Ep 767 ｜ Hershey's Celebrates Women... By Celebrating a Man ｜ Guest： Bethany Mandel
Episode Stats
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Summary
Jon Stewart thinks he made a really good point about drag queens and guns, but did he? Also, Hershey s has used a man in their ads to celebrate Women s History Month. And Bethany Mandel is here to talk about an incredible book that she co-wrote called Stolen Youth, about how the indoctrination in our schools is preying upon the innocence of our kids.
Transcript
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Jon Stewart thinks he made a really good point about drag queens and guns, but did he?
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Also, Hershey's has decided to use a man in their advertisements to celebrate Women's History Month.
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Also, my friend Bethany Mandel is here to talk about an incredible book that she co-wrote called Stolen Youth.
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And it's about how the indoctrination in our schools and the institutional capture that we see in all kinds of institutions in our country is preying upon the innocence of our kids.
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And she's got some really great tips to fight back.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Just a reminder that women have XX chromosomes.
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It's not even getting fake breasts or getting any kind of reconstructive surgery.
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You can do all of those things, but unless you have female genetics, you will never be a female.
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These are immutable characteristics, and we should celebrate that.
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We should celebrate the unique differences between men and women, boys and girls.
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We should teach people to celebrate their gender, which is interchangeable with sex, by the way.
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These are not two separate entities in any kind of scientific or realistic sense, rather than telling people that if they're a little bit uncomfortable or a little bit confused or a little bit distressed, that they should try to do the impossible, which is switch your gender.
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Genesis 127, for the Christian, makes it very clear about what has turned into this culture war issue, that God created them male and female.
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And we are created in His image as male and female, and again, that cannot be changed.
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And in fact, to try to change that would not just be an assault on the human being as image bearers of God, but also an affront to God Himself, far be it from us, to question His authority on how He made us.
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He knit us together perfectly, purposely, intricately in our mother's wombs, as we read in Psalm 139.
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So let us celebrate being women and all of the unique capabilities and capacities that we have.
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And also, we can celebrate the uniqueness and wonderful characteristics of men.
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Praise God for His creativity and His purposefulness and His mastery in creating the human body the way that He did.
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So happy International Women's Day to all of us.
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We've got, along those lines, we've got to talk about some things having to do with gender, as we often do.
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We're going to react first to this Jon Stewart clip that you've probably seen circulating.
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He had an exchange with a state senator from Oklahoma, Nathan Dom.
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He is a Republican from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
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And for some reason, the state senator decided that it would be a good idea to go on an episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart.
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And they debated about gun law because, being a Republican, Senator Dom has tried to loosen restrictions on gun ownership in the state of Oklahoma, as many Republicans do.
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And, of course, Senator Dom talked about being an advocate for the Second Amendment.
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And let's watch this clip that has gone viral on Twitter that a lot of LGBTQ activists are saying is a huge win for gender ideology and just shows the hypocrisy of the right for criticizing things like drag shows.
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You want to ban drag show readings to children.
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Why can we prohibit children from voting, those under 18, from voting?
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Are you infringing on that performer's free speech?
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They can continue to exercise their free speech, just not in front of a child.
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Because the government does have a responsibility to protect.
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The government does have a responsibility in certain instances to protect children.
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What's the leading cause of death amongst children in this country?
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I'm presuming you're going to say it's firearms.
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No, I'm not going to say it like it's an opinion.
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And what you're telling me is you don't mind infringing free speech to protect children from this amorphous thing that you think of.
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But when it comes to children that have died, you don't give a flying f*** to stop that because that shall not be infringed.
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Of course, I know that we want to know the question, is this true?
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Firearm-related deaths, according to several analyses by the CDC, is the leading cause of death.
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We're talking about accidental firearm interactions or firearm accidents.
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We're talking about purposeful homicide, which is pretty rare.
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This is, according to the CDC, a leading cause of death for children.
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Now, the CDC does say that children is defined by them.
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I'm not totally sure why, but starting at age one, starting at age one to age 18.
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Because if you go down to infants, so if you go zero from 18, it's not actually the leading cause of death.
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There are different kinds of diseases that are actually the leading cause of death for children.
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I'm not saying necessarily that there is a nefarious reason that they define childhood that way.
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Maybe the reason that they're doing that is because those are infant-specific diseases that tend to cause infant fatalities.
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So they didn't think it was a very good picture of why children are dying in the United States.
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And so, according to the CDC, Jon Stewart's assertion is mostly true.
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Now, it is still rare for that to happen, but that's because we have a pretty good childhood survival rate, thankfully, as we should in a first-world country in the United States.
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But a leading cause of death, according to the CDC, about 60% of deaths of kids ages 1 to 18 is because of some kind of firearm incident.
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Which, of course, I agree, is absolutely tragic.
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And if someone on the left can point us to, which maybe, you know, some have, but point us to the exact policy and the exact piece of legislation that would prevent these deaths,
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I think a lot of Republicans and conservatives would come to the table and also show how things like constitutional carry
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or being able to easily get your concealed carry license leads to or precipitates these deaths among young people.
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Because very often what is actually happening is that these firearm deaths are because someone has already broken the law.
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They have already broken the law by murdering someone.
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They have already broken the law by going in a place where a gun is not permitted or they illegally own a firearm.
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So it's hard to kind of imagine how another restriction would be an impediment to lawbreakers killing someone else.
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And so I agree, obviously, this is absolutely tragic.
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However, the real leading cause of death for children, if you are to extend it to really the beginning of adolescent life,
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which is the moment of conception, the leading cause of death is actually abortion.
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So if we're going to do this, if we're going to look at the importance of things based on how many people it kills,
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Abortion kills about a thousand children every day, or at least that's what was happening before the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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And so abortion is killing thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people in this country,
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millions and millions of people around the world.
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And if you're unconvinced by that, if for some reason you think that babies in the womb aren't humans or aren't alive,
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please go back and listen to my million episodes breaking down just the illogic of the pro-choice or pro-abortion position.
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He's wrong if you are looking at the actual scientific definition of adolescence, which starts at the moment of conception.
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Really, the leading cause of death in children is abortion.
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But also, if we are looking at the argumentation strategy here that is being employed by Jon Stewart,
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this is a fallacious way to engage in a kind of debate.
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So this is what you do when you know that you don't really have a good point.
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And when you're in the position of power, like he is obviously going to be rhetorically more savvy.
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He's done this for a living for a very long time.
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And so he knows that he is going to be able to manipulate the conversation.
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Rather than talking about the drag queen issue,
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rather than answering, because I could tell that State Senator Rahm was about to,
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Rather than answering the question, why do you think kids should have an audience,
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or should be in the audience when a man, scantily clad, is twerking for them for money?
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Why shouldn't the government do something about that?
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And no, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
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We're not saying that drag queens can't be drag queens.
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But of course, there are restrictions on what you can show a child.
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That doesn't have to do with the First Amendment.
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And as we talked about yesterday, I do think that the state has a place to step in and say,
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no, these kinds of things, this kind of content is actually not appropriate for children.
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And so Jon Stewart simply wasn't equipped to have that conversation
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of why he actually thinks it's a good thing for a man in fishnets and fake boobs
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Instead, he says, well, how many people have been killed by a drag queen?
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That's not the argument that this state senator is making.
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That's not the argument that any of us are making.
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None of us are saying that drag queens are going around and killing these children,
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or even necessarily that they are physically always preying upon these children.
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We're saying in the same way that it's wrong to show a child pornography,
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in the same way that it is wrong or a similar way that it's wrong to bring a child to Hooters,
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Yes, there is something innately sexual about a man dressing up like a caricature of a woman.
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Don't gaslight us into thinking that there's none.
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Beyond that, I will just say it's inappropriate for a man to pretend to be a woman and to present
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If parents are going to continue to demand these kinds of shows, I do think that there is a place
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We have to restrict these kinds of shows to venues that only allow people ages 21 and up
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I wish that we didn't even have to have this conversation.
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I wish that there wasn't a law necessary, but apparently there is.
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Apparently, they can't be content with just performing for adults.
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They also have to be performing for toddlers, too, which is very disturbing in and of itself.
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He's not actually interested in having the conversation about drag queens.
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And so you see how he very quickly, very stealthily pivots to something else.
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And so it's not actually a way of having a conversation.
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It's not actually a way of arguing the substance of what the other person is saying because the
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And he said, well, because that thing isn't killing you, you shouldn't care about it.
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But again, that's not the reason that we care about these perverse drag shows that are being
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Just because something isn't killing you or harming you the same way something else is
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It's so funny because far leftists like Jon Stewart, they think that the government should
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I mean, they believe that the government should care about us so much that they should actually
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force us to get a vaccine that many of us did not want or even need.
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They believe that the government should force us to wear masks, should force us inside our
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But when it comes to protecting the innocence of children, all of a sudden, that's just a step
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And by the way, there's not a constitutional right to perform drag in front of kids.
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OK, and so I would love for Chuck Schumer or not for Chuck Schumer, the article I have
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I would love for Jon Stewart to actually debate someone who is willing to match his tenacity
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and also to call him out on his manipulation because that's what this clip was.
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This clip does nothing to prove that drag shows for children is good or beneficial or
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not psychologically and spiritually and emotionally and sexually harmful for kids.
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Those two things really don't have anything to do with each other.
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So, I mean, good job for getting the viral clip by using rhetorical manipulation, but
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you didn't do anything to actually defend the morality of drag shows for children.
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So whenever you say things like this and whenever you think, oh, this is a victory for them, just
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What do you what benefit do you think that kids get from seeing men in fake boobs twerking?
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No one would have said this even five years ago.
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We've got another absurd story that I know that you've you've heard people talk about,
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but I haven't had a chance to talk about it yet.
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OK, I wasn't able to talk about this last week when it happened, so I just wanted to
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quickly touch on this ridiculous story of Hershey of Hershey's.
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Sorry, the you know, who makes the chocolate and stuff and they own a bunch of other candy
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brands as well for Women's History Month and International Women's Day, which is March
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So they came out with a little punny candy bar, Hershey, Hershey.
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Like not just Hershey, but Hershey, like the pronouns.
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And in 2022, they celebrated women for International Women's Day, like Billie Jean King, Catherine
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But at least all of these people were women, right?
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Like at least as far as we know, all of these people are actually women.
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But in 2023, they celebrated four actual women in their campaign for this.
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So several people or several women who have done different things, activists, left-wing
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And then in their commercial, they also showed this person named Faye Johnstone, previously
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And he calls himself a 2SLGBTQIA plus advocate.
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And not too long ago, like within the past couple years, he decided that he is going to
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So he grew his hair out and I guess started taking hormones, but it's still very obviously
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And here is Hershey's ad celebrating him as a woman that we should uphold, lift up as some
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I'm the executive director of Wisdom to Action.
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We can create a world where everyone is able to live in public space as their honest and
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See the woman changing how we see the future at Hershey's Canada.
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So Matt Walsh posted a Twitter thread just showing this person's, um, showing this person's
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In 2015, he called himself a cis male, which cisgender is a nonsensical term that doesn't actually
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mean anything, but it is, it means like you are the gender that you actually are.
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So you're born a woman, you identify as a woman.
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And remember, these terms were created by perverse sexologists in the 60s and 70s that
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And this is always a common thread who also happened to advocate for things like pedophilia.
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So you can just reject the legitimacy of all of these terms, but he talked about his own
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In 2014, he was calling himself a gay boy and a queer boy.
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And 2017, he also called for militant organized queers to fight back against Trump.
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Um, in 2021, he was arguing that TERFs called trans exclusionary radical feminists, or, you
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know, just people who don't believe that men can be women, uh, shouldn't be allowed to speak
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or share their opinions in public and should be shut down.
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In 2022, he argued that parents shouldn't have rights over their children.
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He said, fund dedicated supports for trans and gender diverse students in schools, work with
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school boards to establish and implement best practices to ensure all students learn about
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Parents do not have absolute rights over their children.
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Um, another gentle reminder for the children's rights sector.
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We need you to speak up for trans kids now more than ever.
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Now it is of course true that parents can't do absolutely anything that they want, that
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But he is talking about separating parents from their children because a parent doesn't believe
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that their little 12 year old daughter, Sally, should be able to go on hormones and
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become Jack with the help of her school and the state, which happens in almost every single
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In 2023, this year, he argued that men who raped women and children, but claimed to be
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He went back with a reporter named Peter Tatchell, who is a left wing reporter.
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This reporter actually apologized for misgendering this person who identifies as transgender.
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He was jailed with women because he said that he was a woman and he was in jail for raping
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And Faye Johnstone, who is being elevated as a female heroine by Hershey's, is saying that
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he is hurt by this because not because this person misgendered this prisoner, but actually
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because this journalist does not believe this male rapist should be in prison with women
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Faye Johnstone said that including trans women and LGBTI liberation means that men who identify
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as women, even if they're rapists, should be able to go into women's prison.
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So this apparently is the guy, the guy who believes that male rapists should be in prison
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with women who just transitioned so-called in the past couple of years after calling himself
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This is the person that we should be elevating to our daughters and pointing to and saying,
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This is someone who knows nothing about femininity whatsoever, who has had no female experiences,
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who has had no female thoughts, has no female cell in his body.
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So basically, we're just telling women, all you have to do is grow your hair out and call
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That's what we're supposed to teach our daughters.
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I actually explained this very succinctly to someone who came after me on Instagram and
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Why does this Hershey's campaign even affect your life?
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And I said, look, this person has been a man his whole life, has never had female experiences
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and now is grifting, identifying as the opposite sex.
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But because I don't identify with any of the ways of feminism and everything that they fought
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But of course, I believe that women have the right to sex exclusive spaces, sex exclusive
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rights, sex exclusive protections, sex exclusive teams.
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And if you believe that, then you cannot go along with this lie that a man can become
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And this person, to her credit, who started off very fiery and kind of rude, all she said
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And I don't know if she agrees with me, but maybe she thought about it a little bit.
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And yes, I believe that we should be really, really clear on them.
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Even if people tone police you, even if other evangelicals and Christians say that you're
00:23:21.080
being mean, the truth is, I think that this Faye Johnstone person is made in the image
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of God, that God created him to be male at conception, that God sent his son to die for
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him just as much as he sent his son to die for me.
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I want this person to come to repentance, to accept who they are, to love the body, the
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Of course, has innate worth, innate value as an image bearer of God.
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And it is for that reason that I am so adamant about this, not just for him, but also for
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Because yes, accepting this idea that men can become women and boys can become girls is
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actually damaging, not just to the individual, but to society as a whole.
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It's always damaging to have to accept the lie.
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And then you talk about all of the different unfair things that go on in discriminating against
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women when it comes to favoring men who identify as women, as we just talked about.
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So Hershey's is playing along with the propaganda that is so harmful.
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And if things continue to go, how they are going, I actually think that things are going
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I think it's really breaking down, especially when you start coming after children.
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Hopefully, 10, 20 years, they'll look back and they will cringe at what they actually supported.
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All right, now we're going to talk to my friend, Bethany Mandel.
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Bethany is a contributing writer for Deseret News and Ricochet.
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She doesn't homeschool her youngest yet because he's brand new.
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But she is a homeschooling mom of six, and she is the co-author of Stolen Youth, How Radicals
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Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating the Generation.
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And you are going to love, love this conversation.
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This time, we're talking about your new book with Carol, Stolen Youth.
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Tell us, just go ahead and tell us what this is about and why you guys wrote it.
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So it's basically about the woke assault on childhood.
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And we came at it from a lot of different angles.
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We wanted to sort of talk about the woke assault in education and classrooms.
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And so there's the woke assault on institutions, which is the chapters that I wrote that I personally
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found to be the most terrifying, on medical associations, medical schools, pediatric associations.
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There's been a lot of books written about sort of the woke virus and how it's impacting, you
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And all of those things are extremely important.
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But we wanted to tackle it from the early childhood perspective, because really, the first
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time that you see any conversation about woke indoctrination, it's in colleges and on
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And we wanted to tackle it from sort of the lower years.
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And we also have a lot of chapters in there about the media and, you know, Disney and Scholastic.
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Um, and then sort of the, the end chapter is really about how all of these, uh, sort of woke talking points
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and, and indoctrination, how that impacts, uh, resiliency and innocence.
00:27:00.720
And that's what it comes down to is that all of this is sort of aimed at stripping children of their
00:27:06.940
Yeah, you know, we're kind of gaslit when it comes to this, when a parent has a problem with
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LGBTQ curriculum in first grade or their child going to drag queen story hour, or just going
00:27:18.580
into the library and seeing a book about trans kids, so called or whatever, we're told that,
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wow, you're making that sexual that has nothing to do with sexuality.
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And we're told, well, it's just about inclusion.
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And then I honestly think a lot of parents kind of are manipulated by that effectively.
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They're like, oh, well, maybe I am just being a bigot.
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What's, what's the response of a parent who's like, well, I just don't, I don't know how to
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I don't know how to say why I don't want my kid learning about that kind of thing.
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And so, you know, drag queen story hour is, is a perfect example because they are creating
00:28:04.800
a situation in which you're a bigot if you don't want your child to go to drag queen story
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hour, or if you don't think that drag queen story hour is appropriate.
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And they've done it by sort of using a gay man who dresses in drag in order to make them
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But would you ever bring your child to stripper story hour?
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It is not different, but the drag queen aspect of it makes it so that you're a bigot if you
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can possibly complain or are not comfortable with it.
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And it's this, this sort of backdoor way that they're trying to emotionally make parents
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uncomfortable enough with the sexualization of their children by sort of scaring them into
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saying, well, if you're a bigot, if you're not comfortable with it.
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There was a great tweet by Blair White, who's a transgender adult who said, no one had any
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issue with drag shows until they brought in kids.
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No one had any issues with medical transition until they brought in kids.
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And I think that a lot of us in the conservative movement, with very few exceptions, saw this
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coming, that sort of the lessons that we learned from the gay marriage fight, that they would
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That's like Eric Erickson's famous line, you will be made to care.
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And this was something that I saw and I was writing about at the Federalist, I don't know,
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And I said, I am not comfortable with the transgender crusade because we will be made to care.
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And how they're making us care is they're aiming all of this messaging towards our kids.
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But it's also in the books that the librarians hand to our children.
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And the end result is that they're trying to indoctrinate our children because that's
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You can't, you see it sort of in communist societies where they go for the kids.
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And you know, I think a lot of people, they still just delude themselves into thinking,
00:30:13.100
well, so what if your kid sees some library book or is taught about this in school?
00:30:18.940
They're taught about, you know, straight couples in school or families like that.
00:30:22.380
And I'm like, look, whether you think so or not, a lot of families think that,
00:30:27.320
and a lot of parents think that there is a moral question about sexuality and about the
00:30:32.500
makeup of families and about marriage and about whether or not you can change genders.
00:30:37.080
You might not agree with the morality that a family has, but it is a moral question.
00:30:45.240
It is a matter of sexuality and private parts and things like that.
00:30:49.120
Therefore, that should not be introduced to kids at school.
00:30:52.920
That should be something that parents have the authority to first introduce to their kids.
00:30:58.880
So yes, it does have something to do with taking away their innocence.
00:31:02.440
I think some people don't see that connection, but it does.
00:31:05.980
When you have a stranger in authority, like a teacher telling a kid about switching their
00:31:10.000
gender or even about a different makeup of a family, they are not then equipped to answer
00:31:14.800
all of the moral and scientific questions that that kid then has.
00:31:19.300
That's what worries me is taking away the authority of the parents, the opportunity from the parents
00:31:24.280
to be the first ones to talk to their kids about that kind of thing, and then allowing
00:31:28.280
strangers in the school system to do it who not only aren't equipped to do it, they also
00:31:37.160
I mean, they think ultimately that our children belong to them and they belong to the collective.
00:31:41.360
And so they have to educate this because, you know, it won't happen in our houses because
00:31:46.480
we're all bigots, and so they try to take over.
00:31:49.540
But a lot of my concern with all of these issues is also that we're training children
00:31:55.400
that, and this is happening in school districts across the country, even in red areas, that
00:32:01.200
they can talk about sexual topics and sexuality with adults and that they should do this behind
00:32:10.080
And this is something that we've seen time and time again.
00:32:12.220
And there's a name for this, and I know that it's become sort of an insult that has
00:32:21.680
But it is literally the definition of grooming.
00:32:24.120
And in Soul and Youth, I write, like, this is the definition of grooming.
00:32:28.120
And talking to a child about sexuality is inherently dangerous.
00:32:33.040
And they're sort of developing minds to teach them that, yes, you can keep secrets from your
00:32:39.560
All of these things are happening behind your parents' backs, and we know better than your
00:32:46.820
And, you know, outside of any ideological sort of indoctrination that parents have concerns
00:32:52.820
over, which, I mean, obviously I find very valid because I wrote an entire book about it.
00:32:57.200
But outside of that is the fact that we're teaching young people that they should have this exposure
00:33:03.920
about sex way too early with strangers instead of, you know, in the comfort of their homes,
00:33:12.640
I remember there was this Psychology Today article, and actually I just looked it up and I can
00:33:21.120
So, I mean, this is the psychological definition of what grooming is.
00:33:26.860
It's gaining access to and then isolating the minor from the people most influential and who
00:33:33.180
have authority in their life, like a parent, developing trust with the minor, and then other
00:33:38.780
adults in the minor's life, desensitizing the child to sexual content, which we're seeing in a lot of
00:33:46.960
We're told, oh, no, this is just an innocent story.
00:33:48.900
You literally see graphic depictions of fellatio with, like, transgender people.
00:33:54.260
And we're told that, oh, yeah, this is fine for a middle schooler.
00:33:56.700
So, desensitizing the child to sexual content and physical contact.
00:34:00.960
Physical contact isn't always there in these kinds of education situations, but certainly
00:34:07.660
Maintenance behaviors following the commission of abuse.
00:34:11.980
And then very often they also manipulate them into thinking that if you don't like talking
00:34:16.820
about this stuff, if this makes you uncomfortable, something is wrong with you.
00:34:20.500
Like you said, keeping a secret from their parents.
00:34:23.540
And so, I mean, they get mad when we call this grooming.
00:34:26.620
This is, as you said, literally the textbook definition of grooming.
00:34:30.320
And it doesn't always lead to necessarily physical abuse by the person who is teaching
00:34:37.200
But I do think it actually makes kids more susceptible to sexual confusion and sexual
00:34:45.440
And that last point is something that I hit on a lot in Stolen Youth.
00:34:48.760
Kids are scared about speaking up about their discomfort.
00:34:53.900
I mean, if you look at what's happening to all these young girls who are objecting to
00:34:57.800
being exposed to male genitalia in locker rooms, whether they be in spas or locker rooms, they
00:35:04.040
are being told on a national stage that they are bigots for not wanting to see someone's genitalia
00:35:12.400
One of the girls that I spoke with in the book, well, actually, I spoke to her mother.
00:35:16.560
This was sort of one of the stories that really exemplifies, like, this is exactly why we wrote
00:35:22.540
Um, she went to a school program on an overnight trip, um, and she stayed in cabins.
00:35:30.140
It was sort of a summer camp situation, but with her school and she stayed there over the
00:35:34.400
weekend and her mom had heard that there were sort of issues of males being in female bunks
00:35:42.060
And she talked to the school and the school told her, well, you know, we're following
00:35:46.140
California state law and, you know, we only house people according to their gender identity.
00:35:55.280
Cause they, they sort of said it in a reassuring voice.
00:35:58.000
And so she sent her kid off and her daughter came back traumatized and exhausted because
00:36:04.400
And she said, mommy, there was someone in my bunk, one of the counselors.
00:36:11.880
They went by the name, Nick, they had a full sleeve of tattoos and rotting teeth.
00:36:18.360
And the mom was like, honey, why didn't you say something?
00:36:21.260
Why didn't you say something to your teachers or the principal who knew about the whole trip?
00:36:27.280
And she said, I was scared because a couple of weeks ago, uh, she was getting into a text
00:36:34.920
And the classmate said as an insult, as you know, middle schoolers do, well, you're a lesbian.
00:36:39.460
And she's, she sort of lobbed back, well, you're gay.
00:36:42.580
And that was, I mean, middle school taunts, like it's 101 and the text messages were brought
00:36:48.320
to the principal and the principal said, wow, you really crossed a line here and you are
00:36:54.780
And so she was stripped of being class president publicly because of this text message exchange.
00:37:01.420
And so she learned from that experience, I can never say anything about sex or gender
00:37:09.960
And so she took that lesson to the summer camp experience and she just sat there terrified
00:37:18.360
And the mom went to the school and said, what on earth were you thinking?
00:37:26.680
And you told me that, that it was fine in California state law.
00:37:30.760
I don't know what you told me, but you told me I was being crazy.
00:37:33.220
And they said, well, no, ma'am, we told you it was California state law that we would house
00:37:39.420
And that means that the school had to let Nick into her daughter's bunk.
00:37:44.720
And that message that you have to quiet that little internal alarm wasn't just sent to that
00:37:51.320
It was also sent to the teachers and the principal, all of these people in positions of power who
00:37:56.620
should have known better and should have spoken up and said, we don't think that Nick with
00:38:01.620
rotting teeth and facial hair should be in charge of a bunk of seventh grade girls.
00:38:07.260
And no one said a word because everyone was afraid.
00:38:10.440
And that's exactly why we wrote Stolen Youth, because that is happening across the country,
00:38:14.780
not just in California, but across the country.
00:38:30.260
I think that's a really great way to put it and actually a very terrifying way to put
00:38:33.520
it, because as moms and just as human beings, we do kind of have that instinct of something's
00:38:41.600
And yet we are told that even if we have that little alarm or we let it sound off at
00:38:47.940
And people actually care more about not seeming like a terrible person than they do keeping
00:38:54.900
Sometimes it's because they want to keep their job.
00:38:56.540
Sometimes it's just because they want to keep their reputation.
00:39:03.860
But the innocence aspect, I think about a lot now that I have, you know, I've got two toddlers
00:39:10.380
and, you know, the toddler stage as a mom of six, they're so observant and they're trying
00:39:14.800
to figure out like what goes in what category, like what is labeled this?
00:39:23.140
Part of that is male and female observing mommy, daddy, Grammy, grandpa, like, oh, girls
00:39:29.220
go in the girls bathroom, boys go in the boys bathroom.
00:39:31.600
All of that, I think, is so important to their sense of self.
00:39:35.680
They're making sense of a world that is very new and very big and very chaotic and confusing
00:39:42.620
Like the other day we were in the bathroom and there was a legitimate boy in the bathroom
00:39:49.680
But for my daughter, it was still very confusing to her.
00:39:52.500
I had to talk to her that, OK, you know, he's little, but she still was trying to make
00:39:57.400
sense of why something seemed out of place to her.
00:40:00.340
And I just it would break my heart and it would steal her innocence and also, I think,
00:40:08.480
If I told her there really is no category, there are no definitions, there's no context
00:40:13.820
in which some things are appropriate and some things are not appropriate.
00:40:19.520
I mean, that's got to be torture for little kids who are trying to make sense of a very
00:40:25.920
You are preaching to the choir and I give that example almost exactly in the book.
00:40:31.860
What really bothers me also, in addition to all of those super valid things that you just
00:40:36.500
talked about, is the sort of brain science behind it.
00:40:40.020
And so, you know, we have kids the same age and this was how we became friends, three years
00:40:44.980
And my three year old now, she sort of says, mommy is a girl, daddy is a boy, Bobby is a
00:40:57.440
And so when you're taking away that skill, you're also taking away a really important
00:41:04.180
And one of the chapters is called children as guinea pigs.
00:41:07.560
There's so many ways in which they're sort of by by doing all of these things, they're
00:41:13.720
treating our children as guinea pigs, sociologically, psychologically, a lot of with the gender
00:41:19.080
transition stuff with puberty blockers physically that we're not going to see for an entire
00:41:25.260
We have another chapter about COVID and about masking.
00:41:29.060
And there was never any sort of thought process behind like, what will this do to a developing
00:41:38.540
And we're not going to see that for many years.
00:41:40.860
And it used to be that when you intervene in a child's life, you you have to there are
00:41:53.280
And instead of sort of admitting, you know, that there that there there might be some question
00:41:59.440
marks, they instead just gaslit us throughout the entire pandemic.
00:42:02.980
No masking is absolutely not detrimental in any way.
00:42:05.960
That's what the American Academy of Pediatrics said.
00:42:08.480
Meanwhile, they used to have something on their website for parents of of infants called the
00:42:15.600
And they would talk about engaging with children and making sure that you could see their faces.
00:42:26.080
And now I mean, in the daycares near me, I live outside of Washington, D.C.
00:42:32.640
And that will have serious repercussions on those kids.
00:42:36.340
And we're not going to know about it for, you know, 10, 15 years.
00:42:39.680
And, you know, we think we have a mental health crisis now, which we do, by the way, among
00:42:44.800
But I think about everything that we've done over the past few years.
00:42:48.080
And like we've been talking about gender ideology, the sexualization of children, social media,
00:42:52.520
all of that, like those chickens have not even come home to roost yet.
00:42:57.300
Like we still we've got 10 to 20, even 30 years before we really see the long term repercussions,
00:43:05.220
I think, of generations who have been marred by this stuff.
00:43:08.960
But you in the end, you talk about, OK, what we actually do, what do we do?
00:43:14.320
OK, so we've got the problems and y'all really go through all of it.
00:43:17.160
Y'all talk about the sexualization of children and all the different institutions that have
00:43:21.260
been captured by this stuff that were supposed to be about childhood.
00:43:24.540
In a sense, you talk about the masking, you talk about the woke medicine, which, by the
00:43:38.160
Carol, I believe she sends her kids to to public school.
00:43:43.660
So tell us about I know you can't maybe speak to exactly to her strategy, but tell us just
00:43:49.120
knowing that the audience is in two different places, what that strategy could look like
00:43:54.180
to fight back either by pulling your kids out or staying in.
00:43:58.180
So this was something really powerful about Carol and I sort of teaming up because we've
00:44:03.360
Like, how do you how do you deal with this problem?
00:44:06.040
And so Carol moved her her family from Brooklyn to Florida because she wanted her children
00:44:11.380
to have something resembling a normal childhood in the wake of covid.
00:44:16.960
And ultimately, she has three children, one of whom goes to private and the other two go
00:44:21.780
And she has a very open dialogue with her kids, teachers and school.
00:44:27.300
She lives in a state where she has a lot more faith in her governor than she did here in
00:44:36.680
But I think that she's open to the fact that, like, you know, life changes and life throws
00:44:41.980
And she was willing to roll with it and pick up her family and move to Florida.
00:44:50.220
I'm very grateful for it because during covid, I would have effectively been homeschooling
00:44:55.420
But we kind of I have the go galt model of, you know, my kids don't really watch a lot
00:45:05.200
Their favorite actor is Robin Williams, who died in 2014, going through the whole canon
00:45:11.460
of Robin Williams, because I don't have time to pre-screen, you know, all of the current
00:45:17.180
movies and television shows, nor am I really interested in doing so.
00:45:23.740
The majority of the books that my kids read are older books.
00:45:27.280
Their favorite book series is, uh, called Freddy and Freddy something.
00:45:39.280
And we, we homeschool and obviously like nothing curriculum wise goes through my children without
00:45:47.820
Um, so, you know, I, there's a lot of different paths that folks can take and we sort of break
00:45:55.140
So like in the example of, you know, how do you know if a book is safe?
00:45:58.320
Um, I give, I give the advice of, you should look at the one star reviews on Amazon.
00:46:04.020
Someone sent me a DM the other day on Twitter and said, you know, we have common sense media,
00:46:09.320
And people should avail themselves of for books and, and, or not books, I'm sorry, for TV
00:46:14.000
shows and movies, but we don't have that equivalent in books.
00:46:19.440
And if you look up, um, gender queer, if you look up one of the books that I mentioned in
00:46:25.320
It was a book that my daughter pulled off the shelves from our local library.
00:46:29.120
And it was a graphic novel about girls, soccer players written for, you know, eight, nine
00:46:38.800
And then another mother in the research for this book alerted me to the fact that there
00:46:43.280
was a lesbian sex scene at a sleepover in the book.
00:46:49.760
Thankfully I'm irresponsible and I forgot to bring the library bag in from my trunk for like
00:46:55.480
So, I mean, the lesson was I should be irresponsible more often, but I looked at the one star reviews
00:47:02.220
People talked about it and I thought, gosh, this is what I need to do in the future.
00:47:05.860
First of all, we don't go to the library and just randomly pick things off the shelves
00:47:13.340
And so that's sort of some of the advice that we give in the book, how you can on a day
00:47:17.360
to day basis, you know, function in this world and raise kids who have a semblance of, you
00:47:26.000
Like I'm sure another book will come through our doors that I haven't effectively screened.
00:47:30.320
It's, it's, it feels sometimes like you're in a Titanic sinking and you have a, you have
00:47:37.540
But for us, we just, my, my perspective is we don't get on the ship.
00:47:47.360
You know, some, some people think about this whole kind of parental rights and anti-woke
00:47:59.380
movement among parents as certainly the left wants to just see it as this white evangelical
00:48:06.100
It's just a bunch of Christian fundamentalists who care about this stuff, but that's not
00:48:18.120
And neither of us come at this from a, from a religious perspective, very much the opposite.
00:48:23.580
I mean, for me, one of the last chapters that I probably blathered too much about it, but
00:48:30.180
And I talked about the fact that like my parents died when I was very young and I was able to
00:48:35.620
sort of power through that because I had some really good therapists who tough loved me.
00:48:41.480
And I think now would that, would that therapist have tough loved me in the same way?
00:48:47.700
If you look at the training for, for people in the mental health field, that's not the
00:48:54.400
And that's not the, it's not the perspective that they then bring into patient care.
00:49:01.220
I'm a tomboy who like learns how to put makeup on.
00:49:04.900
I'm like, I did this by myself because Fox News doesn't do your makeup anymore, which
00:49:10.760
And I like during an overnight layover in an airport, once I went to like one of those
00:49:15.460
booths and I said, can you teach me how to like put on makeup and I'll buy like everything
00:49:21.580
And if I had grown up in this time now, I've been told that, you know, my hatred of dresses
00:49:29.900
and makeup and nail polish, all these things because I'm a boy and I felt so deeply uncomfortable
00:49:35.660
in my prepubescent body, which like who doesn't when they're going to puberty, I, I can't even
00:49:41.900
imagine the things I would have been told and the things I would have believed coming from
00:49:45.520
people in positions of authority in the media, in my school, in the books that I was reading
00:49:51.200
and my life would have ended up very different.
00:49:53.260
I'm a mother of six who has nursed all her babies throughout, like would I've been put
00:49:58.040
on puberty blockers and rendered, then rendered infertile?
00:50:01.000
Would I have been convinced to chop off my breasts, which I hated and are uncomfortable,
00:50:05.340
but are, you know, a source of nourishment for my children?
00:50:12.620
It's not because I'm like a crazy Christian fundamentalist.
00:50:15.100
It's because I, I am scared for the Bethany Mandels who are growing up now,
00:50:20.720
who, you know, I feel like it was a luck of the draw that I grew up when I did.
00:50:25.180
And I want other kids, other girls to have the opportunities that I did to grow up normal.
00:50:30.980
I think all of us who were born before 2000 feel that way.
00:50:35.280
I think that we are all thankful that we got to go through our tomboy stage
00:50:40.760
And we got to go play outside in our neighborhood without technology.
00:50:46.120
It's harder today for kids, but that means it's harder today for parents.
00:50:48.780
And that's why everyone needs to go out and buy this book,
00:50:51.520
because I think one of the best ways to keep your sanity
00:50:54.600
and one of the best ways to be encouraged is to remember that you're not alone
00:51:04.340
The things that you have an internal alarm about, you're actually right.
00:51:10.460
And also you don't just have to sit there like a sitting duck.
00:51:19.080
At Barnes & Noble, I'm actually going to go visit my book in person for the first time.
00:51:31.200
Bethany, thank you so much for taking the time to come on.