Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 01, 2021


Ep 448 ｜ Gay, Feminist, and Against Trans Activism (Part 2) ｜ Guest： Dr. Kathleen Stock


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

174.81984

Word count

5,426

Sentence count

277

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In Part 2 of my conversation with author Kathleen Stock, we talk about gender identity in children and how it has changed over the years. Kathleen shares her own experience of growing up with a gender identity disorder and how she dealt with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. You guys loved part
00:00:15.460 one of my conversation with author Kathleen Stock. And so this is part two. I'm really
00:00:21.800 excited for you guys to hear it. Without further ado, here again is Kathleen Stock.
00:00:30.000 When it comes to children, I just cannot believe that the psychological and psychiatric profession
00:00:37.760 have, I don't know what has happened to them. I really don't know what has happened to them
00:00:42.580 because these are not stupid people and they're not, you would think, particularly conservative.
00:00:48.040 But when it comes to this issue, I've got books which say, you know, a child's gender identity
00:00:52.660 emerges around the age of three. And I've seen videos of gender identity therapists,
00:01:00.000 talking about looking for evidence in children. And like, maybe the boy picks up a hair clip or,
00:01:05.420 you know, the girl moves towards the action man. And these are signs of something inside them. It's
00:01:09.760 just, it's just incredible. It's strange. And I'm not totally sure to answer your question,
00:01:17.020 why in this segment of science, it seems like many academics and doctors and scientists are so
00:01:23.120 anti-scientific. Um, but I, I don't know why we can't allow just kids to be kids. I think about
00:01:30.860 when I was, um, when I was in preschool, the only thing that I would allow my mom to put me in was
00:01:36.940 jeans and a white t-shirt. I did not want to wear a dress. I didn't want to wear bows. That embarrassed
00:01:41.380 me. Um, and I, you know, I bought, I, my parents were a little concerned there for a while because
00:01:47.100 I only wanted to read books about snakes and I really liked worms. I mean, it was just me being
00:01:52.900 a kid. I had two older brothers at the same time. I had a boyfriend from the time that I was in
00:01:57.840 preschool. I was just being who I was. And there was never a thought in my parents' mind or in my
00:02:02.560 mind that maybe she should be the other gender. And I just wonder if I had been the same way in this
00:02:09.840 era, would there have been teachers and administrators and social workers and pediatricians
00:02:15.260 in my life pushing me into starting a plan of, of hormone blockers and how drastically that would
00:02:22.880 have changed my life for the worst. And you just have to think about how many victims of that, um,
00:02:28.620 are there right now? Yeah. I mean, I agree. And one of the kind of powerful aspects of the, um,
00:02:35.480 pushback in Britain has been lesbians in particular and gay men, um, who as children strongly identified
00:02:42.320 with the opposite sex, maybe called themselves boys' names, um, insisted. I mean, I know several 0.99
00:02:48.400 of my friends as children insisted on being called boys' names. They didn't want to like
00:02:53.560 pee sitting down, you know, they really, really identified with boys and, um, they were,
00:03:00.880 they played with boys and that's, you know, was all at the time considered so unworrying. So,
00:03:07.100 you know, just fine. Um, and it would just be very different for some families, not every family,
00:03:13.340 like we need an exaggerate. This is not like going on everywhere, but it is going on. And, um,
00:03:19.500 the worrying thing is that, like I say, parents who feel a bit uncomfortable with that can have now
00:03:24.440 have a narrative that they can just quickly turn to. They have internet chat groups that can help them
00:03:30.080 buy, you know, like packers for, um, trans-identified girls. So, you know, there's just a whole bunch 1.00
00:03:40.260 of paraphernalia now you can buy or, um, books you can read to kind of support this fantasy that you're
00:03:47.920 going to get a daughter at the end of it when you started with a son or vice versa. Yeah. I mean,
00:03:54.080 I just don't know what to say about it.
00:03:56.080 I think parents are scared too, because there's been cases in America and Canada and the UK of
00:04:01.740 parents refusing to affirm the gender identity of their child and their child being, um, taken away
00:04:09.840 from them temporarily. Sometimes, um, you know, there, there are worst cases of that and parents
00:04:15.820 are scared because they love their child and they want to do what's best for their child.
00:04:19.880 And some parents just don't know any better. And there's some, in some cases scared of the state.
00:04:25.060 And so I understand an awful situation. It is. I mean, really we have to go to the powerful people
00:04:32.320 in this. We have to go to the LGBT lobby groups, which have lots of money. We have to go to educators.
00:04:37.440 We have to go to academics who are thus waving this through. And we have to go to the, um, psychiatric
00:04:42.440 and psychological professional associations who have all signed. Well, in Britain, they've signed a
00:04:47.320 memorandum of understanding that they will only affirm gender identity. And there's a similar
00:04:52.480 kind of understanding, I think, in place in America. So it's very hard to find a therapist
00:04:56.840 who could talk you through this stuff, say, hang on a minute, maybe, maybe you just, maybe there's
00:05:02.380 another narrative here. You know, maybe we should wait and see what happens because there is evidence
00:05:07.160 that, um, if you wait, most kids will desist from thinking that they're the opposite sex, but you have
00:05:15.160 to give it time. You can't leap into anything. Now, of course, for some very small number of
00:05:19.860 people, being trans might be the right thing to do, but I think it's got to be an adult decision 0.95
00:05:24.700 after, uh, quite a lot of talking and thinking rather than something that we would let a nine
00:05:31.100 year old or a 10 year old do.
00:05:32.960 Yeah. But you can kind of see the logic behind some trans activists. If you truly believe that 1.00
00:05:38.300 gender identity is just as real, or if not more real than biological sex, if you believe that it's 0.63
00:05:44.020 the same as sexual orientation and that sexual orientation is something that you're born with,
00:05:48.800 um, then you could see the logic of someone saying, well, why shouldn't we allow 11 year
00:05:53.960 old or 12 year old to be who they really are? And I know that you would disagree with that
00:05:58.540 conflation, but you could see how someone who conflates those, you know, gender identity
00:06:03.020 and sexual orientation, they, if they think that, okay, any kind of therapy is quote conversion
00:06:11.440 therapy. And if they oppose conversion therapy for gay kids, then that means that they oppose
00:06:17.120 any kind of quote conversion therapy for trans kids. And so that conflation, I think also is part
00:06:23.460 of the issue is that they lump it all together and they say, well, no, we just have to affirm.
00:06:31.220 Um, and that's the most healthy path that we can take.
00:06:34.300 Yeah. I mean, that conflation that happens in the Equality Act, your Equality Act, it happens, um,
00:06:40.400 in the Yoga Kiata principles, which were in 2003 and which have influenced all sorts of international
00:06:45.200 bodies legislation. They put sexual orientation and gender identity together in the same sentence,
00:06:50.580 in the same breath. And they say, both are fundamental aspects of your, um, of you and, uh,
00:06:56.460 no one should be forced to suppress them or pressure to change them, but they're very different
00:07:02.720 things. I mean, gender, in my view, gender identity is not what makes you trans or not make what makes
00:07:07.500 you trans is, is a behavior or a choice to modify your body or to take hormones or to dress a certain 1.00
00:07:13.940 way or to start even just announcing to the world or a certain way. It's not a thing inside you. That's
00:07:18.340 like always been there bursting to come out just in the same way, actually, sexual orientation is
00:07:23.000 expressed through behavior, like who you're attracted to and who you date and who you marry and who you
00:07:29.120 sleep with and so on. So, um, I, it's not that I don't think, I do think trans people should be
00:07:36.180 protected in law. They certainly shouldn't be fired for being trans. They certainly shouldn't
00:07:41.340 face any kind of discrimination or harassment for being trans, but that's not to say that gender
00:07:46.240 identity is what makes them trans or what makes it worth protecting them. So it's, I would like to
00:07:51.820 separate out these two issues and say, let's think about what, um, protections, legal protections and
00:07:57.960 social protections we need for trans people. Let's get gender identity as this concept, which is just
00:08:03.460 a very bad concept out, out of the discussion and do it some other way.
00:08:17.800 You mentioned about separating out and then you talked about discrimination and trans people
00:08:22.900 shouldn't be discriminated against. I also think it's important to kind of delineate,
00:08:27.960 certain kinds of discrimination because I think we would probably both agree that biological males,
00:08:35.240 I don't like that phrase, but it seems like we have to, for the sake of clarity,
00:08:38.960 should be discriminated against when it comes to who we put in women's prisons and who we let into 1.00
00:08:45.660 women's shelters and who we let into women's bathrooms and who we let into women's locker rooms. 0.62
00:08:49.520 So that's where it kind of, the language kind of gets tricky because the fact of the matter is,
00:08:54.800 is that some of us are advocating for, quote, discrimination. We're not advocating for,
00:09:00.080 um, you know, mistreatment or to not have, you know, basic human rights, but we are talking about,
00:09:06.400 okay, the right of a woman to be able to have a sex protected space should trump any sort of so-called 0.99
00:09:14.120 right of a biological man to enter those spaces. And so it is a kind of discrimination that we're
00:09:19.080 advocating for. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I, I use the word discrimination, um, in a different sense
00:09:26.380 there. And I agree that we need better, more flexible, more fine grained concept because
00:09:31.100 there's different kinds of discrimination and some are permissible in some contexts. So in the British
00:09:35.320 legal system, we have a law which says that discrimination of the kind you mentioned
00:09:40.540 is permissible where it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim. And it seems, it used to seem
00:09:47.580 obvious to everyone that it was a legitimate aim to protect women from sexual, potential sexual
00:09:54.740 predators when they got undressed in changing rooms or when they were sleeping in dormitories or halls of
00:10:01.160 residence or where they were seeking refuge from violent males in domestic violence shelters. So that
00:10:07.820 used to be like absolutely uncontroversial, that that was a good place to do sex discrimination and sports
00:10:14.760 teams is another one. Like if that's built into our equality act too. Unfortunately, like in America too,
00:10:22.480 trans activism in the UK has been very successful in convincing people that really the important grounds for
00:10:28.740 these discriminations is gender identity. So now it should be that anyone with a female gender identity gets 0.92
00:10:36.140 into the changing room or the prison or the, I mean, in the right circumstances or, um, the sports team.
00:10:44.080 Now that's something that anyone could say they had that you don't, as I keep stressing, it's doesn't
00:10:48.800 have to be, you don't have to have had any surgery on your genitalia or anywhere else. You don't have to
00:10:54.300 take in any hormones. You just, it's, so it's written into policies across the UK that the legitimate
00:11:01.440 permissible criteria of entry into the shower or the changing room or the facility is gender identity,
00:11:07.900 not sex. Now that arguably is illegal, but it has yet to be tested. Um, and we have a strong lobbying
00:11:15.680 group saying, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. That's what it always was. Right. There was a story out of,
00:11:21.660 um, California here about, um, a group of girls at a, at a public sports facility who walked in
00:11:29.260 to a locker room where there were kind of these open showers and there was a man and they're taking
00:11:36.320 a shower and they were obviously traumatized. There were 17 year old girls. They told their
00:11:40.360 parents, the parents complained. Well, the, the, uh, local officials said that they couldn't do
00:11:46.280 anything because this grown man, just like, like we were saying earlier, just a man, no kind of changes
00:11:51.960 whatsoever said that he identifies as a woman. And so you can already kind of see the tangible
00:11:56.920 consequences of this kind of thing. What we would have considered even five years ago,
00:12:00.640 sexual harassment or sexual assault of young girls is now being normalized as something that we just
00:12:06.120 all need to accept. And my bit of optimism is that ultimately people won't stand for that kind of
00:12:14.940 thing that they will risk being called a quote, transphobe or a turf or a bigot for the sake of
00:12:20.220 their daughters and for the sake of protection of their wives and friends and sisters. Um, that's,
00:12:27.780 that's my hope. Maybe I'm, I'm too hopeful in these crazy times, but I do think that this issue is tipping
00:12:34.540 people over the edge. Well, I mean, there's been quite a few cases in the UK. There's been a notorious
00:12:41.780 case of, um, a convicted rapist and pedophile being put in a female prison and then sexually assaulting
00:12:49.560 female prisoners. Now, female prisoners are some of the most vulnerable population. Most of them 0.83
00:12:53.920 are in there for petty crime. A large proportion have been in the social care system, um, were
00:12:58.880 homeless at the time they went in. And, um, the thought that we are putting sexual offenders
00:13:03.340 in female prisons because they say they are female, just again, it's one of those ones where you just 1.00
00:13:10.480 kind of spin out. But, um, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe that sort of case will push people over
00:13:17.800 the edge, but one for that to happen, there's two things. One for that to happen, it has to be
00:13:23.380 talked about in bigger circles than the conservative ones in which it's being talked about, right?
00:13:28.200 Because, um, we all need to hear about this. We all have an interest in it. But the other thing I'm
00:13:33.200 really worried about is some kind of backlash because I don't think, I think trans people should 1.00
00:13:38.320 be protected in law as, as in they shouldn't be fired for being trans. I think that gay people
00:13:44.300 should also be protected in law, um, in various ways. And I'm worried that this, um, overreach
00:13:50.960 on behalf of LGBT organizations, this crazy overreach is going to result in some kind of 0.87
00:13:57.600 backlash against the, um, gay people too, and trans people who are just wanting to get on with
00:14:02.020 their lives. You know, transsexuals who've been, um, living as the other sex for years without any 1.00
00:14:08.740 problem and without making any huge demands on people around them. You know, that's, those are the
00:14:13.240 people that are going to suffer as well. Well, I think that the fact that you and I,
00:14:19.060 and I've talked to many other people who identify as gay or identify as feminist or identify on the
00:14:24.000 left, that a lot of people who identify as those categories on my podcast, I am a conservative,
00:14:30.640 traditional Christian. The fact that we find these kind of strange bedfellows, we find ourselves 0.99
00:14:36.840 linking arms with people who on other subjects, we might not link arms with, we might not agree with.
00:14:41.120 I think that that actually bodes very well. That's not to say there isn't a concern of some
00:14:46.140 kind of backlash, of course, but I do see, you know, not just when it comes to this, but when it
00:14:52.220 comes to a lot of the, um, what people feel like is a totalitarian movement coming from the left.
00:14:59.000 And I know that's not exclusive to leftism, but a lot of people feel that way. I see atheists and,
00:15:03.680 and Christians and agnostics and gay people and straight people and conservatives and some liberals
00:15:10.100 coming together and kind of pushing back against what we see as insanity. And so I think that the
00:15:15.400 fact that there is kind of this, uh, there's a, an alliance of a variety of backgrounds and political
00:15:22.000 stripes, I think actually could hopefully push back against any sort of, you know, unintended consequence
00:15:30.780 to say no to the, you know, uh, insane parts of the trans activist movement. 0.59
00:15:39.980 Well, I hope you're right. I mean, I certainly see that that is bound to happen. It's not,
00:15:45.440 it's, it's completely predictable that a vast range of people from a vast range of backgrounds
00:15:51.680 and interests and religious commitments or atheist commitments or whatever,
00:15:54.820 will have an interest in maintaining that there are males and females in the world. You know,
00:16:00.800 I mean, who wouldn't, it's, it's crazy that this ever happened. So, um, yeah, there's going to be
00:16:07.040 very unusual alliances. I mean, personally speaking, I am tired of, uh, the purity spirals
00:16:15.160 that happen on the left and I'm tired of identity politics. So I can identify myself
00:16:20.880 as, you know, economically left, but not necessarily culturally left. I think there's
00:16:25.300 another interesting feature of this, that there's like a range, I think the left and the right are
00:16:29.860 becoming, um, no, not everyone fits so cleanly between those two things now, because there's,
00:16:36.800 um, I mean, this is different conversation, but obviously there's sort of cultural left and then
00:16:40.480 there's economic left and you don't have to be on, on the same side in both those cases.
00:16:45.160 And I think conservatives in the United States, there was this kind of scatterplot of 2016 voters
00:16:52.780 that said where the vast majority of people who identify as conservatives are, is they're conservative
00:16:58.540 economically and they're conservative socially, but there are far more people who are conservative
00:17:03.340 socially and culturally and are okay with some economic leftism and economic populism.
00:17:09.980 Then there are people who are socially liberal and economically conservative. And we are not really
00:17:18.700 well represented by the people who are in charge and the elites, because that kind of social liberalism,
00:17:25.520 well, I'm just not really going to speak up about this whole gender thing or any of these cultural
00:17:29.200 movements, but capitalism, libertarianism, that's actually not in line with the majority of conservative
00:17:37.100 Americans. And so I think what you're speaking of is absolutely true. As far as the population goes,
00:17:41.980 I just don't think that's represented at least here in the United States by the people who are
00:17:46.680 making decisions. And that, you know, that does kind of concern me, obviously.
00:17:52.080 Yeah. I mean, I think, um, we've talked a lot about the influence of the left, but we can,
00:17:56.260 and I don't know where you would put libertarians actually, but I would, you know, I think of libertarians
00:18:00.080 as more on the right than on the left. And, um, there's a strong kind of libertarian influence in
00:18:05.000 trans activism. There is a kind of, um, you know, let everybody radically be who they want to be,
00:18:12.220 no matter as long as, and then they say, as long as they're not harming anyone else, obviously be,
00:18:15.580 then you can downplay all sorts of different kinds of harms, particularly when it comes to women. So,
00:18:20.300 um, I think I'd like to see rejection of that. I think that the free market, like I explained,
00:18:25.200 I think has a big role to play in this too. It's like monetizing, uh, dysphoria. It's monetizing
00:18:32.180 people's uncomfortableness with themselves and particularly teenagers. And, and so that's
00:18:37.860 something I think should be reined in by the right. Um, so there's a lot, there's something
00:18:42.840 for everyone to work on. Well, yes. And I think the right, a lot of people on the right and the left
00:18:48.000 could possibly agree with the growth of corporate power, which has been, um, exacerbated in the United
00:18:56.440 States by mostly Republicans giving disproportionate tax breaks and deregulation to these corporations,
00:19:03.340 making them grow and grow and grow to where we have the, almost this corporate oligarchy who is
00:19:08.780 pushing things like gender identity down our throats. And hopefully the right and the left 1.00
00:19:14.400 could kind of agree that, okay, we've given these big corporations too much power. There's no need for
00:19:19.020 us to continue giving tax cuts to corporations at the expense of the working and middle class.
00:19:24.180 And so you do kind of hope that that sort of, I don't know if it's, I don't know if I should say
00:19:28.680 populism, but a little bit of economic populism could bring people together in that way. And at
00:19:35.200 least say, okay, we've given these entities too much power. And I think the right is only now waking
00:19:41.640 up to the dangers of corporate power. Yeah. I mean, it's an elite and, uh, I think there are several
00:19:49.040 elites involved in this particular nightmare, you know, there is a kind of LGBT elite that have gained, 1.00
00:19:58.160 um, enormous status through hard fought, laudable battles on behalf of gay people,
00:20:05.280 but are now, you know, looking for new projects. And then there is the sort of, I would say a kind of
00:20:11.780 male led indifference to the effect on women's rights, um, because they just don't care as much 0.99
00:20:19.240 about it. And then there is, um, the money men, and then there's the left, which is a very masculine,
00:20:25.480 uh, chauvinist place as well. So yeah, there's all sorts of elites going on here. And I think, um,
00:20:32.320 ordinary people, um, oh yeah. And the academic elites, of course, and I speak as an academic,
00:20:38.940 you know, a fully prepared member of the academic elites, but I completely recognize their role in
00:20:43.320 this and how ordinary people are the people that are going to suffer. Yeah. Um, it's not,
00:20:47.640 so it's not the, you know, the middle-class academic, um, who writes books about how we
00:20:53.880 should have full surrogacy now, who is going to pay the cost of, um, their, you know, homeless hostel
00:21:02.400 being, uh, suddenly, suddenly having to be pushed into the presence of a, of a, of a male in their,
00:21:08.660 in a homeless hostel, or, you know, they don't have as much reliance on public services.
00:21:12.620 It's there that it's going to affect people most.
00:21:25.700 Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. And I do only have one quick question to, to ask you, but,
00:21:34.100 um, when you say middle-class, see, I typically think of this as most elite movements, like critical
00:21:40.820 theory, like critical race theory, like gender identity, being coming from the upper class and
00:21:46.020 being a war on the middle class. I think that's just a British, a British, my, my problem translation. 0.79
00:21:53.380 So middle class, I mean, upper middle class as opposed to working class. Okay. So we kind of
00:21:58.580 use working class and middle class interchangeably here, obviously there's like a wide range. And so
00:22:07.700 I just wanted to clarify that for people, uh, for people listening. And it's also interesting how we
00:22:13.300 kind of view economic classes in the United States. Like we might see, you know, a New York Times reporter
00:22:19.060 who only makes $60,000 a year as part of the elites, but she's not necessarily, she's not making as much 1.00
00:22:27.140 money as the person who lives in, you know, Middletown, Kansas, who's making a hundred thousand
00:22:31.860 dollars a year, but as a plumber, like our view of what is elite and what is not is, um, and what
00:22:37.780 is working classes and what is not, is not necessarily tied to income in the United States.
00:22:42.020 So it does just seem like it's these elites, whether they're rich or not pushing it down, um,
00:22:49.540 on, I don't know if the right word is just regular people, just kind of working people. But I think
00:22:54.820 essentially we agree. Um, no, no, no, no. Um, I, I, we agree though, on the premise,
00:23:02.660 speaking of people in charge and elites, um, you have been, you've received some pushback or a lot
00:23:09.860 of pushback, and I don't know what any of this means. So you might have to clarify for us. Um,
00:23:14.900 you were made an officer of the order of the British empire, uh, in the 2021 new year honors
00:23:21.540 list for services to higher education. So I don't know what that means, but apparently
00:23:25.380 a lot of people were mad that you, uh, earned this accolade.
00:23:29.380 Yeah. I didn't know what it mean meant either when I got it. Um, so yeah, that's gonna,
00:23:34.260 uh, I very unexpectedly. So I've been talking about this for a while and I've been also talking about
00:23:40.740 the impact on academic freedom and freedom of speech. Um, and I've been trying to draw attention
00:23:45.540 to the fact that, um, academics who feel like me are not free to discuss this in the same way as
00:23:52.020 other academics. We have faced all these extra obstacles. We can't publish our work. We can't
00:23:56.420 give talks without them being protested or no platformed. Uh, there's many open letters and
00:24:00.660 petitions against me and all sorts of things have happened to me. So I've been trying to draw attention
00:24:04.740 to that. Um, then very unexpectedly, I got an honor, um, in our honors list. I don't know if you have a kind
00:24:11.780 of presidential honor type thing, but ours is from the queen, although she obviously has nothing to
00:24:16.820 do with it really. Um, but there's a kind of committee that looks at nominations and I got this
00:24:22.020 honor, um, called an OBE, um, very unexpectedly. And yes, that really enraged people who hate me even
00:24:32.580 further. So, uh, at that point, 600 philosophers, um, many of whom were in the, in the U S actually,
00:24:40.740 um, wrote an open letter about me, you know, they, what they accuse me of is every time is
00:24:47.140 transphobia. This, they assume that I must hate trans people, um, that I must, what do they accuse
00:24:53.620 me of propping up the patriarchy, uh, various other ridiculous things. Oh yeah. Stopping, stopping
00:25:01.300 trans people from having life, life saving surgeries, me personally. Um, and so on, you know,
00:25:07.540 very hyperbolic rhetorical and turns out they didn't even know what I actually thought because
00:25:11.860 they accused me of something in the letter that turns out I didn't think I have actually publicly
00:25:16.580 said, I don't think so, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. You're always told not you personally,
00:25:23.540 but maybe you personally, if you have any objection to this on a philosophical or political level,
00:25:30.420 um, you're told obviously that you hate trans people personally, which is not true for you or for
00:25:34.900 me that you don't think that they should have rights. And I think the most egregious thing
00:25:39.220 that I hear so often from them is that you have blood on your hands. Like the suicides of trans 1.00
00:25:45.620 people is on your hands. If you don't agree with trans activism and that scares a lot of people from
00:25:52.020 speaking out, they see pushback that you got and you're in the academic field. You have all of these
00:25:57.220 credentials and obviously you're very thoughtful about how you approach it. And you're progressive in a
00:26:01.700 lot of ways too. And you're even getting that pushback. That makes a lot of people intimidated.
00:26:06.500 Can you give some people some hope and encouragement? They want to speak up,
00:26:09.620 but they don't know what to do. And maybe they're scared.
00:26:12.900 Um, yes. I mean, I just want to say about the suicide rhetoric. Um, it's, it's completely
00:26:19.460 irresponsible. And, um, it's also propaganda because, uh, there isn't particularly good evidence.
00:26:27.300 I mean, there isn't any evidence that the, um, I don't know what the claim would be. The thing is
00:26:32.980 that trans activists use the threat of suicide to say that parents should accept their children's
00:26:40.500 transitions or in a, in Britain, um, a trans activist organization called mermaids, which
00:26:46.740 lobbies on behalf of children used again, this rhetoric about the potential for suicides to say that, um,
00:26:55.700 children should be given puberty blockers quicker. You know, it's just used all the time as a tool to
00:27:00.820 get certain political demands met and, um, it's not evidence-based. So, and also the other thing is
00:27:08.580 it's really, suicide is very contagious. Um, suicide talk tends to produce more suicide. So it's
00:27:14.820 completely irresponsible to talk as if it was a simple causal story. And when, when suicide does occur,
00:27:21.220 tragically, there's numerous factors, usually it's, it's, it's connected to all sorts of
00:27:25.860 complicated background stories. It couldn't just be one thing. Right. Anyway, could I give people hope?
00:27:31.380 Um, well, I've got a lot of solidarity and friendship out of, um, this because I've met many amazing people
00:27:39.780 who are, um, worried about this too. So that's, I think, you know, that was a definite bonus for me.
00:27:46.260 I also feel incredibly relieved. I can say what I think. Um, and people should not underestimate
00:27:53.940 that particularly academics. If anyone's watching, I mean, your job is to do this stuff. And if you
00:28:00.820 can't do it, who can? So you will feel an enormous sense of relief to be able to say what you think.
00:28:06.740 Um, and now I've written a book which, uh, hopefully explains in more detail why there,
00:28:14.580 we don't have to accept the choice that we've been given between you must be transphobic, um,
00:28:21.620 or you must accept trans activism. Those are the two choices made that we're told are available to us,
00:28:27.860 but that's not true. We could think of creative ways to protect trans people through law and maybe
00:28:34.660 even to grant, you know, to develop new spaces where they feel safe. Um, if needs be, you know,
00:28:40.260 there's all sorts of creative stories we can, uh, conversations we can have that don't involve
00:28:45.380 these black and white aggressively asserted binaries, um, that we're being forced to accept.
00:28:52.580 Yes. And I really encourage people to get your book. I think that, you know, knowledge is power and
00:28:57.540 people educating themselves and realizing that there is someone, um, like you who is speaking out
00:29:02.740 against this stuff, even amidst a lot of pushback and a lot of hate. I think that courage begets
00:29:08.100 courage in itself. And people need to realize that about themselves as well, that their own
00:29:14.500 courage and their own willingness to speak up despite pushback gives courage to other people.
00:29:19.140 And that kind of contagion is something that we desperately need. Um, people can get your book.
00:29:24.020 I'm guessing on Amazon, but we try not to direct people towards Amazon quite as much. Is there
00:29:30.500 anywhere else they can get your book? Um, well, the situation in America is a bit complicated
00:29:35.380 because I, um, couldn't get an American deal, funnily enough, because no, no American publisher
00:29:40.340 wants to touch it. So I've got a British publisher, Little Brown, and they are making the ebook available
00:29:45.860 on the launch date, which is May the 6th. And then they hope that hardback will be available later,
00:29:52.180 some at some point later. So you can get it as an ebook. I'm afraid you might have to get that
00:29:57.220 through Amazon. I don't know, to be honest, there's another one. But, um, or you can order
00:30:02.020 it from the UK, um, through any one of multiple, um, outlets. So you just go to Little Brown and look
00:30:10.340 for me and they've got links to all the places you can order it. Okay, great. Well, we'll put that link
00:30:15.540 in the description to this podcast episode. So people can order it. It's called Material Girls,
00:30:21.220 Correct? Mm-hmm. Material Girls, Why Reality Matters for Feminism. But it's not just for 1.00
00:30:27.140 feminists. It's basically for humans. Right, right. And it comes out May 5th. Awesome. Well, 1.00
00:30:32.180 I know people are going to gain a lot, a lot of insight and a lot of encouragement for that,
00:30:37.380 from that. So thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. I'm sure everyone can follow you
00:30:42.340 on social media. Do you have a website? I do, KathleenStock.com. And I am
00:30:48.500 DocStock with an extra K on the end on Twitter, where you can find me arguing with people.
00:30:55.620 As we all do, as we all do on Twitter. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
00:31:00.740 Thank you, Ellie. Thanks for having me.