Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / BONUS: "Fact Check" with Jesse Singal

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BONUS: "Fact Check" with Jesse Singal · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
Well, I don't normally do this, I don't normally come back and fact-check something after
0:09
an episode is over, but I've been feeling a bit weird about the last episode because
0:15
allegations were made against other public figures, fellow journalists, about the inaccuracy
0:21
of their work that I wasn't able to fact-check in real time.
0:26
So I just wanted to close a button on it and without re-illitigating anything, I think
0:32
if a guest makes an accusation that one of our colleagues is lying or behaving inappropriately
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and that guest has been in a major public stash with that person, and if we then leave
0:46
the conversation as we did by saying, okay, the only thing we need to establish now is
0:53
the factual veracity of the claims being made by the person who's not here who we're
0:59
talking about and throwing under the bus, then I think it does prove me to come back
1:03
and verify whether or not those facts were true or false.
1:09
Here's a little of how the conversation with Diana Anderson on the last episode went.
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And so like there are different reasons that people de-transition, so I'm not denying
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that de-transition happens, but the idea that it is something where somebody didn't
1:25
question enough or they were rushed through these environments, I don't think that is happening.
1:34
Right. If the criticism is that the sort of medical system is not rushing people through,
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does that mean that if it did rush people through or if it did start rushing people through,
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then writing such articles would be responsible, because your earlier point was that such articles
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can get misused as pretexts for people who are transphobic to past laws that strip trans
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people of their rights. That would still be the case. That would still be the case if those
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articles were true.
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Yeah, if we had statistic proof that there was suddenly a rush of people going through
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the system way too quickly, like they get handed their testosterone prescription at the
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first appointment or whatever, and they have only been identifying as whatever for three
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days publicly or whatever, like I would think there would be a responsibility to do that,
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but that's not what's happening. And that unfortunately is the primary narrative that we
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have around trans kids, if it would be responsible to report on that, even if it gave ammunition
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to transphobes. Yeah, because that would be a thing that's actually happening, and therefore
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needs regulation in some way, maybe some new standards of care.
3:00
So now it's just a factual question about whether or not the things that Emily Bazelon and
3:04
Jesse Singles say are happening are actually happening. I don't think they are. Right.
3:09
Okay, well, that makes it easier to certainly makes it certainly makes the whole debate a
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lot easier to evolve because we just have to see on that out on that before.
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Yeah, we just have to do it again. I don't we just have yeah, we just have to establish
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whether or not what they're saying is true or in order to know whether or not it's worth
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writing because you're really a criticism of them was we should we should dismiss such
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articles or you know, punish the writers of such articles because they have a bad impact
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on the transgender community. They don't act in the interest of trans people, but that's
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a different claim than saying. Because they are now that now that we're just questioning
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the veracity of the articles, it's easier to to adjudicate. So there you have it. We left
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it as an open question that needed to be fact checked. This is a little fact check. And Jesse
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Singles, who is the target of Diana's IR will join me in just a moment just because he knows
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a lot more than I do about whether or not the accusations are correct. So you will have heard
4:06
from Diana and you will have heard from Jesse and you can make up your own mind. I should just
4:11
clarify, I've been since that episode dropped, swept up in my own bizarre. It's just bizarre,
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the level of hostility. And it's so I don't know, it's so I feel so I feel for trans people so much
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that this controversy is distracting from the real fight for transgender equality and compassion
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and rights. It is such a bad publicity strategy. I mean, I think about the strategy that
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fueled the wild success of the LGBT movement. It basically went from being in the 70s a
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perverted fringe community where to believe intolerance towards gay people was to condone
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men shoving their willies up into disgusting places of the human anatomy with other men in a
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totally unnatural and godless frenzy. And the conversation was changed from that nasty framing
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to a question of do you believe in equality for all people? Because this community of people
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simply want the same things that you want. They want no discrimination in the workplace,
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they want equal opportunity to get housing and rent and they want to not be fired for what they
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do on their own time. And if possible, they'd also like to start families and adopt kids and get
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married. And by reframing this to these very reasonable sounding sort of mainstream common sense
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instincts that heartland voters had, you had probably the most successful civil rights
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movement in the history of the world. I mean, when you think about the fact that as recently as
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the 90s, a majority of people thought that homosexuality was perverted and in many jurisdictions
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in Western democracies, it was still illegal. Tasmania was illegal in the 90s.
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And the idea that it is now so normal that it's boring is a fantastic triumph. And I just wish
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that the conversation around trans rights was able to find a way to pivot from these deeply arcane
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and hostile ideas about biology and whether or not trans women are women and the same as women,
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whether or not there's anything special about women who grew up as girls versus women who grew up
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as boys. This insistence on there being no biological differences between men and women,
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there's this whole universe of, I suppose, university level post structuralist sort of nonsense.
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And it wouldn't even have to be nonsense. Even if it were true, it would still be such a hard
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to sell to people who have a common sense traditional view of sex and gender that it would not be
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the best tactic. I don't understand why this is the strategy. Anyway, I just feel for all of my
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trans friends who would just rather not just like stop helping. They would say to these activists,
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stop helping. All we want is to go about our lives. We just want equal rights. So how can we best
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convince non trans people to give us equal rights? Is it by shouting in their faces about what
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bigots they are or is it by trying to have a dance with them in which we bring them to the table?
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Anyway, so what happened after my conversation with Diana Anderson dropped is she wasn't happy
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and she went on Twitter. Listen to me get increasingly frustrated with this guy, she said with a link.
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She said it's a mess. I knew there was a likelihood. This is a whole Twitter thread.
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And sorry, I just said she, my apologies. They write, I knew there was a likelihood. This
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was going to be a bad faith going on. I see what that means going in. And I literally took pages
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of notes to prepare for that. But I wasn't prepared for him to assure you talking about the book on
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this entirely, etc. I do stand by what I said. And I do even more so now than I did then believe
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the quote unquote debate around trans kids to be irresponsible and journalists who push it
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like single and now zeps are irresponsible for doing so. And then there's just a
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a cavalcade, a tirade of sympathetic voices. This is the way Twitter works, right? So you know,
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someone named Joseph says there was this great moment at the end where he's trying to make the
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case that society is too credulous towards trans kids where you let out the perfect,
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exasperated sigh. It just marked the moment so perfectly, just so exhausting. I thought you
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did such a great job. Another person named Sarah, I'm listening to this now, you kept your calm,
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so well, Diana. I wanted to ring his neck. We're not dogs. Oh my god, the fact you had to say that.
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Another person named Aubrey, oh, D, what an absolute nightmare. I'm so sorry to which Diana writes,
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I'm fine with everything I said and argued. It was just frustrating to clearly be in such a
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conversation. I have no doubt you delivered writes, Aubrey. It's just such a forever nightmare to end
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up in this kind of bad faith conversation to feel so misled. You deserve so much better. Good God.
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And Diana replies, I take heart in the fact that it was me and not some other person who would be
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less able to bounce back from it. It was in bad faith. I can warn other people now. They write,
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and that's a good thing. In another tweet, it says, this is wrong on so many levels.
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Another person, Julian, with they, them pronouns, I'm so sorry. Another person, D, I'm sorry.
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Megan writes, sigh, Sarah writes, what the fuck? Another person, what the fuck?
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Did you listen to the conversation between Diana and me? If you haven't, go back and listen to it
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before we listen to any of this. Are those responses? Do they comport with what you took away from that
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conversation that I was acting in bad faith and was being bullying?
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I do fess up to one mistake, which is occasionally misgendering Diana.
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It's still a new thing. I try my very best. I think it's better treated with whimsy
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when we get it wrong than with aggression, but I'm sorry to Diana for initially the blurb of the
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podcast said, she and Josh argue about blah blah blah. As soon as that was pointed out to me,
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I had my producer change it back to they and Josh because Diana is a they, them, not a she,
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so sorry about that. It is the case that many of us make that mistake, including I would note
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Diana Anderson themselves on Diana's website in the blurb of one of their books,
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damaged goods. It says on their website, Diana Anderson offers a fresh approach to the
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purity conversation, one that opens a new dialogue with the most influential Christian authors of
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her generation of her generation of Diana Anderson's generation, her generation it says on their
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website. So Diana, the best of us can still have trouble with misgendering, including it seems
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yourself. Look, let's just hear from Jesse single. This is the last that I'm going to say about
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any of this. It doesn't particularly interest me this subject. I just want equality for everybody
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and I want trans people to be safe and well and I want young people who are confused about their
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gender, who may not ultimately go on to be trans to be safe and well as well. And so open
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communication and open dialogue is the only way to make those two things happen. Have a wonderful
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week and I'll see you next time. Jesse, sometimes think people say things on the podcast, which I
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kind of know are untrue or I know are true. And then there are other times where it's beyond
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my ability to fact check them in real time. So I wanted to just get you on so that I didn't leave
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dangling any of those claims that Diana made, where should I even begin to understand how to
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fact check the things that need to be fact checked out of my conversation. Yeah, can I start by
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saying something just a little bit rude? Yeah. So I was, I was made, when I saw you're interviewing
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Diane, I was a little bit nervous. I was made aware of Diane last year. They did a tweet storm
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about me and my work that sort of caught on and it contained stuff about my work that like was
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really just lies. I'll read one sentence. I won't, I won't get too deep into this. We'll get in
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the meat of your interview, but quote, his most controversial piece, I cover story in the Atlantic
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about transgender kids repeats the same focus on detransitioning and speaks to almost no transgender
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people or people friendly to trans affirming health care. This was a 12,000 word piece where I
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interviewed at least a half dozen trans people and I didn't interview a single clinician who was
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unfriendly to trans affirming health care. So to me, that gets into a different category from
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disagreements, some of which we'll talk about and into just like being a little bit dishonest.
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So going in, I was a little bit skeptical. But if you want, I can go through and respond to
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sort of specific claims. It made that I disagree with. Is that the best thing? Yeah. If people first
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a sense of what it's like to be in the position in the position that you're in, this piece.
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America's chief, America's chief transfer. America's chief transphobic hate monger, hate speech
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monger. I mean, back in July, August of 2018, I guess you probably wrote this what you must have
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started at the end of 2017. This was not as hot and issue. Did you, I mean, how has it impacted
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you a lot? Overwhelmingly, positively, with the one exception that there's a very angry group
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of people on Twitter and a fairly large number of them and some people in journalism who since then
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have been sort of trying to destroy my career and reputation. I think I was seen as saying stuff
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you're just really not allowed to say. The interesting thing is that you might agree or disagree,
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but I feel like four years later, there's now been like a mini spate of pieces,
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making similar arguments in multiple other outlets. People seem to be acknowledging that at least
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some of what was in my Atlantic piece is at least worth discussing. So it seems like the trajectory
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has been in my favor journalistically. Yeah, but those people then trigger endless pylons with
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people wanting to cancel their subscriptions on mass to the publications that they write for
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as well. But what I tried to do in the last episode was to, at the very least, on the question
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of whether or not journalists should be able to, and for people who haven't read Jesse's
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excellent piece, I've got it in front of me, it's massive. You just said 12,000 words. It's like
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you printed out over 13 pages or something. And there are like bazillions of people who you speak
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to and tons of gender experts who are trans themselves and clinicians who work with trans people
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and the individual case studies of trans people. And as far as I can tell, these are different
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case studies, not all of them because, you know, it is a small community from the ones that Emily
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Baselon wrote about in the New York Times. Her piece is also excellent and massively long. And these
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are not pieces that are seeking to, there is no fair reading of these pieces that can have you
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coming away thinking that this piece is an attempt to only tell one side of the story. There is in
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both in all of these particular pieces, and I want to consciously exclude these from the right
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wing rat baggery, which relentlessly focuses on this stuff and spreads misinformation about the
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mutilation of children and says that, you know, trans women are actually just men or something
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like that. That's the separate class of kind of activism in disguised as journalism. This sort
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of journalism is as far as I can tell, balanced. And what I wanted to do when Diana was essentially
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saying that it's irresponsible to write such pieces was just to get them to clarify whether or
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not it's irresponsible because of the impact that it can have even though it's true or whether
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it's irresponsible because it's actually untrue that there is a problem here or some controversy
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to be reported on. And I think somewhat to my credit, I was able to get them to establish that it
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is only a bad thing to write about because it is a beat up and it's untrue. So I want to get your
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thoughts about that criticism. Yeah, I mean, I have a bunch of actual, you know, factual
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cripples with her, but on that one, I mean, their basic argument was that our work gets cited
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by right wingers. And let's just focus on that because I know you did never hurt down and we'll
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talk about that question whether it is happening, but you constantly see this. You see people arguing
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that my article or Bazelon's article got cited in right wing court cases. And for one thing,
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a couple one time that's happened with me, they just sort of misrepresented my article. They said
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that I said that transition doesn't alleviate gender dysphoria on average, which is just the
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opposite of what I said. I have no control over people distorting my article, but more broadly,
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if they're citing our articles to say there's medical controversy over these treatments,
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that's true. That is a fact. You can't tell journalists don't report on facts, don't report on
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unfolding controversies because some bad politician might do something bad with it. I mean,
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I think a good example here is a satanic sex abuse panic. People reported on these recovered
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memories on these horrible false accusations of pedophilia. An actual pedophile could use that
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to say, up, see, the concerns over pedophilia are overstated. We shouldn't worry about pedophiles.
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A bad person could choose to use any sort of information to make a bad argument about something.
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That's not as journalist, we can't really worry about that as long as we're telling the truth.
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Now, on the question of de-transition rates and clinical protocols, de-transition rates,
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we have no idea what the de-transition rate is for kids who go on blockers or hormones as kids
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or teenagers in the states. We have no data on that. Diane confidently proclaimed the rates of
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de-transition overall and the rates of regret for surgery were 1%. I've seen those estimates
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flying around. They're completely inapplicable to an American setting. They're also from these
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big samples of adults, so that's one reason they're inapplicable, where there's major problems with
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the data. There's this one systematic review from 2021 that found a 1% regret rate for surgery.
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I actually hired someone to look into it and to see what the loss to follow-up rate was in these
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27 studies. That's basically, you reach out to the folks who got surgery at your clinic and you
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see what percentage of them you can get in touch with. The authors of these studies couldn't
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get in touch with 28% of the patients who got surgery. If you can't get in touch with a quarter
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of your patients, you can't then claim that you only have a 1% regret rate because you don't
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know. You don't know where a quarter of your patients are or how they're doing. That's one issue
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with the regret. Can you just explain de-transition and desisting? I think we might be setting the
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var quite high as well. I don't think most reasonable-minded people who are interested in the contours
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of this debate are only concerned about people who fully or at least medically transition and then
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regret it. It's also a more nuanced question about social and cultural transition. What's
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desisting and what's detransitioning? The terms are often conflated and it depends on whether a
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kid socially transitions or is allowed to. By their parents, I define de-sistance as having gender
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dysphoria and then it goes away on its own without transitioning. Other people define it a little
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bit differently. I find it useful to define de-sistance that way and de-transition as transitioning
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socially or medically and then deciding to undo that and to re-identify as your verse X.
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When we say that 1% of people who transition come to regret it, that may be true, but it may
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even if that were true, it would still potentially obscure a higher proportion of people who
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feel that they have gender dysphoria or are confused about their gender, for whom that then just
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fights away in time. Yeah, and there's a whole other issue with the de-sistance research,
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which is this pile of studies showing that it really depends on the study. 60, 70, 80, 90% of
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kids desist. Those were from very different settings. They were from mostly clinics that did not
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encourage social transition. My view is that the evidence strongly suggests that a good number of
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kids who have gender dysphoria at some point in childhood, if you're talking about kids in childhood,
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grow out of it in time. For kids whose gender dysphoria first manifests at 13 or 14 or 15, I think
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we have no idea because we have basically no research on that population. Okay, got it. Proceed to
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your like post. I feel like there's a list, Jesse. There is a list. There's always a list of my
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many grievances. Just on that point of, she said, the same detransitioners are sort of recycled over
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and over. I found that really silly because you could say the same thing about either trans people
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or gender affirming clinicians. So for a while, jazz Jennings and Caitlin Jenner were disproportionately
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represented and quoted just because there weren't yet that many well-known or media savvy trans people.
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Clinicians-wise, for a long time, Joanna Olson Kennedy and Diana Ransaf sort of dominated the scene
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and then Jack Turbin and some other really enthusiastic proponents of these treatments arrive.
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So it just doesn't really make sense to say that just because a few detransitioners show up in
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multiple articles, there aren't a lot of them. That's just like how any new population works.
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I only have a few people who talk to the media at first. Yeah, so. I mean, it does. But then how do
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you establish whether or not they are representatives of a large cohort or whether they're isolated
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cases? Yeah, we have no data on that. So that's all I'll say. I won't even, I think the number of
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detransitioners is going up just anecdotally. I can't point to any data. But why are no clinicians in
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the States collecting good data on this? It's astonishing. I mean, this is a big country with
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lots of clinics who do things in different ways. I don't know what the situation is in Australia,
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but the lack of data is a real problem. So I'm not going to respond to Diane saying
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the detransition rate is low by saying actually it's high. I'm going to say we have no idea because
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we have no idea. Right. And the other, I mean, the other, the other retort that one could make to the
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fact that some of these same case studies show up over and over again is that yes, they may be the
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people who are willing and willing to willing to speak with the media and well versed enough to do so.
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But the clinicians who are quoted in your piece and basalons piece, it seems like there are
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clinicians who end up spoken to them here in Australia who see a lot of this. And just because those,
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you know, young people don't necessarily want to be paraded in front of the media and their parents
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don't feel comfortable doing that. It doesn't mean that there isn't anecdotal evidence from the
24:35
people who work at the front lines who are honest. Also detransitioners, it's unfair and it's not
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right. But detransitioners, when they go public, often come in for horrible treatment from some
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other trans people, not not all trans people, but like some activists really treat detransitioners
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poorly and immediately call them sort of right wing chuds basically. That was, that was part of
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what Diane did. She's, they said that, you know, the family's featured in my article were part
25:02
of anti-trans groups. I struggle with that because I think if you or your child had a procedure that
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you don't think benefited them and then you want to raise awareness about diagnostic standards,
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I don't think that alone makes you anti-trans personally. Right. So it struck me that there were
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two things that they were saying that were critical of you. One was that everyone who reports on
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this issue cherry picks the same handful of detransitioners as their case studies and there are only,
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that means that there are only a few cases of this in existence. Another was Diane said that no
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13-year-olds are just walking into clinics and getting hormones. That this concern just isn't
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happening that it is that the the affirming care is happening at a slow enough pace and with
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enough caution that we don't need to worry about it. Yeah. So the, I actually, I think I wrote down
25:48
the direct quote quote, you don't walk into a Planned Parenthood at 14 and get hormones. That
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jumped out at me because it's technically true, but like if you're 15 in Oregon, you can very much
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walk into a Planned Parenthood and get hormones. In other states, you can be 16. In like to Anderson's
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credit, she did say she'd acknowledged there's a reason to be concerned that folks were getting
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referred to hormones on their first visit. And while they're right, we don't have good data on this,
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we have we do have a ton of anecdotal accounts. There was actually just a big,
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excellent investigation published by Reuters on this very subject like four days ago. It basically
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compared American-style gender clinics to the pioneers in this field, the, you know, the so-called
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Dutch approach. Now the Dutch approach is very careful and gradual. It takes place over many months.
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It excludes a lot of kids because they won't transition kids or at least back then they wouldn't.
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Kids who had serious mental health problems are unsupported families. The whole point was to
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really call the group to the kids most likely do benefit from transitioning and live well
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as the other sex. So what these Reuters reporters did is they called a bunch of gender clinics and
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got to know their protocols and compared what American clinics are doing to the Dutch approach.
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That is the source of the little bit of research we have on this direct quote. In interviews with
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Reuters, doctors and other staff at 18-general clinics across the country describe the processes
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for evaluating patients. None, I'm emphasizing this none, described anything like the months-long
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assessments the Dutch did. So we know there's a lot of clinics who do way less assessment than the
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Dutch. As for first visit hormones or blockers, it does happen sometimes. The Reuters article mentions
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I have anecdotal accounts of my own. I have in my 2018 article Laura Edwards-Lieber,
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who's another pioneering gender clinician, talked about all the pressure on her to give kids hormones
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very quickly. She's had stuff thrown at her at conferences. On top of all that, you have a lot
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of clinicians giving quotes to the media like AJ Eckerd or Joanna Olsen Kennedy saying explicitly,
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they don't really believe in mental health evaluations. Even for 13 and 14 and 15 year olds,
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they view that as gatekeeping. So if they're saying that explicitly and they clearly represent
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a faction of clinicians who don't believe in much assessment, how can Diane Anderson then say,
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no, there's always good assessment going on. What does she know or what do they know that AJ Eckerd
28:08
and Joanna Olsen Kennedy don't know? Right. In other words, you don't even need to
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launch this as a critique about the way that the care is being provided because the providers
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of the care themselves are the ones who are saying they're proud of it. They're
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should be interrogating anything else that's going on in this young person's life.
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Yeah, I'm not sure they'd say that bluntly and I can't say for sure. Eckerd or Olsen Kennedy
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would do a one appointment thing, but the Reuters folks who did an excellent job provided examples
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of first appointment hormones and blockers and the point is clinicians themselves, the Vanguard
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clinicians who are most enthusiastic about this stuff and least concerned with the stuff I'm concerned
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about, they're very open about it. They don't like quote unquote gatekeeping. Now,
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the idea of calling it gatekeeping when it's a 13 or 14 year old with multiple mental health
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problems, that could be a whole other episode, but the point is they tell us how they do their job
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and Anderson seems to be ignoring what they're saying. I'm just looking through your article,
29:07
Jesse, for and trying to tally up the number of people because what I thought was interesting is
29:13
this claim that it's underresearched and this is just an opinion piece in the guise of journalism.
29:24
Just as I go through it, so you start with Claire who followed this person Miles McKenno
29:30
who's a YouTuber. You quote Robin Moran's Henig in National Geographic and then Nate Sharon who's
29:39
a psychiatrist who oversaw agenda clinic, who's trans and then Christina Olson who you've
29:45
mentioned University of Washington researcher and then you talk about the center of expertise on
29:52
gender dysphoria in Amsterdam and Thomas Stinsma who's a psychologist and researcher at the Dutch
29:58
clinic and Joshua Safer who's one of the authors of the endocrine society's clinical practice
30:03
guideline for the treatment of gender dysphoria. You mentioned Aaron Janssen and quote them the
30:09
clinical director of the gender and sexuality service at Hassanfield Children's Hospital in New
30:13
York. You view site Rebecca Kling who's an educator at the National Center for Transgender
30:17
Equality in Washington DC. Christine Jorgensen, the first American to become widely known for
30:22
transitioning. You look at the case of that person, Eric Randerson, a trans woman and clinical
30:27
psychologist at UC San Francisco who you speak to, Zinnia Jones, a trans woman who you speak to
30:34
for the peace. Diane Ehrensaf, the director of mental health at UC San Francisco's child
30:39
natalism gender center. You quote Diane in this Diane Berg, a co-director of the National Center for
30:45
Gender Spectrum Health. You speak to her for the peace. You talk to Max Robinson, a 17-year-old
30:52
who got a double mastectomy. You talk to Carrie Stella, who's the author of a blog called Guide
30:58
on Raging Stars, who's socially transitioned at 15. You talk to Carrie Callahan, a 36-year-old
31:03
in Ohio, who de-transitioned after identifying as trans for four years. You talk to the psychologist
31:09
Laura Edwards-Lieper and you talk to Scott Padberg, who's one of Edward Leaper's patients.
31:21
A teenager. You talk to Michelle Forcier, a pediatrician who specializes in youth gender
31:26
issues in Rhode Island and Delta, who was 13 and homeschooled when she came out as gender queer.
31:37
Oh, and yeah, Joanna Rolson Kennedy, who you also mentioned, a physician who specializes in
31:41
pediatric and natalism at the children's hospital in Los Angeles and who's the medical director
31:46
of the Center for Trans Youth Health and Development. Let me just read the quote again. His most
31:54
controversial piece speaks to almost no transgender people or people friendly to trans affirming
31:59
healthcare. It's a lie. I know it's impolite to say they're lie, and I don't like when people lie,
32:05
I wish we could have a more honest discussion about that. Sorry.
32:09
So what's happening here, Jesse? Because I think, I mean, obviously I'm copying Flack for even
32:15
touching this as well as everyone does. But I'm fairly committed to just having, I just don't
32:25
think that any noble social or cultural cause is going to be successful unless it's based on
32:33
the widest possible sense of agreement and honesty and can robustly argue for itself. And that
32:40
requires honesty. And I don't understand what's happening here. I don't understand what the strategy
32:48
is. And I try to have like a very open and generous conversation with just a bit of pushback
32:57
and a bit of intellectual kind of rumble in a good faith way. And it comes out the other end as
33:03
a turd sausage. And I'm not sure why it's it's just it's such a toxic issue. And it's hard in
33:10
the States because we really do have right wing legislators trying to ban these treatments
33:15
outright, which is horrible in Texas. They're trying to take kids from their families if they
33:20
socially transition. It's a nightmare. It's the most polarizing issue imaginable. There was just
33:25
that everyone's talking about a John Stewart segment where I haven't watched the whole thing yet,
33:29
but he's clearly taking the stance that these treatments are great. And there's no legitimate
33:32
questions about them because the only people with questions are mega-cheds. So it's like you take
33:37
an issue that's already genuinely complicated and really deals with tricky bioethical questions
33:42
because we're talking about kids. Then you layer on top of that American culture war horror and
33:48
politicization horror and polarization. It's just it's a really bad mix. And it frustrates me that
33:55
the folks who disagree with me, the honest ones send me emails and I sometimes talk to them,
34:03
but it seems like in social media and the media more broadly a lot of like really dishonest
34:09
demagogues get to set the tones of the discussion. And I just really the more I've looked into
34:15
the data on this stuff in my Atlantic piece, I actually went too soft on evidence for these
34:18
treatments. It's borderline non-existent in an American context. It really is. We desperately need
34:23
more data. What's non-existent evidence for what? That it helps kids to put them on blockers
34:29
or hormones or give them double mastectomies. It's like I was, what do you mean by kids there
34:35
because the retort would be, well we're not doing that to kids. I mean we're allowing kids to
34:39
socially transition and then at some point. But that's bullshit. So the youngest you'd go on
34:47
blockers is what 10 or 11, maybe nine in some cases, hormones are regularly given to 12, 13, 14
34:55
year-olds surgery in a study from 2018. Olsen Kennedy was referring kids as young as 13 for surgery.
35:01
They just took the age requirements. Anderson was happy with this. They just took the age
35:05
requirements out of the standards of care. Very young kids are going out of these treatments.
35:09
So there's like, I understand it is true that you'll get right wing demagogues saying like,
35:14
oh they're going to castrate five year olds. That kind of thing doesn't happen. That's a lie.
35:17
But like, no, it's sort of disingenuous when people are like, oh well you're just socially
35:22
transitioning at six or seven because like, I don't know, I don't have kids. My sense is two
35:26
years pass really quickly and then they're on the cost of puberty and then, you know, because
35:30
they're socially transitioned, they either need to be a boy with breasts or they have to go on
35:36
puberty blockers and we don't really know what puberty blockers do to kids when they're on them
35:40
for a while. There's a lot of uncertainty here and I wish people would recognize that because
35:43
again, like, you can yell at, you know, journalists all you want. You can yell at Emily Bazelon. You
35:48
can yell at me. We're talking about developing bodies and kids in a context where multiple European
35:54
countries have looked at the data of this and be like, whoa, what are we doing? We need to slow
35:58
down here. I'm talking about Sweden and Finland there and to a lesser extent than UK.
36:03
Okay, thanks Jesse. So just to wrap that up, I think if the two criticisms of your work and
36:11
basically of every other journalist who touches this is that their cherry picking the same handful
36:16
of detransitioners, your response would be, yes, maybe guilty is charged but that's because
36:21
there are very few who are put forward and who are courageous enough to withstand the
36:25
alternative abuse that they're going to get and who want to be public about this but it's offset
36:30
by the fact that there are clinicians who deal with people all the time who are seeing what's
36:34
going on and we don't need to necessarily expose every single one. And on the second point of
36:39
the claim that no 14-year-olds are walking into clinics and getting drugs, you would say,
36:43
yes, also true, but sort of trivially true because-
36:48
No, they are, no, they are walking and going to be getting more. Yeah, yeah, some of them are.
36:52
I mean, it just depends on whether they need parental consent. If the question is whether
36:56
clear they're getting hormones on their first visit, the answer is yes. And then just quickly,
37:01
the only thing I would add to the detransition thing is there are more and more of them,
37:04
so I just think people who claim it's just the same few, just go to the reddit detransition
37:08
separate. And if you're a journalist, just try to get in touch with them. There are more and
37:11
more people who are coming forward. Jesse, thanks for clarifying. Good job to you. Thanks for having
37:17
me.