0:12

Uhhhhh... Wait, you have to tagline us. I

0:15

do! What have you? You can tell me

0:17

to pull this one back. Ooh? If it's

0:19

too close to home. You'll hear a loud

0:21

buzzer sound. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance

0:24

Phase, the podcast that's pretty much just on

0:26

Twitter to start shit with transphobes. Oh!

0:28

Oh, you're subtweeting me. You were 10 seconds

0:31

in. And you're like, I saw

0:33

Mike's online presence yesterday. I

0:35

did. That is accurate. I did see your online

0:37

presence yesterday. I apologize for who I am on

0:39

the internet, and in person, and

0:42

on podcasts. For the record,

0:44

I'm very sorry about that. This is a

0:46

good way to approach growth and accountability. I

0:48

apologize for who I am. All of

0:50

my behavior and thoughts. I'm

0:52

Michael Hobbs. I'm Aubrey Gordon. If

0:55

you would like to support the show, you can

0:57

do that at patreon.com/maintenance phase. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

0:59

We have news on that, though. And we do

1:01

have news on that. God, we have so much

1:03

housekeeping. OK, let's do this as quickly as possible.

1:06

Mike and I have been talking about the

1:08

show and how to keep it going with

1:10

his other podcast, with my books and movies

1:12

and all of that. And the

1:14

way that we're going to do that so that

1:17

the show doesn't go away is we're just going

1:19

to have a slower pace than we have in the

1:21

past. Instead of an

1:24

episode every two weeks, it'll probably be closer

1:26

to an episode a month. The thing is,

1:28

we're both stretched thin lately because Aubrey is

1:31

finishing her next book and has been doing

1:33

this movie. And I'm doing other podcasts. And

1:35

also, I have some other upcoming stuff happening.

1:38

Basically, we were talking about what our options are.

1:40

And it's like one of them is to just

1:42

lower our standards for the

1:44

show and just churn out episodes and stick

1:46

to it every two weeks scheduled. But we

1:48

don't want to do that. And the other

1:50

option is to just stop doing the show. And we

1:53

also don't want to do that. And so what we're

1:55

going to do is we're going to keep our shows

1:57

to the level of quality with,

2:00

and we're just gonna like release them when they're done. Yep,

2:02

we're gonna continue doing Patreon bonus episodes

2:05

every month. Those are like a

2:07

little bit like more hangouts. Those aren't that difficult

2:09

to keep the pace going. We think like we've

2:11

always said that like there is no such thing

2:13

as a bad reason to stop supporting us on

2:16

Patreon. Like if you're not comfortable because the pace

2:18

of the episode is gonna slow down and you're like,

2:20

ah, there's probably other shows that I could

2:22

support, completely fine with us. Like

2:24

we absolutely do not want you to feel bad about

2:26

that. And you have been

2:29

very outspoken about this and I could not agree

2:31

more. We're also big fans of like, hey, do

2:33

you want to go join the Patreon and then

2:35

download everything and then quit the Patreon? Yes, yes.

2:37

That's totally fine. So also if you want to

2:39

do that and just like once a year, sign

2:41

up, download all the bonus episodes and then cancel,

2:43

that's also super chill. Anyway, this

2:45

is just to say that like the episodes

2:47

will continue until more Alan proves. We

2:50

love you. We don't want to go

2:52

away. We don't want to make bad shows.

2:54

Yeah, we want to be able to meet

2:57

our own standards, being like, you know, productive,

2:59

helpful media. Uh, speaking of helpful media,

3:01

Aubrey has further housekeeping. Oh, it's

3:03

very fun, Maya. It's happening. It's

3:05

finally happening. I am the subject of

3:08

a documentary called Your Fat

3:10

Friend and you can currently

3:12

stream it. Anyone? It's

3:14

directed by Jeannie Finley, who is

3:17

like an absolutely brilliant director. This

3:19

is her ninth feature. Jeannie? I

3:21

was shot over a six year

3:23

period starting when I

3:25

was writing anonymously on medium. And

3:28

your makeup was hella different. It

3:30

was so different. I was really

3:32

into an extremely dark lip. Yeah,

3:34

yeah, yeah. It's available almost everywhere.

3:36

All you have to do is

3:38

go to jolt.film, rent it

3:41

for yourself. You can send it as a gift to friends

3:43

and family. And I'm just really

3:45

excited for people to actually all the way be

3:47

able to see it. To watch it. Yay!

3:50

So we're going to do the show.

3:52

Housekeeping done. Housekeeping complete! Today, Aubrey, we

3:55

are talking about rapid onset

3:57

gender dysphoria. Yes. According

4:00

to what you told me eight minutes ago before we were

4:02

recording, you don't know anything about it. You haven't heard

4:04

of this concept. We've touched on this a little bit

4:06

in the show. I spent a number of years of

4:08

my life organizing around trans healthcare

4:11

as like a, as my

4:13

main thing. I continue to

4:15

know and love many, many, many trans people

4:17

and sort of like stay tapped into parts

4:19

of the conversation. But the parts that I

4:22

have tapped out of are the parts that

4:24

are like full moral panic shit,

4:26

which is a lot of it right now. Although,

4:28

okay, so I was going to actually ask you

4:31

for a favor in this episode. I

4:33

know there's a lot of people who just

4:35

like don't know that much about like youth

4:38

gender affirming care, which is what we're going

4:40

to be getting into. And one of

4:42

the things you find in a lot of moral panics is there's

4:44

always this argument that like, we should be allowed

4:46

to ask questions. You can't even ask questions. And

4:48

like, I want to stress, you are

4:50

allowed to ask questions. And like people are allowed

4:53

to be curious about this issue. And even a

4:55

little bit concerned about this issue, right? Like all

4:57

of us have dealt with the American medical system.

5:00

I know friends that were prescribed antidepressants, like very

5:02

young and look back and we're like, I don't

5:04

think I was ready for that. And I don't

5:06

think that was appropriate for me at that time.

5:09

And so what I'm trying to do in

5:11

this episode is to like speak to those

5:13

legitimate concerns and like lay out the information

5:15

of like what we know. And

5:17

so I was going to ask you to be

5:19

our like proxy for like

5:22

people who might be a little bit concerned

5:24

about this. Yeah. So panel your

5:26

inner reply guy. Ask the

5:28

tough, tough question. I

5:31

have an inner reply guy. You have an outer

5:33

reply guy. You're just channeling

5:35

me now. You're

5:38

doing a mic impression. But

5:40

so I think really the starting point for

5:43

this entire conversation and like the good face

5:45

people that we're trying to speak to is that

5:47

like there have always been trans people. Trans

5:49

people are real. If you don't

5:51

agree with that as a premise, then like I have

5:53

nothing to say to you. Trans people

5:55

are real and not new. Yes. Pretty

5:58

much every kind of person. including trans people,

6:00

have been around for as long as there

6:03

have been people. So for this I talked

6:05

to Jule Gil-Peterson who is a historian and

6:07

she wrote an entire book about the history

6:09

of trans medical care and trans medical care

6:12

for kids. The field of

6:14

trans healthcare, I mean again this goes

6:16

back much further, but kind of modern

6:18

trans gender affirming care starts with the

6:21

synthesis of estrogen and testosterone in the

6:23

1930s. In the

6:25

1960s is when we first start developing

6:27

the field of gender affirming care, we

6:29

start using hormones and plastic surgery for

6:31

trans people. By 1979

6:34

we have the first medical standards of exactly

6:36

the steps and what this should start looking

6:38

like. Those are the Harry Benjamin standards, yes?

6:40

He pioneered the care and then we got

6:42

the formalization of standards. I think it was

6:44

like 10 or 12 years after his book

6:46

came out. Yes, and I will say the

6:49

Harry Benjamin standards are not beloved by

6:51

trans people. I mean this is also

6:53

something that Jule Gil-Peterson talked about

6:55

is that the history of trans

6:58

gender affirming care is like, I mean

7:00

first of all we didn't call it gender affirming care,

7:03

right? It was mostly like trying to talk trans people

7:05

out of being trans. A lot of

7:07

the stuff that you hear now kind of uses this

7:09

much more recent history as like the starting point. They're

7:11

like, oh they just like out of the blue

7:14

started doing gender affirming stuff on trans people but

7:16

like they were doing stuff to and with trans

7:18

people for much longer than that but it was

7:20

mostly trying to talk them out

7:22

of it and trying to get them to live as cisgender people.

7:25

And so in the 1990s is

7:27

when we start getting the first studies on

7:29

like does this kind of care work? How

7:31

do people feel about it afterwards? The

7:34

first studies come out of Sweden. There's

7:36

one that tracks every single person

7:38

who got gender affirming surgery between 1972 and

7:42

1992 and only 4% of

7:44

people regret getting the surgeries and

7:46

like have gone back. In

7:49

2014 we get a comprehensive review of every

7:51

single surgery that's been done over 50 years in

7:53

Sweden, 2.2% regret rate. It's

7:57

fascinating to me that regret rates have become such a

7:59

big part of it. of this conversation

8:02

because most of the rest

8:04

of the time, cis

8:06

people do not care how

8:09

trans people feel or do not act as

8:11

if we care how trans people feel. Right?

8:14

So much of the history of trans

8:16

healthcare is the history of

8:18

cis people's discomfort with

8:20

giving trans people what they have

8:22

been very clearly, very consistently needing

8:25

for a long time. That's a weird thing for a

8:27

reply guy to say. Oh, sorry. That's a little bit

8:29

weird. I think that's a little bit weird because someone

8:31

has one job for this show. I'm gonna be bad

8:33

at it, but I'm gonna try. Put on a goatee

8:36

and some Oakleys. The thing that I thought I would

8:38

say as the introduction to my reply guy, think this

8:40

is how bad I'm gonna be at this, was

8:42

I know you are, but what am I? Oh yeah,

8:44

that's pretty good actually. Just

8:47

go, nuh-uh. After I got

8:49

there. Fourth grade reply guy. One of

8:51

the things to really say, and this

8:53

isn't something that is really

8:55

disputed if you really get down to it,

8:57

is that gender-affirming care in adults is

8:59

extremely successful. I mean, we're talking about

9:01

regret rates that are like one

9:04

half to one third what regret rates are

9:06

for nose jobs and knee replacements. People

9:09

really feel better after

9:11

they get this kind of care. It's

9:13

still preliminary, but there's early results from a

9:15

survey of 90,000 trans people and

9:18

among people who have been taking

9:20

hormones. The regret, I strongly regret

9:22

getting this, is under 1% and

9:25

just kind of transition in general. It's only

9:27

3% of people say that they're either

9:30

less satisfied with their life or very

9:32

unsatisfied with their life. There's also a

9:34

systematic review that looks at 55 studies

9:37

of gender-affirming care in adults. 51

9:40

out of 55 find that gender

9:42

transition improves wellbeing and

9:44

the other four find mixed results

9:46

or just like no finding at

9:48

all. So basically you can't

9:50

find studies that find harms. Like I'm worse

9:53

off. And so again, I mean, this

9:55

is a show about the foibles

9:57

of having overconfidence. in medical research

9:59

and overconfidence in existing medical systems.

10:02

And so I'm not gonna say

10:04

that like every single person who's

10:06

ever gotten gender-affirming care loves it and it's

10:08

perfect in every way. Like this is

10:10

a field that continues to be refined but there

10:13

are very few fields in

10:15

medicine and medical procedures for

10:17

which you find this kind

10:19

of satisfaction. The idea that

10:22

there are simply two genders

10:24

is something that we have built up

10:26

so many systems around.

10:29

It's a major organizing

10:31

principle and I think

10:34

part of what happens for this stuff

10:36

is that people feel this sense of

10:38

like worldview upheaval happening and they take

10:40

it out on trans people who are

10:42

the people who they see as being responsible

10:44

for that worldview upheaval. So basically

10:46

as we start getting more and

10:49

more data on gender-affirming care and how it

10:51

makes people more satisfied with their lives, it

10:53

sort of makes sense to people in the

10:55

field that we have this kind of care

10:57

that works for adults and we know that

11:00

a lot of trans people, not all but

11:02

many trans people start to show signs

11:04

of being trans at like four

11:06

years old. We should probably start

11:08

to explore this for kids and

11:11

so another thing that Jules Gil Peterson mentioned

11:13

was that again this is not the first

11:15

care for trans adolescents but the care for

11:17

trans adolescents had always just been conversion therapy.

11:20

They're like I'm a girl, no you're not. That was

11:22

basically how it worked and so basically everything else

11:25

they've tried manifestly isn't

11:27

working right and so they're like

11:29

okay as a last resort let's

11:31

try like affirming these kids

11:33

gender and so in 1987

11:35

the first clinic in the

11:37

Netherlands starts providing the first

11:40

gender-affirming care to kids. In

11:42

1997 we get the first study that is published of these very

11:47

early patients. Actually I was

11:49

gonna, this isn't yellow but I'm gonna send it to you.

11:51

You're using green. Oh it's not in anything it's just in-

11:53

Well for you when I paste it it's in nothing but

11:55

for me. That's a good thing we had that lead up

11:57

then. Fascinating,

12:01

fascinating look behind the scenes.

12:04

Sintillating, pink behind the scenes. You

12:07

sign up on Patreon, this is the stuff you get. Woo!

12:13

It's pure gold, but I

12:15

can't see the gold. Adolescence

12:20

is a phase in which

12:22

many identities, e.g. political or

12:24

religious, are developed. Professionals fear that

12:26

experimenting with certain aspects of gender,

12:29

such as gender role behavior, will

12:31

lead adolescents to conclude that they have

12:33

a gender identity problem, and

12:35

that they will, as a result, wrongly

12:38

seek a medical means of resolving their

12:40

confusion. The chance of

12:42

making the wrong diagnosis and the consequent

12:44

risk of post-operative regret is

12:47

therefore felt to be higher in adolescents

12:49

than in adults. I think that

12:51

this is the heart of all of the anxieties around

12:53

this issue, especially from people

12:55

that haven't had gender dysphoria as kids, is that you think

12:57

about your time as an adolescent, and you're like, yeah,

13:00

I was playing around with my identity. You're

13:02

a goth this week, and you're a prep

13:04

the next week, and you are in different

13:06

social groups, and we want to

13:09

make sure that we're establishing that kids are really

13:11

trans and really settled in this identity before

13:14

they get any kind of irreversible medical procedures. That's

13:17

something that strikes most people as fairly reasonable, right? But

13:20

the reason why I wanted to include

13:23

this is it shows that from literally

13:25

the first study on this, the

13:27

doctors know this too. The

13:30

idea that this extremely obvious thing is

13:32

not also obvious to the doctors who

13:34

are practicing this kind of medicine is

13:37

fairly implausible, and it shows up in the

13:39

studies. They're like, hey, look, we know this

13:41

is a time when kids are experimenting, and

13:43

that might include some gender expression experimentation, and

13:45

so we want to make sure in this

13:48

field that we're talking to the kids, we're

13:50

getting some kind of holistic assessment. This is

13:52

something that the field has been aware of

13:54

since literally day one. I'm in the

13:56

bag for big child. I'm

13:58

in the pocket of big child. The I older

14:01

I was you know, raised by

14:03

a lady who's in early childhood

14:05

brain development. Experts that loser

14:07

per field with P as a

14:09

high as President of Light Up.

14:11

Her assessment has very consistently been

14:13

that like are issues around children

14:15

are that we don't believe them

14:17

when they tell us what's going

14:19

on Get like. We get ourselves

14:21

into really sticky situations when we

14:23

decide that children as a whole

14:25

are unreliable narrators Like necessarily that's

14:27

not a carte blanche. I believe

14:29

you when you say there's a

14:31

monster under your bed, but that

14:33

is a you're telling me there's

14:35

a monster. Under your bed and I

14:37

believe that you're really afraid of something for

14:39

not fear, deserves tending to. As a this first

14:42

study kind of sets a precedent if like a lot

14:44

of the further studies the study that they be they

14:46

look at the. First twenty two kids

14:48

who got gender affirming care and

14:50

they ask them three years later,

14:52

are you happy about it And

14:54

zero regrets? All of

14:57

the kids are like very happy with

14:59

this and while we get another study

15:01

in twenty eleven of the first seventy

15:03

patients. At this Dutch Clinic to your

15:05

follow up, all of them continue the treatment

15:07

there now do in puberty blockers and hormones.

15:09

We also are getting surveys from other countries,

15:12

so in twenty fourteen we get a survey

15:14

of eighty four. Kids which is every

15:16

single patient set this clinic in. Vancouver

15:18

saw over thirteen years. They

15:20

find a reduction in. Suicide

15:22

attempts. We. Also, get the

15:25

for steady said of the Uk Cinder

15:27

Clinic. One of them follows two hundred

15:29

and one kids and finds improved psychological

15:31

functioning. In twenty fourteen we get a

15:33

study that follows fifty five patients for

15:36

an average of seven years. And

15:38

they find that they have the same

15:40

mental health markers as the standards is

15:42

which is actually huge because. Trains.

15:45

Kids tend to have higher rates

15:47

of depression, anxiety, suicidality, lower quality

15:49

of life and course higher gender

15:51

dysphoria. then says kids and so

15:53

the fact that if we're intervening early

15:55

enough like holy shit use these kids

15:58

are roughly the same as their sustained

16:00

your peers that's actually like a really

16:02

big deal. That phenomenon is something that

16:04

I feel like I observe more sort

16:06

of weaponized by like deeply anti-trans folks

16:09

than like understood with compassion as like,

16:11

Oh my God, we could tackle

16:13

a bunch of mental health stuff before

16:15

it even really develops, right? Yeah. But

16:18

it very often ends up being like, well, look at these unstable

16:21

trans people, right? Yeah, exactly.

16:23

Yeah. More often how

16:25

that gets billed. I want to pause here

16:28

in like 2014, 2015 to say that like

16:30

all of what we're seeing in youth

16:32

gender affirming care medicine at this point is

16:34

like fairly standard, right? We do this with

16:36

lots of other medical treatments. We have this

16:39

thing that seems to work in adults. Over

16:41

time, we kind of slowly expand it to kids,

16:43

right? We have like a migraine treatment that's like,

16:45

Hey, it works in adults. Let's see if it

16:47

works in kids. As you get

16:49

more data, you kind of make bigger studies and you start

16:51

giving it to more kids and you

16:53

just develop like a body of research

16:56

over time. You know, this is a

16:58

podcast that, you know, has criticized other

17:01

studies for being really small and like

17:03

a lot of these early studies are on like, yeah, 100, 200

17:05

kids. They're really small. So

17:08

we're not going to say that we've established that

17:10

this care is like definitively great for

17:12

every single person who gets it under

17:14

every single circumstance. But

17:16

yeah, this is promising enough to continue doing it

17:19

and to continue doing it on larger numbers of

17:21

kids. Yeah. This is essentially

17:23

what has happened, right? In the first two decades

17:25

of this field, you have a lot of small

17:27

studies coming out, mostly because you're simply not giving

17:29

this care to that many kids, right? The

17:32

clinic in the Netherlands says they have nine patients per

17:34

year for the first couple of years. This

17:37

isn't really a debate about

17:39

like, is this a perfect care for every single

17:41

person all the time or not? It's

17:44

like, is this promising enough to keep

17:46

giving it to people? At

17:48

this point, it would be bananas to

17:50

stop giving care to kids on

17:52

the basis of the fact that

17:54

there aren't larger studies when large

17:57

studies are literally impossible. It becomes

17:59

this sort of chicken or the egg

18:01

thing, which is like we need larger studies

18:03

in order to provide more care

18:06

to more trans people and

18:08

we can't provide more care to

18:10

more trans people until we have

18:12

larger studies. Exactly. So what

18:15

we have basically is the

18:17

field exploring gender-affirming care for kids

18:19

throughout the 2000s, 2010s, but

18:21

that's all kind of under the radar. I don't know

18:23

about you. I like was not aware of this at

18:25

all until it started showing up in popular media in

18:27

kind of the mid-2010s. It's like,

18:29

you know, again, it's like a very small field.

18:32

And so we finally get the first appearance of

18:34

this as an issue in the mid-2000s where I

18:39

can't find exactly sort of patient

18:41

zero for this, but in 2006,

18:44

we get a Barbara Walters special

18:46

about this kid named Jazz Jennings

18:49

who transitioned and was living as

18:51

a little girl. And

18:53

then there's an Atlantic article called

18:56

A Boy's Life. God, the amount

18:58

of misgendering in this era. They're

19:01

misgendering and deadnaming this kid throughout

19:03

the article. Jesus fucking Christ. So

19:05

there's this entire decade where trans

19:07

people in general are getting more

19:09

visibility and we start getting these

19:11

little inklings of like the trans

19:13

kids thing. There's a Oprah special in 2011.

19:17

There's a 2013 article in the New

19:19

York Times. We then

19:21

in 2014 get the time cover like the transgender

19:24

moment, right? Because like Orange is the New Black

19:26

is on and LeBron Cox is in it.

19:28

Caitlyn Jenner comes out in 2015, you

19:30

know, cover of Vanity Fair, huge deal.

19:32

There's all these bathroom bills in 2016. Yeah,

19:36

prior to all that we get Chaz Bono. Yeah, Chaz

19:38

Bono. Yeah, exactly. It's just

19:40

like this is becoming a much more prominent

19:42

issue. And also this is really the end

19:44

of the gay marriage fight, right? Obergefell is 2015, I believe.

19:48

And it's sort of like at the time,

19:50

the Christian right, they just lost, right? Like

19:52

gay marriage, you know, in public polling in

19:54

the law is recognized everywhere. Yeah, there's a

19:57

lot of all of a sudden there was

19:59

a lot of anti-porn advocacy

20:01

which was a long term

20:03

thing. It was just a real

20:06

mission drift moment of like, we lost

20:08

our thing. And unfortunately they have found

20:10

their new thing. What you

20:12

start seeing is these inklings of

20:15

this issue of what they call

20:17

gender confusion. That's the whole trans-trender

20:20

bullshit. Yeah, it was just a

20:22

little more time. And

20:24

this is the way that they conceive of trans people as

20:26

a group. People

20:28

that, as kids

20:30

they're confused, as adults they're like sex perverts. I

20:32

mean, that's the thing that I find really

20:35

remarkable about so much of both

20:37

the studies and the discourse around

20:39

this. It feels like there's so

20:41

little accounting for the immense force

20:44

of transphobia. Aubrey, I just want to point

20:46

out that we've been recording for 40 minutes

20:48

and you haven't done any reply guy shit.

20:50

Not one reply guy! The duality

20:53

of the show is that you can't pretend to

20:55

be a reply guy and I can't pretend not

20:57

to be a reply guy for like even five

20:59

minutes. Neither one of us

21:01

can manage. Because our identities on this are

21:03

consistent and persistent. That's actually the perfect

21:08

metaphor for this. We can stop now. See, it

21:10

doesn't work. So

21:12

for this I interviewed Julia Serrano

21:14

who is a biologist. Oh, wonderful!

21:17

Yeah! I'm drawing heavily

21:19

on her work. She has a

21:21

very detailed timeline. The

21:23

way that she described it was there's

21:25

just kind of these like swirling anxieties.

21:29

Because a lot of parents are reading

21:31

these articles. And so

21:33

in 2015 we have the establishment

21:35

of three websites. The

21:38

first is called Fourth Wave Now, which is

21:40

supposed to be referenced to like fourth wave

21:43

feminism. Wow! Uh oh! I

21:45

hate it! So this is an excerpt

21:48

from the About page. You should probably do a

21:50

British accent for all these because whenever I think

21:52

of transphobia it's in a British accent in my

21:54

head. They're mutilating

21:56

the kids! No, no, no,

21:59

absolutely. not. That was

22:01

impeccable. Governor. Fourth

22:08

Wave Now was started by the mother

22:11

of a teenage girl who suddenly announced

22:13

she was a quote unquote trans man

22:16

after a few weeks of total

22:18

immersion in YouTube transition vlogs. The

22:21

daughter has since desisted from

22:23

identifying as transgender. After

22:26

much research and fruitless searching

22:28

for an alternative online viewpoint,

22:30

this mom began writing about

22:32

her deepening skepticism of the

22:34

ever accelerating medical and

22:36

media fascination with

22:38

the phenomenon of quote unquote

22:41

transgender children. Boy oh boy,

22:44

the level of scare quotes in

22:46

this. There's a weird like reluctance

22:48

to identify these as like transphobic

22:50

websites, but I feel like if

22:53

you're putting the term trans man

22:55

and transgender children in quotes, remember

22:57

in the 90s how they used

22:59

to put gay marriage in quotes

23:02

in like extreme right publications. It

23:04

was like, like they're trying

23:06

to call wives and wives. I think

23:09

we can be comfortable looking back on that and being like that

23:11

this was homophobic. If you look through

23:13

the archives of this website, it's

23:15

every single post is about

23:18

how you know, discrimination against trans

23:20

people is kind of overblown and

23:22

the suicide rates aren't really all that

23:24

high. You know, some of the post titles

23:26

are neuroplasticity, the gaping logic

23:28

hole in the transgender house

23:30

of cards. Another one's

23:32

called How is this not a cult? Another

23:35

one is baby boomers head explodes. How did

23:37

identity politics gain all this traction? Good.

23:39

It's part of identity politics discourse. Exactly. There's

23:42

I was going to read you a whole

23:44

paragraph, but it's so boring. They

23:46

also have some like Soros stuff.

23:48

So there's a post called the

23:50

open society foundations and the transgender

23:52

movement. Oh, fuck. Maybe you don't want

23:54

to say it's transphobic. I don't know if

23:57

I really want to litigate that. But like this is an anti

23:59

trans block. The blog of anti

24:01

trans messages. I think that like

24:03

pretty well established. I think we

24:05

can probably all agree at this

24:07

point that like X Gay conversion

24:09

therapy is also like a pretty

24:11

fuckin homophobic venture. Death rates in

24:13

the contours of the sort of

24:15

to beat around the existence of

24:17

trans people are really similar to

24:19

that. You aren't you say you

24:21

are. You can't be trusted to

24:23

marry your own identity threat I

24:25

would say actually arguably be unreliable

24:27

narrators of their own identity or

24:29

people who'd display. This kind

24:31

of gate keeping to other people's identity

24:33

isn't if you're doing this kind of

24:36

thing. I don't know the you get

24:38

to decide yes, your actions are bigoted

24:40

or so that's one of them that

24:43

fourth wave. Now there's another one called

24:45

transgender trend which I'm going to send

24:47

you. Oh fuck off. And now.

24:50

We're and organization of parents,

24:52

professionals, and academics based in

24:54

the Uk who are concerned

24:57

about the current trend to

24:59

diagnose children as transgender, including

25:01

the unprecedented number of teenage

25:03

girls suddenly self identifying has

25:06

quote unquote Trans Suddenly We

25:08

are also concerned about legislation

25:10

which places transgender rights above

25:13

the right to seize the

25:15

four girls and young women

25:17

in public toilets and changing

25:19

rooms along. With fairness, for

25:21

girls in sport, it's about. Fairness

25:24

and Girl Sports this like

25:26

idea. That this gives aid and

25:28

comfort to people who want to

25:30

sexually assault girls and women. That's

25:32

the one where I'm like, I

25:34

don't know how you see this

25:36

as anything other than biggest. Was.

25:38

It is. This is what so fascinates me. Like

25:40

you don't Slippery slope arguments. Are a mainstay

25:42

of conservative rhetoric? Yeah, right is like a

25:45

mummy of going to marry his horse or

25:47

whatever. But what's wild about the bathroom stuff?

25:49

The tram bathroom stuff. Is it the

25:51

slippery slope fair warning of is already in

25:53

place. People already use whatever fucking bathroom they

25:56

want when I would say. To paragraph like

25:58

this is it sounds like you're. Really

26:00

concerned with a sexual

26:02

assault. What is your

26:04

work here? On for actual sexual

26:06

assault, rape, rape threats. It's very strange

26:09

to be like I'm very concerned about

26:11

sexual assault. Therefore, man do I hate

26:13

three of people, right? Or like I

26:15

don't trust. Of right we're like that's

26:18

not a one to one. Those are

26:20

to read disconnected right? Statements that you

26:22

are making so those are the first two

26:25

website says also. One told a youth

26:27

Trans Critical professional.org which we're not gonna

26:29

go as far into it's now defunct,

26:31

but if they do the same thing

26:33

where medical professionals were doctors and were.

26:35

Concerned about the medicalization frames

26:38

kids, blah blah boxes. So

26:40

these what sites pop up

26:43

in Twenty Fifteen on February

26:45

twentieth. Twenty Sixteen. We have

26:47

the first ever claim that

26:50

social contagion is the reason

26:52

why kids are trans. Oh,

26:54

this appears as a comment.

26:57

On. The about page. For.

27:00

Fourth, Wave Nap or you fucking boy we're

27:02

gonna. We're gonna dive into this because it

27:04

has a lot of components that we still

27:06

see now. so me see. This.

27:09

This. Is from a commenter called

27:11

Skeptical Therapist. There is this episode

27:14

of Star Trek The Next Generation

27:16

where the crew is introduced to

27:18

a mysterious alien. Videogame. It

27:20

slowly infiltrates the crew and

27:23

Wesley Crusher and another young

27:25

ensign watch as the adults

27:27

around them slip into addiction.

27:29

Mentally begins to sense that

27:31

something is amiss and goes

27:34

to find Captain Picard. He

27:36

is so relieved to find. The captain and

27:38

to be able to confide in him. As.

27:41

Wesley leave. We see the captain

27:43

reach into his desk with signature

27:45

is saying floss and take out

27:48

a gaming device. He too

27:50

has been infected. doesn't sound we

27:52

suspected. the game is really an

27:55

insidious mind. Controlling apparatus that will

27:57

allow an alien race to gain

27:59

can. of the ship. This

28:02

is what this trans madness feels

28:04

like to me. Long wind up. I have

28:06

some comments about the length of the tonus,

28:09

though. So this is another relatively long

28:11

excerpt where she talks about her

28:14

own experience. The

28:16

alien mind control device made its

28:19

way into my home about two

28:21

years ago, when my then

28:23

11-year-old daughter begged me for

28:25

a Tumblr account since her friends all

28:28

had one. Foolishly, I

28:30

consented without looking into it

28:32

further. I wish I hadn't.

28:35

This trend

28:37

toward all

28:40

things pan-slash-bi-slash-non-binary-slash-gender-fluid-slash-trans-etc.

28:44

has had a huge amount of energy

28:46

among kids my daughter's age. I

28:48

have watched it with some degree of

28:50

suspicion and concern. But last

28:52

month, the degree of my alarm grew.

28:55

She started dropping provocative hints, such

28:57

as asking if she could get a

29:00

buzz cut. I found some writings

29:02

she had left around the house where

29:04

she wondered to herself whether she were

29:06

quote-unquote really a girl. She was

29:09

very excited a few weeks later when a

29:11

new friend came out as trans. For

29:14

the record, this is a kid

29:16

who has never had any gender

29:18

non-conforming behavior at all. She

29:21

has always been interested in art

29:23

and dance at school. She

29:25

is a little socially anxious and

29:27

that is the only thing that makes

29:29

her susceptible to this, I think. This

29:31

is really the er example of this

29:34

social contagion phenomenon, right? Where we have

29:36

a kid, no signs of

29:38

trans-ness, and then all of a sudden,

29:40

right, they get on Tumblr, a couple

29:42

of their friends are trans, and then

29:44

boom, mom, I'm trans. We

29:47

then have another important component.

29:49

I'm gonna read this paragraph.

29:52

It isn't that I am a hating ogre. I

29:55

Think if I really believed that my

29:57

kid were profoundly unhappy in her body,

30:00

That this narrative was coming from

30:02

her and not from social media

30:04

and the kids around her, I

30:06

would be reacting very differently. I

30:08

would also be having a different

30:10

reaction if I could convince myself

30:12

that gender identity experimentation were essentially

30:14

harmless girls want to pretend to

30:16

be boys? Sure, why not, but

30:19

it is absolutely chilling to think

30:21

that these kids who are just

30:23

doing what teams do get support.

30:25

From the adults around them that

30:27

let them get stuck in the

30:29

experiment so that many of them

30:31

wind up permanently changing their bodies.

30:33

This is another very important component

30:35

and comes so often. In these

30:37

accounts, it's like. I'm not a trance

30:40

all the if all I thought with as

30:42

a like a little identity thing I wouldn't

30:44

be so mad but. This. Is

30:46

difference? Something is going on that

30:48

are going a push into medicalization

30:50

and in all of these irreversible

30:52

procedures in the it feels like

30:54

it's operating on is like emotional

30:56

register worth like I need permission.

30:59

To be uncomfortable with us. Also,

31:01

it feels really telling. This

31:03

I think that if I really

31:05

believe that my kid were profoundly

31:07

unhappy and her body that kind

31:10

of language is like. Requiring.

31:12

And amount of performed suffering

31:14

in order to believe this

31:16

identity as and I think

31:18

that sort of rhetoric is

31:21

a feels like it's popping

31:23

up more and more. Yeah,

31:25

you can't be trans because

31:27

you're not unhappy enough for

31:29

I'm not seeing you suffer

31:31

in though the body or

31:33

gender presentation that you currently

31:35

have air go your identity

31:37

isn't real. Which. Is also something

31:39

that is boy oh boy pretty much

31:41

guaranteed to create some suffering. so I

31:43

guess you did at so okay final

31:45

thing that this is like the final

31:47

component of this and I'm really belaboring

31:49

as the is all for these opponents

31:51

will show up in every single account

31:53

of social contagion, like from now until

31:55

forever. So here's this her. Current school

31:57

is wonderfully progressive and nurture.

32:00

But the school administrators all seem

32:03

keen to jump on the quote-unquote

32:05

trans-is-terrific train. They proudly proclaim

32:08

to prospective parents that there are

32:10

several kids transitioning in the upper school. Ooh,

32:13

this is a private school, baby! Upper

32:15

school! I recognize my

32:17

people! Oh, okay. I thought it was

32:20

like the top floor, but okay. It

32:22

seems like this fact is sort of

32:24

exciting to everyone and establishes without question

32:26

their all-accepting super-liberal cred. I

32:29

have decided that the cult

32:31

indoctrinators have had free access

32:33

to her beautiful 13-year-old brain

32:36

for two years now, and it is

32:38

time that I intervene and fight for

32:40

my daughter. This also

32:42

relies on this myth that it's like

32:44

you're a lone voice of reason in

32:46

an unreasonable world. It's so

32:49

fascinating to me that being like, hey,

32:51

we've had trans students here who are

32:55

allowed to be who they are has

32:57

been translated in this person in their

33:00

brain to the trans-is-terrific

33:03

train. Right. It feels

33:05

like such similar energy to

33:07

the like glorifying obesity energy. Right,

33:09

right, right. Where you're like, you

33:12

just saw a fat person who didn't look

33:14

sad. Right, and you're seeing it as like

33:16

you're trying to indoctrinate me. Like it just

33:18

is wild to me the ways in which

33:21

people tell on themselves in public. Right.

33:23

And I was talking to my brother about this last night. He was like, man, a thing

33:27

that he has said to me many times

33:29

is that the things that are most opaque

33:31

to us about ourselves and the things we

33:33

think we're keeping as secrets, we're

33:35

actually just like blaring out to

33:37

everyone around us. Yeah, this is like when my

33:39

therapist said that I'm a nervous wreck. Thanks.

33:44

Throughout this entire panic, we're going to see a

33:46

lot of claims about existing institutions

33:48

being worryingly pro-trans in ways

33:50

that seem a little dubious

33:52

to me, partly from what

33:54

I've read. And I've interviewed

33:56

numerous like trans teens around the country. I've

33:58

interviewed parents of trans teens. interviewed clinicians,

34:01

this is not an experience that I've seen even

34:03

in affirming contexts.

34:06

We don't see this like, I hope you're trans, I

34:08

want you to be trans. It's still

34:10

a really, really difficult process of coming out.

34:12

I just think about like being this kid

34:15

and if your mom was saying these

34:17

things about you on the internet. Although

34:19

I actually, part of me thinks that

34:21

this might be fake. There's

34:23

something a little perfect about

34:25

the fact that it all started with

34:27

a fight over having a Tumblr account.

34:30

That's something Julia Serrano mentioned to me

34:32

because we were talking about this decade

34:34

before this increased visibility of trans rights

34:36

and the emergence of this myth. A

34:39

lot of this is a proxy for

34:41

anxieties around kids and the internet. Whenever

34:45

we have a new technology, whether

34:47

it's graphic novels or jukeboxes or

34:49

automobiles, there's a huge panic about

34:51

how kids are using this technology.

34:53

Of course, there's huge anxiety about

34:55

the internet and teenagers and social media and everything

34:58

else. The fact that

35:00

there's this trans thing, transgressing

35:02

gender norms, which makes people uncomfortable in

35:04

general, and then we can also blame it on

35:07

the internet. We can say, well, she's going on

35:09

Tumblr and now she's trans. It's just

35:11

like this perfect combination of

35:13

two existing sites of

35:15

huge anxieties for parents. There's

35:18

later studies of the people who are

35:21

using these websites and it's mostly upper middle

35:24

class white women. Nothing bad has

35:26

ever come from the anxieties of white

35:29

upper middle class parents, right? This is

35:31

like the same kind of suburban fear

35:33

that gave us like the stranger danger panic.

35:35

Sure. This is just a

35:38

group that is like, you know,

35:40

prone to anxiety, especially anxiety around

35:42

teens, anxiety around technology. And

35:45

it is a group of people

35:47

who are very accustomed to their

35:49

anxieties becoming a centerpiece of public

35:51

policy. Exactly. It's also, can I

35:53

speak to the manager energy? Right.

35:56

Yeah. Who can fire

35:58

you? Yeah. this as

36:00

a person who is of that group

36:02

of people? As a member of the

36:05

Karen community, I just want to call

36:07

out my own people. It's the idea

36:09

that every feeling that I have deserves

36:11

tending to through policy and

36:14

public discourse. Exactly. So

36:16

this is just a random comment on

36:19

the about page of this blog

36:21

in 2016. So

36:23

a week later, the blog turns it into a post.

36:26

It has the headline, Tumblr snags

36:28

another girl, but her therapist mom

36:30

knows a thing or two about

36:33

social contagion. I

36:35

was planning on going down a

36:37

deep rabbit hole on the concept

36:39

of social contagion. This is something that's come up

36:41

tangentially in other episodes. I decided

36:44

not to mostly because it seems like

36:46

it's a pretty contested concept. I

36:49

read this really interesting meta analysis

36:51

that had something about like gun

36:53

violence. Like there's a theory that

36:55

gun violence is socially contagious. There's

36:57

these kind of peer influences that

36:59

normalize using guns to solve disputes.

37:01

And there was one study that found that

37:04

one of the best predictors of somebody who's

37:06

arrested for gun violence is like how

37:08

many previous incidents of gun violence have there

37:10

been in their neighborhood? Okay, that

37:12

might be social contagion, but that also might just

37:14

be like a poor neighborhood. Yeah, totally. And the

37:16

other one they mentioned was that apparently there's a

37:18

spike in gun violence when there's

37:21

more depictions of gun violence on TV.

37:23

But that actually feels like a different phenomenon to me

37:26

because it's not peer to peer influence. I

37:28

started to notice this since I came across this literature

37:30

that people just invoke social contagion. It's like, oh, it's

37:33

social contagion, but like isn't that just like we do

37:35

things that our friends do, which is just totally normal

37:37

behavior, right? Like my friends says, this book is good.

37:39

And then I read the book. But

37:41

then also if a friend of mine is

37:43

like clinically depressed, I don't know if that

37:45

would transfer to me in the same way,

37:47

right? And there are studies

37:49

of depression. There's a study that

37:52

compares roommates, college roommates, when one has

37:54

depression and the other doesn't. And you would

37:56

expect if social contagion was true, the second

37:58

roommate who developed depression over time. that

38:00

doesn't happen. It clearly depends on

38:03

what is being contagious and

38:05

the relationship of the two people. It just is like

38:08

we should just talk about transgender identity as

38:10

transgender identity rather than trying to put it

38:12

in this frame of this concept that kind of

38:14

works sometimes and doesn't and just isn't really like all

38:16

that useful of a way to look at this. The

38:18

energy of this feels so similar

38:21

to the post Columbine. Is

38:23

Marilyn Manson to blame? Yeah. Like

38:25

discourse where it's like, guys

38:28

we gotta rule out like 129 things before

38:30

we get

38:33

to Marilyn Manson. Exactly. So it's not

38:35

totally clear how this happens but relatively

38:38

shortly after this blog post on

38:40

4th Wave Now, the concept

38:43

of social contagion starts like

38:46

going viral among conservative writers.

38:48

So in August, the American

38:50

conservative publishes a piece called

38:52

The Cult of Transgender. Dude.

38:55

Which quotes a

38:57

parent who like emailed the author and says,

39:00

as a parent living the nightmare of having

39:02

a kid who suddenly announces she's transgender,

39:04

I can tell you there are no

39:06

doctors who will do anything but agree.

39:08

There is no science behind this. There

39:10

is no way to medically diagnose her.

39:12

Her therapist knows that she is not

39:14

transgender but fears there's no way we

39:16

can stop her. There's also

39:18

shortly thereafter a David French current

39:21

New York Times opinion

39:23

columnist column in

39:25

the National Review called the

39:27

Tragic Transgender Contagion where he

39:30

basically repeats this myth of like

39:32

gender confusion. He's like, yeah, there's some people that like say

39:34

they're trans but actually they're like confused about their gender. And

39:37

he also says, gatekeeping has been replaced

39:39

by cheerleading. In the UK where records

39:42

are easier to obtain, clinics

39:44

are facing an explosion in demand

39:46

for quote unquote gender identity treatment.

39:49

At one major clinic, referrals quadrupled. At

39:51

another, they increased 20 fold in 10

39:53

years. So these

39:56

are all relative statistics, right? They're increasing

39:58

tenfold. Remember the first year that that

40:00

the gender clinic opened it had two patients. Right.

40:02

I mean, you could say that about a lot

40:04

of small businesses from year one to year two.

40:07

It's always about me like the actual articles

40:09

on this always contain the information debunking themselves.

40:11

He mentions later in the piece, he's

40:13

like, oh, the staggering rise, etc. And

40:15

he says this UK gender clinic, they've

40:17

had an unprecedented increase from 697 referrals

40:22

to 1398 referrals in 2016. So that's like 1400

40:24

referrals to this gender clinic in the UK.

40:29

There are 8 million kids between

40:32

10 and 19 in the UK. So that's 0.0175% have gotten referrals

40:38

to the gender clinic or one in around 6000 kids.

40:41

These are also just referrals, right? There's

40:43

already at this time years long waiting

40:45

lists. And then once you get referred,

40:47

you still have appointments and you sort of then go

40:50

through the process and you may or may not get

40:52

a referral to endocrinology. So these are

40:54

very small numbers. But of course, all

40:57

of this kind of reinforces this idea

40:59

of like social contagion. They're just reaching

41:01

for like, somebody has to be responsible

41:03

for this. Right, right. It can't just

41:05

be that some people are trans. And

41:08

now there is like more of a

41:10

way for more of those people to

41:12

come out, right than 50 or 100

41:14

years ago, we have been recording for

41:16

an hour and 44 minutes. And we're

41:19

getting to the thing that's in the

41:21

title of the episode. Okay, we're

41:23

getting to the actual left wing podcast.

41:25

It's like 90% contact. Is this a

41:29

two parter or a no

41:31

parter? We just never get

41:33

to the topic. So all

41:35

of that is bouncing around

41:37

in 2016. In February

41:40

of 2017, we get

41:42

the first appearance, finally,

41:44

of the term rapid onset

41:47

gender dysphoria. This appears in

41:49

a study by a woman

41:51

named Lisa Littman, who is

41:53

a professor at Brown. Before

41:55

she was studying women's and reproductive health, she

41:58

has no like background in trans anything. but

42:00

she publishes in February 2017 this

42:03

like very short poster abstract.

42:05

It's like a column and a

42:07

half in the Journal

42:10

of Adolescent Health. The

42:12

title is Rapid Onset of Gender

42:14

Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults,

42:16

colon, a Descriptive Study. So

42:19

this is the text of

42:21

the study. So this is under purpose. This

42:23

is what it says. Parents

42:25

online are observed reporting their children

42:28

experiencing a rapid onset of gender

42:30

dysphoria, appearing for the first time

42:33

during or after puberty. They

42:35

describe this development occurring in the context

42:38

of being part of a peer group

42:40

where one, multiple, or even all friends

42:42

have developed gender dysphoria and come

42:45

out as transgender during the same

42:47

time frame and or

42:49

an increase in social media slash

42:51

internet use. The

42:53

purpose of this study is

42:55

to document this observation and

42:58

describe the resulting presentation of

43:00

gender dysphoria inconsistent with existing

43:02

research. The existing research indicates

43:05

that most trans people

43:07

realize relatively young and it's not

43:09

something that just kind of like

43:11

suddenly occurs in adolescence. So

43:14

kind of on its face, it's like, okay, this

43:16

might be like a new phenomenon. However, the first

43:19

two words of this are

43:21

parents online. So this

43:23

is not a survey of trans people

43:25

who say, hey, I suddenly got this identity. It's

43:28

not that they developed gender dysphoria

43:30

suddenly, it's that it felt sudden

43:32

to their parents. As

43:35

a project, it's so weird

43:37

to try to propose and describe

43:40

a phenomenon of

43:42

self-discovery from other

43:44

people. And by asking other

43:47

people who have alarmingly high

43:49

rates of rejecting their own

43:51

children for this specific thing.

43:53

Exactly. This is not just

43:55

a survey of parents. This

43:58

is a survey of parents who were

44:00

recruited on 4th Wave

44:02

Now, Transgender Trend, and Youth

44:04

Trans Critical Professionals. Those three websites

44:07

we talked about earlier are where

44:10

the researcher posted the advertisement

44:13

recruiting participants. It's

44:16

like saying, oh, we wanted to find

44:18

out how many teenagers are worshipping

44:20

Satan. So we went to parents

44:23

who think their teens are worshipping

44:25

satan.com and we surveyed a bunch

44:27

of parents and wouldn't you know it,

44:30

99% of teens are worshipping

44:32

Satan. Yeah, it just feels like a

44:34

reverse engineering of like, the

44:36

science is here because I'm uncomfortable. Exactly.

44:39

It just feels like such a classic overreach. So the

44:41

study, it just says like,

44:43

okay, we got 164 parents to fill

44:46

out this survey. It says, you

44:48

know, 93% are female, 94% are white. I

44:51

think this is important. 88% of

44:53

parents answered that they believe transgender people

44:55

deserve the same rights and protections as

44:58

other individuals. But not my kids. This

45:00

is again, this thing, this constant invocation

45:02

of like, we're not transphobes, we just

45:04

want to say, right? You know what

45:06

it is. It's the

45:08

parental version of nimbyism. Like

45:11

it's fine in theory, but not

45:14

in here. Not in my back

45:16

child. Okay. Nimp.

45:19

Nimp. Yes. So

45:21

it's quite this thing of like 88% of respondents

45:23

say that like, I'm chill with trans people. 76.5%

45:28

of people say that they believe their

45:30

child is incorrect in their belief of

45:32

being transgender. And then we get

45:34

into the like, super red flag stuff. Oh,

45:36

that wasn't the red flag stuff. Well, it's

45:39

getting to like, the sort of like, the

45:41

more comedic red flags, honestly. Some

45:43

of the things that are in this are like,

45:45

genuinely hilarious. So here's the next couple of paragraphs.

45:49

It's not all hilarious, but we'll get there. Although

45:51

the expected prevalence rate for transgender

45:53

young adults is 0.7%, 39% of the

45:59

friend groups describe it. described, had

46:01

more than half of the

46:03

pre-existing friend group becoming transgender.

46:06

On average, 3.5 friends

46:08

per group became gender dysphoric.

46:11

So this is again asking parents for

46:13

like objective information that they would have

46:15

no idea about. Like my parents did not

46:17

know the makeups of my friend groups. Where

46:20

friend group activities were known, 64% of

46:23

friend groups mocked people

46:25

who were not transgender

46:27

or LGBTQ. This

46:30

is my favorite shit. Honestly

46:33

it seems low. They hate

46:35

you because you're straight. It's

46:37

reverse discrimination. This is such a

46:39

fucking pelt of me of just like how

46:41

janky the survey is. It's also like you're

46:43

talking about teens and children. Yeah

46:45

there's no relevance. They're

46:48

making fun of you because you wear

46:50

skinny jeans. They're not making fun of

46:53

you because you're straight. Also

46:55

it's like you're asking parents what

46:57

their teens are making fun

46:59

of them for. The answer is everything.

47:02

You embarrass them in every way. Wait

47:04

keep reading, keep reading, keep reading. Where

47:06

popularity status was known, 64% of

47:10

adolescents had an increase in

47:12

popularity within the friend group

47:14

after announcing they were transgender.

47:16

Again it's like how would parents know this?

47:19

How would parents know this? Also ask the

47:23

trans kids. Do

47:25

people like you more for being trans?

47:27

That's really weird. Adolescents and

47:29

young adults received online advice

47:32

that if they didn't transition immediately

47:34

they'd never be happy and that parents

47:36

who didn't agree to take them for

47:38

hormones are abusive and transphobic. You said

47:41

that it's like this is coming from

47:43

a place of anxiety. It's also you can tell

47:45

it's coming from some place of resentment

47:47

too. It's like they're sitting around

47:49

and they're mocking us. Like why

47:51

would you even ask this? Adolescents

47:54

and young adults expressed distrust of

47:56

people who are not transgender. Stop

47:58

spending time with non-transgender friends. friends,

48:00

withdrew from their families, and expressed

48:03

that they only trust information about

48:05

gender dysphoria that comes from transgender

48:07

sources." Sis people

48:09

are like super on one about trans

48:12

people, so I'm like, that's reasonable. The

48:14

thing is, it's funny that like it's

48:16

sort of purporting to be a description of

48:19

this phenomenon where people realize they're

48:21

trans really quickly. What it really is, is a

48:23

portrait of like what

48:25

transphobic parents think is going

48:27

on with their kids and online. Like

48:29

none of this actually sounds like what

48:31

you find on the internet or like the

48:34

advice around trans people and this whole thing

48:36

of like they're going to call you transphobic,

48:38

they don't even spend time with their non-transgender

48:40

friends anymore. It's like dude, like 1% of

48:42

the population is transgender. Every

48:45

trans person is spending time with people who

48:47

are not transgender. Also, this is like a

48:49

core part of identity development, right? Yes. When

48:52

I was in college, I was like, I don't talk to straight

48:54

people, right? And then you fucking come out of it. Yeah,

48:56

like whatever, yeah. The place

48:58

that that comes from is not like

49:00

a deep-seated bigotry against straight

49:03

people or cis people or whatever.

49:06

It comes from hard and fast

49:08

signals from other people that you are

49:10

not wanted here. Right. That is

49:12

born of very clear behavior

49:14

from other people. It's born

49:17

of transphobia. Another

49:19

thing that I think is really important to

49:21

stress here after this study

49:23

gets published is the

49:25

entire concept of rapid onset

49:28

gender dysphoria is actually

49:30

distinct from social contagion in like

49:32

meaningful ways, right? Because

49:35

just because somebody discovers

49:37

that they're trans quickly or

49:39

suddenly doesn't mean it's not true. Right. There's

49:43

something very weird at the

49:45

center of this that it's like your discovery of

49:47

your status somehow invalidates the status.

49:49

So, I mean, the thing that I always think

49:51

of is I have an uncle who lives

49:54

in Berlin, and his husband,

49:56

whose name is not Fritz, but I will call

49:58

Fritz, grew up in East... Germany

50:01

and like of course was not exposed

50:03

to any information about homosexuality the entire

50:05

time that he was growing up. What

50:07

Fritz says is that like he knew he was

50:09

different but he couldn't put his finger

50:11

on it and when he was I believe 19 he

50:14

was watching a documentary on East

50:16

German TV that was like not a

50:18

sympathetic documentary but it was a documentary about

50:21

like homosexuals and he says the minute he

50:23

heard the word he was like that's

50:25

what I am. On some

50:27

level that is rapid onset homosexuality. He

50:30

finally had a term for it but

50:32

first of all he is gay like

50:34

he's now married to a man and

50:37

like that's not invalid for

50:39

people to sort of have this epiphany or

50:41

sudden realization and like yeah you know what

50:44

sometimes that does come from a friend sometimes

50:46

that does come from something you see on

50:48

TV or fucking Tumblr who knows but that

50:50

doesn't mean that it's not true.

50:53

There's just this really weird desperation

50:56

to find some excuse

50:59

to say that this whole thing is invalid but

51:01

like it's not even clear at this point that

51:04

rapid onset gender dysphoria even is a

51:06

fucking thing because nobody's interviewed actual trans

51:08

kids about their experiences right so this

51:11

entire concept is from a fucking blog comment right? Yeah.

51:14

But then also nothing about this

51:17

phenomenon even if it is true means

51:19

that it's all a fucking trend or it's fake

51:21

or they're going to desist eventually it's just like

51:23

another way that people discover things about themselves. I

51:25

think one of the biggest tells in a

51:27

bunch of the stuff that we've

51:29

talked about today is

51:32

the lack of curiosity. It's

51:34

fascinating to me how rarely

51:37

when people go oh there are all these

51:40

kids and they might all be trans but

51:42

no one just goes okay then what? Yeah.

51:45

Then there's trans adults.

51:47

Yeah. And then uhhhhh

51:50

unclear. So basically after

51:52

this extremely brief not very

51:55

indicative of anything study of quote

51:57

unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria comes out.

52:00

We then get this concept slowly

52:03

moving from the right,

52:05

from conservative publications, into kind

52:07

of polite mainstream news.

52:10

So in 2017, there's a BBC

52:12

documentary called Transgender Kids. Who

52:14

knows best? In the Globe

52:16

and Mail, which is kind of a centre rights

52:18

publication in Canada, there's an

52:20

article called Don't Treat All

52:22

Cases of Gender Dysphoria the

52:25

Same Way. This is a

52:27

little excerpt. Rapid-onset gender dysphoria,

52:29

seen primarily in teenage girls

52:32

and university-aged young women, is

52:34

characterized by a sudden desire to

52:36

transition without any signs of gender

52:38

dysphoria in childhood. It typically

52:41

emerges after an individual has spent

52:43

much time researching gender dysphoria online.

52:45

A 2017 study

52:47

found an association between this

52:50

phenomenon and having a friend,

52:52

or multiple friends, identify as

52:54

transgender, suggesting similarities to a

52:57

social contagion. These

52:59

girls frequently also have other

53:01

mental health conditions like autism or

53:03

borderline personality disorder that should be

53:06

the focus of concern instead. This

53:08

is another, this is kind of the

53:11

final component of this myth that starts

53:13

appearing at this time, that what we're

53:15

really talking about here is kids with

53:17

mental health problems. And they

53:19

might say they're trans, but they're really just

53:21

acting out the fact that they have autism

53:23

or they have borderline or they're depressed or

53:25

something else. This is like a very important

53:27

component of this myth going forward. Well also,

53:29

this is where I'm going to channel Matt

53:31

Bernstein. Oh, Matt-chef. This

53:34

is indistinguishable from the rhetoric in

53:36

like the 2000s and early 2010s,

53:39

specifically around marriage, was just like, Yeah, yeah,

53:42

yeah, yeah, yeah. If

53:44

we do this, then it will be cool to be

53:46

gay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very funny

53:48

to me that there are so many straight-says people out there who are like, Wait

53:50

a minute, what if there are more somewhere?

53:53

And I'm like, Surprise! There totally are! That's the

53:55

thing, it's, This

53:57

is what is so frustrating to me, is like so much of

53:59

this is driven by- by like very explicit

54:01

homophobia and transphobia. There are people

54:03

who have like legitimate questions and

54:05

like I'm fine to speak to

54:07

those people, but there are also a lot

54:09

of people who cause play as someone with

54:11

reasonable questions who are just fucking transphobes

54:14

and homophobes. Absolute sea lions. Yeah, exactly. There's

54:16

lots of that shit going on too. To

54:18

me, it's just like such a fucking, yeah,

54:20

it's just such a perfect like little distillation

54:22

of like where this is because it's

54:24

the same messages, right? But it's sounding, it's

54:26

like sounding more polite now. It's like, well,

54:28

you know, there's a study that says, you

54:30

know, this rapid onset gender dysphoria, it

54:33

has these characteristics. It's like, I can see

54:35

reasonable people reading this and being like, oh,

54:37

interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like in totally good

54:39

faith and being like, oh wow, okay. Because

54:42

most people don't know a trans person and they

54:44

don't really have a lot of context

54:46

for this issue. At one point we

54:48

did a focus group specifically on trans

54:50

health care with cis people. I had

54:52

heard for years and years and years

54:55

just like knowing one queer or trans

54:57

person like can make a whole world

54:59

of difference for people. And I was

55:01

always sort of like, yeah, we did

55:03

a focus group and asked people to

55:05

list off the words that they associated

55:07

with the word transgender as the like

55:09

opening exercise. Pariah was a word that

55:11

came up over and over again. Someone

55:14

wrote murder. Okay. And then we got

55:16

to this last guy and he

55:19

was like, wine lover. What?

55:23

Hardworking. Hollen

55:26

Oates fan was one of it.

55:28

I was like, what is

55:30

going on? So the moderator of the discussion group was

55:32

like, it sounds like your words

55:34

are different than everybody else's words. What's going

55:36

on there? And he was like, oh, I

55:38

work with a gal down at the post

55:41

office. She's great. Oh, that's so funny. He

55:43

was the one person in the room

55:45

who was like close to a trans

55:47

woman. Yeah. And his words were just

55:49

like night and fucking day. It's also

55:51

it's so funny that he also seemed to misunderstand

55:53

the brief. Where's like, what do you think

55:55

about transgender people as a group? And he's

55:57

like, Janine loves Steely Dan. And

56:01

the Orioles. I

56:03

don't know that you understood the question, but you know what? I'll

56:05

take it. Your heart is in the right place. But

56:08

then, I don't know if you remember

56:10

this internet blowup, but in

56:12

this kind of wave of laundering,

56:14

we have an article in

56:16

The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly newspaper,

56:19

called The D-Transitioners. They

56:21

were transgender until they weren't. What

56:23

the fuck, The Stranger? Let's

56:26

read a couple paragraphs.

56:29

Oh, fucking shit. This

56:31

one's kind of long. Jane, a 53-year-old

56:33

woman in Southern California, lived as

56:36

a trans man for nearly 20

56:38

years before discovering

56:40

radical feminist forums online

56:42

and, soon after, opted

56:44

to transition back. I

56:46

really thought I was trans, Jane said. I

56:49

really believed it, 100%. I

56:51

was even fired from my job for coming

56:53

out. The idea that the perceived

56:55

boom in the trans population is due to

56:57

peer pressure or social contagion can be

57:00

uncomfortable for trans people and their

57:02

supporters. It's also a theory

57:04

frequently pushed by the right. In

57:06

reality, no one knows exactly why

57:08

so many people seem to have

57:11

recently come out as trans or some

57:13

other form of genderqueer. It's a mystery.

57:15

The writer and trans woman, Julia Serrano,

57:17

argues in an essay on Medium that

57:19

this is due to the shift from

57:22

the old gatekeeper system of trans healthcare

57:24

to the newer model that, in

57:26

fact, takes trans people's experiences and

57:28

concerns seriously. Increased

57:31

visibility and social acceptance are also logical

57:33

explanations for the perceived growth in the

57:36

trans population. More people

57:38

are aware it's an option now. But

57:41

as a study published this year in the Journal

57:43

of Adolescent Health notes, parents have

57:45

begun reporting, quote, a rapid onset

57:48

of gender dysphoria in

57:50

adolescents and teens who are,

57:52

quote, part of a peer group where one,

57:54

multiple, or even all friends have

57:56

developed gender dysphoria and come out

57:58

as trans people. gender during the same

58:01

time frame. So what do you think overall?

58:03

It just feels like it is holding all

58:05

this shit at arms lengths and is like,

58:08

uh, it could be increased visibility, it could

58:10

be social acceptance, it could be all these

58:12

other things, but it's not. Right. We

58:15

still have the fundamental problem that there's

58:17

no actual evidence of this phenomenon of

58:19

rapid onset gender display, right? Yes, correct.

58:21

We don't have anything other than this

58:24

study that is proposing it. And also, as we

58:26

see in almost all of these articles,

58:28

the story doesn't even have examples of it.

58:30

So Jane, the lead character, we meet her

58:33

when she's 53, it appears

58:35

she transitioned in her 30s. There's

58:37

one other source in this article who started taking testosterone at

58:39

20. I mean, maybe it's peer

58:41

pressure, maybe it's not, but as a country, we're

58:45

kind of comfortable with adults making their own decisions

58:47

as far as the medical care that they need. Yeah. Also,

58:49

no, none of these people appear to have been

58:51

rushed through medical transition. Another source in

58:53

this article, who the author calls Jackie,

58:55

is 17 when she starts reading about

58:59

trans issues online. And then it

59:01

says in the article, it took another three years

59:03

in the passage of the Affordable Care Act for

59:05

her to start hormone therapy. At this point, we're

59:08

talking about adults, and adults can

59:10

do whatever they want with their bodies. There

59:12

isn't really any question of people being rushed

59:14

into surgeries and rushed into care. These are

59:16

the conclusions of someone who has never sought

59:18

healthcare in the United States. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

59:20

yeah. Like doctors will just be like, right

59:22

this way. I'm going to take us, I'm now going to take

59:24

us down a 45 minute tangent about my carpal

59:26

tunnel. So

59:29

if anyone is given a shit about it. Hang on,

59:31

I gotta pop some popcorn. We're going to do some

59:33

wax skeleton talk. The article is

59:36

basically just saying like, there's some people who

59:38

identify as trans, and then at a later

59:40

point in their life, they no longer identify

59:42

as trans, which I've never seen anybody deny.

59:44

Like there's this weird thing, this kind of

59:46

narrative that goes around online that like, you

59:48

know, trans people refuse to acknowledge the existence

59:50

of detransitioners. I've never heard a trans person

59:52

say that even like privately. Like

59:54

some people, like your, your identity changes over the

59:57

course of your life. And so some people transition

59:59

and later detransition. This is a phenomenon

1:00:01

that exists. Based on all the data we

1:00:03

have now, it's quite rare, but like, I

1:00:05

mostly see trans people being like really

1:00:07

charitable and really chill with these people,

1:00:09

and also, I see most detransitioners saying

1:00:12

just like, yeah, this, it's part of like the

1:00:14

journey that I'm on. Sure. Also,

1:00:16

according to the research that's come out about this, there's

1:00:18

also a huge amount of people who detransition because it's really

1:00:20

fucking hard to live as a trans person. If you

1:00:22

had asked me about my regret rate

1:00:25

on Pax Loved when I was tasting

1:00:27

pennies, I would have been like, really

1:00:29

high! Also, it fucking got rid

1:00:31

of COVID for me, so like, I'm good.

1:00:34

I do regret the cherry bark extract for

1:00:36

my, whatever the fuck that was. Where's

1:00:39

my article? So we're seeing this narrative start

1:00:41

to show up like almost everywhere, right? We

1:00:43

have like centrist publications, far right, center

1:00:45

right, and even like relatively far left

1:00:47

publications who are all kind of pushing

1:00:49

this thing of like, it's a little

1:00:51

mysterious of like so many desert trends and I

1:00:53

go there might be the thing where it's like rapid

1:00:55

onset. I think that's really

1:00:57

crescendos and an important chapter

1:01:00

in the mainstreaming of this is

1:01:02

a 2018 cover story

1:01:04

in The Atlantic. The

1:01:07

story was originally called, Your Child

1:01:09

Says She's Trans, She Wants Hormones

1:01:11

and Surgery, She's Thirteen, but

1:01:14

they've since changed the pronouns because the

1:01:16

model on the cover was

1:01:18

using he, him, or they, them pronouns at

1:01:20

the time and it appears that this outed

1:01:22

them to their parents. It's not totally clear

1:01:24

what happened. Fuck! But it's now

1:01:27

called, When Children Say They're Transgender. To

1:01:29

be fair to this article, it doesn't use the

1:01:31

term rapid onset gender dysphoria. It's

1:01:34

not explicitly proposing this as an

1:01:36

explanation, but again we see the

1:01:38

same pattern where it's kind of

1:01:40

entertaining this social contagion

1:01:42

theory as if it's like on the

1:01:44

same level as greater trans

1:01:47

acceptance means that more people are coming out as trans,

1:01:49

right? It's kind of proposing these two things almost as

1:01:51

if like it's like a 50-50 thing, right? And

1:01:54

it's really constructing this like the mystery

1:01:56

of why so many people say that

1:01:58

they're trans all of a sudden. So

1:02:00

we're going to read a relatively

1:02:02

long excerpt because

1:02:04

I think you you really have to get like the full

1:02:07

context of this article to see what

1:02:09

it's doing. When parents discuss the reasons

1:02:11

they question their children's desire to transition

1:02:14

whether in online forums or in response

1:02:16

to a journalist's questions, many

1:02:18

mention quote-unquote social contagion. These

1:02:22

parents are worried that their kids are influenced

1:02:24

by the gender identity exploration

1:02:26

they're seeing online and perhaps

1:02:28

at school or in other social

1:02:31

settings rather than experiencing gender

1:02:33

dysphoria. Many trans

1:02:35

advocates find the idea of social

1:02:37

contagion silly or even offensive given

1:02:39

the bullying, violence, and other abuse

1:02:41

this population faces. They also

1:02:44

point out that some parents simply

1:02:46

might not want a trans kid.

1:02:48

Again, parental skepticism or rejection is

1:02:50

a painfully common experience for trans young

1:02:52

people. Michelle Forcier, a

1:02:55

pediatrician who specializes in youth gender

1:02:57

issues in Rhode Island, said

1:03:00

the trans adolescents she works with frequently

1:03:02

tell her things like no one's taking

1:03:04

me seriously, my parents think this

1:03:06

is a phase or a fad. But

1:03:08

some anecdotal evidence suggests that social

1:03:11

forces can play a role in

1:03:13

a young person's gender questioning. I've

1:03:15

been seeing this more frequently, gender clinician

1:03:17

Laura Edwards Leaper wrote in an email.

1:03:20

Her young clients talk openly about peer

1:03:23

influence saying things like, oh Steve is

1:03:25

really trans, but Rachel is just doing

1:03:27

it for attention. Scott

1:03:30

Padberg, one of Edwards Leaper's

1:03:32

patients, did exactly this when

1:03:34

we met for lunch. He said there

1:03:36

are kids in his school who claim to be trans but

1:03:38

who he believes are not. Quote,

1:03:40

they flaunt it around like I'm trans,

1:03:43

I'm trans, I'm trans. He said they

1:03:45

posted on social media. I

1:03:47

heard a similar story from a quirky 16 year

1:03:50

old theater kid who was going by the

1:03:52

nickname Delta when we spoke. She

1:03:54

lives outside Portland, Oregon with her mother and

1:03:56

father, a wave of

1:03:58

gender identity experiments. orientation hit her

1:04:01

social circle in 2013. Suddenly,

1:04:04

it seemed, no one was

1:04:06

cisgender anymore. It says,

1:04:08

you know, some anecdotal evidence suggests

1:04:11

social forces can play a role in a

1:04:14

young person's gender questioning. We've got this

1:04:16

kid Delta who's like, oh, suddenly everybody's

1:04:18

trans around me. You don't really notice

1:04:20

it doing it, but it is proposing

1:04:22

this as like a legitimate option based

1:04:25

essentially on just like anecdotes, like

1:04:27

teens saying this. I'm

1:04:29

not forgetting that Portland looms large in these

1:04:31

anecdotes. I think this is our third. Blame

1:04:34

Portland when in doubt. Sure,

1:04:36

sure. I mean, I think, listen, I think

1:04:38

the language of this section is a lot

1:04:40

like the perceived boom language in the last

1:04:43

one, right? Which is like, journalistically, your editor

1:04:46

isn't going to let you say, like this

1:04:49

is caused by social contagion and a

1:04:51

smart journalist who's been around the block

1:04:53

kind of knows that they have some

1:04:55

level of responsibility to like accurately

1:04:57

describe what's going on here regardless

1:04:59

of how they feel about it.

1:05:02

So this to me reads like

1:05:04

another example of like, we want

1:05:06

to promote this idea. We want

1:05:08

to elevate this idea. And

1:05:10

we have to do that in a careful way

1:05:12

so that it sticks. We're going to dive in

1:05:14

on the story of Delta in a second. But

1:05:17

this article does something that we see that the same

1:05:19

pattern that we see in so many of these kind

1:05:21

of identical at this point feature stories that are like

1:05:23

about the tricky debate over trans medicine for

1:05:25

youth. It doesn't really investigate

1:05:28

whether or not this social contagion theory

1:05:30

makes any sense. Like we looked at the

1:05:32

evidence. Here's what we found. It basically just

1:05:35

like proposes it as a theory while not

1:05:37

actually offering any evidence for it. So in

1:05:39

the article, the article profiles a bunch of

1:05:41

different people who transitioned and later ended up

1:05:43

detransitioning, but none of them were rushed through

1:05:46

medical procedures. So the opening anecdote of

1:05:48

the article is somebody named Claire who

1:05:50

identified as trans for a while and

1:05:53

then eventually doesn't identify as trans anymore.

1:05:55

And her parents say like, we're worried that

1:05:57

if we had taken her to a gender

1:05:59

clinic. They would have pushed her through physical transition

1:06:01

and she would have regretted it. But

1:06:03

nothing happened. That's

1:06:06

just a hypothetical. This is where this as

1:06:08

a project really reveals itself to

1:06:11

be about cis people's anxieties

1:06:13

about the existence of trans people.

1:06:16

This is not and has never really been

1:06:18

about healthcare. Healthcare is just sort of a

1:06:20

foothold. It's a system where we can have

1:06:22

some influence. And you focus on

1:06:24

kids because again, that's another place where you

1:06:26

can be like, I'm just concerned for their

1:06:28

safety. Are you not concerned about kids? Yeah.

1:06:31

It's a very Mrs. Lovejoy won't somebody please think

1:06:33

of the children kind of thing. There's

1:06:36

also someone whose timeline is a little

1:06:38

murky but it appears she socially transitions

1:06:40

at 15, gets hormones at 16 and

1:06:42

a mastectomy at 17. There's

1:06:45

also somebody who socially transitions at 15,

1:06:47

starts hormones at 17, gets a double mastectomy

1:06:50

at 20 and detransitions at 22. So

1:06:53

that's a five year process. There's

1:06:55

another person who transitions in her late 20s. So

1:06:58

just irrelevant to this issue completely.

1:07:01

This Scott Padberg kid who was mentioned

1:07:03

in the previous paragraph starts

1:07:05

getting assessed by therapists at age 13.

1:07:08

He is 16 when he's featured in this article still

1:07:10

has not a top surgery. So he's in the

1:07:12

middle of a three year process that includes

1:07:14

it appears very intense assessment by

1:07:17

a medical professional. There's

1:07:19

yet another kid who identifies as

1:07:21

trans in 2014 and gets a mastectomy in 2017.

1:07:25

So it's not really clear what the intermediate steps are.

1:07:27

But again, three year process

1:07:29

and this kid talks about

1:07:31

a eight hour assessment by

1:07:33

two clinicians and weekly visits

1:07:35

with a psychologist before they

1:07:38

transition. I don't

1:07:40

know what the like scandal is about any of

1:07:42

these, right? They're just like straightforwardly are not being

1:07:44

rushed. This is the other thing about the like

1:07:46

sort of this idea of like rushed care. If

1:07:49

you know anything about the

1:07:51

fucking standards of care for trans

1:07:54

people, you know that

1:07:56

it's almost impossible to quote

1:07:58

unquote rush care. It's really funny

1:08:00

to read the popular press that's just

1:08:03

constantly raising the specter of kids being

1:08:05

pushed into these surgeries versus

1:08:07

the academic press that is all about

1:08:09

the barriers. There's cost barriers. There's

1:08:11

logistical barriers. Not everybody lives near a clinic.

1:08:15

It's actually, in reality, really hard to get this

1:08:17

care. And yet, we're constantly being

1:08:19

told by these magazine articles that it's too

1:08:21

easy or that we should be worried that

1:08:23

it's too easy. There's a debate over whether

1:08:25

it's too easy. It's

1:08:27

a fairly easily answerable question, even in

1:08:30

the text of these articles. They

1:08:32

can't come up with any examples of it happening. It actually reminds me

1:08:34

a lot of the razor blades in apples

1:08:36

on Halloween, miss. There's

1:08:38

no example of this ever happening. Can

1:08:42

I prove that it hasn't happened? No.

1:08:45

But surely, at some point, if

1:08:47

we're supposed to be afraid of

1:08:49

something, we should have a decent

1:08:51

number of clear-cut examples of it

1:08:54

taking place. And the fact that this

1:08:56

is 2018 when this article is published, but we're now in 2024, and

1:09:00

there's a couple things that maybe

1:09:02

get close, although a lot of

1:09:04

those haven't really been confirmed, but

1:09:06

we're still getting in these articles these

1:09:08

stories of people transitioning at 25

1:09:11

and people with years-long

1:09:13

transition periods, like the person who sued

1:09:16

the UK gender clinic, had a five-year

1:09:18

process and admits that she saw

1:09:20

psychologists more than 10 times in

1:09:22

that process. If that's rushed,

1:09:24

then all medical care in

1:09:27

the US and the UK is rushed.

1:09:29

It's not happening at a breakneck pace.

1:09:31

Yeah. So we're going

1:09:33

to zoom back into Delta,

1:09:35

who is this kid who identifies as trans

1:09:37

at 13. And so

1:09:39

we are going to read the

1:09:41

description from the Atlantic article. Delta's

1:09:44

parents took her to see Edward's leaper.

1:09:47

The psychologist didn't question her about being

1:09:49

trans or closed the door on her

1:09:52

eventually starting hormones. Rather, she asked Delta

1:09:54

a host of detailed questions about her

1:09:56

life and mental health and family. Edward's

1:09:59

leaper advised her to wait until she

1:10:01

was a bit older to take steps toward

1:10:03

a physical transition. As Delta recalled,

1:10:05

she said something like, I acknowledge

1:10:07

that you feel a certain way, but I think

1:10:10

we should work on other stuff first, and

1:10:12

then if you still feel this way later on

1:10:14

in life, then I will help you with that.

1:10:17

Other stuff mostly meant her problems with

1:10:19

anxiety and depression. Edwards Leaper

1:10:21

told Delta and her mother that while

1:10:23

Delta met the clinical threshold for gender

1:10:26

dysphoria, a deliberate approach made the most

1:10:28

sense in light of her mental health

1:10:30

issues. At the time, I

1:10:33

was not happy that she told me that I should

1:10:35

go on and deal with mental health stuff first, Delta

1:10:37

said. But I'm glad she said

1:10:39

that because too many people are just gung

1:10:41

ho, like, you're trans, go ahead, even if

1:10:44

they aren't. And then they end

1:10:46

up making mistakes that they can't redo. Again, we

1:10:48

include a quote from a teenager saying that this

1:10:50

is common when we've seen no evidence that it's

1:10:52

common, but anyway. Footage not found. Yeah. If

1:10:56

people can't get health care until they

1:10:58

deal with their anxiety and depression. Uh

1:11:01

oh, I'm never getting no one will

1:11:03

get health care. We're all anxious and depressed. Fuck.

1:11:07

Delta's gender dysphoria subsequently dissipated,

1:11:09

though it's unclear why she

1:11:12

started taking antidepressants in December, which

1:11:14

seemed to be working. I

1:11:16

asked Delta whether she thought her mental health

1:11:18

problems and identity questioning were linked. They

1:11:21

definitely were, she said, because

1:11:23

once I actually started working on things, I

1:11:25

kind of got better than I didn't want anything

1:11:27

to do with gender labels. I

1:11:29

was fine with just being me and not

1:11:31

being a specific thing. So basically, I mean, I

1:11:34

know that's a long excerpt, but essentially the

1:11:36

story we have here is she says that

1:11:38

she's trans, but then it turns out she's

1:11:40

experiencing some kind of depression, anxiety stuff. And

1:11:43

once we start working on the depression, anxiety

1:11:45

stuff, it turns out, she's

1:11:47

not trans. Like the transness was kind

1:11:50

of an output of the fact

1:11:52

that she was depressed and anxious. And

1:11:54

once you deal with those underlying issues,

1:11:56

the transness goes away. It's essentially a

1:11:58

symptom, right? This is extremely important to

1:12:00

this narrative, right? So the fact

1:12:02

that these kids are, again,

1:12:05

basically confused. Right. They're not trans,

1:12:07

they're just mentally ill. It's very similar to the

1:12:09

narratives that we got around gay people in the

1:12:11

80s and 90s when gay people also had

1:12:13

much higher rates of depression and anxiety. We're more

1:12:15

likely to use drugs, we're more likely to kill themselves.

1:12:17

That was seen as an output of

1:12:20

the gayness, right? Why should we affirm

1:12:22

gay identities? Like, these people are killing themselves at high rates.

1:12:24

They're all sad to be gay. We should be fixing

1:12:26

the gayness, right? Because it's obviously causing them a

1:12:28

lot of distress. But when

1:12:31

we have marginalized groups that have

1:12:33

higher rates of mental health problems,

1:12:35

we should at least entertain the

1:12:37

possibility that the depression and anxiety

1:12:40

are outputs of being trans in

1:12:42

a transphobic family and a transphobic school

1:12:44

and a transphobic country. I

1:12:46

came out when I was like 15

1:12:49

and got medicated for depression

1:12:51

and anxiety that same year. That

1:12:54

medication didn't make me straight. Right.

1:12:57

Zoloft is not a conversion

1:12:59

therapy? Once we get

1:13:01

deeper into Delta's story, things get

1:13:04

even worse. So after this article

1:13:06

comes out, both Transgender Trend and

1:13:08

Force Wave Now, these anti-trans blogs,

1:13:10

both positively promote the article. They're

1:13:12

like, we think this is great.

1:13:14

At one point, someone says,

1:13:17

kind of in reply to one of these tweets, someone says, hey,

1:13:19

it's kind of weird that the Atlantic

1:13:22

article didn't link to Force Wave Now because Force Wave

1:13:24

Now has a lot of like resources that

1:13:26

parents could use, right? If their kids

1:13:28

are trans. And someone from

1:13:30

Force Wave Now replies, families

1:13:33

profiled are forced families. That was

1:13:35

the censors line in the sand,

1:13:37

removal of any mention of force.

1:13:40

So Force Wave Now, according

1:13:43

to this person, helped

1:13:45

this article come about and

1:13:47

provided sources. And then it appears

1:13:49

late in the editing process, any

1:13:52

mention of that was removed. Yikes. This

1:13:54

is where it gets really bad,

1:13:56

Aubrey. So this kid Delta, her

1:13:59

mother. is a blogger

1:14:02

at Force Wave Now. And at

1:14:04

some time before the Atlantic article,

1:14:06

she writes a post laying

1:14:09

out her timeline of what happened

1:14:11

with Delta. She starts off with

1:14:13

sort of scene setting. She says that she got, you

1:14:15

know, her daughter started to identify as trans.

1:14:18

She then got really radicalized on this

1:14:20

when she saw a special about

1:14:22

a National Geographic cover about

1:14:25

like the changing nature of womanhood and how

1:14:27

the way that femininity is changing

1:14:29

like different cultures around the world. And

1:14:31

she talks about this a little bit. And then she says, from

1:14:34

that point, it was like a cascade of

1:14:36

ideas came into focus for me. I had

1:14:38

small epiphanies about how all this impacted civil

1:14:40

rights. The transgender politics and policies have the

1:14:43

potential to undo civil rights for all

1:14:45

people. If civil rights are not based on

1:14:47

material reality, then anyone anywhere can

1:14:49

undo them and change them. This seemed extremely

1:14:51

dangerous to me. When that idea hit me,

1:14:53

it was like a sucker punch. It was

1:14:56

the pulling of the thread that began to

1:14:58

unravel the tapestry of transgender ideology.

1:15:00

This is the UK shit of

1:15:02

just like somehow acknowledging

1:15:04

and making space for

1:15:07

trans people is

1:15:09

like an assault on cis women.

1:15:11

You said pregnant people and now

1:15:13

nobody can get medical care at

1:15:15

the hospital anymore. Right, right, right, right. That's

1:15:18

the reason we don't have abortion.

1:15:21

People use different words. Okay, but

1:15:23

then here is this mother describing

1:15:25

her account of

1:15:27

what actually happened with Delta. Just before

1:15:29

this time, my kid was insistent on

1:15:32

seeing a gender therapist and getting into a

1:15:34

gender clinic to start transitioning. I

1:15:36

dragged my feet. When we went to

1:15:38

doctor appointments for totally unrelated things, they would

1:15:40

refer my child to the gender clinic, even

1:15:43

though we'd already been, and tell

1:15:45

my child they shouldn't have to suffer

1:15:47

and that they could easily take testosterone

1:15:49

to alleviate these horrible symptoms like

1:15:51

periods and breast development. It

1:15:54

happened every time. The doctors

1:15:56

wouldn't stop dangling the bait. Because

1:15:59

of the turmoil. this caused, I

1:16:01

had to stop taking my child to

1:16:03

the doctor unless it was an emergency.

1:16:05

Jesus hell. When

1:16:08

we started on the new transgender journey

1:16:10

together, my child and I decided that

1:16:12

no matter what this was not going

1:16:14

to be the life focus. We

1:16:17

opted not to join any queer youth

1:16:19

support groups. What I've seen in those

1:16:21

groups is that life becomes very narrow.

1:16:23

One doesn't play music, they play queer

1:16:26

music. One doesn't do art, they make queer

1:16:28

art. My kid even began

1:16:30

to notice this and didn't want to make

1:16:32

life all about being transgender. What?

1:16:35

So, she then describes what

1:16:38

is essentially like a campaign

1:16:40

years long of telling her daughter that

1:16:42

she's not really trans. She

1:16:45

says that they watch this BBC documentary

1:16:47

together, what appears to be at her behest,

1:16:50

and then as they're watching it, she sort of reiterates

1:16:52

to her daughter that like, you'll never really

1:16:54

be a man. Like you can transition,

1:16:56

you can get surgery, hormones, whatever, but like you're never really

1:16:58

going to be a man, it's never going to work. And

1:17:00

the daughter apparently breaks down crying and

1:17:02

sort of accepts this and

1:17:05

eventually kind of drops this whole

1:17:07

thing. This narrative of like,

1:17:09

oh, she started working on her depression and like then

1:17:11

the trans thing went away. I mean, maybe that's true.

1:17:14

I don't love the way that we litigate these fucking

1:17:16

anecdotes in like national media, but also

1:17:18

another fairly plausible explanation of this is

1:17:21

that she has a pretty transphobic mom who

1:17:23

just kept saying, no, you're not, no, you're

1:17:25

not, no, you're not. And eventually she capitulated.

1:17:27

Right. And this person lives with their

1:17:30

parents, their parents determine what

1:17:32

their life is going to look like, what they have access

1:17:34

to, whether or not they go to the fucking

1:17:36

doctor. Exactly. It's telling

1:17:38

that none of this, I think fairly

1:17:41

explicit anti-trans rhetoric shows up

1:17:43

in the article, right? We get a little

1:17:45

bit of explanation of like the mother was

1:17:47

skeptical, but nothing on the level of this. It

1:17:50

seems like the mother really self radicalized during this

1:17:52

process. And then we have this idea

1:17:54

of that, like, oh, well, you know, it was really, you

1:17:56

know, the mental health stuff all along and

1:17:58

like maybe it wasn't. Maybe

1:18:01

she would have desisted any way we don't know, but

1:18:03

it's like, it's very telling

1:18:05

to me that, you know, again, we're

1:18:07

constantly told to worry about parents and

1:18:09

doctors kind of pushing kids into transitioning too

1:18:11

quickly. But the much

1:18:14

larger problem is people talking their

1:18:16

kids out of it and people refusing to get

1:18:18

their kids care, and parents who are so skeptical,

1:18:20

the kids do have to go through a really

1:18:22

upsetting puberty before they can get any appointments with

1:18:24

doctors, right? Much less the money

1:18:26

and the insurance and all the other barriers. We're talking

1:18:28

about this issue as if it is

1:18:30

a level playing field and

1:18:32

not kids with

1:18:35

marginalized identities versus

1:18:37

very politicized adults with all

1:18:40

kinds of social, cultural, and

1:18:42

political power that those kids

1:18:44

do not have. Right.

1:18:47

There is this sort of tone and tenor

1:18:49

of a bunch of this stuff that's like,

1:18:51

I'm speaking truth to power. And I'm like,

1:18:53

do you mean children? I also think

1:18:55

it's worth noting that it's like, you know, it's now 2018

1:18:58

when this article comes out. What

1:19:00

we're basically talking about here is a

1:19:02

two-year process where this concept of social

1:19:05

contagion and rapid onset gender dysphoria appear

1:19:07

on a pretty fringe anti-trans

1:19:09

blog, and within two years they are

1:19:11

on the cover of The Atlantic. Man. Next

1:19:15

episode, we are going to talk

1:19:17

about the extremely unfortunate story of

1:19:19

how this ends up getting further

1:19:21

laundered into government policy. But

1:19:24

for now, you know, first of all,

1:19:26

I have no idea how this Atlantic article came about. I

1:19:28

have no idea behind the scenes what the recruitment

1:19:30

was. I also don't really care, right? If

1:19:33

you're telling the biography of a moral panic, what

1:19:35

you're looking at is the messages that were

1:19:37

available to the public. What were people reading

1:19:39

and hearing at the time? And what

1:19:42

Americans were hearing was that, you

1:19:44

know, trans rights are becoming more visible. You

1:19:47

have these, you know, fairly fringe

1:19:49

websites. You have

1:19:51

this social contagion theory that starts

1:19:53

bouncing around on the right. You then

1:19:56

have academic journals who begin

1:19:58

to explore this phenomenon. The

1:20:00

of rapid onset gender dysphoria. And

1:20:02

then you have cover stories in

1:20:05

prestigious national magazine ten of further

1:20:07

exploring this phenomenon and talking about

1:20:09

the debate within medicine, right? But

1:20:11

then if you zoom in on

1:20:13

any of these components. It's.

1:20:15

All just the same. Friends Web

1:20:17

sites. Yes, Video Site invents the

1:20:19

concept of social contagion. The concept

1:20:22

of rapid onset gender dysphoria is

1:20:24

based on interviews with people from

1:20:26

these web sites. And. Then the

1:20:28

Atlantic rights an article that includes

1:20:30

people who are bloggers. On this

1:20:32

website again it appears like

1:20:34

this: groundswell, but more just

1:20:37

talking about like one blog.

1:20:39

Disoriented. And a relatively small number of

1:20:41

and again, we have no real evidence. That.

1:20:43

There's any reason to consider this possibility at

1:20:45

this point. and I also in in the

1:20:47

same way that we talked. About rapid

1:20:49

onset gender dysphoria that just because you're.

1:20:52

Onset was rapid. Doesn't mean that it's

1:20:54

not true. I also think that the

1:20:56

the entire. Concept of social contagion

1:20:58

is also worth kind of thinking

1:21:00

about a little bit because said

1:21:02

to me it's like the conversation

1:21:04

about whether or not kids identify

1:21:06

as something they're not because it's

1:21:08

trendy. To feel totally irrelevant to

1:21:10

me like I I'm gay. Some kid

1:21:13

who identifies as gay when. He thirteen

1:21:15

as easy something on Tv and then eventually

1:21:17

a year later he's i am probably not.

1:21:19

Ida. Okay, I guess that actually

1:21:21

like a world where that kid is

1:21:24

able to. Explore in like

1:21:26

a affirming. Environment is great.

1:21:28

I would much rather have.

1:21:31

Quote unquote: Too many people identifying as Lgbt

1:21:33

and have the space to figure it out

1:21:35

for themselves. Relatively young then a world where

1:21:37

people are constantly telling them to, you're not

1:21:40

new, you're not new, you're not. I just

1:21:42

don't care that much, right? So. The

1:21:44

actual debate your the extent to which

1:21:46

this is a social dilemma were like

1:21:48

something that needs to be litigated. in

1:21:50

the cover of fucking national magazines

1:21:53

is a medical systems question right

1:21:55

is like are people getting irreversible

1:21:57

treatments when we we don't know

1:22:00

what their actual status is. To me, again,

1:22:02

I think that is a reasonable question to

1:22:04

ask, right? There's a good faith way

1:22:06

to have this conversation. And

1:22:08

again, years of this

1:22:10

panic, now speaking from 2024,

1:22:12

we still don't have any evidence that

1:22:14

that's happening, right? The fact that a

1:22:16

kid identifies as trans because they

1:22:19

see it on TV, I think

1:22:21

that's much more rare than like people

1:22:23

think it is. But like, is that

1:22:25

possible? Sure. But the solution to that,

1:22:28

if we're really so concerned with

1:22:30

kids finding out whether they're really trans before they get

1:22:32

any kind of medical procedures, then we should

1:22:34

make social transition as easy as possible. Then we should

1:22:36

make schools as accepting as

1:22:38

possible, right? The best way to know if

1:22:40

you're like, really your girl is to try

1:22:42

living as a girl for a while in

1:22:44

a supportive environment. There is this idea

1:22:46

that just questioning itself is like

1:22:49

a sinister activity that has to

1:22:51

be born of something, you know,

1:22:53

manipulative or something against sinister, right?

1:22:56

And I just don't think that

1:22:58

that's true. Right?

1:23:00

And actually, in a lot of ways, that's

1:23:02

sort of what your teenage and 20s

1:23:05

years are for. You try

1:23:07

on a bunch of shit and you go, Oh, actually,

1:23:09

I don't really like death metal. And

1:23:12

that's absolutely okay. And I think

1:23:15

if we slotted this into that territory

1:23:17

of just like, Oh, you're trying shit

1:23:19

on. Maybe it's a thing you love

1:23:21

for forever. And maybe it's

1:23:23

not like that feels like

1:23:25

actually a really healthy place

1:23:28

to be. Yep. That kind

1:23:30

of framework makes space for

1:23:32

trans identities to be as

1:23:34

legitimate as cis identities, right? When

1:23:37

we consider it a choice worth making,

1:23:39

a lifestyle, a lifestyle choice.

1:23:41

Yeah, that's right. That's what I

1:23:43

meant to say. I know your

1:23:45

real views. But like, when we

1:23:47

make space for people to actually

1:23:49

explore and actually interrogate, instead of

1:23:51

just fucking defending themselves against attacks

1:23:53

all the time, then more

1:23:55

people can come to clearer understandings

1:23:58

of who they really are. I also think Like

1:24:00

the kind of pull rank here as a

1:24:02

gay person would simply success. Over

1:24:06

the hazardous. Me

1:24:08

all know that be so my

1:24:10

my my seat keeping his podcast

1:24:13

about a gay man I think

1:24:15

as an old first of all

1:24:17

this entire idea feals identical honestly

1:24:19

to this whole panic of like

1:24:21

they're recruiting your kids. Yes I think

1:24:23

nobody wants a recruitment because that is like Anita Bryant

1:24:26

sort of flavor to it as as. Point right, And

1:24:28

the panic about the teachers in the eighties. This

1:24:31

is what they are talking about, right? and

1:24:33

like indoctrination. Can't you can use your can,

1:24:35

your child confusion and their their mental illness

1:24:37

and their vulnerability to tell them they're trans

1:24:40

rights of? That's basically what they're saying, right?

1:24:42

And I think as queer people I think

1:24:44

we know very intimately. That like. You

1:24:47

can't be recruited into a sexuality or

1:24:49

gender identity that you don't have yet,

1:24:51

right? Because we. All tried

1:24:53

recruiting ourselves into fucking

1:24:55

sweetness and there's no

1:24:58

amount of stigma. That

1:25:00

will make queer or trans people

1:25:02

cease to exist. It. Can just make

1:25:04

their lives fucking impossible. Like I was like

1:25:06

that have the teenager I like tried making

1:25:09

out with girls and stuff and like dating

1:25:11

girls and like it did nothing for me.

1:25:13

It was like my tongue as a zone

1:25:15

of his tongue. it was so fucking growth.

1:25:18

Like the whole scene of like sexual attractions

1:25:20

like it's it's more than the sum of

1:25:22

it's parts right? You don't think about like

1:25:24

I'm putting my like my mouth whole on

1:25:27

someone elses orifice right. It's like how did

1:25:29

we get here My clothes didn't seem like

1:25:31

Jimmy says letter. there are getting area. Trying

1:25:34

to. Fuck

1:25:37

off. Apply

1:25:39

to. The

1:25:42

fuck out of a little

1:25:45

after the. I think scissors

1:25:47

a seer among streets as

1:25:49

people that like experimentation. Is.

1:25:51

Going to like somehow ruin their kids. And.

1:25:53

I think like most people are not gay.

1:25:55

I think if you're street kid like dates

1:25:57

of the way for a while he'll be.

1:26:00

More the way I'm bored and I did girls and

1:26:02

then you figure out like oh shit, this doesn't work

1:26:04

for me. It or not, you're not to be tempted

1:26:06

by. Something you don't want. right?

1:26:09

And this is why when we talk about

1:26:11

these like you know as if like telling

1:26:13

young kids. About the existence of trans

1:26:15

people in like Make Them Trans I

1:26:17

I've been. Really lucky to get to know letter

1:26:19

principal and the way they talk about. Their. Gender

1:26:21

identity when they were kids. Like Somebody I Talk

1:26:24

To For Me and Peters episode on this said

1:26:26

that it's like she felt static in her brain.

1:26:28

And it was You put on girls' clothes for

1:26:30

the first time to static went away and she

1:26:32

like Celtic Peace and like I have put on

1:26:34

girls closed for like costume parties. Instance. M

1:26:37

I l feel anything because I'm a

1:26:39

trans. I not afraid of experimentation

1:26:41

and that way because if you're not

1:26:44

friends, you're not. It's not gonna

1:26:46

like tenth you it like this is. This

1:26:48

is what I think like is really missing

1:26:50

from this is that like people are afraid

1:26:52

of somebody exploring their identity as a second

1:26:54

to be like bewitched into thinking that they're

1:26:56

gay or trans. but like that isn't how

1:26:59

it works. Put Michael the

1:27:01

doctors wouldn't stop dangling the

1:27:03

be A That was my

1:27:06

reply. Gosh you're finally got

1:27:08

there. We

1:27:10

got so you couldn't do with your voice though. That

1:27:12

was like the least. not for his skin when I

1:27:14

am. Going to.