Juno News - An honest conversation about transgenderism (feat. Julia Malott)

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this True North interview. I'm Ily Canté-Nantel. Today we will be discussing

00:00:06.900 transgenderism, one of the most hot-button political and cultural topics of our time.

00:00:14.880 Transgender activism and policy has been particularly controversial due to the impact

00:00:21.520 that it has had on children, women, and free speech. Today I will be discussing the latter

00:00:28.900 with transgender woman Julia Malat, who has been critical of gender ideology and modern-day

00:00:38.860 trans activism. She has a blog website called Alata Thoughts, where she makes short videos

00:00:46.840 expressing her thoughts on various issues that relate to transgenderism. And today I have the

00:00:55.140 privilege of speaking with her. Before we get started though, please drop a like on this video

00:01:02.100 and consider subscribing to True North if you haven't already. Julia, thank you so much for

00:01:07.060 joining me today. I'm quite excited for this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for

00:01:11.480 inviting me. So how about we get started with you telling us a bit about your journey as a transgender

00:01:18.540 woman? You know, what age did you start experiencing gender dysphoria? And when and why did you decide

00:01:24.840 to transition? And how has that been for you? So I would say in a certain sense, I've always felt

00:01:30.300 this way. And I say that with an asterisk, as I say most things, because when you're a kid, you don't

00:01:36.500 know what you're feeling, right? These are, I often think of some of the conversations I've had with

00:01:41.940 friends who are gay. And it can take a while to, to kind of realize that because you live in a society

00:01:49.780 where the expectation, our norm is to be straight. And so there's kind of that assumption. And sometimes

00:01:55.220 it can take quite a while to realize that there seems to be a conflict or something doesn't seem

00:01:58.700 to be lining up that way. And for me, that was, that was very much how this was. I felt these things

00:02:02.960 very young. I didn't know what they were. I didn't have a word for them and nobody talked about it.

00:02:06.580 I'm a nineties baby. And so when I was in school, this was not a conversation and people,

00:02:11.280 people knew that something was going on. I saw four different counselors before grade six

00:02:14.860 because Jason didn't have any friends. And I was Jason, by the way, and Jason didn't have any

00:02:19.100 friends and Jason didn't have, you know, didn't, didn't connect with, with his classmates and Jason

00:02:24.000 didn't, had severe anxiety and all these things, but nobody was looking at it from an angle of

00:02:30.040 identity. Nobody was looking at an angle from gender dysphoria because that just wasn't that common

00:02:35.280 in, in psychiatrics back in the nineties. For myself, I came to find the word transgender and

00:02:40.740 trans, transsexual when I was 12 years old. And I found that myself online because I got to a point

00:02:45.620 of desperation where I was older than I was starting to kind of understand what I was feeling

00:02:49.860 and realize like, Oh, I really don't like being a boy. I'm really uncomfortable with the thought of

00:02:55.380 developing to be a man. And I've always felt more like what I saw with the girls in my class and

00:03:00.980 women aligned more with how I felt. And so I'm going to the internet because that's all we had back 1.00

00:03:05.320 then. Cause this wasn't in schools. This wasn't in the healthcare system. And I'm finding,

00:03:08.980 you know, very low grade blogs. This was not medical stuff, but I find people talking about

00:03:12.600 it and I go, Oh, there's other people who feel the way that I do. And I was always a very big

00:03:17.660 science nerd. So once I did this, I thought, well, I want to find real information because blogs are

00:03:22.140 great, but that's just people speaking about their opinions. So I actually got a, I got a high school

00:03:27.380 biology textbooks and I learned high school biology in grades seven and eight, because in my, you know,

00:03:33.460 very egotistical child mind, I'm like, I want to figure out the answer. Why do I feel this way?

00:03:37.560 What's going on? And I guess I assumed that I would somehow get an answer that no one else had. No one

00:03:41.960 had clearly asked this question. And Jason was going to be the first one. And then I went into the

00:03:46.420 journal articles. So I don't know how much you followed a lot of the stuff around transgender matters,

00:03:50.540 but a lot of the big researchers like Zucker and Bailey and Lawrence, they were people. I was

00:03:57.320 reading their articles that they were coming out as a, as a teenager, but I was at the same time

00:04:01.380 hiding all of this from my family, from my church, and from really all of my circles, because I

00:04:07.300 attached an immense amount of shame to how I was feeling. And so I wasn't confronting it. I certainly

00:04:12.180 wasn't telling anybody at this point, and I wasn't not transitioning. But I was understanding how I

00:04:18.680 felt and processing those feelings in a very unhealthy way. And I guess, how has it been since

00:04:25.440 transitioning? Do you feel like for you, this was the right decision? 0.97

00:04:32.820 That's such an, that's such an interesting question. So to continue my story, I am about 14,

00:04:38.900 15 years old, I kind of came to the decision for myself that I certainly wouldn't pursue a transition.

00:04:44.820 I was uncomfortable with the thought of doing that. It was certainly not compatible with my

00:04:48.580 faith, or my family. And it was at that point that I kind of became extremely religious. I dove

00:04:55.000 into my faith much more than I had in the past. I attended an evangelical Christian church,

00:04:59.760 and actually worked in a church then for a number of years following that. And I got a

00:05:06.420 girlfriend in grade 11, and I ended up marrying her. So we got married when we were 22. And she knew

00:05:10.840 about this. We had talked about it when I was 18 years old. But it was one of those things that we

00:05:14.540 kind of talked about. And we just sort of left and ignored and didn't deal with. And our life didn't

00:05:19.580 work. My life specifically didn't work. I wasn't happy. I wasn't thriving. And I was extremely

00:05:27.560 narcissistic. And as I've gone through therapy since, as I kind of look back, I attribute a lot

00:05:32.580 of that to the shame that I was holding on myself. And that's why I have a hard time answering the

00:05:37.960 question you just asked, in terms of, I am much happier, I have a much more workable life now,

00:05:43.420 and I'm thriving. But I have transitioned. And I have worked through the shame that I held around

00:05:49.560 my dysphoria and not sharing it and not talking about it, not dealing with it and being open about

00:05:54.060 it. And I think it would be dishonest of me to act as though I can separate those. And I can know

00:05:59.800 how much of the success and peace of mind I have now comes from the transition, and how much of it

00:06:05.860 comes from dealing with the shame. I'm sure they both contributed. I can't say to what degree.

00:06:12.240 Right. And I guess this is where some, I guess, people are saying that, well,

00:06:15.980 transition alone isn't the answer. There has to be other things as well, right? It's not just a

00:06:21.560 black and white kind of one size fits all kind of super solution, right? So I think your story kind of

00:06:29.140 alludes to that. Then why did you start your blog? I know you have a lot of thoughts.

00:06:35.860 Yeah. And you discuss a lot of these issues from a really nuanced and I think a very common sense.

00:06:40.920 And, you know, you think a critical perspective on both the gender ideology, but also as to some of

00:06:45.340 the other side that is critical of gender ideology, and you really kind of do an analysis, which,

00:06:50.420 you know, I really like. But what made you decide to do this? Because I mean, it is,

00:06:55.500 even as a transgender person, kind of a risk to go and challenge the narrative.

00:07:00.200 Yeah, it is. It is a risk in bad ways and in good ways. In bad ways, it's a risk because there's a

00:07:09.440 very homogenous narrative in the LGBT space and in progressive circles. And I haven't aligned with

00:07:16.600 a lot of the progressive way of thinking ever, really. But it's easy to be given cover. It's

00:07:20.900 easy to stay there and stay quiet. And people will assume that you align with certain beliefs. But

00:07:25.200 speaking out as I've done has certainly created a wedge between those circles and myself, which is

00:07:29.940 a risk. But it's also opened up lots of really interesting and wonderful relationships with

00:07:34.500 people of other, you know, ways of thinking, which I value. Because for me, I don't posit to have the

00:07:40.280 right answer. I think that we need to be able to ask the questions. And that, I guess, is one of the

00:07:44.420 main reasons I started to speak up is I realized we were hitting a point where we're not allowing the 0.88

00:07:49.280 questions to be asked at all. I think the first video I did, so I do something called A Lot of

00:07:53.740 Thoughts. I usually do these videos that are about five to six minutes long. Sometimes they're

00:07:57.120 longer, depending on how much I have to say. But I explore topics around all of the stuff around

00:08:02.180 gender identity and gender ideology, you know, schools and free speech and how all of these

00:08:06.140 intersect. And I really got started on that as I was watching our school boards here in Ontario.

00:08:11.780 And the number of people who were bringing concerns to school board meetings, and were simply not

00:08:16.820 allowed to talk, they were being shut down and told that their concern inherently was hateful or

00:08:21.680 transphobic or in some other way a violation of the Ontario human rights. And that concerned me

00:08:29.500 because that can exist, right? Like there is a line that can be crossed where you can become hateful.

00:08:34.300 And I have seen that happen too. But I was seeing more and more incidents where someone just has a

00:08:40.000 concern. They say, I want to talk about washing usage, or I want to talk about these books that I find

00:08:43.880 concerning. And I don't believe that shutting that down is helpful, both because if we want to live in a

00:08:50.840 liberal society, then we have to be able to have these conversations. And the idea of a book might

00:08:54.900 be might be harmful is a great conversation to have. And we can talk about it, and we can decide

00:08:58.900 whether it is, but we don't have to shut it down. And also, because I came to realize that the more

00:09:03.660 militant those sorts of issues are being shut down, the more it comes back to people like me,

00:09:09.100 because people end up blaming someone who's transgender for it. And I'm sitting here thinking,

00:09:13.120 whoa, whoa, whoa, I think these are great conversations. Why? Why are they being shut down? And so those are

00:09:16.920 kind of the two things that came together and gave me the impetus to start speaking as I do.

00:09:22.020 Right. And you mentioned some of the topics that we're going to get into. I mean, I would argue

00:09:26.860 that somebody pushback against transgenderism, kind of transgender activism, rather, comes from

00:09:35.060 the way that it's impacted three main areas, the way it's impacting children, the way it's impacting

00:09:39.520 women in women's spaces, and in speech. And we're going to kind of go into these three things

00:09:45.360 together. We'll start with children. I think it's the most relevant one, and you brought it up with

00:09:49.900 the school boards. A big debate that's happening in both the United States and Canada and other parts

00:09:55.300 of the world is, should children who cannot drive or cannot buy alcohol be able to medically transition

00:10:05.520 or socially transition? So you told me a bit earlier that you, as a teenager, had gender dysphoria,

00:10:14.120 and you felt like something was wrong. So there's definitely a lot of young people that feel

00:10:18.940 this gender dysphoria. What are your thoughts on the idea of transitioning children and teenagers?

00:10:27.760 Yeah, I think the pattern that we're going to see in this interview is I will not give you a

00:10:32.500 straight answer on anything. And I think that's because of the nuance that interlaces all of these

00:10:36.260 topics. So I am not at a place that I'm comfortable being unilaterally opposed to any

00:10:42.960 and every childhood transition. And I think here we should clarify what we mean by childhood

00:10:47.460 transition. Some people mean that socially, i.e. they have a name and a pronoun that they adopted

00:10:52.300 in school, and that's it. Some people mean that hormonally, you know, they're going to go on some

00:10:56.940 kind of a blocker like Lupron, or they're going to be going on to estradiol or testosterone.

00:11:00.740 Or this could mean surgically. This could mean going to those steps of having a mastectomy or

00:11:05.160 having reassignment surgeries with the genitals. And in all of those cases, I'm not comfortable

00:11:12.640 drawing a line and saying never is that ever appropriate. But I'm certainly comfortable saying

00:11:18.120 the process we're following right now is not working. Because we've gone from a place of being

00:11:23.060 very gatekeeping and very rigid on anything to do with transition for kids and adults, which is

00:11:28.120 how it was probably up until the early 2000s. And when we realized that that was perhaps

00:11:34.000 very restrictive and very problematic for people with deep dysphoria, we kind of swung entirely the

00:11:39.020 other way. And now we've hit this place where even our medical system often can't ask the questions

00:11:44.620 that are necessary, even for adults, to really vet and identify, is this the right measures for an

00:11:51.160 individual to take? And that concerns me for adults too, not just children. But with children,

00:11:56.200 there's the added element of their minors, of their brains are still developing. And I know that the

00:12:01.020 system means well in this. They've looked at dysphoric cases like myself. I do believe I was

00:12:05.380 probably a kid who would have benefited with a childhood transition. But I've also known lots of

00:12:10.080 kids who want a childhood transition who, with what I know and with what I've seen with all of the cases

00:12:13.980 that I've worked with, I observe them and think, I'm not so sure that that's the right fix for you

00:12:18.160 at all. You have a lot of other comorbidities that maybe should be tackled first. And so

00:12:21.840 I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution. And that's where we've ended up right

00:12:27.140 now, because we've made it into a human right to say everybody has the right to express gender and

00:12:32.380 identity and expression as they see fit. And that's kind of trapped us into a corner in a

00:12:37.120 certain way to say you can't question, you can't vet out if there's anything else going on under the

00:12:42.840 hood, because that's deemed to be conversion, that's deemed to be non-affirming, when really

00:12:46.360 I would posit that's just asking the questions that should always be asked. And I think that's

00:12:52.060 where I do differ from the predominant LGBT narrative, that I don't think it's better to 0.98

00:12:58.560 be trans. I think it is a very, you know, caring thing that we allow people to do who have deep

00:13:05.540 dysphoria like myself, because other mechanisms haven't worked. But if there's a kid and they

00:13:10.140 could transition, or we can give them a fulfilled and prosperous life without transitioning, I believe 1.00

00:13:14.740 we should always choose the non-transition path that has less, you know, surgical risk,

00:13:18.700 less hormonal risk, it's cheaper, it's less stigmatizing. I think that this is a path we go

00:13:23.420 down when other options haven't worked. And we've shifted from that attitude to this place of you are

00:13:28.700 the arbiter of your own fate. And if this is what you want, you should pursue it. But this is a one-way

00:13:33.620 path in certain ways. I am post-surgical, so there's lots of things that I'm not getting back if I

00:13:37.680 change my mind. Right, for sure. And we're seeing a lot of older young adults that are

00:13:44.660 now detransitioning and they're saying, well, this was not my problem. But because this ideology of

00:13:49.900 gender reformation, rather than, you know, being like, let's see what is wrong with you. Is it gender 0.94

00:13:56.120 dysphoria? It could be something else. And you know, if it is, in the end, gender dysphoria, then let's

00:14:02.100 actually go and help you. We're just kind of trying if a kid is confused. And I do think that's a bit

00:14:11.000 problematic. Kind of on the same topic, you brought up social transitions. And I know you've spoken out

00:14:16.960 against this idea of hiding social transitions from parents when kids are socially transitioning

00:14:23.280 at school. This is a debate that's going on right now in New Brunswick. So could you maybe explain

00:14:29.380 why you don't agree with that? And I will ask you a question, I guess, from their side,

00:14:34.160 is they claim that some homes aren't safe for trans people and hence the kid needs to be protected from

00:14:39.540 their parents. What would your answer be to that claim that's made by trans activists?

00:14:46.320 Yeah, yeah. So this is the topic that I've done a few videos on, just because it's been such a hot

00:14:50.460 button issue in Canada and the States over the last six months. I've also delegated a number of school

00:14:57.200 boards in Ontario on this on this matter as well. And it's there's an interesting undertone in this

00:15:03.840 discussion, because the part that I have a hard time reconciling is that first, we're saying that

00:15:10.800 transition is that identity is key, right? Identity is formative for an individual,

00:15:16.180 we must affirm them or else significant harms can come. And that's the reason why we are suggesting that

00:15:22.540 very, very young children even need to have their identity firmed, whatever that might be,

00:15:27.000 because we don't want to cause harm. But then at the exact same time as this is happening,

00:15:32.100 we're not telling the parents. So the background here is that many school districts, I know in

00:15:36.940 Ontario is every school board except for one, I don't know about all of the other provinces across

00:15:40.220 Ontario, but many school boards will hide a social transition from parents if the kid doesn't

00:15:46.100 want their parents to be told. So a kid can come to the teacher, they can say, you know,

00:15:49.740 I'm Jason, but I now want to be Julia and I want to be called she her. And the school has an explicit

00:15:54.540 policy in place that will enable that transition, the teacher will get in front of the whole class

00:15:59.140 and tell all the classmates that now Jason is Julia, all the other teachers will know so that

00:16:03.020 on the playground, Jason's not being called Julia, the principal knows. And they also know that if the

00:16:07.660 parents call in, and so talking about Jason, well, we don't tell them that Jason goes by Julia here.

00:16:12.820 So it's taken a very active role in enabling this transition. And that's the piece that I have the most

00:16:18.060 discomfort with kind of, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not here to comment on any particular kid and

00:16:23.900 whether a social transition is right or not for them. I have my thoughts and I have my concerns

00:16:27.500 with some of the cases I've seen, but that's not my role. However, I do think that the parents and

00:16:32.600 the medical system must be involved in these decisions. And if the school enables it, and is

00:16:36.780 hiding it from the parents, and that clearly isn't happening. And so that's the piece that I have

00:16:41.160 kind of most vocally spoken out against is the importance of parental rights and parental

00:16:44.940 involvement because of all the comorbidities and other factors that can be at play for that child.

00:16:50.700 Yeah, absolutely. I think that to the idea of deceiving parents, it is wrong. But what if there

00:17:00.700 is a case, for example, where there is a child who says, my parents at home are always railing against

00:17:07.600 transgender people, and they say they would rather, you know, be dead than have a trans kid, for example. 0.99

00:17:13.580 And this kid feels gender dysphoric and wants to be affirmed at school, but doesn't feel safe 0.94

00:17:18.620 at home. I guess, what would you say would be the solution in a case like that?

00:17:24.280 Yeah, I guess I'd say three things. First thing I would say is I know what it's like

00:17:28.220 to be at school, and to not want your parents to know what's going on. Because I lived in a small

00:17:33.180 town growing up. My dad was an elementary teacher, and my mother was a high school teacher. So I spent my

00:17:38.300 entire time at school with a parent in the building, which meant they didn't find out the stuff that,

00:17:42.220 you know, parents normally found out about the call home stuff, that Jason did something really

00:17:45.980 bad and punched someone, they found out the tiny little details, like Jason didn't do one of the

00:17:49.500 questions on his math homework last night, that would make it to my mom, because she was a math

00:17:52.780 teacher. And so I know what it's like to not want your parents to know things. And I also know what

00:17:57.580 it's like to not want your parents to know that you have feelings surrounding transgender identities,

00:18:02.060 because that was me. And I was devastated and dreaded the thought of my parents knowing, like,

00:18:06.940 this was back in the 90s. But I kept a journal of a lot of my thoughts around this. And I kept

00:18:11.420 it on an encrypted floppy drive that I had hidden in a place in my room, and my parents weren't even

00:18:15.980 technical. But like, I did all these things. So it's just in my head, the absolute worst thing

00:18:19.900 that could happen that would rip my family apart was my parents discovering how I felt about my gender.

00:18:26.620 And I didn't think that they would react well. And when I finally told them at 28, it wasn't good.

00:18:32.620 Yeah, there's a few years of tension in my family. But what service are we doing to any child by

00:18:38.620 hiding this? Because one thing I know from transitioning is that once you start transitioning,

00:18:43.900 you want it more. Once you decide to go by Julia and she, her, and you have a close circle of affirming

00:18:49.980 friends who back you on that and support you in that identity, you resent everyone who calls you Jason

00:18:54.380 even more. And so in that sense, we are going to push them away from their family at home. We're

00:18:59.820 going to pull them closer into their teachers, into the educators and into their classmates at

00:19:04.300 school. And they're still stuck in that house for anywhere from, you know, several to many,

00:19:08.540 many years, depending on their age. And so I don't know where this is supposed to end in that respect.

00:19:13.740 It's one thing, you know, it'd be one thing if they were working with a counselor or a therapist

00:19:18.140 at school, and everyone agrees the parent has to know, and you're not quite ready to tell them yet,

00:19:22.380 okay, so how are we going to get to that point? How are we going to work on this case? That would be one

00:19:25.500 situation. But that's not what's happening. What's happening is just

00:19:29.180 the medical side of it isn't our problem. We'll just do our part by calling you what

00:19:32.300 you want to be called and hope all goes well as things as things form. That comes to my second

00:19:37.500 point, which is, we have and have always had a mechanism for handling abusive situations at home.

00:19:45.260 In the analysis I've done on this, in some of the speeches I've made, there are so many ways that I

00:19:49.660 get notified of my daughter, she's in grade 11, when anything happens, you know, I have to fill out a

00:19:53.580 permission form for her to leave school property. I get called every time she is missing, you know,

00:19:57.420 is missing for a class. And yet, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know about this. What if my daughter's

00:20:02.700 report card comes home and she does really poorly in her classes? Some families are abusive. Some 1.00

00:20:07.260 families might, you know, lash out physically or emotionally at their children for that. And that

00:20:11.420 is horrible. But no one has suggested that we stop giving report cards to parents because they

00:20:16.060 might not respond positively. How we've always handled it is if a teacher has a bonafide

00:20:20.380 concern, they have real credible reason to believe that there's something wrong in a household,

00:20:24.300 then they go to Children's Aid Services, because Children's Aid Services has the ability to come in

00:20:29.020 and check out the household, they can have access to the house, they have access to the medical records,

00:20:32.860 they can understand if there's a real concern, or if there's not a real concern. I look at my case

00:20:37.660 and say my parents, I was scared to tell them, but they weren't abusive. If Children's Aid had been

00:20:41.740 involved, they would have very clearly known that there was no credible concern, other than my

00:20:45.980 discomfort and telling my parents. But if a child comes to school and says, I feel that I want to go

00:20:51.020 by she, her and Julia, but I think my parents are going to hit me like that, then Children's Aid is

00:20:55.900 the one who should solve that. Because if you're going to be hit over that, maybe they're being hit

00:20:59.500 over other things too. And this is why we have Children's Aid. And it just blows my mind that this

00:21:04.140 is the one area that we've decided to circumvent that process that by and large works pretty well for

00:21:09.420 identifying abusive households and supporting the households and resolving that.

00:21:12.860 Yeah, for sure. No, I totally would agree with you there that there are mechanisms in place.

00:21:18.540 And what's good with the New Brunswick law, it actually has a few steps in place to how to deal

00:21:24.460 with kids who aren't ready yet, to work with a counselor, to come up with a plan. Oftentimes,

00:21:28.460 kids just need a plan. And I think oftentimes, and this is not every time, but there's oftentimes where

00:21:34.380 kids are more scared of coming out than actually coming out. They realize once they come out,

00:21:39.340 well, I didn't expect the parents to react so positively, right? There's often this fear of

00:21:44.860 announcing big news. Let's move on to the second area of controversy, which is the way that this is

00:21:53.660 impacting women. I mean, you are a transgender woman yourself. So I feel like this is something 1.00

00:21:58.940 that you may have a bit of experience on dealing with, or at least online. So there are a lot of

00:22:05.580 feminists are saying, and this is a view that I personally share about the sports is that biological 1.00

00:22:12.940 males should not be competing in competitive women's sports. And there's also people who say biological

00:22:19.260 males don't belong in other women's spaces. They'll say like change rooms or dormitories, 1.00

00:22:24.940 or even bathrooms, they would argue. Somebody like yourself, who looks and presents like a woman 1.00

00:22:30.700 should go and use the man's washroom. What are your thoughts on the idea of female spaces, 0.99

00:22:36.780 female sports? Where do we draw the line? You mentioned earlier about nuance. Where's the nuance 1.00

00:22:41.580 in this and what's acceptable and what is not according to you? Yeah. Some of these matters,

00:22:49.580 I have stronger opinions on than others. Some sports I have probably the weakest opinions on,

00:22:55.100 typically because I'm not athletic. I like to rock climb. Rock climbing is lovely. Other than that,

00:23:00.540 I have always shied away from sports. I'm not competitive. And so I don't even watch competitive

00:23:05.340 sports. It's a domain that I'm aware of the transgender side of it because of the work I do,

00:23:09.340 but I have very, very little skin in the game on either side in terms of where this lands.

00:23:13.820 But I had a really, really inspired conversation with someone, I don't know, three or four months

00:23:18.700 ago here. And I think we were talking about prisons that time. I forget, we were talking about one of

00:23:24.940 the hot button topics here. And she said to me that, you know, so often we're ignoring that

00:23:33.260 these institutions or these structures already had problems that weren't working. And rather than

00:23:39.900 look at the root problem, now we've become really, really focused on the way that certain transgender 1.00

00:23:44.460 matters perpetuate the problem, but we're still ignoring the root problem. And I love that in

00:23:48.460 prisons because the way we do prisons doesn't work. And I think, I think a lot of us know that,

00:23:53.180 you know, why does anybody ever get abused in prison? Why does anybody ever die in prison?

00:23:57.900 Why does anybody ever get raped in prison? Like, I'm not okay with the, you know, a biological 1.00

00:24:02.860 male being in a woman's prison and causing abuse or rape, but I'm actually not okay with anybody 1.00

00:24:07.100 being in prison and ended up being abused or raped period, you know? And when you look at the stats, 0.64

00:24:11.260 I think it's 60% of the abuses and rapes in, in women's prisons are actually coming from the guards.

00:24:17.020 So it's like, why, why is that happening? Like clearly the system doesn't function the way that

00:24:20.940 it needs to function and we should fix that. Like that would be an amazing thing to fix. And do I

00:24:26.460 think that, you know, someone who's biologically male who has been convicted of a sex crime should be

00:24:31.340 in a woman's prison? I don't think that, I think that's a bad idea, but I also think that just fixing that 1.00

00:24:37.420 is going to leave so many other vulnerabilities still. So I try to look at these kind of

00:24:40.940 very holistically and say, what, what in the system overall could be better? And on the sports thing,

00:24:46.780 I look at the nuance and say, not all sports are the same thing. You know, some sports,

00:24:51.980 you benefit immensely from being taller, but be more muscular. Other sports like gymnastics, you know,

00:24:57.660 it's, and sometimes it can be the opposite. And so it really depends on what sport are we looking at

00:25:02.140 and what advantages do exist. And so I don't think that a one size fits all necessarily is

00:25:08.700 appropriate. There's also questions of when did someone go on, um, on blockers? When did someone

00:25:13.820 go on hormones? But I also empathize with the arguments that people are giving, you know,

00:25:18.940 it is upsetting when you see somebody who is six foot five or six foot six and has gone through

00:25:23.980 male puberty and has big masculine muscles to be able to blow any biological woman out of the, 0.99

00:25:28.220 you know, out of the water, so to say, if it was a swimming competition. And that would bother me

00:25:32.780 too, I think if I was in that. So I don't think that it's something I'm comfortable just kind of

00:25:37.900 going all into nothing on, but how's that for a non-answer? I'm practicing being a politician. Can you

00:25:43.660 tell? Another issue that some feminists will point to is this change in language. And they say that this 1.00

00:25:51.020 is erasing women. I mean, we've seen here in Canada, the governments use the term pregnant people

00:25:56.140 rather than pregnant women, uh, birthing persons instead of mothers, we say chest feeding instead 0.78

00:26:01.260 of breastfeeding and feminine hygiene has been replaced with menstrual hygiene. And I mean, 0.78

00:26:05.500 I've even seen cases of tampons being put in, you know, men's washrooms. Do you, what are your

00:26:11.820 thoughts on this gender neutral language to refer to things that have traditionally, uh, been female

00:26:18.700 only like pregnancy, like menstruation? Do you think it's beneficial to use these, these gender 1.00

00:26:23.500 neutral worlds or do you think they're doing more harm than good right now?

00:26:26.860 Yeah. You can probably see that I'm laughing right now. I was just saying this. Um, I don't

00:26:31.180 know how to not laugh at all of that stuff. It's a few months ago, I researched, sorry, what was that?

00:26:36.780 I said, me neither.

00:26:39.340 Yeah. Like a few months ago, a researcher from Australia reached out to me. Her name was Caroline

00:26:43.420 Gribble and she, she did a paper on this and she asked if I would read her paper and provide my

00:26:47.900 thoughts. And it was a, it was a great paper and she discussed basically every word you mentioned

00:26:51.980 there along with many others. Um, and I think there's more than one debate going on with language.

00:26:59.180 We could do many hour long discussions about, about language, but a lot of the ones that you

00:27:04.460 zeroed in on there and what you just described are the ones that originate from queer theory.

00:27:09.020 And that's the piece that I am not in alignment with. So the queer theory attitude, the postmodern 0.98

00:27:15.100 deconstructivism that comes in from that. And I won't get into the theory too much, but

00:27:18.060 that's where we get the idea of deconstructing sex and gender of ripping them apart and saying 0.86

00:27:23.020 sex is biology and gender is this conceptualization that can be whatever we want it to be. Right?

00:27:28.620 So you might say there's, there's men and women as genders, but I can say that there's three or

00:27:32.780 five per a million and that's, that's fine. And we can all have our own gender. And that's what 1.00

00:27:37.500 leads to a lot of the language changes. I think that's very silly, um, myself because I'm gender

00:27:43.340 dysphoric because I'm biologically male. You know, I was born with a penis and with everything that 0.98

00:27:48.460 boys have. And I had extreme emotional discomfort with that. And in a sense, I had a disability, 0.99

00:27:55.020 right? Because I wasn't able to thrive for emotional reasons because of that. And so I have

00:28:00.620 made physical changes hormonally and surgically in order to try to cope with that in order to align as

00:28:05.740 closely as I can with the biological sex that I am not. So in other words, I deeply affirm the idea of

00:28:11.900 there being these, this dichotomy of, you know, male and femaleness, and I'm trying to be as close

00:28:16.540 to female as I can knowing that I will never actually be female. So for me, all of the language

00:28:22.060 changes seem very, very silly. You know, women menstruate. That's, that's what, that's what 1.00

00:28:25.980 women do. Do I menstruate? I do not menstruate, but that's okay. We don't have to change the language 0.93

00:28:30.460 around it because that's, you know, that's what they do. And the same goes the other way, you know,

00:28:34.780 women, you know, breastfeed. Well, the fact that someone has decided to be on testosterone doesn't

00:28:39.500 mean that they don't still have mammary glands and have the ability to breastfeed. I don't know 0.53

00:28:43.420 why we have to change the language around it though. I don't think that helps anybody. I think

00:28:46.780 it, it gets confusing and complicated and upsets people when they feel their, their gender, their

00:28:51.740 sex being ripped apart and kind of be told that they're separate in ways that doesn't resonate

00:28:56.460 with them. Right. And I would agree with you there. I think that that's very well said. And you did touch 0.96

00:29:01.100 on queer theory. And I think this leads actually pretty well into my next question. Queer theory and gender

00:29:07.020 ideology have really been behind the whole pronouns thing, this notion that people have different

00:29:13.020 pronouns that are maybe not he, him, or she, her. You made a video and a series of videos where you

00:29:19.340 talked about the issues with fixating on pronouns and you said it's bad for transgender people. So

00:29:24.380 can you maybe explain your thoughts on that and why you don't think we should be compelling people to

00:29:30.060 use pronouns as is being done right now? Yeah, absolutely. So early on in my transition journey,

00:29:36.220 I think I mentioned, I started around 28 and like most people, you know, I started very privately.

00:29:41.740 I was, I, some of my close friends knew and I was still Jason at work and I was still Jason out in

00:29:47.340 public. And then I was being called Julia and she, her in this little circle. And like I already

00:29:51.740 referenced when talking about kids, that felt really good. I liked it. I'm like, oh, I feel so warm and

00:29:55.740 fuzzy with these people. Oh, I don't like what I'm getting everywhere else. But then as I went in and

00:30:01.500 started to expand my transition socially, I, I, I'd run into people who maybe wanted to affirm

00:30:07.100 me. They wanted to call me what I wanted to be called, but then they would, you know,

00:30:11.260 mess up, so to say, or they'd say he, him, because, you know, I'm five for 10 or my voice is fairly low,

00:30:16.300 or they knew me as Jason for 28 years, all these reasons that that came out. And these are not people

00:30:20.300 who are trying in any way to get to me. These are people who like me and affirm for me, but we mess up.

00:30:26.140 It's hard, right? I get it. It's hard. And that really upset me. Like when that would happen,

00:30:32.220 it wasn't just, I didn't like it. It was, it might throw me into a cycle for a few days where I'd be,

00:30:36.060 you know, emotionally thrown off and I wouldn't want to, you know, go and see that person anymore,

00:30:40.860 chat with that person because I was uncomfortable with them. And I had an amazing life coach at this

00:30:46.220 point in time. And as I really kind of wrestled with him and said, what was going on? I came to

00:30:50.460 realize that that was because I was denying reality. I wanted to be female. And at this

00:30:56.060 point, I was imagining that I was, I had created this facade. I am female, just like all the other 0.87

00:31:01.420 women. And, you know, if you don't call me that, when you call me, he am, it reminded me that you

00:31:06.300 saw something different. You might like me, you might like me and want to hang out with me and

00:31:09.260 be totally fine with my transition, but, but something registered different for you. And you

00:31:13.180 saw that. And just knowing that you saw that was what would tear me apart. And when I realized that,

00:31:18.940 I realized how easy it was to just construct this differently for myself and say, I am biologically male.

00:31:26.300 And people are going to see that. And that doesn't mean that they dislike me. That just means that

00:31:30.380 they see that. And thus, I don't need to be bothered by that. And so that was kind of the

00:31:34.620 first transition that I made for myself was to understand that I didn't have, it wasn't helpful

00:31:40.860 to me to not to kind of, you know, separate myself from reality, because it creates ways when I can get

00:31:46.780 hurt by other people and their language. Then, as I started to read a lot more authors in this space and

00:31:51.260 get involved in the work I'm doing now, I was also concerned about the whole idea of

00:31:55.580 compelled speech and the risks that come along with that. You know, for myself,

00:31:59.340 I unapologetically will use the pronouns that people want me to use for them because

00:32:03.660 I understand how that can feel good. I understand how that can be helpful. And mostly,

00:32:07.660 I want to respect people. You know, I don't know what your legal name is. I haven't seen your ID.

00:32:11.740 And I don't need to. I know what you want me to call you. And so I'm going to call you that.

00:32:15.500 And for me, pronouns kind of align in the same way. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable

00:32:20.540 mandating it for somebody else. You know, it's not illegal to be a jerk. It's just maybe not going 0.99

00:32:25.820 to make you a lot of friends. And so if somebody insists that they want to call me he, him,

00:32:29.900 they know I don't really want that. Okay, well, whatever, right? Like, I'd rather have a

00:32:33.260 conversation with them than get really upset over someone who's intentionally trying to do something

00:32:37.180 that they suspect I won't like. And of course, what I found is that taking that position means

00:32:42.300 I basically never get he, him. Because people, for the most part, aren't jerks, right? You know, 0.99

00:32:46.620 even people in this gender critical space, they're concerned about being compelled. And when I come

00:32:50.300 along and say, look, what you feel and what you want matters too. Let's just do what you're

00:32:55.100 comfortable with. Almost always, people call me she, her, because they don't feel like they're

00:32:59.180 denying reality. It's just, just being decent to someone and calling them what they want to be

00:33:03.660 called. Another part of the criticism from the transgender activism is this idea that they,

00:33:09.580 they censor people by shutting down their views and, you know, they'll show up in protest. And

00:33:14.140 there's other protest movements that take part in these tactics. BLM has,

00:33:19.340 some indigenous rights protests have, some socialist protests have. But I don't think there's a group

00:33:25.020 that does it as viciously and as strongly as the queer and trans activists when it comes to, you 1.00

00:33:30.060 know, trying to cancel people. I mean, the way they treated JK Rowling, the way they treated Helen Joyce,

00:33:35.900 for example. Why do you think there's so, a lot of these people are seem to be so angry,

00:33:41.340 so upset, and feel such a need to shut down anyone that's critical of them? Because to me,

00:33:46.940 that sounds almost like there's a psychological aspect to this.

00:33:49.420 I agree and I disagree with you there. I agree with everything you described in terms of the

00:33:58.060 behavior that you see with shutting things down from many trans rights activists. There's another

00:34:04.940 group, though, who I've seen be just as vitriolic in terms of how they handle their activism as well,

00:34:11.020 and that's the radical feminists. And I want to be clear here that I'm not using radical feminism

00:34:16.620 and gender critical as analogous terms. You know, gender critical has, in some circles, come to be,

00:34:22.380 you know, a politically correct way to refer to someone who might have been called a TERF previously,

00:34:27.020 or a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. But it's also used more broadly as anybody who's critical of,

00:34:32.300 you know, the ideological approach to gender that's being taken under queer theory. And that's

00:34:37.180 the one I'm using here. So we have this realm of gender critical people who have concerns. I think

00:34:41.180 you'd probably consider yourself gender critical. I'd consider myself gender critical.

00:34:44.460 And then we have the radical feminists who align very much with, you know, the radical 0.99

00:34:49.420 feminist ideologies that originated in the seventies. And for lack of a better term, it is a 1.00

00:34:56.060 woke ideology. It's a woke ideology the same way that trans, you know, queer theory is a woke ideology

00:35:01.340 the same way that anti-racism is a woke ideology. They're all radiating from the same place of critical

00:35:06.140 social justice. And it creates that really strong activist shutting down drive that you see. And so

00:35:14.380 I do see that with the trans activists and I receive it because I'm on the enemy side to them 1.00

00:35:18.620 because, you know, I don't align with their narrative. So I received that from them, but I

00:35:22.140 received the exact same thing from the radical feminists as well in the exact same way. And I've

00:35:26.060 noticed those two particular parties, it's an intensity I don't get from say a classical conservative

00:35:31.580 who might have conservative values, but they don't have the vitriol. They might not agree with me,

00:35:37.980 but it's not so vile the same way. And, and I think that's why you see such tension between

00:35:43.900 trans rights activism and radical feminists, because they're both using the same ideology. 0.97

00:35:47.180 And this is possibly the first circumstance under critical social justice where we've seen

00:35:52.380 two woke ideologies pitted against each other. Often it's something like that, as you mentioned,

00:35:56.220 it's, you know, anti-racism and queer theory, which you can be both, right? You can be an anti-racist

00:36:01.900 and a queer theory advocate, or you may not, but they're not diametrically opposed, but radical

00:36:05.900 feminism and trans rights activism have found themselves in diametrically opposed positions.

00:36:09.900 Their enemy is each other. And it's, it's very scary. It's very scary. So I'm sitting here in the

00:36:14.140 middle and hoping they mostly shoot over me and occasionally I get some crossfire.

00:36:17.580 Right. And there's something that, that is important to notice some of the vitriol. And

00:36:23.260 I look at, at some of the comments you've gotten from people that are more gender critical, or I

00:36:27.900 look at some of the abuse that Caitlyn Jenner has gotten from the right, even though she 0.99

00:36:32.060 has taken such brave stances on let's say women's sports and whatnot, or even Blair White is one of my 0.99

00:36:37.820 favorite transgender commentator. I've seen a lot of people recently refer to her as he and saying that

00:36:43.980 he's just a mentally ill dude. And they're saying that we should always misgender transgender people. 0.98

00:36:49.180 We should ban transgenderism and eradicate it from, uh, society as Michael Knowles said at CPAC, 0.96

00:36:56.620 and that they're just delusional people that, you know, are unfit for higher office, as they said

00:37:01.420 with Caitlyn Jenner, when she ran for, for, for governor, uh, in a fight to let's say safeguard gender

00:37:08.060 transition for kids or protect women's spaces or to protect free speech. What do you think that

00:37:13.660 type of rhetoric has on a movement that wants the, these basic principles done?

00:37:19.180 Yeah, I think the effect is deleterious. And that is the other reason why I'm here doing what I'm

00:37:24.780 doing, because I mentioned earlier how I would watch in our school board meetings, how many

00:37:31.340 concerned parents are being shut down simply for raising a concern, because the narrative has to

00:37:35.500 become call anybody hateful and transphobic simply for having a concern. And my perspective is there is 0.85

00:37:42.300 hate out there and there is a concern. And instead we are targeting all these people who don't have hate

00:37:48.060 and who are just asking questions. And I want to be in that space in the gender critical realm

00:37:52.460 to draw a very clear wedge and say, look, there's all of these people who have valid concerns and

00:37:56.460 valid questions about sports, washrooms, prisons, children, transition, all these things that we can

00:38:01.100 and should discuss. And there's all these people over here who actually are hateful, who actually have

00:38:06.140 fascist figures, you know, who really we should be concerned about. And they're different, they're

00:38:11.500 different groups, but they blend together so easily, right? Before someone like me is in a space,

00:38:15.660 oh, you have a concern about washrooms, you have a concern about washrooms, great, we're friends, and

00:38:18.940 you don't always necessarily realize someone else's motivation. And as I've found, when I come into a

00:38:23.580 space, a private group or a conference, it's just a friendship circle, it tends to make it pretty clear

00:38:28.300 all of a sudden, because some people are like, Julia is amazing. Julia says what we're saying. Julia helps

00:38:31.980 let's move these things forward. And other people say, absolutely not. Julia is, you know,

00:38:36.460 the embodiment of everything we hate. And it makes it clear whether you hate and have contempt and

00:38:40.380 disdain for transgender people, or whether you have concerns about issues. And so for me,

00:38:45.260 we need to separate those two, those two kind of sects of people. And that's one of my objectives. 1.00

00:38:51.500 Right, for sure. I would agree there. So we're obviously not done having these discussions,

00:39:00.300 these debates. I mean, I think that transgender debate in Canada has really

00:39:04.620 been around since Justin Trudeau has been elected. You know, there was Bill C-16 with

00:39:09.100 Jordan Peterson, there was the sex ed debate in Ontario. Now we're seeing the debates around sports,

00:39:15.500 around prisons, around children. And I think it's only going to keep going from here. Where do you

00:39:22.860 think this narrative, these dialogues are going to go? And is it where you think you want it to go? Or do

00:39:27.660 you think we're, we're, we're due for more, I guess, polarization and more extreme kind of agenda

00:39:34.700 demands and whatnot? I'm certainly not smart enough to be able to comment on where I think this goes.

00:39:42.300 I don't like the way it is going. I'll say that much. I don't like the division. I think that that's,

00:39:47.180 the polarization is very scary. And that's why my mission is to bridge to the gap is to say,

00:39:51.980 we need to be able to talk. We need to be able to connect. I, I travel mostly in gender critical

00:39:56.780 circles now. And every day I'm meeting people who have never known a transgender person. They

00:40:01.580 know of transgender people. They know of those angry people that they've seen in, you know, 1.00

00:40:05.020 viral posts where they're called perverts and all these things, but they don't know someone.

00:40:08.380 And they certainly have not encountered someone they can like. And that has been my goal. It has to

00:40:12.460 be in those gender critical circles and those conservative circles and be a transgender person whom they

00:40:17.020 can like as a person. That doesn't mean they have to agree with me. And I'm not looking for anyone to agree

00:40:21.100 with me. You know, I, I avoid debates like the plague. I'm not looking to go into a debate and

00:40:25.900 argue with someone over whether something is right or not. I'm looking to humanize transgender people

00:40:30.140 to, to prevent that extremism from forming and to say, look, there are people who are gender dysphoric.

00:40:35.260 There are people who are caught in the crossfire here. You can totally be against policies and

00:40:39.500 ideologies. Like I'll help you in some cases where we're aligned, but let's not make it about the

00:40:44.380 people and let's not get to a point where, where people on either side are being hurt. And I'm in,

00:40:48.460 I'm in, I'm in Waterloo region here. And, you know, a few weeks ago we had, we had exactly that happen.

00:40:52.060 And that's scary. That's scary stuff because I don't ever want to see policy disagreements

00:40:57.820 moving to a point where people are actually being, you know, encountering violence.

00:41:01.420 No, for sure. That's a good point. I do think we have to, on all sides, really tone the temperature

00:41:09.260 down and stop these accusations that concerned parents are genocidal transphobe, and that all

00:41:17.420 transgender people are groomers, for example. I really don't think that sort of, sort of dialogue. 1.00

00:41:23.100 So I can understand, and I can understand the frustration people have. Absolutely. A lot of

00:41:29.100 what's going on is very frustrating, but I think as human beings, we need to acknowledge that we're

00:41:35.740 often emotional and try to kind of take a breath and find what are we, what's common sense? What,

00:41:43.500 what are we going to fight? And remember what we're fighting against. And I think for a lot of

00:41:48.300 people, they're not actually fighting against transgender people. They're fighting against 0.93

00:41:51.740 gender ideology and that being imposed on their children, on their sports, on their charter rights, 0.91

00:41:58.540 such as free speech. They're not actually against transgender people. And I think sometimes people

00:42:03.100 need to, you know, take a breather and remind themselves of that. Well, Julia, thank you so

00:42:09.100 much for joining me. I think this was a really good conversation and productive conversation. I certainly

00:42:15.820 learned a lot, and I wish you the best of luck. Please continue to speak out. I think it's good for

00:42:22.620 Ontario and Canada to have voices like you that are critical of narratives and think for yourself

00:42:30.140 with, with nuance. So thanks again for coming on today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

00:42:35.340 I hope that you enjoyed this discussion. I sure did. Please consider supporting True North by

00:42:42.620 visiting donate.tnc.news. For True North, I'm Ilikantinantel. Thank you for watching.

Juno News - July 29, 2023

An honest conversation about transgenderism (feat. Julia Malott)

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