287. Trans： When Ideology Meets Reality ｜ Helen Joyce
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1 hour and 25 minutes
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Summary
Helen Joyce's first book, Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality, was a Times of London bestseller in 2021. She is a longtime staff journalist at The Economist, where she has held various senior positions, including Britain editor, international editor, and finance editor. Helen is currently on leave of absence from The Economist to work with Sex Matters, a new human rights organization campaigning for sex-based rights. In this episode, Helen talks about why she chose to write a book about a controversial issue, and why she felt it was necessary to do so in the current climate. She also talks about the dangers of postmodernism, and the role of social media in shaping the way we communicate about ideas and ideas, and how it affects our ability to make sense of the world and the ideas we're trying to create. Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship, with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive fairs. Discover more at Viking.co.nz/Viking_Books/Our Podcasts/Our-Book-of-the-Day/OurBook-Of-The-Day? Subscribe to Our Words by clicking here to get 10% off our next book, "Trans" by Helen Joyce, "When Ideology Metaphysical: A Realistic, A New Jerusalem" by The Economist s "Transcript" and more! Subscribe to our new podcast, "Our Book of the Day: Transcripts from the World's Best Podcasts," wherever you get your book is published, we'll be giving you 5% off $5 or $10 or $15 or $20 or $25 or $50, and we'll get a copy of The Economist's "Apostulous?" by clicking "That's a Big Book? " by "That'll Say So, I'll Say It?" by "So Much Of That's That's a Good Thing, That'll Say That's A Good Thing?" -- "A Good Thing? " " That'll Be That's Not That?" by Susan Ortega, "And How To Say It's That Will Help You Say It, That Will Be That Will Say It Will Also Say That So Much So Much That Will Also Help Me Say That?" -- And More Like That, "That Will Also Be That, I'm Thank You, Too Much, I Will Say That, This Will Also Have It, This Is That, And I'll Hear That, Will I Hear That?"
Transcript
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Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe
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on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive
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I'm here today with author and journalist Helen Joyce.
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Her first book, Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality, was a Times of London bestseller in
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She is a longtime staff journalist at The Economist, where she has held various senior positions,
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including Britain editor, international editor, and finance editor.
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She is currently on leave of absence from The Economist to work with Sex Matters, a new
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human rights organization campaigning for sex-based rights.
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Thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me, Helen.
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I've been reading your book over the last couple of days and found it, what would you
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And this issue of the transsexual rights and all of the furor and upheaval around them seems
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in some odd way key to the malaise that is central to our times.
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And so people have asked me, like they've asked you, why I've bothered dealing with it
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at all, since it hypothetically doesn't affect me personally.
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But maybe we can start with that, because at the beginning of your book, you pointed out
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that, well, writing this wasn't exactly good for your reputation, let's say.
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It certainly exposed you to the mad affections of the mob, let's say.
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But on the other hand, as we noted in your biography, you are a journalist, after all.
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So maybe we can start with your thoughts on why this book was necessary and timely.
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Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.
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It's really kind of you to talk to me about it.
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And I think, unfortunately, compelling is perhaps the best two-word description of my book
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I mean, I've been a journalist now for approaching 20 years, and I think a journalist, a short description
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would be somebody who runs towards the burning building rather than away from it.
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So when you see something that's crazy, compelling, a moving story, big news, you shouldn't say,
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oh, this is going to be trouble, this is going to be difficult to write about.
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And then when you start to interview people and you get reactions of the sort that you've never
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And, you know, for your listeners, I've been a foreign correspondent.
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I've written about the effects of pornography on teenagers' brains.
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And never before have I had the reaction that I had for this.
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Well, that's also why I thought that, well, that's why I thought that opening with that
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Because you have this immense experience as a journalist, and you've covered all sorts
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of controversial issues, and yet you haven't been exposed to the kind of vitriol that this
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And so I guess there's two questions about that.
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One is, why in the world would this be such a hot-button issue, but also a hot-button issue
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associated with that kind of mobbing and vitriol?
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And what technological transformations, say, social media-related, do you think might be
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also contributing to the fact that someone like you can be targeted so effectively for
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I think that one of the reasons that the vitriol is so intense on this subject is that it's
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You know, when you say that men can become women by saying that they're women, or vice
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versa, you're making a statement about language, not about reality.
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And the postmodernist turn is precisely that turn in which the language takes precedence
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And so when somebody like me insists on talking about the reality that they see and refuses
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to use the words that are mandated, we're destroying the reality that people are trying
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And since they see the reality that they're trying to create as something that is socially
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just, that they're trying to bring around, bring about a new Jerusalem, someone like
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me is doing a very bad thing and should be silenced by any means necessary, including
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by lying about me, or, you know, threatening me, or trying to get me out of my job, and so
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And then your second question was about social media.
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But we are witnessing a social contagion, and that social contagion is carrying what I increasingly
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And it wouldn't be able to spread without social media.
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And not just because social media is now in everybody's pockets, but because of specifics
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about social media, in particular, the censorship role that Silicon Valley firms take upon themselves.
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So I can't speak using the words that I regard as natural.
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If I do, I'll just lose my Twitter account straight away.
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You have to use their language, because that's the language now of Silicon Valley.
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And so it's very hard to say what I want to say using their language.
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Okay, so now you dived into the deepest part of this right off the bat.
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So I think we'll go, we'll talk about the idea that this is a linguistic battle, and then
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So one of the things that I've been trying to think through, because I think we will go
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down, right down to the weeds in this to begin with, is the, what seems to me to be the postmodern
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anti-enlightenment and anti-Judeo-Christian insistence that epistemology, which is the model
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of reality, let's say, that we use to guide ourselves, trumps ontology, which is reality
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And so the postmodernists insisted that the meaning of words could only be adjudicated
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And so they thought of the whole linguistic corpus as something like a massive dictionary
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where every word only bore meaning in relationship to other words.
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And we really did attempt to deny or downplay the idea that there was an external transcendent
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reality, deistic or objective, that could serve as a corrective to these epistemological
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And I think that was driven in part by the underlying Marxist insistence that, let's say, power rules
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everything, but also that human beings are infinitely malleable and because of that can
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be molded and should be molded in the view of whoever happens to hold the utopian reigns,
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And so that's why I'm bringing up all these additional factors, because I think they play
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into this religious, what's become a religious battle, essentially.
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And we should also talk about why you and I have both concluded, apparently, that this
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Yeah, I mean, I agree with every word that you say.
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And in particular, I would say that the reason that this battle is being fought on women's
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bodies particularly, because if you want to say that sex isn't real and what people
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say about themselves is real, like formally, that's symmetric.
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But actually, it affects women because women's bodies are more exigent than men's.
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So we're the ones who carry the babies, basically.
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And I think that means that a large share of all women hit the bedrock reality of this
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And it's easier for men to ignore that fact, easier for men to think of themselves as a
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ghost in a machine or as a little homunculus being carried around by a meat puppet, as someone
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who could become immortal, as someone who could cut the fleshly bonds, or that we could start
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If you've had that experience of growing another human being and then having to get it out of
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you, you're just a much less amenable, shall we say, to these sorts of illusions.
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And so here in Britain, one of the major sites of resistance to all of this is Mumsnet, which
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has this reputation as being a site where you talk about what are the best diapers to buy,
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or what's the best formula, or is my husband being a jerk, or whatever.
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But actually, it's also where women talk about this movement to turn the word woman into something
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that just means a feeling, a feeling that can be in a man's head.
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The first is that my understanding of the anthropological literature in relationship to initiation
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rituals in anachronistic tribal communities, let's say, or primordial tribal communities,
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is that the initiation rituals for men are more severe generally than those for women.
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And one of the hypotheses about that is that, well, women run smack into biological reality,
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not least in the form of menstruation, but then definitely in the form of pregnancy and
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And so they get initiated into the actuality of ontology, the bedrock reality, by nature,
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whereas that has to be done culturally with men.
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And so, and then the next thing is, you said that women have to contend with biological reality
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And that might be true, especially once a woman has been pregnant and had a child, which tends
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But it is also markedly the case that the people affected by this gender dysphoria epidemic
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And so that's something that we could talk about.
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And, well, maybe we'll just leave it at that for the time being.
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The last thing was, you said that it's the reality of feminine existence that seems to
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be the place where this religious battleground is taking place.
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And then you tied the notion of reality to the necessity of reproduction.
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And that's actually a really good definition of what constitutes reality.
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And that is relevant to some of the facts that you laid out in your book.
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So, for example, one of the facts is, these are biological and evolutionary facts, that sex
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It's way before many of the things that we regard as fundamental cardinal elements of
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The brain evolved 500 million years ago and the cerebrum 200 million years ago.
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And what this means is that by the time we developed a central nervous system and were able to
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conceptualize it all, cognitively speaking, sex had been a biological reality for several
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And one of the things that bothered me about the compelled speech legislation in Canada
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that mandated that people use the pronouns of other people's choice was that I thought
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I thought, number one, that that was an assault on what might be the most fundamental perceptual
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category in the human cognitive lexicon and perceptual universe that are the entire way
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we envision reality has a sex-oriented underlying symbolic structure.
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And one of the consequences of introducing this mandated primacy of subjective identity would
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be the destruction of our ability to communicate and also the dissemination of a tremendous amount
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of confusion among impressionable young people.
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So I figured when the pronoun laws first came to existence that we would produce a psychogenic
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epidemic, which is exactly what happened, and that it would particularly affect young women
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because that's where psychogenic epidemics tend to originate if you look at the historical
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And that confusion, psychogenic epidemic and inability to communicate, has stemmed precisely
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from this deep philosophical or even, I would say in some sense, even theological move.
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Now, does any of that seem to you to be stating the case too seriously?
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I would completely agree with everything that you said there.
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So I would say about the psychic epidemic that's playing out in teenage girls, we do see psychic
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They're the people who went through these hysterical laughing episodes and so on, if you look back historically
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speaking, I don't think anyone knows exactly why, but it's an observable fact at this point.
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Well, look, when boys and girls are given personality tests before they hit puberty, there's not a lot
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of difference in average level of negative emotion experienced.
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But as soon as girls hit puberty, their proclivity to experience negative emotion, so that shame
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and guilt and disappointment and fear and depression, is elevated markedly in contrast
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And it's permanently transformed at puberty and it stays stable for the rest of women's
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And so women reliably experience more negative emotion than men on average.
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Now, there's wide individual difference and there's some men who experience more negative
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And what that means, at least in part, is that the people, almost all the people who
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experience the highest levels of negative emotion, and that would include self-consciousness
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Well, at puberty, too, kids have to restructure their identities in quite a major way.
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And that's especially true for girls because they have, first of all, it happens to them
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So they're less mature when nature comes calling, let's say.
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Plus, as soon as puberty kicks in, they have these elevated levels of negative emotion.
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And one of the things we know, this is so interesting as far as I'm concerned, is that if terms that
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are reminiscent of self-consciousness load almost perfectly onto negative emotion, so there's
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almost no difference whatsoever between being self-conscious and experiencing guilt and shame
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And so if you add the stress of puberty and that physical transformation to the emotional
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transformation, and then you take the extreme outliers on the negative emotion continua, it's
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And we know as well, from the literature on gender dysphoria, that the individuals who
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experience gender dysphoria, first of all, don't have suicidal ideation or those sorts
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of symptoms any more highly than people who experience non-gender dysphoria psychiatric
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So it's a class of general psychiatric disorder.
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And if they're associated with negative emotion, that's going to mostly affect young women.
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That makes such sense, and they turn it onto their own bodies as well.
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Like the shame and the self-consciousness get turned onto their bodies, and in particular
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It's not by chance that they're cutting their breasts off.
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Like you put the bad into your breasts and you cut it off.
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Well, it is this self-consciousness at the body level.
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It's clear as well from the evolutionary research.
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So women evaluate men for physical attractiveness and sense of humor and intelligence and so forth,
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but they also evaluate them on the basis of either social status or perceived capability
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Men do not evaluate women for that, but they do evaluate them on the basis of their physical
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appearance, and they look for signs of fecundity and youthfulness, and so women are judged more
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harshly by each other, by men, and by biology itself, let's say, on the basis of their physical
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And so they have reason to be more self-conscious, and the reason they experience more negative
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emotion, as far as I can tell, at puberty, I think there's three factors that contribute
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One is you get physical dimorphism really emerging at puberty because boys get to be bigger than
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girls, and so that means if girls engage in physical combat with males, they're more
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likely to be hurt and hurt badly, and so they should be more afraid in those encounters,
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And then women are also more sexually vulnerable than men because they bear the burden of pregnancy
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And then also, and this is worth thinking about as far as I can tell, is that there's no reason
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to assume that women's nervous systems are adapted to make women comfortable.
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They might be adapted to make women hypersensitive to the sensitivity of infants, and that'll make
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women more tuned to environmental dangers, and the cost of that is that women suffer more
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So you could imagine that the female nervous system might be optimally tuned for the mother-infant
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And so, and then if you add to that the fact that all of those factors tend to make women
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experience more negative emotion than men, and then that girls run into that young when
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they hit puberty, then they're casting about for an explanation for that misery, and if that's
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provided for them, to them, by the context, then they can be susceptible to emotional contagion
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Anything that's associated with explanation for the negative emotion or any way out of
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it, like anorexia, like cutting, like body dysmorphia, they're going to be more susceptible
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to that sociological, to those sociological fads.
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And they jump onto whatever is offered to them.
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And I would say about the trans social contagion in particular, is it's sold as a 100% immediate
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Like nobody tells an anorexic girl that we can just switch the anorexia off, but they
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do say to kids, if you're gender dysphoric, if you transition magically, you'll be better,
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and that all your problems will be solved, because your problems stem from not understanding
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And one other thing I would add, I'd be interested to hear if this resonates with you, something
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that feminists have lamented really for decades is the way that unlike men, there's not very
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So a young man may look at a middle-aged man or even an older man and say, that's what
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Whereas younger women, I've noticed this really personally, tend to almost despise that women
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And I think a lot of what they're saying is that they don't want to become that person,
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Well, I would say there's a couple of reasons for that.
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I mean, my wife has started a podcast series where she's interviewing older women who've
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had successful careers in families to have them lay out the course of their career and
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I think part of the reason that, there's two reasons maybe that young women might have that
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And one is, I think that younger women are lied to almost all the time.
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I'm not going to put this on older women because it's complicated.
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But younger women are told, in no uncertain terms, that the only important thing for them
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and what will be vital to their identity and what should be vital to their identity if
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they're decent and honorable and ambitious young women is their career.
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And it's also not true for most men, by the way.
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But for most women, the optimal life, and I think most women discover this in their 30s,
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is a well-balanced aggregation of family, marriage, and career.
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And I'll tell you, every time I've made that comment, people have clipped out, say,
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I get the most vitriol comments that I've ever got when I've ever discussed anything.
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And they're so vicious that it's beyond, it's actually beyond belief.
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And so that's an echo of what, and then, well, then the other thing is our entire culture
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You know, we presume that if you're a moral agent, then you shouldn't bring any more rapacious
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human beings to expand the cancerous growth of humanity onto the planet.
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And that if you're a woman who wants to be a mother, then you're a second-rate citizen
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because you've subordinated your proper desire to have a career in the patriarchal world to
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this anachronistic birth machine mechanism that you don't want to be destined to.
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And all of that is pathological beyond comprehension, but it's also the situation that we happen
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And I think we devalue age, and in particular, we devalue age in women.
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Like women, you know, women, once they're past the menopause, are no longer seen as valuable
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because they're no longer beautiful and no longer potentially fertile.
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And I see the contradiction between that and what you're saying, but I think both are true.
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And so young women don't like the thought that they're going to turn into older women.
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I think, too, you know, that to the degree that we devalue family and continuity between
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generations, that also leaves the vital role of older women somewhat up in the air because
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one of the major roles that older women can play is as wise guides to younger women making
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their way through the complexities of career and family and also to play out the role of supportive
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grandparent and to be there within that family context.
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And if we devalue family, then we reduce people to their career and their individual
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And then if attractiveness on the sexual front is waning, that reduces it to career.
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And if the career isn't stellar, then what's the remaining signifier of value?
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And that's a pretty damn dismal prospect for anybody who's female who's moving through
00:25:02.800
And you don't like to look forward and see that that's what's coming for you.
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So that makes it quite important not to listen to what older women say, you know, to parody
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what somebody like me says about, say, child safeguarding.
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Like to mock it and to say things like, oh, won't someone think of the children?
00:25:18.000
Well, yes, I do want to think of the children, thanks.
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I think it's one of the most important things I do is think of the children.
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But that seems mock worthy to a lot of younger people and in particularly, strangely, to a
00:25:31.200
Well, you know, the other thing that seems to happen, I would say too, is that the social
00:25:36.480
media networks are set up so that casual, derogatory, derisive, narcissistic mocking
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is not only allowed, but staggeringly prevalent.
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Now, you know, we have to talk during our conversation today about the role that narcissism
00:26:00.320
The mobbing, the derisive online comments, and the transsexual phenomenon itself, as well
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as this claim that subjective claims to identity trump everything, because there is no more
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I am who I say I am, and no one else has a say.
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It's like, well, really, in a marriage, let's say, you're just who you say you are.
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You don't have to negotiate your identity with your wife or husband.
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They just go along with whatever game you want to play every bloody second of your life,
00:26:33.920
And if they don't, that makes them evil predators and valid targets for derision and mocking.
00:26:41.220
And worse than that, because as you know perfectly well, this online mobbing behavior that's driven
00:26:47.120
by thoughtless narcissists, not only is psychologically destabilizing because of its vitriolic quality,
00:26:54.320
but also can certainly reach its tendrils into the confines of your job, let's say.
00:27:00.300
I mean, it's become impossible for me to work as a psychotherapist.
00:27:03.700
I had to leave my job at the university because it became impossible for me to function in both
00:27:10.960
And so I would say this narcissism is also encouraged by, it's encouraged by educational institutions
00:27:17.300
because they take young people in and they say, well, you know, your immature messianic desire
00:27:23.800
to save the world, which could be admirable if channeled properly, should manifest itself
00:27:28.800
in this vehement activism that puts you in position of ultimate moral authority over your
00:27:40.640
And anyone who opposes that is, well, evil and predatory at best.
00:27:46.240
And as a consequence, no punishment is too extreme.
00:27:51.300
And alongside that, that you must choose your identity off a list of dozens and sometimes
00:27:55.340
hundreds, like that require the most intense, constant rumination and self-examination.
00:28:02.100
I mean, I was talking to somebody just yesterday who was telling me that a child who's 12 now,
00:28:07.480
you know, has this check sheet for how do I feel?
00:28:11.620
But you're meant to be thinking all the time, like, how am I feeling right now?
00:28:16.000
Am I, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how happy am I?
00:28:25.680
Look, look, one of the things I learned when I was treating people who were socially anxious,
00:28:30.140
I had a lot of anxious people in my clinical practice, which is hardly surprising because
00:28:35.160
that's the kind of suffering that requires people to seek clinical intervention.
00:28:43.180
So socially anxious people, when they go into a new social situation, think obsessively
00:28:51.820
And so then they become self-conscious, often about bodily issues, but not only that.
00:28:57.000
They might become self-conscious about their lack of conversational ability and the fact
00:29:00.620
that they're not very interesting and the fact that they're being evaluated by other people.
00:29:06.980
And you can, you might say, well, you could train people to stop thinking about themselves,
00:29:11.800
but you can't stop people from thinking about something by telling them to stop thinking
00:29:17.280
But what you can train people to do is to think more about other people.
00:29:23.580
And so one of the techniques that I used in my practice was, okay, now, when you go into
00:29:28.980
a social situation next time, like we'd go through the niceties of introducing yourself
00:29:33.540
and making sure they knew your name and get that ritualized so that it was practiced and
00:29:42.020
But the next thing is, your job is to make the other person that you're talking to as
00:29:47.140
comfortable as possible, to pay as much attention to them.
00:29:50.960
And so we know that the more you think about yourself, this is literally true.
00:29:55.580
There is no difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable.
00:30:05.300
And so these kids that are constantly being tormented by 150 identities, so that's a front
00:30:11.380
not of freedom, but of utter chaos, and then asked to constantly reflect on their own state
00:30:18.140
of emotional well-being and happiness, is the surest route to the kind of misery that's
00:30:23.080
going to open them up to psychogenic epidemics, let's say.
00:30:30.320
And then you land into that the idea that you may have been led to believe that because you're
00:30:35.580
a not very feminine girl or a not very masculine boy, that that means that really you are of
00:30:40.980
The fact is you're not, and no one around you is going to think that you are because you
00:30:44.600
don't look like the opposite sex, and you become even more self-conscious, like self-consciousness
00:30:50.120
brought you to this point, and now you're hyper-aware that everyone around you doesn't
00:30:54.820
think of yourself as the way that you've just presented yourself, and then you're watching
00:30:57.920
for misgendering, and you know, you're actually being told that it's a really terrible thing
00:31:03.200
to do and that no one would do this unless they really hated you and they wanted you to
00:31:06.820
die, like they want you to disappear, they want trans people dead, they want them gone,
00:31:11.780
I mean, that's what people say about me, that I want, you know, to cause a genocide
00:31:14.420
of some sort, and I mean, like when did I ever write such a thing?
00:31:18.520
So what that is, is it's the feeling that you've put all of your ability to care about
00:31:25.560
yourself, understand yourself, define yourself, onto other people and how they're looking
00:31:29.720
at you, and they're not looking at you right, they're looking at you funny.
00:31:36.300
Add to that mix, okay, so we could add a couple of other layers.
00:31:39.820
So kids that are well socialized and popular develop that ability between the age of two
00:31:48.020
and four, and what they undergo this psychological transformation in identity, they go from a
00:31:54.140
two-year-old egocentrism, so the two-year-old can only play a game with him or herself, they
00:32:00.440
can't play a shared game, and so two-year-olds will play in parallel, but they can't play a
00:32:05.620
joint game, and that means that their identity, this is so important, their identity is purely
00:32:11.560
subjectively defined, and they have temper tantrums if you interfere with that.
00:32:18.060
Okay, now between two and four, most kids extend their identity out into the communal world,
00:32:24.500
and so one of the ways they do that is imagine two little kids between the age of, say, three
00:32:30.080
and five playing house, a little boy and a little girl.
00:32:33.160
So the little boy will ask the little girl, do you want to play house?
00:32:37.600
And she'll say yes, and so what that means now is they've established a joint identity
00:32:42.160
for the time span of their play, and the joint identity is that they're both engaged in the
00:32:47.940
same epistemological world, in the same conceptual world, and then they negotiate roles.
00:32:54.200
Say, well, I'll be the daddy, and you be the mummy, and they can flip that role, by the
00:32:59.160
way, and sometimes they will because they want to play out the other side, but generally they
00:33:02.900
pick a sex-appropriate role for obvious reasons.
00:33:06.700
And then, having established the goal, so let's pretend about the household, which is a form
00:33:14.120
of thought, they have to jointly establish an identity that's acceptable to each other.
00:33:20.160
And then they have to do something even more sophisticated, which is they have to conduct
00:33:24.340
themselves in those roles so that the game is fun, so that both people will keep playing,
00:33:31.020
and so that both people want to keep playing with each other.
00:33:34.700
Now, it doesn't take much thought to see that that's exactly, that's an analog and a prodroma
00:33:39.860
to what you actually do as an adult when you enter an intimate relationship that's long-term,
00:33:46.360
But so what happens is, between the age of two and four, your identity moves from egocentric
00:33:52.080
and subjectively defined to communal and negotiated.
00:33:57.580
And now, this idea that we have that your identity is only what you say it is appeals not
00:34:04.020
only to, I suppose, the ideologues that are pushing it, but it also appeals to people who
00:34:11.580
And I mean this in the deepest sense, are stuck at a two-year-old level of psychological
00:34:17.380
And I think maybe there's a couple of reasons for that.
00:34:19.720
You imagine, a lot of kids are only kids now, so they're not socialized by their siblings.
00:34:26.880
A lot of kids have older parents with lots of resources, so they're sheltered in a way
00:34:33.800
And a lot of kids are exposed to computer screens and TV screens at a very early age,
00:34:40.720
so they don't have the opportunity to engage in the kind of dramatic play that helps them
00:34:49.200
And so it's possible, on top of all this, that we have an epidemic of narcissism that's
00:34:54.360
being capitalized on by the woke ideologues who are also likely suffering from the same
00:35:04.220
You see a lot of different needs or weaknesses or pathologies that are playing out in sync
00:35:12.200
And so these children, I really do think that they're victims.
00:35:18.240
So if you're an adult man who wishes to be seen as a woman, the most important thing that
00:35:22.900
you want is to have people believe that this is something innate, that people are born this
00:35:27.440
And that means that there must be children who are trans.
00:35:31.780
And it's not relevant to you whether or not that's actually the case for the individual
00:35:36.320
The children are the sacrificial victims of the ideology.
00:35:39.220
And so you've got adults who are using children as props for their description of who they are.
00:35:49.700
So one of the things you do in your book is you detail out a lot of sexual fetishes, tracing
00:36:00.180
Imagine you're a little narcissistic in your masculinity.
00:36:03.640
And let's say there's a part of your psyche that regards that as unbalanced.
00:36:08.500
And so what happens is you start to have fantasies about the value of the contrasexual temperamental
00:36:19.140
But given that you're not very conceptually sophisticated, maybe the way that counterbalancing
00:36:24.940
tendency manifests itself in you is in fantasies of being female.
00:36:29.460
And that fantasies are so damn deep that they actually involve even the sexual impulse.
00:36:35.280
So Carl Jung, who I think thought more deeply about this than anyone else, believed that as
00:36:40.760
we moved through life and we expanded our personalities, that we would expand them beyond the confines of a rather
00:36:48.740
stereotypical gender identity and incorporate the virtues of the sex that we weren't.
00:36:54.680
So that would mean for women that they would become more emotionally stable and also more disagreeable as they got older.
00:37:01.860
And for men, it would mean that they became more emotionally vulnerable and more compassionate as they got older.
00:37:07.980
At least they would extend their capability into those domains.
00:37:11.060
And that was a necessary part of expansion and maturity.
00:37:15.020
And then if that's forestalled by narcissism, let's say, or even by inability, then the proclivity to develop those
00:37:22.740
contrasexual tendencies would start to manifest itself in the kinds of fantasies that you described as characteristic of the
00:37:31.960
And so then if you think that narcissism is part of what's driving that, right?
00:37:35.440
Like, I'm pushing too hard in the direction that I'm going.
00:37:39.320
And so these fantasies manifest in a compensatory way that you get a perfect storm.
00:37:44.520
And it's the narcissists who are doing this that insist upon subjective identity and who also, by the way,
00:37:50.800
are perfectly willing to sacrifice children to their own purposes.
00:37:55.640
And two things that you notice when you look at these people are, one, what they're seeing when they look in the mirror is not what you're seeing.
00:38:05.880
They're seeing a fantastic version of themselves.
00:38:08.480
But you, who are not in love with this idea, this idea of the feminine version of this man, you're seeing something a lot less flattering.
00:38:19.260
That's experienced, I think, as a psychic insult.
00:38:22.540
That, you know, because it's like being flipped out of the fantasy.
00:38:25.520
Like, if you're in this beautiful fantasy and then someone laughs or someone calls you he, and then that's narcissistic rage is what you see as the response to that.
00:38:36.640
And it's narcissistic rage at, in many ways, the same level that you'd see in a thwarted two-year-old.
00:38:43.720
And it feels like that when you're at the receiving end, I have to say.
00:38:50.620
And when you see these activists on this front melt down and have a tantrum, especially if you have a clinical eye or you've been a parent, you think, oh, my God, like, that's exactly what two-year-olds do.
00:39:03.380
And that's a hell of an early developmental level to be fixated at.
00:39:10.360
That shows a real disjunction in psychological development.
00:39:15.300
And so it's no wonder this is felt as seriously affecting by the people who are affected because it's so deep.
00:39:25.360
And I think it must be felt very differently by a man who's looking at it like you and a woman like me because it's not just that it's offensive that this man is doing what looks to me like a poor and very parodic imitation of a woman.
00:39:37.420
It's also that I am expected to play along in a way that it really casts me as a supporting actress in my own life.
00:39:46.600
And if I step out of role, the rage that this brings down is absolutely extraordinary.
00:39:52.080
Like, you're acceptable as a woman as long as you're going along with this.
00:39:54.760
And then if you mention any tiny little bit of need that a woman might have, like just one vulnerability that a woman needs that really requires that all males are excluded from somewhere, all males, even the males who identify as women, it's as if you've done the worst thing that it's possible to do.
00:40:12.500
It's like saying to the two-year-old, go to bed or brush your teeth or no, you can't have another biscuit.
00:40:17.480
And it is. It's a meltdown. I presume it does feel dreadful to that person, but it's ugly to see it in an adult.
00:40:24.500
Oh, I'm sure it does. Well, it's terrible. If you watch a two-year-old having a temper tantrum carefully, and most people won't because they'll turn away because it's too disturbing.
00:40:35.220
If you watch a two-year-old having a temper tantrum, one of the things you realize is that the overcoming of their developing ego by those internal systems of rage and distress is a catastrophic defeat for the beginning unity of the individual.
00:40:52.820
And so then what you do, if you're a parent with any clue, is that you set up the environment so that tantrums are brought to a halt and eradicated in some sense as a form of acceptable behavior as rapidly as possible.
00:41:06.760
And you don't do that by suppressing the child's capacity for anger or distress.
00:41:11.540
You do that by integrating the capacity for distress and anger into a higher-order personality.
00:41:16.880
And so, and this, you said, you talked about this parody element. So let's go into that because I've noticed this too.
00:41:23.480
A lot of the behavior that I see on the part of people who are aping women, let's say, looks to me like a parody.
00:41:29.760
And I think that part of the reason they get so mad at women who don't play along is because they also have this fantasy of women, femininity, as merely, as passive, receptive, all-encompassing.
00:41:41.860
And, you know, it's kind of the counterpart to the submission element that goes along with dominance and submission play that you often see more hyper-masculine men attracted to.
00:41:53.200
And so I think that when women stand up for themselves, they also violate the image of docile and receptive femininity that plays such a major role in the fantasy life of the people who are engaged in, say, cross-dressing.
00:42:06.560
So I think that's absolutely right. And I would add something else to that, which is that I think that both sexes do have a somewhat maybe idealized version of what it is to be a member of the opposite sex.
00:42:19.020
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00:43:23.620
And, you know, a man may have a fantasy version of what it, you know, just an ordinary man, an ordinary heterosexual man who's happily married and has female friends.
00:43:34.840
He may also just have some quite fantastical ideas about what it would be like to be a woman, like that, you know, you can lie back and let the man do the work, or that it must be lovely to be so fragrant all the time or something.
00:43:48.280
You know, you have these very superficial ideas of what it is to be a member of the opposite sex.
00:43:52.520
And that's true, I have to say, in pornography as well.
00:43:54.780
Like, women as imagined by men in pornography are nothing like real women, just like the men who are written by women in erotica are nothing like real men.
00:44:04.140
And you see that, too, in these what look to me like parodies, but I don't think they're intended to be parodies.
00:44:16.460
Well, because we also don't know to what degree the vitriol that's directed towards women that's a consequence of this narcissism is also a reflection of a genuine hatred.
00:44:30.880
And this is why we should never forget just exactly what kind of radical and revolutionary genius Sigmund Freud really was.
00:44:38.160
Because Freud put his finger on the key pathology of our time, even our time more than his, because he regarded the Oedipal complex as the source of all pathology.
00:44:49.720
And the Oedipal complex was essentially the catastrophic consequences of the non-judgmental, non-discriminating, hyper-compassionate, all-accepting maternal spirit.
00:45:03.000
And so Freud's idea was something, and you can think about this biologically, too.
00:45:08.780
So human beings are peculiar among animals, let's say.
00:45:14.360
And there are two or three developmental reasons for this.
00:45:22.000
So because there's an arms race between the child's head circumference and the carrying capacity of the female pelvis for purposes of birth,
00:45:31.180
if the pelvis was any wider and the hole in the middle any wider, then females...
00:45:39.220
And so the way we've ironed that out over evolution is that babies are born far too young.
00:45:44.840
They're born at nine months instead of two years, and their heads are compressible.
00:45:49.680
And that's why the mortality rate for human babies is so high.
00:45:53.060
It's a real narrow passage into life, let's say.
00:45:57.160
Okay, and so what that means is that humans are hyper-dependent, particularly for the first two years.
00:46:04.980
But then, because we also have this amazing plastic, socially constructible brain, at least to some degree,
00:46:14.060
Now, the risk in that is that because we're so dependent, an excess of compassion is necessary,
00:46:23.700
Because imagine the right response to a human infant under six months of age is,
00:46:29.000
you're 100% correct about anything that distresses you 100% of the time,
00:46:34.780
and your needs have to take priority over absolutely everything else.
00:46:43.180
Now, the problem is, so this is why the psychoanalysts, they said,
00:46:52.460
She has to be willing to sacrifice herself to this infant fully.
00:46:57.760
But then as the infant matures, she has to sacrifice her own compassion and pull back
00:47:04.600
and start to become harsh and more encouraging and demanding simultaneously.
00:47:09.820
Now, if she has a man along with her, that's easier,
00:47:14.540
And that's a cardinal role that the masculine spirit plays.
00:47:17.220
But Freud's point was, well, this protracted period of dependence exposes us to the terrible risk that we never emerge out of infancy.
00:47:28.060
And the terrible devouring mother is a symbol of the person for whom compassion has become a hyperdominant and devouring force.
00:47:38.900
And that is precisely the political problem of our time is that this reflexive compassion that is now deemed morally necessary that it must govern everything.
00:47:52.780
If you don't feel absolutely 100% sorry for people as if they're infants, then you're a predator.
00:47:59.840
And two things that I was thinking when you said that.
00:48:02.720
One was that what I'm doing when I refuse to accept a man who says he's a woman as a woman is I'm like the mother who's refusing to give the infant what he wants,
00:48:25.300
And I think the other one is the most enraging thing for anybody is to desperately want to be something that they can never be
00:48:33.160
or to desperately want something that they can never have.
00:48:35.420
And so, you know, a man who's got himself into this headspace where he can be a woman in his own mind, somebody who says no,
00:48:44.260
and that no can be in one millionth of the world.
00:48:53.540
That is taking away the dream and being a very bad woman, stepping out of role for a woman.
00:48:58.820
Well, especially for this hyper-idealized, feminine, compassionate woman, right?
00:49:04.620
It's all-encompassing and all-loving and all-nurturing.
00:49:09.780
You know, I'm just watching this right now with my grandson.
00:49:13.560
The most magic word, the magic word for two-year-olds is not please.
00:49:23.100
And I would say 20% of the utterances of a two-year-old is no.
00:49:26.980
And that's because no is the word you use to give yourself some space in some sense.
00:49:34.660
And so two-year-olds don't like it when you say no to them.
00:49:37.860
It makes them mad and they push the boundaries as they should
00:49:40.780
because they need to find where the boundaries are.
00:49:45.160
And if you haven't had those boundaries organized for you in a systematic way
00:49:54.900
so that you can find alternative, cooperative routes to adaptation
00:49:58.940
and you just face this arbitrary no or you don't face it at all,
00:50:02.860
then you're going to end up being a person for whom no is a...
00:50:07.260
Well, it has the same effect on you as it does on a recalcitrant two-year-old.
00:50:14.300
the same way that no demolishes the world of a two-year-old.
00:50:17.800
Yeah. I mean, and the strange thing, the very strange thing
00:50:21.620
is that sometimes this is described as, you know, conservative
00:50:29.900
I'd like to see the Conservative Party here in England
00:50:32.200
make the case for self-ID, the conservative case for self-ID,
00:50:36.540
that it's not anybody else's business to tell you who you are.
00:50:40.900
Exactly. Exactly. It's a total misinterpretation.
00:50:44.940
Well, the idea that identity is subjectively defined
00:50:59.900
it's like, well, not only do you get to say exactly what you are.
00:51:04.340
Now, first of all, we could talk about what you are,
00:51:08.140
But the second part of that is, and it depends on your feeling.
00:51:22.280
Well, the answer to the question, what are you,
00:51:28.840
And we actually know this, personality researchers know this.
00:51:37.500
But if you look at how much our innate temperament,
00:51:43.120
can be used to predict our behavior from situation to situation,
00:51:50.460
So that means, and maybe 25% in the case of IQ,
00:51:55.240
which is the most powerful temperamental factor we know,
00:52:02.020
even on the cognitive front, is social context.
00:52:05.000
And that means, like the progressives claim to believe,
00:52:12.020
that about 80% of your personality is socially negotiated.
00:52:17.060
And that, so that, and so also what that means is,
00:52:23.540
And so you want to talk like I do all the bloody time.
00:52:26.740
I'm still going to shut up mostly in a funeral.
00:52:31.540
Now, I might be the most talkative person at the funeral.
00:52:37.400
But I'm still going to use the context to regulate my behavior.
00:52:42.300
And what that means is that the context actually defines my identity.
00:52:48.060
That's what happens if you're a civilized person,
00:52:54.040
Yeah, and the strange thing that layers on top of that
00:52:56.480
is that not only are they saying that how you feel defines who you are,
00:53:06.000
When those are just about the most, you know, concrete things about us,
00:53:14.400
Well, they might be the most bedrock thing about us, right?
00:53:17.300
Which maybe is why the culture war is centering on this issue.
00:53:20.880
Because if it is a war between epistemology and ontology,
00:53:24.740
or between, let's say, narcissistic delusion and reality itself,
00:53:30.900
then the battle devolves to identity on the grounds of sex, right?
00:53:40.360
Yeah, and I mean, I don't believe that entirely.
00:53:49.060
and it's very anchored to biology, of course it is,
00:53:54.400
like we do co-negotiate it in different societies
00:54:00.960
I wish I was a woman or I feel like I'm really a woman
00:54:12.200
Those are things that are only possible for men.
00:54:15.420
And then those things are meant to make you a woman.
00:54:18.000
And then it's so detached from reality that there's no tether.
00:54:22.640
Like this can just float off to anything at all.
00:54:24.780
And that's why we see this weird proliferation of,
00:54:32.320
You know, it goes off into sort of almost stamp collecting levels
00:54:38.800
Well, there's another issue that comes up there too is so,
00:54:45.760
which is entirely warranted that we vary on top of our biology.
00:54:50.460
And so, for example, there is a lot of biological
00:54:53.840
and socially constructed variance in temperament
00:55:09.800
And so that would mean they have more negative emotion,
00:55:14.700
and they're more interested in people than in things.
00:55:45.520
they're not so rare that you don't see them all the time.
00:55:47.880
It might be 10% of boys are essentially feminine
00:55:57.000
which is really where gender should be conceptualized,
00:56:03.260
There are good measures of temperament and interest
00:56:28.820
But that's certainly by no means perfect identification.
00:56:32.300
And so one of the things that's perverse about this too,
00:56:39.260
that identity is socially constructed and variable,
00:56:52.260
Because the biology is so fundamentally important
00:57:20.220
They're just slightly out of the ordinary boys,
01:02:22.620
And it's talked about that for children as well.