WEBVTT - The Anatomy of a Moral Panic Ft. Dr. Julia Serano 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.279 All Zone Media. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to ike it Happen here. 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:08.920 I'm your host, Mia Wong. I am happy to be 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:12.280 here once again with Garrison Davis and doctor Julius Serrano, 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:14.920 the author of, among many other works, a new edition 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.319 of Whipping Girl coming out in March, so. 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:21.000 Kind of pivoting a bit. 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.599 One of the really bleak aspects of being trans in 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.600 a hostile world is that we've we've effectively been forced 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.040 to become experts in the architects of her own extermination. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.120 And I think that's a lot of what kind of 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.519 the new afterward to the upcoming twenty twenty four to 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.360 thirty edition of Whipping Girl is about. So, I guess 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.040 I wanted to ask, what do you see as the 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.640 biggest shifts in sort of the struggle for transliberation between 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.360 the end of the sort of Mitchfest like fighting over 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.680 Mitchfest era that you wrote like Dream, which you sort 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.800 of wrote the second uh, the forward, the preface of 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.280 the second edition, and then the stuff that's happening now 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:04.399 is the sort of three edition is coming out. 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:10.600 Sure, I think a huge aspect of transactivism from my 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.840 perspective of like first coming to trans communities in the nineties, 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:20.080 a lot of nineties and Zero's era transactivism was overcoming 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:25.240 basically people's ignorance, their lack of awareness about trans people 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:29.479 and so, and this is one of the things that 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:31.560 you know, Whipping Girl, for example, there are a lot 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:35.440 of bad ideas about trans people that had been circling, 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:38.720 lating for a long time, especially with the culmination of 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:43.760 Janis Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire the late nineteen seventies 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.440 nineteen seventy nine, I think, and that influenced a lot 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.360 of people, what say, places like Mishfest that had trans 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:54.360 women exclusion policies. And I felt like during the nineties 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.800 through the Zeros, we were constantly making gains that was 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.880 largely due to people learning more about it and then 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:05.640 recognizing basically shared goals, shared things in common. I think 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:10.799 that trans people are marginalized because of you know, mainstream 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:15.240 assumptions about sex, gender sexuality, and those assumptions also hurt 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:19.960 LGBTQIA plus people more broadly, they hurt you know, in 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.359 a sexist world, they hurt you know, CIS women, you know, 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.560 all women, all people who move through the world perceived 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:28.600 as female feminine. So we all have this kind of 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.960 shared thing that we're working towards, and I feel like 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.040 that was where a lot of the progress was happening. 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.200 And I think what really changed in the mid two 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:44.840 thousand tens, especially two year twenty fifteen, which is literally 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.600 the year after the so called tipping point Time magazine 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.920 declaring the transgender dipping point, was when it was the 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:58.519 beginning of what I would describe as organized anti transactivism, 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:03.240 where it wasn't just that people didn't like us or 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.440 they detested us, but it was where there was actual 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:12.560 coordination between different groups. In the afterward, I describe there's 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:16.720 the social conservatives and far right who have always been 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:23.280 anti LGBTQ plus who took an even more intense focus 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:29.480 on trans people. There were groups that at the time 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.000 that I wrote Whipping Girl, the term turf wasn't around, 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.600 of the term gender critical wasn't around. Now we would 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:39.040 call them gender critical or trans exclusionary feminists. They've become 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:41.760 kind of a part of that, and both those groups 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.040 working together in a lot of ways on policies. I 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.080 think one of the things that the average person might 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:52.200 not know if you're not really in kind of highly 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.680 aware of trans communities and issues is that probably behind 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.160 the scenes, the anti transparent movement as probably aid more 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.080 of an impact than any other group, and they are 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:10.040 very much like the anti vax parent movement, where it's 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:14.720 a lot of people who are from their standpoint, they're 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.120 just concerned about their children, they want what's best for 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.680 their children, but they actively seek out and often get 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:27.240 involved in you know, websites, social media forums and sometimes 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.520 actual activist campaigns that buy into a lot of ideas 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:38.800 that of children being indoctrinated into gender ideology or being 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.360 infected by social contagion, and there's all this pseudoscience that 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:45.400 grows out of that. So I would say that that 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.359 was the main difference, that there's this organized campaign, and 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.800 this campaign has just grown and grown and grown to 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:55.960 the point now where it's just this astoundingly large moral 0:04:56.000 --> 0:05:01.000 panic that the types of things that like thirty percent 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.880 of people in our country believe about trans people is abhorrent. 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:06.960 But that's kind of how it played out. 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:11.279 Yeah, I mean, there's there's been a lot of a 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:15.840 lot of very common, weird pseudoscience myths that sort of 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:18.560 came out of that. I wanted to talk a little 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:24.440 bit about quote unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria, because that's 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:25.040 been all. 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:25.400 Over the place. 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:25.480 Me. 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:27.400 There was like a New York Times article talking about 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.159 it like two weeks ago, and it's, I don't know, 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:37.240 really been a fiasco, especially given how unbelievably tenuous the 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.479 stuff they sort of faked or not as say fake, 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.640 like unbelievably tenuous to like quote unquote study they did 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:45.080 that got retracted. 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:50.640 Was Yeah, and this is something that I actually saw 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.000 developing firsthand and then did research on in twenty nineteen. 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.320 So let me frame this. I'll tell like my personal 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.279 a short version of my oral history of this. So 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.039 it was around twenty seventeen that I first heard the 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:11.200 idea of children, you know, becoming trans because of social contagion. 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:14.599 And it just seemed to come out of the blue. 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.279 And it's like, what, you know, it's gender identity is 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.840 not contagious. If it was, like, you know, trans people 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.360 would have infected way more than like the less than 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:28.080 one percent of us that actually exists. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:35.279 Not a very effective contagious go yees rising like no, like. 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.320 Yes, yeah, exactly. It's like, once you start looking at it, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.599 it seems kind of ridiculous. A lot of it was 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.560 because well, you know, you know, my kid was hanging 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.720 around a trans personer started watching trans videos on YouTube, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.760 and now they're trans. It's like, yeah, well, maybe they 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:55.720 were hanging out with that trans friend and watching the 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.360 YouTube videos because they are trans and they just hadn't 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.719 come out. Yeah, or they're just they're still figuring it 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.080 out anyway. So in twenty eighteen is when the Lisa 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.400 Littmann paper on rapid on set gender dysphoria came out, 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.000 and I wrote this essay at the time talking about 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.480 all the things wrong with it, and then in twenty nineteen, 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:15.720 I'm like, where did these ideas come from? And I 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.680 should say that rapid onset gender dysphoria is basically transgender 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:25.520 social contagion wrapped up in a medical sounding diagnosis. Okay, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:30.240 so if you read the initial descriptions of transgender social 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:34.200 contagion and the description of rapid onset gender dysphoria, they're 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.840 basically the same. It's that kids are infecting one another. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.200 But the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:45.120 was meant to describe this quick infection of transness that 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:50.960 supposedly was happening. And so in twenty nineteen, I basically 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.280 did a deep dive. I'm not an investigative reporter, but 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:55.520 that's kind of what I did into like where the 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:58.720 origin of this was. And basically all of this kind 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.960 of came down to the website Fourth Wave Now, which 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:07.000 often worked in coordination with two other anti transparent websites. 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.280 So Fourth Wave Now is an anti transparent website, arguably 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:14.320 the very first one that came out, and a parent 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:19.160 posted the idea that her child was like being infected 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.800 by transgender social contagion, and it's almost definitely clear. Now 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.760 I will leave a little caveat even though I think 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.560 the evidence is pretty strong that that was Lisa Marchiano, 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.920 who's anti trans therapist who's very very involved in anti 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:40.440 transactivism right now, Okay, so and like all everything points 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:44.679 to that being her, and she also seems to have 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.559 in some capacity worked with Lisa Littman. So basically the 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.400 first paper about rapatan sat gender distory that came out 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.760 was not Lisa Littman's, it was actually Lisa Marchiano's, which 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.760 came out in twenty seventeen. So basically kind of grew 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.880 from these anti HRIS transparent websites. It really quickly within 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:06.320 six months. Not only was Lisa Littman doing her survey, 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.199 Lisa Littman, being someone who has no experience in trans 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:13.120 health ever before then just decides to go in and 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.679 only survey parents from an from three anti transparent websites, 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:22.240 and it gets taken very seriously just because the media 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.920 fan the flames. A lot of these groups were very 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.200 excited to have something that seemed to be a case 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:33.160 study on their side. The paper was heavily critiqued when 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.120 it came out. There are now and I described this 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.800 in an all nine SI have. It's free if you 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.160 google my name, and all the evidence against social contagion 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.240 it's in there. There are now ten papers that have 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.480 tested the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:55.679 and or social contagion and found evidence that contradicts the hypothesis. 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:00.079 So it's still being talked about that Pamela Paul, it 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.400 was an alped that looked like an article in the 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.400 New York Times. It's not the first time Pamela Paul 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:08.120 and or the New York Times has done this. They 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:12.920 seem to have a particular acts to grind against trans 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:19.920 people and putting out specious articles suggesting that gender firming care, 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:25.319 especially for trans use, is bad, when actually all the 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:29.280 evidence points to the opposite. So so yeah, that's a 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:33.319 brief discussion of rapid on set genders, for which I 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:38.240 think is the most popular of these kind of pseudoscientific ideas. 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.599 But there are definitely others that are like about like 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.000 four or five others that I could get into, and 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.319 I do get into in the Afterword and in some 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.400 of my other writings, but uh yeah. 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:49.400 And. 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:56.720 You know, I don't use the word pseudo scientific lightly. Basically, 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:02.120 there's like science, which is where different research groups try 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.760 to answer a particular question and if they all get 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.920 similar answers, then that becomes okay, well that seems to 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.600 be established. Now let's work from there and ask more 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:14.920 questions and do more studies. Junk science is when you 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:20.480 do kind of a crappy study that doesn't really interrogate 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:25.360 all the possibilities, that either doesn't use controls or you know, 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.520 only looks at you know, a bias sampling size or 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.880 a bias sample or small sample sizes and comes to 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.280 a conclusion that it wants to come to. That's junk science. 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.120 And then pseudoscience is when multiple independent groups all find 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.560 something different to what you're saying, but you keep touting 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.880 the thing you're saying is science. And that's definitely where 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.079 our GD is right now. Same thing with one of 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:52.240 these ideas that I talked about way back early and 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.120 Whipping Girl, and I've written other, you know, both academic 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:59.400 papers and online essays about this concept of autoginophilia, which 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.160 is this really old theory that just like it's kind 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.960 of like this zombie. It doesn't matter how many groups 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:10.520 find evidence to the contrary. It jibes with what basically 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:17.920 certain you know, gender disaffirming practitioners, practitioners and researchers and 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.440 anti transactivists. It jobs with what they want to say, 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:24.920 so it just kind of continues to be out there. 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.200 So yeah, yeah, I. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.400 Mean something that Garrison we were talking about before, this 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.640 is the extent to which the extent to which the 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.400 rapid onset gender is for you study is almost exactly 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.199 the same study as the first anti VAC study. Like 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:41.719 it has almost exactly the same It's the same thing 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:43.760 where you find a group of people who think their 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:45.880 kid has autism because they got vaccinated, or you find 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:47.480 a group of people who think their kids are trans 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:52.400 because social contation or something, and then you ask them 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:54.439 about it, and then you report the results of the study, 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:56.320 and it's like, well, now and you report the results 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:58.680 of you asking the people the thing that they believe, 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.599 and now it's a study, and it's I don't know, 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:04.880 it drives me insane, they extent to which he is 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:06.400 literally exactly the same thing. 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:09.959 Yeah, I mean that was something. So I didn't know 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:14.040 this until h bomber Guy, who's a YouTuber who does 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:18.319 really good investigations and video essays, and I saw his 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.079 autism and so this is something that you know. I remember, 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:23.679 I'm old enough to remember the Wakefield paper being in 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.839 the news and then you've heard lots of people debunking it, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.959 and then it's officially retracted and basically all you know, 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.959 the scientific field has settled that it's like vaccines do 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:37.839 not cause autism. A lot of that is just like 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:41.240 a coincidence of the time that you first start noticing 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.520 that children maybe autistic is like right around the time 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.440 after they've had vaccinations. But but yeah, it wasn't until 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.679 the h bomber Guy video that he talks about that 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:55.960 the Wakefield study is a study of parents, not the children. 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.160 A study of the parents, and the parents already had 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.240 were already suspicious of the vaccines, and so they said, oh, well, 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:07.240 it happened right after they had these vaccines, just like 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:09.280 rap it dont set genders for it happens. Oh, it 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.400 happened right after. You know, one of my child's peer, 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:15.920 their cheer peers came out as trans. It's like, yeah, 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.839 maybe they're connected. Maybe that's why they're good friends. You know, 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.280 most of my friends, you know, like when I go 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.760 out and stuff like that. You know, a huge chunk 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.560 of my friends, way higher than the average person, are 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:30.840 trans people. And it's not because any of us infected 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:32.960 each other. It's just that you have that thing in common. 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:37.160 You also, really importantly, when you're part of a stigmatized group, 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.400 being around other people who won't stigmatize you often because 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.800 they're part of that same group, that can be really 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:45.440 freeing and really supportive. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.120 So yeah, yeah, Sally, we need to take another AD break, 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.600 but when we come back, there will be more. I 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.000 don't know, I'm really kind of blowing the ad pivots 0:14:56.000 --> 0:15:12.200 on this one. I'm very sorry, and we are back, 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:17.840 so I guess speaking of moral panics, speaking of social contagions. 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.000 Yes, moral panics are always very socially contagious. 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:28.800 Yeah, it's really truly, really truly. They have described their 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:32.240 own ideology and they projected it out to everyone else. 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.840 Uh So, one of the things that you talk about, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.360 both in the Afterward and in sext up is about 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.640 the relationship between stigma and contagion and how it's this powerful, 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.680 incredibly powerful force for moobilizing moral panics. Can you explain 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:49.080 sort of how that works? 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:50.320 Sure? 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.360 Yeah, so, and this was something that when I was 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.280 first working on sex Up, it wasn't kind of my idea. 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.720 I didn't think I was going to write about the 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.120 concept of stigma much, but it really ended up being 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:04.320 very central the more kind of research I did into it. 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:06.920 And so I think most of us are familiar with 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:11.320 the idea of stigma in terms of like feeling embarrassment 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.800 or being made to feel lesser than other people because 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.600 of some aspect of your person, right, And there is 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.600 that aspect of it that's often called like felt stigma. 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:27.560 But then there's the way that other people view stigma, right, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:31.080 And so you know, people weren't necessarily stigmatized in that 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.960 way themselves. They might view people who are stigmatized in 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:41.600 particular ways. And one aspect of stigma that I learned 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:46.840 a lot of this from psychologists, I think it's Paul Rosen, 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:50.880 I know the last name is Rosin, and also Carol 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.640 Nemarov and they both worked together and they had other 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:56.760 colleagues who worked on this. But a lot of this 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.840 comes from this really unconscious idea of contain agent that 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.600 seems to be it's like pan cultural. It's just kind 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:06.280 of a way that people tend to view the world 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:08.560 kind of like a lot of people and a lot 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.920 of cultures have essentialist views. Contagion is sort of along 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.119 those lines. It's often described as a type of magical thinking. 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.120 And the idea is if something in your mind has 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.560 this contagion, if you get too close to it or 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:27.800 you interact with it, it can like permanently corrupt or 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:32.000 taint you. And so it has this kind of contagious 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.640 like property in people's minds, and so people often view 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:40.359 groups who are stigmatized, especially groups that are highly stigmatized, 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:46.240 as essentially contagious, where that stigma that they have could 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.080 rub off on you if you get too close to them. 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.840 And so this happens like when I was really young, 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.320 the idea of like if you were friends with the 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.320 trans person, a lot of times people or even someone 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.040 who is gay back then people be like, oh, so 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:03.520 what are you? You must be gay too, right, It's 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.600 almost as if that stigma would then like kind of 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.639 migrate to you. And that's a lot of why stigmatized 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:15.639 groups face a lot of ostracization in society, and so 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:19.080 so this idea of contagion has been around. I think 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:22.280 groups who are lesser stigmatized, one of the ways that 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.960 that plays out is they're viewed is less contagious. So 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:27.600 you know, when I was really young, the idea of 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:29.480 if you had a trans person in your life, people 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.960 would really question you. Whereas by the time I came out, 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.000 you could have a trans friend and that would be fine. 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.600 It wouldn't necessarily be contagious, unless, of course, you were 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.359 interested in them, and then that stigma would If you 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.639 were like attracted to them, then there's that stigma. And 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.320 I think that stigma plays a lot into kind of 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.960 dynamics of and I write about this and sex stuff 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.639 that the whole idea of like fetishes and chasers and 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.040 all that. That's basically all this stigma that contagent stuff 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:03.240 playing out in different ways anyway, So I also think that, 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:05.520 and I write about and sext up, I think people 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:10.960 view sex and stigma as really closely intertwined, such that 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:15.640 I think people view the average person views heterosexual sex 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.480 as a stigma contamination act where the male is the 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:24.280 corrupting force and it's the woman who is corrupted by sex, 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.439 which is why you know virgins are pure. But then 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.720 once a woman has sex, she's like, you know, she's 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:35.000 become contaminated or tainted, and she has a lot of sex, 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.200 then people view her as like ruined, right, So that 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:42.520 idea is bell in there, And I think this combination 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:47.040 of viewing sex and stigma is kind of intertwined leads 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:52.520 to the sexual predator, the sexual predator stereotype that we're 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.480 seeing play out in really strong ways with trans people 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.879 right now. But actually, if you look throughout history, like 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.480 a lot of marginalized groups like deal in different ways 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:04.280 with the sexual predator trope. 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:05.359 And so. 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:11.040 I think this really clearly plays out with the kind 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.520 of what I call the Groomer explosion that started in 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.440 twenty twenty two, where you know, people were accusing trans 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:19.960 people being groomers before then, but it really exploded in 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.400 twenty twenty two. And if you listen to what people 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.359 are saying, that they're using the word groomer, which sounds 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.960 like a sexual predator thing, like there's a real thing 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:34.160 of grooming children that sexual abusers do, but they're using 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:36.520 it against trans people in a way that has nothing 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.760 to do with that. But what they're talking about is corrupting, 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:42.520 you know, so their children who are presumed to be 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:47.480 sisgender and who often I think this is why a 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:52.200 lot of these anti trans discourses continue to paint like 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.040 trans children as being girls, right like, because then it 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.800 kind of plays into these feelings of like, you know, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:03.920 transgender people are the adult men corrupting young girls. It 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.840 plays into a lot of people's view like messed up, 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:14.680 messed up heteronormative views of sex and fears of you know, 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.359 sexual abuse, child abuse being a very real thing, but 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:23.600 people greatly misinterpret it so that the people who are 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:29.359 the usual perpetrators, which are usually you know, by and large, 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:34.359 straight men who are like adults who are close or 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.119 sometimes even family members of the child in question. But 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.520 like when they say grooming, they just mean corrupting or contaminating, 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.159 And I think that both grooming and social contagion. I 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.000 think both of these basically play off of this stigma 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:53.080 contamination idea. Right, the kids are pure, but then transgenders 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:55.760 like a type of coodies that if one kid becomes 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.680 trans then they spread it to the other kids. And 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.520 so yeah, so I feel like it plays a really 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.879 big role not only moral panics, which amost all moral 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.320 panics are. There's some kind of corrupting force that is 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:15.800 often attacking otherwise pure and innocent children. Sometimes it's technology, right, 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:17.840 and so people will be like, oh, we have to 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.600 ban you know, social media apps, you know, because it's 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.359 hurting the children. Or it could be transgender people who 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:27.120 are the things we need to ban because they're corrupting 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.760 the children. But I definitely think that both these ideas 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:35.119 of stigma and contagion play a big role in the 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.440 way in which moral panics, why they resonate with a 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.720 lot of people, even though they don't make any rational 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:47.280 sense if you just think about them kind of from 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.440 a very realistic, practical point of view. 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:52.920 And we have to go to ads, but really back 0:22:53.040 --> 0:23:05.360 in a second, and we're back. 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.359 This is something that you mentioned briefly in the afterward. 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:12.040 And that's something that we've reported on is how a 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:15.120 lot of this groomer thing that started in twenty twenty 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:17.639 two and a whole bunch of this kind of modern 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:21.160 wave of transphobia is mirroring a lot of the anti 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:24.359 gay stuff from like the eighties that was pushed forward 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:27.640 by a lot of like evangelicals into just like mainstream 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:30.879 conservatism and specifically how it functions as this. Yeah, this 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:33.080 is sort of like moral panic and even social contagion. 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:38.480 The way homosexuality was treated as this thing and this 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.560 this sort of social contingent aspect is so common now. 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:45.760 I mean, even even the way we've already alluded to Musk, 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.080 even the way he mentions like the woke mind virus 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:51.520 ist is exactly this thing, and as it really like 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:54.360 moral panics and stuff. Right, this was kind of predated 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:58.720 by the critical race theory debacle, which then got you know, 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:03.919 turned into the groomer thing, and now exactly and now 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:07.119 it's even changed again. And these moral panics can have 0:24:07.359 --> 0:24:10.520 like devastating results in terms of pushing forward legislation that 0:24:11.000 --> 0:24:14.960 outlasts the actual moral panic, But the actual things themselves 0:24:14.960 --> 0:24:17.520 are very short lived. They don't seem to have very 0:24:17.600 --> 0:24:22.119 much like staying power as as like cultural moments. They 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:24.520 move on so quickly, Like no one talks about critical 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:26.920 race theory anymore. You don't even hear this sort of 0:24:26.960 --> 0:24:30.280 groomer rhetoric as often as you did two years ago, 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:33.119 and it's being replaced by new versions. And yeah, like 0:24:33.200 --> 0:24:36.720