Making Sense - Sam Harris - #135 — Navigating Sex and Gender

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.660 There have been many things in the news.

00:00:49.460 There was the Pennsylvania clergy sex abuse bomb that went off this week.

00:00:55.420 There's a grand jury report detailing the abuse of more than a thousand children by more than

00:01:01.680 300 priests over the years, and there are probably vastly more.

00:01:07.600 This sort of thing is underreported, as we all know, and also sedulously covered up by the

00:01:12.900 Church.

00:01:14.320 In fact, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that the Catholic Church is a machine, 0.99

00:01:19.620 one of whose primary functions has been to ensure that children get raped and that the 0.98

00:01:25.960 world doesn't find out about it. 0.87

00:01:28.360 This really is not an exaggeration.

00:01:31.520 That reminded me of an article I wrote about 10 years ago when a similar scandal happened

00:01:36.520 in Ireland.

00:01:37.840 I wrote an article titled, Bringing the Vatican to Justice.

00:01:42.060 Actually, I may have read this on a much earlier podcast, but I'll just read the first two paragraphs

00:01:47.500 here because it's really all I have to say in the present case, and it makes a point that

00:01:54.900 I think is all too rarely made.

00:01:58.220 So here's what I wrote, I think in 2009 or so.

00:02:03.140 I've paid too little attention to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

00:02:07.840 Frankly, it has always felt unsportsmanlike to shoot so large and languorous a fish in so

00:02:12.740 tiny a barrel, and there seemed to be no need to deride faith at its most vulnerable and self-abased.

00:02:19.520 Even in retrospect, it is easy to understand the impulse to avert one's eyes.

00:02:24.320 Just imagine a pious mother and father sending their beloved child to the Church of a Thousand

00:02:28.800 Hands for spiritual instruction, only to have him raped and terrified into silence by threats 0.88

00:02:34.000 of hell. 0.93

00:02:35.340 Then imagine this occurring to tens of thousands of children in our own time, and to children

00:02:39.900 beyond reckoning for over a thousand years.

00:02:42.740 The spectacle of faith so utterly misplaced and so fully betrayed is simply too depressing

00:02:48.440 to think about.

00:02:49.780 But there was always more to this phenomenon that should have compelled my attention.

00:02:54.180 Consider the ludicrous ideology that made it possible. 0.80

00:02:57.600 The Catholic Church has spent two millennia demonizing human sexuality to a degree unmatched 0.81

00:03:02.820 by any other institution, declaring the most basic, healthy, mature, and consensual behavior

00:03:08.240 is taboo.

00:03:09.580 Indeed, this organization still opposes the use of contraception, preferring instead that

00:03:14.760 the poorest people on earth be blessed with the largest families and the shortest lives. 1.00

00:03:20.100 As a consequence of this hallowed and incorrigible stupidity, the Church has condemned generations 1.00

00:03:25.240 of decent people to shame and hypocrisy, or to neolithic fecundity, poverty, and death by 1.00

00:03:31.280 AIDS.

00:03:32.360 Add to this inhumanity the artifice of cloistered celibacy, and you now have an institution, one 0.98

00:03:38.140 of the wealthiest on earth, that preferentially attracts pederasts, pedophiles, and sexual 0.96

00:03:43.340 sadists into its ranks, promotes them to positions of authority, and grants them privileged access 0.99

00:03:48.720 to children.

00:03:50.060 Finally consider that vast numbers of children will be born out of wedlock, and their unwed 0.95

00:03:54.720 mothers vilified, wherever church teaching holds sway, leading boys and girls by the thousands

00:04:00.540 to be abandoned to church-run orphanages, only to be raped and terrorized by the clergy.

00:04:05.440 Here, in this ghoulish machinery set whirling through the ages by the opposing winds of shame

00:04:11.460 and sadism, we mortals can finally glimpse how strangely perfect are the ways of the Lord.

00:04:17.540 Okay, so that's how I opened that article.

00:04:20.520 But let's be clear about what's happening here.

00:04:23.220 This isn't just the law of large numbers, where you sample hundreds of thousands or millions

00:04:28.200 of people, and you find some thousands of them abusing children.

00:04:33.540 There's something special about the Catholic Church. 0.99

00:04:37.420 Okay, there's a specific machinery here, based on dogmatism and faith and ridiculous ideas. 0.93

00:04:44.760 And every detail matters, like the belief in hell and sin and celibacy and the shame of out-of-wedlock

00:04:52.780 birth.

00:04:53.140 Of course, there are other religious communities that have abused their kids and conceal the 0.98

00:04:58.740 crime so as not to bring embarrassment to the institutions.

00:05:01.580 There have been scandals among the Orthodox Jews in New York in recent years.

00:05:06.480 But no one has perfected this horror show like the Catholic Church. 1.00

00:05:10.940 This is an institution that routinely spends millions of dollars to protect individual 0.96

00:05:18.760 priests who they know have raped children for decades, moving them from one parish to

00:05:25.540 the next, where they can rape again, paying hush money to victims, and when these cases wind 0.77

00:05:31.320 up in court doing everything they can to shame and discredit the children or the adults who

00:05:36.420 were once those children. This is pure evil. And the details are insane. I'm just going to read

00:05:43.800 you a snippet from the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. Okay, this is a quote.

00:05:48.300 Despite a priest's admission to assaulting at least a dozen young boys, the bishop wrote to thank

00:05:52.920 him for, quote, all the good you have done for God's people. The Lord who sees in private will reward,

00:05:59.440 end quote. Another priest confessed to anal and oral rape of at least 15 boys, as young as seven. 0.98

00:06:05.340 The bishop later met with the abuser to commend him as a, quote, person of candor and sincerity, 0.58

00:06:10.960 and to compliment him for, quote, the progress he has made in controlling his, quote, addiction.

00:06:16.440 When the abuser was finally removed from the priesthood years later, the bishop ordered the

00:06:21.160 parish not to say why. Quote, nothing else need be noted, end quote. This is further down here in the

00:06:28.500 report. We came across a file in which the diocese candidly conceded that this, quote, is one of our

00:06:34.400 worst cases, end quote, but of course told no one about him. Actually, we came across the statement

00:06:40.220 in the files of several other priests. Then there was the file with a simple celebratory notation,

00:06:45.940 quote, bad abuse case. Victim sued us. We won. There was the priest, for example, who raped a seven-year-old

00:06:53.880 girl after she'd had her tonsils out. This is me now. This girl was raped in her hospital room. 1.00

00:06:59.520 Just picture the life of this person, okay, in the context of a faith so captivating that

00:07:09.620 there was no recourse here. Picture the family around this girl. You get indoctrinated from birth

00:07:17.880 into a cult, and this is a cult staffed with an inordinate number of pedophiles who gain access

00:07:26.900 to your kids. Back to the report. Or the priest who made a nine-year-old give him oral sex and

00:07:33.000 then rinsed out the boy's mouth with holy water to purify him. Or the boy who drank some juice at 0.99

00:07:37.600 his priest's house and woke up the next morning bleeding from his rectum, unable to remember

00:07:41.780 anything about the night before. Okay, so that's as much as I'll give you. Sorry to ambush you with

00:07:48.220 that, but it's hard even for me to pay attention to this stuff and remember how horrible these details are.

00:07:56.900 None of this should be surprising. This is in the DNA of this organization. If you had to sign a user

00:08:05.100 agreement for the Catholic Church, this should be part of it. Somewhere in the fine print, it should

00:08:11.300 say, the ideology of our organization acts as a filter attracting sexually confused and conflicted

00:08:19.060 and conscienceless men. And we employ these people and hide their crimes. And we've done this for over

00:08:25.160 1,000 years. Now give us your kids. Hearing that the Catholic Church is raping children should be as

00:08:32.960 surprising as hearing that Google and Facebook are selling your data to third parties. Anyway, it's 0.99

00:08:41.060 intense to read about all this. You're getting me just after I did that. Hence the topspin. Imagine if

00:08:47.880 there were a Fortune 500 company that was raping and abusing children for its entire existence and 0.98

00:08:54.960 systematically concealing it. What would we have done to that company? And now consider what hasn't

00:09:02.060 happened to the Catholic Church. Okay, there have been many other things in the news. I can't bear to

00:09:11.720 comment on Trump at the moment. But it's good to see people in the military coming out publicly

00:09:18.020 in criticism of him after McRaven wrote his letter. And it was the Sarah Jong hiring at the New York

00:09:29.860 Times. I think I'll talk about that with Jonathan Haidt, who's coming up this week. And then Jaron Lanier

00:09:36.680 is finally coming up. That had to get rescheduled. So got some good podcasts on the horizon.

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00:17:12.980 Okay, well, today's guest is Marty Hazleton. Marty is the world's leading researcher on how

00:17:24.160 ovulatory cycles influence women's sexuality. She's a professor of psychology at UCLA and at the

00:17:30.900 Institute for Society and Genetics. She's a former editor of the leading journal in the field,

00:17:35.760 Evolution and Human Behavior, and she now directs the Evolutionary Psychology Lab at UCLA.

00:17:40.540 Anyway, I had a great time talking to Marty. We talk about sex and gender and the role of

00:17:47.800 hormones in human psychology, something she calls Darwinian feminism. We focus on the unique

00:17:53.880 hormonal experience of women. But up front, we talk about things like transgenderism and the Google

00:18:00.060 memo and other controversial topics. This stuff is increasingly important, not only ethically,

00:18:07.800 but politically. Cuts across many of the free speech concerns we've been airing on this show.

00:18:14.280 So without further delay, I bring you Marty Hazleton.

00:18:23.360 I am here with Marty Hazleton. Marty, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:18:27.240 Hi, happy to be here.

00:18:28.940 So describe what you do. I should say at the top here, we'll be discussing your book,

00:18:33.340 Hormonal, The Hidden Intelligence of Hormones. But how is it that you have come to write about

00:18:39.240 hormones and what is your particular academic perch?

00:18:43.460 So I would call myself an interdisciplinary evolutionary scientist, by which I mean,

00:18:50.080 you know, and some people would probably look at my work and say, oh, that's evolutionary psychology.

00:18:53.420 I know what that is. But I think of myself as being a little bit broader than what is typically

00:18:59.780 assigned to evolutionary psychology, if that makes sense. So, you know, I certainly have looked at

00:19:08.260 phenomena that are well-worn territory in evolutionary psychology, like mating relationships and so

00:19:13.880 forth. But I've really also been interested in connecting the dots between using the evolutionary

00:19:21.280 or adaptive logic to understand why humans do the things that they do and perhaps to get new insights

00:19:27.020 into those things and test new hypotheses and actually look then at behavior and see, you know,

00:19:34.480 what people are doing and describe that sometimes in some detail. But I'm also interested in the

00:19:39.880 mechanisms in between, both the psychological mechanisms, which I think people who are interested

00:19:45.280 in evolutionary psychology would recognize as straight up evolutionary psychology. But I've also do

00:19:51.700 this work looking at hormonal moderators or hormonal mediators of the kinds of phenomena that we're

00:19:59.100 interested in. And maybe this is too nitty gritty for your audience. I don't know. Please just tell

00:20:05.100 me if you want me to back off a little bit in terms of the technical detail. But I think it sort of,

00:20:12.160 you know, puts me in, you know, this field of biological endocrinology or social endocrinology,

00:20:19.040 but also behavioral ecologists, I, you know, reference their work. I look at, I do a lot of

00:20:25.680 comparative work in setting up my studies. So I look at the literature on non-human primates and on

00:20:32.160 female animals who experience estrus all the way across the spectrum. So some of our insights actually

00:20:38.520 come from looking at rodents, you know, humans clearly aren't rodents.

00:20:41.840 Not all of them at any rate.

00:20:43.680 Not all of them, right. Except the rats. But yeah, so, so I mean, the comparative work also figures

00:20:53.640 into my approach. So I said, I want to sort of claim a broader base for understanding the particular

00:21:00.620 social phenomena that I'm interested in, which mostly had to do with intimate relationships.

00:21:04.820 Well, it is a fascinating and fraught intersection of disciplines, as you know, and I think I'm going

00:21:12.000 to lead you onto some of that dangerous territory. There are several taboos here. There's this taboo

00:21:17.680 around viewing the human mind in biological terms at all. And there's a related taboo around acknowledging

00:21:25.740 sex differences. I mean, it's even taboo in some quarters to acknowledge that biological sex is even

00:21:31.860 a thing. And this leads us to what I think you consider to be mistaken notions of feminism. And 1.00

00:21:41.180 in your book, you write about something called Darwinian feminism. So let's just pick a place 0.99

00:21:47.280 to start here. Perhaps we should just start with the basic concern around understanding the human mind

00:21:55.680 in biological and evolutionary terms. I mean, it's not, I don't think anyone at this point thinks that

00:22:00.720 the logic of evolution subsumes every interesting question about what it's like to be us or what it

00:22:08.060 is to have a human mind. But how do you view biology and psychology at this point?

00:22:13.820 You know, I think you kind of have to take it on a case-by-case basis. For some things,

00:22:18.480 like things that are linked with reproduction, and this perhaps is why this is such well-traversed

00:22:22.720 territory in evolutionary approaches, social scientific approaches. You know, so thinking

00:22:30.120 about reproduction, so close to the engine of natural selection, and therefore how our minds

00:22:36.540 and the minds of our cousins, our non-human cousins, have been shaped, that seems very straightforward.

00:22:44.500 Now, that's not going to tell us everything. So we're not going to be able to derive from first

00:22:48.880 principles, everything that we want to understand about humans, and there are plenty of surprises.

00:22:55.520 So, and I can give some examples of some of those, but you're asking me a more general question,

00:23:01.060 which is the intersection between psychology and biology. I don't think that anybody who is credible

00:23:08.820 could say that it's all biology, right? It's turtles all the way down.

00:23:13.940 Because humans do things that are very uniquely human. And I think this is interesting, both in

00:23:21.780 response to, as a potential response to your question, but also as one of the things that's

00:23:27.200 tripped us up in gaining access to information that I think is important. So humans are undeniably

00:23:33.700 their own kind of special species, right? We can drive Porsches, we can, you know, make lattes,

00:23:40.480 we can, we speak multiple languages, we can read and write in those languages. We have a way of

00:23:47.360 preserving cultural knowledge over time that has allowed us to technologically exploit our modern

00:23:56.740 environment, or our environment in general, to an extent that you just don't see with other species.

00:24:03.360 So I think that seeing, so that's just a really important thing to acknowledge, and any competent

00:24:09.600 treatment of evolution and human behavior will include a large component that explores how those

00:24:17.920 things happen, how they make humans unique, how they have, have make the animal models or the more

00:24:25.080 purely biological models inadequate as the full story.

00:24:29.480 You know, of course, the line between biology and culture is difficult to draw, because much of

00:24:34.700 culture has to be viewed as a kind of extended phenotype. And, you know, we've evolved for some

00:24:41.080 tens of thousands of years in the context of having linguistically based culture.

00:24:47.780 Yes. And I think that there are some fascinating evolutionary psychological questions there. So we can

00:24:54.400 ask the question, well, what are the kinds of things that humans bring when they are entering their

00:24:59.760 social world? What are the kinds of things that they bring with them that help them acquire these

00:25:05.460 useful bits of culture? So things like, and this is some work that's been done, has, was done at UCLA

00:25:11.000 and continues to be done all over. It's gotten very popular. It's gotten very influential, I should say.

00:25:17.960 And that is thinking about how we keenly observe different potential behavioral models and which

00:25:26.940 models are, which of those models have behavior that it's most likely to be repeated, because they

00:25:34.060 show some signs of success, right? So I think that there are some really fascinating evolutionary

00:25:38.660 psychological questions about what is the evolved machinery that we bring to this, our social world

00:25:46.640 that allows us to practice, transmit, benefit from technology.

00:25:52.680 Let's focus now on sex and gender, because this is really where you have spent most of your time.

00:26:00.020 First, I think the difference between sex and gender may not even be clear to most people. How do you

00:26:06.240 define these terms?

00:26:07.500 Yeah, well, I think that there's some disagreement about just exactly how we should define the terms.

00:26:12.200 Um, so I think of gender as being more of the sort of like continuous, um, difference in masculinity and

00:26:21.280 femininity. So you can occupy any number of different levels of relative femininity or relative masculinity,

00:26:29.280 the things that we would recognize. So if we can think about masculine and feminine as, um, what is

00:26:35.720 gender typical, um, there is still a ton of variation between those gender typical, um, central tendencies.

00:26:45.000 And so I tend, and so I think it is most appropriate to, and it becomes very awkward, um, otherwise it's

00:26:51.800 most appropriate to, to refer to those things as gender. You know, I, I read a paper, it's been a few

00:26:57.260 years now, um, but I believe it was about mate copying, mate choice copying in guppies. And the guppies in the

00:27:03.560 paper were referred to as having gender. And I just thought, hmm, okay, this is definitely 0.99

00:27:10.840 not how I'm thinking of the appropriate definition of the word. But I think what it points out,

00:27:17.160 yeah, is that people are reluctant to use the word sex, male, female.

00:27:22.280 Right. That's what I was going to say. There's something awkward, not even socially, but just

00:27:27.360 semantically or grammatically using sex in all of these sentences. And I'm sure that in the past,

00:27:34.000 I have used gender in many of these cases as a synonym for biological sex.

00:27:39.280 Yes. And so I would tend to think of, so biological sex, and I, I talk about, so I teach a class,

00:27:45.520 an entire, um, year long freshman cluster course, the so-called sex cluster. Um, it's all about sex and

00:27:51.440 gender. Um, and, um, in that class, we dig deeply into these issues. But one of the things that we do

00:27:58.800 is we sort of arrive at some common definitions, um, and sex and gender, the difference between sex

00:28:04.660 and gender is one of those. And so the way that we tend to think about sex and the way that I think

00:28:09.520 about it is it's more like understanding what are those central tendencies of masculinity and femininity

00:28:16.680 that we can identify as being sexually dimorphic characteristics of, of human beings. Now, of

00:28:24.140 course, there are going to be exceptions, right? There are, um, there are cases, fascinating cases

00:28:28.200 of intersex. Um, there's the question of sexual orientation, which takes people away from those

00:28:34.420 gender typical, um, categories. And so there's still plenty of, um, variation, but I, but I tend to be

00:28:40.600 comfortable with using the word sex referring to biological sex. So if we're talking about at the

00:28:46.320 chromosomal level, if we're talking about, um, on average differences in hormones, although even

00:28:52.520 there things can get a little squishy, but then, then I find, I think sex is, is really most appropriate 0.88

00:28:58.120 and, and even somebody's identity, whether they identify as male or female, I, I would often be

00:29:05.080 comfortable using the word sex there as well. Now that we're fully in the wilderness, let's just define

00:29:10.420 some more of these terms. So, so intersex and transgender and non-binary, give me the lexicon.

00:29:17.420 So intersex people are born, um, with a phenotype that is neither clearly male nor female in some

00:29:24.700 important way. And so the, the classic case, I suppose, would be looking at babies who are born

00:29:31.900 with genitalia that are neither clearly male nor female. So they have an intersex condition.

00:29:37.460 Is there a chromosomal abnormality here? We're just talking about amounts of, of testosterone or

00:29:43.000 not? It has, it has lots of, um, potential triggers. So humans, when we are born, we are

00:29:50.680 sort of what look, you know, those, the, there's sort of a female default to our phenotype. And then 0.93

00:29:56.620 with the appropriate gene and hormone actions, you'll see sex differentiation. Um, you'll see sex

00:30:02.860 differences emerge between males and females in utero and, and well beyond, of course. Um, and so

00:30:09.820 there, at any of those levels, something could be different, um, in, during development. So whether it

00:30:16.620 be at the chromosomal, you know, whether you're XX or XY, um, and some XX individuals will appear to be

00:30:27.160 male in their phenotype. And so, so, so, you know, so there are, so there are the genetic predictors,

00:30:32.420 but then there are other things that can happen down the line that involve hormone levels, um,

00:30:37.720 and potentially also some environmental, uh, determinants, environmental trauma. That's the

00:30:42.700 easiest case. Um, somebody who has a botched genital surgery and is that changed from male to female or

00:30:50.180 vice versa, um, would also potentially have an intersex identity fall into that category of intersex.

00:30:56.340 What's really interesting, I think, and I think really pushes the boundaries of political correctness

00:31:02.960 is to ask the question, well, we know what's gender typical. Usually a male is attracted to

00:31:10.380 a female, a female is attracted to a male. What about these very numerous voluminous cases of people who

00:31:18.520 are, um, attracted to members of the same sex or maybe, or have bisexual attraction, or maybe they just

00:31:24.380 change their attractions over time.

00:31:26.340 Do we think about that as a sort of intersex condition, even though everything else about them

00:31:30.880 might be very gender typical?

00:31:33.500 Right. So let me just, uh, before I wade into that, so non-binary... 0.84

00:31:41.060 Yes, right.

00:31:41.960 ...is a statement about a person's self-perceived gender weighting?

00:31:47.900 Yes. Yes. And so those, those may be people who have an intersex condition, um, or who just

00:31:54.280 want to not be in the gender binary. They, um, are more comfortable being in between, perhaps

00:32:01.680 not having people know anything about the biological foundations of, of their sex at some level.

00:32:08.140 Um, so these are people who will identify openly as queer. Often those people are, um, have same,

00:32:15.300 same-sex attractions. And so part of their queer identity will be breaking out of that binary with 0.57

00:32:21.500 respect to, you know, who one is attracted to. Um, there's just, there are lots of flavors in the,

00:32:29.300 uh, in the, um, you know, the sexuality rainbow, so to speak, um, for humans. And we're discovering

00:32:36.220 even more of them, um, as we move along. So that's, so that's, uh, queer or non-binary. Um, 0.94

00:32:42.760 but then there are, of course, all of the different boxes that you might be able to check on a

00:32:46.460 questionnaire about your sexual orientation.

00:32:49.620 Yeah, the boxes are proliferating. Somebody I saw on Twitter a few months back took a picture of the,

00:32:57.040 the beginning of, I think it was like the, the, the LSAT or some other standardized test where they

00:33:02.660 were asked to check their, their gender. And, uh, there was something like, you know, 12 boxes.

00:33:08.680 Right. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah. And maybe there need to be 12 boxes so that everybody's

00:33:14.920 preference is, um, acknowledged and respected. You know, I know that it's, it's bothersome to people

00:33:21.640 who are, you know, who really prefer binaries and boxes, um, and want to categorize the world in that

00:33:28.720 way. And so we make, make people uncomfortable, I think, when we acknowledge that there are these

00:33:33.060 variations, but I think it's really important to do, um, just, you know, as a scientist who studies

00:33:38.160 these topics that have real human relevance. So these, these students come into my class, um, and

00:33:44.360 maybe, maybe just, uh, questioning their gender identity. They may be asked, have a lot of questions about,

00:33:51.640 you know, how they are different in some way from others that they have noticed. And, uh, you know,

00:33:58.160 one of the things that I, I'm really proud of at my time here at UCLA is exploring those things,

00:34:05.400 talking about them and giving students a language to do both, um, to ask some questions about themselves,

00:34:12.400 but also to, you know, sort of have their consciousness raised about, um, these gendered issues 0.99

00:34:19.560 in our everyday society. Well, I wasn't actually planning to start here, but now that we've opened

00:34:24.160 Pandora's box, let's just stay with these more esoteric questions before we get into just basic

00:34:29.400 differences between men and women. So just to pivot back to the, the time bomb, it sounds like you armed

00:34:36.920 for us. Is it a plausible thesis that homosexuality should be thought of in terms of intersex? Is that

00:34:46.080 what you just suggested? Um, well, I think that we're really pushing the boundaries when we ask that

00:34:52.060 question. Um, and no doubt people will get quite irritated with me for having raised it. Um, but I

00:34:58.720 think that if what, if what we mean by sex, um, is gender typicality and gender typicality is not hard

00:35:08.320 for us to quantify. So what are the, on average, what are the differences? What, what are men like

00:35:13.520 on average? What are women like? We respect the fact of course, that, you know, in defining that, 1.00

00:35:19.760 that there's a lot of variation. Um, but as soon as we recognize that an individual is not fitting

00:35:27.520 into that binary or not even really getting close to the, on average, um, male or female in their,

00:35:34.540 in certain aspects of their phenotype, then I think we, we ask the question, well, do we want

00:35:39.480 to consider that to be an intersex case? I wouldn't say condition necessarily, um, cause that medicalizes

00:35:45.980 it a little bit too much, but, you know, so as soon as we apply, start being principled in our

00:35:50.860 application of these definitions, then I, then I think it leads us to these questions, which rightly

00:35:56.040 have made people quite uncomfortable. Well, then what would you do with all the other

00:36:00.700 just ambiguities of human sexuality or the, or the, the varieties? So you have things that are,

00:36:06.400 I guess, traditionally classed as paraphilia or, you know, something that's, it's definitely

00:36:11.620 non-standard. If someone, if you have a boot fetish or you have something that's, you know,

00:36:16.820 not especially well subscribed, does that throw a, a wrench into any kind of paradigm where you would

00:36:23.240 want to just think in terms of this single continuum? Well, I think that we might think about

00:36:29.780 those cases as just different. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation,

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00:36:59.780 Thank you.

00:37:00.780 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 20, 2018

#135 — Navigating Sex and Gender

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