Speaker 1: If I did not acknowledge my biology, I would not
Speaker 1: be trans. The whole reason you are trans is because
Speaker 1: of biology. I mean, it's so simple, yet it's being
Speaker 1: so twisted. Words are being twisted, ideas of up biology
Speaker 1: are being twisted. All of those things to me feel
Speaker 1: like gaslighting. Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. The
Speaker 1: following episode is part of the Making Sense of Sex
Speaker 1: and Gender series on this podcast. In this series, we
Speaker 1: try to make sense of the distinction between sex and
Speaker 1: gender and cover trans issues in a very thoughtful and
Speaker 1: nuanced fashion. We have balanced discussions from multiple perspectives, including scientists, activists,
Speaker 1: and a leading feminism scholar. This series will hopefully expand
Speaker 1: your mind and help you make sense of the current
Speaker 1: heated debate surrounding the distinctions between sex and gender as
Speaker 1: well as transgender issues. The aim is to turn down
Speaker 1: the temperature on this very heated topic and increase understanding
Speaker 1: and integrate truth with love. I hope you will listen
Speaker 1: to this entire series with an open mind, in an
Speaker 1: open heart, and as always we look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: your feedback and comments on our website and on the
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, so that further ado I bring you this
Speaker 1: episode within the Making Sense of Sex and Gender series. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today, we welcome Debora so,
Speaker 1: Marco del Judas, and Buck Angel on the show. First,
Speaker 1: let's talk about doctor Debressaux. She's a neuroscientist who specializes
Speaker 1: in gender, sex, and sexual orientation. She holds a PhD
Speaker 1: in neuroscience with scientific expertise in paraphilias, hypersexuality, and child
Speaker 1: sexual abuse prevention. As a journalist, her writing has appeared
Speaker 1: in several publications like The New York Post, The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, Newsweek, and many more. In twenty twenty, she
Speaker 1: published her book called The End of Gender. Doctor Marco
Speaker 1: del Judasa is an associate professor in the Department of
Speaker 1: Psychology at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He received
Speaker 1: his bachelors in psychology and Doctor in Cognitive Science from
Speaker 1: the Universe Turing in Italy. He has over one hundred
Speaker 1: scientific publications on personality, motivation, attachment styles, psychopathology, sex differences,
Speaker 1: and other topics. In twenty sixteen, he was granted the
Speaker 1: Early Career Award of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
Speaker 1: Buck Angel is an adult film producer, performer, and motivational
Speaker 1: speaker who also works as an advocate, educator, lecturer, and writer.
Speaker 1: He has served on the board of directors of the
Speaker 1: Woodhole Sexual Freedom Alliance from twenty ten to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Buck Angel was born a biological female and conquered a
Speaker 1: lifetime of adversity to undergo his transformation and become the healthy, happy,
Speaker 1: self confident man he is today. Buck created the first
Speaker 1: FtM adult website in two thousand and three and became
Speaker 1: the first FtM adult entertainer and film producer. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, Buck made history again as the first
Speaker 1: transsexual man to ever win the AVN Transsexual Performer of
Speaker 1: the Year Award, which is essentially the Academy Awards of
Speaker 1: the adult industry. Recently, Buck has devoted himself to informing
Speaker 1: and enlightening the world, as he demonstrated in his speaking
Speaker 1: engagements at Yale University and Idea City twenty ten. Buck
Speaker 1: is not only inspiring people to think outside the box,
Speaker 1: he is redefining gender and educating an entire generation on
Speaker 1: the facidity of sexuality and identity politics. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Deborah Marco and Buck about the scientific
Speaker 1: realities of biological sex. There is considerable opposition against the
Speaker 1: idea that sex is a binary or even that there's
Speaker 1: any biological component to sex that is meaningful at all.
Speaker 1: But my panel today argue that denying science because it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to fit our gender beliefs or ideology can
Speaker 1: actually be dangerous. They argue that, as ironic as it seems,
Speaker 1: when we acknowledge biology, we can accommodate more variation better
Speaker 1: than our preconceived, rigid social norms. I really enjoyed this panel.
Speaker 1: I hope you listen to it with an open mind
Speaker 1: and an open heart, and we've comments if you re
Speaker 1: act strongly in any way, we would truly love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. This is a really stimulating conversation for me.
Speaker 1: I really respect these individuals. I was glad to give
Speaker 1: them a voice alongside all the other voices in the
Speaker 1: series so that further ado I bring you Deborah, Marco,
Speaker 1: and Buck. I'm so glad to have you three on
Speaker 1: this show today, and I want to just start by
Speaker 1: each of you just introducing yourself a little bit, talk
Speaker 1: a bit about your profession, your career, why you're interested
Speaker 1: in kind of topics and things that you talk about,
Speaker 1: and let's just start with Marco. This is random selection.
Speaker 1: So I'm Marco the Judice. I'm a professor at the
Speaker 1: University of New Mexico starting from next year at the
Speaker 1: University of Trieste. So I'm going back to Italy and
Speaker 1: I what I stumbled. Actually, I stumbled on sex differences
Speaker 1: many years ago when I was doing some research and
Speaker 1: attachment styles, so styles of relationships between kids and their
Speaker 1: parents or caregivers, and I was analyzing videos and coding
Speaker 1: these videos, and I kept finding sex difference. So some
Speaker 1: categories of attachment were popping up much more e mails
Speaker 1: or in females, and so that's how I started to
Speaker 1: get interested in being the topic. Really, I was reading
Speaker 1: a lot of evolutionary I was kind of getting into
Speaker 1: seriously into evolutionary psychology at the time, and so kind
Speaker 1: of at some point, well, at first I had my
Speaker 1: videos checked, like the codings. I thought I was doing
Speaker 1: something wrong because you're not supposed to get sex differences
Speaker 1: in attachment styles. And then they were still there, you know,
Speaker 1: after checking, they were still there. And so I started
Speaker 1: kind of thinking about it and reading and kind of
Speaker 1: clicked in a different interpretation of what I was seeing
Speaker 1: and so there was the start of my kind of
Speaker 1: love affair with sex differences, and then I started doing
Speaker 1: I probably got a bit more notorious. Maybe I started
Speaker 1: publishing some papers about how you measure sex differences and
Speaker 1: the fact that if you consider once, for example, in
Speaker 1: things like personality where you have multiple trades, usually what
Speaker 1: psychologists do when it do sex differences they do one
Speaker 1: trade at the time and measure the difference between the
Speaker 1: sexes on each individual trades, and then maybe you average
Speaker 1: them or kind of take some kind of summary measure.
Speaker 1: And I introduced a multivariate approach to that. So what
Speaker 1: happens when you consider more, you know, many traits at
Speaker 1: the same time, and unsurprisingly, the sex difference is going
Speaker 1: to become larger and more robust. And I'm still doing
Speaker 1: quite a bit of that. I have three papers now
Speaker 1: in the working about trying to do some let's say,
Speaker 1: methodological and statistical innovations in how you measure and think
Speaker 1: about sex differences. And so I got into a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting conversations since then. Thanks Mark, and I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that we talk a little bit today
Speaker 1: about that work versus the predominant view in certain circles
Speaker 1: that it's all mosaic, so I want to contrast that
Speaker 1: view with your view. So great, thank you and welcome
Speaker 1: doctor doctor Debra. So can you tell us a little
Speaker 1: about yourself. I am a former academic sex researcher. My
Speaker 1: PhD is in neuroscience and I was specializing in human sexuality,
Speaker 1: so I used to do brain imaging of sexuality. I
Speaker 1: decided to leave academia to become a science journalist due
Speaker 1: to the political climate. I found it for myself just
Speaker 1: really difficult to pursue interesting questions. By the end of
Speaker 1: my PhD, I had written an op ed criticizing gender
Speaker 1: transitioning in children because it is not backed by the
Speaker 1: scientific research. And I knew that by doing so I
Speaker 1: would have to leave academia because basically I'd be blacklisted.
Speaker 1: So I work as a journalist now. My first book,
Speaker 1: The End of Gender, came out with Simon and Schuster.
Speaker 1: It debunks nine myths that are commonly held about gender
Speaker 1: identity in our society taking a scientific approach, and I
Speaker 1: write about the science of sexuality, gender identity, academic censorship,
Speaker 1: criticize racial politics as well. I have a podcast called
Speaker 1: the Doctor Debriso Podcast. Well, welcome is that your book
Speaker 1: behind you a copy of your book for people watching. Yes, there,
Speaker 1: she is excellent. And then, last, but certainly not least,
Speaker 1: we have Buck Angel. Please introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Buck
Speaker 1: and I am a transsexual man. I transitioned thirty years
Speaker 1: ago from living female to livings male. I am a
Speaker 1: biological female. I believe in biology. I'm even saying this
Speaker 1: is cracking me up, but this is actually a real thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm not an academic. I am more. I think
Speaker 1: I don't even like to use activists anymore. But I'm
Speaker 1: a person who believes in biology and transition for the
Speaker 1: right person. I sit here today because I believe that
Speaker 1: we have gone off the rails when it comes to transitioning.
Speaker 1: And I'm one hundred percent against transitioning children. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of just I guess me and I have a
Speaker 1: background in pornography and sexual wellness products, and so I
Speaker 1: think I need to put that in there because a
Speaker 1: lot of people will say, well, he's a porn star,
Speaker 1: what do you have him here? So I'm proud of
Speaker 1: my pornography work, and though it's not for everybody, I
Speaker 1: believe pornography can help some people. It helped me and
Speaker 1: it helped people like me deal with sex and our bodies.
Speaker 1: So that's me. Well, thank you for your introduction. And
Speaker 1: to clarify performing in pornography, A lot of people have
Speaker 1: a background in pornography. Yeah, I just watched Born, I
Speaker 1: have a background. Undersell yourself. You're understanding yourself a little
Speaker 1: bit here, right, That's right. It could mean a lot
Speaker 1: of things. So you actually were a superstar in the
Speaker 1: pornography world. I guess so, yeah, I guess I'm my
Speaker 1: actual porn star. Thank you. Yeah. So really in my
Speaker 1: porn work, though, you know, it was really about exposing
Speaker 1: my body to the world in a way that was
Speaker 1: on some level helping people deal with those things. So gotcha. Great, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for introducing yourself. And like I did with
Speaker 1: Deborah when I said, behind you, is that a copy
Speaker 1: of your book? Behind you? I'm only going to focus
Speaker 1: on one side of No, No, not that side. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna focus on the Trampa hat right on. I'm a dress.
Speaker 1: You call yourself Trampa, people call you Trampa. They you know,
Speaker 1: your fans. That might be a really interesting way to
Speaker 1: kind of start this conversation. You're like an og of something,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about what that something is
Speaker 1: because I was I saw a chart recently about the
Speaker 1: change and the use of the term from transsexual a transgender,
Speaker 1: and I saw about I'm visualizing my head right now,
Speaker 1: and I saw about twenty eleven there was a huge
Speaker 1: spike in in a shift, a cultural shift. Up until
Speaker 1: that point, it was mostly the use of the term transsexual,
Speaker 1: but something around twenty ten twenty eleven, you see this
Speaker 1: huge shift, And I just wanted to get some of
Speaker 1: your thoughts on what all three of you, what is
Speaker 1: the cause in that shift, and what do you see
Speaker 1: as a difference between a transsexual and a transgender individual,
Speaker 1: if at all. Yeah, it's a great question because I
Speaker 1: get the question all the time, and as you all know,
Speaker 1: I do identify as a transsexual, not transgender. And so
Speaker 1: for me, the reason I keep the word transsexual attached
Speaker 1: to me is because I believe transsexual is a specific
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, no variation, no, none of that. It's
Speaker 1: specifically a person who has been diagnosed from an actual
Speaker 1: therapist or medical professional with the diagnosis of gender dysphoria,
Speaker 1: which I have, and it's somebody who wants to live
Speaker 1: in the binary space. And so for myself if I
Speaker 1: was born female and I wanted to live in a
Speaker 1: male space. And so for transsexual people, we really do
Speaker 1: make an effort to what we call pass as a
Speaker 1: man and a woman and live in the binary space
Speaker 1: and just become that and have surgeries and medical intervention
Speaker 1: to emulate as much as we can that particular sex
Speaker 1: that we wish we were born as. It's real simple.
Speaker 1: Where today transgender has become an umbrella term that has
Speaker 1: excluded the word transsexual and is now open to anybody's
Speaker 1: interpretation of what they think or feel or have or
Speaker 1: you could actually self id in that space without having
Speaker 1: any diagnosis, and people believe in that space that you
Speaker 1: don't need gender dysphoria to be trans. So for me,
Speaker 1: the transgender label is more of a self identification label
Speaker 1: without having a medical attachment to it, where transsexual is
Speaker 1: specifically a medical position. And I do believe that they
Speaker 1: tried to remove transsexual so that everyone can self id
Speaker 1: and that it isn't called a mental disorder, where I
Speaker 1: do believe I have a mental disorder. Okay, thank you
Speaker 1: for that perspective. I don't see too many of you around,
Speaker 1: to be honest, that are outspoken and saying no, like
Speaker 1: transsexual is what I am, not transgender, And so you're
Speaker 1: very You're in a very unique space. You must feel
Speaker 1: like in some ways you're constantly going up against a
Speaker 1: cultural current, you know, in some ways and the way
Speaker 1: I see it and I think this, and tell me
Speaker 1: what you all think about this, But you know, when
Speaker 1: you feel such a mismatch between your body and your
Speaker 1: psychology in terms of your gender, one route is to
Speaker 1: prioritize the psychology, and the another root is to prioritize
Speaker 1: the biology. You're holding onto the biology when a whole
Speaker 1: it seems like the culture today is and especially since
Speaker 1: that trend in twenty eleven is sending the message terribyone
Speaker 1: that we should prioritize the psychology over everything else. What
Speaker 1: do you what do you all think of that framing.
Speaker 1: I think it's important for there to be a balance
Speaker 1: between the two and that I think it's important for
Speaker 1: people to because you see both extremes. You see some
Speaker 1: people who say it's purely about psychology, it's purely about
Speaker 1: the mind, It's purely about internal feelings in terms of
Speaker 1: how someone identifies, and that should be the most important thing,
Speaker 1: and biology is completely irrelevant. And then you see the
Speaker 1: other side of people saying biologies everything. So the body
Speaker 1: you were born with is the body you should have,
Speaker 1: and you should not even consider transitioning because there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as living as the opposite sex, And however
Speaker 1: you feel internally is just a feeling and that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything. So for me personally, I think both are important.
Speaker 1: I think there should be a balance between acknowledging that
Speaker 1: for some people like Buck, transitioning is the way to
Speaker 1: go and that's going to help them feel better. For
Speaker 1: the people, especially with the newer wave that we're seeing
Speaker 1: that you were talking about, doctor Kaufman, in terms of
Speaker 1: people who are identifying as the opposite sex or a
Speaker 1: third gender now very quickly out of the blue, I
Speaker 1: think this is very much more of a social contagion.
Speaker 1: It's more about what's happening culturally, and it's about maybe
Speaker 1: internal distress that they have that they are attributing to
Speaker 1: their gender when it may or may not actually have
Speaker 1: anything to do with identity. So I think a good clinician,
Speaker 1: and I say this as someone who doesn't do clinical
Speaker 1: work anymore, but I think a good clinician will take
Speaker 1: both of those into into consideration when deciding what someone's
Speaker 1: treatment pathway is and making that pathway very much specific
Speaker 1: to that person's needs as opposed to taking a sweeping approach,
Speaker 1: because what we are seeing now is that people are
Speaker 1: just saying across the board, however someone feels is what
Speaker 1: should be taken at face value. Right. Yeah, And Marco,
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring you into this conversation because you
Speaker 1: taught you taught me something about this topic that I
Speaker 1: found very important in my understanding of this and the
Speaker 1: nuance of it. You taught me that, you know, the
Speaker 1: trends is an umbrella for actually multiple sometimes quite different
Speaker 1: mechanisms or sources or varieties of trans that we can't
Speaker 1: lump it all into the same phenomenon. That's something you
Speaker 1: taught me. So can you maybe bring that perspective in
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I'm kind of cautious here because
Speaker 1: this is really not kind of my my area, Okay,
Speaker 1: So of course I've been dealing with sex differences that
Speaker 1: kind of happen to and I'm friends with people who
Speaker 1: actually are in this area as researchers, so I try
Speaker 1: not to stray too much. I appreciate that scientific caution.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of obvious if you look at
Speaker 1: the pathways that people take kind of that take them
Speaker 1: to at some point. Let's say, I mean, it depends
Speaker 1: what's the endpoint is right, because if endpoint is that's say,
Speaker 1: you know, taking hormones or surgery, that's kind of one thing.
Speaker 1: If the end point is just self identifying in a
Speaker 1: way that kind of doesn't match your biological sex or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's also different. It's more there's more, more pathways did
Speaker 1: into that. But I think it's pretty obvious that it's
Speaker 1: not like one thing. If you're thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: what doesn't mean to be transgender is actually multiple things,
Speaker 1: and people get there for multiple reasons, and it's different
Speaker 1: for males and females. It's different between different kind of decades,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, what you see happening now is
Speaker 1: you have people who don't match the template of people
Speaker 1: who were like the typical say you know, a transgender
Speaker 1: from Fran say even ten or twenty years ago. An
Speaker 1: accent I can put on this is that just by
Speaker 1: let's say, shifting the conversation towards more let's psychological and
Speaker 1: subjective right points of view, So from away from this
Speaker 1: and not been happening just about transsexuals to transgender to
Speaker 1: but it's been happening in psychology in general, from you know,
Speaker 1: sexual differences to gender differences to now something you know
Speaker 1: more and more kind of in a haze of meaning
Speaker 1: in which meanings are kind of more fluid and harder
Speaker 1: to pin down. And so I think that's deliberate in
Speaker 1: a sense because if you you know, it helps kind
Speaker 1: of muddy the waters a little bit and also maintain
Speaker 1: if you let's say, not from an activist perspective, right,
Speaker 1: and not just one activist, but there's a galaxy of
Speaker 1: activists with also multiple agendas having words and meanings are
Speaker 1: kind of shifting and kind of hard to pin down.
Speaker 1: Is actually you know, is a resource because you can
Speaker 1: so for example, it just you know, that's feminism for examsample,
Speaker 1: which is not the same thing as a transgender kind
Speaker 1: of activism has had a complicated relationship with biology, and
Speaker 1: even within what I see as you know, transactivists, there's
Speaker 1: there's different perspective and biology, and some people kind of
Speaker 1: embrace at least bits and pieces of it, some people
Speaker 1: kind of reject it as oppressive constructs and stuff, and
Speaker 1: so because at different times or deal it with different topics,
Speaker 1: people to kind of you know, altern you know, embrace
Speaker 1: or reject different pieces of biology. Let's say it actually
Speaker 1: is a plus to have meanings that are not fixed
Speaker 1: and kind of very very uh liquid. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: actually a plus because you never kind of you can
Speaker 1: never be pinned down to your definition and to something stable.
Speaker 1: And so for example, I you know, that's the area
Speaker 1: I know better talking about sex differences. I mean, people
Speaker 1: used to talk about sex differences until pretty much the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, or sexual differences or stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and then gender became a term that was and that
Speaker 1: was adopted pretty enthusiastically by by feminist scholars, right. And
Speaker 1: the idea there was to introduce this kind of very
Speaker 1: you know, a clean separation between what's the domain of
Speaker 1: the body and biology, where maybe we have this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, binary males and females and all this
Speaker 1: kind of nasty hormones and stuff from the realm of
Speaker 1: behavior and psychology and and you know, personality, whatever cognitive
Speaker 1: ability is, identity, what people like to do, how they
Speaker 1: present so forth with the idea that that part is
Speaker 1: essentially mostly a social construction, So you separate the body,
Speaker 1: which is anchored in biology, from psychology, which is more
Speaker 1: and again you you have to think this was the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: so in psychology had a very strong zeit geist for
Speaker 1: social constructionism and situations is like personality doesn't exist, it's
Speaker 1: all kind of expectations and stereotypes and precious pressure from
Speaker 1: the social situation. So that that was the zet guys,
Speaker 1: And in that ze guys, gender is a way to
Speaker 1: kind of liberate the study of sex from the biology
Speaker 1: of sex and the body. But of course then you
Speaker 1: run into other issues because you can't really sustain this
Speaker 1: dicotomy because a lot of the traits that have to
Speaker 1: do with say, personality, generation, and behavior turned out not
Speaker 1: really disconnected from as people kind of thought, and so
Speaker 1: it gets really messy, gets messy. And now if you're
Speaker 1: if you're going to talk I know you're going to
Speaker 1: talk to and Fossils Sterling soon. And she's been one
Speaker 1: of the people we need the feminist you know, scholarship,
Speaker 1: arguing that we should kind of stop talking about sex
Speaker 1: and genders, separate and kind of put them together into
Speaker 1: section gener gender. She has a phrase, she has a phrase.
Speaker 1: It's all on word. It's all on word, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Do I welcome that? And it's kind of
Speaker 1: because I've been arguing that, you know, people have this
Speaker 1: illusion that distinguishing between sex and gender actually helps, but
Speaker 1: the way these terms are defined many times actually confuses
Speaker 1: things even more. It doesn't really help for clarity as
Speaker 1: much as people think. And so the I don't quite
Speaker 1: welcome this, this further move to this sex gender concept
Speaker 1: is that now you're basically, so here's the way it went.
Speaker 1: You have this binary sex more or less, uh, and
Speaker 1: then maybe it's not that binary because you bring in
Speaker 1: intersex conditions and all sorts of things we can talk
Speaker 1: about probably we're going to talk about this more later,
Speaker 1: but basically, it's, you know, something at least root in biology,
Speaker 1: and then you have gender, which is kind of disconnected
Speaker 1: from biology, and it is free floating kind of you know,
Speaker 1: lots of social construction and tereotypes and enrolls, and and
Speaker 1: then now by reconnecting them, I see that as in
Speaker 1: part as a move to take what's left of biological
Speaker 1: sex and make it conceptually as fluid and airy and
Speaker 1: kind of you know, uh, undefined as gender has become
Speaker 1: so I don't see that, and moved to ground gender
Speaker 1: into something a bit more biologically real. You stick by
Speaker 1: the move to take what's left of sex and and
Speaker 1: just dissolve it forever into this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: multi dimensioned combinary. One point, I really want to make.
Speaker 1: Whatether you made that I want to zoom in on.
Speaker 1: Is there there is something quite profound here that if
Speaker 1: we if we step back a second and look at
Speaker 1: it from a larger picture, I do notice that a
Speaker 1: lot of feminist scholars, for good or bad, this is
Speaker 1: an observation I see is an observation is that there
Speaker 1: tends to be various beliefs that are correlated within them,
Speaker 1: one being that that sex is the gender is very,
Speaker 1: very fluid and in sort of extremely non binary way.
Speaker 1: But also they often talk a lot about nature versus
Speaker 1: nurture debate and try to downplay the role of genes
Speaker 1: in anything as well. You very rarely see like a
Speaker 1: feminist scholar who's like a behavioral geneticist but also believes
Speaker 1: gender is fluid. I'm just trying to think of, like
Speaker 1: what would be the sort of the juxtaposition that'd be
Speaker 1: odd to find among a feminist scholar, But you see
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. There tends to be an overarching disdain
Speaker 1: for the idea that we can have unchangeable biology at all.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, first of all, why, like why is
Speaker 1: the G word so scary genes? When you know, as
Speaker 1: Steven Pinker has often made the point which I really like,
Speaker 1: would we want to live in a world where we
Speaker 1: were one hundred percent determined by our environment? That would
Speaker 1: sound that sounds horrible, Like isn't there something good to
Speaker 1: be unchanging within you? I would say there is something good? Right?
Speaker 1: Maybe I should just pause there and say, well, can
Speaker 1: you all kind of defend for me the value of biology?
Speaker 1: It seems almost silly to say, can you defend the
Speaker 1: value of biology? But doctor debress so every time that
Speaker 1: she posts and I see you, doctor Debressau, But every
Speaker 1: time you post on Twitter, sex is binary, unchanging and immutable. You.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a shit storm that is created every
Speaker 1: time you say, and you know a shit storm is
Speaker 1: going to happen. So I also want to know, like
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that psychologically? Like you know
Speaker 1: it's coming. It's not like you're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm so shocked that that caused a shit storm, but
Speaker 1: yet you still feel a reason to defend that view.
Speaker 1: So could you maybe let's start with you. Can you
Speaker 1: just talk about when every time you kind of talk
Speaker 1: about that idea, why do you believe that it's important
Speaker 1: to say that? Yeah, First of all, I want to
Speaker 1: say I love Stefinker. Secondly, why I think it's important
Speaker 1: to talk about biology is that it's reality, and I
Speaker 1: don't think we should be afraid of talking about the truth,
Speaker 1: even if it upsets people or if it is politically inconvenient.
Speaker 1: And to your point about why feminist scholars tend not
Speaker 1: to want to defend biology or acknowledge it and tend
Speaker 1: to be more focused on social constructionist ideas or the
Speaker 1: value of society and culture and sexism or whatever else.
Speaker 1: I think because for many of them, or not most
Speaker 1: of them, their training is in a discipline that has
Speaker 1: no basis in science. And for some of these individuals,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they go through their entire academic training without
Speaker 1: ever taking a class in biology or evolutionary psychology, so
Speaker 1: they don't know anything about these disciplines. All they hear
Speaker 1: about them is that they are sexists and that they're
Speaker 1: misogynistic and that there's no value to them. So I
Speaker 1: think that combined that ignorance, whether it's will wilful or otherwise,
Speaker 1: leads them to feel morally just in the way that
Speaker 1: they present biological research and also in their ignorance. And
Speaker 1: I would say for scholars who are aware of the
Speaker 1: scientific research, like I've said this all the time, if
Speaker 1: you actually read studies about pre natal testosterone and the
Speaker 1: effects on the fetus in the womb in terms of
Speaker 1: the masculinization or otherwise or lack of masculinization, you cannot
Speaker 1: claim that prenatal testosterone is a myth or that it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, or that there are no sex differences in
Speaker 1: the brain. I don't think acknowledging sex differences, biologically based
Speaker 1: sex differences justify sexism. I say all the time, just
Speaker 1: because men and women are on average different, that doesn't
Speaker 1: say anything about individual people, not justify sexism against women.
Speaker 1: And if anything, I think it's sexist to say women
Speaker 1: have to be the same as men in order for
Speaker 1: us to be worthy of equal treatment. That's why I
Speaker 1: speak out about it. I think I think it's such
Speaker 1: a shame that in academia I mean, I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to hear more about doctor Dela Gadchi's experience because I've
Speaker 1: left academia. I imagine it's probably very difficult to do
Speaker 1: with type of work if you do want to speak
Speaker 1: to any sex differences at all. And then because people
Speaker 1: think immediately you're suspect if you're interested, like why would
Speaker 1: you want to say that you must be a sexist person.
Speaker 1: And then if you actually show that these sex differences exist,
Speaker 1: they have to be socially constructed. If they're not, then
Speaker 1: you are a sexist. So yeah, And I'm just honestly
Speaker 1: used to the criticism at this point because when people
Speaker 1: get upset about something, it's always internalized misogyny or you
Speaker 1: are what else is there? I mean, transphobic is like
Speaker 1: I get called transphobic, but you know, they can't actually
Speaker 1: come back with any relevant criticism because I'm totally open
Speaker 1: to that, totally open to that. But it's it's always
Speaker 1: about you know, you hate women, you're xyz. And if anything,
Speaker 1: I think it's actually more harmful to women and patronizing
Speaker 1: to say that we are not in control of our
Speaker 1: own decisions and that the only reason we make the
Speaker 1: decisions we do say with the sex ratio in STEM
Speaker 1: disciplines science, math, and technology engineering, that that's due to
Speaker 1: sexism and women being criticized unfairly by men and not
Speaker 1: wanting to be in these situations and make them uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, just make women sound like we're you know, weak,
Speaker 1: empathetic instead of saying, you know what, yeah, sometimes you
Speaker 1: experience sexism, not always, but if you're really interested and
Speaker 1: you're passionate, like I have a PhD in neuroscience, and
Speaker 1: I just think it's when I listen to these scholars speak,
Speaker 1: they treat women like and they're terrifying girls into not
Speaker 1: going into these disciplines also, but they treat women like
Speaker 1: we're so weak and that we're not capable of making
Speaker 1: our own decisions and that we're completely dependent on men's
Speaker 1: approval or men's support in order for us to be successful.
Speaker 1: I see book nodding. I just love de Bro. She's
Speaker 1: such a badass love because you're so straight on. It's
Speaker 1: just so beautiful to hear the common sense that comes
Speaker 1: out of your mouth, and that's why she gets shut down,
Speaker 1: you know, Buck, I saw a tweet that you wrote
Speaker 1: which just dovetails very much with what doctor Soder said,
Speaker 1: you wrote, it is transphobic to deny biology. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a fascinating tweet. Could you unpack that for
Speaker 1: us a little bit, because you don't often it's not
Speaker 1: something a sentence you often hear. Right, well not, and
Speaker 1: doctor Debttes stated you have to be really solid in
Speaker 1: your beliefs and not be sort of scared of the
Speaker 1: gas lighting and the pile on because you believe in reality.
Speaker 1: And so for me, it's really about my space, right.
Speaker 1: I'm not here to speak for the transgender community. I
Speaker 1: never have and I never will. I'm here to speak
Speaker 1: for what this did for me as a person and
Speaker 1: how it really was so instrumental. I mean being sitting
Speaker 1: here today and why I became a success and so
Speaker 1: many avenues of my life was one hundred percent transitioning
Speaker 1: to live as a male. Now that being said, if
Speaker 1: I did not acknowledge my biology, I would not be trans.
Speaker 1: The whole reason you are trans is because of biology.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so simple, yet it's being so twisted.
Speaker 1: Words are being twisted, ideas of what biology are being twisted.
Speaker 1: All of those things to me feel like gaslighting, Like
Speaker 1: that's not real. What are you talking about and even
Speaker 1: to me, when Debra, doctor Devra speaks, it feels like
Speaker 1: she's being gas lit constantly about her own way you know,
Speaker 1: of actual, real, real scientific facts. So when I talk
Speaker 1: about biology, I talk about it because it's important to me,
Speaker 1: number one, because of health reasons. So if my biology
Speaker 1: was not attached to me, right, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you this from many examples, I can show you many
Speaker 1: examples of why my biology was so important because you know,
Speaker 1: I am being a biological female. I have a you know,
Speaker 1: female body. I have you know, reproductive system, which is
Speaker 1: what a female has, and by injecting testosterone into the
Speaker 1: female body, it disrupted so many health problems down in
Speaker 1: that space of the reproductive system that if I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it or the doctor didn't know about it,
Speaker 1: how are they going to say they saved my life
Speaker 1: because they knew that I was a biological female. And
Speaker 1: this is one of the biggest arguments I have for
Speaker 1: this nonsense that's coming out of the transgender sort of.
Speaker 1: I call it an ideology because trans is not an
Speaker 1: identity choice. Trans is a medical condition. And that's where
Speaker 1: I run, you know, butt heads with the community, because
Speaker 1: I believe this is a mental disorder, and it does
Speaker 1: have everything to do with biology. And if we deny
Speaker 1: our biology, not only are we denying our transseness, but
Speaker 1: we're also denying our own health and how we move
Speaker 1: forward in the world when we're injecting cross sex hormones
Speaker 1: that don't belong. This testosom does not belong naturally in
Speaker 1: my body, because if it did, why am I injecting it? So,
Speaker 1: you know, that's why I say things like that. It
Speaker 1: pushes against this new narrative that says you don't you know,
Speaker 1: biology doesn't matter. It's a social construct. Know, gender is
Speaker 1: all of these things that actually go completely against everything
Speaker 1: I am and have been and why I transitioned. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for presenting your perspective. Both you Buck and you
Speaker 1: doctor So have both said things that they're probably there
Speaker 1: are some listeners their head has exploded, you know, saying
Speaker 1: the combination of both of you saying trans is the
Speaker 1: mental disorder and it's a social contagion, which Doctor So
Speaker 1: said would be enough for someone to completely explode. So
Speaker 1: let me play Devil's advocate then, because I know there's
Speaker 1: someone you know, I think it's good to steal man things, right,
Speaker 1: So let me say that, as a psychologist who recognizes biology,
Speaker 1: I would argue that our psychology is the result of
Speaker 1: our biology too. It's like, I think it's silly how
Speaker 1: we have separated our body from our minds in terms
Speaker 1: of one is biology and one is complete social construction.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a big advocate of the neurodiversity movement,
Speaker 1: and no one would say, like autism spectrum way of
Speaker 1: thinking is completely a social construction, right. It's oid with
Speaker 1: very as doctor del Gucci has spent his career studying
Speaker 1: various biological markers interacting with society. So couldn't one make
Speaker 1: the case that there is something real, a transgender, real
Speaker 1: trans sort of psychology where your psychology feels so at
Speaker 1: odds with your with your physical characterist, I'm not distinguishing
Speaker 1: biology from psychology. I'm saying it's all psych biology. It's
Speaker 1: all biology to a certain degree, but distinguishing the mismatch
Speaker 1: between your psychology and your biology that is real and
Speaker 1: that we should you know, a compassionate, just society is
Speaker 1: one that recognizes that and helps people and maybe even
Speaker 1: normalizes in a way that This is maybe where Trumpa
Speaker 1: really disagrees because I'm not there yet, where I say
Speaker 1: every instance of that mismatch with psychology as a mental disorder,
Speaker 1: I'm not there yet. I'm not making I personally wouldn't
Speaker 1: make that argument. I think we have to kind of
Speaker 1: look at it a case by case basis in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So just playing Devil's advocate, would you
Speaker 1: when you say there's there's a space for helping people
Speaker 1: with that mismatch, of helping them change their psychology and
Speaker 1: ways that make them feel most self actualized, like they're
Speaker 1: living their best life, Like, what's wrong with that? Nothing
Speaker 1: is wrong with that. What I sort of advocate for
Speaker 1: is maybe there's something else going on there. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: not transness. Maybe it's a different kind of thing that's happening,
Speaker 1: maybe a body just you know, dysphoria. Maybe maybe things
Speaker 1: are happening. We are not addressing other mental health issues.
Speaker 1: We are just saying, oh, well, you just feel trans,
Speaker 1: you're trans. That is not fair. That is not fair
Speaker 1: not only to trans people, but to that person because
Speaker 1: we've taken mental health out of the equation. And when
Speaker 1: you take mental health and you just say anyone who
Speaker 1: says they're trans, you now have what we have today,
Speaker 1: which part of my language a shit show, and we
Speaker 1: have a huge amount. Whether or not anyone out there
Speaker 1: tries to push against me on this, this is a fact.
Speaker 1: We have a large amount of de transitioners, and that's
Speaker 1: happening because these trend d transitions were not addressed in
Speaker 1: their mental health. And they'll even tell you that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: mental health is definitely a part of what's happening here.
Speaker 1: But mental health is a huge spectrum. It's not just X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. And just because you're autistic does not
Speaker 1: make you trans. Now that's a narrative. You're autistic, you're
Speaker 1: trans I think that's unfair to autistic people as well.
Speaker 1: So that's why I think, like really understanding diagnosis and
Speaker 1: understanding mental health care and how important it is seeing
Speaker 1: what's going on with this kid, what's happening here. Social contagion.
Speaker 1: I believe in social contagion. I see it happening every day.
Speaker 1: It's easy to lure a kid into something. We all
Speaker 1: want to belong to something. The goal of treatment should
Speaker 1: be about helping someone feel better, not to simply just
Speaker 1: give them treatment for the sake of it or because
Speaker 1: it's going to get you social accolades, and like buck
Speaker 1: is saying, there's so many transitioners who there, I don't
Speaker 1: doubt that they were struggling legitimately with something that was
Speaker 1: very distressing, emotionally difficult the way that I talk about this,
Speaker 1: and I was so worried for a long time that
Speaker 1: the things I was saying about this newer wave of
Speaker 1: young people who are transitioning very quickly, that I was wrong.
Speaker 1: And when I listened to their stories, I would say,
Speaker 1: especially for those born female, almost every single one of
Speaker 1: them seem to have a history of sexual trauma that
Speaker 1: has not been addressed. And so when you mask over
Speaker 1: that with these other solutions, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that trauma is still going to be there, and that
Speaker 1: solution is not going to actually help them feel better.
Speaker 1: So when they do come out on the other side
Speaker 1: living as a man or a third gender, or however
Speaker 1: they identify, they are not in a third gender. I
Speaker 1: say in quotations, I don't believe there's such a thing
Speaker 1: as a third gender, but they're going to still be
Speaker 1: dealing with that trauma, and so I think it really
Speaker 1: is doing a disservice. It has to be something that
Speaker 1: you know, for someone like as I mentioned, Obviously he's thriving,
Speaker 1: he's much happier, and it's helped him. But I think
Speaker 1: that is part of maybe Buck, you can talk to
Speaker 1: this because I know we've talked about this before. It's
Speaker 1: had to do with an appropriate and effective assessment process
Speaker 1: and time and asking questions and ruling things out, as
Speaker 1: opposed to simply saying whatever you want, we're going to
Speaker 1: give it to you. This is what I'm hearing. I'm
Speaker 1: going to reflect the mirror back. Let me know if
Speaker 1: the summary statement I just wrote down it really agrees
Speaker 1: with both of reviews. It seems like you're saying transactivism
Speaker 1: has prevented us from helping people who need help, perhaps
Speaker 1: in a different way than the activists say they need help.
Speaker 1: I will say that. That's when when I joined this today,
Speaker 1: I said I'm not an activist because I believe that
Speaker 1: even that word has been hijacked on some level. Activism
Speaker 1: helps create positive change on some level, and you know,
Speaker 1: what they're doing to me is hijacking a whole movement
Speaker 1: in order for themselves. The trans community has become me,
Speaker 1: me me. If you listen to it, like just take
Speaker 1: pieces out of it, you'll see it's me me, me,
Speaker 1: that's not where I come from. Community is about us
Speaker 1: and about all of us, and it's a very diverse community.
Speaker 1: We aren't all the same. We don't transition a lot
Speaker 1: for the same reason. But that being said, mental health
Speaker 1: care has been actually removed from transition. You have affirmation
Speaker 1: therapy that is not therapy, that is just saying, okay, kiddo,
Speaker 1: you said you're trans right on here you go. How
Speaker 1: is that therapy? That's just telling a kid they're right,
Speaker 1: And that's dangerous and we're seeing the dangers of that
Speaker 1: really coming back on us now. And my community is
Speaker 1: actually really upsetting because they're not speaking up about it.
Speaker 1: They all know. Don't think that people don't know in
Speaker 1: this community, they know, damn right. I'm one of the
Speaker 1: only besides like Blair White and a couple of other
Speaker 1: of us. We're like the only ones who are like, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute here, And that gets us into a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble. And that scares me. The fact that
Speaker 1: people in my own community cannot stand up against what
Speaker 1: we see because they all see it. And here we
Speaker 1: sit today arguing if biology is real. I just am
Speaker 1: in shock about it and upset by it. Love Blair
Speaker 1: white and also want to say I think and I'm
Speaker 1: not transgender, so I never want to seem like I'm
Speaker 1: speaking for the community. But I really worry about what
Speaker 1: the activism is doing to the community because I think
Speaker 1: most average people who are not paying attention, they see
Speaker 1: some of the crazy things that activists are asking for,
Speaker 1: and they actually think that represents transgender people. And I
Speaker 1: understand why people in the community probably wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: stick their net because I see the way that some
Speaker 1: like Bucket treated. Buckets called transphobic all the time, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely ridiculous. But I do wonder now that we
Speaker 1: have more transitions coming out now we see what's happening
Speaker 1: and say women's sports, it's really putting people off of
Speaker 1: wanting to advocate for trans rights, which I think we
Speaker 1: should care about. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you to both of you for speaking your truth there.
Speaker 1: And let me let me put it this way, buck
Speaker 1: do you, if you were forced, you know, give give
Speaker 1: a bone to the transgender activists, like give them something
Speaker 1: that they're doing right, you know, so it's not all negative.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there are legitimate I guess this
Speaker 1: is my direct question for you do you acknowledge there
Speaker 1: are legitimate cases within the transgender community that are not
Speaker 1: reduced to mental illness or narcissism, but where changing pronouns
Speaker 1: and the various other psychological and maybe even physical alter
Speaker 1: are very helpful to those individuals. Well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say yeah, I would say so, but I would say
Speaker 1: that that's not like me, And that's why we need
Speaker 1: to distinguish. There's differences within the transk and why I
Speaker 1: call myself a transsexual today. Trans is a self eydd
Speaker 1: space in anyway. And if that helps you and it
Speaker 1: makes you feel like you're solid in your space and
Speaker 1: you're an adult making that choice, I have nothing to
Speaker 1: say about that at all, because that's an adult making
Speaker 1: the choice. But the problem for me is that now
Speaker 1: we're pushing it this sort of space onto young people
Speaker 1: who aren't in a position to make those life changing choices.
Speaker 1: And so I always distinguish the difference between adults doing
Speaker 1: this and the activism around that, which is I would
Speaker 1: consider that like sort of more non binary, because that's
Speaker 1: now under the trans label, and a lot more people
Speaker 1: are taking on non binary than trans at this point,
Speaker 1: yet they're equating both of them as the same. And
Speaker 1: but that's all again, if it makes you feel better,
Speaker 1: if you're moving through the world better. And I really
Speaker 1: feel like it's part of this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: it's a community. Everyone wants to be part of a community.
Speaker 1: So it feels like these people are creating this sort
Speaker 1: of a community that is not what I am. And
Speaker 1: that's why I keep reiterating it is so important to
Speaker 1: understand the difference between somebody who acknowledges this as a
Speaker 1: mental disorder, which I do, and people who don't acknowledge
Speaker 1: it as a mental disorder. But consider if you think
Speaker 1: your trands, your trans you have to see everyone needs
Speaker 1: to see the difference of That's what the activism today
Speaker 1: is about. It's about self iding, it's about creating a
Speaker 1: non binary space. It's like trying to get rid of biology,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't work for me. It's so fascinating. You
Speaker 1: have two sides here, one side and both sides are
Speaker 1: making are arguing the same thing in a way. They
Speaker 1: both think their existence is being wiped out. And so
Speaker 1: how do you as me, mister un peacekeepers. Hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, I tried so hard. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone sold my tweet where I said, hey, anyone, I
Speaker 1: would love to have a respectful conversation between a transgender
Speaker 1: individual and a turm like who would speak to each other?
Speaker 1: And no one wanted to speak to each other, And
Speaker 1: every single person from either side they all said, why
Speaker 1: would I talk to someone who denies my existence? But
Speaker 1: they're all that's what they're both saying. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anyone from the transnitor community who felt comfortable to be
Speaker 1: part of this, which is why I made it a
Speaker 1: four part series, just so everyone's voice could be heard separately.
Speaker 1: But I would ideally like to live in a world
Speaker 1: where we can all I guess, stop the victimhood mentality
Speaker 1: for one second. Can I speak to that, my friend? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I put myself in positions to speak to the opponents,
Speaker 1: you know that I get. I get asked to be
Speaker 1: on all kinds of places where I don't necessarily align
Speaker 1: with the way they think they hate me. I go
Speaker 1: on a lot of shows where people actually hate me.
Speaker 1: They don't think I'm existence, they don't. But I have
Speaker 1: to do that because I feel like I'm being wiped
Speaker 1: out from the trans community, and so because people hate
Speaker 1: us more. I transitioned thirty years ago. I have never
Speaker 1: felt more hated in my thirty years of transition. Then
Speaker 1: I do that should say something to everybody out there,
Speaker 1: not only from my own community, but from the world.
Speaker 1: So that being said, the fact that says everything that
Speaker 1: you put that out there, can someone step up to
Speaker 1: the plate and have the conversation If they believed in
Speaker 1: what they were saying, they would step up to the plate.
Speaker 1: I believe in what I'm saying. I live it every day.
Speaker 1: I will step up to the plate to show you
Speaker 1: people like me exist, we are real. We need this.
Speaker 1: I will die if I don't have it. And that's
Speaker 1: where I am butting heads with this community because they
Speaker 1: don't see this as a for me, for a person
Speaker 1: like me. They only see it about them, And that
Speaker 1: is where I have this sort of schism with them
Speaker 1: and this thing, because they're not willing to step up
Speaker 1: and have the conversation where I am. I was going
Speaker 1: to say, it's also because I think they are complete.
Speaker 1: They have the approval of society right now, so why
Speaker 1: would they engage with someone like me because they only
Speaker 1: have something to lose. Maybe they on some level know
Speaker 1: that their perspective is not going to hold against my argument,
Speaker 1: But I think also because if they accept the invitation,
Speaker 1: they only have something to potentially lose by being associated
Speaker 1: with me or being willing to engage with me. Do
Speaker 1: you see a world, like I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: what a utopia to look like. Do you see a
Speaker 1: world where no one feels like their existence is being
Speaker 1: eradicated by another group? Like? Can we can? Can we
Speaker 1: have transsexuals and transgenders both coexist as real? Like where
Speaker 1: we acknowed you're real? You're like Oprah, You're real. You're real,
Speaker 1: You're real, You're real, You're all real? Like what if
Speaker 1: I got an Oprah mindset about this? Like? Can we
Speaker 1: live in? Is that even possible? It just feels like
Speaker 1: every time I try to unite, or every time I
Speaker 1: try to have people listen to each other's perspectives, I'm
Speaker 1: the enemy And I'm like, why, why, why do we
Speaker 1: have to live in that world? You can't be in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah, you can't be, like you can't these days,
Speaker 1: these days it seems like you can't. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: I think my prediction is that of course there will
Speaker 1: always be And I don't even like to use the
Speaker 1: word transsexual. I respect Buck's decision because obviously that's how
Speaker 1: you identify and that's your life. But for people who
Speaker 1: medically transition, I think there will always be people medically transition.
Speaker 1: I think this newer trend, this trendiness of the non binary,
Speaker 1: the third gender, and the gender fluid, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: think that is right now a thing that has to
Speaker 1: do with youth, that has to do with trying to
Speaker 1: get cloud and attention and fit in. And once that
Speaker 1: movement eventually dies out, people are going to move on
Speaker 1: to the next thing. I think that will be hopefully
Speaker 1: within the next decade gone and we've forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: We'll hopefully not forgot about it, because I think there
Speaker 1: will be children who be dealing with the effects of
Speaker 1: making potentially the wrong decision for themselves, which I think
Speaker 1: is devastating. But for the people who are jumping onto
Speaker 1: this as a way to promote their brand or to
Speaker 1: get ahead in their career or put their pronouns everywhere
Speaker 1: because that's the socially acceptable thing to do, We're going
Speaker 1: to move on to something else culturally, and I'm just
Speaker 1: really worried about what the afterfects are going to be
Speaker 1: because to me, this is not just about trendiness. These
Speaker 1: are people's lives who are being affected. I can try
Speaker 1: to bring it to the context bit because and in
Speaker 1: a way, I'm going back to your question Scott about
Speaker 1: you know, offering a defense of why why do you
Speaker 1: want to you know, take biology seriously? And here's one
Speaker 1: thing that I kept thinking while listening to devn back
Speaker 1: is you know, there's, of course, again there's parts of
Speaker 1: what is right now the same transgender movement that have
Speaker 1: very different motivations and very different you know, social correlates.
Speaker 1: Part of that might actually die down if the interest
Speaker 1: kind of dies down. But there's also I think something
Speaker 1: that comes through is we have lost nu once in
Speaker 1: our thinking about sex and males and females. So you
Speaker 1: actually end up with a you know, after whatever fifty
Speaker 1: years of kind of trying to detach our understanding of
Speaker 1: psychology from the understanding of biology, you really end up
Speaker 1: with not with a model of males, you know, men
Speaker 1: and women that's more rich and more kind of you
Speaker 1: nu once, And but it seems to me you end
Speaker 1: up with something that's a bit more impoverished and very rigid.
Speaker 1: And so you end up with this thing where every
Speaker 1: kind of you know, we can't think about variation anymore.
Speaker 1: It's like you you have to. You know, you have
Speaker 1: these very rigid categories, and if you don't think you
Speaker 1: fit all the you know, check all the boxes, you
Speaker 1: must be kind of out of the categories. You're not
Speaker 1: you know, neither males or females. There's all there's whole
Speaker 1: thing about you know, non binary, gender queer, whatever I
Speaker 1: think it betrays at a cultural level and even an
Speaker 1: academic level, because there's a strong contribution from academia is
Speaker 1: the kind of loss of ability to think seriously and
Speaker 1: in really nuanced ways about variation within the sexes. And
Speaker 1: my one of my defenses of biology is that there's
Speaker 1: a bus understanding, which is because you know, the biological
Speaker 1: understanding of sex starts from something that is functionally binary, right,
Speaker 1: you know, two roles and reproduction, two kinds of gamuts.
Speaker 1: So you have this kind of very strong kind of
Speaker 1: conceptual binary at at the root of that. The misconception
Speaker 1: is that this idea of a strong binary you know,
Speaker 1: gets carried out to all the levels including behavior and
Speaker 1: psychology and development and so forth. But actually, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you really understand the biology of sex,
Speaker 1: there's also pressures in there that favor variation and divergence
Speaker 1: and you know, and differentiation within males and within females.
Speaker 1: You know, we probably not going to talk about sexual selection,
Speaker 1: but sexual selection is a powerful mechanism in biological evolution,
Speaker 1: and one of the things it does many times is
Speaker 1: to produce divergence between the average say traits in inmas
Speaker 1: and females. But one of the other things does it
Speaker 1: can actually create variation within a sex for a bunch
Speaker 1: of different reasons. And so this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: thinking biologically about sex puts everything into a very rigid
Speaker 1: books where there's no variation and all the variation and
Speaker 1: interest and differences come from the culture to see culture
Speaker 1: or learning or whatever. I think that's a fundamental misconception,
Speaker 1: if you know, that's one of the most powerful defenses
Speaker 1: of biology. Actually taking biology seriously and not as the
Speaker 1: cartoon version of it helps you not just thinking about
Speaker 1: sex in the the in a more kind of categorical terms,
Speaker 1: but actually helps you deal with variation in a way
Speaker 1: that's more nuanced, more interesting, and I think more also
Speaker 1: more personally, you know, meaningful for a lot of people
Speaker 1: than a purely social constructionist perspective on that. There was
Speaker 1: some mentions of autism here and there, right, And again,
Speaker 1: I that's one of the topics I've published a little
Speaker 1: bit on. I've been trying to take an evolutionary perspective
Speaker 1: to autistic traits, so the autism spectrum. And again, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have the right explanation, right, but
Speaker 1: I have one one model of that, and the model
Speaker 1: is basically that what you have is if you look
Speaker 1: at the entire phenotype, not just the cognitive traits that
Speaker 1: everyone focuses on, but also let's call the motivational background.
Speaker 1: So the you say, sexuality of people on the spectrum
Speaker 1: or there, how they behave and how they they you know,
Speaker 1: they function in, say romantic relationships or friendships or competitive
Speaker 1: interactions and so on and so forth. UH, and you
Speaker 1: try to explain this kind of together. I think my
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that this could be a kind of mild
Speaker 1: male biased UH strategy in a biological sense that actually
Speaker 1: fits into the fact in ours we have a lot
Speaker 1: of parental investment also from others, so you have male
Speaker 1: provisioning instead of just female provisioning, and we have a
Speaker 1: variety of ways in which we can do that. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that there's been in our species selection
Speaker 1: for kind of you know, long term relationships, so people
Speaker 1: who kind of fit well into long term relationships and
Speaker 1: end up providing and investing in their kids, but doing
Speaker 1: so indirectly by basically doing other stuff and providing, you know,
Speaker 1: because of the things that do outside so developing say
Speaker 1: let's let's call them technical, cultural skills and whatever, which
Speaker 1: is what the you know, kind of the autistic might
Speaker 1: kind of excels at like systemizing and learning about stuff
Speaker 1: and becoming technically proficient in something. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a very short cartoon of it. But the idea
Speaker 1: is from these hypotheses, you predict that people on the spectrum,
Speaker 1: and again it's not there's also it changes when you're
Speaker 1: talking about autists that's more severe because I think it's
Speaker 1: really not the same thing as the milder forms. Is
Speaker 1: just there's evidence for that. But if you talk about
Speaker 1: see the mild version from let's say normal variation in
Speaker 1: artistic traits to people, we can mild diagnose this. What
Speaker 1: you expect to see is a bit of a mosaic
Speaker 1: of traits. So what you expect to see from this
Speaker 1: perspective is a profile that from the cognitive point of view, is,
Speaker 1: as bear on Coin would say, like an extreme mail brain.
Speaker 1: So there's a shift toward a more male typical version
Speaker 1: of things like you know, visual b it is and
Speaker 1: some some cognitive skills and so on. But from a
Speaker 1: motivational perspective, when you're thinking about you know, air bonding
Speaker 1: and sexuality and so for what you see is actually
Speaker 1: shift in the other direction. And that again from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of this hypotheses is no is no accident. You
Speaker 1: actually have a potentially selection for combinations of trade that
Speaker 1: all go in the same direction of being more female
Speaker 1: typical or male typical, and that could arise as a
Speaker 1: result of biological processes. That's an example I would say
Speaker 1: of how biology have to think about things in a
Speaker 1: way that's not the how other people, you know think, Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you're you're absolutely right. And this is what is confusing
Speaker 1: me right now, because I've gone my whole life just
Speaker 1: taking for granted that I'm a man like for me,
Speaker 1: as I said to a trans individual who was on
Speaker 1: my show, I said, can you tell me what it's
Speaker 1: like to be trans? Because I don't know, like I've
Speaker 1: always just I'm like, I'm a man, like I don't
Speaker 1: think about it, right Like, but here's the thing, Like
Speaker 1: I'm now going to all confused because if it's technically
Speaker 1: true that, I mean, we could say are not just
Speaker 1: our psychology is a mosaic, but our physical is a
Speaker 1: moasaic too. I mean, I got like so many dude
Speaker 1: physical characteristics, right Like I got chest hair popping out
Speaker 1: of my shirt right now. But I'm sure if you
Speaker 1: you looked at my eyebrow you'd be like, oh, the
Speaker 1: eyebrow was statistically more like the average female than you.
Speaker 1: I bet if you started like picking apart all the
Speaker 1: pieces of me, you would say, that's female and average.
Speaker 1: That's male and average. And the same thing with my psychology,
Speaker 1: Like there are various aspects of my psychology that are
Speaker 1: so stereotypically dude, right Like I have agents, you know,
Speaker 1: let's go, let's do it. But I also have compassion,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes stereotypically female. So it confuses me because
Speaker 1: given that we're all kind of this misaic and both like,
Speaker 1: what is like, how do I know what anymore? What
Speaker 1: I am is what I'm saying, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: know I'm a man now because I'm getting all confused.
Speaker 1: Where I think these arguments kind of you should not
Speaker 1: take it is the extreme of saying, oh, we're all
Speaker 1: just kind of random mosaics, that's okay. I think to
Speaker 1: try to kind of dissolve the existentially having an existential
Speaker 1: quandary there a crisis. Yeah, I mean, but this is
Speaker 1: so fascinating. And this is where I for me, at
Speaker 1: least the conversation really gets kind of exciting. What I
Speaker 1: think is the is the benefit potentially of an evolutionary
Speaker 1: perspective on this is that you can think about function
Speaker 1: and again, at least I have some hunches about how
Speaker 1: some traits or combination of traits may actually be advantages
Speaker 1: or arises by product maybe of other things. But at
Speaker 1: least you know, find a functional grounding for that. And
Speaker 1: if you do that, I think you will find that
Speaker 1: some let's say, constellations for example, of personality are better
Speaker 1: understood as mosaics in a sense from a masculinati femininity perspective,
Speaker 1: So you actually have some an in other cases not
Speaker 1: so much. And at the same time, statistically and not
Speaker 1: just statistically but also functionally, you see that for most people,
Speaker 1: the traits tend to go together a certain way, so
Speaker 1: you don't want to you know. I think there's there's
Speaker 1: a balance again to be found between acknowledging that what
Speaker 1: are the big statistical trends, but not just looking at
Speaker 1: them only as statistical trends, also trying to understand what's
Speaker 1: the functional base. So there's there's meaning there, there's it's
Speaker 1: not random. There's a reason why some tracts tend to
Speaker 1: go together with others, and and also there might be
Speaker 1: sometimes biological reasons why for subsets of people it makes
Speaker 1: sense biologically to to not follow the big trend, let's say,
Speaker 1: but to end up in some less crowded corners, let's say,
Speaker 1: of of this space of masculine and feminine phenotypes. I
Speaker 1: would just not not want to apply this mosaic concept
Speaker 1: in a blanket way, as some people do as a
Speaker 1: way to argue that, well, because we're all mosaic. You know,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to be typically made or feeling? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're all mosaics, that's why sex doesn't exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that argument, So thank you for helping me.
Speaker 1: I was having there. Okay, there's an easy resolution there
Speaker 1: because you know, if biology actually worked as as some
Speaker 1: people think it does, like you know, or should like
Speaker 1: pushing just the sexes, all males and one to one side,
Speaker 1: all females to the other side, that would be a
Speaker 1: kind of a paradox. But that's not how biology was.
Speaker 1: It can create you know, variability and alternative strategies and
Speaker 1: you know, different ways of being males and females that
Speaker 1: are not just kind of socially meaningful but may have
Speaker 1: a biological ground in two And when you get to
Speaker 1: that point, you really have to party in carefully and
Speaker 1: you can just have you know, a simple catch all,
Speaker 1: you know, solution of your questions. If that's the case,
Speaker 1: then this is the million dollar question. Is there a
Speaker 1: room for psychology to be part of that? That's really
Speaker 1: the million dollar question because when I ask the chat
Speaker 1: ai what is a woman? Because I was curious what
Speaker 1: the artificial intelligence machine would answer it, their answer was
Speaker 1: that it's either by all an adult an adult woman
Speaker 1: based on their physical characteristics, or it's their gender identity.
Speaker 1: They're leaving a more expansive definition that It's like, you
Speaker 1: could it could be anything, right, That's my million dollar question.
Speaker 1: There is like, yes, if we are expanding our notion
Speaker 1: of what it means. Do we allow for gender identity
Speaker 1: to be one valid answer? That's really the question on
Speaker 1: the table here, isn't it? Yeah? Speaking to that, I
Speaker 1: am very concerned about how this definition, the definition of
Speaker 1: woman is being changed, because we're saying more and more
Speaker 1: it's not adult human female, it's not based on gammets,
Speaker 1: it's based on identity. And if you can change the
Speaker 1: definition of woman, what else can you change the definition
Speaker 1: of I think this is only the start of something
Speaker 1: else that's going to continue going on and is potentially
Speaker 1: very destructive to society. Give me a fear that you have,
Speaker 1: give me something that you think would be ridiculous, Like
Speaker 1: just even you probably probably aready think this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Something that you think even more ridiculous if if we
Speaker 1: went down that's that. I think it speaks to this
Speaker 1: larger theme of science denial, in that if we can
Speaker 1: change the definitions of things based on people petitioning for it,
Speaker 1: then why do we have to pay attention to evidence
Speaker 1: or data? Why can't we just make things up based
Speaker 1: on how we feel or what we think a good
Speaker 1: social outcome would be. And so with say I think sex,
Speaker 1: the denial of sex difference is the denial of biology
Speaker 1: with regard to gender dysphoria. These are I mean, we're
Speaker 1: seeing this happen in real time, and I don't think
Speaker 1: this is going to be the end of it. And
Speaker 1: also to piggyback on that, I wonder why it's only
Speaker 1: about women. Why are we not changing the definition of man?
Speaker 1: Why is every wonderful question? Yeah, I I do. I
Speaker 1: see it all the time. I put it out there.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why are we only sort of on some
Speaker 1: level pushing against the women's space and what it means
Speaker 1: to be a woman and anyway and so on. On
Speaker 1: the other side of that, I also think it's dangerous.
Speaker 1: And I can give you examples like when you self
Speaker 1: id as a woman and you're a man, And let's
Speaker 1: is the example of prison. And here in California, any
Speaker 1: man can identify as a woman now, which means that
Speaker 1: that we have to respect that. And now that man
Speaker 1: who identifies as a woman, and this why biology matters
Speaker 1: to me, now is being put in a woman's prison.
Speaker 1: And things are happening because biology happens, and this woman,
Speaker 1: who is a biological man is doing things in these
Speaker 1: prisons that are absurd and ridiculous, and these are why,
Speaker 1: this is again why biology matters. This man who's identifying
Speaker 1: as a woman is going into a space where a
Speaker 1: biological woman is. They think differently, they act differently, they
Speaker 1: are different, and rapes are happening, bad things are happening.
Speaker 1: So you know, for me, don't I'm not academic, so
Speaker 1: I'm not speaking in those terms or that way. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking in a more sort of my own observation as
Speaker 1: a transsexual personal experience as well. Yeah, my real life experiences.
Speaker 1: And I don't care if a man wants to identify
Speaker 1: as a woman, go right ahead, but respect women when
Speaker 1: you do. And they're not they're not I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: say it here. They're not there. They're doing this. That's
Speaker 1: why they're trying to dismantle what a woman is. Because
Speaker 1: when you dismantle what a woman is, anyone can be
Speaker 1: a woman. And that's just not true. And why we
Speaker 1: need to distinguish the difference between a trans woman and
Speaker 1: a woman. And I say it all the time, it's
Speaker 1: like they're not the same, they'll never be the same.
Speaker 1: And so also I want to talk about this idea
Speaker 1: of children know who they are. What happened to gender
Speaker 1: non conforming, what happened to getting better of gender stereotypes? Now,
Speaker 1: if a little kid says they're a boy, we're immediately
Speaker 1: medicalizing them, putting them on all these drugs and having surgeries.
Speaker 1: And anyone who goes against me on this, I will
Speaker 1: I will debate you to the end. They are giving
Speaker 1: children surgeries, and they are doing hormone blockers and cross
Speaker 1: sex hormones, and sixteen year old kids are kids fifteen.
Speaker 1: I know a thirteen year old who actually had top surgery.
Speaker 1: So these are the things that are really disturbing to
Speaker 1: me because we are pushing young people into this again
Speaker 1: binary space when all I hear on this message from
Speaker 1: this community is non binary. Binary isn't real? Yeah, why
Speaker 1: are you doing that to children? Then? Why are you
Speaker 1: immediately shoving them into a binary space because they said
Speaker 1: they're about boy or a girl. So what was told
Speaker 1: to me in another interview I did, which is part
Speaker 1: of the series from a trans non binary individual, They
Speaker 1: said that there's nothing automatic about it when a kid
Speaker 1: says they want surgery, that there's a that it's very
Speaker 1: very they take it very seriously. Not sure there's a
Speaker 1: very a whole team of people. I'm saying, I want
Speaker 1: their voice to just be heard for one second, because
Speaker 1: they because I can't bring you all together. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of people's voices to bring in. I'm trying
Speaker 1: their folks. I'm trying. Yeah, I apologize. I just get
Speaker 1: very upset about the lies. They're actual lies. I interview
Speaker 1: D transitioners, right, and oh, I don't think anyone's denying
Speaker 1: that they don't exist, but that it's it's it's not automatic.
Speaker 1: Surely it's not like a twelve year old walks into
Speaker 1: the doctor's station and says, please remove my breast and
Speaker 1: they immediately do it. Right. Oh well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you from my own experience dealing with D transitioners.
Speaker 1: Many of these people had literally less than an hour
Speaker 1: with a therapist or a clinician before they started to
Speaker 1: And these are fifteen year old kids. If you don't
Speaker 1: think fifteen year old is a kid, then the conversation
Speaker 1: is over. That's a fifteen year old is a kid.
Speaker 1: They can't make these choices. And so these people are
Speaker 1: also saying those things because they don't want you to
Speaker 1: know that they're getting fifteen minute twenty minute hour intakes
Speaker 1: and literally getting testosterone that same day. So that's just
Speaker 1: the start of the process. And then if they have
Speaker 1: the they can go to a There is an actual
Speaker 1: person in Florida who's doing top surgeries on minors and
Speaker 1: sometimes doesn't even ask for the parental consent. So I
Speaker 1: don't know what, Yes, I don't know what these people.
Speaker 1: That's what they're hiding from you. And you say, you know,
Speaker 1: I know this because I talk to the transition to
Speaker 1: the transitioners, you know, And I would kind of agree that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's lack of good comprehensive data, so
Speaker 1: you know that there's not like a source people can
Speaker 1: put And I think this is especially true of the
Speaker 1: States because of the messy, you know, headcare system. And
Speaker 1: I also suspect that the fact that in other countries
Speaker 1: people are doing more of a you know, are able
Speaker 1: to review what's going on with say transgender you know,
Speaker 1: medicine and so forth, like you know, whatever's with them
Speaker 1: or the UK, the healthcare system I think works in
Speaker 1: a way that makes it easier to keep track of
Speaker 1: what actually happening. And in the States it's kind of
Speaker 1: impossible to know because you have all these you know, entities,
Speaker 1: and so it's all very indirect and you see what
Speaker 1: I mean. So I'm not I'm not saying you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that from if you're an outsider and
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, okay, let me, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to make my mind out on this. What you
Speaker 1: hear essentially is you know, my world against your word.
Speaker 1: You know it's right, because I mean I have on
Speaker 1: the one hand, I have a bunch of people telling
Speaker 1: me that it's really easy to get, and then I have,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I have people telling me it's
Speaker 1: extremely extremely hard. And I try to look for data
Speaker 1: on this and actually that everyone disagrees with each other
Speaker 1: in the psychology, in the literature. I would say for
Speaker 1: people listening who might might not be convinced either way,
Speaker 1: might be trying to make up their mind on this,
Speaker 1: think about the people who are speaking out. What is
Speaker 1: their inventive or incentive to speak out? What do they
Speaker 1: have to gain or lose? So you have the people
Speaker 1: who say that, oh, this is a very long drawn
Speaker 1: out process, it's very cautious, no one's being rushed through.
Speaker 1: What do they have to lose by saying that I
Speaker 1: mean they're coming from a place of probably wanting to
Speaker 1: protect access to care for trans people, which I think
Speaker 1: should be something that we are supportive of appropriate care,
Speaker 1: not rushing people through. But then you see the d
Speaker 1: transitioners who get completely ripped apart for speaking up about
Speaker 1: their own personal experiences. What do they have to gain
Speaker 1: from speaking out about this? You know, you have a
Speaker 1: way the two and really ask yourself. I feel on
Speaker 1: one side it's they're protecting a narrative and the other
Speaker 1: side they're trying to speak truth to something that's really happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like equally. You know, you can have
Speaker 1: multiple people trying to come from a good place, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like you all are coming from a good
Speaker 1: place too, And they're coming from at least intentions right,
Speaker 1: Like you're trying to protect children. In their view, they're
Speaker 1: trying to protect children too, right. I think most of
Speaker 1: the voices on various sides, I don't think there's that
Speaker 1: many evil people. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but
Speaker 1: I think people are seeing it a different way. Now.
Speaker 1: Buck might disagree with that they're denying science though, when
Speaker 1: they're in their form of so called protecting children. They're
Speaker 1: denying the scientific research on desistance, They're denying the scientific
Speaker 1: research on rap it onside gender dysphoria, They're denying the
Speaker 1: studies on the transitioners showing that these young people are
Speaker 1: de transitioning very soon after making the decision to live
Speaker 1: as a third gender or as male. So I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I think we should be having a conversation.
Speaker 1: I do think most people, hopefully are coming from a
Speaker 1: good place, But when you are actively shutting down voices
Speaker 1: and silencing people, to me, that's not acceptable, especially when
Speaker 1: it is coming from a place of actually having numbers
Speaker 1: and data to support your argument. Yeah, look, I agree
Speaker 1: with that. I agree with that, And my friend Jesse
Speaker 1: Single has just beautifully I think, talked about the nuance
Speaker 1: of this in a way showing that there are really
Speaker 1: serious concerns here that should be taken seriously. That does
Speaker 1: pain me when I see activism shut down the truth.
Speaker 1: So i'm that I can take a stand on that. One.
Speaker 1: I only want people to have what I have. I
Speaker 1: would never not want somebody to transition who doesn't need it.
Speaker 1: What I want is a safety system. I went through
Speaker 1: a safety system, right, I went through a whole a
Speaker 1: whole thing to get where I am today. I never
Speaker 1: looked back ever, made the just choice as an adult
Speaker 1: have made my life so amazing. Transition is amazing for
Speaker 1: people who actually need it. We don't have a safety system.
Speaker 1: We have a sloppy medical system that I really feel
Speaker 1: is sort of using the trans community in a way
Speaker 1: that on some level experimentation, on some level money and
Speaker 1: what you said, Marco is it's so messy here. We
Speaker 1: don't have any We're not even like documenting what's going
Speaker 1: on here. On top of that, why do I get
Speaker 1: shut down from the trans community when I just want
Speaker 1: to have a conversation. All I want is for this
Speaker 1: to be safe. That's all I want. Yet I get
Speaker 1: constantly shut down. I get constantly called the transphobe turf
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a boot liquor. I mean, how dare
Speaker 1: people say that to me? I've been in this community
Speaker 1: for a long Yes, it's sick what they yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: meaning that meaning that, like I'm citing, I'm siding with
Speaker 1: the wrong people. If they really cared, they would hear
Speaker 1: all sides through the story and they would hear everything.
Speaker 1: Because I care, And it's not that I want to
Speaker 1: shut down medical. I want medical to be tightened up.
Speaker 1: I want us to understand what's going on here. I
Speaker 1: don't want kids to be rushed through a system when
Speaker 1: you rush. This isn't a rush. This should never be
Speaker 1: a rush. This is something slow, methodical, maybe even you
Speaker 1: can get the person out of it. You know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be trans I wish to God I
Speaker 1: was born a man, but I'm not, and I have
Speaker 1: to fix it. That being said, why are we not
Speaker 1: helping these people get out of that disorder? Instead were
Speaker 1: like literally shoving them back in the disorder. I thought
Speaker 1: mental health care was to help people sort of acclimate,
Speaker 1: do things, even possibly move them forward throughout to get
Speaker 1: them out of that situation. I don't see that. I
Speaker 1: see this desire to create this transgender space so big
Speaker 1: and so powerful. Yeah, not my area. So talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the issues with treatment, I just got to
Speaker 1: listen to you know, Tobac and maybe that she has
Speaker 1: more more ground in there. Let me let me kind
Speaker 1: of go back to a theme that I kind of
Speaker 1: find it interesting and I kind of let it go.
Speaker 1: This theme of identity. I would I would be fascinating.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear what people think about the
Speaker 1: way identities kind of used in relationship to you know, sex,
Speaker 1: gender and so forth, because it's it's meterial. Why so,
Speaker 1: first thing, I think there's a mixing up of of
Speaker 1: two issues, and one is people getting to you know,
Speaker 1: use this kind of self identification or this kind of
Speaker 1: identity or self self construction or self uh say, self certification.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have identity right in an instrumental way,
Speaker 1: so the idea that you can you know, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to go to women's prison and so your self efference.
Speaker 1: But that's very kind of instrumental and obviously kind of
Speaker 1: insincere and so on. But the other it blends into
Speaker 1: something that I find more interesting, which is how do
Speaker 1: people construct and develop their own identity with respect to
Speaker 1: sex and gender? Uh? In a in a space of
Speaker 1: discourse where if I'm right, you know, we are not
Speaker 1: we just you know, we're not helping people think clearly
Speaker 1: about these things, and things become incredibly confusing and incredibly
Speaker 1: kind of in a way, let's say, ungrounded from from reality,
Speaker 1: at least biological reality. But that doesn't end up, in
Speaker 1: my view, in a place where everyone is just you know,
Speaker 1: creative and free to determine their own very special personality.
Speaker 1: It actually ends up in a place where people seem
Speaker 1: to adopt this kind of very rigid and kind of
Speaker 1: constraining views of gender. And so it's kind it's a
Speaker 1: bit paradoxical. And what I think is that you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about so I talked about sex and gender,
Speaker 1: this this this connection that was introduced. It was really
Speaker 1: introduced at some point between the biology the body and
Speaker 1: sex from gender, which is kind of in the mind
Speaker 1: and in a sense in society, you know, come from
Speaker 1: from societies and reinforcement processes and so on. And then
Speaker 1: there's a third step, which is you're moving from this
Speaker 1: thing about gender, which is still measurable because you can
Speaker 1: you can study sex differences and study say sex differences
Speaker 1: in personality or behavior in certain conditions. You can do
Speaker 1: you know, run expert ements some people and see, you know,
Speaker 1: how amazing females react to different kinds of conditions. You
Speaker 1: can you can measure see cognitive abilities in man and women,
Speaker 1: so you can you're still an objective level when you're
Speaker 1: moving to gender identity. It's not just an extension of
Speaker 1: the same thing. You've really cross the boundary because do
Speaker 1: you see what I mean? So because you're in real
Speaker 1: now when in two ways, one is you're you're really
Speaker 1: entering a place where it seems to be all about subjective,
Speaker 1: the subjective perspective. You're kind of cut all ties to
Speaker 1: to even what's kind of measurable and objective and consensual.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I agree with that, but right, but get But
Speaker 1: that's what I think. It would be interesting to know
Speaker 1: how everyone is thinking about this. And then identity is
Speaker 1: so fascinating because it really is. You know, that's one
Speaker 1: place where I think everyone agrees or should agree if
Speaker 1: they're if they agree with me. Social construction really is
Speaker 1: a thing, right, It's a there's a big, really big
Speaker 1: chump in a way we develop our identities of construction.
Speaker 1: And I you know, one example, you know, let's say
Speaker 1: you drink, you stop drinking, you have problems with drinking,
Speaker 1: and then you stop drinking. What are you? Right? Are
Speaker 1: you a person who had a problem, you know, a
Speaker 1: drinking problem and now you recover or you know, so
Speaker 1: if you go to AA, that's not the way it
Speaker 1: works out. You actually you're strongly encouraged to adopt an
Speaker 1: identity of I'm an alcoholic, right, and I will always
Speaker 1: be blah blah blah. So and that I'm not criticizing
Speaker 1: it could be therapeutic in some in some context, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm not disputing that it can have a function.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because whether you end up being you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just this person who had a drinking problem, versus
Speaker 1: I'm an alcoholic and that's my identity. Part of my
Speaker 1: identity really depends on the kind of social you know,
Speaker 1: what's your social environment, kind of you know, directs your
Speaker 1: attention to the way you explain certain things to yourself
Speaker 1: and the kind of explanations and interpretations that are offered
Speaker 1: to you. And you know, porn addiction. I'm friends with
Speaker 1: some people who do research on Some people argue that's
Speaker 1: not a thing. By the way, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm on the fence on that one, right, But one
Speaker 1: of the let's say, one of the readings of the
Speaker 1: evidence is that porn addiction is not not really about
Speaker 1: the behavior of people. So it's not like you really
Speaker 1: have a disordered behavior, particularly with respect to other people.
Speaker 1: It really has to do with the way people come
Speaker 1: to interpret what they're doing in terms of their identity.
Speaker 1: You see what I mean, so like shame, like they
Speaker 1: feel shame for their activities, whereas the ones be a
Speaker 1: bunch of different things. But there's there's a construction process
Speaker 1: at the end of which you're saying, I'm a porn addict,
Speaker 1: or I'm I don't know, I'm I'm I'm a sinner,
Speaker 1: or maybe like an identity. I never want to adopt
Speaker 1: I'm a porn addict. Even if I am a porn addict,
Speaker 1: I don't want that to be my idity, right, I
Speaker 1: would say to that because I studied hypersexuality before and
Speaker 1: so called porn addiction, and I want to acknowledge that definitely,
Speaker 1: excessive porn use exists. Problematic porn use exists. There are
Speaker 1: some people who use porn to the point of it
Speaker 1: negatively affecting their day to day life, impairing their work,
Speaker 1: their relationships. That is real. But is it an addiction
Speaker 1: or is it a poor coping skill? And if you
Speaker 1: actually talk to these individuals, like I agree, I think
Speaker 1: there's an aspect for some people who use it as
Speaker 1: an identity, because when you say that to other people,
Speaker 1: they immediately understand what you're referring to to some extent,
Speaker 1: and I think it also shifts the responsibility to say
Speaker 1: this is a problem as opposed to these are potentially
Speaker 1: bad choices I am making in terms of my day
Speaker 1: to day life. So I don't think we should shame
Speaker 1: people who struggle with pornography. I think definitely like good treatment,
Speaker 1: same thing with anything. Good treatment is very important, and
Speaker 1: I think I think there should be less shame around
Speaker 1: talking about it. For people who do talk about their issues,
Speaker 1: applaud them. I think that must take a lot of courage,
Speaker 1: because obviously there is a lot of shame and stigma
Speaker 1: around talking about that. But again, it's about going to
Speaker 1: the evidence and doing it in a way that is
Speaker 1: not political. Is not about appealing to particular activist groups
Speaker 1: or whomever. It's about really trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: is this about, regardless of whom it might anger. And
Speaker 1: I just can I just go back to Buck's earlier
Speaker 1: point about prisons. As someone who has worked with sex offenders,
Speaker 1: many of the people who are advocating for self id policies,
Speaker 1: I imagine they have probably never sat down face to
Speaker 1: face with a sex offender, because if you have, you
Speaker 1: know that this is a completely different type of person
Speaker 1: that you're dealing with. You cannot take anything that they
Speaker 1: say at face value, and especially not when if they
Speaker 1: are convicted on a rape. You do not put them
Speaker 1: in a place where they potentially access to more victims.
Speaker 1: So it's just beyond me that this is happening. And
Speaker 1: in terms of why we are talking about the definition
Speaker 1: of woman as opposed to what is a man, I
Speaker 1: always just say to people, look at who was advocating
Speaker 1: for this, and that will tell you why you go.
Speaker 1: So you're making some really good points about cases where
Speaker 1: there's queer potential violations. But do you all agree that
Speaker 1: it's perfectly fine for children, children and adults to change
Speaker 1: their pronoun if they want to. Do you see any
Speaker 1: problem with like more innocuous things. It doesn't infringe on
Speaker 1: the rights of others, but it's validating their own inner experience.
Speaker 1: Well that I feel like there needs to be a
Speaker 1: little nuance attached to that because some of the stuff
Speaker 1: I'm sort of reading and hearing about is that if
Speaker 1: we don't sort of socially transition these kids, they'll grow
Speaker 1: out of their just for space. Right now, that being said,
Speaker 1: I was raised in that space of male. You know,
Speaker 1: I was a tomboy and my parents called me, you know,
Speaker 1: a book. I was, you know, that way, and on
Speaker 1: some level, that would be considered social transitioning, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm not I can't say that I'm one hundred percent sure. Again,
Speaker 1: I always go to the kids, you know. That's sort
Speaker 1: of my focus today and me being in these spaces
Speaker 1: and when adults want to do things, I just you
Speaker 1: know what, come on, you can do what you want.
Speaker 1: I really do feel like who cares. I don't care
Speaker 1: decides they want to be a different program. I don't
Speaker 1: care what they do. To be honest with you, I'm
Speaker 1: sad if they make mistakes medically, but I don't don't
Speaker 1: really care. I really so I'm wondering if we do
Speaker 1: give this sort of space to children. I live in California,
Speaker 1: and California is implementing many things in the school systems,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the younger school systems that I
Speaker 1: disagree with, And so I wonder if letting a kid
Speaker 1: who's ten or eleven sort of be a he or
Speaker 1: she is that social transitioning or is that just playing
Speaker 1: around with you know, their gender space? And you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm kind of stuck. I'll be honest, I am
Speaker 1: stuck on that with kids, because again, I just want
Speaker 1: kids to be free and do whatever they need to
Speaker 1: do and hopefully they'll just grow up and be okay
Speaker 1: with themselves. But you know, so to just like put
Speaker 1: these stamps of male and female on them when they
Speaker 1: might feel or be born the other way feel feels
Speaker 1: sort of we're pushing them into a space. But on
Speaker 1: a sense, I don't understand a ten year old taking
Speaker 1: on the non binary. There are ten year olds taking
Speaker 1: on non binary now, and I wonder to myself if
Speaker 1: that's dangerous. I start having a problem with this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff when you're what you're doing, more or less
Speaker 1: consciously is introducing false explanation, right this, Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: that What really bothers me when you say introducing you know,
Speaker 1: see you can change your products, can you. You know
Speaker 1: it's not the thing itself That bothers me is when
Speaker 1: by doing that, you're kind of introducing a whole way
Speaker 1: of thinking about what it means to be saying male
Speaker 1: and female and so forth, that is, uh is false.
Speaker 1: That's where I start having so to take the portant addiction,
Speaker 1: and again I'm not taking a stand on on the
Speaker 1: evidence because I'm not that familiar. But I think it's
Speaker 1: just an interesting example. And of course my intention was
Speaker 1: not to shame any one with you know, problems. We know,
Speaker 1: we know trying to shame people. It's but that's the
Speaker 1: that's a perfect example because in that case, we feel
Speaker 1: we can and should have a debate about whether people
Speaker 1: who say I'm a porn addict actually are porn addicts
Speaker 1: or not. You know, you're that's your identification with a
Speaker 1: certain thing. But we're we're debating. Doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: say that because it matters because if we say, you know,
Speaker 1: because we could say, okay, well what if some people
Speaker 1: want to say their porn addicts, you know, were good
Speaker 1: for them, but that you actually have a problem now
Speaker 1: because it implies, you know, if you if you validate that,
Speaker 1: it implies that pornography, say it works in a certain way,
Speaker 1: it can make you an addict, just like drugs can.
Speaker 1: You know, there are implications for our understanding of the
Speaker 1: world that might actually matter quite a bit. I have
Speaker 1: no battery, right, no battery? Do we feel let's say,
Speaker 1: do we feel we can't have the same kind of conversation.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, I understand, I get why kind of
Speaker 1: you're you're saying that, but does it make sense say
Speaker 1: that what you're interpreting as being non binary actually is
Speaker 1: being do you see what I mean? So I do
Speaker 1: asymmetry though, but the you know the other side would
Speaker 1: say that you're privileging physical characteristics over psychology as the truth.
Speaker 1: This is what they would say, you know that because uh,
Speaker 1: and that's what would probably makes their blood boil listening
Speaker 1: to what you just said, is that you're saying that
Speaker 1: like one is real and the other thing isn't real.
Speaker 1: But I think that the point you made is a
Speaker 1: really good one actually, And I gave you an example
Speaker 1: that everyone can relate to, and you you found it
Speaker 1: funny when I told you this, But I really think
Speaker 1: no one's given me a good challenge to this. And
Speaker 1: let's take the field of gifted education. Okay, imagine if
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, giftedness was purely based on self report,
Speaker 1: that there was no objective, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like suddenly, like any child can just show up to
Speaker 1: the school be like I'm a gifted student, like I
Speaker 1: deserve special resources and everything. Like we'd be like maybe
Speaker 1: like there is something that can be scientifically needs to
Speaker 1: be measured here that you are going to actually benefit
Speaker 1: from those resources in some way. But I would almost
Speaker 1: not be surprised if educators will be like, sure, if
Speaker 1: you identify as gifted, you are gifted education programs, Well
Speaker 1: you're right, because gift we're seeing a trend Gifted education
Speaker 1: programs are being cut because there's not a high representation
Speaker 1: of African Americans in gift education. So instead of believing
Speaker 1: in African Americans that they are capable of excellence at all,
Speaker 1: they're just cutting the programs. And I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the right message we need to be sending to African
Speaker 1: Americans children, is like anyway we need to believe in people.
Speaker 1: But so you see my analogy there, and no one's
Speaker 1: been able to really kind of, you know, challenge to
Speaker 1: challenge that in a way that I've been satisfied with
Speaker 1: because I don't think we do want to live in
Speaker 1: a world where everything is self report all all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, And I think that's a lot of what
Speaker 1: you all are are trying to say, like, hold up,
Speaker 1: we don't want to move to that. And Deborah's in
Speaker 1: her yeah, in her head sees the apocalypse happening. Where
Speaker 1: we do go we do like Deborah sees it sees
Speaker 1: the she's going to the nth degree in her head
Speaker 1: of where this is all heading. You know, I can
Speaker 1: I just speak to one point. I think Buck and
Speaker 1: I this may be the only point in which we
Speaker 1: have a different opinion in terms of the social transition
Speaker 1: of kids, and that research has shown that for kids
Speaker 1: who socially transition, they are more likely to go on
Speaker 1: to persisting in their gender dysphoria. So I agree with you, Buck,
Speaker 1: I think I don't think kids should be tied to
Speaker 1: gender stereotypes. I think let kids play with the toys
Speaker 1: they want, have the friends they want, and an ideal situation.
Speaker 1: When this issue was less political, less politicized, you could
Speaker 1: let a child live however they want it and use
Speaker 1: whatever pronouns and whatever, let the child eventually decide how
Speaker 1: they want to live. But nowadays I would I mean
Speaker 1: here from parents all the time. If you have a
Speaker 1: little boy, say who is even slightly feminine? Everybody wants
Speaker 1: to jump on that and say, oh, you must really
Speaker 1: be a girl. Are you a girl? Have you thought
Speaker 1: about being a girl? And talk to parents about it.
Speaker 1: It's and it's like these are children, you know, kids
Speaker 1: say all types of crazy things. They want to experiment,
Speaker 1: and we give them that freedom and space instead of
Speaker 1: wanting to make this something so concrete, and especially with
Speaker 1: the so called non binary children, I think this is
Speaker 1: just creating more confusion for these kids, because no, there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as non binary, and children need their
Speaker 1: parents to say to them, you know what, if you
Speaker 1: have a boy who puts on a wig, he's not
Speaker 1: now a girl, or he's not somewhere in between male
Speaker 1: and female. He's still a boy just wearing a wig. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: they don't have any understanding of gender and the fact
Speaker 1: that gender is permanent for the most part, right except
Speaker 1: for the what is it six and one thousand people
Speaker 1: who are transgender in adulthood. And then also with regards
Speaker 1: to pronouns, I think adults should be able to identify
Speaker 1: how they want. They them. I'm not a fan of
Speaker 1: just because it's not scientific. You're not a fan of
Speaker 1: they them, Well, that's a valid it's a valid gender identity,
Speaker 1: right right, I mean even I mean you can identify
Speaker 1: is that I'll call someone, I'll call someone they them,
Speaker 1: but don't tell me that's what signs and don't say
Speaker 1: that you're also the same as someone who that your perspective,
Speaker 1: I would say, should be taken as much weight as
Speaker 1: someone who has actually medically transitioned, because to me, that
Speaker 1: comes across the disrespect. Thank you, thank you for saying
Speaker 1: I'm not the same, I'm not the same as a
Speaker 1: non binary. Yet now we're put under that we're completely
Speaker 1: I mean, you can just put as side to side,
Speaker 1: you know, beside each other. There is no way we
Speaker 1: are the same. We're not the same. Problem for me
Speaker 1: with just self iding as non binary. For example, I'll
Speaker 1: give you another example. We had a horrible shooting at
Speaker 1: called Club Q, and all of a sudden, that shooter decided,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe they were maybe they are non binary.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because now we don't have any basis
Speaker 1: to sort of push against somebody who shot up a
Speaker 1: bunch of people and then all of a sudden said
Speaker 1: I'm a non binary they then and the community was like, no,
Speaker 1: they're not, they're not non binary. They look like a man.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the stuff that was coming out
Speaker 1: of their mouth was so hypocritical and so contradictory and
Speaker 1: be phobia, what kind of phobia? And be phobia, which
Speaker 1: is phobia of envs or non binary people, which I'm joking. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that one before. Okay, it was actual
Speaker 1: non binary people, actual non binary people denying that this
Speaker 1: person takes that identity of non binary, saying that they
Speaker 1: only did it because of the shooting. Sure it's hypocritical,
Speaker 1: but going back to the fact that there is there
Speaker 1: is there are more than one thing in play here.
Speaker 1: So the purely instrumental kind of manipulative adoption of all
Speaker 1: identities for some purpose, and people who actually sincerely take
Speaker 1: on an identity because it explains about them. That's exactly
Speaker 1: my point. And I'm not saying that someone doesn't feel
Speaker 1: non binary. But the problem is, now anyone can just
Speaker 1: be non binary and then does that put them into
Speaker 1: a space. You can't say anyone can identify as non
Speaker 1: binary and then at the same time say, well accept them.
Speaker 1: Of course, people don't think the way the way they
Speaker 1: say that. I completely agree with that. Trampa, Yeah, can
Speaker 1: I call you trumpa of course I was. I was
Speaker 1: not arguing that non binary is not a thing. That's
Speaker 1: the That's the crucial point. I'm trying to make Actually,
Speaker 1: if there are people who say, you know, genuinely identify
Speaker 1: and say I feel I'm non binary, I'm extremely curious
Speaker 1: to know, you know, what they why they're thinking that,
Speaker 1: what they're feeling, what kind of phenomena they're referring to.
Speaker 1: Can we maybe is it all? I don't think it's
Speaker 1: all subjective, by the way, because when people tell you why,
Speaker 1: you know they're so. For example, some of the and
Speaker 1: it's a constellation of categories, right, but some things within
Speaker 1: this non binary gender, queer gender fluid, they do capture
Speaker 1: stuff that's real. So the fact, you know, people who
Speaker 1: they feel male or female depending on the day or right,
Speaker 1: it changes, that kind of seems you know, if you
Speaker 1: take it from one perspective, it's like, you know, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: But you know, from a different perspective, it's through that,
Speaker 1: you know, personality does fluctuate a bit. People do feel differently.
Speaker 1: They have the hormonal fluctuations we have, you know, different
Speaker 1: social contests kind of bring us different sides of our
Speaker 1: personalities in play at different times. So the phenomena can
Speaker 1: be quite real. And what my argument would be, because
Speaker 1: we don't have a shared kind of a sophisticated vocabulary
Speaker 1: for talking about this kind of variation. People end up,
Speaker 1: you know, converging on these labels that seem to you know,
Speaker 1: say everything and nothing at the same time. But I'm
Speaker 1: not saying them binary is not a thing. But as
Speaker 1: for foreign addiction, I would almost going back to it's
Speaker 1: of a thing. What she's saying is this, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some people who actually do have some let's say
Speaker 1: problematic or patterns of behavior that actually make them suffer
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. So it's not like it's not real.
Speaker 1: The question is is addiction the best framework two actually
Speaker 1: understand this thing? And I would make exactly the same
Speaker 1: point about non binary. I'm not saying that people identify
Speaker 1: as no binary, you know, don't have reasons for doing so.
Speaker 1: But I think we should be able to have a
Speaker 1: debate about whether non binary, from a scientific point of view,
Speaker 1: is you know, a good description of what's going on
Speaker 1: or not, and also about whether it's actually helping people
Speaker 1: are hurting people in the sense that is it is
Speaker 1: it a byproduct of being only able to think about
Speaker 1: males and females in extremely rigid terms. So whenever you
Speaker 1: feel your kind of outside the balance of these rigid boxes.
Speaker 1: Then you feel you must be you see what I mean?
Speaker 1: So yes, right, So that would be my point. And
Speaker 1: again as a as a you know, biological psychologist, I
Speaker 1: would say, uh, it's not all about biology, but I
Speaker 1: would think that biology does give you some tools to
Speaker 1: sometimes make sense of this, you know, interesting things that
Speaker 1: happen to people in relation to their sex and gender
Speaker 1: and so forth. That's why I keep saying non binary
Speaker 1: is not trans, it's it's it's not me, it's completely
Speaker 1: my gender identity whatever you want to call it. Being
Speaker 1: a male never fluctuates. I don't fluctuate. One day I
Speaker 1: feel like a woman, one day I don't. I actually
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of that. I literally shut that down. Well,
Speaker 1: I interviewed a non binary trans person as part of
Speaker 1: this series, and I found their perspective valuable and interesting.
Speaker 1: That's fine, but I'm not the same as them. I'm
Speaker 1: not the same as them, and that's why they're needs.
Speaker 1: I find your experience valuable. I'm saying it's not zero synge,
Speaker 1: but we need to move away from they speak for me,
Speaker 1: because the non binary people are over speaking me constantly
Speaker 1: and saying, but you don't identify as non binary trands.
Speaker 1: So you're not even in, not even anywhere near that.
Speaker 1: I'm not even anywhere IM binary male, walk the world
Speaker 1: as male. I don't walk the world as a trans person.
Speaker 1: Trans is my disorder that I have learned to live with,
Speaker 1: and I do not identify as trans, identify as a man.
Speaker 1: I want to be a man, and I walk the
Speaker 1: world as a man. That is the complete opposite of
Speaker 1: what is happening on that other side. And that's what
Speaker 1: I want people to here, is that we cannot be
Speaker 1: I cannot have these people representing me because I don't
Speaker 1: even agree with things that they're saying. And how can
Speaker 1: I be put under that same umbrella. Well, my friend,
Speaker 1: I hope you feel as though we represented your voice today.
Speaker 1: You did. Yeah, I just want to make a quick point.
Speaker 1: I would argue that everybody to some extent is non
Speaker 1: binary in that yes, we all have these fluctuations, don't
Speaker 1: we all have? But but that is not that's not
Speaker 1: a reason to then say, I believe you, But why
Speaker 1: do we have to turn upside down this idea that
Speaker 1: gender and sex are binary. That's right to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there can be difference, there can be variation. I feel
Speaker 1: just people who want to be special. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: doctor doc. I'm gonna call you h Deborah. I adore you, Deborah.
Speaker 1: But you can be savage. Let's be honest. And I
Speaker 1: know that's why I know a lot of people love
Speaker 1: you because of that. I mean, you can be You
Speaker 1: remind me of like a character from one of those
Speaker 1: Quentin Taran Taro films. But you just like come in
Speaker 1: and like the Asian you know. But here's the thing. Look,
Speaker 1: and I say that with love. I absolutely I want
Speaker 1: to hang out with you more. You know, I want to.
Speaker 1: I really want to hang out with you more. You're
Speaker 1: You're super fun. But I get a little bit of facts.
Speaker 1: Don't care about your feelings vibe from you sometimes and
Speaker 1: I guess I like me. You know, I'm not there
Speaker 1: yet because I feel like, on the one hand, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do two hands here. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: I do think that feelings are a particular truth. It's
Speaker 1: not generalizable truth. We can all agree on that, but
Speaker 1: it is that person's truth. And there is something there's
Speaker 1: there's value in the field of psychology for studying that
Speaker 1: through qualitative methods and then various things there's value to that,
Speaker 1: but you know we do, we do need to as
Speaker 1: you make this point that's not generalizable truth. You care
Speaker 1: a lot about science, I know you do, and you
Speaker 1: care a lot about generalizable truths, and you care a
Speaker 1: lot about and it drives you bonkers, as it dries
Speaker 1: me bonkers too. When someone makes a statement that is
Speaker 1: clearly untrue from a generalizable point of view and they
Speaker 1: make a truth claim, that drives me bunkers too. My
Speaker 1: head explodes too. So I'm with you on that, but
Speaker 1: I am kind of like one hand to hand about
Speaker 1: it in that way. If that makes sense. No, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And I do think it's important to be compassionate,
Speaker 1: and I don't think being a truth tell it necessarily
Speaker 1: means that you're not compassionate or not empathic. And in
Speaker 1: some cases, I think almost the way society is going
Speaker 1: that we value so much feelings and emotions in people's
Speaker 1: experiences is detrimental in some cases to them if those
Speaker 1: experiences are not warrant some amount of pushing back or
Speaker 1: challenging in a gentle way, because if it isn't so,
Speaker 1: say for someone who says they want to identifies whatever
Speaker 1: they want to identify as if it's about something else
Speaker 1: like sexual trauma or sexism, or say not being comfortable
Speaker 1: with their sexuality, or because they are on the autism spectrum.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't those be the topics of discussion and seeking to
Speaker 1: have greater compassion standing for what they're actually going through
Speaker 1: as opposed to this band aid solution, which is that
Speaker 1: you are this so called persecuted gender minority that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And so especially when I see the way that I'm
Speaker 1: going to get you in so much trouble. But I
Speaker 1: think the way that we're going in that we we
Speaker 1: can't do objective studies anymore about this in academia. You
Speaker 1: just can't. I think you have to be savage in
Speaker 1: response to that, because they're otherwise not going to listen
Speaker 1: to you. Well, I don't know if you have to.
Speaker 1: You know you you you take the rip the band
Speaker 1: aid off approach, like you will tweet. Look, sex is binary,
Speaker 1: it is, it is and change unchangeable. But you know,
Speaker 1: whereas I would like maybe make that point. Secondly, first
Speaker 1: I would say, all, you know a subjectively, but that's
Speaker 1: all that's all. I was like before you shove it
Speaker 1: in when it works with different although it works with
Speaker 1: different people always saying yeah, some people actually in defense
Speaker 1: of the blunt approach. Okay, okay, okay, free speech. That's
Speaker 1: why we have free speech. And I'm a proponent of
Speaker 1: free speech. Some people actually, you know, benefit from being
Speaker 1: kind of you know, walking up from from there from
Speaker 1: their slumber. Well, clearly doctor So is doing something right.
Speaker 1: She's a huge falling right. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: people that stand by you, and tramp pall over here
Speaker 1: is not every time you speak. I love her. I
Speaker 1: love her too. Yeah, so you know, I want to
Speaker 1: be respect of all your time. Today, this might be
Speaker 1: a good time to kind of end and just thank you. Also,
Speaker 1: unless there anyone, did any of you wanted you, like
Speaker 1: dying to say or make a point here today? No,
Speaker 1: we can Okay, thank you, Thank you so much to
Speaker 1: all of you. Thank you so much. This is super fun.
Speaker 1: And uh, and if people disagree with things we said,
Speaker 1: like write comments, you know, that's what the free speech
Speaker 1: is about, right, Like, we value your comments and we
Speaker 1: value your perspective as well. It's uh, it's just that's
Speaker 1: just how we live. That's called Thanks everyone, and have
Speaker 1: a good one. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at thus psychology podcast dot com. We're
Speaker 1: on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also put
Speaker 1: up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page
Speaker 1: as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the show, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.