0:11

Yo!" Dude, smoothies are

0:14

such bullshit. What? What? What?

0:19

Welcome to Mike's Hot Takes! Dude. I've

0:22

been fucking lied to! Everyone is telling me to drink

0:24

smoothies. They're like... Because, you know, I like drink too much

0:26

coffee in the morning, and then I go to the gym,

0:28

and then I'm like... dead, tired, and

0:30

I'm just like a black hole for like three hours.

0:32

Yes. And they're like, try a smoothie instead of breakfast.

0:34

And so now I'm drinking smoothies. And

0:36

I drink a smoothie, and then like 30

0:39

minutes later, I'm fucking starving! No, smoothies are

0:41

delicious. Yeah, they're great. But the idea that

0:43

they're gonna stay with you is... Yeah. ...false.

0:45

We're back to my... my beefs with soup

0:47

and salad. It's like, why? What's the

0:49

point of this? I wanna be

0:52

done eating. I wanna go do things other than

0:54

eating. Do you wanna go grab a spoon of

0:56

peanut butter now? No, I think it's good, actually.

0:58

I think I'm... I think I'm at my best

1:00

when I'm only running on like coffee, Tums, and

1:03

well-butrin. I did see a

1:05

sticker this weekend that just said, at

1:07

my best when I'm at my worst. Oh,

1:09

that's pretty fun. I do feel like that

1:12

is what you described. Well, maybe we

1:14

have a tagline. Maybe we have a tagline.

1:16

Maybe that's it. No, I got a... I

1:18

got a tagline for us. Don't worry about

1:20

it. You thought about it in advance? I

1:22

thought about it while I was falling asleep.

1:24

So it might be terrible. All right, give

1:26

it... Give it to me. Hi, everybody. And

1:28

welcome to the SASS report. Wait,

1:31

what? Are we not talking about

1:33

the CAS report? Oh, god.

1:38

Jesus Christ. Okay,

1:42

no more before you go to bed. Aubrey,

1:44

no more dream journal. Fucking taglines.

1:46

No more thinking of it in

1:48

advance. Oh

1:51

my god. You

1:53

know what? We're trying. We're doing our best. Are

1:55

we? Is that our best? I'm

2:02

Michael Hopps. I am Aubrey Gordon. If you

2:05

would like to support the show, you can

2:07

do that at patreon.com/maintenance phase. Michael

2:10

Aubrey. Today we're

2:12

continuing our conversation about Rapid

2:15

Onset Gender Dysphoria. Yes. Yes.

2:18

So Aubrey, do you want to

2:20

recap us on what we learned

2:22

last episode? Rapid Onset Gender

2:25

Dysphoria made its

2:27

way into the news cycle, sounding

2:29

very legitimate and diagnostic and so

2:31

on and so forth. But last

2:34

time we learned that its origin

2:36

was in basically like

2:39

transphobic message boards. Yes.

2:41

And that the primary

2:43

sort of storytellers around

2:45

this were parents who

2:47

appeared to be having a profoundly

2:49

transphobic response or at the

2:51

very least, like high levels

2:54

of discomfort. Yes. With

2:56

their own kids having

2:58

come out as trans. Yes. Last

3:01

week's episode was essentially a

3:03

bizarre human centipede story where

3:05

there's these parents whose kids

3:07

come out as trans to

3:09

them and they

3:11

essentially speculate, oh, I

3:13

don't think she's really trans. I think

3:16

she's being pied piperd by the

3:18

Internet and her peers and the culture

3:20

around her. And so I'm

3:23

just going to assume that this is some sort

3:25

of like fake temporary thing. And if

3:27

I resist it long enough, she will drop it. And

3:30

despite there being essentially no evidence for

3:32

this, this narrative starts to appear in

3:35

the mainstream media. Eventually,

3:37

we have a poster abstract in

3:39

an academic journal where a researcher

3:41

named Lisa Littman does what looks

3:44

like an exploration of this phenomenon,

3:46

but it's actually just a survey

3:49

of the same pretty small number

3:51

of parents. So that doesn't really

3:53

tell us anything about the phenomenon

3:55

itself. It only tells us about

3:57

the perceptions and beliefs of these

3:59

parents. I would be very upset

4:01

if there was research into gay people

4:04

and the way that they got their

4:06

data was by like asking James Dobson.

4:09

Why did you ask the gay people who were

4:12

right there, huh? So we are now going to

4:14

doodle-loo back to 2018. This

4:17

is the first time we get mainstream,

4:20

quote unquote, evidence for

4:22

rapid onset gender dysphoria.

4:25

This is the publication of the full

4:27

version of that very, very brief study

4:30

we talked about last episode by Lisa

4:32

Littman. This is basically just an anonymous

4:34

survey of a bunch of parents. Lisa

4:36

Littman posted recruitment advertisements on these three

4:39

anti-trans websites, asked parents to fill

4:41

out the survey, and then they held it out.

4:43

There's 90 questions. That's it. That's the whole study. Gotcha.

4:45

So there's going to be a lot of debate and

4:47

discourse about this article, which we will get into.

4:50

But one of the most striking things

4:52

about going back to the research for

4:54

this episode is how almost all of

4:56

the documents that this movement cites

4:59

as part of its kind of evidence base for

5:01

this narrative, how just

5:04

openly low rent and

5:06

transphobic they are. Oh, God. So

5:09

we are going to read some excerpts from

5:11

the study. This is an excerpt from the

5:13

results section where she

5:15

is talking about parents describing

5:18

the experience of hearing their

5:20

kids come out to them as trans. Eighty

5:23

one percent of the parents answered

5:25

affirmatively that their child's announcement of

5:27

being transgender came, quote, out of

5:30

the blue without significant prior evidence

5:32

of gender dysphoria. Almost

5:34

a third of respondents noted that their child

5:36

did not seem gender dysphoric when they made

5:38

their announcement. This one's so weird. Dude, it's

5:40

like, oh, they didn't they didn't seem like

5:42

they had gender dysphoria when they told me

5:44

they're trans. Did you believe it? Yeah.

5:46

Yeah. Did they really

5:48

sell it? I didn't seem gay when I told

5:51

my parents I was gay. That's not that's not

5:53

really for them to decide. This goes back to

5:55

the post that we read last time around, right?

5:57

Which is just like they didn't

5:59

seem like. they were deeply unhappy

6:01

and tortured by their own body.

6:03

We're like, whatever it was, right?

6:05

People are looking for like a deep sense

6:07

of suffering. Also, I was lying. I did

6:09

seem gay when I told my parents I

6:12

was gay. But you seemed gay at every

6:14

moment. I see that every moment of my

6:16

entire life. Family photo that I've seen. I

6:18

can hear our parents butting

6:21

and, you seemed real gay.

6:23

You actually did seem super gay. All

6:25

right. 69%

6:29

of respondents believed that their child was

6:31

using language that they found online when

6:33

they quote unquote came out. Come out

6:35

in scare quotes. I had never seen

6:37

that before I started researching this. Oh man,

6:39

this was all over our many,

6:42

many, many anti-LGBT testimonies. Oh

6:44

yeah. Oh, coming out. Coming

6:46

out. Oh, god. Of

6:49

the 51 responses describing reasons why

6:51

respondents thought their child was reproducing

6:53

language they found online, the top

6:55

two reasons were that it didn't

6:57

sound like their child's voice and

6:59

that the parent later looked online

7:02

and recognized the same words and

7:04

phrases that their child used when

7:06

they announced a transgender identity. One

7:09

parent said, quote, it seemed different from

7:11

the way she usually talked. I remember

7:13

thinking it was like hearing someone who

7:15

had memorized a lot of definitions for

7:18

a vocabulary test. Another

7:20

respondent said, the email my child sent

7:22

to me read like all the narratives

7:24

posted online almost word for word. The

7:26

obvious explanation here is that like if

7:28

your parents are kind of conservative or

7:30

a little bit anti-trans, you're going to

7:32

Google like things to say to them

7:34

for the coming out process. Also, like

7:36

maybe that's something you come across and

7:38

looking to talk to your parents about

7:40

it. It also might be stuff that

7:42

you come across in like figuring

7:45

out your own identity stuff. Totally. There are

7:47

lots and lots of ways that this could

7:49

come to be that don't mean like,

7:52

Oh, no, invasion of the body

7:54

snatchers. I actually think the study

7:57

is very useful and very interesting

7:59

because. It's a portrait

8:01

of parental anxieties. Yes. It

8:04

says in these respondent answers, it says

8:06

it mirrors language

8:09

that I found online afterwards. So

8:11

it's like their kids come out to those trends, they

8:13

then immediately go on the internet and they're like, where

8:15

is she getting this stuff? They basically

8:17

self radicalize, right? They find these videos, they

8:20

find tumblers, they find other things online, and

8:22

then they start thinking that their kid is

8:24

like some sort of automaton. My kid has

8:26

been taken from me. I feel completely hooked

8:28

on this idea of like, what does it

8:31

mean to say something gender dysphorically?

8:33

Yeah, yeah, I know. Oh yes,

8:35

that is a statement of gender

8:37

dysphor... Got it. She was doing

8:39

the John Wayne voice the whole time

8:41

she posted. Seems a little, she kept

8:43

saying, pardon her? I don't know why

8:45

she did that. Da-ha, da-ha. So we're

8:48

gonna read one more excerpt, and like this

8:50

is, this is just unbelievable,

8:52

okay? Okay, the groups targeted for

8:54

mocking by the friend groups are

8:56

often heterosexual people and non-transgender people.

8:59

Sometimes animosity was also directed

9:02

towards males, white people, gay

9:04

and lesbian, non-transgender people, aromantic

9:07

and asexual people, and quote

9:09

unquote, TERFs. Don't

9:14

respond, don't respond. Don't unquote me,

9:17

the writer of this. Sorry. Ha

9:19

ha ha ha ha. One

9:23

participant explained, quote, they are

9:25

constantly putting down straight white

9:27

people for being privileged, dumb

9:29

and boring. Boring. Another

9:34

participant elaborated, in general,

9:36

cisgendered people are considered

9:38

evil and unsupportive, regardless

9:40

of their actual views on the topic. I

9:42

fucking love this. Regardless of their actual

9:45

views. They call you transphobic, regardless of what

9:47

you believe. What do you believe? My daughter's not

9:49

trans. Yes, Emily, well. Ha

9:52

ha ha ha. To be

9:54

heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you

9:57

were assigned at birth, and non-minority

9:59

places you. in the most evil

10:01

of categories with this group of

10:03

friends. Statement of

10:05

opinions by the evil cisgendered

10:08

population are considered phobic and

10:10

discriminatory and are generally discounted

10:12

as unenlightened. Another

10:15

participant said, quote, I

10:17

hear them disparaging heterosexuality,

10:19

marriage and nuclear families.

10:22

What? Another participant said on

10:24

my daughter's Tumblr blog, she

10:26

has liked or favorited or

10:28

reposted disparaging comments about those

10:30

who aren't transgender or seem

10:32

to misunderstand the transgender identity.

10:35

Boy, if you are digging through

10:37

your kids' Tumblr likes, dude, that's

10:39

that's exactly where my brain went.

10:41

I was like, this is a

10:43

level of like self radicalization

10:46

that is really alarming. Yeah. Later in

10:48

this paper, it says also

10:50

as evidence that, you know, my daughter is being

10:52

taken from me or whatever, says she edited her

10:54

diary. I was just about to

10:57

make a diary joke about. She thinks

10:59

I'm invading her privacy, which I wouldn't

11:01

know if I didn't have to read

11:03

her diary all the time. Yeah. If you're

11:05

looking for someone who's being radicalized on

11:07

the Internet, may I introduce you to

11:09

a mirror? No, I mean,

11:11

that's also the social contagion thing is also fascinating,

11:13

too. Right. Right. Because it's clear that these parents

11:15

are like whipping each other up and like, you

11:17

know, they're posting, you know, quote unquote research that

11:19

shows that like trans people don't really have high

11:21

suicide rates, blah, blah, blah. Some of these

11:24

stories from the parents are like honestly

11:26

very sad. It's like these these parents who

11:28

essentially choose like online forums over

11:31

their relationships with their own kids. A lot of

11:33

them are just not in contact with their kids

11:35

anymore because they can't handle just

11:37

saying we love you no matter what.

11:39

I actually think there's something a little

11:41

bit more insidious even than like they're

11:44

positing that all trans identities are fake.

11:46

That's not what they're positing. They're

11:48

positing that all trans identities are

11:50

subject to the approval of cis

11:53

people. So this is actually the

11:55

explicit project of this study. I

11:57

am going to send you an

11:59

excerpt from the. conclusion. The conclusion

12:02

of this exploratory study is that

12:04

clinicians need to be very cautious

12:06

before relying solely on self-report when

12:08

adolescents and young adults seek social,

12:11

medical, or surgical transition. Adolescents and

12:13

young adults are not trained medical

12:15

professionals. When

12:18

they diagnose their own symptoms based on

12:20

what they read on the internet and

12:22

hear from their friends, it is quite

12:24

possible for them to reach incorrect conclusions.

12:27

It is the duty of the clinician,

12:29

when seeing a new adolescent or young

12:31

adult patient seeking transition,

12:34

to perform their own evaluation and

12:36

differential diagnosis to determine if the

12:38

patient is correct or incorrect in

12:40

their self-assessment of their symptoms and

12:43

their conviction that they would benefit

12:45

from transition. If a patient is

12:47

correct or incorrect in their self-assessment,

12:51

it also says, this is a couple paragraphs

12:53

later, the patient's history being

12:55

significantly different than their parent's account

12:57

of the child's history should be

12:59

seen as a red flag that

13:01

a more thorough investigation is needed.

13:04

This was an entry point to

13:06

weakening abortion protections in the U.S.

13:08

was parental notification. And that's essentially

13:10

what they're advocating here, right? It's

13:13

actually good for these kids if you

13:15

out them to their parents who they

13:17

probably haven't told for a fucking reason.

13:19

There's also the thing that we see

13:21

in a lot of reactionary movements where

13:23

the demands of the reactionaries

13:25

are things that are already in place, right?

13:27

They're like, we think kids should be assessed

13:30

before they get hormones and surgery. It's like,

13:32

yes, they are. Right. The barriers

13:34

to getting hormones and surgery as a minor are

13:36

extremely high and you can't

13:39

transition without parental permission already. All of

13:41

this really hinges on the idea that

13:43

like, legal minors

13:46

who are transgender have

13:49

an undue amount of social power

13:51

and influence and need to be

13:54

checked. Yeah, we're sick of coddling

13:56

these trans kids as

13:58

a society. It's too much. Enough is

14:00

enough. But then, OK, but then my

14:02

favorite thing about this study, not only

14:04

just how kind of like honest face

14:06

janky it is, is like essentially every

14:08

other study of this kind,

14:11

while trying to generate evidence

14:13

of rapid onset, gender dysphoria, it

14:16

ends up generating evidence of the

14:18

opposite. So as one of the

14:20

questions to these parents, it's like,

14:22

when did your kid come out? Did your kid go to

14:24

a gender clinic? Did your kid change their hairstyle? Blah,

14:27

blah, blah. So there's 256 parents

14:29

who fill out this survey. Only 11% of

14:33

their kids ended up getting hormones. 2.7%

14:36

ended up getting puberty blockers. And 2%

14:38

ended up having surgery. So if it

14:40

were the case that people are tricking

14:42

doctors into giving them this care, if

14:44

it were the case that doctors themselves

14:46

were like tractor-beaming kids through all

14:48

these medical procedures, we would see way

14:51

more than 10%, 15% of kids getting

14:54

gender-affirming care. I also think this is

14:56

where it reveals, the whole sort of

14:59

endeavor reveals itself to be less about

15:01

concern and more about concern trolling, right?

15:04

It's certainly not about the

15:06

ins and outs of what

15:08

health insurance covers, or

15:10

what doctors are permitted to do, any of

15:12

that kind of stuff. This is all just

15:14

ways of like eating around the edges of

15:17

like a much bigger thing that

15:19

they're trying to eliminate, which is the health care

15:21

for trans people. Yeah. I

15:23

mean, this episode, like all episodes that

15:26

we do, is a extended sub-tweet of Brexit.

15:28

This is exactly what happened with Brexit too. They're like,

15:31

all we're asking for is like a slightly

15:33

updated arrangement. And then like every single time

15:35

they get what they want, they just push it farther and farther

15:37

and farther. And they've ended up with like

15:39

the hardest imaginable Brexit. And like you can't negotiate

15:41

with people who are not actually saying things

15:43

in good faith. They're saying what they know you

15:45

will agree to. And the minute you agree to it,

15:48

they'll push you to the next quote unquote reasonable ask.

15:50

And that's what's happened in like the

15:52

UK. I was gonna say something specific, but it's just

15:54

the UK at this point. Yeah, the whole thing. The

15:57

whole thing. All of it. So this

15:59

article... comes out in August of 2018

16:02

in November of this year, Lisa

16:05

Litman, the author of the paper,

16:07

presents it at the annual meeting

16:09

of the American Academy of Child

16:11

and Adolescent Psychiatry and

16:14

there's a description of

16:16

her presentation which we're only reading because

16:18

I think it's extremely funny. Following

16:21

Dr. Litman's presentation, there was

16:23

no applause. Sorry. Got

16:26

her. Okay. Got her. Okay.

16:33

Following Dr. Litman's presentation, there

16:35

was no applause before several

16:37

audience members launched into questions.

16:40

Some were more civil than others, but

16:42

pretty much all were critical. One

16:45

audience member pointedly asked Dr. Litman

16:47

what she had previously studied in

16:49

her research OB-GYN public

16:51

health issues and whether

16:54

she has worked with any transgender patients

16:56

in the past, she has not. Narrator

16:58

voice. Narrator voice. Her?

17:06

Another questioner at the end repeatedly asked

17:08

her, why did you do this study

17:11

and what's wrong with taking on a

17:13

different gender identity to which she would

17:15

only say that we should keep open

17:18

the possibility that there may be social

17:20

contagion occurring. I

17:22

love that the questions are just like, why? Why?

17:25

Why? Why are you doing this? Like, you're just

17:27

like sputtering. What if

17:30

it's neutral, but what if it's happening

17:32

because of social contagion? You're

17:35

just describing like fashion at this point.

17:37

Wow, we may be, why

17:39

else would people be wearing cargo pants

17:41

right now? So I think this is

17:43

a good summary of the kind of

17:45

academic response to this. And

17:47

before you know it, there start to

17:50

be more formal methodological critiques in various

17:52

journals. So the main thing is that

17:55

Litman is trying to identify

17:57

a phenomenon among kids that

17:59

does The

20:00

previous title of the paper, the original title,

20:02

was Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria

20:04

in Adolescents and Young Adults, a Study

20:06

of Parental Reports, and the updated title

20:09

is Parent Reports of Adolescent and Young

20:11

Adults Perceived to Show Signs of a

20:13

Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria. What

20:15

I find so frustrating about this is

20:18

that Littman herself and a lot of

20:20

conservatives do like this weird victory lap

20:23

about this statement, we've reached the

20:25

conclusion that the study and the

20:28

resultant data represent a valid contribution

20:30

to the scientific literature. Like the

20:32

thing they say before the butt, essentially. Because

20:36

oftentimes what you see, what you see in kind

20:38

of debates about this in like reply guy world

20:40

is that you're like, yeah, the study's like discredited

20:42

and then people will be like, well, it wasn't

20:44

retracted. Well, okay. This

20:47

is like a movie poster where

20:49

the quote from a critic is

20:51

just like watchable. Yeah, it is

20:53

so damned with faint praise.

20:55

There's also an unbelievably tedious

20:58

thing where originally Brown University,

21:00

where Lisa Littman was employed, puts out

21:02

a press release saying like, our researcher

21:04

has a study that found these things.

21:07

And after these

21:10

major corrections to the paper, Brown

21:12

then deletes the press release from

21:14

its website. So there's all this

21:16

like outcry. And the president of Brown

21:19

releases a statement saying, we

21:21

respect the academic freedom of everybody who works

21:23

at Brown. We don't

21:25

want to sort of spread messages that

21:28

might cause harm to the transgender community.

21:30

We're leaving up the study. Like we're

21:32

not retracting the study. We're not deleting

21:34

it from anything. We're just deleting the

21:36

press release. Ultimately, I don't know, relatively

21:38

minor thing, but the right goes

21:40

ballistic. Ben

21:43

Shapiro writes a piece

21:45

for the Daily Wire called a

21:47

Brown University researcher released a study

21:49

about teens imitating their peers by

21:51

turning trans. The left went insane,

21:54

so Brown caved. The left

21:56

went insane. Quillette has, as

21:59

a former. Dean of Harvard

22:01

Medical School, I question Brown's failure

22:03

to defend Lisa Lippmann. They did

22:05

defend her. Fox News

22:07

has Brown U censors gender

22:09

dysphoria study, worried that findings

22:12

might invalidate the perspectives of

22:14

transgender community. The study, you can

22:16

go look at the study and read the study. Nothing

22:18

has been censored. But I think this

22:21

Brown University little dust up thing

22:23

is indicative of one of the big

22:26

shifts that starts happening over the course

22:28

of the next couple of years, after

22:30

2019, is that the

22:33

anti-trans movement starts

22:35

to become increasingly

22:37

conspiratorial. This whole kind

22:39

of narrative, when you think about it, it

22:41

already kind of is a conspiracy

22:43

theory in that it requires you to

22:45

believe hundreds of doctors

22:47

are giving these irreversible procedures

22:49

to kids with no assessment

22:51

because they're so blinded

22:54

by their SJW trans

22:56

ideology that they don't even care. You're

22:59

already in a conspiracy mindset. And

23:01

then this whole thing of Brown

23:03

University censored the research. And the trans

23:05

activists are coming after us. It creates

23:08

this thing that we see in other

23:10

conspiracy theories where everything becomes about these

23:12

meta debates, about you can't even ask

23:14

the questions anymore. When

23:16

you look at sort of anti-trans rhetoric and these

23:19

organizations of parents or whoever it is, they

23:21

spend a huge amount of time on like,

23:24

she tried to publish her research. But then

23:26

it was censored. Whether or not it was

23:28

censored is kind of irrelevant to whether or

23:30

not the narrative holds up on the merits.

23:33

People's work can be censored for political reasons,

23:35

but it can also be censored because it's

23:37

bad. Research on flat

23:39

earth also gets censored. This

23:41

actually appears in a later interview with one of

23:43

the people who's kind of leading this crusade. He

23:45

says, researchers who have touched

23:48

this topic have been punished for their

23:50

curiosity. Just ask Lisa Littman. Ultimately, her

23:52

paper on the subject resulted in unnecessary

23:55

correction by the journal to publish it

23:57

and the loss of Littman's academic. He

30:01

was slightly taken aback that I, a psychologist,

30:03

wanted to meet him. What? I don't

30:06

know. But he also appeared

30:08

slightly flattered. He told me

30:10

his name was Edwin. Edwin is

30:12

a feminine man, one of

30:14

the most feminine men I have ever met.

30:17

I do not ask Edwin about his childhood because

30:20

I do not need to. I

30:22

already know that Edwin played with dolls

30:25

and loathed football, that his

30:27

best friends were girls. There

30:29

is some chance that if I ever

30:32

see Edwin again, his name and appearance

30:34

will be changed to those of a

30:36

woman. Even for a

30:38

gay man, Edwin's appearance and manner

30:40

are exceedingly feminine. He

30:43

would stand out in a gay bar, but

30:45

he'd receive little romantic attention there. First of

30:47

all, how do you know? Yeah, what is

30:49

this weird dig at Edwin? Ugh, god. Yeah,

30:52

I mean, gay men are misogynistic as fuck on this

30:54

stuff, but when straight people talk about this shit, I'm

30:56

like, take Edwin's name out of

30:59

your mouth. Also, femmes are getting laid. Don't worry

31:01

about it. Wait, I have to take off my

31:03

carpal tunnel splints. Hang on, hang on. Femmes

31:06

are getting laid. Femmes.

31:08

He is near the boundary of male

31:10

and female, and someday he may cross

31:12

it. If he does,

31:15

one primary motive will be lust.

31:18

One cannot understand transsexualism

31:21

without studying transsexual sexuality.

31:24

Transsexuals lead remarkable sex lives.

31:27

Those who love men become women

31:30

to attract them. Jesus Christ. Do

31:32

I know? Those who love women

31:34

become the women they love. Although

31:38

transsexuals are cultural hot

31:40

commodities right now, writers

31:42

have either been too

31:45

shallow or too squeamish

31:47

to give transsexual sexuality the

31:49

attention it deserves. No

31:52

longer. Also, trans writers

31:54

have not been too shallow or

31:56

too squeamish to write about transsexuality.

31:58

That's been happening. the

34:01

fucksaw incident. What? And

34:05

I was like, Mike, you have 180 pages of notes. Don't

34:08

open a bunch of other tabs. Don't

34:10

find out what the fuck the fucksaw

34:12

incident was, but I didn't have the

34:14

strength. You and I know why we do

34:16

this show. I didn't have the strength. Finding

34:18

out about fucksaws. It's

34:23

a non-zero factor. Okay, and then all

34:25

day I'm thinking about it, and I'm

34:28

like, what is the fucksaw incident?

34:30

What is it? Also,

34:33

I would just say anything

34:35

involving a fucksaw is

34:37

an incident. I need it. My definition.

34:40

I need it. I need it. It's

34:45

not like a quiet evening with the fucksaw. Sunday

34:49

afternoons. What the fucksaw?

34:54

Oh no, Michael, I might be

34:56

destroyed. Do you want to know

34:58

what the fucksaw incident was? I don't

35:00

know if I can take it. Okay. Okay,

35:02

so 2011, he's a teacher at Northeastern, and

35:07

he teaches about sexuality. He does

35:09

sexuality classes. And so he's doing

35:12

an optional lecture on kink, the

35:15

kink community. And so he brings in

35:17

two kinky people. I

35:20

thought the fucksaw was gonna be a joke

35:22

name or something that a student came up

35:24

with. This is what the kink performers call

35:26

it. So it's a saw, like a saw

35:28

blade, you know, that you use for like

35:30

home construction. But if you

35:32

take off the saw and you put on

35:34

a dildo, then it's like a dildo

35:37

like going in and out. I'm doing this with my

35:39

hand right now. You can't see it. Oh, sure. So

35:41

it's like a jackhammer. It's like a dildo jackhammer, basically.

35:44

And so apparently they're having this

35:46

class and they're describing having sex

35:48

with this woman with the fucksaw.

35:51

And one of them is like, you know, we actually

35:53

have the fucksaw with us right now. Should

35:56

we demonstrate this? Hello,

36:00

students, I happen to have my fucksaw

36:02

on me. It's

36:08

in my civic outside. Give me a second.

36:11

I brought it to school. Then they

36:13

go out and they get the

36:16

fucksaw. I love this. This

36:18

man like uses

36:20

the fucksaw on this woman and

36:22

brings her to like numerous orgasms.

36:24

You're this is made up. This

36:26

is fucking real. This is made up. This

36:28

becomes like a whole big thing. And like the whole country

36:31

is like clowning on this professor who like let

36:33

this happen because apparently they're like, is this cool?

36:35

And he's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. We're all adults

36:37

here. There's eventually

36:40

an interview with him in Salon where

36:43

they're like, what is

36:45

like the deal with this whole outcry? And he's

36:47

saying like it's not a big deal because it's like

36:49

an optional lecture. All the kids in

36:51

college are adults. And he says it

36:54

took no more than 10 minutes of

36:56

the hour long presentation. So

37:01

it's one fucking six. Amazing. Of

37:03

the thing of 10 minutes of

37:06

this woman just having orgasm after orgasm.

37:08

Watching somebody have sex in a lecture

37:10

hall for 10 minutes is a long

37:13

amount of time. So boring,

37:15

honestly, after the first one.

37:18

Like how much fucksaw do we need? So

37:21

that's that's J. Michael Bailey.

37:23

Jesus hell. That's our guy. That's

37:26

our guy. I was

37:28

like a weird long day about

37:30

the fucksaw. We're keeping it.

37:32

Good. I love that you're like,

37:35

this is totally inappropriate for a

37:37

university. Let's just dedicate 25 minutes

37:39

of our podcast. I wanted to

37:41

be exactly one sixth of our podcast the way that

37:43

it was one sixth of the lecture. Oh, I think

37:45

that's fair. I want to keep

37:47

structural integrity. How many of the lecture

37:49

halls full of students are we going

37:52

to reach? Yes. So back

37:54

to the reason why we're talking about the fucksaw. This

37:57

2023 article that is attempting to prove the existence

37:59

of rapid onset. gendered dysphoria. One

38:01

of the authors is the fucksaw guy, Jay

38:03

Michael Bailey. The other author

38:06

is a woman named Susanna Diaz. And the

38:08

way that the study comes about is Jay

38:11

Michael Bailey goes to a conference

38:13

organized by Susanna Diaz. And he's

38:16

talking to her about this website

38:18

that she founded called Parents of

38:20

ROGD Kids. She mentions

38:23

that she has all of this data.

38:25

She has a survey that she has

38:27

sent to the users of this site.

38:29

And that is the basis of this

38:31

study. So right off

38:33

the bat, you can tell that

38:35

this has exactly the same problems

38:37

as the previous study, right? This

38:39

is just essentially a sketchy online

38:41

survey. And it's recruited

38:43

parents who already believe in the concept of

38:46

rapid onset gender dysphoria. So of course, they're

38:48

going to report that they've seen it in

38:50

their kids. That's why they're on this website.

38:52

But the kind of amazing thing is that

38:55

both of those factors are even worse

38:57

in this study. So first of all,

38:59

the data is even sketchier, because

39:03

Susanna Diaz is not her real name. Jay

39:05

Michael Bailey says that like, Oh, because the

39:07

trans activists were so mean to Lisa Lippmann,

39:09

she has no choice but to use a

39:11

pseudonym. He says, my co

39:13

author Susanna Diaz doesn't go by her

39:16

real name. I don't even know it,

39:18

despite having met her in person once

39:20

and spoken with her many times. She

39:22

uses a pseudonym to protect her family,

39:24

especially her daughter, whom Susanna believes has

39:26

rapid onset gender dysphoria. This

39:28

is just a lady who founded this website

39:31

and then says that she surveyed people. But

39:33

there's very little information about the sort of

39:35

methodology and like logistics of the

39:37

survey. And secondly,

39:39

this website that she founded parents

39:42

of ROGD kids, I mean, the

39:44

previous study also recruited parents from

39:46

these anti trans websites. This

39:48

website makes fourth wave now

39:50

look like P flag. So if

39:53

you go to the like our position,

39:55

like the basic about us statement

39:57

on their website, it says our position

40:01

1. Identifying as the opposite gender is

40:03

not normal. Oh, good. In most cases,

40:05

it's a symptom of severe psychological pain

40:08

or dysfunction, or an attempt to resolve

40:10

some other issue. 2.

40:12

Our children are subjected to strong

40:14

cultural influences that promote transitioning. 3.

40:17

The gender-affirmative model is a form of conversion

40:19

therapy. What? I know. Sorry. Dude,

40:21

this is the rhetorical equivalent of a fuck

40:24

saw. Okay, okay. There were fuck sawing us.

40:26

Not in the good way. 4.

40:29

The current standard of care, the gender-affirmative model,

40:31

is unproven. 5. Our

40:33

gender dysphoric children, youth, and adults

40:35

are being experimented on. 6.

40:38

The gender-affirmative model prolongs suffering and

40:41

causes further trauma. 7.

40:43

Professionals who accept an individual

40:46

self-diagnosis and propose medical intervention

40:48

are negligent. Jesus Christmas. 8.

40:51

Medical intervention for gender dysphoria should

40:53

be a last resort. So this

40:55

is very openly an anti-trans

40:58

organization. As you know, my

41:00

brain is broken in such

41:02

a way that it can

41:04

only be treated by recreationally

41:06

watching the Montana legislature. Yes.

41:08

And this was a huge,

41:11

huge, huge fight last session.

41:13

Yeah. There were people making these sorts

41:16

of claims about like kids are being

41:18

rushed into transition and but the whole

41:20

time I was watching it, I was

41:23

like, in Montana? Yeah,

41:25

I know. In Montana. Right?

41:28

Like the places where the moral

41:30

panic is the strongest are

41:32

the places where it is also like the

41:35

most disapproved of. It's just

41:38

real nonsense. And it's a real dead

41:41

giveaway that people are just turning off

41:43

their critical thinking brains at all. They're

41:46

just freaked out and their hypothalamuses are like,

41:48

this is the only part of your brain

41:50

that works right now. And so

41:52

we're not going to spend as much time on this as we

41:54

did on the Lisa Lippmann survey, mostly because this is as much

41:57

time on it as we did on the. fuck

42:00

song? No. Mostly

42:05

because this is essentially the same

42:08

thing again, but like even

42:10

jankier. So in

42:12

the sort of consent form, it

42:15

says who should complete this survey?

42:17

You should complete this survey if

42:19

your child, A, had a relatively

42:21

normal childhood without showing any signs

42:24

of discomfort with their gender and

42:26

B, suddenly, seemingly out of the

42:28

blue, decided they identified as the

42:30

opposite gender or some other quote

42:33

unquote gender. Why gender in scare

42:35

quotes is a new one for me.

42:37

Just like the whole concept of it.

42:39

I don't fucking know. And

42:42

then in the recruitment criteria,

42:44

they say that their respondents are

42:47

reporting like they get

42:49

like a median age of rapid onset

42:51

gender dysphoria and they say that the

42:53

range is between three to greater

42:56

than 25 years. So

42:58

like what child at age three is

43:01

doing rapid onset gender dysphoria. How

43:03

would you like is the three

43:05

year old on TikTok? Yeah, they

43:08

say we limited subsequent analyses to

43:10

parent reports on youths whose gender

43:13

dysphoria was reported to begin between

43:15

ages 11 and 21. So why

43:17

are you including people over 18? They're

43:20

not children then. Yeah. Again, this guy's like such

43:22

just like so non credible

43:24

to me. He says

43:27

he says this in interviews afterwards after

43:29

this paper gets a lot of criticism. He

43:31

says we identified 1655 cases of rapid

43:33

onset gender dysphoria, a significant number

43:38

for activists to ignore. You didn't

43:40

identify cases. Yeah. These are

43:42

not cases. You identified parents.

43:44

Yeah. Also that whole like

43:46

for activists to ignore. I'm like,

43:49

A, what are you doing? Yeah. And

43:51

B, like what else have people

43:53

been ignoring? Right? Like again, this

43:55

is the like, unlike some grocery

43:58

stores, you'll never find. You're

44:01

sort of like trying to

44:04

insinuate that anyone who is

44:06

supportive of trans people is

44:08

like ignoring data or willfully

44:10

shutting down some kind

44:13

of like more science driven conversation. But

44:15

you're not making the implicit explicit, right?

44:17

You're sort of like doing these big

44:19

broad gestures to be like, you know

44:21

how they are. And it's like, no,

44:23

you have to tell me how they

44:25

are. There's then we're

44:27

not going to go into it, but

44:30

like, there's been a whole tedious, like

44:32

debate thing. And this paper is eventually

44:34

retracted. The reason why it's retracted is

44:36

because they never got ethics approval. Oh,

44:39

Jesus, always a good fucking sign. The

44:41

funny thing is too, is like on the

44:43

kind of broader and more substantive critiques, he's

44:46

like, well, the limitations section of the paper,

44:48

like said these weren't representative, which

44:51

like, I guess, but also you can't just

44:53

publish a super shitty study and then have

44:55

limitations be like, well, the study is super

44:57

shitty. So

44:59

after this happens, the paper is

45:02

retracted. You then get another tedious

45:04

wave of like someone published an

45:06

article that questioned the trans orthodoxy

45:08

and they were canceled. He

45:11

writes like two different first

45:14

person accounts, one of which

45:16

for Barry Weiss's website. You got to give

45:18

me a trigger warning before I know it's

45:20

bad. Don't say it three times. You know,

45:23

the headline is my research on gender dysphoria

45:25

was censored, but I won't be. Oh, Lord.

45:27

If rapid onset gender dysphoria was real, you

45:29

would be talking about the real evidence for

45:31

it. You would be pointing us to evidence.

45:34

You wouldn't be talking about like this guy's

45:36

paper was retracted. This guy's like super jank

45:38

balls. Paper was retracted. Well, I think part

45:40

of like what's at the core of what's

45:43

happening here is a thing that

45:45

I thought about a lot as an organizer, which

45:47

is what happens when people

45:49

believe that their discomfort has to

45:51

be resolved in order for other

45:54

people to do other things with

45:56

their own lives. Right. Yeah. wrote

54:00

an article for Barry Weiss's blog

54:02

called, I thought I was saving

54:04

trans kids, now I'm blowing the

54:06

whistle. And this was part

54:09

of a kind of a media rollout that

54:11

also included a sworn affidavit that she filed

54:13

with the Missouri Attorney General. And

54:15

in this affidavit and in this article,

54:17

she basically says that like kids were

54:19

being rushed through processes, they're barely getting

54:21

seen by psychologists, and yet the doctors

54:24

are like, we think you're trans, here's

54:26

some hormones. But once she files this,

54:28

once it goes public, people start noticing

54:30

that she's making some implausible

54:32

claims in this affidavit as

54:34

well. So at one point,

54:36

she says that a kid

54:38

comes in identifying as a communist

54:41

attack helicopter, human, female,

54:43

maybe non-binary, and was put

54:46

on hormones. And I

54:48

don't know if you know this, Aubrey, but this thing

54:50

of I'm an attack helicopter, it's like

54:52

a really well-known right-wing meme. It's

54:54

something that right-wing people say to

54:56

basically invalidate trans people, like, oh, you identify

54:59

as a woman, well, I identify as an

55:01

attack helicopter. It's all the bumper stickers that

55:03

say, my truck identifies as a Prius or

55:05

whatever. Yeah, it's the one fucking joke. They

55:07

only have one fucking joke, right? And so

55:10

this attack helicopter thing strikes people

55:12

as like, was this maybe someone

55:14

who was joking or maybe this whistleblower

55:16

like read it on a website and

55:18

like thought it was real or something,

55:20

like something weird is going on. But

55:22

then to me, the far more implausible

55:24

claim that she makes in this article

55:26

and in this affidavit, she says the

55:28

clinic routinely issued puberty blockers or cross-sex

55:30

hormones without parental consent. If those kids

55:32

are under 18, that's extraordinarily

55:34

unlikely. If this was true,

55:36

I mean, it's a very

55:38

risky strategy for

55:41

this clinic, right? Because you're opening yourself up to

55:44

litigation. And there's also the question of like insurance

55:46

and kind of the administration of the American healthcare

55:48

system that someone is paying for these procedures. And

55:51

so the parents are getting a bill from a

55:53

gender clinic for a shot of

55:55

puberty blockers every three months and

55:57

they're not noticing, right? And also

55:59

their kid is visibly transitioning. Every

56:03

single person who works in health care is like,

56:05

I don't think so. As usual, this

56:07

is something that, of course, there's this big victory

56:10

lap of, you're finally have to admit

56:12

that these clinics are pushing kids through. But

56:14

then local reporters start looking around and saying,

56:16

well, OK, this person alleges that a ton

56:18

of kids are pushed through procedures. Well, let's

56:20

find some of them. Let's go talk to

56:23

people. And so a local reporter finds almost

56:25

two dozen parents of kids who were seen

56:27

at the clinic, and every single one of

56:29

them says that they don't agree with the

56:31

characterization of this whistleblower at all. It took

56:34

a long time, and they were really thoroughly

56:36

assessed, and were happy with the procedures.

56:38

And they even talked to some kind of like anti-trans

56:40

parents who were like, yeah, we didn't think that our

56:42

daughter was trans at all, but we don't think that

56:44

she was rushed through anything. We think that they went

56:46

really, really slow. And eventually, she didn't get care, partly

56:49

because we weren't happy with it. So

56:52

it's like, they just can't find anybody.

56:54

And to this day, as far as

56:56

I know, not a single individual

56:58

named person has come forward and said,

57:00

yes, this happened to me at this

57:02

clinic. All we've had is numerous people

57:04

come forward and say, no, this isn't

57:06

my experience at all. It's really fascinating

57:08

to me that not really anywhere in

57:11

the sort of storytelling of this stuff.

57:14

Does anyone go, I think this person might

57:16

just be really uncomfortable with trans people? Yeah,

57:18

yeah, yeah. And as I always say, I'm

57:20

not going to litigate what is in this

57:23

person's heart. I'm not going to speculate

57:25

about their motives or what they really believe or whatever. But

57:27

in her own affidavit and in this Barry

57:30

Weiss article, she routinely misgenders kids that come

57:32

to this clinic. Jesus Christ. It's pretty really,

57:34

really, really low bar. It's also

57:36

just like a sign of a fucking gremlin

57:38

of a person. Dude, I know it's so

57:40

easy. If you introduce yourself

57:42

to me as Michael, hi, my

57:45

name's Michael. I wouldn't be like,

57:47

Mikey, Emdog. What

57:50

does your birth certificate say? You

57:52

wouldn't do that. That's weird. You're

57:54

being weird. The third rake stepping.

57:56

I hadn't even heard of this

57:58

one before I started researching this

58:00

episode. but in March of 2023,

58:02

there was something called the WPATH

58:04

files. So WPATH

58:06

is the World Professional Association of

58:08

Transgender Health Providers. It's basically like

58:11

the AAP or the Endocrine Society

58:13

or whatever for like trans medical

58:15

providers. And basically, I'm not

58:17

going to go through a whole fucking

58:19

300 page document, but the introduction basically

58:22

presents it as like we have leaked

58:24

documents from inside WPATH where they're admitting

58:26

that they're rushing kids through these procedures,

58:28

right? The only problem is, first

58:32

of all, these are not internal WPATH

58:34

chats. This is not a private forum.

58:38

So our friend Evan Urquhart has like looked

58:40

into this in more detail and found that

58:42

like this is a professional forum where anybody

58:45

can pay $225 and like participate in it.

58:50

It's like a moderated forum for like health professionals. Oh

58:52

no, it's your voters pamphlet where you're

58:54

like, look man for 800 bucks. Anybody

58:57

can put a statement in here. And

58:59

then the other significantly

59:01

larger problem is that if you

59:04

actually read the evidence, like the

59:06

leaked evidence that they amass, it

59:08

again proves the opposite of what

59:10

they're saying. So if you get to

59:12

the actual leaks, like the actual text parts where they're

59:14

like, we got it, this is it. The

59:17

first example of this is

59:19

a doctor in Brazil posts on the forum. It's

59:22

kind of like a Reddit thing. He's like posting

59:24

a question. He says, look, I've

59:26

got a patient who identifies as trans and

59:28

they're 14 years old and they want genital

59:30

surgery. What should I do? One

59:32

of the replies is a doctor

59:34

who says, I wouldn't do it. Tissue

59:36

too immature, dilation routine too critical. Okay,

59:39

so don't do it. Another person

59:41

posts, we at GS Montreal would

59:43

not undertake a surgery at 14. Genital

59:46

surgery is delayed until the patient is 18.

59:49

Okay. Then there's another post,

59:51

which is like much longer, more detailed, where

59:53

it's somebody saying, look, in my entire like

59:55

30 year career as a

59:58

gender affirming care practitioner, I've only

1:00:00

done. maybe like four or six

1:00:02

genital surgeries on people under 18 and

1:00:04

they were in like very specific circumstances.

1:00:06

These were basically kids who wanted the

1:00:08

surgery before they went off to college

1:00:10

and they wanted it to be in the summer so

1:00:12

they could have like the recovery time and kind of

1:00:15

start fresh in college. But like that's something that's done

1:00:17

with like a tremendous amount of care and that's not

1:00:19

something that we do lightly. And like I wouldn't recommend doing

1:00:21

this unless you like really know the patient and like definitely

1:00:23

don't do it at 14. So

1:00:28

someone asked can I do surgery on a young

1:00:30

kid and everyone was like no. And

1:00:34

they just present this as if like well we've proven

1:00:37

they're giving surgery to young kids. We

1:00:39

got them folks. I don't think we have

1:00:41

statistics about how many people under 18 get

1:00:43

general surgeries and it's like so

1:00:45

close to zero you might as well fucking round

1:00:47

it down to zero. It's like basically people are

1:00:49

not getting these procedures under 18. So

1:00:53

Michael I'm so tired. Dude it's exhausting

1:00:55

right. And again you get this fucking

1:00:57

victory lap. It just sucks to see

1:00:59

all this shit playing out and be

1:01:01

like okay cool so

1:01:03

this is gonna be you know the

1:01:05

fabulously wealthy trans community is gonna be

1:01:08

fucking spending their money. Yeah no kidding.

1:01:10

And all their fucking advocacy time beating

1:01:12

back this fucking bullshit. It's also so

1:01:14

frustrating to do this like pretty recently after

1:01:16

we just did this with the gay marriage

1:01:18

debate. Fucking honestly. It's like do

1:01:20

you really need a trans cousin? Really

1:01:23

we have to start from scratch with this? Really

1:01:26

sad and frustrating and demoralizing and the

1:01:28

people who are doing it really

1:01:31

think that they are bringing up reasonable and

1:01:33

good points. And they're forcing us to make

1:01:35

a series of tedious podcast episodes talking

1:01:37

about fucking methodology again. Yeah

1:01:41

Michael's being forced constantly. I'm not doing

1:01:43

this to win internet beefs Aubrey I'm

1:01:46

doing this for science. But

1:01:48

then the thing is that I mean this is the

1:01:50

really dark part of the episode so please bear with

1:01:52

me. The really sad thing

1:01:54

about this is that despite all of

1:01:57

this just years long rake stepping this

1:01:59

this strategy is working. So over

1:02:01

the last couple of years, we've seen an

1:02:03

unprecedented legislative assault on trans people. 21

1:02:05

states have banned trans kids in

1:02:07

sports. 11 states have

1:02:10

banned LGBT content in

1:02:12

schools. Six states have

1:02:14

banned trans people using the bathroom they

1:02:16

want to use. Florida just banned

1:02:19

gender identity cards. So if you want to change

1:02:21

your driver's license, so it says female, they're not

1:02:24

letting you do that anymore, which is just an

1:02:26

unbelievable dick move. It's just so shitty.

1:02:28

There's nine states now are

1:02:30

legislating pronoun use and are making

1:02:32

it illegal for teachers to use kids preferred

1:02:34

pronouns if it doesn't match their birth certificate.

1:02:37

Jesus God almighty. Do you want

1:02:39

to hear the galaxy brain

1:02:41

justification for these? No,

1:02:44

God, what is it, Michael? You

1:02:46

say no, but I'm just going to keep

1:02:48

going regardless. I was just waiting to see

1:02:50

the formality to hear. I understand. I'm asking.

1:02:52

The consent on this show is fake. Look,

1:02:58

I'm going. All right. Let

1:03:01

me proceed. You're like this little wind

1:03:03

up chattering teeth. Once he starts,

1:03:07

there's no, you just got to let him fall

1:03:09

off the edge of the table or just run

1:03:11

out of hands or whatever. So the

1:03:13

justification for banning social transition is

1:03:16

that most kids who socially transition

1:03:18

go on to puberty blockers and most kids

1:03:20

who go on puberty blockers go into hormones.

1:03:22

But that's an argument that

1:03:24

most of the people who socially

1:03:26

transition are trans and they're actually

1:03:28

pretty firm in their identity, relatively

1:03:30

young. They know young, but somehow

1:03:32

transphobes have galaxy brains themselves into

1:03:34

this idea that this is like

1:03:36

putting them on a medical pathway

1:03:38

and that this is like bewitching

1:03:40

them and like keeping them trans

1:03:42

against their wishes and this weird

1:03:44

inversion, this like Darvo nonsense where

1:03:46

it's like, well, there's stigma

1:03:49

against detransitioning. What? So we

1:03:51

have to actually make sure that they feel

1:03:53

comfortable detransitioning as if parents who

1:03:55

are like, we affirm your trans identity, but

1:03:59

when they say, Mommy, I'm sis, they'll be like, fuck

1:04:01

you. That's

1:04:03

why so many kids are homeless.

1:04:05

It's like, what the fuck are

1:04:07

we talking about? Dude, Darvo is

1:04:09

such a good analogy for what's

1:04:12

happening here. For

1:04:14

folks who are unfamiliar, Darvo deny attack reverse victim

1:04:16

and offender. Yes. The thing is, I didn't actually

1:04:18

know that. I just have a friend named Darvo

1:04:20

and she sucks. So just saying this is a

1:04:22

job. Oh, shit. That's what I meant. OK, OK,

1:04:24

OK. It's a lady named Darvo.

1:04:26

Yeah. The

1:04:30

doctor was a woman, you know. Stop

1:04:34

making me giggle during dark shit. Do you

1:04:36

understand my job? But

1:04:39

like, I think it was such a good

1:04:41

example because honestly, like part of what people

1:04:43

are so like whipped up about right now

1:04:46

is children, their parents and

1:04:48

their health care provider making

1:04:50

decisions about what kind of

1:04:52

health care they ought

1:04:55

to access. Yeah. Right.

1:04:57

Like it is such a deep Darvo shit

1:04:59

that you're like, sorry, like

1:05:01

a kid in, I

1:05:04

don't know where Modesto, California

1:05:06

got some health care that they wanted and you're

1:05:09

this bent out of shape about it. So we're

1:05:11

also, of course, seeing this wave

1:05:13

of bans on gender affirming care. And

1:05:15

like it really is

1:05:17

hard to convey like how serious these

1:05:20

laws are. So this is

1:05:22

from a New York Times article. Last month,

1:05:24

Florida joined at least four other states that

1:05:26

make providing gender affirming care a felony. Florida's

1:05:29

law penalizes doctors who violate the

1:05:31

law with up to five years

1:05:34

in prison. Jesus fucking hell, dude.

1:05:36

It also changes child custody rules

1:05:38

to treat transition care as equivalent

1:05:40

to child abuse. Yikes. The this

1:05:43

rapid onset gender dysphoria narrative is

1:05:45

central to the passage of these

1:05:47

laws. In Florida, they have like

1:05:49

a long kind of briefing,

1:05:52

like allegedly studious document that goes along with

1:05:54

the law where they're kind of laying out

1:05:57

the evidence base, which refers to Lisa Littman's

1:05:59

papers. In

1:06:01

Georgia, a congressman reads Lisa

1:06:03

Lippman's study into the record. Jesus

1:06:05

fucking Christ. I also got obsessed

1:06:08

with this evidence brief, frequently asked

1:06:10

questions thing that was submitted to

1:06:12

the Utah legislature that

1:06:15

has numerous explicit references to

1:06:17

rapid onset gender dysphoria and

1:06:20

also includes a bunch of

1:06:22

testimonials from D-transitioners.

1:06:25

The first one is by somebody named Ashira and

1:06:28

she says, I was about 17 when I

1:06:30

heard the word for transgender. All I

1:06:32

did was Google gender therapist in Calgary

1:06:34

and that was how that happened. After

1:06:36

like three sessions, I got my permission

1:06:38

slip or whatever for transitioning medically for

1:06:40

hormones. And so I started in 2013

1:06:42

on testosterone and it wasn't until 2015

1:06:45

or 2016 actually

1:06:47

that I had any surgery. And then the

1:06:49

link to it is a link to YouTube.

1:06:51

And if you watch like just a little

1:06:53

bit longer after this, the person interviewing her

1:06:56

is like, oh, so how old were you

1:06:58

when you transition? And she's like, oh, 23 or 24.

1:07:01

Fully a legal adult. They also

1:07:03

have somebody who in the

1:07:05

document, it says, Billy Burley took cross-sex

1:07:08

hormones and getting surgeries to change his

1:07:10

outward appearance after a difficult childhood and

1:07:12

being sexually assaulted by his swim coach.

1:07:14

He did his best to live as

1:07:16

a woman, but ultimately the truth

1:07:18

of his biology won out. So

1:07:21

I followed the link, which goes to sort

1:07:24

of like a born again ministry website.

1:07:27

He's kind of a little bit vague on the details,

1:07:29

but he's like, I never felt comfortable in my body.

1:07:31

And then in college, I fell in love with someone

1:07:33

and then I was denying it.

1:07:35

And after five or six years in

1:07:37

a failed marriage, I finally decided to

1:07:40

transition. And I'm like, I don't, I

1:07:42

don't think all this happened before he was 18. Guys,

1:07:44

we have other policy

1:07:46

interventions. If someone before 18

1:07:48

has a six year failed marriage, it appears

1:07:50

to be in his thirties or his late

1:07:52

twenties that he transitioned boy. Oh boy. The thing

1:07:55

that I really want to stress here, and

1:07:57

I know I do this on the show

1:07:59

all the time. This

1:22:00

is like totally fucking anecdotal everything.

1:22:03

But like that could just as easily

1:22:05

be trans students seeking

1:22:07

out other trans students because they sort

1:22:09

of like have a sense that

1:22:11

they're kind of on the same page in some

1:22:14

important way. This is like all

1:22:16

the fucking gay kids at your school who came

1:22:18

out after high school and you're like yeah no

1:22:20

shit. There's also I'm man we can't go into

1:22:22

every single one of these but I was

1:22:24

putting these paragraphs in categories and

1:22:27

one of my biggest categories was

1:22:29

just like general jankiness. So in

1:22:32

this section it says clinicians and

1:22:34

parents reported that gay students are still

1:22:37

being stigmatized and bullied in school and

1:22:39

there's sometimes a perception that there is

1:22:41

less validation for them than for trans

1:22:43

pupils. What are we doing this

1:22:46

shit again? This is another bizarre fucking conspiracy

1:22:48

theory that trans folks always trot out that

1:22:50

gay kids are saying that they're trans because

1:22:52

like it's easier to be a trans person

1:22:54

than a gay person. Which is also

1:22:56

wild because in our continuing like journey

1:22:58

to the way back machine a

1:23:01

very standard response to queer people coming

1:23:03

out in the 90s was like so

1:23:06

you think you're a woman or so

1:23:08

you think you're a man. Yeah. You're

1:23:10

just finding reasons not to listen to

1:23:12

us and I wish that you could

1:23:14

just get right with that that is

1:23:16

what's happening within you right. Yeah. Because

1:23:18

it's like real clear from the outside

1:23:20

that like most transphobes

1:23:22

and homophobes don't really

1:23:24

deeply know the difference between

1:23:27

those two identities. There's also this is also the

1:23:29

part where the misogyny

1:23:31

at the heart of this also comes out. There's

1:23:33

something very weird how this whole movement says that

1:23:35

it's like we're out to protect girls right and

1:23:37

like fairness and women's sports and all this kind

1:23:40

of stuff. But then the only other piece of

1:23:42

evidence for rapid onset gender dysphoria

1:23:44

is there's more kids coming to the clinics

1:23:46

and most of those people are assigned female

1:23:49

at birth. That's like the only other piece

1:23:51

of evidence that they can point to. And

1:23:53

this report has so much

1:23:55

stuff about how like girls are

1:23:57

mentally unstable. It says Liberty

1:24:00

is an intense period of rapid change

1:24:02

and can be a difficult process where

1:24:04

young people are vulnerable to mental health

1:24:06

problems, particularly girls. Girls reported

1:24:08

more hours of social media use than boys.

1:24:10

Forty-three percent of girls used social media for

1:24:12

three or more hours per day, compared to

1:24:15

22 percent of boys. Girls

1:24:17

were more likely to have low self-esteem, to

1:24:19

have body weight dissatisfaction, to be unhappy with

1:24:21

their appearance. Girls were more likely

1:24:24

to report fewer hours of sleep than boys, and

1:24:26

to report experiencing disrupted sleep more often or most

1:24:28

of the time. Again, it's not

1:24:30

really saying what it means, but it's like, yeah,

1:24:32

girls are like so, I guess,

1:24:35

like sleep deprived and mentally ill that

1:24:37

they all think they're trans? Girls

1:24:40

were more likely to be diagnosed

1:24:42

with neurasthenia and hysteria. Girls

1:24:46

were more likely to report

1:24:48

a menacing figure hidden in the yellow wallpaper

1:24:50

of the room where there could find it.

1:24:53

What are we doing? I'm hitting my desk.

1:24:56

This is another thing that I just don't

1:24:58

find all that mysterious. I think the

1:25:00

super basic fact is that young

1:25:03

girls are kind of allowed to experiment

1:25:05

with gender presentation in a way that

1:25:07

young boys typically aren't. I

1:25:09

think what's happening is that if you're trans and

1:25:11

you're assigned female at birth, your

1:25:13

parents are going to kind of let you experiment and

1:25:15

maybe let you wear boys' clothes. Whereas

1:25:18

if you're assigned male at birth and you're like, oh, I

1:25:20

want to wear mom's dress or something, or I want to

1:25:22

grow my hair long, parents are going to be like, fuck,

1:25:24

no, you don't. Like school dress

1:25:26

codes or school uniform codes allow for

1:25:29

girls to wear pants, but do not

1:25:31

allow for boys to wear skirts. And

1:25:34

in terms of like the repercussions, right? If

1:25:37

you are a person who has attended a Trans

1:25:39

Day of Remembrance event, you have heard the reading

1:25:41

of the names, you have maybe

1:25:43

seen photos of people who passed.

1:25:45

Those are overwhelmingly trans women and

1:25:47

they are overwhelmingly trans women of

1:25:49

color. There's just a lot

1:25:52

of garbage. I think it's also important

1:25:54

though to mention that it's not just

1:25:56

trans kids that have it really tough. It's

1:25:58

also really tough for