be able to know what the alternative
Speaker 1: would be to make that decision. That's true in a
Speaker 1: lot of decisions, unfortunately, Like, I mean, I see that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean that's you know where I come
Speaker 1: back to, you know, understanding the just unreal level of
Speaker 1: torment that it is to be trans and to be
Speaker 1: denied the ability to do what you need to do
Speaker 1: to feel good about that like that because even like,
Speaker 1: let's just assume that that is the case, right, that
Speaker 1: doesn't actually make it any more clear to me, right
Speaker 1: because because that that is certainly a cost, for sure,
Speaker 1: Like it would be silly to not acknowledge that as
Speaker 1: a cost. But also, yeah, assuming it's real, but like
Speaker 1: that also doesn't erase the very real cost of someone
Speaker 1: being forced to go through a puberty that is, that
Speaker 1: is torture, right Like, And this is obviously I'm speaking
Speaker 1: from an adult perspective, having you know, I had bottom
Speaker 1: surgery when six years ago I was you know, thirty two,
Speaker 1: thirty three, so it's very different thing. But there was
Speaker 1: a period of time in my recovery where I thought
Speaker 1: I had actually lost sexual function as a result of
Speaker 1: the surgery that I had, and for me, that would
Speaker 1: have been a very high cost, to be sure, but
Speaker 1: I still would have preferred that outcome to not having
Speaker 1: had it, like it was that big of a deal
Speaker 1: for me, And so I don't want to dismiss that
Speaker 1: concern at all, but that it's still that still doesn't
Speaker 1: make it like a black and white easy choice, I
Speaker 1: don't think. I mean so, I'm not a biologist. From
Speaker 1: what I understand, the sterility issue is more sort of substantiated.
Speaker 1: The no orgasm thing I would push back on in
Speaker 1: various ways, such as like how are you defining an
Speaker 1: orgasm and measuring it? Like? Lots of lots of problems there.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's problematic because it's an implicit
Speaker 1: statement of you can't enjoy sex anymore, which is an
Speaker 1: assumption that people who don't have orgasms can't enjoy sex.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who enjoy non goal
Speaker 1: directed sex that doesn't involve orgasms that makes them very happy.
Speaker 1: So you want to be careful. If you're going to
Speaker 1: talk to a child about those kinds of costs, then
Speaker 1: I think you want to say, look, there may be
Speaker 1: impacts on the way that you experience sexuality, such as
Speaker 1: potentially impacting your experiences of orgasms. So that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that you can't have healthy, meaningful sexual relationships. So,
Speaker 1: you know, like Kelly's saying, even if we accept one
Speaker 1: hundred percent for the sake of argument that both of
Speaker 1: these things is absolutely true, that's still part of the
Speaker 1: informed consent discussion. That's not you can't use those to
Speaker 1: say and therefore we're going to prevent these people from
Speaker 1: making these decisions because you know, the idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: they don't know what an orgasm is. We make medical
Speaker 1: decisions all the time without knowing the realities of what
Speaker 1: the counterfactuals would actually be like or the cost would
Speaker 1: actually be like. And I think that's just the reality
Speaker 1: of us having to make decisions with imperfect knowledge. The
Speaker 1: important thing is are we doing the best we can
Speaker 1: to make sure that we are providing what seems like
Speaker 1: the most healthy and effective care for these individuals. This
Speaker 1: is obviously an explosive issue. We should acknowledge that for sure,
Speaker 1: and sure, I find even my own blood pressure rising
Speaker 1: when we discuss this, and I care so much about
Speaker 1: protecting children from long term psychological consequences as well as
Speaker 1: physical consequences, and I know you too do as well.
Speaker 1: I'm not pitting that against and saying you two don't care,
Speaker 1: not saying that to be clear, but it makes me
Speaker 1: I'm so wary about being like your position, Aaron, which
Speaker 1: is like, oh yeah, an NBD, no big deal, Like
Speaker 1: this is kind I'm kind of like you have your
Speaker 1: stance on this. I don't have my stance in this yet,
Speaker 1: because I really don't know what the long term psychological
Speaker 1: consequences are of making such a decision so young, in
Speaker 1: the sense that like we have rules, get protections against children,
Speaker 1: and in lots of other ways, twelve year olds even
Speaker 1: if they want to consent to having sex with a
Speaker 1: four year old, we say no that like, yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 1: you're consenting that, but no, like that's gonna that's bad
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons, including your long term psychological consequences.
Speaker 1: And you'll say that's a false analogy. Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: do know. I mean I the level of like empirical
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge. I'm not the expert on that, but like
Speaker 1: we do know for sure what the psychological effects of
Speaker 1: denying the reality of someone's transidentity can be and it
Speaker 1: is often a dead kid like and you know, going
Speaker 1: back to the earlier thing saying that that's an inevitability.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's hyperbole. Obviously that's not true, but like things
Speaker 1: very often do end up working out that way, and
Speaker 1: if not, and if not, that often long term psychological damage,
Speaker 1: long term trauma, like long term life altering trauma. And
Speaker 1: I think it is absolutely a valid question to talk
Speaker 1: about the possible negative effects of making of like moving
Speaker 1: forward with that medical intervention, for sure, because I think
Speaker 1: that's an important conversation with any medical intervention. But I
Speaker 1: think what is what is often lost in the conversation
Speaker 1: is doing nothing has a cost, and often a very
Speaker 1: incredibly incredibly high cost as well, and I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to not dismiss that part of it as well.
Speaker 1: Hold On, hold on, I'm definitely thinking like a scientist
Speaker 1: right now. The alternative here is not to do nothing
Speaker 1: or to have them take puberty blockers. Here's an interesting
Speaker 1: question scientifically, because I think about studies in my head,
Speaker 1: like what is the statistics can a difference between doing
Speaker 1: a gender affirming care in the sense of you change
Speaker 1: your pronouns, you do everything, but the change the pure
Speaker 1: blocking versus the pure blockers in terms of suicience, that
Speaker 1: that would be where my head goes in terms of
Speaker 1: I want to see that data, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, And that's complicated too, because not not all
Speaker 1: trans people need or want hormones or surgeries or anything
Speaker 1: like that, right, So, like it's it's the difference between
Speaker 1: knowing that you need those things and not and not
Speaker 1: needing those things, right because for some people it really
Speaker 1: is entirely about maybe like outward presentation, name pronouns, that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and like that's all fine, and that's
Speaker 1: entirely valid, right. And so that's so when I say
Speaker 1: do nothing, I mean someone who says this is a
Speaker 1: medical intervention I need and refusing to give that do
Speaker 1: nothing is refusing to give them mental not providing the
Speaker 1: medical intervention in those specific circumstances where someone is saying
Speaker 1: this is something I need and you're saying no, we're
Speaker 1: not seeing it's not meaning complete ignoring the child's yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotcha. And can I push back a little bit,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this just just phrasing a little
Speaker 1: bit in terms of like that we see this as
Speaker 1: no big deal. I think like there's a conflation sometimes
Speaker 1: that happens when someone is confident or has a settled
Speaker 1: position on something. That's the same as thinking that it's
Speaker 1: not a hard question or that there aren't important cause
Speaker 1: to every answer to that question. Right, Like, if I've
Speaker 1: just if I've done enough you know, ethical parsing and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I come to a settled conclusion that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: affirming people's identities is the ethical thing to do. I
Speaker 1: think that, like that's reasonable. And if you show me
Speaker 1: like an overwhelming like you showed me that like puberty
Speaker 1: blockers killed children, right like it just they just die,
Speaker 1: right like, then I think you'd have a reasonable argument
Speaker 1: that it's immoral to prescribe puberty blockers to them, even
Speaker 1: if that would affirm their identity. What I think we
Speaker 1: have is enough evidence to say there are some medical costs,
Speaker 1: but there are also some medical and psychological benefits, and
Speaker 1: that like it's not no big deal, but it is
Speaker 1: progress in our understanding. And I think some people think that,
Speaker 1: like we have to always be so open minded to
Speaker 1: every possibility rather than coming to kind of settled conclusions.
Speaker 1: I also just want to say about the the sex
Speaker 1: with children things, because this comes up so much when
Speaker 1: you start talking about child autonomatic automatic kind of you
Speaker 1: would call it a red herring perhaps, yeah, or thought
Speaker 1: you know, a thought turnating cliche or just like it's
Speaker 1: just a bad argument, right, I don't, I don't falacy
Speaker 1: names to just say it's just a bad argument. My
Speaker 1: argument was just a bad argument, Scott. Well, because and
Speaker 1: like you know why, we have, you know, an abundance
Speaker 1: of evidence that like sex with underage individuals significantly harms
Speaker 1: them psychologically, right, Like we know this, it's a real
Speaker 1: it's obvious data on that. Right, And so when we
Speaker 1: when we say you can't have sex with children, even
Speaker 1: if they consent to it, we are you know, in
Speaker 1: a way being soft paternalistic. But because that is the
Speaker 1: right thing to do in that particular situation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a totally different cost benefit analysis when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a medical treatment. Well, even if the data showed
Speaker 1: that it was okay, though it's not like you would
Speaker 1: suddenly be like okay, then we should there's justification for it. Look,
Speaker 1: if humans were a species hypothetically where we were sexually
Speaker 1: active from birth, right and we like were immediately function,
Speaker 1: you're going with I'm getting nervous. I feel like I
Speaker 1: know you're going this, and I'm about to have a
Speaker 1: heart attack. Okay, but what I'm saying is you're asking me,
Speaker 1: what if humans were biologically different, should we morally treat
Speaker 1: them differently? And I would say yeah, like if if
Speaker 1: different things are good for humans because there are a
Speaker 1: different species, then that's fine. We're still respecting autonomy, right
Speaker 1: it which just it's changing the shape of Like if
Speaker 1: we found out, for example, right that like people are
Speaker 1: you know, there's no sexual cast there's no cost to
Speaker 1: being sexually active at sixteen instead of twenty? Right, should
Speaker 1: we set the age of consent at sixteen instead of
Speaker 1: twenty even though religious fundamentalists want to edit it, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five or whatever. Yes, Like, well what about that?
Speaker 1: That's part of the No, that's my question. What about twelve?
Speaker 1: If you could really show that? Can't absolutely no, Look
Speaker 1: you're straightforward, let me straightforward. No, Please let him answer, Please,
Speaker 1: let him answer answer. I'm an ethicist. I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: of being canceled. You can't do anything awel because that
Speaker 1: is my direct analogy is twelve. So sure, let's says
Speaker 1: let's say you had overwhelming evidence, contrary to all prior evidence,
Speaker 1: and right contrary to the giant body of work that
Speaker 1: shows that this is bad for twelve year olds. You
Speaker 1: had so many studies that suddenly proved that it was
Speaker 1: okay for twelve year olds to have sex. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then like if they are psychologically competent, which is what
Speaker 1: you've proven, right, because there's no way that it's not
Speaker 1: causing harm. If they are not psychologically competent, then yeah,
Speaker 1: they should be allowed to have sex. I think that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's about harm reduction right where we care,
Speaker 1: We set the age of consent because we are trying
Speaker 1: to protect people from harm. What other reason would there be? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so okay, I disagree, disagree, but yeah, God, And I
Speaker 1: think what what Aaron was getting at earlier about the
Speaker 1: perception of having having a settled conversation or a settled
Speaker 1: position being read as like a nonchalance about the position.
Speaker 1: And I think there's there's another piece of that that
Speaker 1: I think is important to name, in the sort of
Speaker 1: baggage that I'll just cop to, like coming to conversations
Speaker 1: like this with in that if I don't act that way,
Speaker 1: I know that people in bad faith will point to
Speaker 1: that and saying, well, look, even these activists aren't super
Speaker 1: sure of the things that they say. Right. It's a
Speaker 1: rhetorical trap that is set for you where if you
Speaker 1: are super sure and confident, you get painted as being
Speaker 1: like rigid and unflexible and not willing to consider outside viewpoints.
Speaker 1: But the minute you temper that position, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: even this person says, there's an exception, so we can't know,
Speaker 1: because the argument works its way back to in the
Speaker 1: case of affirming trans kids, for example, the argument works
Speaker 1: its way back to and thus we shouldn't do any
Speaker 1: of this because we just can't know, right, argument. It's
Speaker 1: the argument for inaction. It will and I know that.
Speaker 1: But the problem, the problem that I end up being
Speaker 1: put in is knowing that you are not the only
Speaker 1: audience for this conversation. Right, And that's a thing, and
Speaker 1: that's and that's a thing that I am forced to
Speaker 1: consider in situations like this, definitely, because because that's a
Speaker 1: thing that often ends up happening, is is people taking
Speaker 1: your words out of context and using them against you. Right.
Speaker 1: But like I can tell you, you you know, I've had
Speaker 1: lots of conversations with parents about their kids transitioning and
Speaker 1: like it. I mean, it is. It's it's not a
Speaker 1: thing to undertake lightly. And I don't think anyone actually
Speaker 1: thinks that, like anyone who argues on the on the
Speaker 1: side of affirming trans kids thinks that is it is
Speaker 1: a thing to take lightly, at least not people who
Speaker 1: have the authority to like actually affect the way that
Speaker 1: these things work out in the real world, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can, I can point to all sorts
Speaker 1: of costs that have come with my own transition, but
Speaker 1: they're they're all costs that ended up being worth it
Speaker 1: for me, and they may not be for other people.
Speaker 1: Great point, and I think, and I really respect that
Speaker 1: as a person who is an adult who made these
Speaker 1: decisions with who's capable of making a fully formed decision.
Speaker 1: The reason why why I disagree for a number of
Speaker 1: reasons with what Aron said, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: leave double click on that again the thirteen and four
Speaker 1: year old think that's a whole separate conversation. I think
Speaker 1: there are lots of issues that surrounding why I don't
Speaker 1: think that's okay, not just for this particular reason of
Speaker 1: whether or not there's psychological harm but I think that
Speaker 1: from a psychological perspective, from what I know about child development,
Speaker 1: at the age of twelve, the prefrontal cortex is not
Speaker 1: fully developed, and it really it is important to recognize
Speaker 1: that a twelve year old decision maker is is not
Speaker 1: the same as an adult decision maker who's able to
Speaker 1: weigh a calculus in a mature way, and this does
Speaker 1: have very long term consequences on them this decision. So
Speaker 1: I'm just taking that perspective. So where would you set
Speaker 1: the age of medical consent? I mean, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: like the pre funnel cortex stops developing around twenty five, right,
Speaker 1: so denied informed consent, like because a lot of them
Speaker 1: have some impulse control problems. Let me tell you, trust me,
Speaker 1: I know I teach collegets. I would push back on
Speaker 1: that and say that, like I agree with you, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: But we're not talking about We're not talking about a
Speaker 1: situation in which we decide to not move forward with
Speaker 1: this and there are no consequences of that either, right,
Speaker 1: We're talking about a potential one set of potentially bad
Speaker 1: consequences against another set of horrifically bad consequences, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we're not I think there is there's a fundamental way
Speaker 1: that we treat this conversation that assumes there is no
Speaker 1: harm on the side of waiting and seeing wait, forcing
Speaker 1: a kid to go through a puberty that is torturous
Speaker 1: for them because the like you are, it's not a
Speaker 1: choice between doing this and doing nothing that has no consequences. Right.
Speaker 1: We are talking about the potential whatever potential long term
Speaker 1: negative consequences there could be of puberty blockers, of cross
Speaker 1: sex hormone therapy, of surgeries, whatever, versus the lifelong trauma
Speaker 1: that comes from denying a kid those things, Right, And
Speaker 1: I think that's the side that we are often leaving
Speaker 1: entirely out of the conversation. Wait, there's something I don't
Speaker 1: know just You're gonna have to explain this to me
Speaker 1: later on in life. You still can make decisions, medical
Speaker 1: decisions that help help you have greater alignment. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to ask a really nuanced question. I'm trying think how
Speaker 1: to articulate this, like scientifically, what is the difference in
Speaker 1: mental well being for those who have made this decision
Speaker 1: raid that critical period around puberty versus those who waited
Speaker 1: till they were adults and then had gotten hormones and
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things. What is the that's my question,
Speaker 1: I guess, Well, especially for folks who go through a
Speaker 1: testosterone fuel puberty, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: you can not undo from that process. I mean, you
Speaker 1: you hear my voice, right, Like testosterone thickens your vocal
Speaker 1: cords in a way that hormones does not. Thank you
Speaker 1: for one of the reasons I've done it for a while,
Speaker 1: and and and and actually one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I've not like done voice therapy and tried to change
Speaker 1: the way that I talk because I like my voice.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, like testosterone fuel puberty thick in
Speaker 1: my vocal cords in a way that hormones does not reverse,
Speaker 1: and surgery cannot reliably reverse. And there are lots of
Speaker 1: other things like that that are that there's kind of
Speaker 1: like no going back from if you if you go
Speaker 1: through puberty and wait to do you know, and wait
Speaker 1: to do any sort of medical intervention, like, there are
Speaker 1: things from that that cannot be reversed. Especially like this
Speaker 1: is a very very very big oversimplification, but if you
Speaker 1: go through an estrogen fueled puberty, testosterone will change more
Speaker 1: more of your like physical characteristics. Then if you go
Speaker 1: through a testosterone feel puberty and do estrogen, Like I said,
Speaker 1: gross oversimplification, but like in a general sense, there are
Speaker 1: there are just changes that happened that aren't easily reversed,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, or there's a really high cost for
Speaker 1: reversing them or something, and like, let's be honest, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a cost of a psychological hell if you don't
Speaker 1: identify with your body in this kind of way. Like
Speaker 1: I've talked to people who, for various reasons, felt in
Speaker 1: conflict with their bodies, and it's you know, you feel
Speaker 1: you feel trapped inside of a thing that is like
Speaker 1: fighting you in this kind of way. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's a really horrible experience for people, and they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be forced to suffer through that for what
Speaker 1: five six years before you get to, you know, be
Speaker 1: treated like somebody who knows the inside of their own mind.
Speaker 1: I do, Like I understand being concerned about, you know,
Speaker 1: children not always understanding the complexities of all these kinds
Speaker 1: of trade offs. But like if it's cancer treatment, nobody's
Speaker 1: batting an eye about whether you know, a young cancer
Speaker 1: patient gets to have cancer treatment even though, let me
Speaker 1: tell you, the effects of cancer treatment look really similar
Speaker 1: in some ways to the effects of hormone treatment, like
Speaker 1: sterility and things like that. Interesting. I would actually frame
Speaker 1: it different that they're in conflict with their bodies in
Speaker 1: a way. I would say they're in conflict with the
Speaker 1: way they want to be perceived by society in a
Speaker 1: way that isn't more in alignment with who they are
Speaker 1: or they feel like they are. I think some of
Speaker 1: them identify it's just like being in conflict with their bodies,
Speaker 1: like phantom limb syndrome kind of stuff. Transidentity is complicated
Speaker 1: and nuanced in a way that like, there are pieces
Speaker 1: of that is that are true because sometimes it is,
Speaker 1: you know, fundamentally about a difference in the way people
Speaker 1: treat us versus the way that we want people to
Speaker 1: be treated. But also some people feel that it is
Speaker 1: a very inherent, like inborn thing of who they are
Speaker 1: and I and like that all of that experience is
Speaker 1: valid I think, which is not a soul. Will always say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're saying there's a gendered soul. No, we're saying people
Speaker 1: have a first person, subjective experience that is persistent over time.
Speaker 1: What do you think about I hate that account libs
Speaker 1: of TikTok I got I finally got banned by them.
Speaker 1: It's just straight up bullying. But they do sometimes show
Speaker 1: videos of teachers who say things to their students, who
Speaker 1: teach things such as gender is all about how you
Speaker 1: feel and it can change five times a day. One
Speaker 1: mood might be male gender, one mood might be female gender.
Speaker 1: Now do you both do you love that? Are you like?
Speaker 1: Do you do you watch those VISIOM teachers and you're like, yes,
Speaker 1: they should be teaching that in the schools, Like what's
Speaker 1: your I want to hear your perceptions of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just want more context. I don't I don't trust
Speaker 1: anything that comes from that from that right, And that's fair. Well,
Speaker 1: because because because there's a world in which I am
Speaker 1: cheering that on, Because because gender identity isn't an inherently
Speaker 1: personal thing and it shifts for people over time sometimes,
Speaker 1: And that's great. I love that. That's fine. I like
Speaker 1: we should absolutely be affirming and encourage that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: my mind just got one. And because I really understand
Speaker 1: in Callie's world view, how you can reconcile allowing a
Speaker 1: person to make such a radical decision such as the
Speaker 1: testosterone booster's but also recognizing that if it's just a mood,
Speaker 1: that like maybe two years from now, you'll have a
Speaker 1: different mood, Like how do you reconcile those two things.
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't say it was just a mood. Okay,
Speaker 1: what I think what I said teach some mood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a well And that's why I said
Speaker 1: I would need context, right, and I would need to
Speaker 1: know like more of what that being said, all right,
Speaker 1: because I because I'm certainly guilty of saying things like
Speaker 1: that in conversation, you know, flippantly, like you know, like
Speaker 1: I love making a you know there, like I saw
Speaker 1: a sign that was like man woman at m ah, yes,
Speaker 1: the three genders, right, And I could imagine someone taking
Speaker 1: a video of me saying that out of context to
Speaker 1: make it sound, to make it sound like it way
Speaker 1: more than something that it actually is. Right. I think
Speaker 1: it is true that people's visions of themselves and their
Speaker 1: identities change over time. It is not as equally true
Speaker 1: that people feel the need for some sort of big
Speaker 1: like physical intervention like hormones or surgeries, and that that
Speaker 1: changes over time, like that's those are I think those
Speaker 1: are fundamentally different concepts, and I don't think it is.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it's reasonable to compare those things
Speaker 1: as being equally fluid to one another, because it's just
Speaker 1: not the way that it generally works out. I don't think,
Speaker 1: and I think the reality can be for some people
Speaker 1: their generatity is very stable. For other people that's more fluid,
Speaker 1: And that's just the reality of gender. As for like education,
Speaker 1: I think that we should be teaching about gender in schools,
Speaker 1: just like I think we should be teaching about critical
Speaker 1: race theory in schools. I think I can find you
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of teachers teaching them terribly and like
Speaker 1: causing harm by doing so, just I can find new
Speaker 1: examples of them teaching anything to it terribly and causing harm.
Speaker 1: But by in law large, I think people are teaching
Speaker 1: these things in ways that are positive and a significant improvement. Look,
Speaker 1: you know, just like you were saying, I might say
Speaker 1: something wrong, I apologize if I screw this up, And like,
Speaker 1: on the other side of the spectrum are the really
Speaker 1: really woke people who really want to do the right
Speaker 1: thing and are saying really really wrong things because they
Speaker 1: think that's what they need to be saying to help people,
Speaker 1: and like they need to be corrected to they need
Speaker 1: to be helped. But like they're not monsters. They're not
Speaker 1: trying to ruin children or something like that. They're not
Speaker 1: trying to groom your children. They're just trying to do
Speaker 1: what everybody's trying to do, which is be good people
Speaker 1: and help people live better lives. Yeah, good intentions can
Speaker 1: be paid with hells against the famous expression. Sure, right,
Speaker 1: but doesn't mean you can't talk about gender in school.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, Aaron, wait, so do you not view yourself
Speaker 1: as as as as woke if you're not identify as
Speaker 1: woh identify as woke? But I also think they are
Speaker 1: king about people. And I'm like, Aaron, what are you No?
Speaker 1: I I was criticizing members of my own community as you.
Speaker 1: I think I just absolutely hate that term in the
Speaker 1: way I understand the way it's because well, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a horribly misappropriated use of the word. The
Speaker 1: way that it was initially introduced to be used absolutely true,
Speaker 1: and and I think I think using it that way
Speaker 1: is allowing people of bad faith to steer the conversation
Speaker 1: in a way that I'm not comfortable with. Well, here's
Speaker 1: what I'll say. I think there is something called wokeness
Speaker 1: which is a cultural phenomenon that manifests in various different ways,
Speaker 1: and I think it's worth talking about that phenomenon while
Speaker 1: also acknowledging that the term has been misappropriated from marginalized communities. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's a difference between saying this
Speaker 1: word is being misused and saying this is not actually
Speaker 1: a thing. I one hundred percent think it is a thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's often weaponized and there's no there's no
Speaker 1: discussion about like here is functional wokeness, and here is
Speaker 1: a functional wokeness. It's treated as if like anyone who
Speaker 1: fits this category is this extreme thing, which I don't
Speaker 1: think is a useful way to have a conversation. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I have made that point on my podcast before about
Speaker 1: the Well, I just don't like producing anyone to a
Speaker 1: specific ideology because I may agree with a lot of
Speaker 1: things some so called whol people say, and disagree with
Speaker 1: a lot of things some so called wolk people say,
Speaker 1: what does that make me? You know, like, you know,
Speaker 1: aren't we allowed? I think we need to open up
Speaker 1: more of a space for people. I'm a pluralist, I
Speaker 1: identify with a lot of ideology, so I'm woke. I'm progressive.
Speaker 1: There you go, space for people to mix and match
Speaker 1: and be free thinkers and be fity over in woke world. Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, you sound
Speaker 1: very woke when you said you're like, we should teach
Speaker 1: critical race theory in schools. I mean, that's that's a
Speaker 1: whole other podcast that we could do, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to do that right now. But I bring it
Speaker 1: up because the trans panic is very connected to the
Speaker 1: the queer theory. Moral panic in schools is being pushed
Speaker 1: by the exact same people who push the critical race
Speaker 1: theory moral panic. That is very true. That is very true.
Speaker 1: So let me wrap up today something that a point
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to make for the past hour and
Speaker 1: a half, just keeping in my head to the right
Speaker 1: time to make it. You said something earlier that I
Speaker 1: really resonated with it. I do think people need to
Speaker 1: recognize that words can have multiple meanings. People are being
Speaker 1: so strict in their you know, biologists or like no
Speaker 1: sex means it's like gender means you know, it's like Okay,
Speaker 1: I think we And this is where I do get
Speaker 1: some arguments with some of my biologists colleagues. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, words can have multiple meanings, and I make
Speaker 1: an analogous to the world upon which I've studied of
Speaker 1: intelligence the past twenty years and trying to redefine intelligence
Speaker 1: beyond an IQ test. And you made a really interesting
Speaker 1: point earlier about like the biology stuff. You know that
Speaker 1: going to this this is sex a binary kind of
Speaker 1: connotes there's kind of simplicit assumption will the sex is
Speaker 1: the real thing and the gender identity is the fake thing.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was a really good point, So
Speaker 1: I wanted to I wanted to just I want to
Speaker 1: end here on that agreement, because it's it'd be the
Speaker 1: same thing or like someone who's evidently smart, brilliant, and
Speaker 1: then a school psychologist says like, let me miss your IQ,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you're not really smart because your IQ
Speaker 1: does not indicate that. And that's something I've been challenging
Speaker 1: my whole career. So I see something analogous to what
Speaker 1: you all are saying and what a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the trans community are saying, which is they're trying
Speaker 1: to broaden our notion of what what gender could be
Speaker 1: and how we how we view that and the kind
Speaker 1: of the malleability of it, love it or hate it.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, and I really appreciate you
Speaker 1: coming on my show today and presenting your perspectives. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Uh. The term for that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is essentially contestable concepts. There is no fairness right, There's
Speaker 1: no one definition of the philosopher right, several competing definitions
Speaker 1: of fairness. I also, before we run out of time,
Speaker 1: I just have to say I find it really frustrating
Speaker 1: because I know you were trying to get this to
Speaker 1: be potentially a conversation across the aisle that a lot
Speaker 1: of the folks in this debate from the anti trands
Speaker 1: or whatever we want to call them, terf gender gender critical,
Speaker 1: gender critical right, most of them, you know, many of
Speaker 1: them like Matt Wallash will you know, will say no
Speaker 1: one will debate me on these topics. But as I
Speaker 1: think you discovered, it was actually rather difficult. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do one of them to find write and I like,
Speaker 1: I'm here to debate any of these people. You know,
Speaker 1: Callie doesn't love that nearly as much I love it,
Speaker 1: I'm fine to do it. You're not trans doing hold on,
Speaker 1: you're not trans. And maybe there that does mean something,
Speaker 1: because I did. I've talked to a number of trans
Speaker 1: and it was just would you talk to you know,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned someone in the Gender critical communion and
Speaker 1: most of them, well all of them, I couldn't find
Speaker 1: one that that didn't say, you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like that's going to be good faith and uh
Speaker 1: and you can and you can sort of see it
Speaker 1: from their perspective as well, like, you know, I have
Speaker 1: to defend my existence again, you know, like and yeah
Speaker 1: and yeah, and that's what I'm hearing. So that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it is. Yeah, I feel like I want to
Speaker 1: stand up for the trans community with what you just said, Aaron,
Speaker 1: that's so funny what I just well, so I had
Speaker 1: I had a lengthy exchange with Andy Lewis on letter Wiki,
Speaker 1: and I you know, it got picked up by the
Speaker 1: anti trans community and the pro trans community and the
Speaker 1: pro trans community. Some of them were a little anxious
Speaker 1: that two SIS dudents were arguing about trans issues, and
Speaker 1: other ones were like, well, Aaron does a lot of
Speaker 1: debate with people like this, let's wait and see, and
Speaker 1: most of them were, almost all of them were extremely
Speaker 1: happy with how it went. And like, part of my
Speaker 1: defense of that behavior is there aren't that many trans people,
Speaker 1: and if they're the only ones who are allowed to
Speaker 1: argue these things, that's a big burden on their community.
Speaker 1: I think it's okay if I have done the work
Speaker 1: and I am responsible about not throwing that community under
Speaker 1: the bus as a debate tactic that I can help, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's fine. There's a fundamental understanding of like
Speaker 1: when I say, like as a blanket thing that like
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable with CIS people debating trans stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: because they're CIS, right, it's because very often when I
Speaker 1: see SIS people debating trans stuff, they do a horrible
Speaker 1: job of it, right, Like it's just it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: there's that like second half of it often goes unsaid.
Speaker 1: I would actually love for SIS people like Aaron, who
Speaker 1: have done the work, who have done the reading, who
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, who do a good job
Speaker 1: to more often take those things up. Right. My hesitation
Speaker 1: is not actually to do with the fact that he's
Speaker 1: not trans. My hesitation is that very often SIS people
Speaker 1: have not done the work to understand what things you know,
Speaker 1: what things actually are. I did not mean to denigrate
Speaker 1: Aaron's spectacular reasoning and ability and ability to be this
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the Trans Committee's you were being you
Speaker 1: were being you were being very anti SIS, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come, yeah, you're being very woke. That's so funny
Speaker 1: that I ended up being the woke point. To be
Speaker 1: very clear, my point is I would genuinely like to
Speaker 1: see more of open, honest, respectful discussions between trans people
Speaker 1: and the gender critical people. I want to double click
Speaker 1: on that particular combination and say I would like to
Speaker 1: see more of that. I don't even know if it's possible,
Speaker 1: but hopefully I'm doing this whole series where people can
Speaker 1: at least listen to people's perspectives that may be different
Speaker 1: from each other, even though they're not intercell intersecting with
Speaker 1: each other. Thank you both so much. You are both
Speaker 1: obviously very very thoughtful, compassionate individuals who've thought about this
Speaker 1: for far longer than I have. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being on the show today. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having us you, thanks for a really great chat. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.