Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. You will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have Alice Dreger on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Deregor is a historian, bioethicist, author, and former professor
Speaker 1: of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the Feinberg School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, Northwestern University. Doctor Dreger is widely known for
Speaker 1: her academic work and activism and supportive people at the
Speaker 1: edge of anatomy, such as conjoined twins and those with
Speaker 1: atypical sex characteristics. In her observations, it's often a fuzzy
Speaker 1: line between male and female, among other anatomical distinctions. A
Speaker 1: key question guiding a lot of our work is why
Speaker 1: do we let our anatomy determine our fate. Doctor Dreger
Speaker 1: is the author of multiple books, including one of us,
Speaker 1: Conjoined Twins, in the Future of Normal and Galileo's middle Finger,
Speaker 1: Her Heretics, Activists, and the Search for justice in Science.
Speaker 1: Alice Dreger, so great to chat with you today. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Oh, I don't know. It was so
Speaker 1: hard for me to get through that bio. But I'm
Speaker 1: very impressed with you. I want to say, I want
Speaker 1: to start off by saying and your thoughtfulness, and in
Speaker 1: reading a lot of your work, I came up with
Speaker 1: a list of three postulates that I thought we're both
Speaker 1: totally on the same page with. And I think that's
Speaker 1: always kind of good when you're starting a discussion with
Speaker 1: someone to kind of start maybe on where we are
Speaker 1: in common. And so I'm going to list these three
Speaker 1: things and then feel free to tell me if I've
Speaker 1: mischaracterized what page you're on. But I feel like these
Speaker 1: are three commonalities. So one my notice, we're both scientists
Speaker 1: and activists, and we don't see these categories as necessarily
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive. That's the first one. The second one is
Speaker 1: we both believe that the right starting point is with
Speaker 1: the truth and not leading with a political agenda. And
Speaker 1: the third one is we're both interested in highlighting the
Speaker 1: humanity of those in the margins, whether it's physical anatomy
Speaker 1: in your case or my case. I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: the mind and brain. You know, those withwarding disabilities are
Speaker 1: in the gifted population, et cetera. Is that a fair
Speaker 1: three things, I think so, I mean the only thing
Speaker 1: is historians like me, there's a question about whether or
Speaker 1: not we're scientists. In the American system, we're usually thought
Speaker 1: of as people in the humanities, although in the German
Speaker 1: system we're called scientists. So what I always tell people
Speaker 1: is that history kind of bridges the arts and the
Speaker 1: humanities and the sciences, and it's in the sense that
Speaker 1: we follow data, we follow evidence, So in that sense
Speaker 1: we're in the sciences. We're interested in individual human experience,
Speaker 1: so in that sense, we're like the humanities, and we
Speaker 1: do art in the sense that when we bring forward
Speaker 1: what we found, we have to kind of make it interesting,
Speaker 1: and so there's an art to bringing it forward. So
Speaker 1: I think we're kind of all over the place that
Speaker 1: way as historians. But yeah, we're definitely data driven in
Speaker 1: the same way that social scientists are data driven. Okay,
Speaker 1: lot to find my first postulate. We both have. How
Speaker 1: about this we both have appreciation for the scientific method,
Speaker 1: and we are activists as well. How about that. I
Speaker 1: think that works absolutely. Okay, So I want to start
Speaker 1: with your dissertation, your PGD yesterdation. Take me back there
Speaker 1: and tell me what that topic was, because that, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that laid a foundation right for
Speaker 1: your later thinking. So do you mind taking me back there?
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, I'm just laughing because most people don't
Speaker 1: bother to look at what I did. Well, I like
Speaker 1: to really nice, very detail. We're here when I prepare
Speaker 1: for my guests. So yeah, Well I'm also laughing because
Speaker 1: there was one time I published a pinion piece in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and it pissed off Rush Limbaugh and he
Speaker 1: ended up going to my CV and reading out my
Speaker 1: dissertation title on the air. And my brother there happened
Speaker 1: to be listening to it with his morning coffee, and
Speaker 1: he like calls me and says, Rush Lava is reading
Speaker 1: about your dissertation on the air. Well, maybe I could
Speaker 1: be a good counterbalance in the spirit upon which I
Speaker 1: want you to read your dissertation topic. Well, mostly I
Speaker 1: was concerned that my brother was listening to Rush Limbaugh,
Speaker 1: but I realized you know, if he needs to get
Speaker 1: his blood moving, he listens to irritating people. So that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So if I remember correctly, my dissertation I
Speaker 1: think was called oh gosh, doubtful sex, doubtful status. What
Speaker 1: was the rest of it, hermaphrodites in medicine and science
Speaker 1: from eighteen sixty eight to nineteen fourteen, I think, And
Speaker 1: so what what I was looking at was what happened
Speaker 1: to people whose body types were not standard male or
Speaker 1: a standard female, and what happened to them in science
Speaker 1: and medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: so late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds in France
Speaker 1: and Britain. And the reason I was interested in that
Speaker 1: was because I was interested in looking at what happened
Speaker 1: in a politically quite traditional and conservative to sex to
Speaker 1: gender system when you had people who presented with body
Speaker 1: types that didn't fit those meat categories. So you're right,
Speaker 1: that is where my work started, and that brought me
Speaker 1: into an activist world because people who had been born
Speaker 1: with those same conditions one hundred years later had started
Speaker 1: to contact me and say, you know, we know you're
Speaker 1: writing about this historically, but would you look at what's
Speaker 1: going on today, And so I became active in the
Speaker 1: intersex rights movement because I was brought it was brought
Speaker 1: to my attention by those folks, and I became active
Speaker 1: in that movement in the mid nineteen nineties, and that
Speaker 1: led me to more generally explore the question of what's
Speaker 1: the relationship between our bodies and our personal and social identities,
Speaker 1: and what should be the role of science and medicine
Speaker 1: and mediating those relationships. So there's various things that mediate
Speaker 1: that relationship. So who gets to tell you what your
Speaker 1: body means? Sometimes it's a religious organization like a church.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's the state telling you what it means. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's medicine, and sometimes it's science. And in my work,
Speaker 1: because I'm a history of science and medicine, I was
Speaker 1: especially interested in places where science and medicine would be
Speaker 1: the determining factor in telling us what our bodies mean. Right.
Speaker 1: And when you talk about this intersection between the body
Speaker 1: and identity, you know, the psychologists mean interprets that is
Speaker 1: the relationship between the body and mind. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting it's interesting the different ways that
Speaker 1: those things can come apart, or those things can you know,
Speaker 1: in the general population we have all sorts of correlations,
Speaker 1: and some people focus so much on the general trends
Speaker 1: and then kind of treat those who have these kind
Speaker 1: of really unique mismatches, so to speak, although that's probably
Speaker 1: a terrible word to use, actually, but in ways that
Speaker 1: they come apart that, the question is, you know, how
Speaker 1: can we show them a humanity right and fit them
Speaker 1: within a larger scientific framework, yes, and a social framework,
Speaker 1: because where the real danger comes in is not that
Speaker 1: scientists can't make sense of you, because you know, if
Speaker 1: a scientist can't make sense of you, but your life
Speaker 1: is fine, it doesn't matter. Where it matters is if
Speaker 1: the social system can't make sense of you. And in
Speaker 1: a system where science is very powerful, as in our culture,
Speaker 1: then it really matters. If science can't make sense of
Speaker 1: you and it's public, then there's a question about your
Speaker 1: identity socially. So that's what can happen, and that is
Speaker 1: what happened in the late nineteenth century with regard to
Speaker 1: people who were what we today would call intersects, people
Speaker 1: who are between male and female types biologically, whose bodies
Speaker 1: came into question. It's a mind body thing, but the
Speaker 1: mind is not the only place where identity exists. So
Speaker 1: your our identities exist in other people's minds, So it
Speaker 1: matters a lot in terms of how people think of us. So,
Speaker 1: for example, right as a female, I might feel fully empowered.
Speaker 1: I might feel fully confident, fully capable of doing whatever.
Speaker 1: But if in the culture around me people look at
Speaker 1: me and see me as female and therefore inadequate, that
Speaker 1: will ultimately impact my life, particularly if there are laws
Speaker 1: and social norms that specifically are used to hold me back.
Speaker 1: So it's not just our individual minds that matter. It's
Speaker 1: very much the minds around us that matter. So one
Speaker 1: of the big questions I pose in my work, especially
Speaker 1: in the book One of Us, is the question why
Speaker 1: not change minds instead of bodies? Historically speaking, what's happened
Speaker 1: is people who don't fit. Once the age of surgery
Speaker 1: came about, historically speaking, which was in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: surgery became very safe. What happened was people's attitude was, well,
Speaker 1: this person doesn't fit, so let's change their body. And
Speaker 1: I try to raise my question in my work of
Speaker 1: why don't we change people's attitudes instead of changing people's bodies.
Speaker 1: If what's going to happen is introducing risk with no purpose.
Speaker 1: So there's some stuff for which obviously you want surgery,
Speaker 1: like if there's a life threatening condition, you know, if
Speaker 1: there's something that causes pain, obviously you want to do surgery.
Speaker 1: But in many of the cases I look at somebody
Speaker 1: has a social socially challenging body because they don't fit
Speaker 1: the social system, but there's nothing wrong with them. And
Speaker 1: so in those instances, I ask the question, and why
Speaker 1: don't we change attitudes instead of introducing risk to that individual? Well,
Speaker 1: what is a criterion for something being wrong with a
Speaker 1: person anyway? Right? Like does everyone agree on that? It
Speaker 1: can be difficult to figure it out, right because obviously,
Speaker 1: if a person has pain, or if they have a
Speaker 1: condition that's going to interfere with their ability to enjoy
Speaker 1: life or it's going to shorten their life, then we
Speaker 1: can pretty easily say that that's a health condition. But
Speaker 1: where it gets fuzzy is if they look different and
Speaker 1: they end up being treated differently because they look different.
Speaker 1: So conjoin twins are a great example, and that's why
Speaker 1: I look tot conjoin twins. Visually, they're very different looking.
Speaker 1: I mean, our minds are used to categorizing one person
Speaker 1: per and so conjoined twins are really confusing. And I
Speaker 1: always remember when I was working on I Can Joined
Speaker 1: Twins book, my son was very little, and there was
Speaker 1: one day when he was about probably about three years old,
Speaker 1: where I had laid out on the dining room table
Speaker 1: all these different photos of conjoined twins because I was
Speaker 1: trying to decide which ones to include in the book,
Speaker 1: and my son came upon this whole montage of photographs
Speaker 1: of conjoined twins and he looked at them, and then
Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Because his mind couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't make him bigot it or buys it
Speaker 1: makes him normal, right, It makes them typical, and that
Speaker 1: he expects one person per body. So when you have
Speaker 1: people whose faces don't fit the normal, or their arms
Speaker 1: or legs don't fit the standard of how many we
Speaker 1: expect to see, or they're conjoined or anything like that,
Speaker 1: it causes us to do a sort of double take
Speaker 1: and to begin to question, well, does this person fit
Speaker 1: in this category or that category? And that's where surgeons
Speaker 1: feel like, well, why don't we make this simple and
Speaker 1: just change their body so that those questions don't get raised.
Speaker 1: But the problem comes in when the surgery you're doing
Speaker 1: actually introduces unnecessary risk. We have to ask the question
Speaker 1: is it really going to leave the person better off?
Speaker 1: And surprisingly, if we look at conjoined twins, a lot
Speaker 1: of times it doesn't leave them better off. And that's
Speaker 1: true with a lot of different surgeries done for social
Speaker 1: norming purposes. Absolutely, I see such a great parallel here
Speaker 1: between my own work and work on let's say, just
Speaker 1: children with autism. I think that's a good parallel. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes you do see that language like how can we
Speaker 1: fix autism? Or you know, like what's wrong? You know,
Speaker 1: it's a treat as a deficit automatically, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a psychologist, I try to like coach psychologists, And
Speaker 1: how should you tell the parents the news? You know,
Speaker 1: like the traditional model is you know, a very like
Speaker 1: negative thing, like you know, we have to break it
Speaker 1: to you your child has auto And I'm like, well
Speaker 1: why you say, Like, we have discovered your child is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily unique in the way that they perceive the world
Speaker 1: and they could potentially have great potential for being like
Speaker 1: a scientist someday or like telling the truth, or you know,
Speaker 1: just like a matter of framing in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, in a culture like the one we have,
Speaker 1: where there's a very clear message about what makes somebody
Speaker 1: socially acceptable or socially superior, there is a strong feeling
Speaker 1: among especially pediatricians who see themselves as advocates for children,
Speaker 1: that one of the best things that they can do
Speaker 1: is to try to norm them in the statistical sense,
Speaker 1: try to make children statistically normal. And they're not doing
Speaker 1: that out of an uncharitable place. They're doing it out
Speaker 1: of a charitable place. But as you point out, it's
Speaker 1: often misguided, because first of all, it's often not possible
Speaker 1: right to just magically take somebody who doesn't fit a
Speaker 1: social norm and make them fit. But the other problem
Speaker 1: with it is is that it leads to a sort
Speaker 1: of expectation that that's what we should want out of
Speaker 1: our children and out of our peers in society. And
Speaker 1: I think that's where the really pernicious message comes in,
Speaker 1: is the idea that that's the best we can want
Speaker 1: for people. It seems like in many instances the best
Speaker 1: we can want for people is something better, which is
Speaker 1: to say we can accept variation, and we can not
Speaker 1: only tolerate variation, we can actually see value in variation.
Speaker 1: So what's really interesting to me is that historically speaking,
Speaker 1: can join twins have tended to live in small towns
Speaker 1: by choice, And I think the reason is that when
Speaker 1: you're in a smaller place, there's less of that sense
Speaker 1: of the oppressive sort of statistical norm coming down on you. Right,
Speaker 1: because you're in a small number of people. Therefore by
Speaker 1: sheer numbers, because of the denominator and the new warrator,
Speaker 1: you're not that different. But also everybody gets to know you,
Speaker 1: and once everybody gets to know you, it's not really
Speaker 1: a big deal. So when there was one time when
Speaker 1: I went to go see Lauri and Rieba Chappelle, who
Speaker 1: are conjoined at the face, Dory now goes well, Riba
Speaker 1: was original named Dory. Now she goes by the name George.
Speaker 1: But leave all that aside. When I went out to
Speaker 1: dinner with them, everybody in their town knew them, and
Speaker 1: so nobody flinch, nobody acted weird, everybody was cool. The
Speaker 1: waitress knew them. And so what that suggests to me
Speaker 1: is that if we're in smaller spaces, people learn to
Speaker 1: adjust and adapt and it's just not that big a deal.
Speaker 1: It's when we get this sort of large social system
Speaker 1: that we have today, with so much social instruction on
Speaker 1: what's acceptable, that we end up in a situation where
Speaker 1: people feel really abnormal and they're in the very negative sense,
Speaker 1: not just the statistical sense, but in the pejorative sense
Speaker 1: of abnormal, and that's not really good for us. I
Speaker 1: would say, in general, the good side is right. The
Speaker 1: good side is the Internet because it connects us all
Speaker 1: allows us to find people who are like us, who
Speaker 1: otherwise we would never meet. So I mean, I'm able
Speaker 1: to connect families with conjoin twins with each other, which
Speaker 1: historically speaking wouldn't have happened. In most cases, people with
Speaker 1: intersects have been able to find each other and create
Speaker 1: a social movement. So that's the upside of this huge
Speaker 1: social system is that people can find each other or
Speaker 1: and create communities that didn't exist before, and that does
Speaker 1: empower them. So the autism communities, for example, that exists
Speaker 1: today would not have been able to exist one hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, and that's a really great upside of it.
Speaker 1: The problem with it is the oppressive, constant message that
Speaker 1: we are unacceptable that's right, or like that they're broken
Speaker 1: and need to be fixed. As you've pointed out this
Speaker 1: language that's used. Can we go into some other really
Speaker 1: fascinating cases you just talked about conjoining toins could talk
Speaker 1: what androgen sensitivity syndrome and congenital adrenal hyperpleasia. Did I
Speaker 1: say this right? Yeah? Those are two different types of
Speaker 1: intersex conditions, very different from each other. So one androgen
Speaker 1: insensitivity syndrome. That's when you have a person who begins
Speaker 1: as a male embryo, so you have an x Y
Speaker 1: chromosomal basis, and in fetal development, usually the Y chromosome
Speaker 1: causes the gonads to develop as testes, and so this
Speaker 1: being has testes that are starting to produce testosterone. But
Speaker 1: in these circumstances androgen insensitivity, the body has no responsiveness
Speaker 1: to masculine hormones. And so the consequence of that is
Speaker 1: that even though internally the being has testes, externally they're
Speaker 1: going to develop genitally to look quite female, and in
Speaker 1: terms of their brain development, they'll develop actually even farther
Speaker 1: female than the typical female, if that makes sense, because
Speaker 1: they're not having any reaction to any male hormones and
Speaker 1: so when they're born, these girls look like typical girls,
Speaker 1: grow up as usually typical girls, and it's only often
Speaker 1: the case that when they reach puberty that somebody realizes
Speaker 1: something's going on. And the reason is they're developing in
Speaker 1: terms of their sexual maturity, but they're not menstruating, and
Speaker 1: when somebody doesn't examine on them, then they discover that
Speaker 1: they don't have overason side. They have testes inside and
Speaker 1: they have no uterus. So then what are they, Well,
Speaker 1: they're women, they're girls, and women who happen to have
Speaker 1: testes inside. The testes are functioning as normal testes, but
Speaker 1: the hormones they're making are not having any effect, and
Speaker 1: so when that happens, you develop along a more typical
Speaker 1: female pathway. In the case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, that's
Speaker 1: called CACH. This can affect boys and girls, and it's
Speaker 1: actually a fairly common genetic condition. It's when our glands
Speaker 1: that are in the back of our body, called the
Speaker 1: adrenal glands, kind of are in too high a gear
Speaker 1: and that causes a greater level of the hormones that
Speaker 1: are the masculinizes hormones. We all have these, We all
Speaker 1: have these glands, and in females you can tell that
Speaker 1: they're working because we get hair on our arms and
Speaker 1: our legs as we get older, and we get pubic hair,
Speaker 1: so that all of that is androgen sensitive. We make
Speaker 1: some male hormones, but if you make a large amount
Speaker 1: of them, you can end up in the intersext spectrum.
Speaker 1: And so for female fetuses that have this condition, they
Speaker 1: can get exposed to lots of male hormones as they develop,
Speaker 1: and so internally they'll be female, they'll have ovaries and
Speaker 1: a uterus, but externally they'll develop. They can develop anywhere
Speaker 1: from typical female to the typical male to anything in between,
Speaker 1: and so you don't have two sets of genitals. You
Speaker 1: don't end up with two sets of genitals, but you
Speaker 1: do end up with something in between. So you end
Speaker 1: up with something between a clitterist and a penis and
Speaker 1: something that's a vagina that's sort of in between. So
Speaker 1: the consequence of that is that you can have a
Speaker 1: child who is internally female but looks quite male or
Speaker 1: looks intersex. So this is two of the possible ways
Speaker 1: to have intersex conditions, but there are in fact about
Speaker 1: thirty six forty different intersex conditions. Has anyone put thought
Speaker 1: into mapping this onto like all the different pronouns that
Speaker 1: currently exist that are out there, is there is there
Speaker 1: a correspondence? Can you talk a little about that? No,
Speaker 1: Because though hormone issues are issues of identity, right, And
Speaker 1: so when we're talking about AIS and we're talking about
Speaker 1: ch we're talking about anatomy, not identity. And I know
Speaker 1: that sounds weird, but it's true, right. So, Yeah, for
Speaker 1: a woman who is born with androgen sensitivity syndrome, she's
Speaker 1: a woman unless I mean, it's very, very practically unheard
Speaker 1: of for the most part, for a woman with complete
Speaker 1: androgen sensitivity syndrome to feel like anything other than a woman.
Speaker 1: She's been raised as a girl. She's a woman in
Speaker 1: terms of our identity. So there's no pronoun issue for her.
Speaker 1: It's true internally she's got testes, but that doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: She's always been a girl, she's always been seen as
Speaker 1: a girl. She has a social identity as a woman.
Speaker 1: It doesn't shift. And the same might be true for
Speaker 1: somebody with CAAH that they're either raised as a girl
Speaker 1: or raised as a boy and it doesn't really impact
Speaker 1: their identity. Now that said, you can have a person
Speaker 1: who's transgender, who can have typical male or typical female
Speaker 1: anatomy but feel that the gender assignment given to them
Speaker 1: is wrong. Or you can have somebody who has an
Speaker 1: intersex condition who is also transgender in the sense that
Speaker 1: they also feel as if the gender assignment given to
Speaker 1: them is wrong. And in some of those circumstances, folks
Speaker 1: will choose a pronoun that is different. Increasingly, people choose
Speaker 1: what we've thought of historically as the plural they or them,
Speaker 1: which I think historic is likely in English just to
Speaker 1: increasingly become a non gendered singular pronoun. I think that's
Speaker 1: where English appears to be going. So the pronoun usage
Speaker 1: is more about gender identity. When we're talking about sex development,
Speaker 1: we're talking about sex development, not gender identity. If that
Speaker 1: makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. So I
Speaker 1: do think that English is going to go in the
Speaker 1: direction of accepting them and they as a singular pronoun. We.
Speaker 1: It hasn't officially happened yet, but you'll hear it in
Speaker 1: a lot of people's language already. Even before the transgender
Speaker 1: movement became big, people got tired of saying he or
Speaker 1: she and so they began to use them as a
Speaker 1: singular pronoun, and I think that that's where English is
Speaker 1: going to go. And people need to recognize languages do evolve,
Speaker 1: and so it's not that surprising that English would evolve
Speaker 1: in some circumstances. There are languages, by the way, that
Speaker 1: have no gendered pronouns. So Chinese, for example, historically did
Speaker 1: not have a gendered pronoun. You figure out the gender
Speaker 1: of the person based on the context, but not based
Speaker 1: on the word itself. What do you make about people
Speaker 1: like Jordan Peterson who argues like, well, people who want
Speaker 1: to use pronouns, they need to recognize this, this is
Speaker 1: the way things have been for the past, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the course of human history, and like they're trying
Speaker 1: to revise the language. So I'm wondering, like, when you
Speaker 1: hear that kind of argument, how do you respond to that?
Speaker 1: His argument sounds so jurassic to me? And the reason is,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm old enough. So I'm fifty two, and
Speaker 1: I'm easily old enough to remember the days when those
Speaker 1: of us who are feminists were trying to change the
Speaker 1: habit of using he as the standard singular pronoun. So
Speaker 1: people would say, when you go to a doctor, he
Speaker 1: will ask you some questions, and we would say no,
Speaker 1: it should be he or should be And at that time,
Speaker 1: this was in the nineteen seventies, people would constantly say
Speaker 1: to us, well, he means both, just get over it, right,
Speaker 1: and we would say, no, he doesn't mean both, because
Speaker 1: we know from psychological studies, if you say he, people
Speaker 1: imagine it he. They don't imagine a he or a she.
Speaker 1: So we were asking for language to change, to use
Speaker 1: she or he or he or she. And we were
Speaker 1: also asking, for example, to stop using the language, for example,
Speaker 1: of mankind and to instead say humankind. And we were,
Speaker 1: for example, asking that instead of saying congressman, we would
Speaker 1: say congress person or congresswoman or congressman. That there would
Speaker 1: not be a singular approach to that. For example, we
Speaker 1: used to say chair person all the time, and now
Speaker 1: or chairman all the time. We tried chair person. Most
Speaker 1: people now just say chair chair of a department. They
Speaker 1: won't bother with chairman. At the time, people told us,
Speaker 1: get over it. It's the way language has always been.
Speaker 1: It's not going to change, right. But it did change,
Speaker 1: And if we know it made a difference, we know
Speaker 1: that psychologically it makes a difference to people to be
Speaker 1: offered she or he and to be offered chair as
Speaker 1: opposed to chairman, because they are more likely to imagine
Speaker 1: a woman or a man. So I think he's being
Speaker 1: really silly when he things language doesn't evolve. Language, in fact,
Speaker 1: has always evolved to shift with culture. It's why we
Speaker 1: don't speak Shakespeare in English, right, we don't speak Old
Speaker 1: English because English evolved and English will continue to evolve. Chinese,
Speaker 1: by the way, evolved, so Chinese didn't used to bother
Speaker 1: with indicating specific gendered pronouns as he or she today
Speaker 1: it does in writing in literature, and the reason it
Speaker 1: did is it had partly to do with westernization of literature.
Speaker 1: So we know that languages all over the world in
Speaker 1: fact do evolve, and one of the places they evolve
Speaker 1: is around the way that they manage gender, the way
Speaker 1: they manage age you know, who they think of as
Speaker 1: a child versus an adult, for example, who they recognize
Speaker 1: as citizen or non citizen, the kinds of language that
Speaker 1: evolves there. So the truth is language does change, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with language changing it It reflects a
Speaker 1: culture in evolution, and humans evolved. But cultures evolved too,
Speaker 1: and so his attitude, this is the way it's always been,
Speaker 1: has this sort of attitude that the only thing that
Speaker 1: evolves is biology. But the fact is culture evolves, and
Speaker 1: culture probably evolves much faster, so it's more likely to
Speaker 1: be changing the language than changing our bodies, which to
Speaker 1: me makes sense. I don't have a problem with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, and I'm trying to wrap my head
Speaker 1: around all the different perspectives that are out there now.
Speaker 1: So I think the logic there is that there's this
Speaker 1: kind of attitude of like we're talking about such a
Speaker 1: small minority of the population that people like Jordan, I think,
Speaker 1: focus on the statistical like sort of averages and say, well,
Speaker 1: it seems ridiculous that like a point zho one percent
Speaker 1: of the population are trying to change the language is
Speaker 1: going to just confuse the majority of the masses, and
Speaker 1: that seems like it's not a viable solution. I think
Speaker 1: that would be the rational sort of response you would say,
Speaker 1: And I certainly don't want to like try to like
Speaker 1: channels a person right now and what they would or
Speaker 1: would not say, that's not fair to him or you. However,
Speaker 1: I think in my understanding, because I'm really trying to
Speaker 1: understand and really get to the root of these factions
Speaker 1: or these disagreements. If I had to, like say, what
Speaker 1: in the world do I personally think? You know, I
Speaker 1: am all about trying to see how we can kind
Speaker 1: of like include people on the margins and have a
Speaker 1: healthy integration of them to society. It's nothing I'm going
Speaker 1: to get like furious about. But there are people who
Speaker 1: do get fears about it and would make the argument
Speaker 1: that it seems silly that why should we cater to
Speaker 1: such a small minority of the population. So what you
Speaker 1: make it? Yeah, it strikes me, as you know, just
Speaker 1: one of those basic forms of respect that if possible,
Speaker 1: we should try to accommodate people in terms of recognizing
Speaker 1: their self identities out of a form of respect. The
Speaker 1: other thing is, I think it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that people older than me struggle a great deal with,
Speaker 1: and people much younger than me have absolutely no problem with.
Speaker 1: So I see in my son's my son is seventeen.
Speaker 1: I see in his generation a real ability to just
Speaker 1: change the pronoun they're using for somebody and the gender
Speaker 1: attribution for somebody with really very little difficulty. They just
Speaker 1: do it very fascily and without a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: What I'd have to say to somebody who is very
Speaker 1: rigid and hostile towards this, I think we have to
Speaker 1: recognize that whenever we are attributing an identity to somebody else,
Speaker 1: we're also attributing an identity to ourselves. Identities are not
Speaker 1: done singularly, They're done in dialectic. So the reason I
Speaker 1: know I'm a mother is because I have a child.
Speaker 1: The reason my child is a son is because he
Speaker 1: has a mother. The reason I know that some people
Speaker 1: are black is because we say that some people are white.
Speaker 1: The reason I know I'm female is because we identify
Speaker 1: some people as male. So when we are reacting in
Speaker 1: a way that is hostile, what we need to recognize
Speaker 1: is part of our anxiety is coming from a place
Speaker 1: of having our own identity implicated. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's not enough attention paid to the person who's uncomfortable
Speaker 1: trying to process why am I so uncomfortable? So for me,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, I've learned, because of my own work,
Speaker 1: to recognize that if I come across somebody who has
Speaker 1: a body type or a behavior type, that I find
Speaker 1: very disorienting. What I do now is ask myself, why
Speaker 1: does my own identity feel like suddenly ambiguous in response
Speaker 1: to this? And if I can process that and calm
Speaker 1: myself down, then I can often react to that person
Speaker 1: in a way that is much more charitable and much
Speaker 1: more generous than if I just react to it in
Speaker 1: a phobic fashion. So, for example, if I come across somebody,
Speaker 1: for example, who is somewhat demented, and they're reacting to
Speaker 1: me in a way that seems to confuse who I am,
Speaker 1: so they're attributing the wrong name to me, or they
Speaker 1: think I have a relationship with them that I don't have.
Speaker 1: I mean the thing of one old man I met
Speaker 1: once who I was having a perfectly normal conversation with him,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly he slapped his leg and said, so
Speaker 1: you want to be a navy wife, and I said no.
Speaker 1: I realized he didn't know who I was, and he
Speaker 1: had been acting to me in a way that he
Speaker 1: thought I was somebody dear to him and I didn't
Speaker 1: really know him, and so all of a sudden, my
Speaker 1: own identity felt very uncertain and unstable because I thought
Speaker 1: I knew who he was and who I was, and
Speaker 1: I did calm myself down enough to recognize, Okay, he
Speaker 1: just threw me for a loop, but that's me being
Speaker 1: thrown for a loop by his specific health issues. I
Speaker 1: could calm down enough to react to him in a
Speaker 1: way that was not phobic and hostile and didn't cause
Speaker 1: my anxiety to go into high gear because I'm like,
Speaker 1: who is this guy talking about? And sorry that it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with who I am. So I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that younger generations are getting
Speaker 1: better at is not reacting to those ambiguous moments with
Speaker 1: quite as much phobia. And maybe that's because they're exposed
Speaker 1: to a lot more variation than we were, but maybe
Speaker 1: it's also because we've taught them to respond to things
Speaker 1: in less hostile fashion. I mean, the anti bullying campaigns,
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest, they seem to be working, and
Speaker 1: they seem to have helped a lot of kids process
Speaker 1: the idea that they can accept, you know, mainstreamed kids
Speaker 1: variation among their own population in a way that they
Speaker 1: don't have to be worried, they can handle it, and
Speaker 1: they don't have to worry about it quite so much.
Speaker 1: So it seems to be a very different generation from say,
Speaker 1: the ones of my parents in that passion. You know,
Speaker 1: it does. But to say that there's only like a
Speaker 1: monolithic generation, you know, there is a serious cultural war
Speaker 1: going on right now between those that really see the
Speaker 1: progressive you know, wanting to you know, even like wordsly inclusion.
Speaker 1: They're kind of viewing that as like a really bad thing.
Speaker 1: And then you have those on the other side, obviously,
Speaker 1: who don't view that as a bad thing. So there
Speaker 1: seems to be within this generation there seems to be
Speaker 1: a very very strong cultural war going on. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I never thought I'd be this young to say, but
Speaker 1: clearly my generation is going to have to die for progress.
Speaker 1: I thought i'd be eighty when I was saying that,
Speaker 1: But I'm fifty two and I'm saying that now my
Speaker 1: generation is going to have to die for progress to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, some of it's just going to take time
Speaker 1: to happen. But it certainly was the case in the
Speaker 1: past that, for example, interracial marriage is absolutely not tolerated
Speaker 1: anywhere in the culture, and now it's very widely tolerated.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still certainly lots of areas where it's
Speaker 1: not tolerated, but there's far more toleration. Same thing with
Speaker 1: same gender marriage, we see far more toleration of that.
Speaker 1: We see far more toleration of kids being mainstreamed. So
Speaker 1: I do think that I know it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: we're making progress forward because when we hear from people objecting,
Speaker 1: they sound very loud. But historically speaking, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: as a historian, we are getting better and better about
Speaker 1: recognizing that anatomy is not destiny, and that identity is
Speaker 1: a complicated thing that doesn't get determined in any simplistic
Speaker 1: fashion from anatomy, except in the sense that if you're dead,
Speaker 1: you're dead. That does still happen. But even there there's
Speaker 1: some blurrs things. Yeah, you've talked about how that's blory too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's flurry too. It's weird. Death is socially constructed, which
Speaker 1: I never would have thought would be the case. But
Speaker 1: death is socially constructed. It's freaky lot of this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets, as you've noted, the farther our science goes,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way that free You didn't say
Speaker 1: it this way, but the free cure things are going
Speaker 1: to get in terms of what we need to confront
Speaker 1: us as a society, and the more we may have
Speaker 1: to admit that certain rigid categories are not as stable
Speaker 1: as we thought. They're a lot fuzzier than we thought,
Speaker 1: and not just in terms of sex. And I thought
Speaker 1: we could maybe turn our attention to some other areas
Speaker 1: where you know, the logic can be of the same
Speaker 1: logic can be applied. One point you made, which I
Speaker 1: think is a really great point, is the fact that
Speaker 1: we all share ninety five percent of our DNA with chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: right at least at least Now that's an interesting race.
Speaker 1: A lot of question what does it mean to be human? Yeah? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very tricky question. You know, the
Speaker 1: people on the abortion debate want a debate like when
Speaker 1: does human life begin? And to me, that's not an
Speaker 1: answerable question, right, that's not there's never going to be
Speaker 1: an answer to that. That's not political because the fact
Speaker 1: is life nature Sure, it doesn't care about our desire
Speaker 1: to have these clean political categories for legal purposes. It
Speaker 1: throws a variation all the time, and it stumps us
Speaker 1: when it comes to who is dead. When it stumps
Speaker 1: us as to who is alive, when what counts as
Speaker 1: a person, and it's going to begin to stump us
Speaker 1: more and more, I think with regard to the animal
Speaker 1: categorization humans versus other types of animals. And to my mind,
Speaker 1: one of the most scary places where identity is separating
Speaker 1: from anatomy is in our actual identities with regard to
Speaker 1: online identities. So it's very it's increasingly easy and increasingly
Speaker 1: common for somebody to take your identity and they can
Speaker 1: completely take it and remove it from your anatomy in
Speaker 1: the sense that they can create a whole other person
Speaker 1: that appears to be you that is not you, and
Speaker 1: take credit in your name, literally financial credit in your name,
Speaker 1: can have an online identity. You know what we see
Speaker 1: with regard to the Russian bots creating false identities. There's
Speaker 1: a Twitter account that pretends to be me that isn't me,
Speaker 1: And I've tried to get is that right? Twitter to
Speaker 1: shut it off, but they won't and I don't Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know who it is. It could be.
Speaker 1: I've tried to figure out since the Russian bot stuff
Speaker 1: came about. Is it possible it's that Facebook has an
Speaker 1: identity for me. I've never joined Facebook, but there's a
Speaker 1: Facebook page with my name and my biography, and I
Speaker 1: used to think it was something nefarious, but now it's
Speaker 1: become clear, since Facebook was invested and investigated to some
Speaker 1: extent by Congress, that that's actually a page that Facebook
Speaker 1: put up. I'm important enough apparently that Facebook feels I
Speaker 1: have to have a Facebook page, and so they've created
Speaker 1: one in my name, but I don't have control of it.
Speaker 1: People have liked it. Five hundred something people have bothered
Speaker 1: to like that page thinking it is me, and now
Speaker 1: those people have probably had their political affiliation scraped off
Speaker 1: of my identity based on that. I mean, it's that
Speaker 1: kind of thing is really to my mind, it's the
Speaker 1: most disconcerting because historically speaking, the one thing we could
Speaker 1: count on was that your body and your identity were
Speaker 1: at some level connected, and that's becoming less and less
Speaker 1: the case. So that, to my mind is sort of
Speaker 1: the weirdest part of the future. And where that's going
Speaker 1: to go, I don't know. So I'd like to return
Speaker 1: a second to this first proposition that we both value
Speaker 1: the scientific method and we're activists, and then actually the
Speaker 1: second one that we both believe the right starting point
Speaker 1: is with the truth and not leading with a political agenda.
Speaker 1: And I think when you get in that kind of position,
Speaker 1: it creates all sorts of confusion to those who lead
Speaker 1: with the identity politics, because you can say one thing
Speaker 1: and people will think you're on their side, and then
Speaker 1: you say another thing based on the data that sounds
Speaker 1: like completely not on their side, and so that people
Speaker 1: that wanting to kind of pigeonhole you is one thing
Speaker 1: or another, like she's Alice is on our side or
Speaker 1: she's not on our side. It can be very confusing
Speaker 1: to people who lead with not the truth, but lead
Speaker 1: with the identity politics. I think you could even drop
Speaker 1: up the word identity there, just lead with politics. It's
Speaker 1: not even about identity per se, just politics. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting because a lot of this is framed in
Speaker 1: terms of the phrase identity politics. That's that word is
Speaker 1: being thrown around a lot these days. It is, but
Speaker 1: I think, you know, in some ways, I think it's distracting.
Speaker 1: So I run a nonpartisan newspaper for my city, which
Speaker 1: is East Lansing, Michigan, and I founded it because we
Speaker 1: had no news here and so city government could get
Speaker 1: away with anything. And it's it happens to be a
Speaker 1: one party town. It's a Democrat town. It's a blue town.
Speaker 1: I call it Little Chicago as a joke, but it's
Speaker 1: a very one party town, which means you can get
Speaker 1: away with a lot of stuff. And if there's no news,
Speaker 1: then nobody knows what's going on. And I'm a Democrat.
Speaker 1: I vote Democrat most of the time. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't remember the last time I didn't, you know. But
Speaker 1: my feeling was that people shouldn't know what their government
Speaker 1: is doing. So I found it a newspaper, and it's
Speaker 1: a citizen journalism newspaper that runs for the people of
Speaker 1: the city. We run on a non profit system. And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, people are constantly saying to me that
Speaker 1: they're totally confused because I'll report, you know, something negative
Speaker 1: about this person. Then I'll report something positive about them
Speaker 1: or negative about attax, and then I'll report some positive
Speaker 1: thing about that tax. And they'll say to me like,
Speaker 1: we don't know what the side you're on, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not on a side when I'm reporting, because my
Speaker 1: goal is to report in a way that I think
Speaker 1: intelligent people would want to know about X, Y or z.
Speaker 1: So you know, I have a managing editor who functions
Speaker 1: very excellently. A woman named Ann Nichols functions as our
Speaker 1: managing editor, and she and I will talk about Okay,
Speaker 1: so this thing came up, is that something people would
Speaker 1: want to know about, and if we think, you know,
Speaker 1: more than ten people would want to know about it,
Speaker 1: we'll report it. So, for example, she does our marijuana
Speaker 1: reporting for us. Right now, there's a big legal issue
Speaker 1: with regard to marijuana and knee landsing about legalization. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll report on taxing or and financing, and people will
Speaker 1: say to me, you know, I thought you were pro development,
Speaker 1: but then I thought your antidevelopment. I thought an was
Speaker 1: pro marijuana. Now I think and we say that you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to care what we make right. So I
Speaker 1: don't think it's just identity politics. I think in general,
Speaker 1: in any political realm, people have come to assume that
Speaker 1: you should take a side, and you should only tell
Speaker 1: people the facts that accord with your side. But I
Speaker 1: take very seriously the idea that I should be bringing
Speaker 1: forth facts that matter, even if they undercut politically what
Speaker 1: I would like to see, because reality based government is better.
Speaker 1: Reality based policy is better than pretending that my data
Speaker 1: is somehow clean when it's not nonpartisan. So that's where
Speaker 1: I'm coming from. That's why I think the word identity
Speaker 1: is in some ways distracting, because I think it's just
Speaker 1: politics that cause people to want to have tribal sides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that makes sense. It does make sense. It
Speaker 1: must be frustrating to be who you are in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, like up to this point in
Speaker 1: the interview, I feel like almost everything you've said, a
Speaker 1: Republican or someone writers to hear what you're saying and
Speaker 1: just roll their eyes every second and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's so politically correct. But you get in trouble. You know,
Speaker 1: you've gotten in controversies from people on the left for
Speaker 1: not saying exactly what they want you to say, because
Speaker 1: you lead with the truth. So you know, how does
Speaker 1: it feel to you know, just must be frustrating to
Speaker 1: not have that sort of truth seeking appreciated at all times. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that there's a core group of people who
Speaker 1: do appreciate it, and that you can you can cultivate
Speaker 1: appreciation of it. So one of the things we've done
Speaker 1: with the newspaper is to cultivate an appreciation of non
Speaker 1: partisan reporting. You know, nowadays people in the city, about
Speaker 1: six hundred people in the city. They have donated, some
Speaker 1: of them quite a lot of money to keep the
Speaker 1: organization going because they are really committed to the idea
Speaker 1: that while we may bring forward news, they don't want
Speaker 1: to hear that news is not supposed to make you
Speaker 1: feel better. It's supposed to make you more aware, and
Speaker 1: so they Yeah, they've actually become very frustrated in my
Speaker 1: experience with the New York Times, a CNN, with Fox News,
Speaker 1: with the Wall Street Journal, because they see a lot
Speaker 1: of frankly, very biased reporting. And so I think you
Speaker 1: can cultivate in people a sense of wanting some organizations
Speaker 1: to really bring forward what is honest, not what is skewed,
Speaker 1: to make you feel better. So I think there is
Speaker 1: a possibility of doing that. But yeah, no, I'm old
Speaker 1: enough right to remember the days when if you said
Speaker 1: biology that homosexuality was inborn, people said you were a Nazi.
Speaker 1: In the seventies, it was absolutely true in the eighties
Speaker 1: that if you brought forth the argument that homosexuality was
Speaker 1: probably to some degree inborn, people would say that you
Speaker 1: were contributing to a eugenicist point of view, and that
Speaker 1: it was going to lead to a on a side
Speaker 1: of gay people. And then things totally shifted completely in
Speaker 1: the two thousands and the standard line became being gay
Speaker 1: is totally it's about being born that way. That's all.
Speaker 1: You're never allowed to question it. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was saying something different, as were a lot of people
Speaker 1: looking at the science, which is, we've good reason to
Speaker 1: believe that there is a biological contribution to sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't explain everything. There's more than just a
Speaker 1: biological contribution in terms of theosis. There's nuance. There's also
Speaker 1: more than one way to be gay, and more than
Speaker 1: one way to be straight, but certainly more than one
Speaker 1: way to be gay. That especially among males, for example,
Speaker 1: we see multiple ways you can end up with a
Speaker 1: gay man. In terms of biology, it's not just genetics.
Speaker 1: You can have inborn effects. So what I find is
Speaker 1: that like, people really want to believe that the truth
Speaker 1: is on their side, and it would be nice if
Speaker 1: they would understand that the truth is like a referee, right,
Speaker 1: that science needs to be like a referee and to
Speaker 1: say here's what I see, and yeah, referees are human
Speaker 1: and we're human and so we're going to be wrong
Speaker 1: some of the time. But the ideal is that we say, well,
Speaker 1: this is, you know, you were over the line or
Speaker 1: you weren't over the line kind of thing, the way
Speaker 1: the referee does. And that's what we should try for
Speaker 1: as much as possible. And that's where peer review helps,
Speaker 1: because if peer of you is functioning correctly, what happens
Speaker 1: is people have a really excellent check and balance system
Speaker 1: on knowledge, and in democracy is functioning correctly. The same thing. Voters,
Speaker 1: if told the truth, should be able to vote for
Speaker 1: the best person or the person whose ideology they agree with.
Speaker 1: You know, they should at least know what the persons
Speaker 1: likely to do so that they can be represented. But
Speaker 1: increasingly in a system that's very driven by a media
Speaker 1: system that's profit moded and that that functions off of
Speaker 1: clicks and popularity, what you get is silos of knowledge,
Speaker 1: and they're not really silos of knowledge, of silos of ideology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: silos of ideology. Okay, did you see a difference between
Speaker 1: the kind of activising you do and the kind of
Speaker 1: extreme left activism this emerging intellectual dark web movement or
Speaker 1: railing against Do you think that there's utility in kind
Speaker 1: of distinguishing between, like, I don't know, a healthy form
Speaker 1: of activism and a form that is become so ensure
Speaker 1: that it can become pernicious. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: dumb activism across the board, you know, So there's stupidity
Speaker 1: is not limited to any particular political group. There's lots
Speaker 1: of stupidity across the political spectrum, and certainly the left
Speaker 1: can have it as well as the right can have it,
Speaker 1: even the center can have it. I think what makes
Speaker 1: activism better is when it's reality based and when it's
Speaker 1: actually aimed at a goal, where the goal is not
Speaker 1: self agredizement, but is rather some specifical like for example,
Speaker 1: gay marriage right, so the right to marry whoever you
Speaker 1: want to marry as long as there're a consenting adult,
Speaker 1: or for example, the right to have bodily autonomy so
Speaker 1: that somebody doesn't change your gentle enount without your permission
Speaker 1: unless there's some really dire medical situation that calls for
Speaker 1: it to save your reproductive health or your life something
Speaker 1: like that. Right, there should be a specific goal in mind.
Speaker 1: I think what we see a lot today because of
Speaker 1: the way the internet functions is a lot of vacuous,
Speaker 1: ideologically driven activism that doesn't actually have a purposeful goal,
Speaker 1: And to my mind, it's very sad and worrisome. Because
Speaker 1: we have a global crisis, namely global climate change, we
Speaker 1: also have various global health crises that we're facing, for example,
Speaker 1: antibiotic resistance. We have issues about food provision, for example.
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of things that we could
Speaker 1: actually be working on and could be activist about that
Speaker 1: I think would really matter to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But what you get, particularly in the United States, is
Speaker 1: this sort of vacuous identity politics space activism where people
Speaker 1: on all sides of the political spectrum kind of want
Speaker 1: to yell at each other all the time. And to
Speaker 1: my mind, it's a sign of enormous privilege. You can
Speaker 1: pretend global climate change isn't happening because it's not going
Speaker 1: to affect you for a while. You can pretend anti
Speaker 1: antibiotic resistance is not happening because odds are you in
Speaker 1: the West, you're going to be able to get to
Speaker 1: a medical system that's going to get you the best
Speaker 1: kinds of antibiotics and it's not going to immediately affect you.
Speaker 1: But more and more we're seeing these things, and these
Speaker 1: could be things we could actually be working on in
Speaker 1: a meaningful fashion, but not a lot of activists are
Speaker 1: doing it. They're not working on those those big issues.
Speaker 1: They're working on issues of you know, wanting to shame
Speaker 1: each other and yeah, yeah, humanly so glorify, which is exhausting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really really tiresome. Yeah, it is quite tiresome. For
Speaker 1: that reason. I read a really interesting article from Medium
Speaker 1: just today, just right before our chat today, so it's
Speaker 1: like fresh my mind that this is the title, The
Speaker 1: Left are burning their own house down over identity politics
Speaker 1: and the intellectual dark Web. And the core argument in
Speaker 1: this article is that we have to be very careful
Speaker 1: of what they or political postmodernism, which is the premise
Speaker 1: that there is no objective reality, even scientifically speaking, everyone's
Speaker 1: reality is unique, which means all reality is crafted by
Speaker 1: our own cultural influences. And this person argues that political postmodernism,
Speaker 1: if appliet in certain ways, becomes an engine of war
Speaker 1: and genocide, and that that's precisely what the intellectual dark
Speaker 1: Web thinkers are worried about when they rail against postmodernism
Speaker 1: and identity politics. It sounds like you probably agree with that,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, I certainly think it is a
Speaker 1: problem that some stuff on the left has become unmoored
Speaker 1: from reality. But we could say the same thing about
Speaker 1: the right. Right, Holocaust deniers are absolutely unmoored from reality.
Speaker 1: People who think that the reason slaves were not liberated
Speaker 1: is because they didn't rise up are unmoored from reality.
Speaker 1: So Kanye West, didn't you make that hark? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking Kanye West, Right, These people are not reality based.
Speaker 1: So the problem of the postmodern attitude, dude, where you
Speaker 1: kind of decide what is true based on what you
Speaker 1: want to have be true, is not just a problem
Speaker 1: with the left. It's absolutely also a problem with the right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would absolutely say holocaust denying is a
Speaker 1: postmodern reality ignoring idea and a very dangerous one, an
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous one because it denies what is possible in
Speaker 1: terms of genocide and where genocides come from. So it's
Speaker 1: a very great point, you know. I think what's going
Speaker 1: on in the intellectual dark web is that most of
Speaker 1: the people who identify with that began on the left
Speaker 1: and then discover that the left could be stupid, and
Speaker 1: so they're fighting against the stupidity that is on the left.
Speaker 1: I think that's especially with Weinstein, Eric. Yeah, yeah, But
Speaker 1: if they had begun on the right, they might have
Speaker 1: rejected the stupidity on the right right, But we would
Speaker 1: not be paying attention to them because the mainstream media does,
Speaker 1: in fact skew left, and so it's paying lots of attention,
Speaker 1: and certainly the New York Times, which is a very
Speaker 1: these days, a very left of center publication, is paying
Speaker 1: a lot of attention because it kind of feels scary
Speaker 1: in your own house. But the postmodern attitude, you know,
Speaker 1: my husband often says, and I don't think he's wrong,
Speaker 1: that postmodernism started with Reagan, where Reagan would basically just
Speaker 1: say stuff that was kind of wishful thinking, and the
Speaker 1: press would attempt to say that isn't true. But Reagan,
Speaker 1: you know, in his sort of slightly demented state, would
Speaker 1: honestly believe the stuff that he was saying about the
Speaker 1: good and the evil and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And so in many ways, you know, the Iraq War
Speaker 1: was a postmodern war in the sense that it was
Speaker 1: based on fundamental untruths about had what in terms of
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction. So this is not something that
Speaker 1: is only a product of identity politics. This is a
Speaker 1: worldwide phenomenon that I think George Orwell very well predicted
Speaker 1: that it was going to get to the point where
Speaker 1: basically propaganda was going to become so endemic that it
Speaker 1: would be very difficult to tell what the truth was
Speaker 1: and what was not true. And that's where we are today.
Speaker 1: We're at the point where it can be extremely difficult
Speaker 1: to tell what is real and what is false. Online
Speaker 1: and even on television, it can become you know, fake
Speaker 1: stories take off before we even realize that they're fake,
Speaker 1: and they don't quite die, they linger. So this is
Speaker 1: an international, across the spectrum problem, and for the Dark
Speaker 1: Web to be complaining about, particularly the left and particularly
Speaker 1: identity politics, strikes me as sort of an inch deep.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the deeper problem. And that's why the
Speaker 1: piece I wrote for the Chronicle prier Education I talked
Speaker 1: about the meat, plantscapes that I see is the post modern,
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic media landscape where thoughtfulness and non part isn't
Speaker 1: reporting go to die. And I really mean that. I
Speaker 1: mean this is the problem here is much much greater
Speaker 1: than a problem of people complaining about gender pronouns. It's
Speaker 1: much greater than that. So yeah, And there's a quote
Speaker 1: from that article which was called why I Escaped the
Speaker 1: Intellectual Dark Web, that I've been quoting in all my
Speaker 1: social media because I really like this a lot. Opinion
Speaker 1: is not scholarship, it is not journalism, and we are
Speaker 1: dying for lack of honest, fact based slow inquiry. We
Speaker 1: are dying, like we are getting to the point right
Speaker 1: where literally people are beginning to die because we are
Speaker 1: failing to recognize the harms that we have introduced. So again,
Speaker 1: I would say global climate change, you know, with not
Speaker 1: only the fact that some people are literally losing their
Speaker 1: land to water. I mean Alaska is melting, right, This
Speaker 1: is no joke. The polar bears are dying, the Alaska
Speaker 1: is melting, and that's going to create a huge issue
Speaker 1: for the people of Alaska and for the ecosystem of Alaska.
Speaker 1: The coral reef is dying, fisheries are dying. We have
Speaker 1: a situation at the same time where again I would
Speaker 1: bring up antibiotic resistance, where we have a situation where
Speaker 1: we've put so much antibiotics into the food system that
Speaker 1: we've created a situation where we're creating super bugs all
Speaker 1: over the place. Because of the combination of all these things,
Speaker 1: we're beginning to create ecosystems that are becoming incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: to the species that normally including us, that would normally
Speaker 1: survive in those ecosystems. I literally meant we are dying
Speaker 1: because we are not doing the science and taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: And there are people doing that science, but we're not
Speaker 1: paying attention to it very much. Instead, what are we
Speaker 1: paying attention to? We're paying attention to the latest small
Speaker 1: study of this identity issue or that I read the
Speaker 1: Neyic Times, for example, and they'll be reporting on a
Speaker 1: study that had twelve people on it because it's about
Speaker 1: running and what it does to your knees. And it's
Speaker 1: a stupid, lousy study that shouldn't even be reported on
Speaker 1: because it's an observational study with a small n And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, well, where's the study here in terms of
Speaker 1: telling us about what really matters to millions of people,
Speaker 1: Like where's the information about tuberculosis and what's happening right
Speaker 1: now with the evolution of tuberculosis. Where is the discussion
Speaker 1: of what we're doing in terms of introduction of levels
Speaker 1: of problematic. So, for example, I've become gluten intolerant. I
Speaker 1: think there's a really interesting question here about why the
Speaker 1: hell many of us would be this, right, Like, there's
Speaker 1: something going on in the system. It doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: that it's simply the case that this number of people
Speaker 1: would have had this in the past and they just
Speaker 1: didn't realize it. Right, It's not possible, I don't think
Speaker 1: in terms of a public health issue. So why are
Speaker 1: we paying no attention to whatever's going on in the
Speaker 1: food supply chain? That is probably or maybe some other
Speaker 1: issue with the microbiome. I mean, I think there's I
Speaker 1: think people are literally dying of C. Difficile, right, They
Speaker 1: are literally dying of malaria. We are literally getting sicker
Speaker 1: and sicker in terms of lyme disease, in terms of celiac,
Speaker 1: in terms of all of these things. And so when
Speaker 1: I said dying for, I've literally meant dying, I just
Speaker 1: mean longing for. I meant we are dying for lack
Speaker 1: of science, easier to get lost in the junior high
Speaker 1: pettiness of and I think a lot of it is
Speaker 1: ego driven on all sides, you know well, and tribal
Speaker 1: life is very compelling. You know, it's very we evolved.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say we evolved to have
Speaker 1: a certain need to reiterate with tribe ring all the time.
Speaker 1: And so the consequence and that had to do with
Speaker 1: kin relationships and survivability, and so the consequence of that
Speaker 1: is we're constantly drawn into these dramas about who am
Speaker 1: I and who are you? And are you friend or foe?
Speaker 1: And we spend so much moreships it's easier to get
Speaker 1: drawn to that then deal with real problems, real issues
Speaker 1: that are humanitarian issues. And you know what's great is
Speaker 1: when people spend that on sports. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: that really like when they spend that need on sports
Speaker 1: and they want to be cheering their own team in
Speaker 1: a sports way. But unfortunately, we don't seem to have
Speaker 1: enough of that to or you know, our favorite band,
Speaker 1: our favorite sports, our favorite televisision show is not enough
Speaker 1: to assert those tribal borders, and so we end up
Speaker 1: doing it around identity and around politics and around other things.
Speaker 1: When I mean, the good news is most of us
Speaker 1: are na neegation war, so we're not enacting it in
Speaker 1: a way where we're killing each other. But the bad
Speaker 1: thing is that I think we have to constantly draw
Speaker 1: borders and it's a stupid human behavior that wastes a
Speaker 1: lot of time. And it's to my mind, it's frankly
Speaker 1: a more male behavior in certain ways than a female being. Okay,
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to talk about that, if you don't mind.
Speaker 1: I thought you made a really interesting thought provoking point
Speaker 1: in your ted talk about the Founding fathers and then
Speaker 1: what would the Founding mothers look like? And I think
Speaker 1: this is so relevant to the intellectual dark web, to
Speaker 1: a lot of these ideas, a lot of these factions,
Speaker 1: because I saw George talk, and you know, I thought
Speaker 1: he had a lot of really interesting things to say
Speaker 1: in is talk. One thing he said the state should
Speaker 1: stay the hell from the individual. Now, that might be
Speaker 1: part of it, that's certain was the Founding Father's attitude, right,
Speaker 1: like protect from the monarchy. However, you argue that maybe
Speaker 1: there needs to be a balance there of not just
Speaker 1: you know, protecting us from the state, but also learning
Speaker 1: how to care for each other. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I'm very drawn to the idea of that original
Speaker 1: American ideal, which is that the state exists largely to
Speaker 1: protect the individual from the state. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: paradoxical way of thinking about a democratic system, but it's
Speaker 1: a very beautiful way to think about it, which is
Speaker 1: the state exists in order to keep the state out
Speaker 1: of our faces. But at the same time, I do
Speaker 1: think that it was set up in a way that
Speaker 1: was a sort of male typical approach to looking at
Speaker 1: the world, which had to do with resources and property
Speaker 1: and had less attention paid towards basic care. And if
Speaker 1: we had a system that paid more attention to relationships
Speaker 1: in terms of care relationships that for example, we would
Speaker 1: have national health insurance. By now, we would not have
Speaker 1: a situation where people had to live in fear of
Speaker 1: losing a job means also losing an ability to survive
Speaker 1: physically and have your children survive physically. So the fact
Speaker 1: that we have, you know, this balkanized system of health insurance,
Speaker 1: means that some people can get life saving treatment that
Speaker 1: other people simply cannot get. And it's not often very
Speaker 1: expensive or even very high tech. Often it's pretty basic stuff.
Speaker 1: But it can be very difficult for people who are
Speaker 1: caught in the in between. And strangely, in the United States,
Speaker 1: the people caught in between are the working poor. They're not.
Speaker 1: If you're very poor, the state covers you. If you're
Speaker 1: middle class, you often have some coverage, and if you're wealthy,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of courage. It's the people who
Speaker 1: are in the lower end, the middle middle part of
Speaker 1: the middle class who get caught and have in an
Speaker 1: adequate healthcare protection, and a lot of them are really
Speaker 1: in rough shape. And I wonder to up if we
Speaker 1: had a system where we had more of the characteristics
Speaker 1: that cross culturally. We see females paying attention to which
Speaker 1: is kinship relationships rather than just resource relationships, and also
Speaker 1: thinking more carefully about care. Would we have a situation
Speaker 1: where we were more rational with regard to making sure
Speaker 1: people had a very basic level of care. So, for example,
Speaker 1: we would have I think potentially better public school systems.
Speaker 1: All four year olds, for example, would have school, because
Speaker 1: we know from the studies very very clearly that having
Speaker 1: four year olds in school makes an enormous difference in
Speaker 1: their lives. We don't know why four year olds are
Speaker 1: these almost magical moment where if you catch them and
Speaker 1: you provide schooling to them, and I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: intense schooling, just basic pre K schooling, It increases the
Speaker 1: likelihood that they'll be employed later in life, decreases the
Speaker 1: likelihood of being imprisoned later in life, increases quality of
Speaker 1: health relationships, all sorts of things. I mean, this has
Speaker 1: been studied all over, Yet in many places in this country,
Speaker 1: the only people that can get pre K care in
Speaker 1: terms of government supported is the poor, the most poor,
Speaker 1: because it's through the head Start program. So why is that?
Speaker 1: And I think that if we had a more rational
Speaker 1: system that paid more attention to care and spent less
Speaker 1: time worrying about individual property ownership, we might have a
Speaker 1: system that was better for everybody, that basically made everybody
Speaker 1: better off, and having everybody better off would leave us
Speaker 1: in a better position. I think that's a beautiful place
Speaker 1: to end. And I just want to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I resonate with your dual almost on equal footing desires
Speaker 1: for getting at the truth, getting things right, not ignoring that,
Speaker 1: not ignoring the truth, but also in the care. So
Speaker 1: you're kind of a good balance of these things, you know.
Speaker 1: I think we should start the intellectual lightweb, you know,
Speaker 1: or some sort of web. Can there be a web
Speaker 1: that I even know if web is the right word,
Speaker 1: But some movement where people are not you know why
Speaker 1: the intellectual only part to it, people who are equally
Speaker 1: concerned with not just getting at the truth. But I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: where are the people like you, you you know, like, you know,
Speaker 1: really like, don't treat these as dichotomous things. You know,
Speaker 1: you're either on this one hand, getting at the truth
Speaker 1: or you're a social justice warrior, which is the term
Speaker 1: that's used a lot as a pejorative thing. But can
Speaker 1: you be both? Yeah, I think you absolutely can. That's why,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the real reason I wrote the book
Speaker 1: Galio's middle Finger, was to point out that the fundamental
Speaker 1: things that people who pursue truth and pursue justice we
Speaker 1: care about the same basic stuff, which is, if we
Speaker 1: want to do it well, we care about truth and
Speaker 1: we care about justice. We care about both of those things.
Speaker 1: And so it's funny to me because that book, galios
Speaker 1: middle Finger sometimes gets construed as being you know, anti
Speaker 1: social justice warrior. But that's not that book. That book
Speaker 1: absolutely takes seriously the idea of activism as incredibly important
Speaker 1: to the health of democracy and to the health of
Speaker 1: all of us. So, you know, the book traces my
Speaker 1: own activist work, and other people's activists work showing why
Speaker 1: it functions as a check and a balance on people
Speaker 1: who might otherwise do really abusive research and produce really
Speaker 1: abusive policies. So I do think there's a way to
Speaker 1: do that. And you know, as I said in the
Speaker 1: piece I wrote in the Chronicle last week, I actually
Speaker 1: think the intellectual lightweb is academia. I think that what's
Speaker 1: troubling is that we have had a loss of job security,
Speaker 1: and that reduces whether or not people who have unpopular
Speaker 1: things to say can stay. And so that's where, for example,
Speaker 1: Brett Weinstein, Heather Haying, for example, get driven out and
Speaker 1: that's quit too, right, Well, yeah, I quit because my
Speaker 1: dean censored me. And you know, I I might go
Speaker 1: back to academia. But it is true that I worry
Speaker 1: that the ways in which academia is being overtaken with
Speaker 1: a sort of problematic culture, which is about corporatization and
Speaker 1: about money making and about branding, really cheapens the kind
Speaker 1: of intellectual possibilities that are available. I know, I know
Speaker 1: we have to survive on money. I'm not pretending that
Speaker 1: universities don't have to think about money, but the way
Speaker 1: in which they're thinking about money is deeply troubling at
Speaker 1: this point, and I think counterproductive in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So I think an intellectual lightweb is something to go for.
Speaker 1: And I don't actually think there is a dark web,
Speaker 1: right these people are out in the light. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I think it's this fashion thing and the
Speaker 1: fashion shoot that went with it. Even though the photographer
Speaker 1: is incredibly talented, The New York Times photographer incredibly talented,
Speaker 1: did beautiful photographs, but I just think it ended up
Speaker 1: looking like a fashion shoot that was kind of silly
Speaker 1: and cheapens the ideas that we're trying to get towards.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your perspective immensely, and thanks for like talking
Speaker 1: through this stuff with me. I certainly I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around what I think of the
Speaker 1: intellectual dark way. I just I know that I'm personally
Speaker 1: striving for something that is like intellectual dark web plus
Speaker 1: like something that doesn't make fun of social activism but
Speaker 1: also distinguishes between healthy social activism. And so you see,
Speaker 1: I like the complexities of this, but who like, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to me, because no one else will listening
Speaker 1: to this stuff. Keep doing that now, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, Scott. Thanks Allan. And it's about process, right,
Speaker 1: process is what we do. It's good. Yeah. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for chatting with me today. Thank you. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 1: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
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