Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Is Gender Made-Up?" with Dianna E. Anderson

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"Is Gender Made-Up?" with Dianna E. Anderson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day humans, welcome to our couple of conversations. The safe space for dangerous ideas where I,
• 0:08
  your humble host, your humble warrior, princess, Josh Seps, wander through the, what is it,
• 0:15
  a forest, or maybe a minefield and slay dragons of intellect. Gee, that's an awful analogy,
• 0:23
  isn't it? I'm not doing very well. Let's start again. G'day humans. Welcome to it now. I'm not
• 0:29
  going to do the whole thing over again. That's all right. Anyway, welcome to the show.
• 0:33
  A little bit of horse today. My, my. I've been presenting the breakfast show on ABC radio Sydney
• 0:38
  for a few weeks. Those 330 starts. I'll tell you what. Do you wake up at 330? Have you ever
• 0:44
  worked on it at 330? Of course you haven't. You lazy slub. You haven't gotten up before 8am
• 0:48
  any day of your life. Have you? No, let's cancel that. Let's start again.
• 0:52
  G'day humans. Well, no, I'm not going to start again.
• 0:57
  Diana E Anderson is on the show today. And if you're wondering, is Josh drunk or something
• 1:03
  what's with this intro? No, don't drink anymore. Diana E Anderson is a writer based in Minneapolis,
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  Minnesota. They are the author of, and yes, they are the author of books, including damaged goods,
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  new perspectives on Christian purity, and problematic how toxic call out culture is destroying
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  feminism. But their latest book is called in transit being non-binary in a world of dichotomies.
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  You don't care about all these subtitles of the books. Do you? Why do I have to say the subtitles?
• 1:34
  What I kind of just say. Diana E Anderson has written three books. They're called damaged goods,
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  problematic, and in transit. If you want any of them, you know how to get books.
• 1:45
  Or do you need me to say that they're available? We're all good books. It's sold. We're all
• 1:50
  available at all good bookstores. Or you can go to www.amazon.com AMAZ or Z-O-N. Financy.com.
• 2:02
  Diana is very interesting. I wondered whether or not to have her on the show. Then on the show.
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  God. Let's start this again.
• 2:12
  G'day, humans. Welcome. No, I'm not going to start again. Apologies, Diana, for misgendering you.
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  Diana has first came across my radar as a Twitter, shall I say, Troublemaker? I say that in
• 2:27
  a non-projorative way, but a Twitter troublemaker. They prompted an article by Jesse Single,
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  the writer who had written a big Atlantic piece about
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  desistants, about people who had gone some way down the path of transitioning to
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  being transgender and had then pulled back. Jesse's piece was controversial.
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  Jesse was perhaps the first journalist to really feel a full blowback that comes anytime you touch
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  transgender issues in anything but the most foring and conformist way these days. Jesse was the
• 3:06
  canary in the coal mine. In 2021, in March, he had to write an entire long, long blog in response to
• 3:15
  a single Twitter thread by Diana Anderson. His article is, and this only came to my attention
• 3:24
  subsequently, his article is entitled, Check out how much effort it takes to respond to a single
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  lie staffed tweet storm distorting my work on youth gender dysphoria and then subtitle a response
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  to Diana, he Anderson. So needless to say, the two of them aren't friends, but I'm not the type of
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  person who says, well, I'm not going to platform people who have once sent a tweet storm that I might
• 3:46
  find questionable, the whole point is to talk to them and figure out what they think about the world.
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  And Diana is a really interesting character. As you'll hear, that grew up evangelical and are now
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  an extremely, I was going to say aggressive, but that may sound pejorative, vocal defender of the
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  gender critical trans movement in America. The new book in transit is an exploration of non-binary
• 4:18
  identity. And look, I don't drag Diana over the coals here. I don't raise the Jesse single
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  incident. We do talk about it, and we do talk about the difficulty of talking about this subject
• 4:33
  in the media. But I was more interested in understanding Diana's worldview than in
• 4:41
  pillering them in public. Please do enjoy this conversation with the quite delightful and very
• 4:49
  interesting Diana here.
• 5:01
  So for people who aren't fully on the bandwagon or the terminology, your non-binary, are you also trans?
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  Yes. I consider myself non-binary and trans, and I do consider those somewhat distinct
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  but overlapping categories. So what's trans? Because I think most people will be familiar with
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  a transgender person who feels that they were born into the wrong body or that they were assigned
• 5:27
  the wrong gender at birth and exhibits that kind of resistance from a very early age. And so
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  then they transition to a different sex. But you're that's not you.
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  Right. I think a lot of people, a lot of cis people in particular take a very what's called a
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  sort of trans medicalist view where like if you have undergone these medical transitions,
• 5:55
  this journey of healthcare, then you are trans. That is a major part of being trans. And
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  my argument both in my book and just in my life is that you don't have to undergo
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  any parts of medical transition in order to consider yourself trans or non-binary. Those are
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  categories of identity and of political utility, not necessarily like a diagnosis that you meet
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  and check and check off on a box. And when you say cis people, that just means people who are not trans.
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  Right. Yeah. So what is it for you then and how did it emerge in your life?
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  It's been a long journey to realizing that I am non-binary. I grew up in an evangelical
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  environment, evangelical question, which is very rigid when it comes to the roles that gender
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  plays. My parents didn't follow a lot of gender roles, but the reports when it was very much
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  assumed that because I was assigned female at birth and perceived to be a girl,
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  that I would follow certain paths and certain ideas in life. And it always felt to me like I was
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  an outsider looking in, trying to figure out what the rules are to what it means to be,
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  you know, a girl or a woman or whatever. And when I hit about, I'm in my mid 30s now. And so when
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  I hit about 30, I was like, is this even working anymore? Like I don't know what a woman is anymore.
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  I don't know what that means for me. I can't come up with a definition that satisfies how I feel
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  about myself. So I started exploring other identities and realized that non-binary was the one that
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  fit the best and decided to start pursuing in conjunction with that a medical transition as well.
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  A medical transition? Well, that's interesting because I think of non-binary as being a non-physical
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  aspect, as being something almost spiritual, as being something that where you simply don't
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  feel like you inhabit either gender, but how does that play out physically for you?
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  Yeah, that is something that a lot of non-binary people
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  believe and think about themselves. We're like, gender is just a thing that they play with throughout
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  the day. It's not something that they necessarily feel the need to make permanent changes to their
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  bodies, but everyone is different. And for me, needing to go and get top surgery, which is a
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  double mistake to me, to create a masculinizing appearance, was necessary to my identity,
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  because I wanted to deliberately present as something that didn't automatically get gendered as
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  woman. Why? Because I'm not one, and I don't like being called maim. I don't like being assumed
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  that I am female. Aren't you courting the reverse in a sense that you're courting being referred
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  to as sir and being pigeonholed as a man? And presumably that doesn't fit the gender non-binary
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  in any better. Yeah, it's well, for me, it's more that people will second guess themselves,
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  and like that calls attention to the artificialness of this entire structure of gender that we have.
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  It is, for me, okay, the other day I was in the pet store, and I ran into this little Scottish
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  carrier, and I leaned down to pet the dog, and her owner went, oh be careful, she's not familiar with
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  men. And I was like, ah, well cool, and so I spoke. And then she heard my voice and was like, wait,
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  and like that weight moment is kind of what I like of the people going, huh, I can't place this
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  person. It's so funny, Diana. I hate those moments. Like I remember being, I remember when I was a kid,
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  and you know, I would answer the phone, you know, when you're like 12, you start to think that
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  it's really grown up and cool to answer your parents phone when we had landlines. So maybe when I was
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  like eight or nine or 10, and every time I would pick up, they would say, you know, the friend would
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  just start saying, oh Mary Ann, I'm so glad that I got you thinking that it was my mum, because my
• 10:47
  voice hadn't broken yet. And then they would come this this awkward moment where I'm like, oh no,
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  actually it's Josh, Mary Ann's son, do you want to talk to mum? And I had to start saying, you
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  know, answering the phone by saying, hi, this is Josh, so that people didn't do that. And for me,
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  that was just cringy and embarrassing and unpleasant, obviously unpleasant and awkward for that person,
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  and therefore unpleasant awkward for me on their behalf, I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.
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  It seems like you're going out of your way to do that. I don't like that. And that's part of
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  the tension of my identity is that I don't like making people uncomfortable, but I do sort of
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  get a bit of gender euphoria out of people not being able to tell. And that it's kind of fun.
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  And I would say, I would go so far as to say, like those moments when cis people experience them,
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  when they can't, when somebody mistakes their gender for something, those are elements of gender
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  dysphoria. You are experiencing discomfort at somebody not reading you properly. And that is
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  something that I think there's a lot, a lot says people could learn from thinking about those
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  moments and leaning into them and thinking like, okay, why am I uncomfortable here? What is that
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  feeling? And oh boy, trans people go through that all the time.
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  Yeah. I guess it's a little bit like, I mean, I'm trying to think of analogies.
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  It's not that dissimilar from something that happens to me almost every single day of the year,
• 12:19
  which is someone assuming that when I say spouse, if I don't actually say husband, that they
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  that they assume that it's a wife. So like I was just chatting the day before yesterday and an
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  online chat with an airline because I had to change a reservation. One of those little chatbot
• 12:32
  things, but there's an actual human on the other side, probably in the Philippines or some such
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  place. And they, and I said I needed to, it was going to be ticketed on for my spouse because I
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  wanted to keep it gender neutral because I didn't want to get into the conversation. And they
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  responded by saying, what's your wife's name? Because they can see from my profile that I was a man.
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  And it kept going back and forth and back and forth until I, and they kept saying wife and I kept
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  saying it's husband. I had to say like three times. And then I said, men can marry men, you know,
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  and there was a long pause and then came back this huge long, like groveling paragraph,
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  which I felt bad for the person for having to even say, you know, yes, that's absolutely true.
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  I didn't mean any offense that you're quite right. Men can marry men and there's nothing wrong
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  with that. And I certainly don't feel there's anything wrong with that. And I thought, oh, they
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  probably think that this huge mega corporation airline is going to fire them for some human rights
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  abuse. If they, you know, if I would have dropped them in and show evidence of the chat. So
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  that was fine. But that's just another example where I think people who are who are gay or lesbian
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  or queer in some way have a common experience. And I suppose this, this may happen with people,
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  you know, of non-discriminate ethnic background as well. And you know, I've sometimes been mistaken
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  for this or mistaken for that. Or if you're a black person in France, you might get mistaken for
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  being of Arab descent from one of the North African colonies or whatever it might be. These constant
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  iterations of kind of correction when someone is misdiagnosing the tribe that you belong to or
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  how you're living your life. Most people shy away from it. Most people want to minimize those
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  those interactions. I don't know whether to applaud you or condemn you for courting them.
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  Yeah, it's it's attention in which I think I've deliberately chosen to live. And it sort of
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  forces forces those not to be too on the nose uncomfortable conversations about it.
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  And so you so you're saying you've had and tell me if I'm getting too private here, but you've
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  had top surgery. You don't want to go any further. I have not. I have contemplated going on like
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  lotus testosterone. And so I'm happy to talk about any parts of my medical transition.
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  And so I haven't pursued that yet. And it's one of the things where like I don't know if I will,
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  I don't know if I'm at a point where I want to put my body through that sort of thing. So I got
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  the big main thing done. And that's fine. Well, I mean, in some ways, you would you'd undermine
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  the subversiveness of your gender non-binary status if you went further and became
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  and you were able to pass as male, right? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So I want to maintain
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  some of that bit of femininess and that bit of masculinity that I that I have with my presentation.
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  So it's so interesting, Diana, because so many other trans people who I know who are conventional
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  binary trans people, let's say who aren't playing in the sort of gender non-binary space.
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  It's very important to them to be able to pass. You know, this is this is almost a hierarchy
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  within the trans community of like, you know, oh, you know, she's she's so beautiful. She's
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  such a beautiful trans woman. I mean, you'd never even know you couldn't even tell. That's like a
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  it's almost a status thing. You know, to have a straight guy say, wow, she's she's beautiful.
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  And then for someone to go like, actually, bro, she's a dude, you know, and in your case,
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  that's not an objective at all. Right. And I am glad that I live in a space and in a city and
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  in an area where that sort of thing is possible because it is very much like I live in an area where
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  my identity is a protected status. I can't be described. We have laws on the book here in Minnesota
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  that protect gender identity as a protected class, which is not the case for all states in the US.
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  And so I have a community and environment where it's safer for me to do that. Whereas I think
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  especially for trans women, it's not always been safe to do that because trans women are seen
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  as much more they're much higher. They're much more visible. Sorry, there's the word. They're
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  much more visible in the transgender movement than non binary people like myself, simply because
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  of the forces of what's called trans misogyny, where it is a particular form of misogyny aimed at
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  trans women because they are trans because it's seen as this particularly transgressive thing
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  to be a person who is assigned male at birth who is now a woman.
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  Yes, there's also some kind of sense that like you'll betraying the male team or you're trying
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  to have one over on us or like you're trying to trick us. You know, you're trying to say there's
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  a fear of being seduced. You think of all of the cultural things from what was that English film
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  where the IRA guy was turned out to be a trans woman? Do you remember what I'm talking about?
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  Yeah, I don't listen to tell me. The listeners will tell me. It was like
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  yes. No, it's probably a little before your time and not in the right country, but none.
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  I do know there's like the movie The Crying Game. The Crying Game. That was it. That was it.
• 17:58
  That was it. Okay. Yes, that's the film. Yeah, the final twist is that oh my goodness,
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  he's actually been falling in love with the trans woman. I wonder if there's something sort of
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  pathological in the way that straight men think about themselves as being like the victims,
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  the victims when they're in a violent encounter with a trans woman. Oh yeah, but she was trying
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  to seduce me. Yeah, there is in most of the states in the US, you can actually use that as a
• 18:30
  defense. It's called the Transpanic defense. It's similar to the gay panic defense where straight
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  men could assault or kill gay men because oh, they were hitting on me and that threw me into a panic.
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  And there's a similar defense for Transpanic where like oh, I was on a date with this person.
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  I discovered that they were trans and I'm not responsible for my actions from that point on.
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  And we're working on panicking in Minnesota. And so I've even though it's still legal here.
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  And so that's one of the ways that it's built into the system that it's okay for straight men,
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  very often straight white men to have this overly violent reaction to something they see as
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  transgressive and it's a okay by the state. And wait, does that mean that in those states,
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  you're essentially required to divulge your trans status when you're on a date with somebody,
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  in case they fly into a rage when they find out? It's a thing where like if you do get murdered,
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  they could use that defense at the trial for your murder if it even goes to trial.
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  And that would mean that you and your loved ones would not see justice for it.
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  So you're not required to disclose, but it could come up in the trial if there is an eventual one,
• 19:54
  which is very frustrating. What are the gender characteristics, Diana, that you were talking
• 20:00
  about earlier? You said that like you didn't necessarily feel like you aligned like your behavior
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  and your internal kind of self-monologue aligned with gender characteristics of being a girl.
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  What does that mean? It's really hard to describe because part of it is trying to make this sort
• 20:20
  of invisible internal experience legible and intelligible for other people, which is always going
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  to end up using proxies for that. So like I was a major tomboy growing up. I really loved like climbing
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  trees. I didn't care like if it caught my dress or like stained my shoes or whatever.
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  I wanted to learn how to do what we might categorize as boyish things. I remember being
• 20:52
  really jealous of my brother getting to be the one who mows the lawn, whereas I didn't
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  I haven't as far as I'm concerned. I have it knowing the law.
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  Yeah, it's one of those where I look back as an adult and be like, why was I so jealous of that?
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  That's right. Because my job was dusting the dining room every week and making sure that
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  like things were nice and shiny. And so I felt this like intense gender divide in that.
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  And then as I got older, I tried out all these different ways of being a woman. I was pretty
• 21:30
  feminine for a while, wore a lot of dresses, wore makeup and painted my nails and did those stereotypical
• 21:38
  feminine things. And then I tried to move away from that and lean into being a butcher. And I
• 21:44
  discovered like as I was exploring my identity as like a butcher lesbian as a butcher queer that like
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  I was so much happier when people couldn't tell what gender I was. And that was part of the whole
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  thing of like, oh, maybe I don't have to be part of that woman group at all. Maybe that's not
• 22:08
  within my womanhood or within my gender at all.
• 22:16
  That's interesting. I mean, what's interesting here is that so many of these things that
• 22:20
  you're talking about are culturally constructed in the first place, anyway, isn't it? I mean,
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  you know, maybe there's some innate masculine drive to climb trees and I don't know if
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  fix tools or something and then maybe there's some biological component to having a propensity to,
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  I don't know, taking widgets apart and putting them back together rather than negotiating or
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  mediating conversations with other people, which may be a more feminine trait or maybe that's also
• 22:48
  so constructed as well. But certainly things like painting your nails or, you know, wearing dresses
• 22:53
  or liking pink. These things are not innate. The experience that you're talking about seems to be one
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  that's very innate, that's almost impossible for you to articulate because it's just like you
• 23:03
  knew that you didn't fit these stereotypes, yet the stereotypes are constructed. So is it innate
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  or is it constructed? It is, I look at gender as a language as a way of communicating our inward
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  selves to the world in whatever form that takes in whatever way that fits within how our culture has
• 23:28
  decided to construct gender and that leans a bit on what Judith Butler posits as gender as performance.
• 23:38
  But it is also this innate feeling where we know like, okay, these are the categories where do we
• 23:43
  fit within them? And so for a lot of trans people, it's not a matter of like, oh, well, I was
• 23:52
  playing with boys toys when I was six or I was playing with Barbies and doing their hair.
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  It's a matter of those ideas or proxies for how we talk about our internal experiences,
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  really because we can't actually articulate the feeling of ultimately dysphoria between what
• 24:19
  the world tells us we should be and what we actually are. And that's really how we end up with
• 24:29
  this discussion about like, well, trans people are just reinforcing stereotypes and it's like,
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  no, we're just using stereotypes as this sort of proxy for understanding ourselves within the gender
• 24:41
  system and understanding or how we act it out our gender in those ways when we were younger.
• 24:48
  Not everyone will be familiar with that criticism that you just passingly mentioned,
• 24:52
  oh, transgender people are just reinforcing stereotypes. So let's just linger on that for a moment.
• 24:57
  There's a criticism that some feminists will make, especially feminists a bit others as well,
• 25:02
  but especially feminists will make of the kind of performativity of transgender women.
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  So people who are assigned male at birth and some cohort of that population will get a huge kick
• 25:15
  out of very elaborate displays, very almost camp or almost drag-weeny displays of their own
• 25:19
  femininity. And so the idea that all of a sudden, I never felt more like myself
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  says the young person who has previously been coded as male but is now coded as female
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  when I put on pearls and I put on a ball gown and I put on high heels and I did my hair and I did
• 25:36
  my lipstick. And you know, a certain cohort of I guess second-wave feminists from the Camille
• 25:42
  Parglier and maybe Germaine Greer book will say hang on a second. Feminism and femininity and
• 25:48
  womanhood was never about pearls and high heels and doing your hair and putting on lipstick. That's
• 25:53
  exactly what we were fighting against. And now you people who were assigned male at birth who've
• 25:58
  grown up with all of the benefits of a sexist patriarchal society who've had none of the disadvantages
• 26:03
  of growing up as girls proclaim, you know, yourselves to be relishing your femininity by putting
• 26:09
  on all of these trappings of a very old-fashioned or stereotypical idea about womanhood without having
• 26:15
  to have done any of the hard yards of growing up as a girl in a sexist society. What's your response
• 26:21
  to that? Yeah, there are a number of different things within that that are worth addressing. The
• 26:27
  first is that like not every trans woman is femme. I would argue that femme exists as a separate
• 26:35
  category and femme is a particularly queer term for like a woman who presents feminism who is a
• 26:43
  queer woman, that sort of thing, because I know but trans women who are not in makeup, not into
• 26:52
  that quote unquote girly stuff, but still are women. Of course, but I don't think anyone is saying
• 27:01
  this argument proves that there's no such thing as trans women. I think they're just saying that
• 27:05
  there's something unseemly about that particular quarter of the trans community. Yeah, and I would
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  if that's the way that they're taking, because usually the way that I see the argument is that
• 27:16
  they are saying that well, trans women are just reinforcing stereotypes, therefore they are not
• 27:20
  valid women. I wonder if that's just a reading in from like being too online and having too many
• 27:27
  arguments on Twitter. I don't see that. I don't see that, but I don't doubt that you do from
• 27:31
  people screeching that you're on Twitter all the time, but I have had people argue that too.
• 27:37
  Although the principle day and that we do our best arguing when we're arguing against the
• 27:43
  most the most offensive of our opponents positions rather than the weakest. Yeah, I understand
• 27:50
  that, but I think there's more to be played with there, but the idea of rejecting a trans woman's
• 28:01
  womanness because she says that putting on a skirt makes me feel like my femininity is there,
• 28:09
  makes me feel like a woman feels like you're rejecting also a cis woman's femininity when she
• 28:18
  like enjoys wearing skirts, enjoys doing these feminists would. Yeah, I think these feminists would
• 28:26
  say that those people are living under falsehoods about their subjects of a patriarchy that they're
• 28:33
  not aware of. And I would say that's failing to embrace all the different forms of womanhood.
• 28:43
  I would say that that is also a pretty white view to take because there are so many different
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  ways of womanhood that are not those sort of stereotypical things that are still within
• 28:58
  minority ethnic cultures that are not reflected in those stereotypes. It seems very odd to
• 29:10
  think that you have the power to disallow somebody from the membership of the category woman based
• 29:16
  on how they choose to present themselves to the world or what gives them happiness. That seems very
• 29:24
  well, I think as I said, we can rule out we can rule out any claim that seeks to draw the
• 29:29
  conclusion that you should disallow people from being trans women or from enjoying the category of
• 29:35
  womanhood simply because they have a particularly traditional or maybe old-fashioned or maybe
• 29:42
  unfeminist vision of what how they want to present themselves. But that doesn't necessarily rule
• 29:48
  out. I mean, that doesn't necessarily rule out the concern that some feminists might have about
• 29:53
  the perpetuation of a certain cliche of femininity being peddled by trans women and cis women alike.
• 30:04
  And I mean, on the whiteness of it, that's a valid criticism, but there are all kinds of ethnic
• 30:08
  examples of people, and I use ethnic and quotation marks there, examples of male-imposed forms
• 30:17
  of gender presentation for women that we would freely regard as being awful. I don't know whether
• 30:23
  you would, but the Berkha or Chinese footbinding or any other traditional kind of sexist imposition
• 30:30
  on women and those women may be living under what I would argue is a false consciousness of
• 30:34
  thinking that this is liberating, but you don't have a choice not to think it's liberating. And if
• 30:39
  you want to be critical of Western white culture, then maybe bikinis and Brazilian waxes and
• 30:46
  you know, Kardashian bums and duck lips and all that are an example of women trying to find a
• 30:53
  vision of femininity that is grotesquely malformed to try to appease and please the male gaze.
• 31:01
  And so all of that can be bundled up into the same criticism that some of these feminists might
• 31:06
  have of the way that a certain cohort of trans women take an off the shelf idea of, I don't know
• 31:13
  how to present as females and reinforce all kinds of patriarchal stereotypes.
• 31:17
  Yeah, I want to talk specifically about the example of the hijab.
• 31:23
  I, pure Minneapolis, I am represented in or in the United States Congress by Ilhan Omar,
• 31:30
  who voluntarily wears the hijab. No one would say that some man is forcing her to wear it.
• 31:38
  No one would say that she is engaged in some sort of patriarchal display by choosing to wear it.
• 31:48
  For her, it is a part of her religious devotion and part of her bodily autonomy to choose to wear
• 31:55
  the hijab. I also when I was in my women's studies program at Oxford University,
• 32:02
  I had a classmate who would wear the hijab in class and come dressed up modestly because she felt
• 32:10
  that that was showing deference to the classroom and to the academic seriousness of the topics at
• 32:19
  hand. And that was her choice. And she wouldn't wear it out in the city. That was just a
• 32:25
  clarify before we go down a rabbit hole. I did say the Birka, not the hijab, where you're just
• 32:30
  looking out of a little slit. And I'll take your point that I have friends who wear the hijab,
• 32:36
  we have a huge Muslim population here in Australia as well. The fact that people who enjoy the
• 32:42
  freedoms of Western liberal democracies can choose to wear the hijab or not wear the hijab,
• 32:47
  only highlights for me the fact that most people who wear the hijab globally don't have that choice
• 32:52
  because they don't live in Western democracies. They live in theocracies. So it's great that
• 32:57
  Dylan Omar has that choice, but if she was in Iran, she wouldn't. Yeah. And I think ultimately,
• 33:03
  the feminist position there is to support the bodily autonomy of choice. Yes, that's right. But
• 33:09
  many Muslim feminists regarded as being a symbol of a lack of choice because in the vast majority
• 33:17
  of cases where it's warm, the woman doesn't have a choice. Yeah, I would compare that to
• 33:24
  my own upbringing in evangelical culture where we have this then called modesty culture where
• 33:31
  I did not wear anything that was not a crew neck until I was in my 20s because showing any
• 33:40
  skin, showing any of the like any of the shape of a female body was considered offensive. And
• 33:49
  that was absolutely a patriarchal thing. But so for me putting on a bikini for the first time
• 33:58
  after coming out of that culture and this was before I realized I was non-binary was this sort
• 34:04
  of liberating thing to be able to be a modest by their standards. And so I totally understand
• 34:14
  how like that sort of thing like for me in the particular culture I grew up in like seeing women
• 34:20
  with ankle length of gene skirts because that is the sort of modest thing of fundamentalist American
• 34:26
  Christians does make me go, ooh, that is you know, that is a symbol of patriarchy in my mind.
• 34:34
  But I also don't want to decide for those women what is liberating to them. Of course not. Yes.
• 34:42
  And I think that circling it back to the idea of trans women saying hey this makes me feel
• 34:51
  feminine that's the same thing. We don't get to decide for women what in their bodily autonomy
• 34:58
  in their expression of their gender is quote unquote bad or contributing to negative images of
• 35:06
  feminism or of women. And so because I think that still blames women for patriarchy's moves.
• 35:17
  It still holds individual women to account for buying into the male gays or whatever rather than
• 35:23
  saying why aren't we challenging the male gays. Well aren't we I mean like as a isn't that the
• 35:32
  point of the critique that one should try to I mean completely I completely concur and in
• 35:38
  some respects people like you who are who are pushing back against all of these traditions are
• 35:44
  the vanguard of encouraging people to think in new ways about stuff like this. But shouldn't that
• 35:49
  be the goal that we encourage people to think outside of the the box and create a climate in which
• 35:54
  there's the greatest possible individual flourishing. I mean to take the false consciousness arguments
• 35:59
  seriously imagine that you know you liberate an entire population from a from theocratic rule
• 36:05
  like under the Taliban or something and they continue to wear the full burger and a person like
• 36:13
  you could say look let's not patronize them by saying that they're subjected to some kind of
• 36:18
  patriarchal ideology this is their free choice we shouldn't force them to wear what they don't
• 36:22
  want to wear. Yes we shouldn't force them but it would also be nice to create a climate in which
• 36:28
  they felt self-empowered enough to know what they're missing. Are they missing?
• 36:34
  Thanks by where they won't they won't know until they until they understand all of the options
• 36:39
  that are available to them and until they no longer feel like they're living inside an intellectual
• 36:45
  box. I think that's imposing a lot of thought upon those people that
• 36:54
  is is uncalled for. I think by like oh well this woman can chose to continue wearing the burger
• 37:04
  wearing this extreme example of modesty culture. When like maybe that's just what she's comfortable
• 37:13
  with for right now and if she wants to learn in the future we can you know have people within her
• 37:21
  community willing to talk to her about that or whatever but she might also make that decision
• 37:27
  out of empowerment maybe she likes being anonymous when she goes out um that sort of thing like
• 37:34
  I don't mean maybe but how would she know that she wants to learn unless she's learned isn't
• 37:39
  it sounds like you're arguing against the whole project of educating girls in Afghanistan.
• 37:44
  Oh god no no in a sense that they're not going to have their minds open to the possibility of how
• 37:49
  they can carry themselves and what they could be up to in this world unless they're they're told
• 37:54
  that actually they can live this way but they could live a million otherwise as well. Yeah and in
• 38:00
  your vision of a fully liberated uh government where people are given those choices and stuff a
• 38:07
  woman who chooses to continue wearing the burger would be doing that out of her choice if we're
• 38:13
  talking in yeah yeah in fit in these worlds and stuff so I'm not going to
• 38:21
  judge that person like I I live in it in an area where there is a neighborhood that's jokingly
• 38:29
  called Little Mogadishu because we have so many Muslim Somali refugees who come over and there
• 38:35
  are women who wear the full uh I don't think I've seen the full face covering uh burger but I have
• 38:43
  seen the um oh what's it called the Nikon or what where where it's just around the head and then
• 38:52
  the abaya uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and stuff but like
• 38:56
  everything else is just basically a big lump of fabric um yeah and stuff and that's really common
• 39:01
  here um and it like it's not my job as a as a white person to question what
• 39:13
  that person from Somalia is choosing to wear or uh for what reason um and stuff she lives in an
• 39:19
  area where she could take that off if she wanted um and they know that so yeah of course no
• 39:28
  absolutely I mean as I said that she lives that person lives under a Western secular liberal
• 39:33
  democracy where religious law is not imposed if that person lives in a community where it's likely
• 39:39
  that her husband is going to disown her and is going to informally deprive her of you know financial
• 39:45
  benefits or you know somehow otherwise punish her or prevent her from seeing her kids if there'll be
• 39:49
  enormous uh pressure from her community from her imam from her grandparents to make sure that she
• 39:57
  keeps wearing that then maybe there's a different conversation to be had about the integration of
• 40:01
  of such communities or you know education proper education but um yeah in all the liberal democracy
• 40:07
  there's nothing to worry about um the let's get back to gender because that's that's yeah
• 40:13
  warrior area expertise and my interest in this conversation so these kinds of ways of presenting
• 40:19
  as male or as female is there a is there any conflict between non-binary trans people and binary
• 40:29
  trans people here because it strikes me that your whole kind of mo is to call bullshit on
• 40:40
  the sort of socially arbitrary and culturally arbitrary nature of a lot of gender I mean you
• 40:47
  don't fit in you want to challenge people you want to push them to question their preconceptions about
• 40:52
  gender you want to screw around with gender stereotypes and not be not fit into any category
• 41:01
  and yet the main goal of many binary trans people is to pass is to inhabit the characteristics of
• 41:11
  the gender that they feel they are and is your kind of screwing around with gender running counter to
• 41:18
  that mission uh I think you will find that there are some binary trans people who say yes um
• 41:26
  they're they're non-binary has had to sort of claw for its own space uh within the trans movement
• 41:34
  even though we have always existed right alongside uh trans people there's always been gender queer
• 41:40
  gender fluid non-binary people who sit in the sort of in between spaces um but there is especially in
• 41:49
  the environment that we have today we're trans people in a lot of areas are having to argue to justify
• 41:56
  our own existence uh non-binary people have been treated as though we are taking away from that
• 42:03
  project of general cis acceptance um which to me I understand as a non-binary person but also
• 42:15
  I understand that that is not something I have control over really whether or not cis people accept
• 42:23
  us because in my experience very often cisgender people are looking for a reason to say that they
• 42:31
  don't want trans people in x, y and z um and so whether or not I exist in the conversation isn't
• 42:40
  like it's not my fault that says people want to do a bad faith reading of that um and very much
• 42:48
  of that anger from within the community toward non-binary people I feel is misdirected um because
• 42:55
  the entire thing we're trying to defeat is this cis gender patriarchy that says whatever you are
• 43:02
  born with that is your destiny that is who you will become and it means x, y and z for whichever set
• 43:09
  of genitals you happen to have and so the more that we liberate people from that biology is destiny
• 43:15
  argument uh the more space we will have both for binary trans people who want to go deep stealth and
• 43:22
  never like be considered what they are without ever having to disclose trans status and for non-binary
• 43:31
  people who are like you know I might show up to this in a weird like both masculine and feminine
• 43:41
  outfit and confuse the crap out of you and I think there's room for both of us under the the
• 43:48
  trans umbrella it's yeah why does it have to be under the trans umbrella?
• 43:55
  I actually argue about this my book the trans umbrella doesn't really make that much sense
• 43:59
  anymore so I like to uh but it is the common terminology so I use it with um with people sometimes
• 44:09
  in order to introduce them to other new ideas um but like the trans umbrella has for a while
• 44:16
  included way too many categories that are just basically gender non-conformance or gender
• 44:23
  creativity um and so so I take to referring to as the gender expansive community which includes
• 44:31
  people who are uh binary trans who are non-binary who are some other part of that uh community
• 44:42
  that's interesting but you do include binary trans people in that community yeah yeah that's
• 44:47
  interesting because I mean when you think about I'm just thinking about thinking aloud for the first
• 44:51
  time I hadn't thought about this but the etymology of like transgender like a trans continental flight
• 44:56
  is one that goes from one side of the continent to the other side of the continent right it's a
• 45:01
  trans con you're going from one side to another uh it makes sense that trans gender is going from one
• 45:09
  gender to another gender if you're genderqueer and you're saying there is no such thing
• 45:13
  sorry gender non-binary rather and you're saying there is no such thing and these are false labels
• 45:17
  in the first place you're not flying across the country you know you're right there in the Midwest
• 45:22
  where you are trying to try to you know inhabit that middle ground yeah my uh one of my good friends
• 45:29
  Casey describes their gender precisely as a transatlantic flight you are neither here nor there
• 45:35
  you are in between we're always traveling right which is what led itself to the title of the book
• 45:42
  in transit yes oh I get the yes I get the continental and do you feel that there's a fluctuating
• 45:49
  you know many people uh in the let's call it the gender expansive community as you just you just
• 45:54
  called it will talk about there being a kind of a fluctuating relationship to gender in the same
• 45:59
  way that some people whose sexuality is is complicated will occasionally you know be dating a
• 46:05
  guy at occasionally be dating a girl and we'll we'll find that coming in in ebbs and flows
• 46:09
  throughout their lives is that your experience or is yours more fixed mine is a bit more fixed
• 46:15
  but there are days when I feel more uh how do I put this like genderful than others where like
• 46:22
  there are some days where I'm like I don't want to be perceived I don't want to experience gender
• 46:27
  at all and other days where I'm like I am this like magical fusion of all these different things
• 46:34
  and I am masculine and I am feminine at all these different points and I know that for
• 46:40
  every non-binary person that I've ever talked to it's very similar where they will um
• 46:47
  like it's fixed in that it is non-binary in this label of I'm not this or that um but I'm
• 46:56
  something else entirely but that something else entirely is a big big category of different
• 47:03
  things of how they imagine themselves and what they choose to present themselves as and it's sort
• 47:09
  of this playfulness uh with the concept of gender uh that refuses to be pinned down.
• 47:16
  Hmm got it. In moment ago Diana you you characterized the contemporary cisgender ideology the
• 47:23
  patriarchal one as being like you know very deterministic uh that men are this way and women are
• 47:29
  that way and you know depending on what you're born with between your legs that's going to determine
• 47:34
  what your interests are and what your fate will be that's it's interesting to characterize it that
• 47:37
  way and unsurprising given the fact that you grew up in an evangelical household um I grew up in a
• 47:45
  very progressive secular uh artsy-farty sort of inner-city uh latte sipping uh you know
• 47:52
  Chardonnay um soy boy soy boy you know low testosterone whatever else the Trump has
• 47:58
  want to call me uh that kind of you know a very Brooklyn sort of you know uh environment in in
• 48:04
  Australia and I would characterize the contemporary cisgender ideology as being one that says
• 48:13
  that sex actually is completely irrelevant and biologically irrelevant as well this is not
• 48:19
  not necessarily any more conducive to trans people but but that but a um an ideology that
• 48:28
  any expression any argument that involves any nod to there being a biological difference
• 48:34
  a behavioral biological difference between males and females is primafacy suspect and is
• 48:41
  probably a tool of the patriarchy and that if feminism has taught us anything it's that everyone can
• 48:46
  do anything with equal aptitude and also equal interest um I'm interested in whether or not you see
• 48:53
  and I see that as also maybe even more threatening to the trans movement in the sense that it says
• 49:00
  there there are there is really no male or female at all so what are you talking about trans people
• 49:06
  you know saying that you're in the wrong body uh you know yes some of us have vaginas and yes
• 49:10
  some of us have penises and yes some of us have boobs but inside there is no such thing as a female
• 49:16
  person or a male person in some kind of deep spiritual sense everything as a cultural construct that
• 49:21
  was sort of the ideology that I was brought up with yeah and I think that is misunderstanding how gender
• 49:29
  functions within society uh like I said at the beginning of this gender functions as a language
• 49:35
  uh whether or not we think it is a useful language whether or not we like it it does exist as a form
• 49:45
  in which we communicate with each other in which we express different things in which we have these
• 49:50
  different ideas like when we say feminine and masculine those are cultural constructs but they
• 49:55
  they are words that have meaning for people um and so therefore we it does exist as a thing that
• 50:04
  that we choose to communicate within and yeah there is no difference between men and women not
• 50:11
  really um there's not really do you do you believe that because I mean I was just articulating the
• 50:17
  the sort of what I regard as the prevailing cisgender point of view I mean I I'm not sure
• 50:23
  whether or not gender is only or rather sex difference is only a cultural construct in the sense
• 50:29
  you know if you buy a puppy and you want it a female dog and you get at home and you realize
• 50:34
  it's a male dog you're not gonna shrug and go oh well gender's just a construct anyway and there's
• 50:38
  no difference between biological sex I'll just keep the male dog it'll behave exactly the same as
• 50:41
  the female dog there we are mammals we have evolved over millions of years there probably are
• 50:47
  differences of interest if you gather a thousand males together in a room and say that you can
• 50:54
  either take together take apart and put back together a machine and have you know figure out
• 51:01
  where the widgets go you know you put them alone in a room and or you can spend the rest of the day
• 51:07
  mediating a family conflict it is the case that men will tend to go for the former and women will
• 51:13
  tend to go for the latter in larger numbers does that mean that every single woman wants that?
• 51:17
  No does it mean that every single man wants that? No of course it's all a bell curve but
• 51:21
  the bell curves don't perfectly seem to overlap in the sexes and it's an open question whether or
• 51:25
  not all of that is culturally constructed or whether there are some genetic differences between
• 51:30
  the sexes but is that a salient point either way for your point of view? I don't think there is a way
• 51:36
  to make an argument from reproduction that does not also disallow for homosexuality
• 51:44
  if you are insisting you know women have vaginas men have penises like that sort of thing which
• 51:52
  is very often where the argument goes from there then we end up with well then reproduction is the
• 52:00
  purpose of those things so we end up re-inscribing heterosexuality within that as part of the roles
• 52:08
  because otherwise why do those things exist? Why does that? I'm more of it some exist
• 52:15
  but going back to like whether or not there are differences I don't think personally there are
• 52:19
  differences and to me I don't see like a very helpful distinction between sex and gender
• 52:26
  of it to me it's it's all a language game that we're playing
• 52:30
  and I think that most of the ways that we talk about gender that we inscribe gender as a system
• 52:40
  or social constructs in that in the way that we look at what the identity categories are it's
• 52:49
  a political categories as social categories and as personal categories we don't
• 52:57
  how do I put this? It's to me a distinction without a difference there's not
• 53:12
  there's not a way that you can significantly demarcate between men and women that would actually
• 53:18
  have any meaning down to the individual level which is ultimately what this exists for is this
• 53:26
  of gender where like where like when you say I am a woman you are saying that you belong to a
• 53:33
  specific political social and often economic category within this system of gender so I guess
• 53:40
  what I'm getting back getting at is that yeah they're all social constructs right but I think
• 53:47
  it took you a while to get around to there but I get I feel like you're loading the dice a
• 53:51
  little bit by pre defining the social construct as things like when I say I'm a woman I'm talking
• 53:57
  about my politics and economic theory and all of that sort of stuff because obviously that stuff
• 54:02
  would not be based on biological sex that stuff would be culturally invented but if it's all
• 54:07
  cultural that's not precisely what I said sorry go for it when you are saying I am a woman you are
• 54:15
  making a declarative statement that you are part of a category within a system you are not making
• 54:21
  a specific statement about your politics but like women exist as a social and political category
• 54:27
  for how we organize society and so by saying you are a woman you are saying you are part of this class
• 54:33
  so yes when you you might be saying that if you're talking about your gender but if you're if you're
• 54:39
  with a physician then you might not be saying that you might just be if you're getting screen for
• 54:43
  cervical cancer then you might just be using a shorthand that I know trans people don't like
• 54:48
  but a shorthand that has traditionally been used for people who were assigned female at birth
• 54:53
  well yeah as as a non-binary person who has a vagina and a cervix I do not like that being
• 55:01
  called women's care or a well woman appointment because I'm not a woman and that makes assumptions
• 55:07
  about what equipment I might have when we tie it into biology so closely um I get that
• 55:16
  so for me personally like my doctor does not call it well woman stuff with me yeah right right
• 55:23
  but how does that work for for you as a cis man to have it be like you know you're
• 55:29
  whatever well man appointment or whatever um no I mean I can I can imagine how that would feel
• 55:37
  alienating if it didn't you know if it didn't mesh with your own identity but if it's all cultural
• 55:42
  though then how does the male how has the male dog absorbed the cultural norms that it's supposed
• 55:49
  to abide by when it needs to be decreased because it's going crazy when it goes through puberty
• 55:56
  we're not dogs like that that that analogy doesn't fit for me like at all because we're not dogs
• 56:05
  we're not absolutely are you so religious that you oh right okay but you're not denying it
• 56:12
  you do believe in evolution and that like when mammals who who share a lot of characteristics with
• 56:16
  other mammals yeah but I don't believe in evolutionary psychology as a thing we're like we can apply
• 56:23
  that one to one to humans right yes there is a lot of nonsense in evolutionary psychology
• 56:32
  consider the lobster uh with Jordan yeah you know Jordan Peterson's lobster analogy we keep
• 56:36
  getting trotted out as a as an example of bad evolution psychology by comparing us to crustaceans
• 56:44
  but does the fact that there's bad evolutionary psychology mean that we have no instincts and
• 56:50
  propensities and predispositions on the basis of our physicality when we share what 98
• 56:58
  plus percent of our DNA with other primates who do exhibit those characteristics and we also
• 57:04
  exhibit those characteristics but we're the only mammal for whom it's all it's all culturally
• 57:08
  constructed I think what you're getting at is like how does consciousness form uh which is question
• 57:14
  I'm not qualified to answer um I'm not sure it's how does consciousness form but does is
• 57:19
  consciousness the only game in town is like intellectual and and linguistic consciousness the
• 57:24
  only thing that's driving human beings or are there more primal forces that play I think that
• 57:31
  insofar as it is the thing that defines us it makes us different from humans who are acting as
• 57:36
  instinct we are so separated from those times when we as mammals acted on instinct um that it is not
• 57:46
  meaningful to me to discuss that as a thing um it doesn't we we construct houses we live in
• 57:58
  um apartment buildings and in cities and in these things that would go against all instincts that
• 58:04
  we would have had as the very very early set of humans when they first evolved um and so I take
• 58:11
  a point I also have to make this point when people say oh homosexuality is unnatural to which I say
• 58:17
  well firstly it's not unnatural because animals do it but even if they didn't like go to the moon
• 58:21
  is unnatural inventing vaccines is unnatural there are lots of things that humans do that are
• 58:25
  unnatural I take that point but I mean how can you explain the extraordinary violence of males
• 58:31
  compared to females the the extraordinary extraordinarily higher rates of sexual violence in particular
• 58:39
  and rape and intermale violence is that all a cultural construct I think it is I think that's
• 58:45
  the result of one both how we categorize violence how we look at things um as violence and what we
• 58:54
  categorize as violence is often very much built to exclude the female from those things um in the UK
• 59:07
  for example uh and a lot of people will point to this rape is defined as a penis violating of a
• 59:13
  China and that construct in law means that women who are convicted of sexual assaults and
• 59:21
  convicted of things that we would properly call rape do not get categorized as that and I'm saying
• 59:28
  well you said women you mean sex women yes yes yes I was going to call you up on that people with
• 59:32
  this I mean people without penises yes um and so the ways in which we construct those categories
• 59:39
  is very important how we talk about it and we also live in a patriarchal system where men
• 59:46
  are one both permitted to do violence a lot more it is seen as a form of proper expression of emotion
• 59:57
  for men to be violent and seen as a transgression of femininity for women to be violent um that's why
• 1:00:06
  we end up with categories of like documentaries that are killer women and stuff because it is considered
• 1:00:12
  unusual for women to be violent even though on I think if we stripped out and controlled for those
• 1:00:23
  nuances and the law and things like that we would find that it's fairly equal um if we stripped out
• 1:00:31
  the categories that team violence as the only acceptable thing for men to do to express their
• 1:00:39
  emotion I can hear that women are very violent oddly I can hear men's rights activists who
• 1:00:46
  and these frightened anti feminists applauding and going the transgender non-binary feminist Diana
• 1:00:52
  Anderson says that women are just as violent as men it's just a it's an accounting error guys
• 1:00:58
  well I think I think ultimately it is because of how we live in society and how we construct
• 1:01:04
  violence in society there are cases where like we minimize female violence from cis women
• 1:01:15
  so readily like if you think about how if you see two women are fighting it gets minimized as a
• 1:01:22
  cat fight you know it is something that is non-consequential it is something that is not really seen
• 1:01:30
  as this scary violent thing um and that is important to note of how we categorize it so so I
• 1:01:41
  would not I would not agree with the statement that men are just naturally more violent I think we
• 1:01:46
  have a culture which encourages violence in men as the only proper expression of masculinity yeah
• 1:01:53
  I see I see well the jury's out ultimately on nature versus nurture is that we'll probably
• 1:01:58
  continue to be out for millennia to come yes having these arguments around around around in circles
• 1:02:04
  are all young people who question their gender trans no but I don't but I think there are trans
• 1:02:13
  kids there are people who know from the time when they are four or five that they are trans
• 1:02:21
  and therefore we need to respect that identity as as valid I've been contacted by some parents in
• 1:02:32
  the course of my reporting on on all of this who are I mean I've been contacted by many parents
• 1:02:38
  who are extremely supportive of the way that transgender issues are dealt with in Australia and
• 1:02:43
  feel incredibly relieved that their child was able to access gender affirming care at a very early
• 1:02:50
  age and was able to transition successfully and that's that's a you know a thing that everyone should
• 1:02:56
  applaud on the other hand I do get I do get contacted by parents who feel that their children were
• 1:03:03
  perhaps caught up in a in a system that was too eager to affirm their care and they're worried that
• 1:03:09
  the media really doesn't report on this with the exception of sort of right wing rat bag you know
• 1:03:15
  you can turn on foxes any day of the week and you can hear them you know sparing transphobic
• 1:03:20
  nonsense but in what I regard as being the upstanding journalistic circles there's definitely a fear
• 1:03:26
  of reporting on it a fear of touching the subject every time anyone I know has including myself
• 1:03:33
  when I've just spoken to like when the tapestop clinic closed in the UK we spoke with the Australian
• 1:03:39
  psychiatric association on my show and they had some concerns about they they were their
• 1:03:45
  basic argument was that you know if a 12-year-old girl is it comes to a psychiatrist and says that she
• 1:03:53
  thinks she's transgender should the psychiatrist be able to inquire about any other underlying issues
• 1:03:59
  should they be able to ask about anxiety or depression about her family life about how she's
• 1:04:04
  doing with her peers or is it a requirement that the moment they hear the word transgender they
• 1:04:08
  activate an emergence like an an affirming care plan without interrogating anything further
• 1:04:15
  and there's a sense among these parents that the latter is what happens and that it's impossible
• 1:04:21
  for journalists to ask whether that happens or to talk about it and then why so I did one segment
• 1:04:26
  on this extremely respectful of transgender people repeating over and over that they have every
• 1:04:32
  right to be treated equally into access all of the health care that they need and nonetheless we
• 1:04:38
  got inevitable complaints that then suck up a half day of my time responding to those complaints
• 1:04:43
  you know note by note and it does strike me that the the point of those complaints is not actually
• 1:04:49
  to point out any error the point of those complaints is to raise the cost of even talking about this
• 1:04:53
  issue to such a high watermark that journalists are scared of talking about it what do you make of
• 1:05:00
  that long anecdote like should there be room for reporting on people who don't feel that transitioning
• 1:05:07
  was the right path I think there needs to be much more responsibility on the journalist part
• 1:05:14
  to report those stories within context and with the knowledge of how those stories are used
• 1:05:22
  to punish trans kids in the United States we have had a slew over the past five years of
• 1:05:34
  journalist delving into this area and the stories are always very much the same like this is happening
• 1:05:41
  your kid says they're trans what do you do with them and then telling this narrative like what you
• 1:05:47
  said uh well they're not allowed to question they're not allowed to do all this stuff when they
• 1:05:53
  just go in and get put on hormones right away and it turns into this scaremongering thing and that
• 1:06:00
  very often includes stories from people who have detransitioned and feel like they were misled
• 1:06:08
  who are engaged in activist circles that are trying to stop trans kids from transitioning
• 1:06:17
  which does not get disclosed in the articles and then when that comes out and trans people
• 1:06:23
  rightfully critique it for not disclosing those associations for a leaning hard into the
• 1:06:29
  scaremongering of it by presenting a false narrative of what happens within the appointments within
• 1:06:37
  the medical system the journalist takes this position of well I was just trying to report on this I
• 1:06:49
  was just trying to tell the truth and like you said this is raising the cost of doing these
• 1:06:54
  journalistic things and I think it would be good for journalists to consider that cost because
• 1:07:02
  here in the United States those articles get cited by legislators who are trying to ban trans
• 1:07:09
  healthcare for anybody there are several states that have laws on the books now that ban trans
• 1:07:17
  healthcare for anybody under 18 that are being challenged in laws and thankfully challenged in
• 1:07:23
  the courts and thankfully the courts are saying no this is a bad law you can't do that but those
• 1:07:28
  stories that these reporters feel the need to report end up getting cited in those laws by people
• 1:07:36
  who are acting against transgender people so like no matter how much respect was in the original
• 1:07:42
  story you have to consider how it will be used and what the larger context of where trans identity is
• 1:07:50
  within the media landscape because I never hear in those stories of how trans kids are happy
• 1:08:00
  you almost never ever hear that you hear the worry over transition or no I do hear that I mean
• 1:08:08
  again let's make sure that we're criticizing the strongest opponents arguments not the weakest
• 1:08:13
  ones right so I'm sure there's a ton of what you're talking about which is that someone who is
• 1:08:19
  basically transphobic and who is kind of an activist in anti-trans circles writes some piece
• 1:08:25
  about oh my goodness the children are all transitioning and you know they're they were merely gender
• 1:08:29
  curious and now they're on hormones and all of a sudden you know little I'm talking about like
• 1:08:35
  on hormones or something but they're if you're talking about Emily Bazelon at the New York Times
• 1:08:39
  magazine who wrote a big piece about this and got absolutely annihilated on social media and
• 1:08:44
  the whole piece was unfair I mean she was took real pains in that piece to articulate the position
• 1:08:52
  I think that you're in favor of which is that there are great many trans people for whom this
• 1:08:57
  this is beneficial but there are a few who aren't and there is this controversy inside medical
• 1:09:02
  circles themselves not just among the chattering classes about how much to about how to deal with
• 1:09:08
  five or olds and 10 year olds and 15 year olds who maybe on the in the gray areas here who may not
• 1:09:14
  be people who since the age of two have insisted that they were transgender but who are in some
• 1:09:18
  kind of a social or cultural cohort where a great many people are transitioning at the same time
• 1:09:24
  and so to what extent can psychiatrist and psychologist interrogate that and when you say that
• 1:09:29
  you know these these look I'm a journalist not an activist so anytime that someone tells me
• 1:09:34
  that we shouldn't be reporting on a thing that's happening and a legitimate question of medicine
• 1:09:41
  and medical policy because it might subsequently get misused by some arsehole republican lawmaker
• 1:09:47
  who wants to strip trans people of their rights my answer to that would be let's do everything we
• 1:09:52
  can to ensure that arsehole lawmakers can't strip strip trans people of their rights but I don't
• 1:09:57
  think we're ultimately going to succeed in fighting that battle if we're perceived by
• 1:10:01
  centrists and by people you know all over in the heartland as being disingenuous and unwilling
• 1:10:08
  to cop to actual disagreements that are taking place in our in our community and I mean you say
• 1:10:14
  that these articles might act against the interests of transgender people but we also have to
• 1:10:18
  consider the interests of the people who you just before admitted exist who are young people who
• 1:10:23
  are questioning their gender who are not trans I think how do I put this kindly I do not think
• 1:10:37
  that the journalist choosing to report on this have the have done necessarily the work to see
• 1:10:45
  that it is happening their story what is happening that you mean that people are being rushed
• 1:10:52
  into it yes story after story after story doesn't actually have any evidence or any stories of
• 1:11:03
  people who are rushed through medical transition at a young age the detransitioners that they cite
• 1:11:13
  all transition of over 18 a bunch of the one and they're very often the same ones repeated
• 1:11:20
  over and over again the same people the same stories somebody who transitioned at 13 who transitioned
• 1:11:27
  at 23 talking about how it's bad for 13 year olds transition doesn't make much sense to me that
• 1:11:35
  story does not belong within a story about 13 year olds and so those associations that are so
• 1:11:44
  frequent in the stories including in the puzzle and piece including in the one that just came out in
• 1:11:49
  the New York Times last week about top surgery make it so it sounds like it's a much bigger problem
• 1:11:55
  than it is detransition happens in less than 1% of cases transition surgeries have a regret rate
• 1:12:04
  that is less than 1% and that is not reported on that is not something I don't think this idea that
• 1:12:15
  kids are being rushed through is actually happening if we look at the statistics if we look at
• 1:12:22
  who is transitioning and who is being given access to medications it's people who have
• 1:12:32
  had a stable trans identity for years it is people who have been on waiting lists for multiple years
• 1:12:39
  you don't walk in as a 14 year old into a plant parenthood and get meds that just does not happen
• 1:12:47
  I you hear people telling of that happening but I have yet to have a name and a face put to it
• 1:12:55
  I have yet to have somebody come up and say I went to plant parenthood at 13 and got put on T
• 1:13:01
  that's just not happening and so by having that be the focus of the transgender debate that is
• 1:13:09
  thriving the discourse around it and I think journalists have a responsibility to say okay this
• 1:13:16
  piece how is this different than the any number of pieces about this same thing I'm even using
• 1:13:24
  the same subjects as that other person who did wrong the same years ago or that I'm not sure
• 1:13:29
  that's fair Diana I'm just just in order to fact check it I'm just googling the Emily Baselon
• 1:13:34
  piece and it does say for this article Emily Baselon spoke with more than two dozen young people
• 1:13:38
  about their experiences so they may not all be named and I'm not going to go through the entire
• 1:13:43
  article but they're certainly different from the Atlantic it's been a while since I've heard
• 1:13:47
  the Baselon piece but she quotes Grace Linsky Smith correct I don't know I mean it's a long it's a
• 1:13:53
  long piece but I mean you know this went through all of the New York Times fact checking and you
• 1:13:59
  know she had many many people who she was able to speak to who were young people who spoke to her
• 1:14:03
  yes she speaks to yep she spoke and the ones whose stories she chose to tell were the same people
• 1:14:10
  who appeared in Jesse singles piece who appeared in the recent piece about top surgery who appeared
• 1:14:15
  on the 60 minutes thing about do you transitioners it's the same people over and over again
• 1:14:20
  so if the problem is well if that I'll fact check that but if that's true then that is that is
• 1:14:26
  lazy and it would certainly point to your argument that this is being blown out of proportion
• 1:14:31
  I suspect that statistically it is well I mean I suspect that one reason why it is being blown out
• 1:14:39
  of proportion is because there's a sense among some of these journalists that this is an area
• 1:14:43
  of bad faith where people just aren't willing to to acknowledge the possibility that they're wrong
• 1:14:49
  where you know that that that there is that the system needs tweaking or that there could ever be
• 1:14:54
  a reason for a young person flagging this with their parents or with a school or a health professional
• 1:15:00
  that is not that they actually do want to transition and that is a you know an out of fate almost
• 1:15:06
  comes back to what we were saying about the hijab and the burger and and bikinis and things like
• 1:15:11
  that doesn't like when is something false consciousness and when is something that one needs to take
• 1:15:17
  at face value and at what age is a person capable of making a soft diagnosis that has to be taken
• 1:15:25
  to the bank the moment they announce it and anyone who has any concerns about about that is
• 1:15:32
  finds their lives a steaming pile of of rubble and ruin from from yeah the gender critical
• 1:15:45
  on social media shall I say yeah let me put it this way
• 1:15:50
  so much of the way that you framed that of a kid it denies these trans kids the closet it denies
• 1:16:01
  them any interiority to their own mind the moment that a kid comes out is the moment the kid is
• 1:16:10
  revealing information about themselves it is which you and I both know as queer people that is
• 1:16:17
  you you you know long before you come out very often and so many parents take that as oh they
• 1:16:25
  decided this morning like they don't take that good faith yeah and that to me is a great
• 1:16:35
  problem that we have in this entire discussion is that we deny these children the ability to know
• 1:16:42
  themselves deny that they could possibly know themselves and deny them any sort of interiority
• 1:16:47
  that would mean that they are closeted right if you had a parent who you knew was not going to be
• 1:16:54
  happy if you announced that you were trans you knew would have problems with that you would hold off
• 1:17:03
  until you couldn't deny it anymore I mean that's true if you're a 16 year old in an evangelical
• 1:17:09
  household but it may not be true if you're an eight year old who thinks that you know what we
• 1:17:14
  used to call cross dressing is a fun thing to do with their friends and if they feel awkward in
• 1:17:19
  their skin in the sex that they were assigned and feel like they'd be yeah and nobody is
• 1:17:23
  medically transitioning eight year olds no maybe but is the conversation only about medically
• 1:17:28
  transitioning it isn't also about culturally transitioning and basically what parents should make
• 1:17:32
  of such a claim yeah if if you're kid I lean back on the the standards of care from WPath especially
• 1:17:41
  the ones that they just released which are actually pretty good they really age delimited a lot
• 1:17:47
  of things because people develop differently and if I had say my niece who is six came up to me
• 1:17:59
  and said I think I'm non-binary I would say okay how do you want that to look you know she
• 1:18:07
  her mom and dad and I would have a conversation about that because you know I'm the non-binary
• 1:18:14
  person in the family we would have a conversation about what that should look like for her
• 1:18:19
  and that might include social transition and if she is consistent about that identity for
• 1:18:27
  a number of months to years then down the road medical transition might come into play
• 1:18:34
  but if she say in three months it goes yeah I don't think this is working for me I'm gonna be a girl
• 1:18:42
  again fine what have we lost yeah I see I see so it's it's me you lose so much more by saying no
• 1:18:51
  you're not and denying that child any chance to explore then you do by oh okay social transition
• 1:18:59
  it didn't work out whatever yeah and Dana when you say that the these journalists who write stories
• 1:19:07
  about detransitioners or desisters that you know they're really barking up the wrong tree because
• 1:19:13
  there isn't really a story there because this sort of thing isn't happening it's not true that 13
• 1:19:17
  year olds are going in and being prescribed in testosterone and they're all cherry picking the same
• 1:19:22
  small number of cases does that mean I don't think sorry I want to clear in that detransition does
• 1:19:29
  happen and it happens for all sorts of valid reasons including realizing that you're not trans
• 1:19:34
  there are a lot of people who detransition because they realize it's not going to function well
• 1:19:38
  in their particular social environment uh Caitlyn Jenner being one of the most famous detransitioners
• 1:19:45
  she actually tried to transition in the 80s um and was on hormones for like six months um and
• 1:19:52
  realized it was not going to it was not the right time for her to come out and then eventually did
• 1:19:59
  actually transition uh as we all know um and so like there are different reasons that people
• 1:20:06
  detransition so I'm not denying that detransitioning happens got it but the idea that it is something
• 1:20:13
  where somebody didn't question enough or they didn't they were rushed through these environments
• 1:20:18
  I don't I don't think that is happening right if the if the criticism is that that the
• 1:20:29
  the the sort of medical system is not rushing people through does that mean that if it did rush people
• 1:20:35
  through or if it did start rushing people through then writing such articles would be responsible
• 1:20:40
  because your earlier point was that such articles can get misused as pretexts for people who are
• 1:20:45
  transphobic to past laws that strip trans people of their rights that would still be the case
• 1:20:51
  that would still be the case if those articles were true yeah if we if we had statistic proof that
• 1:21:00
  there was suddenly a rush of people going through the system way too quickly like they get
• 1:21:06
  handed their their testosterone prescription at the first appointment or whatever and they are
• 1:21:11
  you know they've only been identifying as whatever for you know three days uh publicly um or whatever
• 1:21:22
  like I would think there would be a responsibility to do that but that's not what's happening
• 1:21:27
  and that unfortunately is the primary narrative that we have around trans kids
• 1:21:32
  go by and just I'm trying to clarify if it's it would it would be responsible to report on that
• 1:21:37
  even if it gave ammunition to transphobes yeah because that would be a thing that's actually
• 1:21:43
  happening and therefore needs regulation in some way maybe some new standards of care
• 1:21:49
  so now it's a factual question about whether or not the things that Emily Bazelon and Jesse
• 1:21:53
  single say are happening are actually happening I don't think they are right okay well that makes
• 1:21:58
  it easy to they certainly makes it certainly makes the whole debate a lot easier to resolve because
• 1:22:02
  we just have to see on that out on that before um yeah we just have to do it again I don't think
• 1:22:07
  we just have yeah we just have to establish whether or not what they're saying is true or in order to
• 1:22:12
  know whether or not it's worth writing because your earlier criticism of them was we should we
• 1:22:16
  should dismiss such articles or you know punish the writers of such articles because they have a
• 1:22:21
  bad impact on the transgender community they don't act in the interest of transgender people but
• 1:22:26
  that's a different claim than saying because they are now that now that we're just questioning the
• 1:22:31
  veracity of the articles it's easier to to adjudicate yeah and because there is such a big
• 1:22:37
  question of whether or not this is even actually happening and I would contend that there's not
• 1:22:42
  that that it's not happening writing the article to me especially in the ways that many of them
• 1:22:48
  have been written does become irresponsible at that point uh Daniel let's let's talk about the
• 1:22:55
  future because I'm interested I might be of your time but I'm also interested in where you see
• 1:22:58
  gender going from from here I've um I've I've long argued for a sort of sense of I guess sexual
• 1:23:06
  and romantic flourishing and and non non-specific uh like I guess a non a non-binary a non-binary
• 1:23:14
  thinking in sexuality because um I suspect that the time has come in big progressive pro gay
• 1:23:20
  circles for us to worry less about our labels and our identities and worry more about flourishing
• 1:23:27
  as individual human beings who can get their jollies with whomever they wish without having to
• 1:23:31
  jump in and out of uh you know identity boxes or open up whole pandora's boxes of identity do you
• 1:23:38
  feel the same way about gender I mean like I sort of think that when my children who are currently
• 1:23:41
  five years old um are grown up it would be great if they could data boy or data girl or about data
• 1:23:49
  non-binary person and that wouldn't raise eyebrows necessarily that that wouldn't be like oh okay
• 1:23:55
  that means you're now something called a bisexual do you think for saying anything will happen with gender?
• 1:24:01
  I think so I think like we will always have those sort of like categories and labels existing insofar
• 1:24:08
  as the state continues to think it has a compelling interest in identifying a labeling people um
• 1:24:16
  which is a completely other argument um that if you want to read more on jewels, gills,
• 1:24:21
  Peterson is the person for that um but I think ultimately it's gonna be like however you define
• 1:24:28
  your gender I uh I am of the opinion that there's no real tangible like not tangible real
• 1:24:39
  meaningfulness to the idea of effort of cisgender as an individual identity rather it is a way
• 1:24:48
  of identifying within a system of gender that currently exists um and in the future whatever
• 1:24:56
  transness whatever non-binaryness whatever cisgenderness looks like in a world without patriarchy
• 1:25:03
  would be a lot more like oh hey what pronouns do you use like what labels do you personally use
• 1:25:09
  to identify your gender and make it intelligible for other people um I personally believe there's
• 1:25:17
  as many genders as there are people so that's interesting yeah Diana thank you for being such a good
• 1:25:24
  sport thanks for your time rolling with all of my my intrusive questions it's fascinating to talk
• 1:25:32
  to it's it's a really really interesting um a really interesting life to delve into and a really
• 1:25:37
  interesting mind so I appreciate it well thank you thank you for having me on the book is called
• 1:25:42
  in transit being non-binary in a world of dichotomies and people can find I guess people can find
• 1:25:46
  you on twitter if they want to want to want to want to follow your diet tribes against Jesse
• 1:25:50
  single and other and other delights yes thank you Diana thank you
• 1:26:00
  uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Seps on Twitter and
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• 1:26:12
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