This week we follow up our discussion on the Arkansas bill, which banned transition procedures for minors, with a discussion about teenage social contagions. We talk about how the social contagion of our teen years was self-harm, and the tragic fact that today's contagion—rapid onset gender dysphoria—cannot be outgrown if taken too far.
Graham Linehan sits down with Sasha to discuss the recent critique he drew from Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog. Graham talks about his work as a journalist, his response to the accusations from Katie and Jesse, and a variety of things gender critical.
One side — my side — starts with the foundational assumption that everyone, trans or not, is first and foremost to be treated as an individual, no more or less equally deserving of respect than any other individual, and then builds from there. Of course I understand how much sensitivity there is in the transgender community about, say, pronouns. I’m a gay man; I’m deeply embedded in the gay community. I even worked at a trans bar back in the day. But I don’t take it as religious doctrine that anyone who simply claims to be a transgender woman is one — I don’t believe in gender religion and I reserve the right to have my own beliefs about anyone — and I don’t take it as law that I have to abide anyone’s pronouns. I aim to be respectful, but it’s case-by-case, and I’m the judge.
Sophie Watson joins me to chat about her experience at Cambridge University, where she is currently working on an undergraduate dissertation about surrogacy. (Sophie’s proposed dissertation topic was detransition, but her advisors told her they would not and could not oversee this project, deterring her from writing it). In November 2020, Sophie published a piece in Unherd called “Cambridge is censoring any dissent on trans issues” about the student campaign against Kevin Price, a porter at Clare College who resigned as Labour Councillor rather than agree with a motion that included the statement “transwomen are women.”
Suicide is a national public health crisis. It's also preventable, and there are things we know from decades of public research that can either increase the risk of suicide or decrease it. In the wake of a series of new bills in Arkansas meant to address the gender identity crisis in sports, medicine, and schools, trans "advocates" are foreshadowing an impending epidemic of suicide among trans-identifying youth. In doing so, they are flying in the face of all known research on preventing suicide, and quite possibly creating the very problem they claim they've set out to solve.
In this episode we talk about two Arkansas bills—HB1570 and HB1749—both of which pertain to minors undergoing gender transition. The first bill we discuss, HB 1570, titled the "Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act" prohibits medical gender procedures for minors (these include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and a variety of surgeries). We discuss what the bill actually says, and cover some of the misinformation that's been propagated about it by various sources.
Kara Dansky is an attorney, public speaker, writer, and consultant who currently serves on the steering committee of the U.S. chapter of the Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC). She also serves as the Chair of the Committee on Law and Legislation for WHRC globally. Kara has a background in criminal justice law and policy, and formerly served on the board of the Women's Liberation Front.
She joins me in this episode to talk about the push to redefine sex in the law to include the nebulous concept of gender identity, the current court cases where women's sex-based rights hang in the balance, and how she sees the gender identity ideology movement as a continuation in a long history of male abuse and silencing of women.
I'm joined by Alanna Smith, a high school track athlete from Connecticut, along with her mom Cheryl Radachowsky, and Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Christiana Holcomb.
Alanna is one of four athletes, the others being Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, and Ashley Nicoletti, who have filed a lawsuit that would block male athletes who identify as transgender from competing in girl’s sports in Connecticut.
The four girls have been consistently deprived of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels due to a policy in their state that allows males who self-identify as female to compete in girls’ athletic events.
In this episode, we follow up last week's chat about logical fallacies with a conversation about how we've questioned our own assumptions and ideologies and what we've learned from it.