How Autism & Anorexia Unlocked the Mechanism Behind Gender Dysphoria
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we re discussing gender dysphoria and Anorexia, a phenomenon that is very similar to the phenomenon of autism and transgenderism in the United States. In fact, it s the same phenomenon!
Transcript
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hello simone today is an interesting day because i had a revelation as i was studying some data
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where you know sometimes i look at data i'll be like hmm that's weird i've seen a number really
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similar to that somewhere else and i'm like bring data bring data oh my god oh my god this explains
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everything and i now feel like i have a much better understanding of what's causing the
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transgender phenomenon in the united states do tell here is what simone had to say at the end
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of this episode wow i've now experienced a paradigm change and i have a lot more empathy for people
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who have gender dysphoria what we are going to be arguing using data is that gender dysphoria is the
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same phenomenon as anorexia not a similar phenomenon but literally the same phenomenon and as we read
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through this we will both see what is causing the phenomenon as well as why it is specifically
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hitting the autistic population at such high rates and wow yeah i'll just jump right into it all right
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so the thing i was reading that first got me thinking this because it was like two statistics
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that overlapped and i was like that's weird why do these statistics keep overlapping so statistic one
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with a scott alexander piece on culture bound mental illnesses specifically what a culture bound
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mental illness is is it something like in the recent episode we did on the phenomenon in africa or
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east asia called koro where people think their penises are being stolen by witches and they like
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really believe this and there's lots of others that we're going to go over but in the united states
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one of the particularly best studied cases of a likely culturally bound illness which we'll go over
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evidence that is culturally bound is anorexia and when scott alexander was trying to judge because
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he said yeah but everything is like partly biological and partly culture bound so he in his piece was
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trying to judge how much is this right and he goes well i suspect that anorexia is about 80 percent
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culture bound and 20 percent biological that checks out i'm gonna be like yeah that checks out
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then at the end of the piece he's like now a lot of people reading this piece are probably
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thinking about gender dysphoria and the transgender phenomenon in the united states
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is this a culture bound phenomenon and his estimate and i will note scott alexander is a very pro trans
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person okay and but he also has like an incredible amount of integrity to be willing to say this
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because in san francisco saying what he said is like walking down the seat was like the sign from
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die hard with a vengeance oh no you're right in this scene i imagine samuel jackson's character
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to be scott alexander's trans friends trying to get him to take the piece down after it was
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first published as i imagine quite a few probably did
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down 9-1-1 tell the police to get up here quick somebody's about to get killed
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now you got about 10 seconds before those guys see you when they do they will kill you you
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understand you are about to have a very bad day tell me about it
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this guy wrote a piece arguing being trans is in large part a social phenomenon now what are we
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like i'm pretty sure he lives with transgender people in the comments under the thing i like
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i don't have a confirmation that he's dated transgender people before like this is not
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he's against transgenderism he's just laying out the facts as he sees them he says it seemed to be
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about the same as anorexia about 80 cultural and about 20 biological which is exactly what i'd agree
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with i actually might i might put it above scott alexander here i might say it 30 biological 70
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cultural when i look at things like endocrine disruptors and the tide studies and stuff like
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that which you can read about in our other trans videos but there is like evidence that males due to
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chemicals they're being exposed to at least males at least are they really are turning the frogs gay
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i don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the freaking frogs gay do you understand
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that turn the freaking frogs gay boom boom serious crap gay frogs freaking frogs boom it's not funny
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i'm gonna say it real slow for you gay frogs they really are showing less gender presentation as males
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due to biological reasons but then i saw a separate statistic that linked these two things
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which was really high rates of autism uh oh and we'll go over the sounds like wait wait wait wait
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i'm noticing something here so estimates of autism prevalence in anorexia populations range from 20
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to 30 percent a study at the national specialist eating disorders service at maudsley hospital found
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that 35 percent of women met the criteria for an autism spectrum disorder we also know that autism and
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adhd commonly co-occur in a recent meta-analysis that ranged from 63 studies between 40 and 70 percent
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with bulimia this was wrong at all 2021 and then anorexia nervosa carries the highest mortality rate
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of any health disorder at a 10 to 20 percent suicide or death risk from this as bernstein 2023
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and martin et al 2015 all right so what i'm pointing out when i point out like the suicide risk here
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this is to say that even if transness is a culturally locked phenomenon that doesn't mean that these
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people are not experiencing something that is loud enough to get them to kill themselves and
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simone is a like sane logical person who you guys apparently like hearing her opinions she almost died
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of anorexia and she also happens to be autistic so do you want to do you want to talk to that at all
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before we go further here yeah when you're saying this hearing it and and you you putting the pieces
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together this does make a lot of intuitive sense and i think it comes down to autistic people committing
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to the bit and and having when they have a special interest they just actually go all the way they just
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actually do it other people dabble autistic people go all the way you know there are train enthusiastic
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and then there are autistic train enthusiasts and you know you know like those are the ones
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are the train conventions those are the ones going to the train pilgrimage sites and then you know you
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have people with eating disorders it takes a lot of discipline like an inhuman level you know beyond
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the level of proper intuition or you know the the human body has a lot of ways of resisting starvation
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right like it's pretty good at controlling for that so i think you need something else super out of
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whack to be able to commit to that and it makes the same sense gender uh transition requires a huge
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amount of commitment and you have to be committed to the point of tone deafness to getting there and i
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think also framing anorexia as uh a body dysmorphia driven by a desire to look beautiful
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is misleading and may misstate what people think anorexia is they think anorexia is the pretty
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popular girl who talks about dieting when anorexia is often the very not pretty girl who looks like
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skeletor who is clearly not doing this to look good it's commitment to the bit yeah well and i by the
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way how how light did you get in college when you were doing this i was high school i think the
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the lightest i ever was was 98 pounds i'm currently like 123 pounds which is like the minimum safe
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weight i can have i'm like five foot eight and a half above that yeah so well i would note here
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that this also can help you understand something which is like if as a non-autistic person you will
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struggle to understand how a person with anorexia who looks like skeletor can be standing there and
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being like i'm too fat like yeah but now now in your head think about the autistic train enthusiast
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you know they don't understand how crazy they look yeah when they're there talking to you about a
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whatever train and you're like i do not how do you not understand that i don't care about this yeah but
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now think about the like don't you have enough trains and they're like
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yeah now think about this in the context of the trans person which is like wait why why won't
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everyone accept me like why can't i be on women's sports teams why can't i you know yeah like you we
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need to go 100 with this we can't be like let's do this in a reasonable way yeah we're like i'm not
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like an active impediment to other people living their lives you know yeah which and then even even the
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threat of death as anorexia demonstrates with that high mortality rate you pointed out
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is not at all of interest or relevant so very important here is this claim is not saying that
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they are faking it or that they are imagining it or that they are yeah what we are saying is it's a
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culturally bound illness but culturally bound illnesses are illnesses yeah yeah so we're going
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to keep going here a large-scale study published in nature communications in 2020 found that 24 percent
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of transgender and gender diverse respondents were autistic compared to five percent of cisgender
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participants the study analyzed data from 641 000 participants across five data sets including
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survey data population studies and online questionnaires studies have found that the
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lifetime prevalence of eating disorders is also noticeably higher in transgender men 10.5 percent
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in transgender women 8.1 percent compared to four percent non-autistic females 0.3 percent
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non-autistic male so just like astronomically higher wow now here is where the real breakthrough for me
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came from okay this is going to shock you so i decided to go and read more about from the perspective
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of like psychiatrists or psychologists who work with people who have anorexia why autism might lead to
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that and when i started reading their explanation if you just replace these words like you change out the
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word eating with gender expression or you change out the word you know like autism with gender dysphoria
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you're going to be like oh my god this is such a good explanation really oh can you read us some
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quotes i'm going to go through oh lever and gertz 2016 found that up to 79 percent of autistic adults
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met diagnostic criteria for a mental health condition including depression anxiety and eating disorders
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we also know that many autistic individuals struggle to emotionally self-regulate use internal strategies
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to calm down like breathing and co-regulate be soothed by another person so they find other ways
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to self-soothe or feel okay and one example is by eating or not eating sensory sensitivities are
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extremely common in autism so much so that they form part of the standard diagnostic
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criteria apa 2022 eating involves all five senses and interception or the capacity to sense internal
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body sensations such as hunger association is perhaps unsurprising that eating disorders are
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overrepresented in the autistic population so let's reread that uh your sense of gender identity involves
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all five senses and interception the capacity to sense internal body sensations such as
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any of the things associated with gender dysphoria okay let's keep going here unfortunately many
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autistic individuals in our society experience loneliness herkinson et al 2017 bullying and abuse
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rumble 2019 they may use restrictive eating patterns as a way of distracting themselves from
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these difficulties and numb the emotional pain as one autistic person with anorexia nervosa said
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i can get engrossed in food and exercise and just forget about everything else okay they may use gender
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dysphoria as a way of distracting themselves from these difficulties and numb the emotional pain yeah going
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through a transition is is is physically mentally socially it's it's it's it will completely take over
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your life and so you don't have any room to worry that's actually a really good point like i've pointed out
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for example that having kids is an amazing anxiety combat tool because you simply don't have time or
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mental space to be tired or stressed or worried like you're just gonna like child maxing is a new
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transition yes let's just look can we can we hijack this can we but yeah that that makes a lot of sense
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and that that doesn't yeah absolutely controlling well there's the thing that people have noticed is that
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the pronatalist movement is like overwhelmingly autistic and that's the rumor oh my gosh it is
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are we the new trans this is so exciting it'd be so fun if a bunch of autistic people are like spamming
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20 kids because it's like their special interest let's do it the greater replacement theory
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happening the hottest it's happening okay so i mean i think that's kind of why you're doing it right
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like he's into it you get really into pregnancy and you get into all the measuring and everything
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the measuring the appointments making sure all the hormone shots and everything you have to do
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yeah all the yeah it's very similar to transition in a way and she gets really actively distressed
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when she's not pregnant especially right after her birth oh my god i'm trans pregnant
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oh you have you have gender dysphoria i have fertility dysphoria i have i have pregnancy dysphoria
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gestational dysphoria there we go i have gestational dysphoria that's a thing that some
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trans people experience right you know they they yeah which sucks that that's it yeah my heart goes
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out to them trans woman to have a successful uterus transplant ovaries and eggs included
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and i want to be the first trans woman to have an abortion mr garrison mrs garrison you can't have
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an abortion don't you tell me what i can and can't do with my body a woman has a right to choose
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you can't get pregnant but i missed my period you can't have periods either you mean i'll never know
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what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out
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this would mean i'm not really a woman i'm just a i'm just a guy with a mutilated penis
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basically yes oh boy do i feel like a jackass conversely they may use comfort eating to
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overcome difficult feelings associated with socializing many social occasions are paired
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with eating socializing can be difficult and anxiety provoking for an autistic person
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c conversely they may use gender displays to overcome difficult feelings associated with
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socializing many social occasions are paired with gender displays socializing can be difficult
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and anxiety provoking for an autistic person you see it's all it's all falling together for me here
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okay um eating disorders often begin in puberty just as the social world becomes more complex
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and the autistic person experiences more problems navigating changing social expectations and trying
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to connect with their peers and quote-unquote fit in they often feel very different from their peers
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and may become immensely as a way of coping they may believe that they do not fit in socially
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because their body or appearance so seek to change them both it is common for teenagers to connect
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with peers through this common interest but an autistic teenager may be unable to connect with
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interests of non-autistic groups as they become more fascinated with eating disorder behaviors
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they become accepted in a peer group that embraces this culture some autistic teenagers will focus on
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dieting and appearance as a way of being included and build a sense of identity all right simone so
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let's reread that but change a few things here oh boy trans disorders often begin in puberty just as
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a social world becomes more complex and the autistic person experiences more problems navigating changing
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social expectations and trying to connect with their peers and fit in they feel very different from
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their peers and may become immersed in gender transition as a way of coping they may believe that
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they do not fit in socially because of their body i'm not even having to change the words here
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because of their body and their appearance so they seek to change them both uh-oh
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it is common for teenagers to connect with peers through a common interest but a autistic teenager may
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not be able to connect with the interests of non-autistic groups again i'm not having to change any of the
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words here as they become more fascinated with gender transition and trans communities they may
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become accepted in a peer group that embraces this culture some autistic teenagers will focus on gender
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transition and appearance as a way of being included and build a sense of identity
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ah it the overlap is so strong that was found in a different community that also has all of these
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over other overlaps here yeah yeah so to keep going here no it's just like the entire thing reads like
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it's about trans individuals but it but it helped me understand it from this alternate perspective but you
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know what i'm doing i'm there then i'm replacing this with pregnancy and like you know pregnancy
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communities and fertility communities i'm like oh hello can we create a disease in our culture around
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girls who want hot autistic girls who want to get pregnant all the time this is the thing people
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online are like oh this is like a fetish they're like oh they must have a breeding fetish and it's like
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no it's a special interest it's so much worse than that thanks it's about autism
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it's about body dysmorphia guys um oh my god if we could get if we could get pronatalism categorized
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in the same way that like trans people get like special rights and stuff like that that you as a
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pregnant person who is autistic and it's like you're a special interest you've got to get all these special
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rights because now you know well you know you're a protected class right yeah it's it's no longer a
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wholesome thing it's a weird sex thing or a weird gender thing and as soon as it's that now we just
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need to embrace that aspect of pronatalism right i will say here you know to all the the hate watchers
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who i see the comments no hate watchers by the way you know our comment section is like 95 percent
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votes on even our most hated videos wow okay well i guess i would say that there are people
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who are they take umbrage to the idea of people having children for quote unquote the wrong reasons
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like because it's an autistic special interest to this being one example right or for ideological
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reasons instead of just loving children i think honestly and and this is something i've heard other
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very um pronatalist people say you kind of have to have an ideological or logical or special interest
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reason to begin having kids because it's really hard to get started then once you actually get to know
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them as people you're having kids because they're amazing people and you realize that one of the most
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meaningful thing you could ever do is create an amazing life for them and bring amazing wonderful
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people into the world and give them the best possible life okay so you start out essentially doing it for
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the wrong reason or for a heartless reason and then you start doing it for the heart i just want to
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i just want to point out that it's not wrong for someone to like use special interests or ideology
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or logic to get someone started because you can't really you can't show someone for example what it's
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like to be in love until they're actually in love right you know they have to get they have to be
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interested in getting in love from a logical standpoint first before it happens or just kind of
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happens naturally you know they fall in love by mistake just like you might get pregnant by mistake
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and have kids by mistake but i just wanted to comment on some very frequent pointed remarks about
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oh like isn't it terrible that pronatalists would be having children just because they think it's
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important to have children this is the worst reason it's when we need to keep up the facade our
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children live a gray and dull and and and and dreary existence yes look miserable indy i mean look
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we're we don't eat our house in the winter this is me wearing a warm winter coat inside right like
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yeah and indy's wearing a snow suit because of course she is clearly our our drive towards extreme
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levels of temperance is where i'd say i'd say with discipline to try to work on our internal discipline
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by by not indulging in pointless she's so sad she's so deprived so i see it in her eyes that's that
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her eyes we did this episode on the the girl who went and shot up a school that's what she was like
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same eyes i see it i see it she knows she knows she's a mistake just like that girl her parents had
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her as a mistake oh for all the wrong reasons and oh you're so not okay so simone hold on i gotta
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continue here okay i'm not gonna keep reading it both ways anymore because like it just gets so
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comical at this point yeah sometimes restricted eating can commence because the person seeks to
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remain asexual and androgynous sometimes puberty blockers can commence because okay fearing change
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and disliking the body changes that start to occur during puberty for example the person may be
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afraid of becoming an adult and the changes this will bring to their lives feeling incapable of
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getting a job or living independently and so they seek to stay in their childlike body oh my god what
00:21:50.960
when i started reading this revelation moment this is the same phenomenon yeah okay we found that
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autistic people often experience difficulties discerning the character or personality of others
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including their own personality they often define themselves in terms of their interests and knowledge
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rather than in terms of personality descriptors of social roles such as mother daughter or friend
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this difficulty with conceptualizing the self can lead to over-reliance on a self-identification in
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terms of physical appearance including their weight rather than their character and other personality
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qualities can we say including their gender rather than their character or other personality qualities
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because in reality your gender should not be that important to you like to a normal person like i'd
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say myself if i woke up the other day and i was in a woman's body i'd just be like okay i'll figure
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out how to make this work like i wouldn't be like oh my god i need to transition back immediately
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and i said this within the transgender world makes us a gender and ironically because both of us feel this
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way and ironically a form of transgender because a gender is a form of gender queer and gender queer
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is a form of transgender by i forgot the the main organization that does all of this one of the
00:23:00.640
main pride groups or whatever so we are technically transgender by their own definition just because i
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don't understand why i would care if i was a different gender i'm like i've got to focus on the
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difference i'm going to make in the world you would trounce as a woman i'm just saying i would no i'm
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even like it's funny like i wouldn't even be distressed i'd just be like oh awesome like
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now i can try and i'd be such a cute guy like you know like taking care of the household you and i
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would make a great partner if you change nothing about our personality and just the gender yeah
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oh my gosh i would watch the gender swapped ai movie of us that we will eventually create in like
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two years when that becomes possible we become famous enough there will be rule 34 point of us
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that's where they do gender swap or no rule 34 if they exist there's point of it and then there's rule
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16 so many rules of the internet one of the other rules is that there's gender swap porn of it so
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eventually there's going to be gender swap porn of us anyway part of the international definition
00:23:55.120
of autism is rigidity and thinking apa 2020 once an autistic person has made a decision they can be
00:24:00.480
very determined and stay with the decision despite data and persuasion to the contrary commit to the
00:24:07.120
bet what commit to the bet that's what they do for example the person may decide that their life
00:24:13.040
is far easier and simpler if they follow the rules dictated by eating disorder and therefore are very
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reluctant to change yeah and someone does it she still follows the rules of the eating disorder and
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i find this can help you if you've ever functional anorexic okay if you've ever interacted with a
00:24:29.760
trans person and they're like my life is better now and you're like yeah but like i knew you before
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this and it's clearly not like you're not as happy as you used to be you you have to spend all of
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this money every month on this you are not widely accepted you know a lot of people treat you as
00:24:46.480
discrimination now that didn't treat you as discrimination before like your life is objectively
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not better but they're like no my life is better now and it's the same way you're talking to an
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anorexic person if you go to an anorexic person they're like no you don't understand my life gosh
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yeah and if i'm thinking about how i felt when i weighed like 98 pounds as a five foot eight and
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half woman and people were like you need to put on weight i could imagine that's how it felt
00:25:12.320
when people are like you're you're not passing like you should just be a guy again and this feeling of
00:25:18.560
like i am not crossing that line yeah i can feel that and i yeah that that makes actually that makes
00:25:28.480
gender dysphoria feel a lot more relatable to me so this is really helpful that you're reading this to
00:25:33.200
me thanks malcolm yeah right like as soon as you who is an autistic person who it diagnosed autistic
00:25:40.560
who went through this and understanding this is really important for our family because this is
00:25:44.160
something our kids are going to be exposed to you know it i mean toasty's already showing all of my
00:25:49.120
disordered eating all of our kids are autistic so far that can or old enough to be diagnosed um
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and so you know how do how could somebody have had off anorexia for you given that it's a culture
00:26:00.960
maybe we just need to make our culture so different from the culture around them that they wouldn't
00:26:05.280
even think of it maybe we make the way you relate to gender and sexuality in our culture so different
00:26:10.000
that they wouldn't even think about it no see i think that again just the mere presence of a large
00:26:16.240
family really solves this problem because again let's go back to that part where they needed something
00:26:22.160
to fill the void or the to drown out the chaos that was too noisy that was so noisy like a
00:26:28.800
a restrictive eating disorder or like gender transition that they didn't have room for social
00:26:35.200
anxiety and a large family will do that the responsibilities of being in a large family will do that the
00:26:41.680
chaos of being in a large family i really think that i and i'd love to see research on this if rates of
00:26:50.000
both gender dysphoria and anorexia and cutting and all these other i would say like kind of related
00:26:57.600
disorders are lower when there are five plus children and i really think the key is five
00:27:04.800
plus children and i don't i would not say that elon musk's family counts because they have
00:27:11.680
enough supplementary care where the kids aren't growing up in a highly constrained environment
00:27:17.520
like resource constrained and like cramped and chaotic like unfortunately they have been given
00:27:24.080
too much space for anxiety to creep in through their privilege yeah they're too privileged we
00:27:29.760
get a small house like this where you've always got other people in a room with you and you're always
00:27:34.960
there's no room for the social anxiety there's just no like you're you're literally too tired and like
00:27:39.680
fed up with it all to have room for social anxiety you give zero shits at that point which is so beautiful
00:27:46.880
like the word that was used in hannah's children so it was something along the lines of of having
00:27:53.040
enough children to burn the selfishness out of you and it really is burned away like a cleansing fire
00:28:00.560
it's so cool simone i love you by the way you're fantastic in the way you talk about this next there
00:28:06.480
are other types of thinking that are characteristics of autism and may be a risk factor for developing an
00:28:11.360
eating disorder for example black and white thinking the person may think if i am not thin
00:28:15.760
then i am fat and hold on i'd note here that and sees weight as a dichotomy rather than a range of
00:28:22.000
acceptable weights so think about this in terms of gender presentation right yeah they may be like i'm
00:28:26.640
a girl but i like some boy things or i'm a boy but i like some girl things and because of instead of
00:28:33.280
being able to be like well you can present your gender in a way but like well then it means that i'm a
00:28:37.520
girl or it means that i'm a boy exactly yeah you have to it's this is the systematizing part of
00:28:44.960
autism where it has to be in the category and that's why i'm pretty sure that titan also is
00:28:51.440
autistic because she loves categorizing oh my gosh she'll just sit and sort her dinner for like an hour
00:28:57.920
have you noticed that no they can stick very rigidly to a single number on the weighted scale as being
00:29:04.320
the only desirable number even though that number puts them at a life-threatening way part of the
00:29:09.840
rigidity of thinking it can be what we have called the and this is what i i i know here like with a
00:29:16.160
trans individual you can be like but your suicide risk is super high now like your mental health seems
00:29:22.240
really poor right now like why why do you think this is a preferable position and they're just like
00:29:27.840
because it is because it needs to fit the the thing needs to fit and and this is the only way of
00:29:34.080
doing this the the the risk of death has absolutely zero bearing when i was 98 and i weighed in at 98
00:29:42.560
pounds i was like all right so let's get to 97 all right good job let's keep going there was no there
00:29:48.400
is no stopping point with these things and there is no concern about health or death yes and so in the
00:29:56.160
past this is called the frank sinatra syndrome or the my way um syndrome once the person has decided on
00:30:02.480
their beliefs about their weight or you could say gender expression the rules around their eating
00:30:06.800
and exercise patterns you could say their presentation they can be very rigid they are
00:30:11.760
not open to other people's advice or opinions even if these are based on scientific evidence you know
00:30:16.400
i could have gone to you as papers on you know the correct weight ranges healthy ranges i could have
00:30:20.960
said why like what's the point of this weight and you'd be like i feel more comfortable this way
00:30:26.080
you know imagine how bad anorexic would get as we as a society started accepting it right and we're
00:30:32.640
like pro anna for the win pro you can't you can't hit on someone for being pro anna oh yeah if we if we
00:30:38.080
defended people's right to continue to starve themselves like how dare you put her in a recovery
00:30:45.280
home she she identifies yeah yeah you put anorexic people in recovery home and they're like this is
00:30:50.960
like you know you're denying their identity yeah like transitioning gay people right although you
00:30:55.600
know my my dad god bless his genius he he somehow figured out how to do that he he enabled me to maintain
00:31:05.760
my status as someone with a severe eating disorder and not die by giving me a food scale and a software
00:31:12.880
program where i could automatically track everything i ate and then all the calories i burned using
00:31:20.240
fitness trackers or just logging and what would that look like for for gender dysphoria though
00:31:27.520
it would probably involve like giving other categories or i would probably like introducing
00:31:34.400
different definitions of gender possibly introducing them to like the concept of of louis the 14th's
00:31:40.400
brother whose name i'm forgetting oh i yeah i actually love this idea so you actually fix it by
00:31:44.960
going you have to change the categories yeah you have to be like oh but you're you like you're
00:31:48.880
more likely you you are manifesting like what was it louis philippe i can't remember his name he was
00:31:53.680
so badass but you just have to be like you have the wrong sorry you have misunderstood the
00:31:58.960
categorization system actually you're sub-level a b five four and parts of the community have
00:32:05.840
basically done this we're like i'll meet people and we'll see them online who identify as trans but
00:32:10.720
have done literally nothing in terms of gender transition or anything like that they're just like oh i'm like
00:32:15.680
category b7 subsection 15 fascinating i think you're right yeah and it's a it's a yes and is
00:32:23.360
always the right answer with children yes and one of the qualities of autism is the intensity of the
00:32:30.400
interests a person develops and the pleasure that these interests bring one of the reasons eating
00:32:35.360
disorders can develop is because of an intellectual fascination was eating and its effects on the body
00:32:40.480
as well as the numbers involved for example in terms of calories for different foods okay i just
00:32:45.840
have to well one of the reasons for gender transition can develop is an intellectual fascination with
00:32:52.000
puberty and gender and its effects on the body as well as the numbers involved and i absolutely see this
00:32:57.040
in the trans community they're like my numbers let's let's share my numbers absolutely yes
00:33:04.080
they may enjoy exploring eating patterns rules and weight they may keep schedules and spreadsheets or
00:33:12.240
use apps to record progress entering numbers and seeking patterns that can be very enjoyable aspect
00:33:17.680
of their interest the eating disorder practices become a source of enjoyment and they embrace being
00:33:23.680
an expert in the eating disorder their expertise and commitment are admired by others within the
00:33:28.560
eating disorder social media can be a way of sharing their knowledge and gaining dopamine
00:33:32.720
to the number of likes achieved through their social media page is that not something we see with
00:33:38.960
people going through transition nail on the head wow i mean done i feel like the argument has been
00:33:45.680
has been presented this is insane um well there was actually i know you need to go soon um but for
00:33:52.320
people to believe this there's a few things we need to go into we need to go into evidence that because
00:33:56.560
a lot of people will be like wait what's the evidence that anorexia is a cultural phenomenon right
00:34:00.640
uh-huh so just to read here this is from scott alexander anorexia was mostly unknown in the west
00:34:06.720
until becoming trendy in the mid-1800s during that period doctors reported a high prevalence of
00:34:10.800
anorexia among quote-unquote hysterics but the fad ended after about 10 or 20 years and went back to
00:34:16.160
being basically unknown in 1983 a famous singer karen carpenter died of anorexia thrusting it back
00:34:23.120
into national news and suddenly lots of people in the west were anorexic again meanwhile foreign doctors
00:34:28.640
who trained in the west went back to their countries uh searched far and wide for it and
00:34:32.160
found almost nothing the few cases they did see didn't resemble the typical western version at all
00:34:36.880
for example one hong kong the psychiatrist was able to find a woman who refused to eat out of
00:34:41.200
grief when her boyfriend left her but she didn't think she was fat or feel any cultural pressure to
00:34:45.360
be thinner but this doesn't appear like the this is like a self-punishment thing the absence of
00:34:50.000
anorexia abroad was especially surprising since anorexics tend to end up in the hospital was
00:34:55.120
extremely noticeable malnutrition that doesn't really mimic anything else it's not really
00:34:59.920
possible to hide severe anorexia in the way you can hide severe depression in 1994 hong kong got its
00:35:05.760
own karen carpenter a young girl died of anorexia setting off a national pandemic in many public
00:35:10.400
awareness campaigns near instantly anorexia rate shot up to the same level as the west with
00:35:15.360
appropriate number of people presenting to hospital errs with severe malnutrition a study of the caribbean
00:35:20.480
island of and this is not from him this one's something else of caracau found no cases among
00:35:24.880
the black population while incident rates among the white and mixed-race residents were comparable
00:35:29.120
to those in the u.s and the netherlands um and in post here one thing i'm going to add is a description
00:35:35.920
of some of the alternate gender uh displays that you get in different countries because trans people
00:35:42.800
will point to them as trans just because they're a non-conforming gender display yeah they don't
00:35:46.800
actually they they point to like incredibly rigid social structures in these countries
00:35:51.760
or or tribes where like if a man takes on like a woman's job or is gay they'll say oh he's actually
00:35:59.440
a woman that's that's the way it often works it's nothing like transgenderism in the west yeah it's
00:36:04.160
nothing like oh i don't feel comfortable in my body or something like that it's like oh well that guy's
00:36:08.160
a florist so we we treat him like he's a woman and use female pronouns for him because that's a woman's job
00:36:13.920
and you know okay well or that guy likes sleeping with guys and you know women do that so we used
00:36:19.360
like uh women it's a twink basically that's that's what you're seeing you know not this big effort to
00:36:24.880
gender transition or anything like that you've got the fafaim of samoa who are effeminate males who are
00:36:31.520
attracted to other males in the united states this is not what we would call trans this is what we would
00:36:37.200
call a twink this is also seems to be the case of the mukse of southern mexico which are again just
00:36:44.880
males who are effeminate and attracted to other males twinkie sub gay males that's what they are
00:36:51.920
not trans then you have the bugus people of southern indonesia and they believe in five genders and people
00:37:01.280
will say oh this this one of the genders the kalabi these are trans people and so let's describe these
00:37:10.640
individuals and see what you would classify them as in our society they do not undergo any sort of
00:37:16.240
feminization surgery or feminization practices but they are males who are attracted to other males
00:37:24.240
and are predominantly involved in industries like wedding planning
00:37:27.520
yes it sounds very much like a trans no that's a fucking gay person
00:37:32.320
okay that's a fucking gay person trans people really seem to only exist it was in the urban
00:37:38.960
monoculture in every one of these instances the alternate gender identity that these individuals
00:37:45.040
are assigned appears to be downstream of the gender they are attracted to so if i am attracted to
00:37:53.920
men i am assigned a female gender and if i am attracted to females i am assigned a male gender that is
00:38:02.160
very different than the western version of transgenderism i think to find a phenomenon that you could
00:38:10.560
consider culturally analogous to the transgender phenomenon in the united states you would need to
00:38:15.680
find a culture in which individuals are considered the opposite gender from their birth gender but are
00:38:23.760
still attracted to the gender that their birth gender would be expected to be attracted to
00:38:28.720
i.e trans women who are attracted to women or trans men who are attracted to men and you just don't see
00:38:35.200
this anywhere else i have found in history or in any culture trans people only seem to really exist in
00:38:41.360
large numbers in the urban monoculture and we don't seem to be able to find the phenomenon really anywhere
00:38:48.160
else you will find cross-dressers throughout history but they do not appear like the trans phenomenon of
00:38:54.240
today where all of a sudden it's like oh my god i need to go through this i need to go through this
00:38:57.920
i need to be recognized for this or i'm going to kill myself it's very much oh there's that weird guy
00:39:03.040
or girl who likes dressing up as somebody else like that's that's cool or oh a girl's dressing up as
00:39:08.880
guys so that she can serve in the military or some other function that she wouldn't be able to serve as a
00:39:13.920
woman but not out of this like obsession was being recognized as another gender that's a completely
00:39:20.480
modern phenomenon if you're wondering why i'm not going into two-spirit people it's because my read
00:39:26.160
of the evidence that they're mostly a modern fabrication and didn't exist in wide numbers
00:39:30.960
across native american cultures however where they did exist they typically meant one of two things
00:39:37.280
it was either when a man or woman held a job that was typically associated with the other gender
00:39:43.040
i.e if i was a man and i was a wedding planner i would be called a woman in this tribe and that is
00:39:49.200
not a sign of gender flexibility that is a sign of intense gender rigidity or it was a way to talk about
00:39:56.560
twinkie homosexual men which as we have seen it is not uncommon for cultures to categorize as women
00:40:03.040
and to be honest i kind of get it i actually don't know of gender transition really exists
00:40:08.320
uh that widely in any other culture i take that back it does exist pretty widely in some middle
00:40:14.160
eastern cultures as a cure for gayness but i'm pretty sure that no one would consider that the
00:40:19.120
same phenomenon as what's going on in the united states i.e if there's a guy who likes sleeping with
00:40:24.480
guys well you know obviously if he's gay he needs to be put to death but you can fix that by turning him
00:40:30.000
into a woman it also exists in the form of hijras in india pakistan area this is communities of born
00:40:39.360
males who if they are living in poverty or kicked out of their family go live in these communities
00:40:45.440
where they are castrated or gender transitioned whatever you want to say so that they can act as
00:40:50.640
sex workers for other men again not anything like you would think a modern transgender individual
00:40:56.160
although the transgender community calls them transgender calling someone in poverty who was
00:41:01.360
castrated so they could be used for sex work transgender one to me feels incredibly offensive
00:41:06.960
but two it would be sort of the equivalent of calling a castrato transgender if you're not
00:41:12.320
familiar with who a castrato is that's a historic thing in italy where they would castrate young boys
00:41:18.880
who were very good singers so that they could continue to sing in the equivalent of uh high pitches
00:41:25.760
and i want to be absolutely clear here what we are not arguing is that fluid gender identity didn't
00:41:31.920
exist historically historically there is a wide range of gender presentation what we're specifically
00:41:38.720
addressing here is the modern phenomenon where somebody all of a sudden starts obsessing over
00:41:44.480
the ways that other people interpret their gender identity and the way that they see their own gender
00:41:50.000
identity and then enters the state where they feel like they're going to kill themselves if people
00:41:56.320
don't start seeing their gender identity the way that they want them to this is why we did the episode
00:42:01.200
on member stealing witches which is a culture-bound illness similar to anorexia or gender dysphoria in
00:42:08.800
the united states because we can look at something like that as outsiders and have a laugh but from within
00:42:14.960
that culture's perspective it is very real so real that some people end up killing their own babies
00:42:20.640
over it accidentally of course or end up permanently dismembering their genitalia over it and so when
00:42:27.840
we hear about this we have a laugh at them because we don't have something like this was in our culture
00:42:34.480
but when they hear about something like gender dysphoria in our culture they have a laugh at us
00:42:39.280
yes people are laughing is that is that a dumb question no no it look like to if you want to
00:42:48.240
become a lady but your man you have something wrong something wrong something wrong in your family
00:42:54.560
something wrong in you and unfortunately this new understanding of what gender dysphoria and
00:42:59.920
transgenderism is has moved me to a position where i am maybe more antagonistic towards openly supporting
00:43:07.920
any form of alternative gender identity than i was historically because if this is accurate it
00:43:14.720
means that generally supporting this as a society is just as harmful as being supportive of something
00:43:22.400
like the pro-ana movement this is a movement that promotes anorexia and is made up of primarily
00:43:27.520
anorexic people and people will be like but i feel better now in the same way that anorexic people you
00:43:33.840
know as i said i've had anorexic friends in the past and they're like look i feel better i feel
00:43:37.520
accepted i finally feel comfortable in my body and i'm like as an outsider who is looking in on you
00:43:44.080
and who has known you for a long time i can see that that's a delusion you're less happy now than
00:43:50.400
you've ever been this is this is not healthy for you but if i tell you that you will cut me out of
00:43:56.400
your life and stop talking to me something anorexic people often do to people who try to shake them out
00:44:01.200
of it and if you look at if a transgender person is is listening to this and they're like yeah but
00:44:07.360
i feel better now than i did historically and i'm like well i'm sorry i can just look at the
00:44:12.880
statistics on trans individuals and see that the suicide rate goes way up i can see that we even
00:44:18.480
know from the travestock clinic that people put on puberty blockers when you're put on puberty
00:44:23.360
blockers your suicide rate actually goes up now they were suppressing this information because they're
00:44:26.720
a pro-trans clinic i mean it's a community was a 50 attempted suicide rate if you were aware that
00:44:34.080
didn't exist in other cultures you'd be like well why are we making room for it was in our culture
00:44:40.160
and my historic position was some real trans individuals probably exist but a large part of
00:44:45.760
the movement is social and i still hold this position as i said at the beginning i think about
00:44:51.280
30 percent is probably biological however the damage done by the social part of the movement
00:44:56.880
is so severe and so demonstrable at this point that i am beginning to rethink whether it is a net good
00:45:06.320
to society to support trans individuals for the small faction that are real but i don't even know if
00:45:13.280
it would really hurt those individuals because i assume with the real trans individuals they don't
00:45:18.320
particularly care how other people see their gender presentation they just have preferences
00:45:24.960
and thought patterns that match the opposite gender they would be okay with a society that just accepted
00:45:30.240
more fluid forms of gender presentation whereas when we're talking about this new form of transness
00:45:36.880
i i guess i'd call it gender obsession a overwhelming obsession with how you perceive your own gender and how
00:45:44.560
other people are perceiving your gender because that leads to a huge amount of suffering and these
00:45:51.200
people are hurting and i think that this can be occluded from trans individuals because they when they
00:45:56.960
develop gender dysphoria they begin to look at the way a person's body looks and stop looking at simple
00:46:05.040
things like the way their eyes look so take an individual like elliot page look at his eyes pre and post
00:46:12.240
transition or look at dylan milvaney's eyes or look at really any public facing trans individuals eyes
00:46:19.680
pre and post transition and you will notice post transition there's something like a spark
00:46:26.880
that has left them and it's really really sad to see and i think trans individuals don't see this
00:46:32.560
because they're so focused on every other part of that person's body and gender identity
00:46:37.200
that they don't see that the person has become that anorexic person who is desperately trying to
00:46:44.720
tell you and everyone else that they're genuinely happy and satisfied so yeah that's wow no you've
00:46:52.560
completely you've experienced a paradigm change i've now experienced a paradigm change and i have
00:46:58.320
a lot of more empathy for people who have gender dysphoria because now i realize i
00:47:03.360
didn't do basically experience the exact same thing but with eating and pregnancy oh well now
00:47:14.880
we've got to be more worried about our kids you know he no we were already worried we already knew
00:47:20.640
that autistic kids were disproportionately they're just uh like like like modeled and aesthetic wise so
00:47:28.720
similar anorexia and gender dysphoria yeah and in terms of talking to individuals because i had a
00:47:34.800
cousin who was anorexic for example and i just remember you know trying to talk to her about it
00:47:40.160
yeah there i mean well there is a logic but you have to speak autism fortunately and she was likely
00:47:48.320
autistic we speak autism in knowing you now and knowing her she was like one of the only really fun
00:47:53.840
people in my family so i was always like oh you know she gets me because she broke the social norms
00:47:59.280
more but it was likely because she thought just maybe so do you want to go over some other culture
00:48:05.040
bound syndrome or do you have to head out i really have to go both because i have to change a poopy diaper
00:48:10.480
and we might add another day i know i i will do a separate episode on different culture bound
00:48:16.800
syndromes these these have been really fun episodes yeah and this and we've already we're 37 minutes in
00:48:21.440
yeah so this will be a different episode and i've got a life and describe if you want to
00:48:28.080
oh go to the natalism conference you use the use the code collins for 10 off it will be there
00:48:34.320
so many cool people will be there it is going to be awesome it is an awesome you can find your
00:48:39.920
autistic husband yes first annual autistic marriage market taking place austin this march
00:48:47.680
it's gonna be so we gotta make sure they do a dating market this year we should talk with
00:48:52.720
uh kevin about that do we have the call set up by the way no i need to get one on the books okay well
00:48:57.200
i just want to say i so also this this was weird like shifting for you too right like when i read
00:49:18.640
yeah but it also it it helps me understand what we would need to do just like my dad found a way to
00:49:27.440
enable me to be a functional anorexic one can easily enable someone to be a functional
00:49:33.520
trans person by functional i mean trans in a way where they're less likely to die just like i am
00:49:38.880
i am i have an eating disorder in a way where i'm far less likely to die yeah and i think that this can
00:49:43.920
also help trans people just in modeling the way that they come off to outsiders and the way that they
00:49:48.240
can think about themselves so like yeah if you're a trans person and you've had a friend who suffered
00:49:52.560
from anorexia before and you tried to talk to them about like you're clearly hurting yourself
00:49:56.720
yeah i know you say you feel better like this but i i've seen you before this i've seen you after this
00:50:01.440
this is not the same and then this person begins retreating more and more into pro anna communities
00:50:06.240
you know what pro anna is these are pro anorexia anorexia supporting communities where they'll post
00:50:10.320
like inspiration of like really sickly yeah it's called if you have a friend who's gone down that
00:50:16.240
rabbit hole that's how other people feel when they're talking to you yeah no this will help
00:50:20.000
everyone understand everyone else this is good okay i'm going off to get my teeth cleaned and
00:50:23.920
change a poopy diaper i love you so much and steak tonight wagyu let's do it and we'll use that we
00:50:29.840
didn't buy wagyu ourself i'm not a bad indulgent i got it for christmas okay i got it for christmas
00:50:33.440
best christmas present oh my gosh amazing thank you okay love you bye love you bye
00:50:37.600
bye there's snow on the window there's snow on the window there's snow on the window
00:50:53.760
this this aren't snow in these snow drops it's snowing
00:51:07.680
what do you see octavian i see the christmas tree
00:51:10.640
are you happy yeah tosty are you happy i'm sick in it i'm sick in it