In this episode, I sit down with sex neuroscientist, journalist and columnist, Dr. Jay Shetty, to talk about the current climate in academia, gender identity, climate change, and much, much more. Dr. Shetty is an expert on sex and gender identity and has been a long-time advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. We talk about his work, his views, and his thoughts on the current state of science in the U.S. as a whole. This episode is a must listen for anyone who wants to know what's going on in the world of science, and why it's important to be a scientist and a journalist. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Thanks for listening and supporting the podcast! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What's the deal with gender identity? 6:30 - Why is there no such thing as a "binary" gender? 7:00 8:40 - Is there a difference between male and female? 9:20 - Is gender fluid? 11:00- Is science a thing? 14:30- Is climate change real or fake? 16:40- Is Bill Nye a scientist? 17:15 - Who's responsible for climate change? 18: What are we to blame? 19:20- What do we know about climate change and what are we don't know about it? 21:15- Are we need to be more inclusive? 22:40 27: Is there more than two genders? 26:30 29:20 32:00 -- What are you going to be? 33:30 -- What do you want? 35:40 -- What does science of science? 36:10 -- Is science about? ? 37:10 39:20 -- What's your point? 40:00 | 36:00-- Is there really a gender binary? 45:00 // 45:10 | 47: What is gender fluidity? 47:30 | 48:40 | 45: Is it a binary or a binary thing ? 51:00 + 47:00? 56:00 ? 55:30 // 56:20 | Is there something else?
00:01:10.000But I think it's that they've reached the mainstream.
00:01:12.000I see it as political correctness running amok.
00:01:16.000And I see it as legitimate researchers not being able to speak out because they've got enough on their plate with their research, their teaching, they've got their students, you know, they're super busy.
00:01:28.000And then on top of it, they don't want to deal with the mobbing that will inevitably happen if they do speak out.
00:01:32.000So things are kind of in favor right now of the craziness.
00:01:35.000But it's fascinating, though, as an outsider to watch the craziness.
00:02:27.000Yeah, it's just – but gender in particular.
00:02:30.000One of the things that I said about – one of the more bizarre things about today's political climate is that people selectively agree with science.
00:02:42.000It's like when it comes to climate change, everybody is pro-science, science all the way.
00:04:20.000There was another episode where they clearly say that gender is binary.
00:04:24.000Yeah, this is like way back before all this nuttiness.
00:04:26.000So it's influencing people who are deciding instead of supporting science and supporting the research on actual human beings as a biological organism.
00:04:40.000Instead, we're going with this bizarre politically correct climate Which inclines people to this weird, delusional thinking.
00:04:50.000And as an outsider, that's what's interesting to me, to watch all this.
00:06:04.000This is what the big problem is to try to say, I mean, I certainly think we should all have equal rights, but we're not equal in terms of what we are.
00:06:13.000We're a different, and it's not that we're not equal like one's better.
00:06:17.000It's just like saying a wolf is not equal to a cheetah.
00:06:25.000And this is clear when you study us as an organism.
00:06:30.000You know, I had a really bizarre conversation once with a guy who's a professor or a former professor, and he was trying to deny that there's a difference between men and women.
00:07:02.000Well, it's this idea that you can be one gender one day, another gender the other day, or it might cycle through the day, or be in your mix of both.
00:07:10.000That seems like if it was anything else, you would have to be fucking crazy.
00:07:32.000You have people that are maybe more typically masculine or more typically feminine, but even still, I don't think there are many people that are 100% one way or the other.
00:07:43.000I mean, people are clearly more masculine than other people, but does that mean that the people like, you know, let's pick a person, Bill Nye.
00:08:01.000I almost feel like that way of thinking is more old-fashioned because this is all about being progressive and open-minded.
00:08:05.000But I think if someone is a man but is maybe more female-typical, to say that this person is a different category of gender or that they're, I don't know, not male, to me that's more stereotypical.
00:08:30.000I mean, people vary so much that, I mean, I think having some sort of categories to say, oh, this is a male and this is a female, it seems like it's pretty beneficial.
00:08:55.000You see these companies going and they're trying to be more with the times, I guess.
00:09:00.000Everything is gender neutral now and I'm thinking, all of that money and time is being wasted when I don't think that does anything for women or sexism.
00:09:08.000Instead of addressing someone by ladies and gentlemen, you say, people, is that really going to stop sexism?
00:09:15.000It just makes people mad because then they have to change the way they talk.
00:09:18.000I put up a story on Twitter the other day about people that are raising their kids with they and them.
00:09:32.000I think it's coming from, for some parents, it's coming from a good place.
00:09:35.000Like, they obviously want the best for their kids, and they don't want to limit the kid in terms of what they might be interested in.
00:09:41.000And I think because the media is telling them, if you let girls play with dolls, that's terrible, and they're going to end up, you know, not having any sort of prospects when they grow up in terms of their jobs, or, I don't know, it's such a terrible thing to be female-typical nowadays.
00:09:55.000But, I mean, like you mentioned, it's biology that's going to dictate what your kids play with.
00:09:58.000And then in other cases, I think it's parents that want to be special.
00:10:01.000Well, it's also weird because if your son is trans, it's totally fine for him to be female typical.
00:10:10.000If you have a trans son and he likes wearing lipstick and short skirts and prancing around, then he's fabulous.
00:10:17.000There was a boy in New York and there was this whole thing about he's the youngest ever drag queen and everybody's going crazy and people were angry about it.
00:11:06.000But I think that little boy is likely going to grow up to be a gay boy.
00:11:09.000If you have a little boy who says he's a girl, and you see a lot of these trans girls, if they were left alone and they didn't transition, they would likely...
00:11:16.000Research shows they would grow up to be gay men.
00:13:22.000But I do also think there's people that are crazy.
00:13:26.000There's people that have legit mental illness.
00:13:29.000They're delusional and they're also very susceptible to influence and very susceptible to, you know, someone persuading them that they are one thing or another thing.
00:13:42.000Look, it's Those, like, Heaven's Gate cult people who cut their balls off and wore the Nikes and decided to kill themselves when the comet was near.
00:13:54.000It's not normal for someone to be able to talk you into cutting your balls off or putting on the purple sneakers or killing yourself when the comet's closed.
00:14:06.000So we know that people are subject to very irrational behavior under the influence of other people's suggestions or other people's persuasion.
00:14:16.000And this is a thing today where you have to wonder, like, how many of these people are legitimately trans?
00:14:22.000How many of these people are legitimately dealing with a real mental issue that's causing them to shift from male to female and back again?
00:14:32.000And why is it that we can't ask these questions?
00:14:35.000Because why is it that even this question right now, I could be accused of being transphobic for asking how many of these people are ill.
00:14:48.000I do think that gender dysphoria is a legitimate phenomenon, and I do have a lot of empathy for people who are suffering.
00:14:54.000And I think for adults, they should be allowed to transition if that's what they decide to do, if that's something that will help them feel better.
00:15:00.000My issues with the kids, I don't think it's appropriate for children to be transitioning, and I can talk a bit more about why.
00:15:06.000But I think in terms of the pathology aspect, I think for...
00:15:09.000Because gender is so trendy right now.
00:15:12.000And in the past, you might have seen this kind of pathology manifest in a different way.
00:15:17.000But now because everyone is saying gender is the way to express, you know, I think people also see if you have a problem in your life, they think it's gender related.
00:15:25.000So say with someone with a personality disorder, and people like a lot of attention, they like to...
00:15:31.000It's always about them and their identity, and their identity shifts a lot.
00:15:34.000So this could very well be what it is, and now they're being basically rewarded for that.
00:18:25.000Because people are so ready to proclaim their progressiveness and so excited about it that they...
00:18:37.000Instead of treating them as an equal, they go completely the other way.
00:18:44.000So they're definitely not prejudiced, they're definitely not discriminating against them, but they're absolutely inflating what this person is.
00:18:55.000And they're making it a big giant deal that they're trans.
00:20:19.000And also the denial of these conditions and the denial of the science behind these conditions.
00:20:25.000This is the issue with progressive people today, is that there's certain things where they embrace science and certain things where they deny it.
00:20:32.000And in gender, gender in particular, seems to be so hotly contested.
00:23:22.000I see some women, which I find interesting because I think it's confusing for young women now who are starting to date and they think, I don't really want to have casual sex, but I'm being told that's what I should do.
00:25:17.000Yeah, but the dynamics shift according to what is available and who's there and what kind of a culture you live in.
00:25:28.000People adapt or very malleable to different climates and different cultures and the way people treat sex and don't treat sex.
00:25:37.000I think what happens is people tend to react very aggressively or very strongly when someone is Doing something that is different than the way they're doing things.
00:25:51.000Because this would possibly indicate that there's another way, or maybe their way is wrong.
00:25:56.000Especially when it comes to sex, people get very strange.
00:26:49.000Yeah, I mean, open relationships are actually pretty common.
00:26:52.000Consensual non-monogamy, there's one study that showed one in five Americans have actually tried it, so it's pretty common.
00:26:57.000Me personally, I'm monogamous, but I think, you know, people should do what they want to do if it's consensual.
00:27:02.000I think, you know, obviously, having been a sex researcher and now someone who writes about sex research for a living, I'm very sex positive, and I think a lot of the problems that we see and a lot of the suffering and distress and issues that people have In their lives could be solved if our world was more sex-positive.
00:27:19.000We could just talk about sex like anything else.
00:27:21.000Like, the shame of it is the real problem.
00:27:24.000And this is what I'm saying, that people, when you're living a life that's different than the way they're living their life, people get very aggressive about it.
00:28:28.000But it's this thing that people living a different way is somehow or another unacceptable and threatening to their perceptions of what you should be doing with your life.
00:29:35.000I guess the idea is that women should be equal, and obviously as a woman I believe that.
00:29:41.000And so any sort of subjugation of women must somehow be imposed by society.
00:29:46.000Because if we acknowledge that women are different biologically in any way, that's going to be used as justification why they don't deserve to be treated the same as men, or they're not as capable as men.
00:30:00.000I guess because there has been a history of there being sexism.
00:30:02.000And say, so with the whole Google memo thing...
00:30:05.000And this idea that women are biologically, we are different, not to say we're not as capable, but if there are any sort of biological correlates to what women find interesting, could that be extrapolated to capability, extrapolated to women should go back to the kitchen,
00:30:21.000women aren't good at math, things like that.
00:30:23.000I mean, I get why people don't like biological explanations for things.
00:30:29.000Like you said, I think it's just a lot easier.
00:30:31.000It's a lazy way to just dismiss the whole thing and say, you know, we don't need to think about it.
00:30:38.000But it's just – it's clearly not true in terms of the scientific research.
00:30:43.000So there has to be some cognitive dissonance in order to accept that and to preach it and to say it, and everybody has to agree upon it, which is one of the reasons why I think – Any statements contrary to that get aggressively attacked.
00:31:00.000And this is part of the reason why these ideas are so supercharged.
00:31:05.000It's that there's an understanding that it's horseshit.
00:31:10.000And so when someone challenges it and says it's horseshit, you've been living your whole life with this horseshit.
00:31:18.000Well, okay, I think some people know what the truth is and they actively lie because they think they're doing something good for women.
00:31:24.000So they'll say gender is a social construct even though they know it's biological.
00:31:27.000And I think people who are younger maybe going through school now are being taught this actually don't know the difference and actually believe it.
00:31:34.000But why would they aggressively attack the scientific research that's contrary to that claim then?
00:31:42.000You mean the people who don't know any better?
00:32:02.000The sense I get is they find someone or some journalist who has some sort of decent sounding criticism of the literature and they just parrot that.
00:32:11.000I don't think they actually go and look at the studies.
00:32:14.000Well, I think there's definitely something to that, and I think there's something to this problem that human beings have, where they have an idea, and that idea becomes part of their identity.
00:32:25.000And then they start arguing for that idea, and any argument against that idea is an argument against them as a person, because they're trying to win.
00:32:34.000They're not necessarily looking at things in an objective way where they're detached from the idea and studying it as a thing.
00:32:43.000Instead, they're arguing to try to win.
00:32:45.000I think that is a giant problem with ideas.
00:32:51.000And it becomes even more of a problem when it gets tribal, when these ideas are attached, like climate change, clearly attached in denial to the right in support to the left.
00:33:09.000If you are in support of women's rights and you are in support of trans rights and LBGTQ and all that jazz, you're almost 100% going to be on the left.
00:37:20.000What's interesting is if you follow boxing history, and I know you're a martial artist, if you follow boxing history, the oppressed early immigrants are almost always the best boxers at the time.
00:37:32.000And for a while, there was a lot of Jewish boxers.
00:37:35.000A lot of Italian boxers, of course, you know, Rocky Graziano and Rocky Marciano and all these Italian.
00:37:40.000And then it became Cubans and Puerto Ricans.
00:37:44.000And then it became, well, there was always blacks as well.
00:37:47.000But this like the immigrants in particular, Irish, like a lot of Irish immigrants that early on, they were thought of as like being some of the lowliest of the low.
00:38:11.000What is it about not trying to kick you guys out, but that is one of the weirder discriminations that is somehow or another slipped under the radar, that they're making it more difficult for Asians to get into Ivy League universities because you guys do so well.
00:38:30.000And I think some of these people who are getting pats on the back for being progressive about being diverse, I think they just don't like us.
00:38:36.000And now they have a politically acceptable way to do it.
00:39:05.000One of the problems with that book is people were showing the differences in IQ by, you know, as it varies across different geographical segments and across races.
00:39:18.000And if anything, that book is really like a testament to the master race of Asians.
00:39:47.000But one of the things about it is it sort of dismisses the idea of talent.
00:39:51.000And it shows, it goes into depth about all the, not dismisses it, but shows that it's not some magic gift that's bestowed upon people.
00:40:00.000But what it is, is it shows all the pathways that lead to the skill developments that we consider talent.
00:40:07.000And discipline and hard work, in particular, discipline being a culturally enforced thing, which it is with many Asians.
00:40:16.000I often talk about my friend Junkzik, who when I was doing Taekwondo, he was on the US team while he was also in his residency in medical school.
00:40:35.000He just was always tired, but then would go to work like a fucking savage.
00:40:39.000Was in between studying for his, you know, in the middle of medical school, and he would put his backpack on, filled with books, and run the stairs at the university.
00:41:04.000And his parents are like, you must be a doctor!
00:41:07.000And he was like telling me about the kind of discipline that he grew up with.
00:41:11.000And that culturally enforced discipline leads many, many, many, many, many people to succeed.
00:41:17.000Whereas the sort of latchkey kids that I grew up with, there was no culturally enforced discipline.
00:41:25.000You either developed it on your own, you pursued something that you enjoyed and figured out how to become disciplined, or you just weren't.
00:41:32.000But this thing that's in Asian cultures is what's propelling them forward.
00:42:03.000Will you explain the lawsuit for people that don't know what we're talking about?
00:42:05.000Okay, so it turns out that for decades now, Harvard has been discriminating against Asians and requiring them to have higher SAT scores than people of other ethnic backgrounds in order to get the same chance of admission.
00:42:17.000And then more recently, it's been shown that, okay, so Asians do well with SAT scores.
00:42:22.000They do well with extracurricular activities.
00:42:24.000So the only way that admissions committees can actually penalize them is through rating their personality.
00:42:30.000So seeing them as, you know, less likable, things like that, because they're subjective.
00:42:34.000And, you know, I find it amazing that very few liberal outlets have covered this.
00:45:01.000Alright, maybe, but it's kind of fucking weird that you can't figure out whether or not a phone is being used to, like, how are these hackers, how are these, like, super genius people who program phones, you can't, like, look at one of those phones and figure out what it's doing?
00:45:16.000Is it, like, doing some magic, or somehow or another it's stealing people's information and there's no mechanism that you can detect?
00:45:22.000Well, do you think there's another reason why they're not letting them in?
00:45:25.000What I'm worried about is that they're scared that these companies, which are fanatical, maniacal in their aggressive pursuit of dominance in the cell phone markets and technology in general, are going to take over.
00:45:40.000They're going to squash all these American companies.
00:45:44.000This is my own personal speculation, but I'm looking at this, I'm like, how much legitimacy is in that?
00:45:51.000Because they're right now, worldwide, I believe they're the number three cell phone manufacturer.
00:45:57.000I think it's Samsung, Apple, and then Huawei.
00:45:59.000But you can't buy Huawei phones in America.
00:47:28.000What I'm saying is the problem with the...
00:47:30.000This is an article that I read that's explaining the problem.
00:47:33.000I think it was one of those tech sites.
00:47:36.000But it was saying that in certain places with limited coverage, you probably would have no coverage with one of these phones.
00:47:41.000Whereas it would work okay if you were in New York or in Los Angeles or Chicago or something like that.
00:47:47.000But if you went to the boonies, if you have Verizon, you probably could be able to text your friends or get a phone call out, but you wouldn't be able to do it.
00:48:54.000The government was worried about them getting too much money and power.
00:48:57.000Yeah, but I guess if you're asking me in terms of my view on things and my experience, that's where I would take it.
00:49:03.000So, the Equality of Outcome people, the reason why they're trying to keep Asians or at least limit the number of Asians, but doesn't that have the opposite effect?
00:49:14.000Doesn't that make Asians work even harder?
00:49:46.000I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
00:49:48.000If you're asking me in terms of what people see as a problem, I think because it looks as though other groups are not getting a fair chance.
00:50:02.000Because it means that you're acknowledging at some level that some people are doing better than other people, and that makes some people uncomfortable.
00:50:14.000Yeah, that's exactly what it is, right?
00:50:15.000But it's gone to a place where it becomes indefensible.
00:50:20.000So instead of trying to raise up people whose scores are lower and give them an equal opportunity or take people from impoverished areas with poor education and give them more of a chance, which is what Affirmative action was supposed to be about.
00:50:36.000Instead of that, you're doing it from the top down.
00:50:49.000But doing it from that perspective, doing it like looking at a race that's super successful that is also a minority and saying too many of them.
00:52:10.000What I find the most sad is there are Asians who are totally fine and they say, I'm willing to give up my spot for someone else because I think diversity is important.
00:52:27.000It's not someone who actually thinks that way.
00:52:29.000They could actually think that way, but the people who cut their balls off and killed themselves because they thought the comet was coming and the spaceship was behind it, they thought that too.
00:52:38.000Yeah, people think all kinds of things.
00:53:28.000So I actually got a chance to talk to James as part of, so there's a podcast, Wrong Speak, that I host with Jonathan Kay.
00:53:35.000And our first episode was actually about James Damore and his saga and basically how, what I took away from that whole thing, I mean, it's been almost a year now.
00:53:44.000It's amazing how the media could not get it right, and I feel that they intentionally smeared him.
00:53:50.000It wasn't that people didn't understand the science, that they very intentionally said, we don't like this, we want to get clicks, or we want to basically sacrifice this man for our agenda.
00:54:40.000And I mean, if you hear what he had to say when I spoke with him, he very much was for equality and very much was for men and women working together.
00:54:51.000I think it's crazy that that's the narrative that continues to go on now.
00:54:55.000Well, the problem is he actually cited the studies that showed why people choose different professions, why people gravitate towards different activities and different professions based on gender.
00:55:42.000I don't know why The problem with denial of any facts is that the people that are opposing you now have evidence that you're a loon, right?
00:55:55.000Like, one of the problems with the left and this really radical, progressive behavior that's in denial of science is now the right gets to look at the left and go, look, these people are out of their fucking mind.
00:57:33.000You need far extreme right to polarize and activate the far extreme left.
00:57:39.000I mean, I really think you need a guy like Trump.
00:57:42.000To get people to be more politically active and more socially active.
00:57:46.000I think, in many ways, he does the left a service by providing this, like, ridiculous figurehead of what's possible with ego and greed and right-wing gone amok.
00:57:57.000You know, the Steve Bannons and the Breitbarts and all that stuff.
00:58:01.000Like, that stuff empowers the other side, and the good thing about it is somewhere in the middle is like a balanced, healthy society, and hopefully we'll be able to achieve that someday.
00:58:11.000I mean, this is the argument always, is that you cannot have light without dark.
00:58:24.000I just would hope that with the amount of information that's available today, that we can look at the actual studies that are being done on gender, on sex, on biology, and don't look at it in terms of, you know, don't quantify it in terms of this side's better or that side's better.
00:58:41.000Just look at what fascinating difference is.
00:59:15.000There's influences in terms of your environment, your education, your life experiences, your family, your loved ones, your There's so much that leads to you being who you are today.
00:59:38.000If you're just going to keep pumping out, like from a research perspective, if you go in, the only scientists who are going to look at this stuff now are the people who know what they're going to find in advance.
00:59:46.000They're not going to publish anything that's going to upset the public.
00:59:49.000So in my mind, there's no point to even do that kind of research because that's not actually science, what you're doing.
01:00:16.000Why did you decide to call your podcast that?
01:00:19.000I mean, it's a throwback to Orwell, obviously, in 1984 and this idea that by controlling language, we can control, the government can control how people think and what reality is.
01:00:30.000And what I find interesting is with the topics we covered.
01:00:34.000So first episode, we talked to James Damore.
01:00:36.000Second episode, we talked to Lindsay Shepard and looked at the whole what happened at Wilfrid Laurier University.
01:00:42.000And then the third one is rapid onset gender dysphoria.
01:00:45.000So looking at this trend in adolescent girls who come out as transgender, even though they've had no previous signs of gender dysphoria.
01:00:53.000And so with all of them, these issues are all super taboo and all these people have been mobbed.
01:00:58.000And in the case of rapid onset gender dysphoria, you see the parents who are being called transphobic for questioning, is my daughter really trans?
01:01:05.000You know, we're just trying to get at the truth, really.
01:01:07.000We're trying to understand, you know, why is it we can't talk about these things?
01:01:11.000Why is it we're in such a situation now that the response to any sort of unpopular idea is to be mobbed and to attack people and intimidate them and shut the conversation down.
01:01:22.000Like, how do we stop that from happening?
01:01:24.000Explain rapid onset gender dysphoria because I'm not really aware of that.
01:01:28.000So it's this phenomenon that's been growing more recently.
01:02:02.000And then usually what happens is there's some sort of...
01:02:05.000I don't know, educational session at school or one of these girls, their friends come out as trans and then the daughter says, oh, I want to be a boy.
01:02:14.000And so if you take that child to a professional, like a therapist, the therapist has to affirm.
01:02:59.000I think part of it is for some of these girls, they are a bit socially awkward.
01:03:02.000And so when they come out as transgender, suddenly everybody loves them and wants to support them.
01:03:07.000And I think as people should for trans people, because obviously it's a difficult thing to go through.
01:03:11.000But I think there's an aspect of it that people aren't talking about that kids are coming out as transgender just because it gives them acceptance.
01:03:46.000Being a person, being a finite organism, clinging to a ball that's spinning a thousand miles an hour, hurling through infinity, that's weird.
01:04:08.000This rapid onset gender dysphoria, how is this being treated?
01:04:14.000Like in terms of how is this being accepted in academia?
01:04:19.000How is it being discussed in the literature?
01:04:22.000And what are the recommendations for what to do about it or the descriptions of what it is?
01:04:27.000Well, there's only been one study so far that's been published because it is such a new phenomenon and because it is so hard to do this work because, I mean, people call it a myth.
01:04:37.000Pretty much anything that counters the transgender narrative is considered hate speech.
01:04:42.000So as a researcher, if you try to do any research on this issue that goes against what trans activists say is acceptable, you know you're going to get into trouble.
01:04:52.000So there's been one study that did show, you know, with girls especially, it's very much about Being influenced by friends within a peer group.
01:04:59.000I think there's some crazy high number in terms of the number of girls that will come out as transgender one after the other.
01:05:39.000It's so interesting when you watch the similarities between any group that feels that they're being maligned or that are being very defensive about their position and trying to hold strong and aggressively attacking people that are against it.
01:05:57.000In many ways, this sort of behavior is mirrored in the Second Amendment people, like the people that are pro-gun.
01:06:06.000Like, if you tried any gun restrictions or any gun legislation or any changes in the laws of gun control, they aggressively go after it.
01:06:17.000They do whatever they can to keep things the way they are now and show how much positive benefits guns have and how many people are saved by guns.
01:06:28.000But it's this thing, besides the gun, take the gun out of it.
01:07:22.000That would be an interesting study, right?
01:07:24.000If you look at the climate of today and the support of trans people and the attacking of people that are transphobic and the overwhelming social benefit of supporting trans people,
01:07:39.000and then you look at the rapid onset gender dysphoria and see if they match up.
01:07:45.000What you were saying, actually, I think the majority of trans people are not on board with this whole, across the board, everyone should just transition.
01:07:53.000But I think it's another case of the vocal minority shutting down anyone who dares to disagree.
01:08:00.000Well, some trans people get very upset if non-trans people talk about trans people.
01:08:21.000A trans man in a movie and people freaked out that she is not trans and she has this part.
01:08:29.000You know, that was the same thing that happened with Jeffrey Tambor.
01:08:32.000Jeffrey Tambor was accused of sexual harassment by people on the set who were trans, who were also very upset that he was the star of a television show that was about trans people, and he's not trans.
01:08:46.000I do, because, you know, I think representation is important to some extent.
01:08:50.000And so I can understand if you are of a group that isn't being represented in the media, how you would want that to change.
01:08:59.000Yeah, but you're also looking at an A-list actress who would bring an incredible amount of attention to your progressive project.
01:09:06.000And, you know, it may very well change the tone of the way people accept trans people.
01:09:12.000Like, if it's portrayed in a positive light, it's entirely possible that it would open up, like, especially if people that are on the fence, it might open up their heart and make them look at things differently and say, oh, okay, I see where this...
01:09:25.000Woman wanted, you know, she wanted to transition to be a man because she was wired incorrectly or wired to be a man.
01:09:55.000We need to have a certain quota, so we need to have this number of people that fit this.
01:09:59.000That's my only issue, because then people look at it and say, you only picked this person because of their identity, not because of what they brought to the table.
01:10:06.000True, but I could argue against that if you go back and look at like John Wayne when he played Genghis Khan, like what in the fuck was that?
01:10:15.000Or like there's a bunch of those really goofy ones like Charlie Chan.
01:10:19.000Did you ever see the old-school Charlie Chan movies?
01:14:40.000Other monsters in waiting would not act out on their instincts because of the fact they're worried about the repercussions that you're clearly seeing.
01:14:49.000And that we would hope that people, that our behavior as a culture shifts one way or another.
01:14:55.000And then it's going to move as far away from misogyny as possible.
01:15:00.000And whether it's through the threat of incarceration or shame or whatever it is that causes it to go the other way.
01:15:08.000It's probably for the best, as long as it doesn't go as far as all men are pigs, all men are creeps, all men are trash, and that's what we were talking about earlier.
01:15:18.000Like, when it gets to that place, you gotta go, well, this is not a good place to be.
01:15:23.000Well, also, if there is an allegation that that's taken at face value right away, because we do see, unfortunately, that some of these allegations are false.
01:15:53.000And as soon as we stop looking at human beings as individuals and we just agree that one group is good and one group is bad, you've got some real discrimination problems there.
01:16:14.000I believe survivors or something like that.
01:16:17.000Or if you say you want due process and women lie and that side of the equation, I think both sides are equally bad because you're not getting at the truth.
01:16:27.000Well, we're also in this weird, slippery thing when it comes to human beings and truth because it's so hard to tell who's telling the truth.
01:16:35.000If two people see something, like see a car accident, and one person says, well, this lady ran the red light and slammed into the car, and then the person right next to her says, no, she didn't.
01:16:44.000This other guy ran the red light, and she hit him.
01:16:50.000There's a lot of subjectivity in terms of interpersonal Relationships.
01:16:55.000Well, there's also a problem with just describing things and language and reality.
01:17:00.000I don't know if you're telling the truth.
01:17:32.000So when you're dealing with some certain accusations when it comes to human beings, like this Chris Hardwick thing is a perfect example of that.
01:17:39.000I mean, he was just reinstated yesterday by AMC. And that's a weird one.
01:17:46.000It was an ex-girlfriend that wrote something about him.
01:17:50.000Well, she clearly didn't tell the truth about some aspects of their relationship.
01:17:54.000She cheated on him, and that's why he got rid of her, or broke up with her.
01:17:58.000And then she also said he was this terrible boyfriend, but then there's videos of her talking about what an amazing boyfriend he was.
01:18:07.000While they were together about how we stayed with her in the hospital and slept by her bed and it's like and she's also she had a bunch a host of mental illnesses that she described in their video about like not being able to drive down the street with the windows open because she's worried that germs gonna get in her car and some of those she recovered from and some of them she didn't like it's and there's another problem with people when it comes to when they're talking about things they might not even be lying Yeah,
01:18:36.000They just might have a distorted perception of reality.
01:18:38.000That is another problem with human beings when it comes to any sort of interaction between two people.
01:18:43.000Especially after a breakup, I think the way that a person can view the time they spent with someone can very much change based on their current situation or how that breakup happened.
01:19:05.000So we're relying on a person's description and then we have to rely on what we know about them.
01:19:11.000What we know about their ability to describe things accurately, what we know about their perceptions of reality, their delusions, their clarity.
01:19:27.000Yeah, I mean my rule of thumb what I would say to people is unless you know the two people I don't think you can ever really know what happened So in that case of say you leave and Jamie tells you I said something about you're probably gonna go with Jamie right cuz you know him so I would say this Jamie's a little crazy.
01:19:40.000I might go Yeah, I mean it's for sure if I didn't know you and in Jamie told me you did something fucked up I would side with Jamie but Even that's weird.
01:20:29.000I watched one episode, so everyone tells me how amazing this show is, and I think it is amazing, but I saw one episode that really freaked me out.
01:21:05.000Fucking dark episode stays with you after this one does this one's dark I mean this I mean I can't I can't I will give too much away if I talk about it but the concept is that you can they have a machine and they set this machine up and through this machine they can literally read your memories Okay.
01:21:25.000Until that happens, we really don't know.
01:21:29.000And, you know, there's been things in my life where I looked back on it and I had a perception and then I went to the place where I grew up and I was like, I don't remember it looking like this.
01:22:07.000I mean, it's been absolutely proven that eyewitness testimony is the least accurate piece of evidence that any investigator can ever use in terms of like trying to figure out what happened at the scene of a crime or anything involving any sort of trauma.
01:22:27.000And I mean, when we look at, say, the issue with Me Too and the sexual assault and sexual harassment, I think also some people see this and they think, I want to help this person.
01:22:35.000So they might reinterpret their situation in a way to say, I also want to help this person.
01:22:40.000Well, I think there's clearly, without doubt, been a lot of unchecked sexual harassment in the workplace.
01:23:40.000But if you were around a gay guy that was always trying to fuck you and maybe touched your ass when you bent over to pick up some paper or something like that, that would get real annoying.
01:23:51.000And if your job relied on this guy liking you and approving you, which a lot of women's jobs rely on creeps liking them and approving you, it gets fucking disgusting.
01:24:01.000That's the reality that many women have lived with for decades.
01:26:43.000But then I see, okay, now imagine being a woman who works in the office with this guy who's in love with this woman, and then they have a relationship, and then all of a sudden her career starts doing a little bit better.
01:27:28.000Transactional is a great way to put it.
01:27:30.000There's a lot of women who I know who are actresses who were approached by certain types of men who are producers or executives in certain ways, and they said no.
01:27:41.000And then girls that they know said yes, and their careers advanced.
01:27:46.000And this was a thing where people were aware of it.
01:27:49.000There's a power dynamic that exists when there's a boss and then there's an underling.
01:27:56.000There's a person who's working for that boss.
01:27:58.000And whether it's a producer and an actress or whether it's a CEO and an employee, when they engage in some sort of a transactional sexual relationship, that makes everyone fucking uncomfortable.
01:28:14.000Do you think it's the industry's job, or how do you weed that out?
01:28:19.000I think corporations pretty much across the board now just fire people when they do that.
01:28:24.000There was a recent CEO of some large, high-profile company who had to step down because he was involved in a consensual sexual relationship with somebody.
01:28:52.000If you go home, say if you work eight hours a day, and it takes you an hour to drive to work, takes you an hour to drive home, that's fucking ten hours, and nobody works eight hours a day if you really want to make it, right?
01:29:02.000You work nine and ten, so it's like half the day is gone.
01:29:06.000You get home, you're exhausted, You know, your husband's exhausted.
01:29:51.000So, I mean, I think if it's a consensual relationship, there shouldn't be anything wrong there.
01:29:55.000But I can see how in this climate, there are all these other, you know, ways of looking at being imposed on it.
01:30:01.000So, is that really consensual if it's someone who is your boss?
01:30:04.000But then, imagine, say, if you and Jamie worked together, okay?
01:30:08.000And you guys had a consensual sexual relationship, and you both were on the same level, you both, and there's not, it's not like anybody has any power, but then you break up.
01:30:23.000And then you come to me, and you're like, you know, Jamie, you know, he looks like a good guy, but when you start dating him, he's a fucking selfish prick.
01:33:23.000They're posturing as an alternative to these men who don't want monogamous relationships or would break the woman's heart or are not willing to compromise and bend the will of the woman.
01:33:35.000And they put these women on a platform and worship these women and I am the alternative.
01:34:23.000Yeah, I mean, I think men who, not all men who call themselves feminists are male feminists.
01:34:30.000So in that, I think men who ascribe to women being equal, that's a good thing.
01:34:35.000And I think a lot of guys will say, yeah, I'm feminist, because they think that's the right thing to do.
01:34:39.000That's the socially acceptable thing, and that's the way we should be.
01:34:43.000But then the ones who run around and say, you know, really, really push it and make that their identity and really sell themselves as male feminists, those are the guys I have an issue with.
01:34:53.000Because like you said, they're sneaky.
01:35:55.000I don't want you to get discriminated against in any way, shape, or form.
01:35:58.000But I don't want to pretend that one group is better than other groups.
01:36:01.000Except Asians when it comes to Harvard.
01:36:04.000The crazy thing is with these guys, though, you see there's been a trend where they actually have a lot to hide, and they usually are misogynistic, and they usually do abuse women, which is the scary thing.
01:36:14.000I think what happens is there's a certain amount of resentment from living this sort of fake life and having these fake beliefs and doing so just to get to the approval of women.
01:36:26.000And then when it doesn't work out, there's anger and resentment and this just...
01:36:32.000Or I think some guys put it on because it's a way of overcompensating for their own guilt.
01:37:08.000And this is like how I feel about male feminists.
01:37:10.000Like, I'm sure there's a bunch of them out there that are really good guys and maybe through the influence of the people that have been around, they've chosen to identify as a male feminist and this seems to be a good way to show that they support women.
01:37:24.000And even if they have to support women over men, look, women have been fucked over for so long.
01:37:49.000Or work on yourself to make yourself more attractive to women instead of deceiving them.
01:37:53.000One of my all-time favorite tweets that I read was a guy saying, I'm not going to describe myself as a feminist until women tell me that I'm doing feminism correctly.
01:40:18.000It's fairly unrelated, but not necessarily to what we were talking about about Gender dysphoria about some people choosing that as a path to get a lot of attention.
01:40:28.000I mean, I think there's many things that people do to get a lot of attention.
01:40:32.000There's things that people do to stand out as typically unique, right?
01:40:36.000Dye their hair pink or purple or blue or wear certain things or do certain piercings.
01:40:42.000There's things that people do to like get attention and fit in and find their niche and just do something where it makes them feel like they have some clout in this community of humans.
01:41:21.000Yeah, when it's not just a bunch of people finding each other, but a bunch of people looking at the other people and attacking them for not being similar.
01:41:44.000You've got to wonder, like, objectively, if you were from another planet and you were watching these patterns take place, you go, wow, look at this creepy little organism.
01:41:52.000Look at this weird thing that it does.
01:41:55.000Going back to the transgender bullying, I guess, my issue with all of that intimidation is the fact that these kids are not getting the help that they need.
01:42:05.000And so if we look at something like I was saying earlier about if it's a little boy who says he's a girl, he's likely going to grow up to be a gay man.
01:42:14.000And so all of the scientific research suggests that, all the studies ever done suggest that, but you can't say that because it really upsets transgender activists.
01:42:23.000And so you have all these children now who are transitioning who I think in five, ten years are going to regret it.
01:42:28.000Isn't this sort of similar to what we were talking about earlier is that historically Trans people have been so discriminated against that it shifted so hard the other way.
01:42:44.000Like just what we were talking about in terms of sexism and then harassment in the workplace and sexual harassment and rape was so one-sided that now it's pushing the opposite way.
01:42:56.000I read a tweet once by this woman that said, here's an unpopular opinion.
01:43:12.000Brett Weinstein retweeted it and pointed out how wrong this idea was and how crazy this is to take allies who are falsely accused of sexual harassment or assault and not being concerned about that.
01:43:25.000You're only concerned with your own gender.
01:43:27.000This is a perfect example of an intelligent person that's thinking in this really crazy discriminatory way because in her mind, her team had been fucked over so many times that it's time to fuck over that other team.
01:43:42.000If we lose a couple of people, hey, we shoot some drones into some apartment buildings and a few civilians die, at least we got the terrorists.
01:43:51.000And I mean, I understand that, like the anger that comes with that.
01:43:54.000I think for the people who are the most militant, so not to say that of this particular person, but I think of women in particular who are the most militant about this movement, I think they really just have been hurt badly by men.
01:44:04.000And it's a way for them to express that.
01:44:08.000If you say that these women that are angry about men, that they've been hurt by men, so now they discriminate against large groups of men because of that pain.
01:44:32.000Does it balance out to a point in our children's future, our children's children's future, where this is no longer a concern, like cannibalism is no longer a concern, or a very, very slight concern?
01:44:46.000You know, where it's an aberration, where it's a very, very rare thing.
01:44:49.000I mean, that's the ultimate goal, right?
01:44:52.000Is that we reach a point in our society where we do not care if someone's gay.
01:45:13.000Like, where is it eventually going to lead us?
01:45:15.000Yeah, I mean, culturally, across the board, whether it's male versus female, whether it's trans versus straight, all of this, gay versus straight, whether, you know, progressive versus conservative, I would love it if we got to this point with all this chaos and calamity and arguing back and forth.
01:45:34.000It would be fantastic if we can get to a balance point.
01:46:39.000And over the time that I knew him, he became more and more resentful to women to the point where he would just openly say fucked up, misogynistic things about women.
01:46:52.000And it was weird to watch, but it was one of those things where I was like, oh, I see.
01:47:22.000But when we look at it with compassion, I mean, hopefully the healthy people, the people that aren't in that state of anger and resentment, that they look at it with compassion, they go, oh, okay, I see why this woman would write that tweet.
01:47:39.000She's met a bunch of fucked up, shitty dudes, probably male feminists.
01:49:03.000It's a good way to really trim down the fat in your jokes.
01:49:08.000But it's not a good way to express ideas.
01:49:11.000One of the good things about Twitter is they have this thing where you can reply to your tweet and then reply to that, reply to that, and they all fit in together.
01:51:03.000You guys are out of your mind if you think that a man who has been a man for 30 years And has taken female hormones for two is the same.
01:51:12.000You put Brock Lesnar, chop his dick off and put him in a dress, that guy's gonna maul through the women's heavyweight division like nothing you've ever seen in your life.
01:51:23.000And anyone who tries to argue that is crazy.
01:51:25.000And there are certainly standouts in terms of women who are much more muscular, higher bone density, particularly African-American women have very high bone density.
01:51:37.000But there's a different shape to their hips.
01:51:39.000There's the size of the hands, the size of the shoulders.
01:52:14.000And she's also talking about the science of one of the things they talk about is how women, you know, or trans women, once they transition to being a woman, they're basically biologically almost exactly the same as women.
01:52:25.000She was like, no, not only that, but the bone density is retained by taking estrogen, which is what the problem with women when they have osteoporosis is They're losing estrogen.
01:52:40.000Well, the estrogen actually helps you retain bone mass.
01:52:43.000So when a man transitions to a woman and then starts taking estrogen, it's actually helping retain the bone mass that he would have lost by not having testosterone.
01:52:51.000And then on top of that, reaction times.
01:52:53.000The reaction times are several tenths of a second faster in general for women than they are for men rather than they are for even professional athlete women.
01:55:39.000What was fascinating about it was, here's something that I... I mean, I'm not a real expert in physiology or endocrinology, but I'm a martial arts expert.
01:56:07.000You know, there's more of a gap in jujitsu or the gap rather closes in jujitsu because skill and technique Take precedent over physical strength.
01:56:17.000But goddammit, when it comes to striking, you could get a man who's been doing it for six months but just happens to have a lot of fast twitch muscle fiber and just knows how to hit things hard.
01:56:38.000And to say that those advantages are immediately cut out of the picture as soon as you transition to being a woman and within two years you should be able to fight women in a cage and not tell them that you're a woman.
01:56:51.000So that was the big mob that came after me.
01:56:54.000I think it's interesting that in this, because it is pitting people who would call themselves feminists against transgender activists, and it's basically women are being lost in the mix, so you can't say certain things like, on what planet would it be okay for someone who is born male to fight a woman?
01:57:11.000But in this case, because this person who's born male identifies as female, you can't call that into question.
01:57:17.000And also, there was a real problem in Texas, the other way, where they're What they were doing is being prejudiced against trans people to the point where they wouldn't let a girl transitioning to being a boy wrestle with boys.
01:57:32.000They made her wrestle with girls while she was taking testosterone.
01:57:36.000It's like, you guys are out of your fucking mind.
01:57:38.000You're not even recognizing that she wants to compete with boys, which is a disadvantage for her or him now.
01:57:46.000Let him compete with boys because this is a different thing.
01:57:51.000But then even then, a lot of boys are saying, well, look, I'm not taking testosterone.
01:58:06.000There's a lot of new ground that's going on here.
01:58:10.000My concern as a martial arts expert is when you are using ideology to push this progressive notion that a trans woman is exactly the same as a woman,
01:58:26.000and you're getting women beat the fuck up because of it.
01:58:29.000And this is what I felt, this is what I saw.
01:58:32.000And they wouldn't have to be hard for like a year or two, but then it all went away.
01:58:35.000What's the worst thing they said about you?
02:02:44.000Well, it seems to me that we have to accept the fact that there's some physical differences when the consequences are being gravely injured.
02:02:53.000And this is what martial arts are all about.
02:04:04.000So you would kind of be a turf in this situation because you're advocating for women and the safety of women and saying that people who are born male but identify as female are not the same as people who are born female.
02:04:41.000Look, if you have a thousand people and a hundred of those people are a fucking asshole to you, it's going to feel like a lot of people, right?
02:04:49.000So if you're a trans person and you're...
02:04:52.000I mean, I've seen horrific things written to trans people online.
02:04:56.000I understand there's real discrimination.
02:04:58.000But I understand that you have to understand...
02:05:01.000You have to appreciate who your actual allies and people who are rational people who actually care about you and who disagree with you on one very particular thing.
02:05:12.000And this is the only place where I disagree.
02:05:28.000And I know from talking to endocrinologists and people who are experts in the human anatomy that there's just physiological differences that are insurmountable.
02:05:43.000I mean, I get where people are coming from, the people who are upset by this, because I think by acknowledging that someone was not born the sex that they identify as, it's almost like pointing out to them that they're different.
02:07:23.000These delusional perceptions of reality?
02:07:26.000And why are we reinforcing these delusional perceptions of reality?
02:07:29.000Because it seems to me that this kind of language and this kind of exclusionary...
02:07:36.000Inability to use certain words and the inability to describe things accurately, correctly, and in many cases scientifically, it hurts everybody.
02:08:50.000For men who will date trans women who are retaining their penis, that's what it's called in the literature, if they decide not to get surgery, it's actually a particular sexual preference.
02:09:00.000For the people that are attracted to that particular trans woman.
02:09:03.000Yeah, it's called gynandromorphophilia.
02:09:16.000But this is the thing, the difference between a man and a woman, a trans man, a trans woman, and then someone who could actually be a woman.
02:09:27.000I think we're going to get to a point within, you know, whether it's 100 years or 500 years, where we can use things like the future version of CRISPR or whatever comes down the line next, some scientific innovation that's going to allow people to literally transition.
02:13:23.000It's not often promoted and that benefit is there's something good about being nervous.
02:13:30.000There's something good about what people call paranoia.
02:13:33.000There's something good about heightened perspective that is brought upon by psychedelics or by marijuana where you are forced to re-examine what you've taken for granted.
02:13:49.000One of the things that I like about Smoke and Pot, besides the fact that I believe it makes me more compassionate, it instills a better sense of community, it makes me more friendly and more loving, and it definitely does that.
02:14:01.000But it also makes me look at things with fresh eyes and appreciate the weirdness.
02:14:08.000I genuinely love it when I see some girl...
02:14:55.000So where people would get an incorrect assumption is my radical stance against this trans woman fighting other women because I recognize it as being unfair.
02:15:08.000Well, because there's suppression of the debate as well.
02:15:13.000It's one thing if you could talk about it openly.
02:15:15.000Well, it's also something that I'm an expert in.
02:15:31.000It's interesting because I heard you talk about this.
02:15:33.000I don't know if it was your interview with Josh Barnett, but when you first get into the cage, you don't know what the other person is going to be like until you start fighting.
02:15:40.000And I just imagine if you go in and you don't know that someone was born male, how that's a very big disadvantage.
02:15:47.000I think there's a propensity for violence that exists in the mind of a man that I just don't know if it's the same in most women.
02:16:26.000You know, people lived in Roman times and shit, watched people get chopped up by swords.
02:16:30.000But people in modern time, like in terms of like fisticuffs, people getting head kicked and beaten down with elbows, I've probably seen more of that than almost anyone that's ever lived.
02:16:41.000There's probably a small group of people, like a thousand people on the planet that have seen as many people get fucked up personally as I have.
02:17:19.000An extreme over-the-top masculine violence that I've seen that's that's even more ferocious There's there's something to it that is it's another level this and and this is not saying that men are better than women This is not this is just I'm saying there's a thing that men do there's a reason why men cause all wars Men cause all wars.
02:17:44.000Women aren't fucking suiting up and going into battle and trying to conquer as a giant, you know, million-strong group of women soldiers invading a foreign army.
02:18:26.000And people who don't think it's a different thing have probably never been punched in the face by a guy, you know, or seen guys punch guys in the face or been around it enough where you realize, like, it's a different thing.
02:18:38.000You know, I've seen some awesome women fights.
02:19:50.000Until we come up with some sort of a way, like with CRISPR or whatever we talked about before, where you can actually turn a man into a woman.
02:20:00.000Until it's like real clean, we look at it, we go, yep, we just did the chromosome test, you've got a Y chromosome now, and you've erased 30 years of testosterone, and you know, a man now is built like you.
02:21:18.000Which is, there's a big difference, you know?
02:21:21.000And what she was, I mean, if you look at like the caliber of competition that she's fought, guys like Raquel Pennington, or girls, excuse me, like Raquel Pennington, Sorry, Raquel.
02:21:32.000And look at who Fallon Fox was fighting when she was fighting, you know, lower-level competition.
02:21:38.000That's a giant leap between Raquel Pennington and someone who is on these amateur circuits.
02:22:47.000Imagine if you were a woman and all your life you've been fucking power cleaning.
02:22:52.000Through the force of will and determination and your focus and discipline and then some trans woman comes in and just, this bitch is lifting a hundred pounds more than you're ever gonna lift.
02:23:07.000You know, like those poor girls in Texas that had to wrestle that girl because they're discriminatory in the opposite way and they won't recognize that this trans girl is a boy or this trans boy is a boy.
02:24:49.000And it's amazing because parents are saying, well, you know, if that's the decision they want to make, then they should make that decision.
02:25:29.000Well, not only that, I don't think she breastfed, which shouldn't be celebrated.
02:25:32.000Like, there's massive amounts of evidence that breastfeeding is super positive.
02:25:39.000Look at that, full beard, holding a baby.
02:25:43.000So, clearly, taking the testosterone again, if not taking it while the baby was in the womb, and I'm sure Five years after having a child as a woman.
02:26:17.000So I guess it isn't impossible to get pregnant, but if you're straight from pubertal blockers straight onto cross-sex hormones, your body hasn't even really developed.
02:26:33.000I think it depends on how, I'm not an endocrinologist, but I think it has to do with how long you've been on the hormones and probably how old you were when you started.
02:26:45.000But in this case, I mean, I've seen cases too where trans women will breastfeed, but they're, and the doctors say this is an amazing thing, but they're taking hormones.
02:26:56.000So basically those hormones are going to the baby when they're breastfeeding.
02:27:35.000Well, the one side being that is progressive and if you identify as a woman and you have a child, then you should, you know, raise that child as if no different from any other woman.
02:28:34.000But, you know, we should probably take into consideration the idea that maybe this isn't the best thing for that child to be subjected to hormones.
02:29:37.000It's also, I mean, it goes against people who say that gender's a social construct.
02:29:41.000Why do you need to take testosterone then to be the opposite sex?
02:29:44.000Well, this is one of the weirder things, the argument that I had.
02:29:47.000about with one person online where they said about Fallon Fox they said she's always been a woman and I said even when she was having sex with a woman and got her pregnant and she said yes even then I'm like we're done we're done here we can't we're in make-believe land now yeah well what does that mean you wrote you were a woman when you were having sex with a woman so why not just stay that woman who has sex with women I think it's because people want to have sympathy,
02:30:54.000Well, that's the only way they can win, too, though.
02:30:56.000Because if you actually enter into a conversation, you have to actually think about your position and actually think of ways to argue with the other person.
02:31:10.000It's also an acknowledgment of the oddity of the situation.
02:31:14.000If you're not committed to one side or the other and you're looking at it for what it really is, you really have to go, wow, it's so strange.
02:31:25.000Be open-minded, be accepting, be completely embracing of all oddities, all strange different variables of the broad spectrum of human sexuality.
02:32:14.000When you don't fall in line with the accepted narrative, people think, well, oh, it must be because you're conservative or you're transphobic or homophobic or something wrong, where you're not on board with the way people are thinking today.
02:32:46.000And you have to actually think about what is your position.
02:32:49.000And you actually have to look at the facts and then have a nuanced position.
02:32:53.000Because I don't think most of these issues, you can't just simply go with one side or the other across the board or simply go with what sounds nice.
02:33:00.000There's usually a lot of other stuff underlying that that needs to kind of be hashed out.
02:33:04.000What is your transition from academia to doing what you do now and being able to write things and do podcasts and be free of that sort of career?
02:33:45.000But I realized as time went on that you couldn't ask important questions anymore.
02:33:49.000And especially when it comes to gender, sex differences, and gender dysphoria.
02:33:54.000So at the time, with regards to the debate on kids with gender dysphoria, every single mainstream news piece in left-leaning outlets was saying, young kids should transition.
02:34:08.000And so you'd see all this coverage of young kids who had transitioned to the opposite sex, and their parents were, you know, elated, the kids were, you know, doing so well, apparently...
02:34:17.000But from a scientific perspective, that's not what the research shows.
02:34:21.000As I said, most kids will grow their feelings, so it's best to just wait and see.
02:34:28.000And at the time, I wrote it and I sat on it for probably about six months trying to decide whether I should really try and get it published because I knew that people were going to be really upset, even though I was just talking about the scientific literature.
02:34:40.000And I asked my colleagues, what do you think?
02:34:42.000And they said to me, I said, should I wait until I have tenure to publish this?
02:34:46.000And they said, even if you have tenure, it's not going to protect you nowadays.
02:34:52.000My mentors have always been very supportive of looking at facts and looking at the truth.
02:34:57.000And don't worry about whether it's politically incorrect or not.
02:34:59.000Just say, when you do a study, just present what you found.
02:35:03.000Don't worry about how people are going to take it.
02:35:05.000But not everyone is like that, especially even in the hard sciences now.
02:35:09.000If you publish, I mean, it won't even get published now if you find things that are controversial because journals don't want to have to deal with that.
02:35:16.000The institutions don't want to have to deal with that.
02:35:18.000So I made the decision to publish that op-ed and then from there I said, well, I'm going to see where this journalism thing can take me.
02:35:27.000Well, that sort of behavior and that thought process on their side is such a weakening of the foundation of critical thinking.
02:35:37.000And it also comes at the same time as these platforms like podcasting and YouTube that allows a person like you or like Jordan Peterson to now disconnect and have a far larger audience.
02:35:53.000Although it is scary, there is quite a bit of censorship going on with some of those platforms.
02:36:10.000But the demonetization, especially since you criticize YouTube, as soon as you criticize YouTube, that's like one of the best ways to get demonetized from one of their videos is to criticize them.
02:36:55.000The problem with the guidelines is even if you, like, say if we have a video and they just decide that they don't like the video, You can't really protest it.
02:37:02.000You can protest it, but then they review it and then they uphold their initial ruling and they don't tell you why.
02:37:08.000They don't say, well, hey, you called someone a queer or you did this.
02:37:52.000It's like, how do you catch up to them?
02:37:53.000And I don't think they're evil by any stretch of the imagination.
02:37:57.000And I had a conversation with someone about it pretty recently where she was describing that they're using crude tools.
02:38:06.000And this is part of the problem with...
02:38:09.000What is being deemed as censorship is really—they're trying to root out hate speech, and they're doing so with crude tools that will eventually, through AI, get better.
02:38:22.000Is that it, though, or is it that they're trying to shut down any sort of dissenting points of view?
02:38:28.000I think they definitely lean hard left.
02:38:42.000Because I was doing YouTube for a bit and then I stopped just because I unfortunately didn't have time because my writing is like my number one thing.
02:38:47.000But I had one video that the minute it went up, I was talking about science on gender dysphoria.
02:38:53.000It got demonetized literally like 20 minutes.
02:38:55.000And I thought, you know, I know what my intentions are and it's really unsettling when that happens.
02:39:01.000Well, it should be because you're not doing anything hateful.
02:41:05.000That are what we've been discussing all day.
02:41:07.000There's these political ideology blind spots that people have, these ideological holes that they have in the way they look at things.
02:41:16.000Well, I think the question is, do you want to solve the problem, or are you trying to just be successful as a business?
02:41:23.000If you want to solve the problem, I don't think.
02:41:25.000Suppressing speech and shutting down people who are genuinely just trying to ask questions and have conversations, I don't think that's going to solve things.
02:41:34.000I don't think they're trying to solve any problems.
02:41:36.000I think they're trying to make a ton of money, and they're also very liberal, and they think the right thing to do is to suppress certain ideologies they deem harmful or hate speech.
02:41:46.000You know, I had a conversation with a woman who's a YouTube exec.
02:41:48.000She was telling me that Douglas Murray and Sam Harris, they had this podcast that they did online, and Some guy put it up in his playlist, and he got a community guideline strike for having it in his playlist.
02:43:56.000Look, I'm very happy to be able to have a platform where I can have people like you on or any of those people, whether it's Brett Weinstein or Eric Weinstein.
02:46:04.000And there was an article today where someone was calling it problematic and saying that it's mostly right leaning people, which is absolutely not true.
02:49:26.000What do you think about all this dork web stuff?
02:49:30.000I felt, I mean, the fact that the New York Times covered it gave me a sense of relief because sometimes the things I write, I don't feel like the things I write are that controversial or that offensive, but the response I get sometimes I'm surprised.
02:50:16.000But I feel a little bit more optimistic because it tells me that people get it, that we have conversations like this and people don't think that we're bigoted or that we're coming from, we have a nefarious agenda.
02:52:06.000The appeal is that you and I, I really believe this, if there was no microphone, we probably would never have this conversation because it's too difficult.
02:53:11.000It should just be that interest in having a conversation.
02:53:15.000Well, I used to like doing radio when I was a guest.
02:53:18.000You know, on certain radio shows, you know, like you do, like, if I was going to go to, you know, Phoenix or something like that, and I would go do stand-up there, I would have to promote it on the radio in the old days.
02:53:31.000And I would get there, and I would get there early and, you know, smoke a joint beforehand, drink a cup of coffee, get in and start talking shit and having a good time and laughing.
02:53:40.000I'd be like, that'd be fun to have a radio show, man.
02:53:42.000You know, just go in there and just talk and have fun.
02:53:45.000But the problem was, to me, it was like always the censorship.
02:53:48.000I was like, oh, you gotta censor yourself.
02:53:50.000Then I started doing the Opie and Anthony show.
02:53:52.000And Opie and Anthony had a show on, you know, first it was XM, then it became Sirius, and And then they split up.
02:54:00.000But when I would do that, it was Opie and Anthony and Jim Norton.
02:54:29.000It was just Anthony is such a smart and funny guy and Opie would sort of run the thing and Jim was there and they would just let everybody talk and I'd be like this would be amazing.
02:54:39.000You could just come in and hang out and have fun.
02:54:42.000And then Then I started doing a podcast after that.
02:55:24.000I was gonna say the same thing I feel the wrong speak the fact that I can see people being mobbed and I can think okay I wonder what they're like and I can just ask them yeah yeah like is that what it's like for you see someone you think I just want to talk to them oh yeah Yeah,
02:55:40.000especially someone in a controversial position like Jordan.
02:55:44.000When I first met Jordan, it's like when he was just starting to get some attention online and I wanted to talk to him.
02:55:53.000I was like, well, what is going on here?
02:56:08.000It's amazing to see intelligent, articulate people clearly lying about his positions and not even understanding that by doing that they're strengthening him.
02:56:24.000You're not going to lie to the point where people are going to really think that your position is correct and all these things that Jordan has said.
02:56:37.000That somehow or another you misheard them or the whole world misheard them.
02:56:41.000You're misrepresenting his positions and that just makes all the people that are siding with him realize he's right.
02:57:20.000And all of it came out of him putting his foot down In opposition to the very same things that you experienced that forced you to leave academia.
02:57:31.000This misrepresenting of reality that seems to be going...
02:58:38.000But it's not a good way to discuss topics.
02:58:41.000Long-form conversations are really the only way where you can get a good sense of where someone stands on a position and how they think.
02:58:53.000I get a chance to see you, and a lot of people are going to get a chance to see you today, how you think about things, what your thought process is.
02:59:01.000And if there's holes in that thought process, they get exposed.
02:59:05.000And I think also with issues that are more complex, you can talk about all the different nuances to that issue.
02:59:12.000Because if you just simply have your talking points, if you do a standard interview that's, say, seven minutes long, it's going to be very, very sparse in terms of what you're saying.
02:59:23.000Yeah, I mean, there's not a single thing we discussed today that wasn't 15 minutes long, at least.
03:01:07.000But I think that's one of the rarest qualities when it comes to discourse, is the ability that people have to abandon ideas that they've supported in the past.
03:01:17.000Because what does that mean, then, if you're on one side and everyone in your life thinks this way?
03:01:22.000What does it mean if you don't think that way?
03:02:21.000And through that, I think I've understood...
03:02:27.000I've come to understand not just how I think about things, but why I've had roadblocks and conversations before, and speed bumps, and I've learned.
03:02:39.000If you examine yourself and your own thoughts, you're sure to learn, hopefully.
03:03:15.000They've gotten these things and they've decided this is what my side supports, so I'm going to just spout this out and this makes me seem like I'm a good team player.
03:03:23.000And then the thing about podcasts though, when you're sitting down for three hours, you go, why do you think that?
03:04:02.000But the politics are just so flavored by money.
03:04:05.000The problem with that version of idea sport is lobbyists and special interest groups and different people that are pushing you to get in the office because you're going to change laws and force things through.
03:04:18.000That's the trickiest of all idea sports and also the most shallow.
03:04:22.000I mean just think about presidential debates and speeches and those are the most shallow discussions in terms of the actual reality of who that person is.
03:08:32.000Well, I'm not even sure how I found out about you.
03:08:35.000I'm sure I found out about you online, but I don't know what it was that led me to one of your interviews.
03:08:41.000It was probably the Google memo, I think, when I wrote that column defending James Damore's memo, because I think that's when we first started being in contact.
03:08:54.000So I have a weekly column for Playboy.com, monthly column for The Globe and Mail, which is Canada's national newspaper, co-host on Wrong Speak, the podcast, and I'll be doing hopefully lots and lots more stuff going forward.