In this podcast, Corinna Cohn, Lisa Selin Davis, Wesley Yang, and I discuss our experiences at the European Professional Association for Transgender Health and Genspect conferences in this recording from the last day of our time together in Ireland.
I really appreciate that you flagged this conversation. Very worthwhile and thought-provoking. In fact, as many who are likely interested don't have time for long form, it would be worth, if possible, breaking discussions like this into shorter topic segments. Just as one example, in the segment about "bridging" conversations (starting about 41:35), Lisa noted that, in the 70s, stereotypes were to be defied, then explained how the concept of "gender" has changed, and then noted at ~43:10 "there's some very basic information that got lost in the last couple generations, and I want to bring this into the conversation."
This is also high on my "to do" list in speaking with (mostly female, often lesbian, all left of center) friends and neighbors, almost all of whom, before I am able to persuade them to engage with me on this, are extremely low information. Ironically, some among my peers, who tend to be 60+, think that younger people are just on to something we older folks missed. As one said, "I feel I just have to adapt." I am working on various ways for folks to grasp that IMHO this is really just old wine in new bottles. I'd be very interested in a discussion among folks as smart and knowledgeable as those here about your views on this and strategies you've used to address that problem.
What I think, myself, is that younger people are simply doing what younger people always do, which is, in Erik Erikson lingo, searching for the answer to the big question "Who Am I?" (There's a wonderful, easy to understand, article about this here: https://www.verywellmind.com/identity-versus-confusion-2795735.) As I see it, one of the many terrible things about the current gender identity discourse is that, instead of young people defying all stereotypes, they are instead being encouraged to fit themselves into the tiniest of little identity boxes. But they are not the ones at fault: it's the adults who are supposed to be guiding them who are the problem.
Great observations Susan! I’m a 61 year old lesbian, a word which I’m sure you’ve heard Johns Hopkins University recently redefined as a non-man who is attracted to non-men. The gender cult will have fully had its way when men become the only people who are permitted to be called women. The cult’s project of upending our language by targeting all words referring to women and redefining them by meticulously cleansing them of any reference to females makes this the most sexist, woman-hating social force the west has seen in generations. We are being served, or rather force fed, old conservative wine in new progressive bottles.
Hey, Barb, good to “meet” you. I gather, BTW, that Johns Hopkins may have pulled back on that wacky definition (though I haven’t followed through to confirm). What worries me most is getting through to anyone we know, and then to public officials, to get this ship turned around. Biden is clueless, and his advisors (Levine chief among them) are making a fool of him. That Rose Montoya incident is only the latest, and sure to be fodder for numerous campaign ads. I know some Ds are frustrated enough to vote for Rs, but I think that’s a really bad idea. In addition to the issues with which you and I and so many others are rightly concerned, Rs will gut social programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the ACA. So I think that makes any of us who care about those things, too, which I do, to do everything we can to educate others and then get everyone to contact their public officials early and often in hopes we avoid a total calamity in 2024.
Good to meet you too Susan! Yes, I’m encouraged to see that the Hopkins definition received a Dylan Mulvaney-type reception. One thing I’ve done to plant a seed with my friends, who are on the left with me but who I don’t think are actually seeing this hiding-in-plain-sight, multi-headed gender cult for what it is, is to point them to the “Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” podcast series. I think it’s deeply thoughtful, compassionate and humble, while refusing to pull any punches. My friends found it so engrossing they binge-listened all 7 episodes. I’m alarmed that virtually all of our civic institutions have become propagators and enforcers of the gender cult. It’s so important for Ds to stop propagating the cult and start standing up to it, for the sake of everyone being harmed by it. Not to be too Machiavellian about it, but I also think it would be a huge political win for the Ds to do so. The cult is built on the lie that biological sex is not real, so it’s fundamentally unstable. I hope that once one brave, high-visibility democrat calls this shit out for what it is, an avalanche of support will follow. I can tell from “reader’s picks” comments on NYT articles about all issues trans that congressional democrats are completely out of touch with the democratic electorate.
Barb, everything you write here is spot on, and particularly this: “The cult is built on the lie that biological sex is not real, so it’s fundamentally unstable. I hope that once one brave, high-visibility democrat calls this shit out for what it is, an avalanche of support will follow.” (I’ve been able to get one person, a straight white elderly male, to listen to Witch Trials. Others don’t know what they are missing--it is really terrific!)
I agree gender ideology is the same old sexist wine in new "progressive" bottles. But how to stimulate more thought on this is a tough one. Asking questions can be good -- "How does one tell the difference between internalized misogyny and homophobia and gender identity?" I also think expressing our own doubts can be beneficial if the people we're speaking with respect our opinions. I know Eliza's written a lot about doubt and I think it can be a powerful thing. Perhaps we don't focus so much on convincing people of the 'right' answer but creating an environment where it's safe to doubt and question.
This is an excellent insight. I have found, with those who will engage, raising questions and making room for thinking works much, much better than simply laying out the facts. I am, though, more than a little tired of the failure of so many to bother to educate themselves. There is by now, lots of good information available, starting with, eg Time to Think. But, onward we go, mustering what patience and fortitude we have, to try and get people to open their eyes.
That's understandable. I think a lot of what we're seeing with the blind acceptance of gender ideology IS due to the willingness of so many adults to opt out of critical thought. That's why I like questions because they invite people to engage whereas opinions and facts are easily dismissed. It's important to be discerning with how we spend our energy and time, but if you have the patience and the fortitude, ask questions.
Another difficulty in this emergence of opposition to people who are concerned about the affirmative care model is that it emerged from a discussion that was concerned about conversion therapy of gays and lesbians. When discussing conversion therapy, many people and organizations like the Human Rights Campaign want only the affirmative model for trans identifying teens. This has a long history:
How the UN perverted conversion therapy; A murky history shrouds the erasure of biological sex
Susan, I think one reason older feminists do not see what is happening is that many of them were not in the wave of women who entered non-traditional professions in the 1980s and 1990s. I tried to attend a local book group recently in my neighborhood in San Francisco. These are women who were old enough to be "hippies" in Haight-Ashbury in the 1960 and 70s. It's hard to get these women to engage on topics around the type of misogyny that women have experienced since the 1990s. My impression is that they've simply bought into the narrative that women's rights were fully won when women won the right to abortion and that women's rights are addressed simply by defending the right to abortion.
After women won the right to abortion, there continued to be a conversation in the 1980s and early 1990s about gender roles. Unfortunately, in the last twenty-five years or so, Judith Butler seems to have transformed this discussion into a discussion that has tried to eliminate the notion of gender and sex entirely. Many people don't realize that this has huge legal and social ramifications.
The single best account of the varying definitions of "gender", and the transformation of academic feminism in the 1990s, is recounted in Kathleen Stock's book "Material Girl". If any of the women you are talking to would be open enough to read this book, that might be a good start.
In terms of the psychology, and what's going on with teenagers, one needs to consider social media and smartphones. I think people that don't have teenagers with smartphones don't understand that smartphone addiction is real, and that what is on social media is toxic, especially to teenage girls.
For what is going on with teenagers and social media, Jon Haidt's and Jean Twenge's papers are enlightening:
Margaret Atwood is probably the most prominent example of a feminist who hasn't been willing to defend biological sex. That's quite significant, because in Canada, sex as well as gender are protected in law in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Yet many women's rights are under attack in Canada. Atwood has explicitly said in an interview with Hadley Freeman that she thinks sex is on a distribution. I love several of Atwood's books, especially "The Edible Woman". Yet, she refuses to dig into the literature and science that shows that biological sex is not on a distribution.
On top of this, Canada has had, and continues to have a dialog about violence against women:
How can we even have a dialog about violence against women if we can't even talk coherently about who women are?
Many people outside Canada think that Canada's most prominent feminist is Margaret Atwood. I would say no. The "sex is on a distribution" position is convenient for her to take. She's got two million followers on twitter.
Francine Pelletier: 4,300 twitter followers
Canadian Femicide Observatory: 8,800 followers
Amy Eileen Hamm: 33,000 twitter followers
Meghan Murphy: 83,000 twitter followers
Atwood continues to be a darling of the Guardian and the New York Times. Many women continue to read her as a beacon of feminism.
Liza, just watched the Boyce, Gunn interview you did a couple days ago. Can't comment there so am doing it here instead. Hope that's okay. It's about the reason many straight women support gender ideology and do it fiercely. Benjamin says this proves it isn't patriarchy creating gender ideology but he always misunderstands what patriarchy is... it is itself an ideology permeating our society... it doesn't reside specifically in a woman or a man, but can reside in either and both. When feminists criticise patriarchy they are not criticising MEN, they are criticising patriarchy. (Not that you don't know all this.) So back to why women support gender ideology... largely because of patriarchy. In other words women, from an extremely young age learn to fear male violence. Even if females don't experience that violence, they are continually threatened by it. "Be kind" is a threat; it implies "or else" you know what we can do to you because of our superior strength and our control of power... " be kind" derives from "smile bitch" thrown at us if we dare to reject a man's advances. Women live with this extreme fear every day after they first realise it; we push it down and carry on but many women push it so far down in order to survive the knowledge of it that they are able to pretend the fear doesn't reside in them. So my supposition is that straight women support gender ideology because they fear violent retaliation, whether they know this is why they support it or not. Fear is a powerful motivation. conscious or not. This extreme fear of going against the desires of men (trans identified men in this instance) will stop the access to critical thought. "If I go along with it, men won't hurt me or threaten me and they will like me and they will protect me from other men." This motivation is not to be underestimated. I think female academics who pretend to be feminists but instead promote male power are motivated by this. Thank god (well, not god actually) there are women doing wonderful work like you!! Bravo!!
The following is from an editorial in the Swedish Medical Journal, 12/13/2022 by Mats Reimer, pediatrician. Thought you & readers might find it interesting...
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare's new guidelines for care for gender dysphoria more reasonable
"...since the extremely weak scientific foundation of the previous guidelines/knowledge support emerged, both the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and healthcare providers such as Karolinska Hospital have changed the guidelines point by point. The new knowledge support/guidelines will advise against surgery, puberty blockers and sex-opposite hormones before adulthood, except for future research projects only.
"The knowledge support from 2015 was largely based on the activist organization WPATH's (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) »Standards of Care« version 7 (SOC7).
"SOC8 claims that eunuchs can discover their gender identity as early as childhood, but makes no specific treatment recommendations for young people. Had this been published elsewhere than in a supposedly scientific article, people would have thought that it was satire driving the trans movement. That the National Board of Health and Welfare's updated guidelines are no longer based on such an obviously activist organization as WPATH is of course welcome, Even within the World Health Organization (WHO), the issue is highly politicized, and has has succumbed to lobbying [by transactivists]; the psychiatric diagnosis of transsexualism has changed its name and place in ICD-11. The new diagnosis of 'gender incongruence' is not placed in the chapter on mental illnesses but in a completely new chapter on sexual health is combined with diagnoses such as reduced libido, premature ejaculation, intercourse pain, and difficulty achieving orgasm.
"In Swedish healthcare, child psychiatry will continue to be responsible for treating those under the age of 18 who experience gender incongruity and suffer from it. Care will now primarily consist of psychological support to help the youth live with healthy bodies in which they were born."
I really appreciate that you flagged this conversation. Very worthwhile and thought-provoking. In fact, as many who are likely interested don't have time for long form, it would be worth, if possible, breaking discussions like this into shorter topic segments. Just as one example, in the segment about "bridging" conversations (starting about 41:35), Lisa noted that, in the 70s, stereotypes were to be defied, then explained how the concept of "gender" has changed, and then noted at ~43:10 "there's some very basic information that got lost in the last couple generations, and I want to bring this into the conversation."
This is also high on my "to do" list in speaking with (mostly female, often lesbian, all left of center) friends and neighbors, almost all of whom, before I am able to persuade them to engage with me on this, are extremely low information. Ironically, some among my peers, who tend to be 60+, think that younger people are just on to something we older folks missed. As one said, "I feel I just have to adapt." I am working on various ways for folks to grasp that IMHO this is really just old wine in new bottles. I'd be very interested in a discussion among folks as smart and knowledgeable as those here about your views on this and strategies you've used to address that problem.
What I think, myself, is that younger people are simply doing what younger people always do, which is, in Erik Erikson lingo, searching for the answer to the big question "Who Am I?" (There's a wonderful, easy to understand, article about this here: https://www.verywellmind.com/identity-versus-confusion-2795735.) As I see it, one of the many terrible things about the current gender identity discourse is that, instead of young people defying all stereotypes, they are instead being encouraged to fit themselves into the tiniest of little identity boxes. But they are not the ones at fault: it's the adults who are supposed to be guiding them who are the problem.
Great observations Susan! I’m a 61 year old lesbian, a word which I’m sure you’ve heard Johns Hopkins University recently redefined as a non-man who is attracted to non-men. The gender cult will have fully had its way when men become the only people who are permitted to be called women. The cult’s project of upending our language by targeting all words referring to women and redefining them by meticulously cleansing them of any reference to females makes this the most sexist, woman-hating social force the west has seen in generations. We are being served, or rather force fed, old conservative wine in new progressive bottles.
Hey, Barb, good to “meet” you. I gather, BTW, that Johns Hopkins may have pulled back on that wacky definition (though I haven’t followed through to confirm). What worries me most is getting through to anyone we know, and then to public officials, to get this ship turned around. Biden is clueless, and his advisors (Levine chief among them) are making a fool of him. That Rose Montoya incident is only the latest, and sure to be fodder for numerous campaign ads. I know some Ds are frustrated enough to vote for Rs, but I think that’s a really bad idea. In addition to the issues with which you and I and so many others are rightly concerned, Rs will gut social programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the ACA. So I think that makes any of us who care about those things, too, which I do, to do everything we can to educate others and then get everyone to contact their public officials early and often in hopes we avoid a total calamity in 2024.
Good to meet you too Susan! Yes, I’m encouraged to see that the Hopkins definition received a Dylan Mulvaney-type reception. One thing I’ve done to plant a seed with my friends, who are on the left with me but who I don’t think are actually seeing this hiding-in-plain-sight, multi-headed gender cult for what it is, is to point them to the “Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” podcast series. I think it’s deeply thoughtful, compassionate and humble, while refusing to pull any punches. My friends found it so engrossing they binge-listened all 7 episodes. I’m alarmed that virtually all of our civic institutions have become propagators and enforcers of the gender cult. It’s so important for Ds to stop propagating the cult and start standing up to it, for the sake of everyone being harmed by it. Not to be too Machiavellian about it, but I also think it would be a huge political win for the Ds to do so. The cult is built on the lie that biological sex is not real, so it’s fundamentally unstable. I hope that once one brave, high-visibility democrat calls this shit out for what it is, an avalanche of support will follow. I can tell from “reader’s picks” comments on NYT articles about all issues trans that congressional democrats are completely out of touch with the democratic electorate.
Barb, everything you write here is spot on, and particularly this: “The cult is built on the lie that biological sex is not real, so it’s fundamentally unstable. I hope that once one brave, high-visibility democrat calls this shit out for what it is, an avalanche of support will follow.” (I’ve been able to get one person, a straight white elderly male, to listen to Witch Trials. Others don’t know what they are missing--it is really terrific!)
I agree gender ideology is the same old sexist wine in new "progressive" bottles. But how to stimulate more thought on this is a tough one. Asking questions can be good -- "How does one tell the difference between internalized misogyny and homophobia and gender identity?" I also think expressing our own doubts can be beneficial if the people we're speaking with respect our opinions. I know Eliza's written a lot about doubt and I think it can be a powerful thing. Perhaps we don't focus so much on convincing people of the 'right' answer but creating an environment where it's safe to doubt and question.
This is an excellent insight. I have found, with those who will engage, raising questions and making room for thinking works much, much better than simply laying out the facts. I am, though, more than a little tired of the failure of so many to bother to educate themselves. There is by now, lots of good information available, starting with, eg Time to Think. But, onward we go, mustering what patience and fortitude we have, to try and get people to open their eyes.
That's understandable. I think a lot of what we're seeing with the blind acceptance of gender ideology IS due to the willingness of so many adults to opt out of critical thought. That's why I like questions because they invite people to engage whereas opinions and facts are easily dismissed. It's important to be discerning with how we spend our energy and time, but if you have the patience and the fortitude, ask questions.
Another difficulty in this emergence of opposition to people who are concerned about the affirmative care model is that it emerged from a discussion that was concerned about conversion therapy of gays and lesbians. When discussing conversion therapy, many people and organizations like the Human Rights Campaign want only the affirmative model for trans identifying teens. This has a long history:
How the UN perverted conversion therapy; A murky history shrouds the erasure of biological sex
https://unherd.com/2023/06/how-the-un-perverted-conversion-therapy/
Haha, looks like we read all the same people!
Susan, I think one reason older feminists do not see what is happening is that many of them were not in the wave of women who entered non-traditional professions in the 1980s and 1990s. I tried to attend a local book group recently in my neighborhood in San Francisco. These are women who were old enough to be "hippies" in Haight-Ashbury in the 1960 and 70s. It's hard to get these women to engage on topics around the type of misogyny that women have experienced since the 1990s. My impression is that they've simply bought into the narrative that women's rights were fully won when women won the right to abortion and that women's rights are addressed simply by defending the right to abortion.
After women won the right to abortion, there continued to be a conversation in the 1980s and early 1990s about gender roles. Unfortunately, in the last twenty-five years or so, Judith Butler seems to have transformed this discussion into a discussion that has tried to eliminate the notion of gender and sex entirely. Many people don't realize that this has huge legal and social ramifications.
The single best account of the varying definitions of "gender", and the transformation of academic feminism in the 1990s, is recounted in Kathleen Stock's book "Material Girl". If any of the women you are talking to would be open enough to read this book, that might be a good start.
In terms of the psychology, and what's going on with teenagers, one needs to consider social media and smartphones. I think people that don't have teenagers with smartphones don't understand that smartphone addiction is real, and that what is on social media is toxic, especially to teenage girls.
For what is going on with teenagers and social media, Jon Haidt's and Jean Twenge's papers are enlightening:
https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
Material Girls is a terrific book. I recommend it to everyone, whether they ask for recommendations or not! I am a big, big Kathleen Stock fan: https://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/2023/05/31/taking-stock/
Margaret Atwood is probably the most prominent example of a feminist who hasn't been willing to defend biological sex. That's quite significant, because in Canada, sex as well as gender are protected in law in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Yet many women's rights are under attack in Canada. Atwood has explicitly said in an interview with Hadley Freeman that she thinks sex is on a distribution. I love several of Atwood's books, especially "The Edible Woman". Yet, she refuses to dig into the literature and science that shows that biological sex is not on a distribution.
On top of this, Canada has had, and continues to have a dialog about violence against women:
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2023/06/12/incels-murder-designation-as-terrorism-more-proof-its-a-grim-time-for-womens-rights.html
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-december-1-2019-1.5377096/30-years-since-the-montreal-massacre-we-still-see-a-deadly-hatred-of-women-1.5377220
How can we even have a dialog about violence against women if we can't even talk coherently about who women are?
Many people outside Canada think that Canada's most prominent feminist is Margaret Atwood. I would say no. The "sex is on a distribution" position is convenient for her to take. She's got two million followers on twitter.
Francine Pelletier: 4,300 twitter followers
Canadian Femicide Observatory: 8,800 followers
Amy Eileen Hamm: 33,000 twitter followers
Meghan Murphy: 83,000 twitter followers
Atwood continues to be a darling of the Guardian and the New York Times. Many women continue to read her as a beacon of feminism.
Liza, just watched the Boyce, Gunn interview you did a couple days ago. Can't comment there so am doing it here instead. Hope that's okay. It's about the reason many straight women support gender ideology and do it fiercely. Benjamin says this proves it isn't patriarchy creating gender ideology but he always misunderstands what patriarchy is... it is itself an ideology permeating our society... it doesn't reside specifically in a woman or a man, but can reside in either and both. When feminists criticise patriarchy they are not criticising MEN, they are criticising patriarchy. (Not that you don't know all this.) So back to why women support gender ideology... largely because of patriarchy. In other words women, from an extremely young age learn to fear male violence. Even if females don't experience that violence, they are continually threatened by it. "Be kind" is a threat; it implies "or else" you know what we can do to you because of our superior strength and our control of power... " be kind" derives from "smile bitch" thrown at us if we dare to reject a man's advances. Women live with this extreme fear every day after they first realise it; we push it down and carry on but many women push it so far down in order to survive the knowledge of it that they are able to pretend the fear doesn't reside in them. So my supposition is that straight women support gender ideology because they fear violent retaliation, whether they know this is why they support it or not. Fear is a powerful motivation. conscious or not. This extreme fear of going against the desires of men (trans identified men in this instance) will stop the access to critical thought. "If I go along with it, men won't hurt me or threaten me and they will like me and they will protect me from other men." This motivation is not to be underestimated. I think female academics who pretend to be feminists but instead promote male power are motivated by this. Thank god (well, not god actually) there are women doing wonderful work like you!! Bravo!!
Eliza,
So sorry I spelled your name wrong above. Many apologies for my carelessness! And me a proofreader for many years!
The following is from an editorial in the Swedish Medical Journal, 12/13/2022 by Mats Reimer, pediatrician. Thought you & readers might find it interesting...
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare's new guidelines for care for gender dysphoria more reasonable
"...since the extremely weak scientific foundation of the previous guidelines/knowledge support emerged, both the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and healthcare providers such as Karolinska Hospital have changed the guidelines point by point. The new knowledge support/guidelines will advise against surgery, puberty blockers and sex-opposite hormones before adulthood, except for future research projects only.
"The knowledge support from 2015 was largely based on the activist organization WPATH's (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) »Standards of Care« version 7 (SOC7).
"SOC8 claims that eunuchs can discover their gender identity as early as childhood, but makes no specific treatment recommendations for young people. Had this been published elsewhere than in a supposedly scientific article, people would have thought that it was satire driving the trans movement. That the National Board of Health and Welfare's updated guidelines are no longer based on such an obviously activist organization as WPATH is of course welcome, Even within the World Health Organization (WHO), the issue is highly politicized, and has has succumbed to lobbying [by transactivists]; the psychiatric diagnosis of transsexualism has changed its name and place in ICD-11. The new diagnosis of 'gender incongruence' is not placed in the chapter on mental illnesses but in a completely new chapter on sexual health is combined with diagnoses such as reduced libido, premature ejaculation, intercourse pain, and difficulty achieving orgasm.
"In Swedish healthcare, child psychiatry will continue to be responsible for treating those under the age of 18 who experience gender incongruity and suffer from it. Care will now primarily consist of psychological support to help the youth live with healthy bodies in which they were born."
Your work is impeccable. Thank you for wading in the viper pit to uncover the poison.