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as a woman is a thing that only a man can

1:00

do. Wanting to be a woman is a thing that only

1:02

a man can do. Only men

1:04

can be trans women. But it took me a

1:06

year to work out that I didn't just think

1:08

it was weird that I thought it was dangerous.

1:11

It's genuinely regressive. It's sexist

1:13

bought. And I mean,

1:15

this is completely absurd. Holy

1:18

God! You mean you say

1:20

what? You know? The lesbians

1:22

are bigoted for saying that people with penis can't

1:25

be lesbians, you know? Clownfish can change sex. They

1:27

genuinely can change sex. But

1:29

we're not clownfish. You do have bloody little hands.

1:32

Yeah. Would you know that these are male? If I just

1:34

cut off the hair, would you know these are male? Yeah,

1:37

look at the size of your pan. But now, because of

1:39

the work I do, I do think

1:41

about the differences between the sexes. And

1:43

they are big. And they

1:46

are baked through. They're in every bit of us. They're

1:48

in every cell. What kind of thing? Well,

1:54

you asked for more heretics. And

1:57

today on the podcast heretics, it's

1:59

Helen Joy. Joyce, who has made

2:01

quite a name for herself in

2:03

recent years. She's an Irish journalist

2:05

and critic of the transgender rights

2:08

movement. She actually studied as a

2:10

mathematician and worked in academia before

2:12

becoming a journalist. Joyce began working

2:14

for The Economist as education correspondent

2:16

for its Britain section in 2005

2:19

and has since held several senior

2:21

positions, including finance editor and international

2:23

editor. She published her book Trans,

2:26

colon, When ideology meets

2:28

reality. In 2021. And

2:32

this is another episode where

2:36

she's going to really look into why this

2:38

is a problem and try to explain it,

2:40

because I've got to say, since I changed

2:42

the name of this podcast to heretics and

2:45

we started focusing on things like this, something

2:47

these are things I always wanted to focus

2:49

on because I was looking into cults and

2:51

I have always, in case anyone thinks I've

2:53

suddenly launched to this sort of weird

2:56

controversial position, I've always considered

2:59

certain ideas on the left, just as

3:01

on the right as cultish.

3:04

I just always have done. And I think the

3:06

first place to look for that is

3:09

where reality is being

3:11

skewed. I keep repeating the mantra.

3:13

Those who make you believe absurdities

3:15

will make you commit atrocities. I

3:17

think the first step in a

3:20

society on a slippery slope towards

3:22

dangerous ideologies is when we reject

3:24

reality. That does not mean that

3:26

we shouldn't treat trans people with 100 percent

3:29

respect, not just respect, but love, care

3:32

and understanding. What

3:34

it does mean is you cannot

3:36

have a society whereby the United

3:38

Nations tweets trans lesbians are lesbians,

3:40

lesbians fought for their rights. And Helen

3:42

explains that rights are like a pie.

3:44

You'll see what she means by that.

3:47

We have to get rid of this

3:49

idea that because we want the world

3:51

to be a certain way that it's

3:53

OK and satisfactory and no

3:56

long term issues in twisting

3:58

truth. And it's

4:01

really, really important, just as it's important

4:03

to understand that other cults

4:05

and religious beliefs on the

4:07

right, in the center, or just

4:09

religious-related ones, all need

4:11

to be open to criticism. That

4:14

has to happen. I hope that I

4:16

know that many of you are skeptical, I know that

4:18

many of you disagree, I've had a lot of people

4:20

getting in touch to do so. I think this is

4:22

important and Helen will explain why. I hope that you

4:25

can listen with your ears,

4:27

open and without... What does that even mean

4:30

with your ears open? I just mean without

4:32

judging, even if you disagree, that you

4:34

don't presume she must be a monster for

4:36

believing these things. That you

4:38

understand that she, just like you, is coming

4:40

from a good place. So

4:43

that's my hope, that

4:45

you'll feel this way about Helen, who... And

4:48

I think the tide is turning on this whole

4:50

ideology. I think a few years ago it was

4:52

a lot more toxic, and I think today a

4:54

lot more people are opening up to the fact

4:56

that the arrow of progress doesn't

4:58

always go in one direction, and

5:01

that sometimes ideas are not good ideas.

5:04

So yeah, go and follow the links we'll

5:06

put in the description. Check out Helen Joyce

5:08

and all the work she's done. Get hold

5:10

of her book, Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality,

5:12

to understand more about the subtleties and nuances

5:15

involved in this. And do go check out

5:17

the YouTube version of this, which is Andrew

5:19

Gold, Heretics for the 4K. You

5:21

could put it on your TV and

5:24

make it really big screen. It's

5:26

going to look gorgeous. It looks

5:28

better than mainstream TV, but it's

5:30

espousing views that you wouldn't see

5:32

there. So now you're listening to

5:34

My Heretic, it's Helen Joyce. How

5:37

did it all come to this, Helen? Which

5:40

bit? Me being like a

5:42

genocidal maniac or sex and gender,

5:44

like that, you know, we all pretend we don't know there are

5:46

two sexes. Let's do the latter, then we'll do the former. All

5:48

right. How did we end up getting to the

5:51

point that we pretend there aren't two sexes? God,

5:53

I mean, I had to write an entire book to answer

5:55

that question, really. But like Perfect Storm. I

5:57

mean, I think it's a bit of a

6:00

think we can ignore the fact

6:02

that there are some men

6:04

whose dearest wish is to be a woman. And

6:07

those men put all their effort

6:09

into it and have done really

6:11

for a century since Dr. Speras said that

6:14

they could offer a sex change. There's

6:16

no such thing as a sex change, you can't change sex.

6:18

But surgery is to make it look like you've changed sex

6:21

a bit. So

6:23

those men I think really, you know, for a century

6:25

have been pushing, but then you look

6:27

at the fact

6:30

of what was happening on campus with queer theory,

6:32

you look at identity politics, you

6:35

look at the progress narrative, which

6:37

always needs a new battle to fight. So

6:40

you know, women's

6:44

liberation, black liberation, gay

6:46

liberation, what's next? So when you've got to

6:48

gay marriage, you needed another one. And

6:51

all these things came to a point and probably 2015

6:54

was the tipping point. That

6:56

suddenly the most important thing in the world

6:58

if you cared about social justice was that

7:00

you pretend that there weren't two sexes, or

7:02

at the very least, you accepted that there were two sexes,

7:04

but you pretended that people could change. And

7:07

so that is now like,

7:09

you know, it's heresy to say that you

7:12

can't. But it's also true.

7:14

So you know, then you get

7:16

into this state where people have to be super hysterical about

7:19

everything to try to stop you from saying it, which

7:21

is why they throw around to answer

7:23

the first bit of your question, words

7:25

like genocidal and bizarrely anti Semitic. If

7:28

you say people can't change sex on a man who

7:30

identifies as a woman remains a man who identifies as

7:32

a woman, not a woman. Do

7:35

you think it's part of a fallacy that social

7:37

progress is there's always an upwards curve that we're

7:39

always getting closer and closer to

7:42

utopian social culture?

7:44

Oh, completely. I mean, it's a

7:46

very powerful myth. What was

7:48

what's the famous thing? I always misquote this the

7:50

arc of justice bends

7:52

towards. Yes, you know, the one I mean,

7:55

I mean, I should really should learn that quote off by

7:57

heart because I butcher it every time I try to do

7:59

it. But anyway, this of like, you know, progress

8:01

is slow but inevitable. Why do we

8:03

think that? Entire cultures have risen and

8:05

fallen and risen and fallen. That could happen to

8:07

us too. And also it

8:09

means that you can kind of retrofit

8:12

what's happening and say that it's what should be happening.

8:15

I think that's something like the naturalistic fallacy. So

8:17

the naturalistic fallacy is this is natural, therefore it's good.

8:20

So this could be called as the progress fallacy. If

8:22

this is the direction that things are going, that's good.

8:25

So somebody asked me like, am I worried about being

8:27

on the wrong side of history once? And

8:30

I said like, imagine it's 2050 and I'm still here. And everybody

8:33

in the world except me thinks it's all right to

8:35

put a rapist in a women's jail if that

8:37

man says he's a woman. I'm

8:40

still right and they're wrong. Because

8:42

that is a wrong thing to do. It is morally,

8:44

you know, absolutely contemptible. So

8:47

I'm not worried about the judgment of history or

8:49

the right side of history or anything like that.

8:51

I'm deciding now what I know to be

8:53

right on the basis of everybody's human rights

8:55

and everybody's dignity. Did you see

8:57

this coming as a mathematician that you

8:59

would be the person to speak to the

9:02

hot trans rights and gender criticism? No, it's

9:04

the most bizarre. I mean, plot

9:06

twist, you know, I

9:09

was happily at the economist doing one

9:11

job after another. I started there in

9:13

2005 as the education correspondent having

9:15

previously had a sort of former life as

9:17

an academic, as you mentioned, I have a

9:19

PhD in mathematics. And then

9:21

I went from mathematics into public understanding of

9:23

mathematics and then arrived at the economist by

9:25

the Royal Statistical Society. So I

9:28

did the education piece, I went out to Brazil

9:31

and I came back to London in 2014 and

9:33

spent nearly a decade doing editing jobs. And

9:36

during one of those editing jobs, the editor

9:38

in chief of the paper mentioned

9:40

to me that her kids kept coming home

9:42

and saying, such and such as

9:44

trans now. And she said, what's that

9:46

about? And I was like, all I'd ever heard about was

9:48

the occasional mention of a transsexual or a sex

9:51

change operation. I knew nothing about it. So

9:54

I just said to her, I'm looking to it for you. And

9:57

I looked into it and thought it was a bit

9:59

crazy. really quite crazy, like

10:01

that people were already saying by then,

10:03

this is like 2017, that

10:06

you know, sex

10:09

and gender were intertwined

10:11

categories that were

10:13

socially constructed rather than, you

10:16

know, having a bedrock of biological reality in

10:18

them, entirely socially constructed,

10:20

like, and

10:23

this, you know, a man who identified as a

10:25

woman who was attracted to women could be a

10:27

lesbian and, you know, that

10:29

it was bigoted to think and actually

10:31

anti-feminist to think that the

10:34

category of woman was defined by the type of body you

10:36

had. So like, this is

10:38

all really, really weird, but it took me a year

10:40

to work out that I didn't just think it was

10:42

weird, that I thought it was dangerous.

10:46

And a lot of people who go through this

10:48

path, like most of the people I talk to

10:50

these days, they always say at some point, I

10:52

went down the rabbit hole, like the

10:54

bit where you're going, like you're seeing it's actually the corner of

10:56

your eye and you think that's weird. That's really

10:58

weird. You peeked. Graham Minahan said, you peeked there,

11:02

and I was like, I don't know. He

11:04

said, you know, it's like a weird thing.

11:06

You go, holy god, you, me, you say

11:08

what? You know, the lesbians are bigoted

11:10

for saying that people with penis can't be lesbians,

11:13

you know. The problem with peak for me,

11:15

when Graham explained that to me, is

11:17

it does sound remarkably similar to all sorts

11:19

of conspiracy theories. I was red-pilled, I was

11:21

this, I was that about, and actually, well,

11:24

actually, theories I can't even say on YouTube

11:26

about pizzas and things in America. And

11:28

now suddenly everything came together. So how do we know

11:31

that maybe we are

11:33

the bigots? No, no, I'm on your side on

11:35

this. But what if we are the bigots here,

11:37

because bigots don't think they're bigots? Completely.

11:39

Bigots don't think they're bigots. People who are wrong don't

11:41

think they're wrong. Most people in this, on any side

11:44

of the argument, are not trying to do harm. They

11:46

think they're doing the right thing. But I

11:48

mean, that's just true all across. That's true

11:50

right across the piece. So you

11:53

can't outsource your moral

11:55

judgments. You can't say, you know, this

12:01

is formally in structure like

12:03

something else that's wrong, therefore it's wrong.

12:06

And you can't say, oh well, you know,

12:08

the Democrats believe this and Trump's believe that

12:10

and the Democrats are good and Trump is bad

12:13

and therefore I can come to a moral judgment. I

12:16

mean, you have to use some short ends like we

12:18

can to all of us all the

12:20

time think about absolutely everything. I mean, the example

12:22

I often give is, you know, I couldn't

12:24

possibly explain the carbon cycle to somebody with any

12:26

great depth. So like

12:29

I have to take some things about global warming

12:31

on faith. Yes. Or if I

12:33

know about global warming that's taken so much time that

12:35

I have to take something else on faith like vaccines

12:37

or something. Flat Earth. Flat Earth, I'm really pretty sure

12:39

that I have. Oh, you're a mathematician. Yeah. Yeah.

12:43

Because I've done that. I've duels with flat earthers and

12:45

I've always had to concede that I'm also, I think

12:47

they have more faith than I do in something that

12:49

I have an element of faith because I can't, even

12:51

though everyone tells me it's relatively simple, I'm too lazy,

12:54

I don't know, I can't prove that the earth is

12:56

spherical. I have faith that it is. Yeah. If

12:59

I had to sit down with a flat earther, I'd have to prepare for half

13:01

an hour first. But that wouldn't be because I think it's harder that it would

13:03

take me a long time to learn it. I

13:06

mean, if I had to sit down and talk to

13:08

an anti-vaxxer, I'd have to do a lot more. But

13:11

also, and you see, this is the thing is like,

13:13

I feel very much

13:15

more like the person on the vaccine side

13:17

and on the, you know, the round earth

13:19

side, because I've had

13:22

to go through what people

13:25

who battle flat earthers and battle anti-vaxxers

13:27

had to do, which is

13:29

to learn the strange sort of

13:31

twisted melange type

13:33

ideas that they have that stitch

13:35

together things that look superficially

13:37

plausible, you know, to fool you. So

13:41

like I remember in an editorial meeting, the first

13:43

time I heard somebody say, oh, 2.7% of

13:46

people are intersex as many as have red hair.

13:48

Yeah. That's just one of those talking

13:50

point things. It's completely boggled. I was like, what?

13:53

Like I've literally never met somebody who

13:55

can't be categorized as male or female. So

13:57

what's your point? And now I

13:59

know where that figure comes from. I know what the

14:01

misrepresentation is. I know how to rebut it in a

14:03

short form. Well, let's start there. All

14:06

right. Okay. So if you include

14:08

people who have polycystic

14:10

ovaries or a particular, you know, what can

14:12

be very small deformity of the genitals when

14:14

they're born, which is that the opening to

14:16

the penis isn't quite on the end. It could be along the

14:19

side somewhere. Then you can

14:21

get to 2.7% if you try really hard

14:23

for people who have some sort of, you

14:25

know, kind of difference of

14:27

sex development or disorder of sex development. Within

14:30

that, about a thousandth of those people have

14:32

something that you could seriously say, this person

14:35

has elements of the development of

14:37

both sexes. But even then, that doesn't

14:40

mean there's a third sex. It doesn't mean

14:42

that those people are really intersex. That's what

14:44

it sounds like is that they're between the sexes.

14:46

They're one sex or the other, but there's something

14:48

that happened that pushed their body to try to

14:50

develop down the other pathway. And,

14:52

you know, these are very serious disorders, actually, those ones.

14:55

They can be fatal. They

14:57

can cause infertility or sterility, really. And

14:59

they often need you to have diagnosis

15:02

early in life so that you can have treatments. Like

15:05

they can have odd impacts like very low blood

15:07

salt that's dangerous, you know, and you wouldn't think

15:09

that had something to do with a disorder of

15:11

sex development. Now I know that. And

15:14

anyway, this 2.7% of people have read here, where?

15:16

It's loads more than that in Ireland, and it's

15:18

pretty much none in Somalia. So like, it's not. What's

15:21

your point? You know, it's just somebody came up with

15:23

that as a talking point, and

15:25

it's spread. And it's got like the hockey stick

15:28

in, you know, anti

15:30

anti climate change rhetoric, it's got it's got

15:32

that status, and there's about dozen of those,

15:34

and maybe 20 of those, and they

15:36

really derail you until you know where they come from

15:38

and how to rebut them. So I

15:40

feel like I'm on the side of the person who's

15:43

doing the scientific thing. Whereas the

15:45

people who are arguing that sex is a

15:47

spectrum or that, you know, trans women are

15:49

women full stop no debate, like

15:51

really wholly and completely women, the same as

15:54

every other woman, like they're

15:56

kind of the equivalent of the anti vax or

15:58

covert conspiracies or whatever, you know. they're the ones

16:00

who are stitching together, bizarre and shifting. Well, I

16:02

mean, proof of that is when I spoke

16:04

to Richard Dawkins and he spoke about this

16:06

and he said it's lunacy and whatever. And

16:08

the amount of comments, angry comments saying, oh,

16:10

you know, what a shame that Dawkins has

16:12

gone this way. I wish he knew what

16:14

I knew, that kind of thing. And it's

16:16

like, but you're like, you know, cheeky monkey

16:18

69. And he's the

16:20

world's most famous evolutionary biologist, biologist,

16:22

right? And they somehow believe strongly

16:25

enough that he's just too old

16:27

or something now that he missed.

16:29

I mean, they just, it's just retrofitting your

16:31

arguments to your beliefs. Because the thing is,

16:34

you know, Richard Dawkins could be wrong. And there

16:36

are people who are not very many,

16:38

it has to be said, but there

16:40

are people who are senior scientists or

16:42

credentialed scientists. There's a chap called PZ

16:44

Myers, who used to run or

16:46

still does possibly run a skeptics blog. And I

16:49

mean, he describes himself as an evolutionary biologist, and

16:51

I think he genuinely is. And

16:53

he's totally on the, you know, if you say

16:55

there are two sexes, and you say people can't change

16:57

sex, you're like a flat earther and

16:59

you're a trumpet and you're an anti-semite and all that

17:02

stuff. So you know, I

17:05

mean, I also have talked to Richard Dawkins about this, and he

17:07

is an intellectual hero of mine. And it was a

17:09

genuine fangirl moment for me. It's scary talking to

17:12

him though, isn't it? Or not for you? Oh,

17:14

well, you may notice I can talk quite a

17:16

lot, and quite fast. I

17:18

was scared. I was frightened talking to him and

17:21

because he gives very short answers as well. Well,

17:23

he was interviewing me. Oh, okay. I like

17:25

that. Well, and the other thing about intersex,

17:28

so firstly, as you say, the statistics are

17:30

just not right at all. And secondly, I

17:32

don't, I am really

17:34

trying. I don't see the relevance. I don't see

17:36

how, okay, some people are born in sex. Therefore,

17:39

if men who are not intersex believe they are

17:41

women, therefore, I guess it's like I'm trying to

17:43

strong a man. So the idea is it means

17:45

genders all on a spectrum because there are insects

17:47

who are not intersex. Yeah. That

17:49

is a mad leap. It's completely mad. But and it's

17:51

also like, how could somebody be intersex? Like, I hate

17:54

that word intersex. It's not a good word. It's

17:56

a deprecated word now. Like, it

17:58

suggests, like the Call

20:00

them intersect thing. But I mean I actually like

20:02

if there was such a thing as insects, you

20:04

would need to know what the two sexes were

20:06

herself. If we could say some, I'm was neither.

20:08

Of them or otherwise into would mean nothing. Yes,

20:10

Yes, all of a good time system. Love

20:12

clients his plans of the same sex they

20:15

genuinely have changed sex. And

20:17

but we're not quite as as further

20:19

evidence you know with our including or

20:21

Kansas The Avenger so. I mean, how do we

20:23

know the cleanses contain sex? Because we know what the sexes

20:25

are. Like. You

20:28

criticisms walk. And it, you know,

20:30

owners. I think that's the thing. Is. And and and and

20:32

in the no debate saying on this area is one

20:34

of the reasons I use such silly arguments. Some of

20:36

them really can. Be debunked in one sentence like

20:38

the times as one unit. we're not friends.

20:40

They spawn. How do you know the same

20:42

sex? Some yeah and saying if. You say that

20:44

to somebody brings it up like the say stops

20:47

because they never heard anyone argue with it's. Because

20:49

know that there's no debate. For. Matt

20:51

Walsh when he and and I don't agree of

20:53

a lot mobile supposes but we went wrong. And

20:55

what is woman I know I know what I'm

20:57

Israel or citadels. yeah I did. I remember that

20:59

second day they do chickens cry. Petitions.

21:02

Crime Novel: Me: Irony. As a he's

21:04

a doctor I think it's me so for

21:06

sea ice and she went off on this

21:08

absolutely insane land but I can't remember why.

21:10

Of what? Like obvious. Yeah, so what does a woman but

21:12

she see him? As he was all

21:15

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one is a to in one probiotic

21:59

and three Wow! Well that's it,

22:01

it comes back to horn them. I

22:27

was thinking specifically with regards to you as

22:30

a mathematician why this bothers you and I

22:32

happened to recently read, did you ever read

22:34

Ted Chiang? Ted Chiang is a short story writer

22:36

and he's fantastic. Listen, I read nothing

22:38

except factual things about sex and gender now. I've

22:40

not read for pleasure for bloody years except

22:42

for J.K. Rowling because I made an exception there. I was doing

22:44

that because of the podcast, you have to always read non-fiction because

22:46

you have to be up and then I thought, you know what,

22:48

I'm done and I'm going to go back to fiction. I

22:51

need to. You need to have a

22:53

happier life. Or maybe it's a more miserable life. Ted

22:55

Chiang is great. He wrote the short story that Arrival

22:57

was based on. There's a movie about language and aliens.

23:00

Oh yeah, watch that. Yeah. So

23:02

he's always about like mathematical and science and

23:04

language and how it interacts with fiction. He

23:08

wrote one called Division by Zero and

23:10

it's a short story and it's about

23:12

a woman mathematician who accidentally

23:14

proves that maths or arithmetic is inconsistent.

23:16

She accidentally proved that one does not

23:18

necessarily actually equal one and she goes

23:20

insane and tried to kill herself. Okay,

23:22

I must read this one. Yeah, yeah,

23:24

it must be up your street. And

23:26

I wondered if this is a similar

23:28

thing. Trans women are

23:30

women when you hear that. It's

23:33

almost like hearing one, two. I

23:35

mean it's a thought stopping cliche is the specific

23:37

thing it is and in the phrase of

23:39

Robert Lifton who wrote about thought

23:41

control in China, communist China, and he

23:43

came up with this expression that a

23:46

thought stopping or a thought terminating cliche

23:48

was a short, highly reductive phrase that

23:51

was the beginning and end of every

23:53

conversation. That's

23:55

not quite the right wording. But anyway, so the point

23:57

is that when it pops into your head, a

23:59

thought... You know, inconvenient thoughts pop into your head like,

24:01

well, if trans women are women, obviously trans women are

24:03

allowed into women's sports. But like, is that fair? Because

24:07

they've been through male development. So

24:09

they're going to be stronger, because that's what testosterone does. And

24:12

if that thought comes into your head, you need to be

24:14

able to loop back and just say trans women are women,

24:16

full stop. Because otherwise, you'll

24:18

find yourself in the very inconvenient place of realizing

24:20

that this is not fair. And

24:23

then you've got to bounce back and think, well, that

24:25

means they're not really women, at least for the purposes

24:27

of sport. And then you think, well, what about sex

24:29

crimes? What about prisons? What about, you

24:31

know, whatever. And then suddenly, you're

24:33

down the rabbit hole, and you too are

24:36

a heretic and you're cast out. So

24:38

it is specifically that's how trans women are

24:40

women functions. It's not really meant to be

24:42

a truth as

24:44

such. It's meant to be

24:46

like a mystery. It

24:50

makes you feel clever. It makes you feel like you're

24:52

part of the in crowd. It's a bit like saying,

24:54

you know, the Trinity are three and one, or, you

24:56

know, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord,

24:58

the bread and the wine turn into them in

25:00

some real genuine sense like but they still look

25:02

like bread. Why? So

25:04

it's that kind of mystery thing. But

25:07

in the last few years, because laws

25:09

don't function like mysteries and thought

25:11

stopping cliches, they function like mathematical

25:13

statements. This

25:15

mystery has been turned into a really

25:18

flat piece of paper that says, you

25:20

know, male and

25:22

female are both mixed sex categories.

25:25

And that is like saying one equals zero. And

25:28

it breaks everything it turns out. It

25:31

turns out that when you absolutely

25:33

flatly lie about something that

25:35

is fundamentally an

25:37

immutable core factor of what it is

25:39

to be a human, and you break

25:41

you lie about that in the laws

25:43

about humans, that you break an

25:45

awful lot of stuff, you break a lot of institutions, you

25:49

break specifically education for kids, because you've got

25:51

to lie to them about something really central

25:53

themselves as they're growing up. You

25:55

break the accommodations for women in

25:58

public life. What

26:00

else? And you break statistics? Like you know we've

26:03

just gone through a census in this country well

26:05

a couple of years ago but it's just

26:07

relatively recently been analysed. And

26:09

you know the ONS Office

26:12

for National Statistics tried to have

26:14

self-ID in effect for the answer to

26:16

whether you're male or female. This is in

26:18

the thing that costs a billion pounds and is

26:20

used to plan for the next 10 years for demographics,

26:22

for where you put schools, for where you put doctor

26:24

surgeries, for how many people are going to be, you

26:27

transport everything. And I mean that actually

26:30

really does depend on

26:32

knowing which sex people are because that's

26:34

how we make babies. And

26:36

the ONS is like well you know who

26:39

cares other people tell the truth. Like it broke the

26:41

central point of the ONS. That

26:44

happened in a lot of places. I keep finding new

26:46

ones. I do think it's scary. I mean

26:48

for everyone's that's talking out about this I

26:51

think has a different point where they're

26:53

like okay no. You know one friend of mine

26:55

was a lawyer who was saying like well legally

26:57

what are we going to do with this issue.

26:59

One friend had just had a child

27:01

and was saying hang on I don't want

27:03

my kid being taught this educationally. For me

27:05

I'm a linguist so for me it was

27:07

just an assault on language. Yeah. And then

27:09

everyone says oh but language is always changing.

27:11

But not to mean things that aren't true.

27:13

Yeah and not by force either. No. I

27:16

mean there's this very irritating phenomenon if you

27:19

talk and write on this and you're contactable

27:21

which I am both because of having a website

27:23

with my email address on it but also because

27:25

I work for this campaign group Sex Matters because

27:27

they contact us. And really

27:29

with some regularity and I really don't

27:31

want to slag off men generally so let me go hashtag not

27:33

all men but it is 100% men who

27:36

do this one. They message and they

27:38

say I don't think that

27:40

you have understood that you know sex is

27:42

real that's male and female. Man and woman

27:45

are social roles. They are genders. The arrogance.

27:47

And you're like oh I wasted the last five

27:49

years of my life trying to think about this.

27:51

You know what is the social role then? Yeah.

27:53

Like was I playing the female social

27:55

role when I got a PhD in mathematics? Presumably

27:58

not. You know. If

28:00

you were to stay home and look after your child when you have

28:02

a child, are you playing the female social role? Does it

28:04

turn me into a man and you into a woman? If

28:07

it does, then it's massively sexist. What

28:10

is there that I could do in my

28:12

life as a social role that

28:14

would constitute living as a man? I

28:17

don't even... It's such a conservative point that

28:20

you would do these things and they make

28:22

you... That makes you a man. It's regressive.

28:24

I didn't even like to say conservative because there's

28:26

nothing wrong with being conservative if what you're doing

28:28

is conserving good stuff. I'm trying to

28:30

insult people who consider themselves progressive, so that's why I

28:32

say it. Yes, so I say regressive.

28:35

Regressive. Yeah, it's genuinely regressive. It's sexist

28:37

bullshit and it's regressive. But more than

28:39

that, literally anything that I do, anything

28:41

at all, is a thing that a

28:43

woman does because I'm a one. So

28:46

there's literally nothing I could do that is living as a man. I

28:48

can't do it. You

28:50

can't live as a woman because you're a man. No, there's nothing. I

28:52

can't do it. Anything I can do is a thing that a woman does.

28:55

Identifying as a woman is a thing that only a man can do. Anything

28:58

to be a woman is a thing that only a man can do. Only

29:01

men can be trans women. I'd like to

29:03

be a woman for, and I've said this a few times, for a few

29:05

days because you only get

29:07

like, you live once, don't you? And I'd love to,

29:10

and then I always think, and I had this discussion with

29:12

Coleman Hughes and I was trying to push him on it

29:14

and he was like, hmm, a bit sheepish about it. And

29:16

I was saying, but come on, come on, like you got

29:19

one life. Wouldn't you have a few days? It wouldn't have

29:21

to be those few days of the month. You'd have a

29:23

really good time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I

29:26

can totally see that, but it's

29:28

really interesting that absolutely everybody listening

29:30

knows just what you mean. But

29:32

when you think about it, there is no you that's a

29:34

woman. It's not possible for you to

29:36

be a woman for a few days, but we do this

29:38

in science fiction or even just in fiction all the time.

29:41

Like we have this idea, you know, we could

29:44

be ghosts after death or you could do

29:46

body swap like in the film, or whatever.

29:49

But none of that makes any sense because

29:51

we are our bodies. And

29:53

I'm not trying to make a superficial point here. I

29:55

think it's a deep point. And, you

29:58

know, I didn't spend most of my time thinking about it. the fact

30:00

that I'm female. Like, you

30:03

know, I had the babies, so I was the one who was

30:05

pregnant for nine months for my two children. And, you know,

30:08

on occasion I've experienced sexism, especially because

30:10

I studied mathematics and, you know, there

30:12

are some issues sometimes, not often. So,

30:17

and, you know, you think about rape in a

30:19

different way, obviously as a woman going home at

30:21

night, but, you know, most of my life I

30:23

wasn't thinking I'm living as a woman. You know,

30:25

I did a job that actually both

30:27

sexes do in fairly equal numbers, namely

30:30

journalism. The economist has more men

30:32

than women, but fine. It was completely

30:34

fine. So I didn't think about being a woman most of

30:36

the time, but now because of the

30:38

work I do, I do think about

30:40

the differences between the sexes and they

30:42

are big and they

30:45

are baked through. They're in every bit of us,

30:47

they're in every cell. What kind of thing? Oh

30:49

God, like, I mean, if you just look at your hand,

30:52

you have a man's hand. Well, you've chosen

30:54

the wrong person because despite my height,

30:56

which is tall, I have these little

30:58

hands. Yeah, but I mean, I have brothers who have little

31:00

hands. You do have bloody little hands. Yeah. Would you know that

31:02

these are male? If I just cut off the

31:04

hair here, would you know these are the little nails? Yeah, look

31:06

at the size of your palm. But look at the size of your palm. I've

31:09

got quite pretty nails though. Yeah, you've got short fingers

31:11

for somebody. Your hands are small because your fingers are

31:13

short. Your palm isn't small. Oh, is the palm big

31:15

then? Yeah, the palm is normal size. You've just got

31:18

little fingers. The little slaughters in. You've got little

31:20

fingers, yeah. Like, my sons have quite small hands for

31:22

men, but they have beautiful long fingers.

31:24

Yeah, I wish.

31:27

Nobody's easy and everything, so your hands are much stronger

31:29

than a woman's would be. One of the biggest sex

31:31

differences is in hand strength. Oh, so even if you and

31:33

I have the same, we might have to

31:36

say, guys, you don't have to actually touch me. It's all right. Mine

31:39

is slightly bigger. You really have got

31:41

tiny hands. Tiny hands, but mine would

31:43

be significantly stronger. Your wrists will be

31:45

stronger. You've got better bone density. You've

31:47

got tighter tendons. You've got, what else?

31:50

Your muscles aren't just stronger. They've got

31:52

more fast twitch fibre. They've got a

31:54

different constitution To them. Like, there are many reasons

31:56

why men run faster than women, right? And It's not

31:58

just men are bigger and stronger. Stronger. It's their

32:00

tendons or tie so so that they stole

32:02

more power. and they were bound by water.

32:05

As your hips the way that your

32:07

your pelvis works is very difference. And.

32:10

As you know to puts it puts force

32:12

through. Besser. This is that. There's.

32:15

So many things and your skill is

32:17

stronger. You've got your eyes a d

32:19

presets as you know your jaw. It's

32:22

not just that, it's a stronger jewel.

32:24

It's harder to break your jewel and

32:26

you're punching. Power That's one others A

32:29

very, very big differences because M

32:31

to punch you use your chest,

32:33

your shoulders, your back, your arms,

32:35

your hand, your fist unites all

32:37

of them. Sorry. Compounds a lot

32:39

of differences, all of which are

32:41

quite large so. The. Inner

32:43

this just these big differences and they're just a

32:45

city. Outfits is illogical ones as well. Let

32:48

women them and psyches. A difference. Alec

32:50

in part because of a lifetime in of one sex

32:52

being the rape sex on the other sites been the

32:55

make the raping sex and I'm not single. men are

32:57

rapists see I was. Reading. Some.

33:00

Is Madison, It'll only not you. This year you now

33:02

have been. Doing. Rebuttals in your head. I know it's. Mailers

33:04

and then people sometimes go. Can you stop explaining

33:07

selfish what has since you got your budget item?

33:09

I've read up a bit of a good at

33:11

as the over really successful by they just go

33:13

yeah student visas most sane sorry from south as

33:15

a nice. Subtle, but as as I did, I

33:17

went to the sort of big detour to say, like

33:20

being. Male or female. easy and everything

33:22

it's is immune. their a psychological differences

33:24

that it's hardly surprising. Evolution is very

33:26

powerful force. You. Know once I get

33:28

frightened for nine months breastfeeds, the other one, dozens.

33:30

Of. The see that's going to call psychological

33:33

differences because evolution works that way. anyway.

33:35

Suspect frightful you. What? Sex.

33:37

You are. I can't even remember

33:39

why we were talking about that. But it's oh yes,

33:41

Have you entered The isn't to you that a

33:43

woman there just isn't. It's. For the me

33:45

and my head despite his me with breasts and

33:47

a vagina to which is a very male way

33:49

to think about being a woman tussle I'm and

33:51

yes them yeah I know I mean it's. Amazed

33:53

the a male joke of like gone and have tapped his could

33:56

play with more. Than like over Gazans I miss

33:58

in his vision and attracted to myself. Yeah,

34:00

and that is the reason that some

34:02

men identify as women. That is a thing, isn't it? That

34:04

is a real thing. That's offensive, but it's a thing. I don't

34:06

think like that, obviously, because I actually am a woman. I

34:08

don't sit here thinking, God, I really can't work

34:10

because, you know, whoa, I've got this sort of vagina, you

34:12

know. Hang on, when you came in, you... But

34:15

you see what I mean? Like,

34:17

it isn't a you that's a woman, and... But

34:21

it feels like a very natural thing to say, oh, I'd love

34:23

to be a woman for a few days. What

34:26

woman? There is no woman there can be. To

34:28

an extent, there is this, you know, when you're

34:30

born, is it true you don't have a thing

34:32

yet, agenda, sex, whatever? Is that before you're born?

34:34

Sorry, and then... That's a myth. Something

34:36

to do with nipples. That's a bloody myth. Oh,

34:38

so there's this thing like, oh, everybody's conceived female. Like

34:40

that's the idea. That's the thing that people say. Yeah,

34:43

that's a myth. Wow. How can

34:45

it be true? I mean, it's your chromosomes that make you

34:47

male or female, and you've got your chromosomes from conception. What

34:50

they're actually saying is that we don't go

34:52

through sex differentiation for some weeks. And

34:57

there's this bizarre, like incredibly

34:59

baked in sexism that

35:02

to be a man is to actively have

35:05

something. And when you're null

35:07

or negative or lacking, that's female.

35:10

So in the weeks before, there's any

35:13

either that you could see from the

35:15

fetus, whether it was male or female,

35:17

they said that's female. Well, why? I mean, half of

35:19

them are male. So it's male as

35:21

well as female. It's like this thing. Sorry,

35:23

I'm really jumping all over the place. Like why

35:26

do girls who identify as non-binary cut off their

35:28

breasts? Like not having

35:30

breasts is male and having breasts is female.

35:32

So why is non-binary? Oh, they do. Non-binary.

35:35

That's the one that- Like

35:38

not all the time, but it's

35:40

really like non-binary girls cut their

35:42

hair short, bind their breasts

35:45

or have a mastectomy. And you're like,

35:47

so you're looking more like a boy. Why does that make you

35:49

non-binary? That's the in-bake sexism

35:52

because neutral- Yeah, it is. It's like

35:54

the girl is like the non-human sort

35:56

of thing and the real thing, the

35:58

thing that you want to be. is

36:00

the male. Got it. Non-binary,

36:02

and I was saying this to someone yesterday, I

36:04

think annoys me more because it's

36:07

insulting because it suggests that the rest of

36:09

us are binary. Yeah. So I'm just man.

36:11

And I keep saying this to people. I

36:13

feel quite feminine. Do I seem quite,

36:15

in some ways- You're a bit metrosexual or ice.

36:17

Well I don't do all the vanity stuff. I

36:19

don't do all that. If you really not like

36:22

to exfoliate on that, it's very nice skin. no,

36:26

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I

36:28

mean, I don't like to be that lady but

36:32

my idea is like the man I want to

36:34

be and I keep saying this. I'm sorry for

36:36

the listeners who are bored of hearing me say

36:38

it. Cause I can complaining. I go to the

36:40

David Lloyd because I play tennis and I hate

36:42

the men's changing room because of the snorting and

36:44

the hoefishness and the horrible noises coming out of

36:46

the shower and all these things. And I even

36:48

now say I stopped it now because for a

36:50

while I when they've made those noises, all

36:53

these horrible things and I won't go on to- I don't want to

36:55

know anything about this. It's all a closed

36:57

book to me, unfortunately. I'll continue then. And

37:01

I started going like, oh, like that to sort of

37:03

show these people I can't have it because I don't

37:05

want to, I'm trying to enjoy a nice shower here.

37:08

But I realised the noises I was

37:10

making might have sounded even more like sexual noises.

37:12

So I've stopped doing that now and there's just

37:14

nothing I can do. But

37:16

the point is that this- You

37:18

don't identify as a man and do all the

37:20

man things. Yeah, I could do it. Then I

37:22

go and play football and I love that. But

37:25

it's worse that they put

37:27

this on women. Because if

37:30

I identify with the social role of

37:32

woman or whatever the hell, I actively

37:35

choose to inhabit

37:38

the role of woman because I'm not non-binary

37:40

and I'm cis or whatever,

37:42

then that means basically that I'm identifying

37:44

with being oppressed. And I'm not trying

37:46

to say that women's lives are terrible

37:48

in this country or that we're constantly oppressed or

37:50

whatever. But the fact is, the

37:52

sexes are not equal in status. Still,

37:56

we're getting there. Well, we were

37:58

until this latest madness. But

38:00

so I'm meant to be actively happy about being

38:03

treated as a sex object or

38:05

as the You know with

38:07

contempt actually as older women who tend to

38:09

be like men get wiser women get disposable

38:12

Like there's no you well people get you

38:14

on the podcast and want to speak to you But

38:16

I mean, you know the insults that are aimed

38:19

at me are not the insults will be aimed

38:21

at a 55 year old man With my level

38:23

of grooming and my level of looks and my

38:25

level of clothes which is whatever level you think

38:27

I have I just you know, I get the

38:29

you know, you're a frump your you

38:31

know You're only jealous of trans

38:33

women because they're better looking than you You know,

38:35

this is bullshit. I get that as well and then that was

38:37

what I was gonna ask you I actually got this written I

38:40

was gonna ask about It's a really intriguing

38:42

thing since I saw I wasn't really talking about the gender

38:44

thing before I mostly talked about cults and it so happens

38:46

I consider this part of that and that got me into

38:48

the cult. Yeah Yeah, it got me in trouble for saying

38:50

and a lot of we didn't like that Okay, which is

38:52

the sign of a cult because they next communicated me enough

38:55

I'm amazed by the percentage of insults aimed

38:57

you're right at most a women but also

38:59

at me and anyone who questions That

39:01

focus on our looks and I'm just like

39:03

isn't the whole point that you're supposed to be this like really

39:05

nice Progressive person who doesn't care

39:07

about look I was talking with an interviewee and

39:09

about this and the comments were just like oh

39:13

Two guys with stupid faces who look like

39:15

they're older than they are or stick

39:17

mad things And I thought and it was

39:19

it was a trans person who's all smiley in their photos

39:21

and things Never go at you about

39:23

your look I mean, I mean

39:25

the internet can be a bit like that Of course like if

39:28

it's an anonymous person people's papers the look it's

39:30

always looks with them and I think it's it's

39:32

there Oh, well, I mean, I'm genocidal and

39:34

anti-semitic. I don't always look I forgot about that.

39:37

Yeah Yeah, the anti-semitic stuff that came from you

39:39

pointing out something which I think is established Which

39:41

is that there is a lot of money coming

39:43

in and it so happens that two of the

39:45

three or four people Yeah, I didn't even really

39:47

point that out exactly what I said was this was

39:49

top-down It's not a grassroots movement.

39:52

It's an astroturf movement Okay, I mean that I

39:54

think is very easy to establish

39:56

Okay, and in a short section

39:58

of my book I mentioned three

40:00

of the billionaires who have

40:02

put money into this. It didn't occur to me to

40:04

think about their religion because why on earth was it? I

40:07

mean, obviously I know that George Soros is

40:09

Jewish, but I mean, it didn't occur to me as I

40:11

flew past saying Open Society Foundations puts a fair bit

40:14

of money into this. I'm actually not even

40:16

sure it's Soros because I don't think he does much

40:18

in the direction of the

40:20

sort of social things that the

40:23

OSF funds. He cares

40:25

about democracy, and he cares about Orban,

40:27

and he cares about Trump, you know. Anyway,

40:29

so he was one of them. Obviously,

40:32

I knew he was Jewish. It didn't occur to me,

40:34

and I wouldn't have been able to tell you what

40:36

the other two were. And one of them isn't Jewish

40:38

anyway. But what my critic said was that I had

40:40

picked three Jewish billionaires. So

40:43

then somebody, not me, looked into it and said,

40:45

well, one of them isn't Jewish. And

40:47

they said, aha, he sounded Jewish, so

40:49

she thought he was Jewish. And

40:52

I also think, like, the chain

40:55

of reasoning that goes, she

40:58

says rich people are funding this,

41:00

she means the Jews, is

41:02

an incredibly anti-Semitic chain of reasoning.

41:05

Like, why would I mean that? No.

41:09

Again, it's that thing of because some people do do that,

41:11

you know, there are people, and that's not fair on you.

41:14

No, I know, but people do come into my head. Like, I just mean, like,

41:16

for your mind to go that way even, like, you're the

41:19

one who's thinking about conspiracy theories about Jews. Not

41:22

me. I mean, one of the nice

41:24

things that came out of that is that an orthodox rabbi

41:26

got in touch with me when he saw this, and he

41:28

spends his days. This is about two years

41:30

ago. This is shortly after my book came out. And

41:33

he spends his days obviously battling anti-Semitism. And

41:35

we're still now very good friends. And

41:37

so, you know, like, to

41:39

have an orthodox rabbi who sends me little

41:42

messages whenever he sees it kicking off, you know,

41:44

saying, you want to send me a message saying,

41:46

I know many anti-Semites, and you're my favourite. And

41:48

I just think that to myself every time it

41:50

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43:25

That was his community up. Say goodbye. I'm

43:27

Jewish myself, so I can say that, but

43:29

as some of the orthodox spots, spam doesn't

43:31

or bad stuff. Humbling. Yeah,

43:33

I mean I don't know. I don't think

43:35

of Isis. I'm not. I'm actually very on

43:38

interested in religion. Yeah.

43:40

School. The doesn't Interesting thing though because

43:42

the coachable of. Moon. twenty

43:44

years ago did tend to be the sort

43:47

of atheists the new atheists hitchens dawkins nurses

43:49

the religious right it seems to be near

43:51

a know this been like an alliance i

43:53

was a movie dawkins he posted images you

43:55

will see and as a sort of alliance

43:58

with the jordan peterson's in the bench heroes

44:00

of this world. I'm keener on Jordan

44:02

than I am on Ben. But I

44:04

mean, you know what, many, many, many

44:07

things have realigned in

44:09

ways that I think are very salutary. And

44:12

it's certainly I find it salutary for

44:14

me. Like I think I thought, you know,

44:16

a bunch of very superficial and easy

44:18

and glib things about progress and what

44:21

was bad and what was good. And, you

44:23

know, it's been very good for me

44:25

to have to think again about

44:27

people who are socially conservative or,

44:29

you know, to take

44:31

other people's beliefs much more seriously than I used to,

44:35

or to work as a sort of single issue

44:37

way with people. So, for

44:39

example, I really have got very little

44:41

in common with the worldview of an evangelical Christian

44:43

and in particular, like I really am a hardline

44:45

atheist, but in particular, I have a gay son.

44:48

And so I really find, you

44:52

know, I find it hard to think that there are

44:54

people who if he had been born into their family,

44:57

their freedom of belief means that

44:59

he's going to grow up thinking there's something wrong with

45:01

him. Because I'm absolutely certain

45:03

that in at least some cases, gay is

45:05

as baked in, gay and straight are as

45:07

baked in as male and female. I think so. And

45:09

I don't feel I know enough about the subject

45:12

to say always by any means, but I'm really

45:14

very certain that there is no version of my

45:16

son who is straight. Which which

45:19

order was your son? He's the younger one. And

45:21

I know that there's a connection, but I mean,

45:23

it's not a very strong one. Dr. James Cantor,

45:25

yeah, talks about that. Yeah, I mean, it's every

45:27

I mean, I have five brothers and they're all

45:29

straight. So that one didn't work there. Yeah. So

45:32

yes, it's but on the other hand, I now

45:35

know a bunch of evangelical Christians through this. And

45:37

I think that evangelical Christians are going to be

45:40

very important to the legal fight back against gender

45:42

self ID. Because there's this

45:44

strange thing where, you know, the whole

45:46

thing, it's so crazy. And it's so

45:49

everywhere that it comes into many, many people's professional

45:51

lives. Like if you're a nurse or a doctor or

45:53

a teacher or a lawyer, whatever, you're going to come

45:55

up against this. Or just in your

45:57

office, the EDI people are going to be telling you that men

45:59

are to be allowed to go into the women's toys if they

46:01

identify as women or whatever. You're going to come up against it

46:04

and most people have the common

46:06

sense to think this could blow

46:08

up my life and let someone else sort

46:11

it out. So who

46:13

doesn't do that? Basically someone who

46:15

thinks that immortal soul is on the line. So,

46:17

you know, and a few people

46:20

like me who for whatever reason got in too

46:22

deep before realising that, you know,

46:24

this is really, really toxic and it's going to change

46:26

your entire life. So the Evangelical Christians

46:28

are the people who are going to say

46:30

enough is enough in ways that are

46:32

incredibly helpful to protect all of us, all of our

46:34

freedom of speech, all of our freedom of belief. And

46:37

I think they're learning a lot too, because

46:40

you know, like I have to

46:42

say to when I'm talking to people like this, you

46:44

know, listen, you're wrong on gay, you're really wrong. I

46:46

respect your freedom of belief, but you're wrong on that.

46:49

And this is why I think this. So they're listening to

46:51

people outside their bubble too. It's

46:54

a weird I'm imagining us like I'm

46:56

an alien looking down at various different

46:58

tribes of people. And there's like the

47:00

new atheists and the creationists

47:02

or, you know, hating each other. Now they're

47:05

forming a bond. Yeah, because of their mutual

47:07

dislike of the other one, which is the

47:09

woke culture, which is a religious thing in

47:11

itself. And then in 20 years, the woke

47:13

will come with the others. Oh, I don't

47:15

think I don't think so. I mean, I don't

47:18

think there's going to be anything like this realignment

47:20

necessarily in another 20 years. This is a real

47:22

generation defined realignment. You

47:24

know, I mean, it is not an exaggeration to

47:26

say that, you know, the liberal

47:28

order and evidence based policymaking

47:31

and liberalism in general is under attack.

47:34

And that's something that has held obviously

47:36

with threats and going through wars and

47:38

so on. But like for way

47:40

over a century, and we're going

47:43

through a big realignment now. And those

47:46

of us who care about the liberal order

47:48

care about evidence based policymaking care about things

47:50

like That

47:54

human rights are universal as opposed to being

47:56

things that attach to. Hi

48:00

Tribes! Well we we all of us have

48:02

to. Come together and fight together. And of course, those people

48:04

can be found in all sorts of places. That conservatives

48:06

they are. and that progress is

48:09

there. Some religious, nonreligious day straits

48:11

that you know? Oh, it is.

48:13

It's It's hard to predict how

48:15

seriously someone takes this threat from

48:17

other things they do or believe.

48:20

Except of course we're fighting

48:23

against liberalism. Gonna post mates.

48:25

It's so complicated. As

48:27

and and how would you even be

48:29

able to Straw man. Veterans

48:32

I Activist arguments. I

48:35

mean. There's

48:38

so many different arguments in the so

48:40

inconsistent, but it's very difficult. I.

48:43

Mean. The thing the young people

48:45

say the most when they took him to me

48:47

is there nice like some every now and like

48:49

mostly that and talk. To me at if they

48:51

believe the stuffed. loads of young people do not

48:53

believe the stuff. By the way, loads of them.

48:56

I hear a lot from people saying thank you

48:58

for doing what you're doing. All my friends are

49:00

in this bullshit. You know? I can't say a

49:02

word with lobby completely cut off. but anyway, So

49:05

young people were in. This is they

49:07

do. Talk to me and in a

49:09

try to gently reeducate me what they

49:11

tend to think I once is a

49:13

return to very rigid gendered social roles.

49:16

Yeah, I mean this is completely absurd.

49:19

Like. An older generation of women who

49:21

smashed those down and and benefited from.

49:23

The work of my. Form. Others them that

49:25

you did. It was housed the Phd in.

49:28

That he mathematics ice became ah breadwinner. We

49:30

went out to Brazil on i was a

49:32

foreign correspondent. My husband followed me as the

49:34

dependence knives and looked up to the kids.

49:36

You know I've lived this very very very

49:39

and genders nice. But. They

49:41

think it's is. It does this. I can't even

49:43

hear what I'm saying And they can't hear what

49:45

they're saying themselves either. Like they are the ones

49:47

who. Are trying to put people back into boxes. Stay

49:49

think that if I'd. Describe.

49:51

Myself as doing what I suppose could because living

49:53

as a man despite the having had the baby's.

49:56

Doses. And be a. Man or something. My.

49:58

undies on with your body Yeah, I was born

50:01

in the wrong body wanting to be this person who's in

50:03

charge. And

50:05

it's hard to get them to hear it because they're so

50:07

sure that they think. They're so sure

50:09

that they know what I think and they're so 180

50:11

degrees wrong. And

50:14

also they shift ground. Like whenever you say that, they'll

50:16

say, oh no, it's not about social roles. It's

50:18

about an innate gendered feeling. Well

50:22

what innate gendered feeling? How would you

50:24

judge your innate gendered feeling and know that that

50:26

was the sort of gendered feeling that meant man

50:28

or woman without looking at the

50:30

social roles and the stereotypes? Oh

50:32

no, no, it's just it's ineffable. It's

50:35

like this makes no sense. It doesn't actually

50:37

make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense. So

50:39

it's not like creationism where I know what it is

50:41

they're saying. I think

50:43

it's false. That's a good, that's an interesting difference. I

50:46

think I know what they mean. There was

50:48

God, six thousand years, la di da. I don't

50:50

think there's any evidence for that. But if people

50:52

want to believe that, that's fine. I respect that.

50:55

This is, I am a woman. Okay, what does that

50:57

mean? What do you tell me? Well, I'm an adult

51:00

or human female. I mean,

51:02

I did a debate some weeks ago at

51:04

the Institute for Economic Affairs in

51:07

London. It

51:09

was a absolutely bizarre thing. I invite your listeners

51:12

to go and look it up. It's on YouTube.

51:14

So Peter Tatchell and a trans woman called

51:16

Frieda Wallace were the other people. It was

51:19

a debate really. It was very unusual in

51:21

this. And I and this guy

51:23

Mark Glendening, who's at the IEA, were that

51:26

this is all a threat to liberal values and so on.

51:28

And Peter and Frieda were on the

51:30

other side. And I mean, I'm going

51:32

to call Frieda he, him because I don't do

51:34

preferred pronouns. Frieda turned

51:36

up. There's a man in basically

51:38

fetish gear. And

51:42

fishnet tights that were really ripped at the groin

51:44

and then sat kind of displaying his groins to

51:47

the audience, which was mostly women, and

51:50

talked about how, you

51:53

know, he was

51:56

going to the torture garden fetish club this weekend

51:58

and he'd be fucking turb's husband. and

52:01

you know just absolutely

52:03

disgusting display of male sexual

52:06

aggression and entitlement. He insulted

52:08

my looks, he drank

52:10

his other way through it, he was really

52:12

drunk. Peter Tachl tried to stop him drinking, that was

52:14

hilarious. And the

52:16

whole thing like Peter

52:19

said that you

52:21

know he gave this absolutely extraordinary

52:23

definition of what it is to have a gender identity

52:25

that everyone has a gender identity and people in the

52:27

audience were saying I don't, and he was saying you

52:29

do, I can tell all your gender identities by the

52:32

way you dress. I know.

52:34

So I thought like I wish

52:36

I'd said this, I only thought of it

52:38

afterwards, like what about what Frida is wearing

52:40

and saying and doing makes you think that

52:42

this is a woman? Like it's a man

52:45

who's dressing as a woman for sexual thrills

52:47

and in order to, like as

52:51

a display of dominance over the women in the

52:53

audience, like it's such a male thing to do,

52:55

like this is a person living as a man,

52:58

like a minority man, a minority

53:00

way of living as a man, but I mean

53:02

absolutely as a man. Yeah I rarely do

53:04

that but I mean. Women really don't.

53:07

So there is an autism

53:09

link. Yeah there is. There is a

53:11

social contagion suggestion and

53:13

there is something I didn't know about

53:16

until I saw Helen Pluckrose's Twitter.

53:18

AGP. Yeah, so this is what this

53:21

is. Yeah it stands for autoglyphilia. I don't

53:23

want to diagnose Frida Wallace. I am not

53:25

a psychiatrist or a psychologist. So

53:27

setting Frida aside, it

53:30

is a relatively common male sexual fetish to get a

53:32

thrill out of cross-dressing. It's a while

53:36

ago but there was a study in Sweden which

53:38

was anonymised and it which seems to be about the

53:40

best estimate 3% of men erotically cross-dressed to

53:42

masturbate. 3%? 3% yeah.

53:44

I bet you it's more actually. But

53:49

those men, whether they remain

53:51

in you know accepting that they're

53:53

men and they keep the cross dressing in the

53:55

bedroom for the weekend or the you know cross

53:57

dressing clubs or whatever or whether they

53:59

bring their fetish out of the closet and go out dressed

54:01

as women and find that thrilling, that

54:04

depends on the society they're in. So,

54:07

you know, there's parts of the world where obviously men

54:09

don't go around dressed as women because they'd get gay-bashed

54:11

or, you know, women don't have rights as they wouldn't

54:14

want to identify as women. But here, of

54:16

course, you're going to be standing and brave. So

54:18

men who are sexual fetishists and

54:20

crossdressers for erotic purposes

54:23

will largely identify now as trans women. What's

54:26

really sad is a lot of gay people

54:28

fought really hard for rights. It's very serious

54:30

rights. And okay, you can have fun while

54:32

doing it sometimes if you want to celebrate.

54:34

There's nothing wrong with that. But I've heard

54:36

a lot of gay people today saying, you

54:39

know, the way that it's

54:41

morphed into this queer-slash-LGBT thing and

54:43

people are just dressing incredibly sexually.

54:46

I went to a gay

54:48

rights... What's pride? Berlin.

54:51

And I looked down and... It's public sex. This

54:53

is a guy giving another guy a blowjob. That's

54:55

not something I've seen before. It's not something I'm

54:57

comfortable seeing. I'm certainly not comfortable with kids around

54:59

me seeing that. That's just going on. And it's

55:01

amazing they're able to get away with it, pretending

55:04

it's anything to do with the rights of gay people who

55:06

are looking at this going, why have you done this? Yeah,

55:08

why are all the fetishists out? Why are the...

55:10

Like it's turned into a display of male

55:13

sexual license. And I mean, like

55:15

straight men would enjoy a lot of sexual license

55:17

if they were allowed to do it as well.

55:19

But it's nothing to do with being gay or

55:21

straight. It's to do with being male. That's not

55:23

a very female thing to do. No. It's a male thing to do,

55:29

but you're not allowed to do it if you're straight, you're allowed to

55:31

do it if you're gay. It's

55:34

under cover of the

55:36

rainbow flag. And it's so unfair

55:38

to gay people, most gay people. Most gay

55:40

people, like most straight people, don't particularly want

55:42

to smash social norms. They want to be

55:44

upstanding members of society who, by the way,

55:47

and this is relevant only to their sexual

55:49

partners, are interested in same sex ones rather

55:51

than opposite sex. I

55:53

mean, I don't know. There was... I mean,

55:56

Pete Buttigieg is the classic example of a

55:58

gay man who seems to to be very

56:00

uninterested in gay as an identity. He just wishes

56:02

to live with his husband rather than a potential

56:04

wife, that's all. And there was this

56:06

remarkable article in the LA Review of Books some

56:08

years ago. I think it was

56:11

in the LA Review of Books, pretty sure it was. And

56:13

they put him on the cover looking very square, standing

56:16

in front of a very square sort of looking

56:18

house. And it

56:20

was heterosexuality without women. So

56:24

I know it's heterosexuality as

56:26

a style, as a

56:29

life. So offensive

56:32

against gay people. I know, hugely offensive. I mean,

56:34

it means that you can be straight. Like if

56:36

you've ever heard this expression spicy straight? So

56:38

spicy straight are people who are straight but queer.

56:42

So you're a woman who only

56:44

sleeps with men, you might have kissed

56:46

a girl and you like to possibly. But you know, you're

56:52

bisexual. So that's a

56:54

spicy straight. So LGBT groups now

56:56

are basically becoming inundated with straight people who

56:59

don't want to be straight because straight is

57:01

boring. And so

57:03

they're in there. You know, I mean, somebody I know

57:05

was talking to me about her

57:07

non binary identifying daughter recently, and

57:10

mentioned, you know, my daughter who's part of, I didn't say

57:12

daughter, obviously, but I'm going to and

57:14

who's a member of the LGBTQIA++

57:17

community. I just thought like, is

57:19

my gay son in that community? I don't

57:22

think so. Because what have they

57:24

got in common? She's a straight girl. And

57:27

he's a gay boy. And

57:29

the things they have in common aren't about

57:31

sexuality. It's

57:34

become a symbol LGBTQI of

57:36

like, I'm part of this quasi.

57:38

I'm not boring. It's what it

57:40

means. I'm not boring. I'm not

57:42

basically. I mean,

57:45

I can't think of anything more boring. Oh, my God, I

57:47

know. And it's it's also it's got that very teenage

57:49

vibe of it like, you know, everybody's a rebel

57:51

in exactly the same way. Yes,

57:54

man. What okay, what

57:56

I still think is that people are going to be listening and I

57:58

always get these sort of questions. Why

58:00

not just be kind? And I know we've covered

58:03

many of these, but what is the

58:05

main thing that you're saying, this is why

58:07

this is really dangerous? Yeah, that's a

58:09

great question. And it's actually what I spend my

58:11

days doing there with sex matters. So the short

58:14

version is four words, other people have rights.

58:17

So there's a stupid

58:19

thing that they say in this movement, which is

58:21

rights are not a pie. Or like,

58:23

what does it mean to you? Like a pie is

58:25

something you divide up and one person gets more and

58:27

another person gets less rights really are a pie in

58:29

many cases. So you know,

58:31

one person's freedom of speech is another person's infringement

58:33

of privacy. One person's privacy

58:36

is another person's infringement of freedom of

58:38

speech. Those are two human rights that

58:40

collide. And often you have to

58:42

weigh them up against each other. So every time a

58:45

celebrity goes to court to stop the publication

58:48

of paparazzi pictures, they are infringing on the

58:50

freedom of speech of the press. And

58:52

if they lose, the press is infringing

58:55

on their privacy. Yeah, so that's just an example

58:57

of how it is not true that human rights

58:59

are not pie. Human rights are often pie, right?

59:03

And some human rights depend on being able

59:05

to recognize the sex of people around you, in

59:08

particular, women's privacy rights, women's

59:10

safety, women's

59:13

ability to recover from trauma, especially

59:15

sexual trauma. Those

59:18

things rely on women being able to recognize

59:20

who is male and who is female and

59:22

to act on that recognition. So

59:24

if you are a woman who has been raped and

59:26

you wish to go to a place where you can

59:29

recover, and that will mean for you to be entirely

59:31

male free space. And a

59:33

man says, what is it to you if I identify

59:35

as a woman, it's everything to you, it's going to ruin your

59:37

male free space. And that's like

59:39

a really sort of big example of it, like

59:42

a really pointed example of it. But just in

59:44

everyday situations, women are not

59:46

safe, undressing in places where

59:48

men have free access. And that,

59:51

you know, you told me things I didn't know about means changing

59:53

rooms, and I wish I hadn't known them. How do you

59:55

not know that they make all these horrible noises,

59:57

unseemly noisy? I didn't know this. thought

1:00:00

it was obvious about. No, I mean I know

1:00:02

that men we on the seats because I've got to go into toilets after

1:00:04

them but I've never used a changing room that I shared with men. Seats,

1:00:07

I mean what about sinks? I

1:00:09

know, I know, I know that. I know that because I've

1:00:12

got brothers who played sports and traveled and you

1:00:14

know complained about you know drunk

1:00:17

roommates coming back in and using the sink. Yeah.

1:00:19

Disgusting, anyway disgusting human beings. Sorry you're not, you're

1:00:21

lovely, I've got sons and brothers that all lovely

1:00:23

people. You're right and I know you're thinking some

1:00:25

people go no all men and that thing. I

1:00:27

would say to those men, first

1:00:29

I can't stand the other side, men who are like the man

1:00:32

is like oh you men are all horrible and I'm nice

1:00:34

but I would say to those men if you had to

1:00:36

leave your daughter or girlfriend or wife or whoever it is

1:00:38

in a room with a stranger and you don't know who

1:00:40

it is would you rather it be a woman or a

1:00:42

man? Yeah. And if you don't want them to be a

1:00:44

man why is that? It doesn't mean that they're all, we're

1:00:46

all bad. Most men are lovely. It's not a character reference

1:00:48

to men to say I don't want them in my

1:00:51

changing room. Yeah. I don't want my son in

1:00:53

my changing room either like you know he's a

1:00:55

grown-up, he'd be embarrassing and I understand that there

1:00:58

are cultures like Finland where that's not the case,

1:01:00

where families do sound naked together. I'm

1:01:02

not Finnish and my boundaries

1:01:05

are my boundaries. So for women to

1:01:07

be able to have boundaries which is absolutely

1:01:09

essential for women to live as full human

1:01:11

beings with full autonomy, you know to be

1:01:13

able to take full part in public life,

1:01:15

women need to be able to say you're

1:01:17

male, you're not welcome in here and

1:01:21

if that male person says what's it to you, I say well

1:01:23

it's my rights, it's my right to

1:01:25

privacy, it's my right to dignity, it's

1:01:27

my safety and on occasion it's even

1:01:30

more than that. Like if

1:01:32

you think about like the

1:01:34

most extreme examples are

1:01:36

medical examination. So there was

1:01:38

this extraordinary episode a year or two ago in

1:01:40

Scotland where a bill was put forward to

1:01:43

enable women who were reporting rape

1:01:46

and had to have a forensic exam. So

1:01:48

this is going to mean a vaginal exam,

1:01:50

an uncomfortable vaginal exam, possibly an anal exam

1:01:52

as well, you know putting fingers inside

1:01:55

you that that woman could request

1:01:57

a forensics specialist to

1:01:59

a female. And

1:02:01

the Scottish government opposed an

1:02:03

amendment to say really female, not identifying as

1:02:06

female, but really female. And this turned into

1:02:08

a big debate in Hollyrood and in fact

1:02:10

the amendment passed. But anyone who

1:02:12

voted against it or argued against it was

1:02:15

literally arguing that

1:02:17

a raped woman should

1:02:19

be forced to accept a man

1:02:21

putting his fingers in her vagina. Right?

1:02:25

And she isn't allowed to say that that is

1:02:27

what has happened. That if she says no,

1:02:29

you're a man, she will either not get

1:02:32

care, not be able to have any

1:02:34

chance of a rape prosecution, not be able

1:02:36

to check for internal injuries or anything like that, or

1:02:38

she'll be called the biggest. Right? That's

1:02:41

actually an Article 3 violation in human

1:02:43

rights terms. Article 3 is the

1:02:46

prohibition on torture or human degrading

1:02:48

treatment. So that's

1:02:51

when the rubber really hits the road when a man

1:02:54

who says he's a woman thinks that gives him the

1:02:56

right to do an internal examination of a raped woman. In the

1:02:59

name of progressive values. In the name of progressive

1:03:01

values. So whenever I say these

1:03:03

things, people say, oh, you're picking the most extreme

1:03:05

examples. And that is

1:03:07

correct. But as a mathematician, that's what you do.

1:03:09

You look for the reductio ad absurdum, as

1:03:11

it's called. You say start with

1:03:13

these premises. The premise is that what makes you a man

1:03:15

or a woman is what you say you are. And

1:03:18

then follow that chain of reasoning to its logical

1:03:20

conclusion. Well, if men and women are groups

1:03:23

that are self defined, then

1:03:25

you will have rapists in women's jails. You will

1:03:27

have men winning women's sports prizes, and you will

1:03:29

have, sure as eggs as eggs, you will have

1:03:31

men who think it's their right to put their fingers

1:03:33

in a woman's vagina. And she has no right

1:03:36

to even say that's what's happening. That is just

1:03:38

logic. You just unfold it. So

1:03:40

I get to that point and I say that's

1:03:42

the reductio ad absurdum that shows me the premise

1:03:44

was false. That's the

1:03:46

way that a proof by contradiction works in mathematics.

1:03:48

Start with your premise, work forward the logic, get

1:03:50

to a point that's absurd, like

1:03:52

in maths it's a contradiction, and

1:03:55

then say write the starting premises were false. Also,

1:03:58

I mean, what? same point I

1:04:00

think but we have

1:04:02

laws to protect us from the extremes.

1:04:04

Yes that's correct. People get offended and I understand they're offended

1:04:07

because oh you think we're all going to be like that?

1:04:09

No, I don't think it will, I think a very very

1:04:12

small minority just like probably the same number of men I

1:04:14

don't know who might take advantage of things like that. We

1:04:17

don't need laws for average Joe blocking attacking you

1:04:19

because he's not going to attack you. And

1:04:22

then the other thing they often say is you know we

1:04:24

don't take rights away from entire groups on the

1:04:26

basis of the behaviour of minority. Well

1:04:28

actually we do and we

1:04:30

do in any situation where they're safeguarding. So

1:04:33

when people say that I know they know nothing

1:04:35

about safeguarding like actually Peter Tatchell said this again

1:04:37

and again in that IEA debate and you know

1:04:39

it was so annoying there were five people on the

1:04:41

panel including the chair and he just everything he said

1:04:44

I wanted to just say Peter let me stop you right

1:04:46

there you don't know what you're talking about and many

1:04:48

points flew by. But anyway again and again he

1:04:50

said this you know you can't take rights away from

1:04:52

all trans people because of the behaviour of minority. Well

1:04:55

think about school and safeguarding. You

1:04:58

are not allowed to go into a school at

1:05:00

all without going through the police checks. Schools

1:05:03

have hard bright lines like no adults

1:05:05

on their own ever with a child

1:05:08

unless the door is open. None

1:05:11

not one. No male

1:05:13

teachers go into the female spaces

1:05:15

ever not one because

1:05:17

as soon as you allow any loophole

1:05:20

well who uses it the pedophiles the

1:05:22

opiates the groomers you know whatever. So

1:05:25

we actually do have hard bright line

1:05:27

rules in situations where

1:05:29

failure is catastrophic. So

1:05:32

when I say I don't want any men

1:05:34

in women's spaces no matter how those men

1:05:37

identify I'm not saying all men are rapists

1:05:39

I'm not saying you know

1:05:41

all men who identify as women are rapists I'm

1:05:43

just saying well I'm saying two things

1:05:45

one is I don't want them there because I'd be embarrassed

1:05:47

it's uncomfortable and that's my right. But I'm

1:05:50

also saying if I allow some of them in

1:05:52

guess what the ones who want to do it

1:05:54

are disproportionately the specific ones that's worth

1:05:56

those are the ones doing it. Yeah. So

1:05:59

any any man who oversees. steps women's boundaries by

1:06:01

coming into women's spaces has already

1:06:03

demonstrated he doesn't care about women's boundaries.

1:06:06

He's exactly the worst sort of man to be

1:06:08

in there. I tell you what, as

1:06:10

well in men's changing rooms, there is a kind

1:06:12

of guy, those of these men who just, they'll

1:06:14

just be like drying their hair and they'll have

1:06:16

their like genitalia. Yeah. Right

1:06:18

in front of them, they'll just say, oh, I saw you

1:06:21

playing tennis. I'm sitting down. There's women

1:06:23

like that too, actually. I'm just flabbergasted. I'm like,

1:06:25

I should not be this close to your appendage.

1:06:27

People vary so much on that. I

1:06:29

spend all my days, spent so much

1:06:31

more of my days talking

1:06:33

about things that I just

1:06:35

was able to ignore when I was the, I was the finance editor of

1:06:38

The Economist, by the way, when I read

1:06:41

my book. I was talking about banking

1:06:43

regulation. I did a special report

1:06:46

on digital banking for

1:06:48

consumers and travels to China

1:06:50

and Korea and

1:06:52

Singapore for it while I was thinking about

1:06:55

these issues. So bizarre, real quick but

1:06:57

yeah, I mean, I think back to the changing

1:06:59

rooms in the building where The Economist was and

1:07:01

still is. And that is really

1:07:03

people who just do that. They wander around completely

1:07:06

naked, women who wander around completely naked. They're drying

1:07:08

their hair and they're chatting to you and there's

1:07:10

other people who like get entirely dressed in the

1:07:12

shower cubicle. Yeah. So yeah, people

1:07:14

are really varied, but people are entitled to

1:07:16

their own boundaries. Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate

1:07:18

that. Why

1:07:20

is it, I mean, you talk to the side on, I'm

1:07:23

finding that almost impossible. So I think

1:07:25

you are as well. What's going on? I

1:07:28

mean, I'd like to say they know

1:07:30

their arguments are idiotic, but I don't think that's

1:07:32

true unfortunately. No. I

1:07:34

mean, Peter Tatchell just keeps saying the same things. And

1:07:37

I mean, I've literally debunked them as in chapter and verse

1:07:39

debunked some of them. And I still see her in two

1:07:41

weeks later saying them again. So it's not stopping them. And

1:07:43

I mean, I'll give Peter one thing he was willing to

1:07:45

turn up and talk. Yeah, most of them. It's good for

1:07:48

him. Yeah.

1:07:50

Why? Like, I

1:07:55

think for a lot of the

1:07:57

people who identify as trans, like the ones for whom

1:07:59

this is really important. important, it

1:08:01

falls into the category of things that you

1:08:04

can't really explain. It's a feeling like

1:08:07

I've said and I stand by my statements that, you

1:08:09

know, no man can feel like a woman. Whatever it

1:08:11

is, he's feeling is a man's feeling. But

1:08:15

to them, it feels like a religious people

1:08:17

feeling the direct presence of God. And

1:08:21

that's just not something that you can debate like

1:08:23

religious people don't debate that either. They may debate

1:08:25

other things, but they wouldn't enter

1:08:27

into head to head on with you on the

1:08:30

ineffable feeling that there is a God. Like,

1:08:34

where the debate is that I say that doesn't mean that

1:08:36

God's real, that's just a feeling you have. And

1:08:39

so a trans identified person who feels like really, I

1:08:41

know I am a woman, whatever that means, or I

1:08:43

know I am a man. And I

1:08:46

say, I hear you just

1:08:48

doesn't mean anything to me doesn't make you a woman who doesn't make

1:08:51

you a man. But what more is there to say? Yeah, like,

1:08:55

this is just not the sort of thing that can be an

1:08:57

argument. All we can do in the end to say we have

1:08:59

freedom of belief in this country.

1:09:01

Yeah, you believe what you believe, I believe

1:09:03

what I believe. And don't you try and make

1:09:05

me believe your belief. But I can

1:09:07

see that you're a man. You tell

1:09:09

me you're a woman and I'm like, think what you

1:09:11

like, but don't come into women's spaces because you're not.

1:09:14

Like, as long as we get to that point. And

1:09:16

then the other reason is I think because of course,

1:09:18

around trans identified people, there's this enormous and much

1:09:20

larger group of people for whom this is

1:09:22

the social justice movement of our time. And

1:09:26

for those people, unfortunately,

1:09:28

there's a narrative that

1:09:31

just was not the case in social

1:09:33

justice activism 20 years ago, that even

1:09:35

to debate, you don't debate people's rights. You're

1:09:38

like, seriously, we don't debate people's rights. Like,

1:09:40

look back at the history of ending slavery.

1:09:43

They did nothing but debate us. If

1:09:46

somebody said to me, there's a debate now whether

1:09:48

Jews should be killed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the

1:09:50

one they use. Yeah,

1:09:52

that's, you know, that video the

1:09:54

other day of the Penn State and Harvard

1:09:56

presidents. Yeah, they're being asked very clearly this

1:09:59

genocide and same genocide against Jews, is that against

1:10:01

your terms of service? And we know that they would

1:10:03

say it's against terms of service to misgender someone. Yeah.

1:10:06

100%. Genocide against Jews and one after another

1:10:08

just, well, it depends on the context. I

1:10:10

know, amazing, isn't it? Like we are upside down

1:10:12

world, we are such upside down world. But like,

1:10:15

if you want to take people's rights

1:10:17

away, or gain rights that are

1:10:19

not there in law, you're going to have to do

1:10:21

the work. So at the moment

1:10:24

in this country, it is the law

1:10:26

that there are two sexes, and that

1:10:28

that's really biological, and people can't change

1:10:30

sex except in certain limited legal situations. And you've got

1:10:32

to go through a big process and only 6000 people

1:10:34

have ever done that. That's the law. If

1:10:36

you want to change that, you have to do the work. And

1:10:39

I'm totally entitled to say I think that the law shouldn't

1:10:41

change. I mean, that's

1:10:43

the way it was with gay marriage. That the law

1:10:45

was it had to be a man or a woman. And if you

1:10:47

want to change that you had to do the work.

1:10:50

And people did the work, my God, they

1:10:52

set up charities, they argued, they debated, they,

1:10:55

you know, demonstrated how, you

1:10:58

know, gay men during the AIDS crisis weren't

1:11:00

able to act as next of kin for

1:11:02

their much loved partners, who ended up being

1:11:04

ended up being shut out of hospital, hospital

1:11:07

rooms, you know, they demonstrated it, they debated

1:11:09

it, and they won. And now

1:11:12

the narrative is that you should just go, it's

1:11:14

my right. And

1:11:16

I mean, if, if it was the other way around

1:11:18

that the law was that there's no such

1:11:21

thing as sex, or that for some reason, we've

1:11:23

decided to have these two categories called male and female,

1:11:25

but everyone just says which they are like, why the hell would

1:11:27

we do that, by the way? But anyway, if that was the law,

1:11:29

then it would be on me to have to debate. Oh, yeah,

1:11:31

we would. And we would. But instead, we've

1:11:33

got this mad situation where you know, I

1:11:35

the person who is defending the

1:11:37

law, material reality and public opinion,

1:11:40

and the one who's having to do all the work. Well,

1:11:43

we're pleased that you do. I've got

1:11:45

one more question for you. But first, tell

1:11:47

us where you want people to go and

1:11:49

see your stuff. All right. So I have

1:11:51

a website, the Helen joyce.com. Somebody else got

1:11:54

Helen joyce.com first, obviously. And, and

1:11:56

I'm on Twitter more than I should be because I

1:11:58

tend to use Twitter as the punctuation between writing

1:12:00

paragraphs and such like so and that is

1:12:02

H Joyce gender those the two

1:12:04

places to find me oh another column in the critic

1:12:06

okay we will put a link below I want to

1:12:08

ask you who

1:12:10

is a heretic that you

1:12:13

admire God yeah I should ask people before

1:12:15

yeah no I mean I'm going to be sycophantic and say

1:12:17

the woman that I work with at sex matters yeah

1:12:20

then my a forest eater so

1:12:22

I mean we actually had our Christmas

1:12:25

party last night to the day before recording this and

1:12:27

I had to say some words about Maya and the

1:12:29

thing is she's somebody who went through a president

1:12:32

setting legal case so she

1:12:34

was kicked out of the Center for

1:12:36

what's it called Center for Development Studies

1:12:38

see see she's a center for global

1:12:41

development that's it an American think tank that

1:12:43

has an arm in London and

1:12:45

in 2018 when the government

1:12:48

was considering introducing self-idea so the

1:12:50

policy that you just said which

1:12:52

sex you were yourselves she

1:12:54

said in work that she thought that was a bad idea and

1:12:56

why and she ended up

1:12:58

being unlawfully dismissed and so she

1:13:01

went to court she lost in the employment

1:13:03

tribunal she won in the hierarchy if you

1:13:05

don't know about this it's mad reading the

1:13:07

original judgment said that it was akin

1:13:09

to Nazism to believe that there

1:13:11

are two sexes and you can't change your sex it

1:13:14

was not worthy of respect in a democratic society so

1:13:16

she went to the appeal tribunal and that

1:13:18

was overturned in its entirety and that set a

1:13:20

precedent so it is now illegal to discriminate

1:13:23

in employment or the provision of goods

1:13:25

or services on the basis

1:13:27

of somebody thinking that there are two sexes that

1:13:29

matters they've continued to happen so she did that

1:13:31

it does continue to happen so she did that

1:13:33

and it took her five years but

1:13:36

what's interesting about that bit of heresy

1:13:38

on her part is that and you

1:13:41

know I now know a lot about what it takes to

1:13:43

do a big legal case and

1:13:46

really almost nobody can do it

1:13:48

because either you're sane in

1:13:50

which case you don't put yourself through this you

1:13:52

just apologize at work and stop talking or

1:13:55

you're nuts so you don't do that but then

1:13:58

you make an absolutely dreadful witness and you in

1:14:00

the picture of five years of being called a

1:14:02

bigot and going through and being cross-examined and so

1:14:04

on. And every now and then you find

1:14:07

somebody who's got the right sort of crazy

1:14:09

to insist on it and the right sort of saying to

1:14:11

do it well admires that person. So she's

1:14:13

just this incredibly phlegmatic person who

1:14:15

just nothing seems to bother her but she

1:14:18

still deeply cares, which is

1:14:20

an unusual combination. We'll have to go on the

1:14:22

podcast. Very impressive. I have to go

1:14:24

on the podcast. No, you should do. Thank

1:14:27

you, Helen Joyce. I thought she was an absolute

1:14:29

tour de force. Really, really good.

1:14:31

She is still quite clearly a bit

1:14:33

of a lefty, I think, and she

1:14:36

disagrees with many who are on the right who are

1:14:39

gender critical. And I think that's really, really

1:14:41

good. I think that we can't all just... There's

1:14:43

nothing more boring, as Christopher Hitchens always points out,

1:14:45

than somebody where you can guess one, you know,

1:14:47

from knowing one of their views, you can guess

1:14:50

all of their views. So it's really interesting to

1:14:52

listen to Helen. I hope you enjoyed that. Do

1:14:55

go check out Trans When Ideology Meets Reality

1:14:57

to understand more about the nuances

1:14:59

in her beliefs and

1:15:01

see the YouTube version of that. But

1:15:03

importantly, share this audio podcast

1:15:06

heretic with everyone you know,

1:15:08

because it's the only way an audio podcast

1:15:10

can grow. And a lot of people are

1:15:12

now getting upset with it because some of

1:15:14

these views, a lot of new people are

1:15:16

coming along. There's been a changing of the

1:15:18

guards here. And I would

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appreciate your help in promulgating

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