The Megyn Kelly Show - The Rise Of The Illiberal Left, with Christina Hoff Sommers, Desh Amila, and Curt Jaimungal

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00:00:30.720 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.540 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.780 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.360 Oh, we have a great show for you today.

00:00:46.940 I'm really excited about the discussion you're about to hear.

00:00:49.140 We're going to talk about the rise of the illiberal left.

00:00:52.640 How it happened, what it looks like,

00:00:54.740 and what we can do to stop it.

00:00:56.820 And I think all of our guests today are of the left.

00:01:01.360 At least two out of three.

00:01:02.680 I asked two out of the three.

00:01:04.320 And so these are people who are left-leaning,

00:01:08.300 who are objecting to the craziness

00:01:10.580 that's taken over our country and the Democratic Party

00:01:13.280 and our cultural institutions.

00:01:16.280 And so we're going to get into how we got here

00:01:18.220 and exactly how it's manifested.

00:01:21.560 First, with Christina Hoff Summers, who I've long admired.

00:01:24.560 She's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,

00:01:27.040 which is a conservative think tank, but she's a Democrat.

00:01:30.340 But she calls herself a feminist, but she says she's a freedom feminist.

00:01:33.720 She's an equity feminist, meaning she's not against men

00:01:37.260 and she's not about infantilizing women.

00:01:39.920 So you'll hear from her first and we're going to get into Simone Biles.

00:01:43.300 That's how we'll kick it off.

00:01:44.080 I'll have little talking points for you on that.

00:01:46.560 And then we're going to be joined by two guys

00:01:48.040 who have just put out a film not long ago called Better Left Unsaid.

00:01:51.840 You've got to watch this movie.

00:01:54.560 You'll see Coleman Hughes.

00:01:56.320 You'll see Steven Pinker.

00:01:57.560 You'll see Douglas Murray.

00:01:58.940 You'll see Noam Chomsky.

00:02:01.020 All sorts of deep thinkers on how we arrived here.

00:02:05.040 And they really get into sort of the extreme left, how it's taken over

00:02:08.880 and its historical roots in Marxism, Leninism, socialism, communism,

00:02:14.000 and how those experiments worked out.

00:02:16.780 And they kind of show you and it's parallels to what we're going through right now.

00:02:20.960 We're going to be joined by Kurt Jai-Mungal.

00:02:23.160 He's the director and host of this movie.

00:02:25.400 And Desh Amala, who is the producer.

00:02:27.860 He's a pal of Coleman's.

00:02:29.360 And these guys have gotten tons of pushback from big tech

00:02:32.100 on trying to get the good word out about this film.

00:02:34.740 So we are happy to help them here.

00:02:36.220 You guys need to check it out.

00:02:37.700 Better Left Unsaid.

00:02:38.980 And we'll give you all the deets on how you can find it.

00:02:42.100 But first, before we get to Christina, this.

00:02:50.620 I want to begin today with Simone Biles.

00:02:53.060 I've been thinking a lot about how I feel on this.

00:02:55.340 And I didn't want to knee-jerk defend her because I've long been her fan.

00:02:59.340 I interviewed her while I was at NBC.

00:03:00.800 Nor did I want to pile on just because when the mainstream narrative

00:03:05.480 is so strongly in one direction, I tend to get suspicious.

00:03:09.660 Is she a pathetic quitter or a heroic trailblazing mental health warrior?

00:03:13.760 Or are both of these narratives wrong?

00:03:16.260 We've seen some extreme reactions to her decision to quit the team competition

00:03:19.640 and then the individual all-around at the Tokyo Olympics.

00:03:23.200 Charlie Kirk called her a selfish sociopath.

00:03:26.500 That's bullshit.

00:03:27.520 Come on.

00:03:28.120 But what she did this week was not heroic either, in my view.

00:03:32.920 First of all, she is clearly struggling.

00:03:35.420 Unlike with Naomi Osaka, there is zero reason to doubt Simone's word.

00:03:39.500 Remember, Osaka only landed on the I have social anxiety excuse

00:03:43.020 for refusing to do press conferences after she had been condemned by her fellow players,

00:03:47.900 the Grand Slam tournaments, and by pundits chastising her

00:03:51.600 for equating her annoyance at reporters' questions to actual mental health struggles.

00:03:57.340 Her sister gave up the truth when she posted on Facebook and then later deleted

00:04:00.880 that Naomi doesn't suffer from depression or mental health problems.

00:04:04.320 She just didn't like the negative questions about her game.

00:04:07.200 Then came the blowback and then suddenly Naomi went with,

00:04:09.700 I have crippling social anxiety that makes me want to avoid the press.

00:04:13.520 Obviously a fig leaf to patch up her growing PR missteps.

00:04:16.800 But the media was so excited that a diverse woman on the world stage was leaning into alleged

00:04:20.640 mental health problems that all conversation was shut down and only one narrative was then allowed.

00:04:25.900 All praise Queen Naomi.

00:04:27.460 Her dishonesty was soon made clear by the multiple magazine covers she posed for

00:04:32.480 and interviews she gave both before and after her so-called press anxiety crisis.

00:04:38.640 Not to mention the Netflix documentary about her life that we now know she orchestrated.

00:04:42.800 And let's not forget the release of her Barbie.

00:04:46.760 Competing in Tokyo on behalf of her native country, Japan,

00:04:50.120 Osaka went on to lose to the 42nd Seed and she went home without a medal.

00:04:55.400 But let's get back to Simone.

00:04:56.480 Simone, how did she explain her decision?

00:04:59.780 Well, her message was a bit all over the place,

00:05:01.500 and that is in part why I think she's getting criticized.

00:05:03.760 She said it was tough being, quote, head star of the Olympics.

00:05:07.380 I mean, Simone wears a goat on her leotard,

00:05:10.420 clearly embracing the idea that she is, in fact, the greatest of all time, which she is.

00:05:15.300 But expectations were set accordingly.

00:05:17.460 Then she blew it on the vault, essentially relegating her team to at best second place.

00:05:22.000 And she, the team captain, refused to finish the competition.

00:05:25.160 She explained she was not having as much fun as she wanted at the games,

00:05:29.460 that she had wanted this competition to be, quote, for myself and not, quote, to please other people,

00:05:34.680 which not surprisingly made some other people feel unimportant to Simone,

00:05:40.300 namely some of her countrymen who sent her to represent America, not to compete for herself.

00:05:45.480 But she also said her head wasn't in the right place and that she had realized this is not worth getting hurt.

00:05:53.340 She said she wanted to walk out of that arena, not be carried out on a stretcher, which has happened to others before.

00:05:59.900 Young gymnasts have been paralyzed, leading to death when things go wrong in that sport.

00:06:04.680 Who the hell are we to say? Do that life-threatening routine anyway.

00:06:08.420 This isn't tennis or a press conference that an athlete is expected to attend.

00:06:12.320 This is high-flying aerial vaults and backward flips on balance beams and jumps that defy gravity on the floor routines.

00:06:20.780 Moreover, Simone Biles has earned our deference to her in making these decisions.

00:06:25.620 Remember, in gymnastics, there's Simone and then there is everyone else.

00:06:29.520 No one even comes close.

00:06:32.920 Her daring feats on the vault are so extraordinary, judges struggle to even understand how to rate them.

00:06:38.180 Silver is like gold to the gymnasts competing against her because they know she's in a league of her own.

00:06:44.140 So when she says, this time, I couldn't, we should believe her and accept her decision to say,

00:06:51.920 it wasn't safe for me today.

00:06:54.260 And you know what? We're forgetting something.

00:06:56.600 There is a history here.

00:06:59.560 Simone Biles has been abused by this damn sport and the leaders of it for years.

00:07:06.100 She was a victim of the evil team doctor Larry Nassar, a serial child molester who hurt Simone for years,

00:07:12.460 along with so many of her friends and teammates.

00:07:14.640 She said publicly that one of the reasons she came back to compete this year,

00:07:18.520 at, I guess it's considered old in gymnastics, age 24,

00:07:21.560 was that she thought officials would brush the abuse story to the side if a survivor were not on the floor.

00:07:28.760 She was out there for a lot of complicated reasons.

00:07:31.380 And she was in the very setting that led to her serial abuse in the first place.

00:07:36.400 Is it any wonder that she wasn't really in the right headspace?

00:07:40.640 So Simone Biles deserves our full support.

00:07:42.980 But supporting her does not mean one needs to celebrate this development.

00:07:49.700 It's sad.

00:07:51.400 It's a valley in the highs and lows story of an incredible athlete's life.

00:07:55.840 The superhuman Simone, as it turns out, is human.

00:08:00.060 After all, as Juliet Huddy said the other day, and on this particular day, she faltered.

00:08:05.180 A huge, huge part of sports, especially at this level, is mental grit.

00:08:11.340 She's had it her whole career.

00:08:12.840 Let's not forget she won those four gold medals in Rio back in 2016, weeks before the Nassar story broke.

00:08:20.340 She's the best there's ever been in a sport in which female athletes' health and well-being

00:08:25.000 has been notoriously worth nothing to those in charge.

00:08:29.260 The Washington Post had a story out just today outlining how terribly USA Gymnastics officials

00:08:35.400 have allegedly behaved towards Simone and the other Nassar victims.

00:08:38.260 It's worse than we know.

00:08:39.660 Covering up for Nassar, dodging the athletes' demands for information ever since.

00:08:44.840 All of which helps explain why on this one day, the GOAT couldn't win.

00:08:51.100 She deserves our understanding, our empathy, and our thanks to her for a lifetime of making us proud

00:08:56.000 of the stars and stripes on her uniform.

00:08:57.520 And we can and should be saying, next time, Simone.

00:09:00.580 We hope there will be a next time.

00:09:02.220 You'll get them then.

00:09:03.800 But that does not mean we have to celebrate this as empowering, which is where the media

00:09:08.620 seems to be going.

00:09:10.140 She put her mental health first, say those arguing that this is a trailblazing moment.

00:09:15.340 Well, yes, she did.

00:09:16.680 But one can understand how the American people who put her on that team so she could compete

00:09:20.680 and win don't feel like celebrating this particular moment.

00:09:24.600 Deadspin called this, quote, the most impressive move of Simone's career.

00:09:30.100 The most impressive?

00:09:31.840 No.

00:09:33.060 But that comment is indicative of a larger issue in our society right now where we

00:09:37.280 seem to want to cheer on any surrender to upset.

00:09:41.340 Outside of Simone, this is what we're doing lately.

00:09:43.940 Whereas we used to celebrate toughing it out.

00:09:46.960 Take the military, for example.

00:09:48.320 We can't have our Navy SEALs putting mental health first instead of jumping into the helicopters

00:09:51.860 to go kill bad guys.

00:09:53.760 Our frontline medical workers don't have that luxury when they walk into COVID-infested hospitals

00:09:57.840 and nursing homes to take care of the sick and dying.

00:10:01.500 Bailing on a commitment in order to put one's mental health first may indeed be necessary

00:10:06.300 and something which one's mom will applaud.

00:10:09.600 But the folks who are counting on you to do your job do not need to feel that way.

00:10:13.980 They are allowed to feel a bit sad and disappointed, and they will clap as you walk off after a bad

00:10:20.100 fault, but they don't have to clap when you quit or, in this case, because you quit.

00:10:27.420 We don't need to support our young female athletes by celebrating their surrender to self-doubt

00:10:32.600 or upset.

00:10:33.740 We seem to want to lionize people's retreat from emotional challenges these days.

00:10:39.300 Those who say, I can't, get lifted onto a pedestal because they said, I can't.

00:10:46.100 Is that the example we want to set for young girls in particular?

00:10:49.800 Can't we get to the point where we no longer shame women for self-doubt, for being emotional,

00:10:54.420 or for having a rough time mentally, while not deifying them when they give in to those

00:10:58.980 feelings?

00:11:00.500 Simone Biles is as tough as they come.

00:11:02.700 She can handle some disappointment from the fans.

00:11:05.620 As a world-class athlete, no doubt she expected it.

00:11:08.340 She's also entitled to our empathy for the hell she and too many other American gymnasts

00:11:14.380 have been put through at the hands of those who were supposed to be protecting them.

00:11:18.740 For now, I think the message should be, we are rooting for you, Simone, and the porch light

00:11:24.280 remains on for your inevitable comeback.

00:11:28.180 Joining me now, Christina Hoff-Sommers.

00:11:31.220 Christina, I'm so glad you're here.

00:11:33.120 You're the perfect person to discuss this with.

00:11:34.900 And I'd love to get your thoughts on Simone Biles.

00:11:39.160 I agree with your analysis.

00:11:41.660 I thought there is a difference between what happened with Simone Biles and with Naomi.

00:11:48.260 And she is an athlete of such brilliance.

00:11:55.360 And her past feats are enough to earn her a place in a permanent antheon.

00:12:01.400 And she's human.

00:12:02.900 So it would seem quite appropriate to defer to her judgment and move on.

00:12:09.020 What's annoying is more the reaction in the media with this fixation on safetyism.

00:12:14.940 And they keep pointing out how dangerous the sport is.

00:12:17.900 Of course, it's dangerous.

00:12:19.200 We know that most of us couldn't come near to doing these things.

00:12:23.060 And yet, it's almost as if the mood is that people shouldn't be doing these things.

00:12:29.000 And I don't get, well, I do, because it's a fixation.

00:12:32.500 This, I wrote a book called One Nation Under Therapy with the psychiatrist Sally Sattel.

00:12:36.480 And here we are, a therapeutic culture.

00:12:39.900 And that's the narrative favored by many in the prestige media.

00:12:43.280 All right.

00:12:43.460 So why are we doing that, right?

00:12:45.060 Why in any day past, we would have said, oh, gosh, I love Simone Biles.

00:12:50.200 So bummed to see that happen to her.

00:12:52.100 You know, I hope she comes back for the individual.

00:12:54.400 Why did we go to, yes, the most historic, best, bravest moment of her career?

00:12:59.980 Well, we are deeply into this culture of therapy where the road to

00:13:05.800 salvation is therapeutic self-understanding.

00:13:09.620 Now, as Sally, my psychiatrist, co-author, and I wrote, there's nothing wrong with

00:13:15.400 psychiatric self-understanding, but it's limited in terms of the world that it opens to you

00:13:23.420 because safety and cautiousness and self-awareness and so forth, all very important.

00:13:30.400 But there's also glory, and there's also spectacle and pursuing greatness, and we admire that

00:13:38.860 as well.

00:13:39.600 But all of those ideals seem to be falling away for many, and they want life to be like

00:13:46.000 a permanent therapy session.

00:13:47.780 And they're desperate for, I guess, some kind of role model of safetyism and therapism.

00:13:55.280 I doubt that Simone wants to be that.

00:13:57.940 There's no evidence that's going to happen, but there we are.

00:14:01.760 I know.

00:14:02.060 Well, she said she was inspired by Naomi Osaka, which I was like, oh boy.

00:14:06.860 I mean, if I were Naomi, I wouldn't be too pleased to hear that because I wouldn't want

00:14:11.300 Simone Biles bailing from the Olympics on my shoulders, especially because I don't believe

00:14:16.080 Naomi's.

00:14:16.780 I think Naomi got there as a PR cover, as opposed to Simone, who I believe is wrestling with something.

00:14:21.340 Right.

00:14:21.940 Right.

00:14:22.540 And also, I do think this is very bad for young women.

00:14:28.160 We have an idea this wouldn't be happening if it were a male athlete.

00:14:32.980 And so there is a tendency to use a different standard.

00:14:36.820 Let's bracket the particular case of Simone Biles and its particularities, which I'm, like

00:14:42.080 you, quite empathetic.

00:14:43.560 But overall, the culture right now with this, I think we've seen a kind of feminization.

00:14:53.520 And if you were to generalize about sex differences, women do tend to be more cautious and more

00:15:01.020 fearful.

00:15:02.780 There are psychological studies.

00:15:04.320 You ask people, like, would you go up in the space shuttle?

00:15:07.280 And far more men than women say yes.

00:15:09.820 Men take more risks just physically than women.

00:15:14.440 And from the earliest age, boys are more likely than girls to end up in the emergency room, having

00:15:19.240 done crazy things.

00:15:21.760 But you can have a culture that is too extremely male and martial and aggressive and violent

00:15:30.220 and people dying and so forth.

00:15:32.600 Obviously bad.

00:15:33.520 But I think there's another extreme where you can become so obsessed with safety and caution

00:15:39.500 and hyper-protectiveness, overly cosseted.

00:15:44.900 And I see us moving in that direction, even with the response to recently, with the recent

00:15:50.860 policies on the COVID vaccine, where we're erring on the side of maximum safety without considering

00:15:58.960 the other values that may be sacrificed.

00:16:02.180 It's so true.

00:16:03.740 And I read a lot when they when they write like this about women and race is a factor,

00:16:08.860 too.

00:16:09.120 It's not just women.

00:16:10.400 It's black women from Simone Biles to Naomi to Meghan Markle.

00:16:15.340 You know, that historically society's been notoriously unforgiving of them and held them to an

00:16:21.260 impossible standard.

00:16:22.240 And that that indeed may be true.

00:16:24.820 And especially when it comes to expressing weakness or, you know, that that women aren't

00:16:28.520 allowed to shed a tear because we're known as hysterics.

00:16:32.360 You know what I mean?

00:16:32.800 That we're fighting back against this typical way we've been portrayed publicly.

00:16:37.780 And I get all that.

00:16:38.780 I get all that.

00:16:39.660 But I just happen to think the solution to this is not to then celebrate any meltdown,

00:16:46.420 any failure, any, you know, implosion on the on the the vault during the Olympics that the

00:16:52.940 standard that the solution, in my view, is let's just hold everybody to the same standard.

00:16:57.140 She she messes up in the vault.

00:16:58.840 You feel disappointed.

00:16:59.760 You root her on forward.

00:17:01.240 We go.

00:17:01.760 There doesn't need to be this.

00:17:03.260 Oh, look at the delicate little baby who somehow like she's the toughest among us.

00:17:08.720 She's already competed after having been a sexual assault victim repeatedly by that

00:17:13.200 pervert, Dr. Nassar.

00:17:14.420 She has nothing to prove.

00:17:15.460 I don't understand why we have to like to me.

00:17:18.660 I worry because we're showing our daughters.

00:17:20.540 If you feel any sort of hesitation, any sort of vulnerability, any sort of a weakness, you

00:17:25.000 will be praised for surrendering to it.

00:17:27.740 Yes.

00:17:28.000 And what worries me, too, is the they're encouraged to focus on their their emotions.

00:17:35.880 And there's pretty good research that there are a lot of benefits to being stoical.

00:17:40.760 And yes, if you are too obsessed with your emotions, I saw one study that looked at a

00:17:47.300 cross-section of adolescent girls and boys and asked them, how do you feel when you talk

00:17:51.960 about your problems?

00:17:53.400 How do you feel when you share your troubles with another person, with your parent, with

00:17:58.200 a counselor?

00:17:59.020 And almost all the girls said they felt better.

00:18:01.360 And the boys, the number one answer was they thought it was weird and it didn't make them

00:18:06.580 feel better.

00:18:07.060 And people said, oh, this is this puts the boys in danger.

00:18:10.820 They're not in touch with their emotions.

00:18:12.100 They don't talk about their feelings.

00:18:13.320 They're not self-aware.

00:18:14.780 But it turned out that the girls have far more depression.

00:18:18.300 And the researchers, a researcher, Amanda Rose, thought that it's possible that a certain

00:18:24.320 amount of stoicism is conducive to well-being and happiness.

00:18:30.660 And if you become an obsessive ruminator, that may be what depression is, is just obsessive

00:18:38.380 focus.

00:18:38.760 You can't escape the focus on the self.

00:18:41.040 And there may be just something protective in male stoicism.

00:18:44.740 And this researcher and her team concluded that we have to reconsider this idea that always

00:18:51.660 sharing emotions, always being in touch with your feelings, being a feeling-centered society

00:18:57.260 may actually be detrimental to well-being.

00:19:01.020 Can I tell you, this resonates with me because I have found, I used to believe, talk about

00:19:07.340 your feelings all day long.

00:19:08.260 I did.

00:19:09.160 And the more adversity I suffered in my life, the more I realized it was helpful to me to

00:19:14.860 process it when it happened.

00:19:16.240 You know, try to put it in a box and understand what had gone down.

00:19:18.640 And I'm not averse to crying and, you know, showing emotion.

00:19:21.820 And I think part of the beauty of women is that we're more emotional and we can be a

00:19:26.560 softer place to fall.

00:19:27.480 And that's great.

00:19:28.320 That's one of the reasons we're so attractive, I think.

00:19:31.360 However, sort of, I believe in cognitive behavioral therapy is essentially where I'm going, where

00:19:37.560 it doesn't make sense to obsess on it.

00:19:40.300 It's there.

00:19:41.080 It happened.

00:19:41.860 If you can move it off to the side and focus on something else, especially during the trauma,

00:19:45.940 that's not repressing it.

00:19:47.500 That's not letting it kill you.

00:19:49.780 That's getting past it.

00:19:51.140 And that has worked really well for me.

00:19:53.340 I am such a proponent of cognitive behavioral therapy because it's problem solving.

00:19:59.980 It shakes it and says, well, okay, you have some bad psychological habits.

00:20:06.760 You're catastrophizing and you're oversimplifying and you're engaging in your paranoia and just

00:20:13.000 be more reasonable with yourself.

00:20:14.640 And a good cognitive therapist, who I wrote this a long time ago, I'm not promoting that

00:20:20.280 book.

00:20:20.740 It was before its time, unfortunately, because we really weren't quite there the way we are

00:20:25.120 today.

00:20:25.500 I remember I went on Comedy Central and was talking about the book and they just were looking

00:20:30.300 at me like I was crazy that teachers, you know, at the time they weren't using red pens

00:20:35.600 because that was thought to be powerful to students' feelings.

00:20:40.280 And I remember John Stewart said, what do they do?

00:20:42.520 Like put potpourri on the papers and things that they weren't doing that.

00:20:46.400 But he, Stewart just thought this couldn't really be happening, that we were obsessed with feelings

00:20:52.460 and that, you know, the Girl Scouts were giving awards for candle therapy.

00:20:57.680 I don't know, strange things were going on and tug of war was becoming tug of peace for

00:21:03.320 kids.

00:21:04.080 You know, everything to tone down and make the environment more reassuring and safe.

00:21:11.140 That was what we talked about in that book.

00:21:12.980 But now it's all sort of come, it's coming into being.

00:21:16.460 It's coming to reality.

00:21:18.000 Yes, I was saying the other day, I just feel like all of this messaging is part of the

00:21:21.640 wussification of America where we're, you know, the messaging we've gotten, the ads

00:21:25.700 to recruit people into the army are now about how diverse, you know, the woman had two moms

00:21:30.140 and it's like, OK, that's nice, but it's not relevant to whether you can perform in the

00:21:34.340 army.

00:21:35.160 And we whenever a public figure expresses any sort of a struggle or a weakness, I mean, we

00:21:41.680 lionize them.

00:21:42.760 And I understand we want to make people who are struggling with mental health issues or what

00:21:46.340 have you feel not alone.

00:21:48.120 I like that.

00:21:48.940 And I believe in that.

00:21:50.060 I believe in that because for too long, no one ever did it.

00:21:53.000 And so you'd feel like, oh, my God, I'm the only one who has this completely effed up

00:21:56.120 family or background or, you know, my own issues.

00:21:58.760 So I like that.

00:21:59.820 But it seems like we've tipped it too far in the other direction to where now the messaging

00:22:03.700 is the more screwed up you are, the farther you will go.

00:22:08.680 I know.

00:22:09.460 And we're we're not being reasonable with children.

00:22:12.600 I mean, we're so afraid that that girls will get eating disorders, which are terrible things.

00:22:18.280 But on the other hand, because we're so afraid, we're not being truthful to them about the

00:22:22.740 dangers of obesity.

00:22:24.500 And there's now this sort of sort of fat acceptance movement.

00:22:28.420 I get it up to a point.

00:22:31.060 But if you look at the data, it's pretty clear that you're better off, you know, doing what

00:22:37.840 you can to stay in a reasonable shape.

00:22:43.160 And I'm finding that there's just they're going overboard to indulge every young woman and

00:22:53.200 be reassuring.

00:22:54.240 And by the way, I should add that the mental health movement in our book, I meant to say

00:22:59.080 this before, we strongly supported for those who are in distress.

00:23:05.340 Cognitive behavioral therapy has one of the best records of success, but not to just become

00:23:11.960 obsessively an obsessive ruminator.

00:23:15.920 And, you know, it's probably good to cultivate.

00:23:18.040 What do you make of the point I was trying to make about hardship versus mental health

00:23:23.780 troubles?

00:23:24.620 Like, I just feel like mental health is now being used as a catchall for any sort of mental

00:23:29.900 struggle.

00:23:31.320 If you talk to personnel in our universities, they are claiming that a high percentage now

00:23:39.840 of college freshmen come to them with mental disorders.

00:23:44.200 And that the it used to be they always had a school psychologist.

00:23:48.920 Well, now they have to have teams of psychologists because there's so many kids under duress.

00:23:53.540 And I have to wonder if they've been brought up to think that any adversity is it means,

00:24:00.920 you know, any when you're feeling bad about something that that's a catastrophe and it must

00:24:06.480 be addressed.

00:24:07.100 And there has to be you have to go to an authority to fix it.

00:24:09.580 And it's almost as if we haven't given them the resources just to cope with the daily

00:24:13.980 the ups and downs of everyday life.

00:24:16.760 Yeah, that's called being human.

00:24:18.500 A lot of people feel sad, feel anxious, worry, you know, that that's normal.

00:24:24.500 And even if you do it a lot, it's normal.

00:24:27.040 It doesn't mean you have a mental disorder.

00:24:29.220 And I don't I just feel like mental health could be used to cover just about anything.

00:24:33.500 We I don't want us to see us swing so far in the other direction that we use it to get

00:24:39.160 out of anything tough.

00:24:40.700 You know, it's just a pass, a free pass to get out of doing tough things.

00:24:44.840 You know, I look at our military and I do look at those frontline workers who have been

00:24:47.820 through hell this year that they'd never show up for work if we allowed that.

00:24:52.220 Right.

00:24:52.780 Well, the other thing is, I don't want it.

00:24:55.440 And of course, we don't we don't want it to sound like we are saying that people shouldn't

00:24:59.700 seek therapy.

00:25:00.280 Of course they should.

00:25:01.180 And in fact, I worry about young men who have mental serious mental health disorders, because

00:25:06.940 I think they are underserved by the the psychological the psychology profession.

00:25:14.480 It's very much catered to the therapy needs of women.

00:25:18.600 And there are some in what was largely in Australia where they became aware that young men were just

00:25:26.020 sort of outside.

00:25:27.120 They're not getting the mental health treatments.

00:25:30.180 Some of them badly needed and they came up with some solutions.

00:25:34.480 I don't know if they are working, but in this country, it's not acknowledged as a problem.

00:25:41.040 In fact, the therapeutic communities kind of carried away with a political agenda in which

00:25:47.600 you could you could send a young man to a psychiatrist and she talked to him about about toxic masculinity

00:25:53.820 or male supremacy or male supremacy or patriarchy.

00:25:57.200 Can you imagine?

00:25:59.960 Up next, we're going to get into the medical community now apologizing for using the term

00:26:05.740 pregnant women.

00:26:07.540 Barry Weiss and Katie Herzog had an exclusive on this.

00:26:09.920 It was great.

00:26:10.540 And we'll talk to Christina about that right after this.

00:26:12.800 I'm in therapy.

00:26:17.600 I've been in therapy for a long time.

00:26:18.820 I love my my therapist and he is non woke.

00:26:21.400 So that's good.

00:26:22.280 That works for me.

00:26:23.000 But he does tell me stories about what he sees in the hospital, about how he's the one

00:26:28.380 who first told me you're not allowed to say this.

00:26:30.500 This patient is a 42 year old female.

00:26:32.380 You can't you cannot assume gender based on the breasts and the appearance of the person

00:26:37.400 sitting there and the fact that, you know, she's got female sex organs.

00:26:40.560 No.

00:26:41.400 And we saw this just this week where Barry Weiss, who's got this great sub stack column, had

00:26:46.480 Katie Herzog write in it.

00:26:47.760 Both women have been on the show.

00:26:49.400 And Katie was writing about what's happening in the medical community right now.

00:26:52.680 And she revealed that even in the medical community right now, there's blowback for doctors

00:27:00.660 denying biological sex.

00:27:04.360 So professors, she caught one on on a tape.

00:27:07.560 Somebody gave it to her apologizing for saying male and female and writing about how the students

00:27:12.920 are are policing the teachers because activism has taken over medicine.

00:27:18.820 And the one example they gave in particular, Christina, was here's a professor at the University

00:27:23.120 of California.

00:27:23.900 This is a quote from a tape that Katie got.

00:27:26.500 He says, I don't want you to think that I'm in any way trying to imply anything.

00:27:29.540 And if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it.

00:27:34.640 Again, I'm very sorry for what I did.

00:27:36.720 It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone.

00:27:39.160 The worst thing that I can do as a human being is to be offensive.

00:27:43.540 I mean, the worst thing.

00:27:44.400 OK.

00:27:45.060 And then the offense that he committed using the term pregnant women.

00:27:50.740 I know you're not supposed to say breastfeeding.

00:27:54.440 The word, the preferred word is chest feeding.

00:27:58.660 It's so absurd and it's hard to believe.

00:28:02.700 And I'm having a hard time imagining these.

00:28:07.560 I've known, I've been to universities all my life.

00:28:09.880 And the professors in the medical school were always struck me as being very sober, no nonsense,

00:28:16.120 empirically based scientists.

00:28:19.360 And they seem totally unprepared to deal with this wave of fanaticism that's just, you know,

00:28:28.620 sort of sweeping over the culture.

00:28:31.040 And they're caving.

00:28:33.160 And it's probably just a small coterie of little fanatics, little red guards in the first year class.

00:28:41.740 Or that's what I imagine.

00:28:43.140 And they're giving in to them.

00:28:45.860 This is very bad.

00:28:47.940 And medicine doesn't, I mean, already the CDC is losing some credibility, the medical community.

00:28:56.940 And then they do something like this, which is going to make them a laughingstock.

00:29:02.020 I don't get how in trying to be supportive of a very small community, the transgender community,

00:29:08.380 very small numbers wise, you've got to take away from, from all women, from all girls.

00:29:14.760 We can no longer be pregnant women.

00:29:16.180 We can no longer breastfeed terms.

00:29:18.000 You're not even allowed to say mother in, in, in, in administrative regulations and rules

00:29:23.580 that the Biden administration is passing right now.

00:29:25.860 They've gotten rid of those terms because they find the term mother offensive.

00:29:29.180 And, and that's what loses support for transgender people, right?

00:29:33.060 It's like, if you feel like you, you somehow find the term mother offensive, then I'm going

00:29:37.560 to fight you.

00:29:38.340 Then, then I'm going to fight.

00:29:39.680 So I feel like it's the approach is boneheaded.

00:29:43.680 No, I agree with you.

00:29:45.260 I'm for a long time been supportive of people who are genuinely transgender.

00:29:50.520 And I think it's an authentic human rights issue.

00:29:54.900 And that movement has legitimacy, of course.

00:29:58.140 But there are many who have glummed on to it.

00:30:02.040 I don't think, I mean, I think that, uh, there probably a lot is particularly young women

00:30:06.760 who are mentally unstable and they are moving towards this because they, maybe they get interested

00:30:14.120 in it for being online or from friends.

00:30:16.140 And there are far more girls now, uh, saying they're trans than, um, ever before.

00:30:23.080 And in, in ways which suggests that it's a contagion of some kind of hysteria.

00:30:28.980 No signs of being trans at any point prior to the 16 year old awkwardness.

00:30:33.180 Exactly.

00:30:34.600 And, or it may just be girls who are gay and you can be a lesbian and that you don't undergo

00:30:41.560 treatments to become, uh, masculinized.

00:30:44.680 That's again, a very, very small group of people, but it's being mainstreamed.

00:30:50.260 And as you say, it's become an occasion for, um, just being coercive and authoritarian towards

00:30:58.960 the public.

00:31:00.420 And this is not going to help the cause.

00:31:02.840 It's, it's, uh, it's infuriating to people.

00:31:06.700 So I, I, I've heard, and I've heard transgender people say this as well.

00:31:11.460 I mean, they're a hundred percent.

00:31:12.600 I always try to make the point.

00:31:13.540 This is their activists.

00:31:14.840 It's not them.

00:31:15.720 The trans activists are just pains in the ass.

00:31:18.680 I mean, really they're, they're so loud and obnoxious and I'm convinced they do not represent

00:31:22.160 trans people who are reasonable and just want to be loved and supported.

00:31:25.760 But tell me, let's talk about the feminist role in all of this.

00:31:28.360 Cause this is a field in which you've found yourself for a long, long time.

00:31:31.880 I love it.

00:31:32.640 You know, you talk about yourself as a, as a young woman saying, okay, I'm a feminist.

00:31:37.300 And then you kind of looked into the background and you were like, well, this is pretty

00:31:39.980 Marxist and it's approach and it's pretty demonizing of men.

00:31:42.800 And I'm not sure this label works for me.

00:31:45.060 And then you did battle with the feminists of the time, but I love that you've kind of

00:31:49.780 come full circle with them.

00:31:51.220 You, you may find yourself in the same camp as the old radical feminists who are kind of

00:31:56.060 pushing back against some of the stuff we're talking about.

00:31:59.400 So talk to me about feminism and how you view it and how your own journey has gone.

00:32:04.400 I have always been a feminist.

00:32:06.000 My mother was a feminist.

00:32:07.080 My grandmother was a suffragist.

00:32:08.740 And I was surprised as a grad student and in philosophy, and then as a professor many

00:32:16.760 years that my colleagues in philosophy and feminist philosophy and my, some of the radical

00:32:22.920 feminists in the university held views that were sort of shockingly extreme and just gratuitously

00:32:30.560 angry and denigrating to men, even, even to women.

00:32:34.640 And they didn't like what they called the gender system.

00:32:37.640 So, whereas I was a feminist that wanted to achieve equality with men, their goal was

00:32:42.260 to overthrow what they called the sex gender system.

00:32:45.540 And that they thought it was all just an artifact of culture and could be taken apart, taken

00:32:53.440 down.

00:32:54.040 And we were all just sort of gender neutral, um, beings.

00:32:59.100 Well, it turns out that's not true.

00:33:02.820 There's no evidence, good evidence to the, the, the preponderance of evidence suggests that

00:33:07.380 there, there's, that there are men and there are differences between men and women.

00:33:11.460 There are some people for whom, uh, the, the, the stereotypes of sex don't hold true, but

00:33:18.940 for many of us say they are true.

00:33:20.600 Women do tend to be, as I said before, a little more cautious and aware of, uh, danger and,

00:33:27.980 um, more risk averse and, uh, but also more, uh, nurturing and, uh, higher emotional intelligence,

00:33:36.420 um, better reading skills when women are better students overall and better rule followers,

00:33:44.560 boys tend to be more rule breaking.

00:33:46.780 Uh, and as I said, there are exceptions.

00:33:48.680 I'm talking about the rules.

00:33:50.300 Well, my colleagues in feminist philosophy would not accept any of this.

00:33:54.760 There's some that don't even accept that men are stronger than women.

00:33:57.600 They think that's an artifact of culture.

00:34:00.120 So I started, um, tangling with them and it, it has gone full circle of it.

00:34:06.420 Because there were the radical feminists and they would at least come out and, and fight.

00:34:11.460 A lot of feminists just didn't like debate.

00:34:13.420 And we've been there, you know, they thought it was too contentious and they wouldn't debate

00:34:17.640 me.

00:34:18.060 The radical feminists would, but I've become friends with them because they don't like,

00:34:22.640 uh, many aspects of the, the trans activist movement.

00:34:25.940 And they have been so viciously targeted by trans activists.

00:34:30.160 Um, and they are called TERFs, uh, trans exclusionary radical feminists.

00:34:36.060 That's a term of denigration.

00:34:37.200 And, and they, they, they've been heroically, uh, they've been courageous coming out and saying,

00:34:43.220 so I admire them for that.

00:34:44.580 I disagree with them with many things, but I like to spear it.

00:34:47.140 And so now the women I used to debate, I don't agree with them.

00:34:50.360 I don't, they, I think they're very hostile.

00:34:52.100 They, they, they think a lot of very negative, they hold a lot of negative views about men.

00:34:56.320 And I think I disagree with them to this day, but overall, uh, I I'm in their court right

00:35:04.660 now.

00:35:04.900 Mm-hmm and what the, one of the problems with, I don't know if it's feminism or a misguided

00:35:11.140 attempt to lift up young women is how unfair the process can be to men.

00:35:17.560 You know, that's, it's one of the things, one of the reasons I don't call myself a feminist

00:35:21.000 and it's exemplified in what's happening on college campuses right now with the lack of

00:35:25.300 due process for men who get accused for lack of a better term again, in, in the, in the

00:35:30.020 me too movement, you know, they get accused of sexual assault or some sort of sexual misbehavior.

00:35:34.900 And thanks to Obama, we have, we had almost no due process rights for men on campus.

00:35:39.780 Trump and Betsy DeVos put them back in place.

00:35:42.480 And now Biden is trying to undo it all and return us to a day and age in which men, if

00:35:48.660 you, if you got accused, you were done.

00:35:50.980 It, you, you were convicted.

00:35:52.460 They lowered the standard to just a preponderance of the evidence for you to be found guilty.

00:35:56.540 It's just 51% likely.

00:35:58.660 Um, they got rid of your right to cross-examine your accuser that you didn't have a right to

00:36:02.640 a lawyer and the proceedings.

00:36:03.740 It was usually a kangaroo court staffed with people who are victims rights advocates.

00:36:07.600 So that's the, the, the duck is stacked for these young men and, and they're, they're

00:36:11.960 fighting right now to go back to it.

00:36:13.760 And I think if that's feminism, if that's what it means to be, you know, a strong feminist

00:36:19.000 woman standing up for other women, I don't want that.

00:36:21.700 I, I don't want that to come to the expense of due process and boys and men.

00:36:25.200 Um, no.

00:36:26.020 And as a, as a classical equality feminist, I never wanted that.

00:36:31.980 And I'm horrified that in the name of feminism, we now see these illiberal policies that's been

00:36:38.160 going on for many years in feminism, but we see it certainly all over the universities and

00:36:43.480 increasingly in the workplace of these, uh, authoritarian censorship of an extreme kind

00:36:49.660 where, you know, a man, well, now anybody can get in trouble for just a slightly risk,

00:36:54.520 you know, mildly risque joke, um, all sorts of policing the environment for the slightest

00:37:00.100 hint of sexism.

00:37:02.220 And we've just becoming less free.

00:37:04.640 And I don't see how that helps women.

00:37:06.940 I don't see how that helps, helps anyone, but it's the, the bidding of a radical group.

00:37:13.480 That has been there all along in the universities.

00:37:16.640 And a lot that I see that's happening, people say, where did this, this, this, you know,

00:37:21.880 wokeness come from?

00:37:23.340 A lot of it came from the schools, the schools of education that have been teaching this

00:37:27.740 for years and years, and they don't believe in intellectual diversity.

00:37:31.160 So they don't hire professors that might have a different point of view.

00:37:35.300 So it's pretty much, uh, you know, a one party system in increasingly in schools of

00:37:41.320 education, but now throughout many universities, but even in the younger grades, because the

00:37:45.540 schools of ed are teaching the teachers.

00:37:48.160 And so in the classrooms, the kids are getting a steady diet of this sort of far left view

00:37:55.440 of the world.

00:37:56.020 And it's, it's distorted and empirically unfounded, but if you challenge it, the kids are, you

00:38:03.720 know, been taught to see you as, uh, you know, uh, a male, you know, you're supporting

00:38:08.120 male supremacy and patriarchy or, or, or, or toxic masculinity.

00:38:13.560 And, uh, I tried to stop it and I had great allies, I had Camille, Camille Paglia and Katie

00:38:22.140 Royce and the ACLU was there at the time.

00:38:26.320 Uh, you had people, uh, Wendy Kaminer and we were fighting it and I thought we've won,

00:38:34.680 but then something happened.

00:38:36.280 And now, you know, the ACLU has gone over to, there seem to be hardline feminists.

00:38:43.160 Yeah, that's right.

00:38:44.420 There aren't that sympathetic to free speech and due process.

00:38:47.480 Two steps backwards.

00:38:48.660 So, and you're correct me if I'm wrong, but you're, you're a Democrat.

00:38:52.140 That's the thing I've always been, I've come from a very liberal family.

00:38:55.660 My parents were, uh, so liberal.

00:38:58.160 They left California and moved to Vermont at a certain point after I grew up, but we

00:39:03.500 lived in Topanga Canyon and sort of a hippie socialist family.

00:39:08.060 And it's in my DNA.

00:39:09.480 And I, I, I, I'm a, I'm a self-hating Democrat.

00:39:13.740 But don't you think, I mean, you tell me, but I hear all the time, I feel like the country's

00:39:17.160 going through something, through something.

00:39:18.520 And in particular, people on the left are going through something.

00:39:20.620 People who are lifelong Democrats are starting to realize, I don't know what I am anymore.

00:39:25.580 You know, the Ronald Reagan line, cause he used to be a Democrat.

00:39:28.020 I didn't leave the party.

00:39:28.900 The party left me.

00:39:30.280 It just seems like the party's changing dramatically.

00:39:34.580 The Republicans had a big change with Trump.

00:39:36.980 It's like, wait a minute.

00:39:38.300 What do, what do we, we don't care about spending anymore.

00:39:40.600 We don't really, the messaging on trade changed isolationism.

00:39:44.260 And I feel like something's happening on the left right now where there's, there's a cleaving

00:39:48.280 between that, the far left and the center left.

00:39:52.160 Well, also, when I was growing up, humor was on, sort of seemed to be something the left

00:40:02.080 liked.

00:40:02.500 And it was like conservative grouches that wanted censorship and conservative grouches that,

00:40:08.880 you know, wanted to stop people's fun.

00:40:11.200 And, and people, people who were liberal seem to be, you know, just kinder and wanting policies

00:40:19.260 that, um, giving people a break, giving people a chance.

00:40:22.900 I just associated that with a kind of liberal spirit.

00:40:26.260 But right now I see so much cruelty.

00:40:29.780 I don't think that the majority of people on the left are cruel.

00:40:32.500 And I can tell you, my, my parents were the worst.

00:40:35.360 It's they're, they've passed away, but they were the kindest, loveliest people.

00:40:40.440 And, but that spirit of liberalism that they had, and it was what I thought the left was

00:40:47.160 supposed to be about that it's been replaced by something that's full of censoring scolds

00:40:53.280 and people that, that, that want, you know, to do away with basic rights.

00:40:57.240 And it's become unrecognizable.

00:41:00.500 And I think the left has a problem with it.

00:41:02.420 Maybe it just, there are some very cruel people in this a opportunistically taken, uh, advantage

00:41:09.180 and everyone else is frightened now, but this has to change because it's just, it's this,

00:41:14.580 it's, it's extinguishing a, a, a spirit of humanity and, and kindness and forgiveness.

00:41:20.900 I mean, in this cancel culture, there's no forgiveness.

00:41:24.200 You are, even for the smallest infraction, I've seen people destroyed and going back to

00:41:30.160 you were talking about the due process.

00:41:32.140 I have met young men who've been caught up in this in unfairly, uh, and wrongly accused.

00:41:39.020 It is life annihilating.

00:41:41.360 They hear that one day they're happy sophomores at Tufts university or something.

00:41:45.180 And the next day at home shamed and no one will talk to them.

00:41:48.420 And when you hear what happened, even when you, I've heard cases where both sides agree

00:41:52.020 on the facts, the idea that he's called a rapist is absurd because now it will, I hope we don't

00:41:58.280 go back to that, but before the changes under Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration, before

00:42:04.300 those changes, if two young people had sex and there was alcohol, he could be called a

00:42:10.660 rapist.

00:42:12.160 And I once debated a professor at the university of Virginia and I asked her, I said, well,

00:42:15.860 what if two people, a boy and a girl are drunk and they both report it, uh, could you say

00:42:21.520 they raped each other?

00:42:22.860 And she said, yes.

00:42:25.000 And I just found this whole, whole thing ridiculous.

00:42:26.980 Sex while under the influence has been known to happen, uh, even on, you know, honeymoons

00:42:33.520 people imbibe, but there's this idea that if a young woman has alcohol, she is incapable

00:42:40.620 of consenting.

00:42:41.820 I can agree if she's just blacked out drunk or something, of course, a reasonable person

00:42:46.520 without that, but boys have been convicted when, when, you know, they both had, uh, you

00:42:52.060 know, a couple of margaritas.

00:42:54.100 It's the same thing.

00:42:55.140 So that's back to what we were saying before.

00:42:57.000 There's no reason to treat us like we're these delicate wilting flowers who can't bear

00:43:00.800 the consequences of our own decisions.

00:43:02.280 That's not equality.

00:43:04.020 That's treating us like we're on a pedestal.

00:43:07.140 That we have to be protected from male vulgarity.

00:43:10.540 I call this fainting couch feminism.

00:43:12.700 It's not a feminism.

00:43:14.000 I recognize it's hyper puritanical when feminism was supposed to overthrow that kind of puritanism.

00:43:19.980 It's also authoritarian.

00:43:22.480 It's coercive and it's unkind.

00:43:25.060 I don't reckon a feminism without mercy.

00:43:27.600 And it's, it can be very vicious and we've, we've seen it and it makes women, women that, and I've seen

00:43:34.960 this happen with students.

00:43:36.140 You bring in a young woman who is, you know, curious and full of excitement and that she

00:43:42.540 takes one of these hardline gender studies courses and becomes paranoid and angry at men

00:43:48.980 and angry at the world.

00:43:51.320 And, you know, and they encourage rage and, you know, these extreme emotions.

00:43:55.620 I just think it's psychologically unhealthy.

00:43:57.300 And I think we are dealing with the results of, you know, by now many, you know, a few decades

00:44:04.280 of this kind of teaching.

00:44:06.280 And again, most college students don't come out bitter and enraged and politicized, but

00:44:11.260 many of them do.

00:44:12.900 And I think it's especially a problem that are more elite schools.

00:44:15.660 And then they take these, these, these twisted ideas with them into the workplace.

00:44:21.340 And we all thought, oh, when they get to the workplace, reality will kick in and they'll

00:44:25.780 have to change.

00:44:26.480 No, they're changing the workplace and making it an impossible sort of censorious place where

00:44:33.560 people are honestly afraid to say anything.

00:44:36.920 No, it's terrifying.

00:44:37.760 It's terrifying because, you know, I get asked a lot.

00:44:40.140 You probably get this too from women.

00:44:42.220 You know, how, how are you so strong, right?

00:44:44.040 How, how are you so strong?

00:44:45.020 They see public battles I've had with, you know, powerful people and they say, how do

00:44:49.200 you hold yourself?

00:44:50.160 And I say the truth, which is I went through a lot and then I just kept getting up and getting

00:44:55.020 out of bed and doing my job again.

00:44:56.680 You know, like you, you just don't surrender to it.

00:44:59.240 It actually doesn't take that much.

00:45:00.400 Just keep forging forward.

00:45:02.040 Just, just keep going.

00:45:03.860 And now we're at this place where it's like, no, I, I have to control everybody else's

00:45:08.560 behavior.

00:45:08.960 I have to stop the behavior in the, in the first instance, which is not realistic.

00:45:12.600 We can't control everybody's behavior.

00:45:14.240 Bad things are going to happen, difficult things.

00:45:16.280 And when it happens, then I need to lean into my victimhood and look for other people to

00:45:20.020 feel sorry for me in order to feel like I matter.

00:45:22.540 Well, that's BS.

00:45:23.240 Those people will abandon you just as soon as you take the wrong position.

00:45:26.020 Why don't you just figure out how you can convince yourself you matter and, and subject

00:45:30.940 yourself to tough challenges.

00:45:32.400 So, you know, in your heart, how strong you are.

00:45:35.180 Absolutely.

00:45:35.940 I couldn't agree more.

00:45:37.420 And one thing that I found when I started taking a stand and, and I believe me, I was

00:45:42.480 in brave.

00:45:43.040 I did it.

00:45:43.460 I just thought I should do it.

00:45:45.620 I didn't realize that I was going to be vilified and called all sorts of names.

00:45:50.800 I was surprised and I was frankly a little distressed and I lost friends, especially when

00:45:55.600 in early on, when I was challenging some of the, uh, hardline feminists in my field,

00:46:00.660 I lost some friends, but then I got better friends, new friends.

00:46:05.160 And so it's true that you, that you might, you may now, when things are so politically

00:46:10.940 charged, you do risk, um, ruining some friendships, but, um, you enter a new world with people with

00:46:19.020 whom you can, you can speak freely and, and who wants to practice this sort of, uh, you

00:46:24.440 know, preference falsification and self-censorship.

00:46:27.140 And it's just exhausting.

00:46:28.520 And especially when now you want to say something that's completely reasonable.

00:46:34.160 And I think most of my positions on feminism are not only effective, but, uh, compassionate.

00:46:41.000 I don't think that the radical view has proved that it's a more benevolent way to see the

00:46:45.220 world.

00:46:45.400 Some people say, Oh, right now we're just undergoing a big revolution and a new generation

00:46:49.640 is taking over and they have better ideas.

00:46:52.000 This is what progress looks like.

00:46:53.780 I don't think it's what progress looks like when, when I've seen real progress in the

00:46:58.280 past, it was liberating and it brought joy.

00:47:01.940 And this is people are shutting down and people are being punished.

00:47:06.200 And it, it, it, it feels like, um, uh, we're going to look back at this moment, the way

00:47:11.720 we look at, you know, McCarthyism.

00:47:14.580 Yes, you're so right.

00:47:15.860 That's such a good point about, there's no joy to this movement.

00:47:18.600 It's alienating and small and vindictive and mean.

00:47:23.120 No one feels good at the end of this.

00:47:25.300 This is not empowerment.

00:47:26.660 Empowerment in a, in a nutshell, it boils down to, you know, I've said this before,

00:47:30.040 but, um, my daughter was talking about this t-shirt.

00:47:32.920 I have two sons and a daughter, um, girls rule, boys drool.

00:47:37.480 And I was like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:47:40.100 That's, that's not empowerment for girls.

00:47:42.300 Right?

00:47:42.700 Like as somebody who, who married a man and had, and made two more, um, I understand that

00:47:47.940 the key to lifting my daughter up is not to put my boys down.

00:47:50.780 And I heard somebody say once that the, the answer to this problem we're having right now

00:47:55.220 with feminism and otherwise is parents of both boys and girls.

00:47:59.420 And I, uh, that's one of the reasons why I almost feel like the answer to like the cop

00:48:03.620 problem and the, the, you know, with violence against black men is black male cops or black

00:48:10.440 female cops, you know, like people who can understand and be empathetic to both arguments,

00:48:15.800 but not far left activists who want to shame everybody out of any pushback or any sort of

00:48:23.080 opinion.

00:48:23.780 So can you tell me though, because I watched you, you did a tour with Roxanne Gay,

00:48:27.860 who is a more, I don't know, traditional feminist.

00:48:31.260 I don't know, a radical feminist.

00:48:32.460 I'm not sure what we call her.

00:48:34.140 I don't know what you call it, but so you debated her and I, it was, it was nuts to me

00:48:39.380 because people, it devolved to people calling you a white supremacist.

00:48:43.520 It was like, wait, what?

00:48:45.460 I think she called me that.

00:48:47.000 It was this debate in Australia.

00:48:49.080 And when the organizer Deshamilla asked me, I said, well, he's coming on next, by the

00:48:56.320 way, he's my next guest on this show, but keep going.

00:48:58.600 Oh, give him my regards.

00:49:00.380 I'm so fond of him.

00:49:01.440 He's a wonderful young man.

00:49:03.220 And he had this, he was this idealist.

00:49:05.840 He thought, oh, we'll bring two feminists from different schools because she's a little

00:49:10.700 more of a, like a, I guess a critical feminist, a radical feminist, and I'm more moderate and

00:49:16.580 you would debate and, you know, we'd come to some understanding.

00:49:20.420 We didn't come to an understanding.

00:49:21.880 She wouldn't even look me in the eye.

00:49:23.640 And then she behaved like such a diva.

00:49:27.420 She didn't, she decided she didn't like Desh as the moderator because he asked her some

00:49:31.340 hard questions and she just thought that was out of line.

00:49:34.360 And so she insisted that we had two debates.

00:49:36.720 One was in Sydney and one in Melbourne.

00:49:38.340 And she insisted at the, at the Melbourne debate that we get a different moderator and she

00:49:43.120 was going to choose her.

00:49:44.220 And then she, he, he, the reason he did it, he wanted to have the video to, to, um, distribute

00:49:51.640 and she, she wanted no videos released and threatened lawsuits.

00:49:56.340 And it was absolutely insane.

00:49:58.940 It was just gratuitous theatrics.

00:50:01.060 But what I found most interesting is that she, she did to me what radicals claim that oppressors

00:50:08.680 do to them.

00:50:09.220 She, she completely denied my humanity, otherized me.

00:50:13.740 She just wouldn't even look at me.

00:50:15.420 I was just, it was, it was such a, it was ridiculous and distressing that I, she had

00:50:25.560 so much hatred towards another person whom she didn't know.

00:50:29.740 And I don't know why she agreed to debate because we could never really have an exchange.

00:50:35.040 And she just sort of, uh, dismissed me out of hand.

00:50:38.660 And then the audience, two thirds were her fans.

00:50:41.360 So every time I spoke, they would jeer and hiss and then she would speak and they, she'd

00:50:47.180 get riotous applause.

00:50:48.320 So it was not a fun experience.

00:50:51.140 And, and, you know, the, this fall I'll, I speak on campuses a lot and I expect I'll be

00:50:56.160 visiting campuses, but things have become so charged and people are so full of hate.

00:51:00.840 Like when I debated the radical feminists in the past, we had heated debates, but it wasn't

00:51:04.960 hatred.

00:51:05.920 There was just excitement and disagreement.

00:51:08.720 Sometimes we'd go out for drinks.

00:51:10.360 Nobody goes out for drinks anymore, but the adversary, you know, you're there to, to fight

00:51:14.520 a war, I guess.

00:51:16.360 Yeah.

00:51:16.740 Oh my gosh.

00:51:17.260 This is so interesting because I've, I've experienced this just in my, in my job and you've been

00:51:21.260 out there leading this, this whole fight in a lot of ways for women for many, many years.

00:51:26.040 But it's, to me, it's distressing to see somebody like you be called these names.

00:51:30.200 They, they, they really, and I see them on Twitter sometimes talking, you know, wishing

00:51:34.440 I would die.

00:51:35.480 And I, I just am not aware of ever thinking that way about other people, even people I

00:51:41.320 disagree with, you know, I really would love to, to, to, to, to vanquish them in an argument.

00:51:46.960 I don't want them to get hit by a car.

00:51:49.440 They, they want that.

00:51:50.540 They talk about that.

00:51:51.420 Now, of course, these are Twitter trolls, but Roxanne talked a little bit, you know,

00:51:57.120 she, she was just so full of, of, um, uh, hatred and there's, I don't think a politics

00:52:06.360 of rage and hatred is going to take us anywhere except down and everywhere where these, these

00:52:13.380 hardline policies, this, these censorious policies based on radical race theory or radical feminist

00:52:18.580 theory, every time they're tried out, they, they destroy, they tear institutions apart.

00:52:24.860 They don't make them better, kinder, stronger, more effective.

00:52:28.140 They weaken them.

00:52:29.220 Just look at what happened.

00:52:30.480 I think it was a great, uh, warning what happened with the women's March.

00:52:33.700 You know, all these women from all across the political spectrum came out huge women's

00:52:39.220 March.

00:52:40.060 Where is it now?

00:52:41.800 You know what happened?

00:52:42.800 It was intersectional and they began attacking each other.

00:52:46.280 The Jewish women were pushed out and then a kind of radical, uh, feminist, uh, group

00:52:52.920 came in that somehow were allied with Louis Farrakhan and figure that out because he's

00:52:57.900 the biggest sexist and a homophobe.

00:52:59.880 You can imagine it was twisted and perverse what happened to the leadership of the women's

00:53:05.060 March.

00:53:05.280 But I've seen that happen.

00:53:06.680 It's happening in university departments.

00:53:09.020 I think some version of it is, you know, this toxic philosophy is happening in our elite

00:53:14.960 institutions and they weren't prepared to fight it.

00:53:17.780 They weren't prepared to fight the, the anger, the rage, the, just the, the, the fanaticism

00:53:24.800 of not seeing, not seeing nuance, not seeing details.

00:53:29.060 And everything is seen through that intersexual lens.

00:53:31.500 I mean, if you, you know very well, and I've experienced this many times, if you deign to

00:53:36.260 criticize a woman, a black woman, uh, you know, forget it immediately, no matter what

00:53:42.500 you're criticizing, you could say, you know, I think she got that math problem wrong.

00:53:46.340 They'll go to the race place and the gender place.

00:53:48.520 And if sexuality or, or, you know, gender identity is, is relevant to, they'll go there

00:53:52.760 too.

00:53:53.140 So you just have to be prepared for them to bring these things in, even if they have absolutely

00:53:58.400 nothing.

00:53:59.040 And the, and the people who are trying to lecture everybody on, on how to speak and how

00:54:03.080 to feel and how to be empathetic and how to be an ally to your point, I'll just, this is

00:54:08.180 just an example that happened to me last week, but I, I was critical of Naomi Osaka.

00:54:11.280 I don't believe her claims and I'm entitled to that belief as a journalist and a lawyer who's

00:54:15.900 trained for a living and detecting deception.

00:54:19.380 Um, there, somebody got reported on Twitter for threatening to, I think it was slit my throat,

00:54:24.720 something, some sort of manner of murdering me having to do with my throat.

00:54:28.260 So, okay.

00:54:29.360 So I, I'm supposed to listen to you about how the appropriate way is to speak and respect

00:54:35.080 others.

00:54:35.780 I don't think so.

00:54:37.060 Right.

00:54:37.360 I, to your point of otherizing and, and just attacking in a way that feels disturbing.

00:54:43.440 It is disturbing.

00:54:44.760 Well, the intersexual activists do to others, what they claim has been done to them.

00:54:51.300 Nobody's doing it to them.

00:54:52.820 And that's, that's the fallacy is they are claiming this dire, they live in this world with

00:54:57.800 this, their dire oppression.

00:55:00.000 And they, and many of them are among the most privileged people I would ever hope to

00:55:04.660 meet.

00:55:05.700 And, uh, you know, the educated at the most elite institutions and wealthy and, you know,

00:55:10.620 all of the benefits.

00:55:11.740 And yet they look at us and claim that, uh, and carry out this kind of, this demonization

00:55:18.640 that it is not happening to them.

00:55:20.920 They don't have a history of that, of being oppressed in that way.

00:55:24.300 Uh, the elites, at least that I know.

00:55:26.500 And, and, and yet they don't seem to have that self-awareness.

00:55:29.620 I don't know how this happened.

00:55:31.040 I really don't, uh, it must be something.

00:55:33.580 I honestly, as a philosopher, most of my career, I believe that if you really could marshal the

00:55:40.380 right evidence and good arguments, you would change people's minds, but it's harder to change

00:55:45.820 minds than I thought.

00:55:47.000 So, um, I don't know what, what's going to be effective, but I do worry there's a contagion

00:55:52.440 of hysteria and I don't, I think we need something stronger than logic, but I'm not

00:55:57.400 sure what it is.

00:55:58.080 I don't want to be coercive, but I don't want them to take over.

00:56:02.340 This is the perfect segue into, into dash who's up next in his film.

00:56:07.020 I don't know if you've seen it.

00:56:07.800 It's called better left unsaid, but it is about how we got here.

00:56:11.360 And it's the best look I've seen yet on how we got here.

00:56:15.060 So thank you for everything.

00:56:17.080 Thank you for the great talk and your wisdom and fighting the good fight for so long in

00:56:21.820 such a brave way and, and for the perfect transition, Christina Haas-Sommer's a big,

00:56:25.880 big fan.

00:56:26.840 Thank you, Megan.

00:56:28.920 Up next, we're going to be joined by the two guys behind the film, better left unsaid

00:56:32.740 Kurt Jai Mungal and Desh Amala.

00:56:35.020 These two guys have tried to figure out how we got here.

00:56:37.560 They've looked at the history behind it, the rise of the movement.

00:56:39.980 And as I was saying with Christina, the cleaving of sort of the center left from the extreme

00:56:46.520 left and how that's left us here, how, how the rest of us are now supposed to deal with

00:56:50.540 this because they've taken over these cultural institutions that we all have to deal with

00:56:54.780 universities, big tech, medicine, you name it.

00:56:57.360 So you'll find it fascinating.

00:56:59.060 And these guys are interesting.

00:57:00.360 You don't want to miss it.

00:57:01.480 It's up in one minute.

00:57:02.560 First, a quick ad and then Kurt and Desh.

00:57:05.120 I'm very excited to talk about this movie.

00:57:11.600 I just watched the whole thing.

00:57:13.040 I made my husband watch it too.

00:57:14.740 I said to him what the highest praise I can give a film, which is it made me feel the way

00:57:20.000 the movie No Safe Spaces made me feel, which is just sort of gripped and immobile in my seat

00:57:25.780 watching it.

00:57:27.000 And what an amazing forensic deep dive into how we got to this crazy place in not just

00:57:35.260 our country here in the United States, in Canada, where you guys are.

00:57:38.540 I know, Desh, I think you're from Australia.

00:57:40.860 So, I mean, it's happening all over the globe.

00:57:43.940 And this is the first deep dive I've seen into how we got here.

00:57:47.620 So can we just start with this?

00:57:48.980 It as I see it, this taps into something I've been saying all along to my friends on the

00:57:53.660 right.

00:57:54.340 Stop dividing this battle into left and right.

00:57:56.520 This is not a left and right battle.

00:57:58.660 This is about woke and unwoke, reason and unreason, I think rationality and irrationality.

00:58:05.780 And you seem to be tapping into that because you're talking about the rise of the extreme

00:58:10.320 left.

00:58:10.920 You talk about the extreme right too, but the extreme left is a relatively new phenomenon

00:58:15.440 the way it's fighting this battle.

00:58:18.300 And so how did you begin?

00:58:19.520 Let me ask you that, Desh, as the producer of the film.

00:58:21.540 How did you begin to deconstruct what they are doing?

00:58:23.600 Well, when you say they're doing, I see this as somebody who's on the political left on

00:58:31.620 almost every issue.

00:58:34.560 This is my people.

00:58:36.400 And when I started seeing people around me policing their words and sort of being scared of talking

00:58:46.420 about certain subject matter, I first started noticing it in 2014.

00:58:49.760 And then the rhetoric got louder and louder with regards to certain subject matter and people

00:58:59.320 started throwing words around like civil war and what's going to happen to the Western civilization

00:59:06.600 if this happened this way or Trump is the next Hitler, all of that.

00:59:11.900 And I was like, this sounds pretty insane.

00:59:15.020 See, I come from Sri Lanka originally, and I was born during a civil war.

00:59:21.180 And I witnessed what a real civil war is.

00:59:25.380 And I know exactly the literal meaning of some of those words.

00:59:31.280 So I've always had this worry because the freedoms that's been given to me in the West, I cherish them.

00:59:39.720 Absolutely.

00:59:40.760 I know what can happen to journalists or people who are interested in subjects that a government

00:59:46.260 is not interested in people knowing, you know, talking about.

00:59:50.240 If that happens, you will disappear.

00:59:51.800 And so I first made a film called Islam and the Future of Tolerance.

00:59:57.060 And after that, I've been wanting to make a film about political extremism,

01:00:04.700 not necessarily pinpointing the way Kurt wrote this film.

01:00:10.800 Kurt approached me at the very early stages of making the film.

01:00:15.900 And I was like, this is definitely what I wanted to be speaking at this point in our history.

01:00:25.240 So that's how I got into this film.

01:00:27.480 You know, Kurt, you do a great job, by the way, on camera.

01:00:30.140 You're the star of the film, our narrator.

01:00:32.400 You walk us through everything and you do a great job of it.

01:00:34.820 You're obviously very smart.

01:00:36.160 Your math background showed.

01:00:37.720 I was paying very close attention to make sure I understood everything you said.

01:00:41.260 But you do walk us through the history of Lenin and Marxism and communism

01:00:46.740 and talk about how, you know, these young people who look at that as some sort of an ideal.

01:00:52.320 And even some BLM activists, you know, like the statement they put out about what's happening in Cuba.

01:00:57.340 And, you know, this idealistic version of communism, socialism and so on kind of stops.

01:01:04.580 It stops examining that ideology very early into any time it's ever been tried for a reason.

01:01:11.760 Can you talk about that?

01:01:13.380 Sure.

01:01:13.900 When I was approaching the film, like you mentioned, it is it's true.

01:01:16.900 I have a training in math and physics.

01:01:19.740 And so my approach was an analytical and precise one or as exact as I could be.

01:01:24.540 I tried to derive what are the motivations for the extreme left,

01:01:29.480 as well as also delineate what constitutes the extreme left because there's disagreements there.

01:01:33.660 Some people call them the radical left and so on.

01:01:35.720 I tried to do that from a historical perspective with communism,

01:01:39.760 as well as some philosophical roots with social constructionism and postmodernism and so on,

01:01:47.240 other buzzwords that are now becoming familiar.

01:01:51.360 And they refuse to learn from the past.

01:01:52.900 It's like we have lots of examples of this being absolutely disastrous.

01:01:56.460 Why are you leaning into this ideology as a solution to anything?

01:01:59.380 But it is the basis.

01:02:00.800 If you look at Black Lives Matter and some of the extreme left ideologies that are getting pushed,

01:02:04.980 it does sound very Marxist and has its roots there.

01:02:08.900 And you spend a long time looking at the intolerance on college campuses.

01:02:12.280 And not only about how it is a minefield for, quote, cis men, meaning guys who are who see themselves as guys who have no gender confusion whatsoever,

01:02:24.200 but how the professors who now in so many instances have these crazy intolerant views can tweet out things like I'm pro white genocide with absolutely no blowback.

01:02:38.800 It's fine. That kind of messaging is fine. You can call the entire white race white nationalists.

01:02:44.360 You will not be penalized. You will probably get tenure.

01:02:46.780 And this is the environment that the guys and whites and everybody's walking into now.

01:02:51.740 It explains a lot of what we're what we're seeing when they get out of school.

01:02:56.260 Yeah, it's funny because I'm a first generation immigrant.

01:02:58.220 And you would think that what I'm saying would hold some weight to the extreme left because they count that as a factor in your favor.

01:03:04.360 But because I'm so against the extreme left, I might I'm what's considered to be white supremacist adjacent, even though I'm apolitical.

01:03:13.080 I don't consider myself to be part of the right or the left.

01:03:15.500 Right. But you're not allowed to be. You make that point.

01:03:18.560 And I love that point because I am a registered independent, but you can't be.

01:03:22.320 They won't. They don't care. They don't care if you're a liberal.

01:03:25.300 You know, I have friends who are lifelong flaming liberals.

01:03:28.080 That's how they describe themselves. And they still get kicked out of the club because you have to buy into the entire ideology.

01:03:33.660 You have to reject biology. You have to accept all the tenets of BLM and so on.

01:03:39.980 And otherwise, you're not in the club. So I do wonder, you know, you tell me, Kurt, whether those people need to realize don't bother.

01:03:47.520 Don't bother trying. Just figure out what you actually believe, because there's no there's no membership in the politically correct club unless you sign on to all of it.

01:03:55.960 Yeah, it's it's a shame because what happens is you're so excoriated if you don't believe in, let's say, the ten.

01:04:02.140 If you don't believe in all ten of their tenants, then then what happens is because the larger media system, I know there's Fox News, which.

01:04:09.980 Has a right bent to it, but the larger media system generally has a left leaning bent to it and and is politically correct.

01:04:17.720 And so then they they censor censure you.

01:04:21.600 And who embraces you is the center right or the extreme left me, but.

01:04:27.420 Which breeds a bit of bitterness in you toward your prior team, the left and then the left or the extreme left, they're spearheaded by the extreme left.

01:04:35.420 So it seems like it's the left in general, the left will then say the extreme left will say that you're a member of the extreme right just because you disagree with them.

01:04:45.900 Right. Well, and it is funny.

01:04:47.780 I've noticed this before, that the people who get it the worst tend to be people who are, let's say, on the center left or even center right.

01:04:56.420 They'll get it worse than people who are established far left or far right.

01:05:01.340 Like they don't get as mad at somebody like a Sean Hannity, you know, a host on Fox News who's very conservative.

01:05:08.000 And we all know that as they would at even somebody like me or somebody like you, more center right or center left people who they think should be listening to them.

01:05:16.540 And who they see as smart and able to articulate a view that might be appealing to the very folks they're trying to convince.

01:05:24.680 So you tell me, because I want to talk about in particular how hard this is for people to navigate.

01:05:31.420 You know, it can happen on college campuses to anybody who doesn't sign on, but it can also happen well beyond that.

01:05:36.880 And the example you use in the film with Douglas Murray, who I idolize.

01:05:39.940 I just love Douglas Murray.

01:05:41.000 So brilliant.

01:05:41.520 He talks about David Cameron of the UK and how there was absolutely zero empathy for David Cameron's loss of his son because of David's skin color.

01:05:54.120 Here's a soundbite from your film.

01:05:55.620 The Guardian says in its editorial that David Cameron, the setbacks he had in his life were not real setbacks because of his privilege.

01:06:02.960 And they included the fact that his first son died.

01:06:06.780 And they said, even that him sitting at the deathbed of his own son wasn't as bad as it would be for other people because he had privilege.

01:06:17.180 You end up judging the extent to which a father has the right to mourn his child because you're playing a privilege game.

01:06:24.560 So you tell me, Desh, whether there's any reasoning with people who see the world like that, because this is an ongoing debate we were having.

01:06:30.260 Do you try to reason with folks who subscribe to this ideology or just try to defeat them?

01:06:35.220 Well, that example is gut-wrenching, obviously.

01:06:43.380 When the world is presented through the binary lens that you are fighting ultimate evil, you present the other side as Darth Vader, it's collateral damage.

01:07:00.180 But I do generally think, although it sounds as completely that kind of thinking, groups like that, there is no redemptive quality.

01:07:14.660 I do believe in our ability to reason with people.

01:07:19.280 It might take a while, but I do think there is a way out.

01:07:23.420 An example would be how people were talking about, especially on the left, about Islam and whether it had anything to do with what was happening in the world.

01:07:42.620 Some wouldn't even want to make the connection that 9-11 and an ideology had any connection.

01:07:50.260 It took almost, I would say, two decades before people started accepting it.

01:07:57.460 But that was because the attempts of people like Sam Harris and Majid Nawaz and a number of people who were on the political left continue to press that matter.

01:08:10.500 So I do think, you know, by people like us talking about this matter, that they will see, eventually have to, because there is no sustainable way forward for a movement to really stick to their guns like this example.

01:08:33.440 Because there is the cruelty of that way of thinking is obvious.

01:08:41.720 But if we keep pointing it out, I'm hoping that people will change them.

01:08:47.220 And I think there is redemptive qualities.

01:08:49.580 Well, and on that front, the example that you touch in the film when it comes to gender and this guy, John Money of Hopkins, is so telling.

01:09:00.320 I've heard of this before, but I never heard it laid out the way you guys did in the film.

01:09:04.540 Can you tell us, Kurt, about John Money of Hopkins and what happened with his experiment in 1967 and how it's held up by people who are telling us we should let our kids determine their gender and that it's not related to their biological sex?

01:09:17.760 And they hold this up as an example of why that's true, and they don't reveal the ending.

01:09:23.980 Yep.

01:09:24.220 So in 1967, which I'm going to go by your quotation because I actually forgot, in around the late 1960s or early 1970s, John Money was a proponent of gender fluidity.

01:09:38.680 So something which means that you can, that's a child's gender or a person's gender because it's predicated on what they are when they're younger, is socialized into them.

01:09:49.080 So what we can do is we can do a standard twin example.

01:09:52.380 So those are considered textbook best cases, although the best cases are when twins are raised separately.

01:09:57.140 But anyway, there were twins who, one of which had a botched circumcision and the parents wanted to know, how do I raise my child ordinarily, make them not have psychological issues?

01:10:07.580 And then John Money, well, they reached out to John Money and John Money said, okay, how about we raise one child?

01:10:13.360 I believe his name was Brandon.

01:10:14.620 We raise him as a her, call her Brenda, give her her, she, pronouns.

01:10:20.580 And even when they were young, let's reenact some sexual positions on the children, which is, well, you can think what you like about that when they're, right, right, when they're late, basically tweens, the preteens and tweens with their clothes on, but still.

01:10:38.320 So it reinforces, you're the brother, you're the male example, and then you're Brenda, you're the female.

01:10:44.100 Well, Brenda had many psychological issues, as well as the brother, and Brenda eventually ended up realizing what happened because it was so young that Brenda had forgotten.

01:10:56.820 And then switching Brenda's name back to Brandon, I believe, or back to a male gender, and then years later, killing himself.

01:11:04.860 And it's no longer touted as a success story was touted.

01:11:11.460 And what's happened is that the citations of what are pro-gender fluidity and so on reference what references the original study or references what references what references.

01:11:23.180 And even nowadays, there was a modern study, I think I referenced one from the past two years, which said that, well, it's still an example of a success story because Brenda didn't self-express this gender change.

01:11:36.860 So that means that you can't force someone into a gender change, and you must believe someone when they, as a child, say that they're of a different gender.

01:11:44.300 You know, but that's kind of happening right now.

01:11:47.480 We're seeing all these parents take a child's innocent remark about, I want to wear a dress for a little boy, which lots of little boys say, and it doesn't mean anything about being transgender, and then start pushing them into a new gender, which I do think is abusive.

01:12:02.700 We've gotten to this very strange, almost intolerant place when it comes to gender roles, which turns everything we used to know on its head, right?

01:12:10.380 We used to not say, oh, if a little boy likes pink, that means he's a girl.

01:12:13.680 We used to say that's just, you know, that's too, don't be such a gender, I don't know, don't put kids into unnecessary gender roles, right?

01:12:24.260 Boys can like pink, and girls can like trucks.

01:12:27.080 When I was 10, or sorry, when I was 7, I remember my mom saying, do you want to marry someone when you grow up?

01:12:32.500 And I remember saying, I want to marry my sister.

01:12:35.640 So if I was to be taken seriously, they're like, okay, yes, you should marry your sister by the extreme way.

01:12:41.060 Or I want to marry you, mom.

01:12:42.340 So, right, exactly, that's still where I want my voice to be, but the big reveal will come one day.

01:12:49.140 But I want to pick up on something you said, because I do think that's a great point in the film, where you sort of say, what about me?

01:12:54.180 You know, I'm an immigrant, I have brown skin, am I higher up in the social hierarchy, where I get to have opinions that, you know, the white cisgender men might not have on college campuses?

01:13:03.740 And here's how you put it in the film.

01:13:05.020 I thought, well, what about me?

01:13:06.580 I'm an immigrant, don't my views count?

01:13:08.480 And it turns out they do, if I subscribe to the precepts of the extreme left.

01:13:12.780 But if I don't, then I'm a racist and self-loathing immigrant who acts and speaks white and makes a documentary that justifies white supremacy.

01:13:21.460 And by doing so, denies the lived experience of the truly oppressed.

01:13:26.500 I love that, because that's exactly right.

01:13:29.440 Your views, sure, all of your status as, you know, a man, an immigrant with brown skin, that will definitely count for you if you subscribe to their worldview.

01:13:39.860 Otherwise, you need to take a seat and be quiet.

01:13:41.940 Right.

01:13:42.300 Man, when I hear that, I forgot how the film was, because I haven't seen it in a year.

01:13:45.200 It's pretty articulate.

01:13:46.200 Yeah, well, I mean, it really brings it home.

01:13:48.940 And you tell me, Desh, because you guys taking on these issues so head on has not been all that well received by, for example, the big tech world, which I understand has given you some trouble about trying to advertise the film.

01:14:01.520 Yeah, this has been unusually challenging.

01:14:04.660 You know, with another independent film under my belt, I had a pretty good idea how to get the film out using the digital channels available.

01:14:16.920 But we could not get a single ad running.

01:14:21.420 We couldn't even pay to get this film in front of people.

01:14:26.100 Facebook prevented, basically locked every single account that tried to run an ad.

01:14:32.240 So we couldn't put a single ad.

01:14:34.560 Google stopped all of our ads, and they labeled our ads hateful and a range of other strange titles or reasons.

01:14:46.580 Twitter didn't let our ads run.

01:14:49.800 YouTube eventually let a teaser run.

01:14:53.340 But again, the reach was very minimal.

01:14:57.360 And even our organic posts were, you could clearly see the algorithm is doing something to minimize the reach.

01:15:07.640 We were extremely lucky because the likes of Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker's actually liked the movie and they amplified.

01:15:16.620 But it has been incredibly challenging to get the movie out because every usual avenue.

01:15:26.180 I actually want to reveal something I haven't really publicly acknowledged.

01:15:30.540 The PR firm we had for this film, the same PR firm that helped us get Islam and the Future of Tolerance to a large audience,

01:15:42.180 said yes to the film because the two founders loved it.

01:15:46.620 And then we pretty much signed agreements and everything.

01:15:51.100 And just before we were ready to go out, I get an email saying, hey, the team has seen the movie and they're very uncomfortable by the subject matter and everything you're talking about.

01:16:04.760 So that was a huge blow for us because we had, you know, big reliance on those guys because they, you know, they're a pretty big agency.

01:16:19.300 And I called them and I said, hey, I thought you two loved the movie.

01:16:23.360 And they said, we still stand by our statement.

01:16:25.960 It's just our team feels otherwise.

01:16:30.120 This is so crazy.

01:16:32.380 So did you wind up getting anybody to help you with PR?

01:16:35.780 No, we, you know, I then I spoke to so many agencies.

01:16:40.920 The initial call is always warm and nice.

01:16:43.260 And, you know, we eventually send them a copy to watch and then we get ghosted.

01:16:47.500 And even if they like the film, we are in an environment that you don't want to publicly acknowledge.

01:16:55.720 I have a famous journalist, you know, scientists who absolutely love the movie, who would personally message me and say, mate, love the movie.

01:17:07.920 But please don't tell anyone that I told you that, you know, we actually released a number of those comments with anonymizing their names, because it's it's crazy.

01:17:21.300 The sheer number of people that have personally messaged us famous comedians, et cetera, but wouldn't say publicly.

01:17:27.080 Mm hmm. Yeah, no, we've seen this.

01:17:29.460 I was just talking about this.

01:17:30.460 You are not allowed to have certain opinions right now.

01:17:34.900 And unless we start fighting back against that and expressing our unpopular, quote unquote, unpopular opinions, we're we're all going to be silenced.

01:17:44.100 And what you find when you speak out with your, quote unquote, unpopular opinion is that it's not as unpopular as you think.

01:17:50.720 Millions of people share your views, but they don't have the liberty to express them.

01:17:55.980 They fear getting fired.

01:17:57.480 They fear getting ostracized.

01:17:59.580 We just we just interviewed a guy last week who was talking about life in Cuba and how if you say something against, you know, the government there, you could find out that your apartment lease is no longer in effect.

01:18:10.340 Right. You no longer have a place to live.

01:18:12.060 It's not quite that extreme here, but we're going down that path.

01:18:15.320 I mean, people are losing their livelihoods for, quote, wrong think.

01:18:19.160 So that's why the film is so important that I don't understand.

01:18:22.380 And it actually isn't controversial at all.

01:18:24.020 I mean, it really isn't.

01:18:24.840 It doesn't it doesn't take issue with the left.

01:18:27.700 It takes issue with the extreme left and the extreme right.

01:18:31.580 Right.

01:18:32.520 And that's the irony of the whole situation, isn't it?

01:18:37.180 The irony of the situation is that.

01:18:40.820 People judge the movie by the people who are involved and they make assumptions and by a trailer.

01:18:49.740 If you really watch it, if you go through the painstaking detail we've gone through here to explain what we're talking about, it's you can have a philosophical argument of your disliking or disagreement.

01:19:06.080 But that's the point.

01:19:07.500 We're not trying to tell people that you have to agree with what we are saying.

01:19:11.640 We're simply presenting a certain set of philosophical and intellectual arguments that we haven't seen.

01:19:19.500 And that involves the political far left.

01:19:24.220 And that's an unusual thing.

01:19:26.200 And we are realizing the way people are pushing back is the exact point we are making.

01:19:33.840 Hey, somehow we've come to a place that you can't talk about it.

01:19:38.800 Just similar to what you said, Megan, about in Cuba.

01:19:42.060 In Sri Lanka, when I was growing up in Sri Lanka, it was one of the worst places for a journalist.

01:19:49.040 We used to have the white van syndrome.

01:19:52.540 You know, a journalist would say something or a person would say something.

01:19:56.240 And literally two days later, a van will arrive.

01:19:59.520 And that was the last we've seen or heard of that person.

01:20:02.980 My dad was involved in politics and there was about five years of my life.

01:20:06.860 He wasn't in my life.

01:20:08.200 I thought, you know, he had another life or something.

01:20:11.020 But I recently found out it was because of his political beliefs.

01:20:15.680 People wanted to make him disappear.

01:20:19.040 So he went into hiding.

01:20:20.900 So we don't want to live in a – the problem is in the West, people are too comfortable.

01:20:28.660 In the West, we have this extraordinary ability to say what we want to say, do what we want to do,

01:20:37.320 for the most part, you know, within the enlightenment values and the rules and laws that we've agreed to

01:20:46.380 and still have a life and the state doesn't get to take things away or murder you, your family.

01:20:58.280 That doesn't happen.

01:20:59.880 So it's – West's own success is paradoxically becoming its enemy.

01:21:11.860 You know, through this ability to speak freely, people are then trying to find the villain.

01:21:20.400 And the left, because of the Marxist way of thinking, just you need to find the other.

01:21:30.180 And, you know, even the slightest inkling of this person could be a fascist, right?

01:21:37.360 So that then gives them credence to fight as hard as one could.

01:21:43.680 And that's why the language is so important.

01:21:47.380 And that's why, you know, words have become violent now.

01:21:50.880 You know, so the point I really want to make is that is far removed from actual violence and actually what a state can do.

01:22:03.220 And for me personally, just living through – in a state through a civil war, you can – what really happens is far worse than what people realize.

01:22:20.060 Thanks for staying with us this far.

01:22:21.680 The end of the episode and who's coming up on our next show is right after this quick break.

01:22:26.260 The movie ends on a note of now what?

01:22:33.760 Like, how do we solve it?

01:22:35.960 And it's a philosophical point that seems to be asking, is there a role for faith?

01:22:43.660 You talk about myth, religion.

01:22:46.320 Is there a way we sort of keep, I don't know, old faith alive as opposed to this new religion of wokeness and square it with science and go forward with rationality and logic and reason on all things that we used to accept real truth before, quote, postmodernism came along?

01:23:04.260 And I was really thinking about that.

01:23:06.460 I mean, I don't know because we've talked a lot on this show about whether chasing religion out of the public square has been really detrimental.

01:23:15.080 It's that that void is getting filled by things like wokeness.

01:23:18.920 And we were better off when we had, you know, faith in whatever your particular religion was, but God and a higher power and subjugation of the self.

01:23:27.520 So what do you think?

01:23:28.860 I mean, what do you think is the solution, Kurt?

01:23:31.620 Or, right, you mentioned that at the end of the movie, it ends not with a statement, which I hoped it would.

01:23:37.040 I was trying to come to a firm conclusion and an action, a call to action, but I couldn't come up with one.

01:23:43.240 I came up with the question, which is what is the modern religion?

01:23:47.660 And the reason why I say that, even though many people listening may identify with atheism or at least as true modern religion or any religion as being dogmatic and ancient superstition,

01:24:01.620 the reason I say that is that there seems to be this need, a spiritual need.

01:24:06.780 Also, when we talk about, see me and Desh disagree here, Desh would say what we need is dialogue above all else.

01:24:12.320 But for me, what I would say is for you to want dialogue, you have to value dialogue.

01:24:16.780 And you also have to value something in common, which is that through truthful dialogue, you'll come to something salubrious or nourishing.

01:24:24.040 And that's not exactly, it's not exactly rational.

01:24:27.080 It's something pre-rational.

01:24:28.580 So I don't agree that logic and rationality are the way and even reason, though it depends on how one uses the word reason.

01:24:35.060 I don't agree that that's the way forward.

01:24:36.520 I think there's something before that because you have to value those.

01:24:40.860 And then the question is, well, how do you how do you engender that in a large society?

01:24:49.240 I don't know.

01:24:50.440 I don't know.

01:24:50.980 And to just say, well, go to church.

01:24:53.380 Well, it's not first.

01:24:54.080 It's not as if every church member is a holder of these values.

01:24:58.260 And second, it's not as if the modern person can go to church.

01:25:01.520 It's they're based in fundamental ontological claims that God exists and so on.

01:25:07.360 That doesn't that doesn't ring true for many people.

01:25:10.800 We're not at that stage.

01:25:11.660 And Richard Feynman even said this, that this is the exigent moral problem of our day, which is how do we retain this spiritual nature, this benign and beatific nature and not while we're modern people?

01:25:27.820 I don't know.

01:25:28.660 That's what's so poignant about the movie.

01:25:32.260 It leaves you with that question, right?

01:25:33.980 How how do we fill this void that everybody's trying to fill and and still stay fact based as we those of us who are not considered woke tend to be?

01:25:43.520 We still tend to follow logic, reason, believe there's real truth.

01:25:47.040 There's knowable fact.

01:25:49.280 It look it raises a lot of questions.

01:25:51.360 And but what I love is that it really does give you a forensic look at how we got here.

01:25:55.140 And I will tell you that my audience asked me that all the time, you know, like spend some time.

01:25:59.100 Talking about how we got here.

01:26:00.440 How did they do this?

01:26:01.200 It's not all about what happened on college campuses.

01:26:03.220 It's more widespread than that.

01:26:05.300 And if you look back historically, you'll really see where the roots of this movement are and how pernicious they are.

01:26:11.660 You guys are brilliant.

01:26:12.880 You did a great job with this.

01:26:14.380 And if people want to watch the movie, is it what should they do?

01:26:18.000 They go to the website now since, you know, you're not getting any love from from Google and everybody else.

01:26:22.560 What tell us exactly how we can find it.

01:26:24.360 Yes.

01:26:24.540 The movie is available on iTunes and Google Play and Voodoo.

01:26:30.400 But you can also go to betterleftunsaidfilm.com.

01:26:34.460 And I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak.

01:26:43.240 And I'm sure a lot of people will discover the film because of this conversation as independent filmmakers.

01:26:50.900 This is this is amazing.

01:26:52.820 So thank you.

01:26:53.880 This will reach people.

01:26:56.140 I really appreciate that.

01:26:57.020 It's my honor.

01:26:58.160 And truly, I would not have put you on if I didn't love the film because, you know, I have an ongoing relationship with my audience.

01:27:04.300 I can't mislead.

01:27:05.220 I won't even take an advertiser that I don't I don't really believe in the product.

01:27:07.940 So I really want them to check it out.

01:27:10.400 I think it's riveting and it's emotional at times.

01:27:13.760 It's gripping.

01:27:15.140 It's some of the footage is disturbing, but in an important way.

01:27:18.400 So you can sort of see the outcome of, let's say, you know, Lennon's ideas.

01:27:23.240 But it's worth your time.

01:27:24.420 Well worth your time.

01:27:25.340 That's only an hour and a half.

01:27:26.480 So it's not some huge three hour epic.

01:27:28.440 It's an hour and a half and you'll learn something and you'll feel something.

01:27:31.540 And what more do you want out of a day?

01:27:34.320 May I say one more statement?

01:27:35.700 Yeah.

01:27:35.900 Yeah.

01:27:36.100 The reason why to visit the website instead of buying from Voodoo or Google or iTunes is not only does more of the money actually go to the filmmakers, but because you get access to the director's cut, which has 30 minutes of extra footage, particularly in chapter four, where I talk about a potential solution.

01:27:53.020 Right now, I said that the answer is I don't know.

01:27:54.980 But what I've come up with as to how can we share the same myth is to embody the myth of truth telling.

01:28:03.000 That is to not lie, to try your hardest at every instant to not deceive every single instance, whether that's you're returning a package to Amazon and you and you lie about the reason because you just simply want to return or whether it's whether it's out of politeness.

01:28:18.280 Because every act of deceit perverts the world and then it comes back in a concrete sense to influence you.

01:28:26.140 They have ramifications and they replicate each lie replicates, replicates, replicates.

01:28:30.840 And there's something I didn't pursue in the film because there wasn't enough time is pursuing love and loving thy enemy.

01:28:37.780 One of the stories in the Bible that most resonates to me is Jesus was getting taken away.

01:28:43.780 See, some people want to say, yeah, you should stand up against the extreme left.

01:28:47.100 And what they mean is to go in the streets and almost violently stand up to them.

01:28:50.180 But what happened was Jesus was being taken away and about to be tortured.

01:28:54.800 And he knew he was.

01:28:56.140 So this goes back to ancient myths and taking inspiration from.

01:28:59.680 And he knew this and he still submitted himself to it.

01:29:02.480 And then Peter, his friend, cut off the ear of his enemy, cut off the ear of the handler who was going to torture Jesus or take him away to be tortured.

01:29:09.360 And Jesus said, don't do that and took the ear and healed his enemy.

01:29:13.740 Not only does he love, not only love thy enemy, heal thy enemy.

01:29:17.660 So living in a loving manner, loving thy enemy, even though you dislike them and not lying, which is distinct from telling the truth.

01:29:27.920 I put an emphasis on not lying.

01:29:30.440 I think that's the path forward.

01:29:32.320 Do that in one's private life and that has wide, wide, wide reaching societal implications.

01:29:37.380 I love it.

01:29:39.180 It's well said and it's good advice.

01:29:41.060 And whether it solves the problems or not, it's good advice.

01:29:44.260 Guys, thanks again.

01:29:45.640 Thank you so much.

01:29:46.660 Thank you.

01:29:51.460 Don't miss the show on Monday.

01:29:52.940 Have a great weekend.

01:29:53.580 But don't miss the show on Monday because we've got Sean Parnell, decorated officer and Senate candidate in Pennsylvania.

01:30:00.400 He's got a great, great story and great perspective on life.

01:30:04.420 We're looking forward to that.

01:30:05.520 Have a great weekend.

01:30:06.160 And in the meantime, before I let you go, please go to Apple and give us a review.

01:30:10.660 We hit 20,000.

01:30:12.140 Yay.

01:30:12.820 That's actually really good for a show that's only been on the air for less than a year.

01:30:16.460 So we're proud of our reviews and our ratings.

01:30:19.900 We'd love a five star rating from you.

01:30:21.300 But while you're on there, give us a review because I have read all 20,000 of them and counting.

01:30:26.040 And I would love to see you take us up to 21,000.

01:30:29.680 Maybe we could do it this weekend.

01:30:30.760 Get on there.

01:30:31.400 Let us know what you think.

01:30:32.540 And we'll see you Monday.

01:30:33.180 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:30:36.600 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:30:41.160 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - July 30, 2021

The Rise Of The Illiberal Left, with Christina Hoff Sommers, Desh Amila, and Curt Jaimungal ｜ Ep. 137

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