Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 271 ｜ Investigating the New Generations of Transgender Girls ｜ Guest： Abigail Shrier

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Happy Monday. So

00:00:15.400 today I am going to have an interview. I know typically we don't do interviews on Monday.

00:00:20.620 We did last week and we are today. But when I have an especially exciting person that

00:00:26.600 I want to talk to and I don't want to wait until Friday to play you guys the conversation,

00:00:31.700 then I play it on Monday. And I know you guys are going to gain so much from this conversation

00:00:36.380 that I'm having with journalist Abigail Schreier. She wrote the book Irreversible Damage,

00:00:41.860 the Transgender Craze, Seducing Our Daughters. If it sounds controversial in this day and age, 1.00

00:00:47.740 that's because it is. But we simply talk about the facts that she found in her book,

00:00:53.440 the implications of what is very much a trend in young girls and in teenage girls and the long-term

00:01:01.840 implications and consequences of that. I'm so excited for you to listen to this conversation.

00:01:07.760 I gained a lot of insight and I know that you're going to as well. Without further ado,

00:01:11.880 here is Abigail Schreier. Abigail, thank you so much for joining me.

00:01:16.400 Thank you so much for having me on. Could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:01:20.340 Sure. I'm a journalist. I write most often for the Wall Street Journal. And I'm here because I

00:01:26.260 wrote a book, Irreversible Damage, the Transgender Craze, Seducing Our Daughters.

00:01:32.380 Can you tell everyone how you came upon this subject and decided to write a book about it?

00:01:39.060 Yeah. So this was not sort of a subject that affected me personally, and it wasn't something

00:01:44.080 that I sought out. I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about transgender pronoun laws,

00:01:50.640 compelled pronoun use. In California and New York, there are now laws that assign criminal penalties

00:01:59.320 if you fail to use someone's preferred pronoun. This is straightforwardly unconstitutional. Under the

00:02:06.020 First Amendment in America, the government can't make people say anything. 0.78

00:02:10.740 And I'm a lawyer. And so I wrote a piece about this. And a mother got in touch with me

00:02:17.700 and said her daughter had been caught up in this craze. And in fact, there were parents all over

00:02:23.080 the country going through this with their daughters, girls with no history of gender dysphoria,

00:02:28.780 hitting their teenage years and suddenly deciding they were transgender. And she wanted me to write 0.69

00:02:33.980 about it. And at the time, I thought, well, that's that's the last thing I need is to wade into this.

00:02:40.940 So I passed it on to another journalist. But what I found found was that no one wanted to write about

00:02:45.540 this. So after waiting for a few months, I got back in touch with the woman.

00:02:51.080 And what was what was that process like when you reached out to this woman and kind of had the

00:02:56.360 conversation? How did that develop into the story that I guess then laid the basis for this book?

00:03:01.160 Right. So I wrote I got in touch with her and a whole network of parents who were

00:03:07.560 meeting in secret across the country, terribly worried for their daughters who had suddenly

00:03:15.040 decided they were transgender daughters who are either on hormones or starting hormones and asking 0.98

00:03:19.840 for surgeries. And all these parents, overwhelmingly, they were politically progressive, but they didn't

00:03:25.820 they accepted gay marriage. They had no issue with that. They even would have accepted a gay 0.95

00:03:29.880 daughter. But they didn't think this transgender identification was authentic and they didn't

00:03:34.940 think it was doing their daughter any good. So I eventually wrote the story for The Wall Street

00:03:39.080 Journal last not not this past January, but the January before 2019. And it sort of was explosive.

00:03:45.900 It was the biggest article in a mainstream newspaper to address this contagion. And and I got a lot,

00:03:55.180 a lot of parental response and as well as professional response. A lot of therapists and doctors reached

00:04:01.140 out to me and then I had the basis for a book. And I'm sure you got well, I know you did. You got a lot

00:04:06.400 of pushback. I think there was even an article written in The New York Times in response to your article,

00:04:13.660 correct? That's right. You know, by Jenny Boylan wrote a piece responding to it in The New York Times

00:04:20.080 saying that this wasn't a pure contagion. This was sort of an authentic choice. And, you know,

00:04:26.080 I don't want to put words into her mouth. But, you know, I did get a lot of pushback. I would just say

00:04:32.140 that the numbers kind of speak for themselves. My book is not based on original research. It's based on

00:04:37.720 the research of public health researcher Lisa Lipman at Brown University, who found that the prevalence

00:04:45.000 numbers among teenage girls didn't make any sense. They were way higher than expected. And they came 1.00

00:04:51.060 out of nowhere. This is not traditional, typical gender dysphoria that we're seeing. Right. And we

00:04:57.120 we know this because we've had nearly 100 year diagnostic history of gender dysphoria. It's always 1.00

00:05:02.040 been little boys, you know, preschool emerges in preschool age and they just don't they insist they're

00:05:07.700 not a girl. Don't I mean, not a boy don't want to be a boy. These are these are little boys in

00:05:12.240 terrible distress. And most often they outgrow it. That's what it always was. In the last decade,

00:05:17.620 this this gender dysphoria has exploded as a self diagnosis, specifically among teenage girls. And

00:05:25.440 this is true across the West, not not just in America, you know, United Kingdom, Scandinavia. So

00:05:31.980 it's a big problem. Right. And how did this come about? This wasn't something that we were thinking

00:05:38.200 about as much, at least in mainstream circles, even 10, 20 years ago. So what were the what were the

00:05:46.260 factors that played into what is obviously a contagion? So a few things. So these are young

00:05:55.500 girls. First of all, I don't want to minimize their distress. They're in severe distress. These

00:05:59.100 are girls with high anxiety, high rates of depression, as this generation tends to have,

00:06:03.760 especially among its teenage girls. And when teenage girls are in distress, and this is true of people

00:06:10.180 generally, but especially teenage girls, they tend to look to the culture or look for ways to describe

00:06:16.100 what they're feeling. And one of the things that had become more socially acceptable was to describe

00:06:22.840 their feeling as gender dysphoria. Gender ideology has been pushed very hard in the school systems.

00:06:28.460 It's been pushed very hard on college campuses. It's very sort of in a college campus to declare

00:06:34.460 an LGBTQ identity. And it was something that immediately lifted these girls popularity at a 0.57

00:06:40.240 time when they were really looking to make friends. And then there's social media, which is which has

00:06:46.500 exacerbated the phenomenon enormously. There are all kinds of transgender influencers all across social

00:06:52.160 media. These are young teenagers who promise they post these wonderful, you know, exciting videos.

00:06:58.460 That are fairly addictive. And they promise that if you just start a course of T, all your troubles

00:07:03.420 will disappear.

00:07:04.800 And so would you say that most of these young women who are kind of suddenly saying, okay, when,

00:07:12.520 when they're a teenager that I am transgender, I no longer feel that I'm a girl anymore. Would you say

00:07:18.820 typically what led to that was a feeling of being an outsider in other ways and in, uh, an inability to

00:07:27.380 kind of fit in socially that maybe pushed them in that direction?

00:07:31.940 That that's exactly right. So this is the same old, you know, age old trouble with adolescents that

00:07:37.920 young women have always had. Their bodies are changing fast. Social rules seem to change on them, 0.99

00:07:43.200 you know, all the time with clicks, navigating clicks at school. These girls are very highly precocious.

00:07:48.220 They tend to be, um, you know, um, white middle and upper middle class girls, highly educated parents. 0.83

00:07:54.300 They have a lot of pressure on them and they're not fitting in in school so easily. And, um, the way

00:08:01.080 other girls might have, you know, in prior eras, these same girls would have reached for anorexia 0.99

00:08:06.200 or cutting or bulimia, which were, you know, at various points, very popular. But today the thing to do

00:08:11.920 is to decide that your, your real problem is your gender and that you're supposed to be a boy.

00:08:17.480 I gotcha. And what is the typical response for a young woman who in high school or in college, 0.95

00:08:24.980 maybe they don't go to their parents, but they go to, um, a school counselor or maybe an administrator

00:08:31.040 and say, this is how, this is how I feel. I want to be a boy now. Or maybe they, you know,

00:08:36.880 somehow they have access to a doctor without their parents. What happens from, from there

00:08:44.160 when these young women are affirmed in their new found male identity? Right. So, um, the thing

00:08:52.300 that makes this so different and the reason it has spread, like it has spread so rapidly, like wildfire

00:08:58.480 is that, um, no high school principal celebrates a kid with bulimia. No, no therapist says to a kid

00:09:06.440 who says they're bulimic. That's, Oh, if you're bulimic, then I, you know, that that's great.

00:09:11.400 I'll call you whatever you want. Let's, let's help you get a, um, you know, liposuction, um, to help

00:09:17.520 you deal with your fat. Um, but that is what's happening across schools. The P the school will

00:09:22.460 change a child's. This is, this is true throughout California and New York, New Jersey. They will, um,

00:09:29.360 take the child's name, new name and pronouns. They will keep this from the parent. They keep it secret

00:09:34.360 from the parent. And the child is then encouraged to use the opposite sex bathrooms of their choice. 0.92

00:09:40.000 They, they stay with the boys on the overnight trip and they are treated as a boy in school,

00:09:45.300 um, without the parent's knowledge. So it tends to solidify the identity in the child's mind.

00:09:52.000 And at what age can these young women, um, start taking testosterone and going down the path of 1.00

00:09:59.340 so-called transitioning. So the age of medical consent varies by state and in Oregon, it is 15.

00:10:06.820 And it's not only that they can get these drugs so young, but they get them so easily. So, um,

00:10:13.800 you don't even need a therapist note. You don't need anyone to confirm your diagnosis of gender

00:10:19.360 dysphoria. You simply self-diagnose, you show up at a clinic and say, and it can even be Planned

00:10:24.320 Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is one of the major, um, uh, suppliers of testosterone across the

00:10:29.080 country. So you go into Planned Parenthood and you say, I have gender dysphoria. I've always hated 0.95

00:10:34.220 being a girl. I'm really a boy. And they say, okay, sign these forms. Here's your testosterone.

00:10:39.520 Wow. And I, I wonder what brought us here to the point of being able to so easily accept something

00:10:49.440 that for a very long time, we recognized as a dysphoria. Like you said, we recognize the legitimacy 0.99

00:10:55.580 of the distress that a lot of times young people felt in their own bodies and they were treated in

00:11:01.340 such a way as, as if they had this kind of dysphoria or dysmorphia. Uh, but we have transitioned

00:11:08.960 into an attitude and a very aggressive posture of not just accepting it, not just, um, saying, okay,

00:11:16.720 you know, we'll call you by your pronouns, but actually helping people without the consent of their

00:11:22.500 parents physically transition to me without any thought of the physical and psychological

00:11:28.220 consequences, uh, for that young person's life. Is that true? Yes. Um, one of the really insidious

00:11:35.620 things about this craze is that the activists were able to, to really take over the profession,

00:11:41.460 medical professional organization so that almost every medical professional organization has adopted

00:11:46.660 affirmative care as their standard, meaning that when a patient shows up and says, I hate my

00:11:52.440 body, body, I hate that. I'm, I'm a girl. I'm really a boy. The, the doctor has to agree with

00:11:57.680 them. They have to affirm their self-diagnosis. There is no other mental illness. You know, if a child

00:12:03.320 shows up and says, I hate, I'm so fat, I hate, I hate my body. Please call me fatty. The, the mental 0.99

00:12:08.860 health professional does not respond with, okay, fatty, let's help you get liposuction. Right. But when a

00:12:14.180 child says, I have gender dysphoria, I hate myself. I'm really a boy. The doctor is supposed to say,

00:12:19.780 okay, Jimmy, what, let's talk about how to get you the hormones you need. 0.98

00:12:25.080 So that's the standard. It's not, cause I've heard that it has to be persistent and consistent,

00:12:30.740 you know, for a certain number of years. Are you saying that the standard is actually a lot lower

00:12:35.940 than that? So that is the, that's the DSM definition in the diagnosis, you know, the diagnostic

00:12:42.920 manual that's most, you know, the psychiatric manuals used in the, they, that is the definition of

00:12:48.140 gender dysphoria. They require, you know, consistent, persistent feeling and biological sex, but no 1.00

00:12:54.180 doctors are checking for that. Right. So the patient comes in and says, I have felt this way since I was

00:12:59.680 a child and they'll be coached on social media, exactly what to tell the clinics. And by the way,

00:13:05.020 it's often not even a doctor. They see, um, they, they, they self-diagnose and it's on the basis of the

00:13:10.900 self-diagnosis that they're given medication.

00:13:12.800 What are some of the physical consequences of young girls and teenagers altering their hormones

00:13:20.960 and altering their bodies to try to fit what they believe is their new gender identity?

00:13:26.440 So the, the really insidious thing here is there there's good stuff and bad. So the stuff that's

00:13:33.200 good, the good effects of, for instance, testosterone, and these girls are taking massive doses, 1.00

00:13:38.720 um, are it suppresses anxiety. So they feel better. It delivers euphoria. So they can't wait to tell

00:13:45.580 their friends how great it is. Um, and it even helps them treat, it even helps them treat depression

00:13:50.680 and it also redistributes fat. So girls who have changing bodies, who maybe are having trouble 1.00

00:13:56.040 controlling their weight for the first times in their lives, all of a sudden that's taken care of.

00:14:00.280 So they feel great. The problem is of course, um, long-term it, there's a, a very large risk

00:14:07.380 of infertility. Very, uh, if they've been on it for five years, um, doctors will recommend a

00:14:12.020 prophylactic hysterectomy. Um, it will add body hair and facial hair in ways that don't go away.

00:14:17.880 It alters body feet. It also, it alters facial features and it lowers the voice. Um, it also changes

00:14:24.160 a girl's private anatomy and, and that does not seem to go away even if you, after you go off of it. 0.98

00:14:29.500 So these girls who, uh, for a lot of them decided to transition in this way because they previously 0.70

00:14:37.440 felt, you know, socially isolated or that they weren't celebrated or accepted. Do most of them

00:14:45.380 in your, in your study and your experience find that acceptance and that celebration and that

00:14:52.800 self-confidence that they were looking for? So if these girls were thriving,

00:14:59.020 I wouldn't have written this book, right? If, if, if the book was just about, you know, these girls

00:15:04.120 decide they're transgender, but they get, they go to college, they get great jobs. They have great

00:15:08.920 friends. They're so happy. There's not a book to write. Maybe it is better to, to transition in that

00:15:14.160 case. Um, the reason I wrote the book is because they're often their mental health deteriorates.

00:15:19.520 It's important to know that these girls are not what their, their problem is not actually gender 1.00

00:15:23.700 dysphoria. In fact, it doesn't look like typical gender dysphoria at all. So the things they do to 0.98

00:15:28.020 treat it, you know, including transition don't alleviate their mental health problems. And

00:15:33.220 very often they get worse. They cut off families. They are unhappy. Their depression gets worse.

00:15:38.420 Their dysphoria often gets worse because they go through one treatment, but they still don't quite 1.00

00:15:43.980 look like a boy. Um, so then the question is what's the next treatment they need.

00:16:00.640 We're told by gender activists that if doctors and parents don't affirm their child's boy or girl,

00:16:09.920 new gender identity, even if they're three years old and they say, you know, I feel like I'm a boy

00:16:14.780 or a girl today. I feel like I'm the opposite sex. If that is not affirmed throughout their life,

00:16:19.800 if they're not given, you know, dresses to wear, if they're a boy or a new name, if they're a girl,

00:16:25.000 whatever it is, then that is actually what leads to depression and, and, and suicide. It's the

00:16:30.600 affirmation we hear that alleviates all of those things and allows them to be their full selves and,

00:16:37.600 you know, not be depressed and not feel like outsiders. But is that actually true? Is

00:16:42.300 affirmation, um, is affirmation what they need to alleviate the problems that they have?

00:16:50.080 So there's actually no proof that affirmation leads to better mental health outcomes or that it,

00:16:56.040 um, cures suicidality. Um, you know, there's a very good study by Christina Olson, who's a big

00:17:01.780 proponent of affirmation, but, you know, there are a lot of flaws with the study, um, including the

00:17:07.300 fact that it didn't, it, it looked at the mental health of these kids some period after affirmation,

00:17:13.080 but didn't look at the mental health before they were affirmed. Um, it also relied on parental report,

00:17:19.240 which is not, not bad enough itself, but of course the very parents who transition their young

00:17:26.000 children are, were then asked, are they happier? And of course there's a high incentive for them to

00:17:31.080 say, yes, after all, look what they just did to their, their children. It's very hard for the

00:17:36.120 same parents to admit that there might've been a problem, but there there's just been no indication

00:17:40.800 that long-term this cures suicidality. And in fact, the suicidality rates are extreme and suicidal

00:17:46.460 ideation rates are extremely high even after affirmation and after medical intervention. So

00:17:52.640 there, there's certainly no cure. I think that it's fair to say that it's fairly irresponsible of

00:17:59.340 therapists to trot out the so-called suicide narrative as quickly as some of them do. Um, the moment,

00:18:05.840 a parent is uncomfortable or says, I really don't think this is appropriate for my kids. She never

00:18:10.100 had gender dysphoria as a child. The therapist will often immediately hit them with, well,

00:18:15.460 she may kill herself then it's, it's an incredibly, um, coercive thing for a therapist to say. And I've

00:18:22.760 heard from a lot of parents that it happens as an initial suggestion, not, not even something that

00:18:28.520 they have to work up to. Um, how often do these young women, um, want to transition back to being 1.00

00:18:38.080 a woman? How often are there regrets? So we don't know the rates yet. Um, obviously this has been an 0.96

00:18:45.880 explosive phenomenon in the last 10 years. So we're still waiting to find out. I can tell you that I've

00:18:49.940 interviewed a lot of detransitioners because of course, gender dysphoria was never really, you know,

00:18:55.400 typical gender dysphoria was never really their problem. This is very often no solution. So I've

00:18:59.800 interviewed a lot of women with a lot of regret. I can only tell you that the detransitioner group on 1.00

00:19:05.480 Reddit, um, now has 13,000 members. So we know that there's a, and, and the early fast, the earlier

00:19:14.140 time that I checked, I guess six months prior, it had only 7,000, I think. So, um, we know that this

00:19:20.500 population of detransitioners, so-called, you know, people who did medical transition and now are trying

00:19:26.920 to go back that this is exploding. Um, and it's, it's very worrisome because we are fast tracking

00:19:33.120 transition in this country. Our psychologists and doctors, I mean, they have to know the science

00:19:39.400 and they have, they have to know that this physically, biologically, psychologically,

00:19:44.800 isn't best based on the data that we have, uh, is it best to rush young women into transitioning 1.00

00:19:53.720 simply because they feel, you know, socially isolated? Are, are they just scared of, uh, the,

00:20:02.040 the gender activists? Are they scared of getting canceled? Do they just want to be politically

00:20:06.200 correct? I mean, why, why aren't more doctors standing up and saying, Hey, this isn't medically

00:20:12.260 or scientifically right for these girls? So I think there's a couple of different, you know,

00:20:19.180 um, reasons for this, um, and explanations. One is that the science has become highly politicized

00:20:26.100 like every other area of science. So for every, you know, even though there are a lot of flaws in

00:20:31.080 the studies pushing affirmation, if you, if you're not sort of careful and you don't read them

00:20:35.480 critically, a lot of, you know, science, you know, um, doctors really push the idea that,

00:20:41.480 that transition is better. And it really, it really takes some digging to show that that's

00:20:46.240 not the case, but there's something even worse, which is that in, I think we're up to 18 states

00:20:50.920 have passed, um, conversion therapy laws. Now these laws were intended to ban conversion therapy,

00:20:58.720 the really ugly practices that tried to, that inflicted a kind of torture on gay kids and trying

00:21:05.140 to make them into straight kids. Unfortunately, uh, gender identity language was inserted into these

00:21:11.500 laws so that you're not allowed to, as a therapist, try to convince a child who has discomfort in their

00:21:18.120 biological sex that they trying to help you're not allowed to, um, or, or you, you run the risk of 0.97

00:21:25.200 running afoul of the laws. If you try to help them become comfortable in their, in their biological

00:21:30.260 sex. Um, the reason that matters is because for years, that's exactly how a therapist treated gender

00:21:38.180 dysphoria by helping kids get more comfortable. And they were very successful. It's very strange

00:21:44.720 that this culture and these generations that are very centered on self-love, loving yourself and body

00:21:52.960 positivity are simultaneously saying in many cases that yes, you should hate your body and your body

00:22:00.880 is a mistake and you should deny your body and seek to change your body so it can match what you 0.98

00:22:07.560 feel on the inside. But to me, I mean, that is obviously contradictory. If we're talking about the

00:22:14.580 importance of appreciating your body and appreciating, you know, how God made you, we should say, you know,

00:22:20.800 your body actually isn't a mistake and it's okay. If you are a girl who likes to play sports, if you're

00:22:27.000 a girl who doesn't like to wear dresses, if you are a girl who is, you know, more tomboy or more

00:22:33.380 traditionally masculine, we don't have to abide by every gender stereotype that has ever existed,

00:22:39.720 but that doesn't mean that you need to alter your body hormonally and even surgically. Uh, where,

00:22:48.180 what happened? Like, when did we jump the shark from saying, okay, gender stereotypes don't have 1.00

00:22:53.480 to be abided by, but it's okay for you to be who you are to actually gender stereotypes do have to

00:22:58.320 be abided by and you have to change who you are to match them. I'm just a little bit confused.

00:23:03.160 Right. Well, it's not good today to be a white girl. And a lot of these, it's hard to miss that a 0.82

00:23:09.480 lot of these are white girls. So I don't think it's great to have a white girl body. They're told in so 1.00

00:23:15.240 many ways that it's better to be a boy and it's even better to have a victim status.

00:23:19.900 And that's what this gives them. It's the only victim status that they can choose for themselves.

00:23:25.000 They can't choose to be poor because they're not, there can't choose to be minorities. 1.00

00:23:28.460 They can't even necessarily choose to be gay, but they can choose to be trans. Um, so it's a way that 0.54

00:23:35.540 young girls can get popularity and sympathy in schools and in the university.

00:23:40.040 Oh, that just breaks my heart. You have gotten even, uh, pushback for this book from places like

00:23:48.460 Amazon who said that they weren't going to allow your book to advertise. Is that correct?

00:23:54.160 That that's right. They're there. They advertise all kinds of books that are so excited for teenage

00:23:59.960 girls with no childhood history of gender dysphoria to medically transition and change their bodies in

00:24:05.220 irreversible ways. But if you have a book that's skeptical of that, they don't allow you to

00:24:09.940 promote it. Wow. That's amazing. And they didn't change their mind. I'm sure that you guys kind

00:24:14.980 of asked them, what's the deal with this? And did they have a response?

00:24:19.280 Yes. They said that it, um, I think it ran, they said that it was, um, offensive conduct

00:24:24.540 contained offensive content, which is interesting because right next to my book, depending on what

00:24:29.520 search terms you enter, you will get silicone undergarments for trans, you know, biological men 0.91

00:24:36.000 so that they, you know, have the undergarments to look like they have the anatomy of women. That's, 1.00

00:24:42.000 that's okay. You can sponsor ads for that. But, but my book that's skeptical that these girls are in, 1.00

00:24:46.840 are heading anywhere good. That's, that's not allowed. That's offensive.

00:24:50.620 That is crazy. Um, can you talk about the other side of this as well, not for young women who are 0.99

00:24:58.920 transitioning, but also for young women who, um, are now having their exclusively female spaces

00:25:07.420 invaded, um, by biological males in the name of tolerance and inclusion? What's the future

00:25:14.940 of female sports, female bathrooms, female locker rooms? 1.00

00:25:19.380 Right. So I think the future is bleak. And I think young girls have figured that out. 0.86

00:25:23.320 They know that the culture has turned against them. Part of the, part of the crisis that they're

00:25:27.820 experiencing is not just routine adolescent crisis, but also the fact that, um, they, they know that

00:25:34.720 when, that, that they've noticed that mediocre boy athletes are now allowed to out-compete them,

00:25:40.480 even if they've worked very, very hard. Um, they know that biological men who claim to be women are now 0.96

00:25:47.180 allowed in their locker rooms because it's happened. And, and they know that it's just not that esteemed

00:25:52.540 or great right now to be a girl. Um, so yeah, I think that's having a big effect.

00:25:56.960 It was amazing to me because you mentioned, it's not that great to be a white girl. It's not that

00:26:01.860 great to be a girl right now. Where are the, the feminist groups talking about this, who claim to 1.00

00:26:08.260 be for the empowerment and the protection of young women? I mean, I know there are feminists who are 1.00

00:26:13.820 doing that. Um, JK Rowling, for example, speaking up about some of the just illogic of this movement,

00:26:20.480 but it seems like feminism at large right now is all on board with transgender ideology at the

00:26:27.440 expense of the safety and the wellbeing of girls. That's right. There are a few wonderful

00:26:32.260 organizations, but very few, um, women's liberation front is very good on this, but most of the feminist 0.89

00:26:38.560 organizations, it turned out were more interested in being woke than in protecting young girls. So

00:26:44.420 they've been silent on this issue and they can't wait to celebrate trans, um, biological boys who 0.96

00:26:49.860 say they're trans women. Um, they, they insist that they are really women. They can't wait to give away 1.00

00:26:55.120 young girls, hard earned trophies and scholarships. Um, they, they really, they were so fast to abandon

00:27:01.620 girls. Wow. That's amazing. Um, can you, can you give us any encouragement? This is very, I, it's

00:27:11.640 discouraging for me to hear. It's discouraging for, I have a lot of moms that listen to this podcast,

00:27:17.880 a lot of moms of young girls who are scared. They're doing their best, of course, to protect

00:27:23.240 their children. And I think that, you know, one positive of all of this is that moms and dads are,

00:27:29.460 are waking up to this kind of stuff that we can't just kind of, um, idly watch our kids grow up and

00:27:35.880 trust their schools to raise them and to provide them with the direction that we want them to. And

00:27:40.520 so hopefully parents are getting more involved, but can you give some encouragement or advice to

00:27:45.460 parents, um, who want to make sure that they are protecting and guiding their kids is, is wisely as

00:27:52.560 they possibly can. So I have a lot of encouragement and advice for, for parents in the book. And one thing

00:27:57.740 I'll say is that the generation that was raising kids when the iPhone originally came out in 2007

00:28:03.540 had it really hard because they had no idea of the dangers of the iPhone, both how addictive,

00:28:08.560 how isolating and how much anxiety and mental health distress they were producing in young girls.

00:28:13.340 We now have a mental health crisis that we get among teenage girls that we can pretty precisely 0.66

00:28:18.120 pinpoint to the introduction of social media, which has really tormented them, you know,

00:28:23.200 girls who always compared themselves to other girls. One thing parents can do is first of all, 1.00

00:28:28.340 they, they've got to get their kids off social media. These girls need to spend more time with 1.00

00:28:32.520 friends in person talking. Um, that, that's a, that's a big thing that we're missing today.

00:28:38.280 That's so important for young girls. They need to know that they're not alone and social media

00:28:43.120 doesn't, doesn't give them that. Um, another thing is that parents need to be aware of the gender 0.99

00:28:48.060 ideology being pushed in the schools and they need to stop believing the lie that you need to push

00:28:53.440 gender ideology in the schools in order to stop bullying. It's simply not true. A school can oppose

00:28:59.320 bullying of all and any children on any basis without introducing gender confusion into the schools.

00:29:06.640 And how can parents speak up to their schools without, uh, you know, I mean, a lot of them fear

00:29:14.000 getting slammed or even fear having their lives ruined. Nowadays, it's just normal to dox people

00:29:19.620 and call them Karen because they say something that you don't like. Um, is there a kind of a strategy

00:29:25.480 that parents can employ to productively have a dialogue with school administration or the school

00:29:31.180 board, whatever it is about these kinds of policies? Well, that's why I wrote the book. I wrote the

00:29:36.420 book to provide that. I mean, the book is not political. It's not religious. I kept everything to do

00:29:42.420 with those things out of it. It's just a journalistic, you know, skeptical exploration.

00:29:46.840 And I talked to everybody. I talked to people on both sides, um, because I really wanted to

00:29:52.320 investigate what was going on. How are these girls faring and what could we do about it? And, 0.81

00:29:57.180 and that's what I did. I really hope to provide ammunition to helping parents fight for the girls.

00:30:02.760 Can you tell everyone where they can purchase your book and where they can find you on social media?

00:30:07.860 Sure. Um, I'm on Twitter at Abigail, Abigail Schreier, uh, on Twitter. And then, um, the book

00:30:14.980 can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and books a million, wherever books are sold.

00:30:19.480 Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This was a great conversation and I am loving your book. I'm reading

00:30:25.020 it right now. And I know that there are going to be lots and lots of people who go out right now

00:30:29.900 and, uh, and order your book. Is it at, I'm guessing it's also at local bookstores that people can

00:30:36.560 support and go out and buy the book as well? I think it is. I think it is. I haven't actually

00:30:41.320 entered one in a while, but I think it is. Right. Well, I encourage people to do that.

00:30:46.000 And, uh, maybe even instead of buying it on Amazon, just to support their local bookstore,

00:30:51.440 but thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

00:30:55.620 It's such a great, it's great to talk to you, Allie. Thank you so much. Thank you.

00:31:06.560 Bye-bye.

00:31:11.260 Bye-bye.

00:31:13.360 Bye-bye.

00:31:13.420 Bye-bye.

00:31:13.500 Bye-bye.

00:31:16.000 Bye-bye.

00:31:17.520 Bye-bye.

00:31:19.760 Bye-bye.

00:31:22.640 Bye-bye.

00:31:33.720 Bye-bye.

00:31:35.380 Bye-bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 06, 2020

Ep 271 ｜ Investigating the New Generations of Transgender Girls ｜ Guest： Abigail Shrier

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