We recorded this on Sunday, one day before the school shooting in Nashville, and unfortunately our discussion of violent radicalization is more prescient than intended.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, I promise. That’s just how the conversation starts.
It was interesting to hear you discuss the external factors that can become a wedge between the person and their belief system. If health complications lead to desisting then it makes sense that the people who choose not to have medical interventions will become the majority of those persisting with trans identification. In order to protect the ideology, we might see the gender identity community evolving into a movement of people for whom socially identifying into a subculture is the ultimate goal and anything medical is for confused dysphoric co-opters.
I wonder whether greater awareness of, and research into, the female phenotype of autism will also contribute to this evolution. I sometimes visit reddit communities like r/aspergirls and I'm often struck by how many of the discussions of ASD struggles with sensory issues are happening in parallel with the trans discussions of the same issues, just framed differently because it's seen through different lenses. You can sometimes see the two worlds come so close to overtly overlapping. For example, there might be a thread on the benefits of deep pressure therapy (the squeeze machine invented by Temple Grandin, weighted blankets, compression clothes etc.) and it's not uncommon for there to be a few people saying they put a binder on when they are in sensory overload to help them relax. Recognition of female ASD is still in the early stage of emerging from out of the shadow of the default male understanding of autism, so it can only be a matter of time before people start joining the dots explicitly.
I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.