In this episode, we speak with former academic sex researcher, neuroscientist, and author of the upcoming book, The End of Gender, Dr. Deborah Deborah, about her journey out of academia and into journalism. She talks about the dangers of academic censorship and how she self-exiled from a career in sex research to pursue a career as a journalist.
00:03:34.120Well, this is what I want to get into.
00:03:36.120The institution of tenure was designed specifically for this purpose,
00:03:39.920to allow scientists to research things that may not be popular in the moment
00:03:44.200so that they can't be punished for discovering the wrong thing, let's say.
00:03:48.540uh what did what did that meant to mean when they said tenure will not protect you like tenure is
00:03:54.020supposed to protect you why wouldn't it protect you well especially within sex research there's
00:03:59.080a very long and ugly history uh between sex researchers and transgender activists where
00:04:05.260if an expert says something that upsets activist groups they will go after the researcher and
00:04:10.900really try to destroy that person not only that person's professional reputation but their personal
00:04:14.760reputation and their life. And there was one case of one sex researcher, Michael Bailey,
00:04:19.940who is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. He published a book in, I believe it
00:04:25.780was 2003, that really upset trans activists. And they went after him. And in my book, I talk about
00:04:33.660all the things that they did to him, which were really terrible and unethical. And so after that
00:04:40.280happened everyone in sex research said you know this is not something i want to go through i don't
00:04:45.000it's just not worth it so everyone just stays quiet about these issues now and so with that
00:04:49.720op-ed they were saying to me and i knew too you know if you say anything that upsets activists
00:04:54.620and particularly transgender activists it's going to not be very nice for you and why is it that
00:05:02.160people just don't stand up to these people isn't that what you mean to do with bullies just stand
00:05:06.360up to them and say and say to them that that's unacceptable you would think so and i think part
00:05:12.880of what it is is is academics are so busy with their research and their you know they're teaching
00:05:17.560they've got administrative duties they're pushed basically to their boundaries in terms of what
00:05:22.380they're capable of as human beings and they're exhausted all the time so the last thing you want
00:05:25.960to do is incite a mob and have to go on social media and fight with them so i think that's part
00:05:30.500of it and i think also activists are really empowered by journalists and and and i think
00:05:37.200the public to some degree because people feel they're on the quote-unquote right side of history
00:05:40.660by defending them so it really is an uphill battle and after you see a number of your colleagues
00:05:45.840everyone in sex research who has spoken up about this gets you know smeared gets attacked gets
00:05:51.740mobbed on social media and so i think it has to be you have to have a very specific personality
00:05:55.560to want to do that and i'm sure you guys have that personality but i think not everybody does so
00:06:00.920that that's how we got to where we are and and deborah why i still don't understand why is it
00:06:07.600so toxic i mean 20 years ago that's a woman that's a man we all agreed on it and then we went on with
00:06:13.920our lives why is it suddenly everybody kicking off on the internet about it i think part of it
00:06:21.160and I should emphasize, so I'm critical of transitioning in children. I do support
00:06:25.180transitioning in adults. I do think transitioning can help some people. And so, especially for
00:06:29.880adults, it's their business. I don't think anyone should be telling them what they can and can't do
00:06:33.360with their bodies. But I think part of this response, especially in the current age, is due
00:06:39.160to seeing what happened with the gay rights movement. And I'm a huge supporter of gay rights,
00:06:43.020a group in the gay community. And I think many people look back on that period of homophobia,
00:06:47.720And homophobia still exists today in society, but I do think it's gotten better to some degree.
00:06:52.800I think people look back on that and they say, okay, we made so many mistakes in that way.
00:06:56.820So now going forward, when it comes to how people identify or anything that has to do with gender or sexuality, we're going to fully support that.
00:07:05.700And I think it's gone so far in the opposite direction now that anyone like myself who criticizes that,
00:07:10.720even when they're coming from a scientific perspective gets shouted down and told that
00:07:15.220they're hateful and that they're bigoted and that they're transphobic okay and look there's some
00:07:20.480things deborah that i'm gonna ask to clarify because like i said before i was understanding
00:07:25.980this was a man this is a woman now i'm very confused okay what does the term gender is
00:07:31.740what is gender what's the difference between sex and gender number one so biological sex
00:07:37.960is determined by gametes. So these are mature reproductive cells. So you produce sperm or you
00:07:43.940produce eggs. The vast majority of people, 99% of us, our gender is our biological sex. So gender
00:07:50.400identity has to do with how you feel, whether you feel masculine or feminine. Gender expression is
00:07:55.280related to that in terms of how you express your gender identity. So whether you are gender
00:07:59.580conforming, say gender non-conforming, as a man, you typically will be masculine in the way you
00:08:04.660dress and the way you carry yourself and similarly someone who's female is going to be feminine
00:08:08.240and with regard to gender dysphoria so gender dysphoria is feeling as though a person identifies
00:08:15.280more as the opposite sex than their birth sex okay now where does the term gender as a social
00:08:22.140construct come in because this is a term that keeps being bandied about what does that actually
00:08:27.820mean and do you agree with it i don't agree with it because it's not true and people will say
00:08:34.020that's very problematic the truth is important wow yeah we're gonna get canceled for like the
00:08:42.28010th time this week so uh what was i saying so gender is not a social construct it's very much
00:08:48.420based in biology and even for people who are transgender there's a biological element to
00:08:52.460why they feel the way that they do so gender when people say gender is a social construct it means
00:08:57.920that uh gender roles are imposed by society so people learn their gender they're socialized to
00:09:04.340be masculine or feminine and that and usually tied into that is the idea that there are no
00:09:09.980biologically based sex differences between men and women in the brain or in relation to uh say
00:09:16.200occupational interest basically anything across the board so if your audience remembers the google
00:09:20.920memo that happened in 2017 i wrote a column for the globe and mail defending james demore
00:09:26.120um and then that that column got picked up quite a bit and people were very upset at me but i feel
00:09:32.080it's again important to be forthright about these things the weird thing is though gender that the
00:09:37.560whole gender is a social construct this is reported now in mainstream news and it's
00:09:43.700repeated ad nauseum as though it's true like there's no there's no people don't back it up
00:09:50.380they don't qualify it they simply just say we know gender is a social construct and they get
00:09:55.040on to saying whatever they were saying and i'm thinking but that's not true so it's it's really
00:09:59.800crazy to me to see how this science denial is is just basically accepted at face value well isn't
00:10:07.180there a baron cohen study which shows that day-old babies uh male and female babies are attracted to
00:10:14.340different things male babies are attracted to objects and female baby more attracted to objects
00:10:19.020female babies are more attracted to uh anthropomorphic type dolls and things like
00:10:23.780isn't that something just like that obvious so even babies are problematic absolutely mate
00:10:29.060well yeah because his research there have been studies where they will um take newborn babies
00:10:35.800and they will find that the females the girls will prefer looking at faces and the boys will
00:10:41.000prefer looking at mobiles or mechanical objects and so what then people who support the argument
00:10:45.840that gender is a social construct they will say well these children have already been born for so
00:10:51.060long and they've managed to learn gender stereotypes in the time i know i'm looking at
00:10:54.220your face my face isn't being shown to the audience but then i'll make it so that it's
00:10:58.680visible their newborn then when did they when did they imbibe these gender stereotypes in in the
00:11:05.860womb like when well this is this is what i say because there's research to show that even in
00:11:10.920the womb before the brain is finished developing there are differences between male and female
00:11:14.560fetuses really unless someone wants unless someone wants to argue that a child is capable of learning
00:11:19.700gender stereotypes before they're born, which I would honestly not be surprised if someone
00:11:23.700were to argue that now, because that's how far this conversation has gone. But I do understand,
00:11:29.440you know, and I think since writing that column in 2017, I understand why people find sex
00:11:34.980differences, especially when it comes to any biologically based ones, why they find it
00:11:38.320so threatening. And, you know, mostly women, but I think some men find it threatening too,
00:11:43.260because if you are in favor of gender equality, there's this message that men and women have to
00:11:47.980be the same and if there are any differences this is due to sexism and we have to fix that and i
00:11:53.840think it's totally fine to acknowledge that men and women are different but that doesn't mean one
00:11:58.040is better than the other and as long as everyone is content with what they're doing in life and
00:12:02.440they don't feel limited then that's really what matters and why do you mind if i just ask yeah
00:12:08.200i don't know if you would have seen our interview with um posy parker i did you did do you remember
00:12:14.820at me having a bit of a disagreement with her, or rather me trying to put the counterpoint,
00:12:19.980I suppose, about the brain. So can you clarify that for us? Is there such a thing as a male
00:12:26.860brain and a female brain? On average, there are differences between what you would find typically
00:12:33.640in men and typically in women. So that doesn't say anything about any individual person. So that's
00:12:37.720one important point. And that's not to say there's not a lot of overlap between the two as well.
00:12:42.160but statistically speaking if you look on average at a group of male versus female brains there will
00:12:47.000be some differences so it's not accurate to say that that their you know brains are identical or
00:12:52.720all right so let me just take that to its logical conclusion which is what i tried to do with her
00:12:57.460which is if there is a difference on average between male brains and female brains would it
00:13:02.500not be therefore credible to argue that somebody can be born in a female body with a male brain
00:13:07.780and so the that yeah that is the common understanding of uh when people say that
00:13:13.720they are transgender right so with the research that's available with regard to brain imaging and
00:13:19.440trans people um they it does show that for say someone who's a trans woman her brain is slightly
00:13:25.460feminized so she was born male identifies as female and her brain is slightly in the direction of
00:13:30.500the sex she identifies as and similarly for trans men so trans men were born female identifies male
00:13:36.480and their brains are shifted in the direction again of the sex they identify as. But the thing
00:13:41.640is with these studies, they are conflated with or confounded with sexual orientation because
00:13:47.360everyone who takes part in these studies are also attracted to people who share their birth sex.
00:13:53.120So in sexology, which is the scientific study of sex and gender, which is my former discipline,
00:13:57.760when you talk about sexual orientation in relation to people who are transgender,
00:14:01.180it's in relation to their birth sex so for a trans woman who is again born male identifies
00:14:07.060as female if she's attracted to men she's considered gay because she is attracted to
00:14:13.500people who share her birth sex and so similarly for trans men if they are attracted to
00:14:20.240women then that's considered gay because attracted again to people who share their birth sex so
00:14:26.080All of this is to say that in the brain, there have been shown to be differences associated with sexual orientation.
00:14:33.780So when we look at the brains of people who are transgender versus people who are not transgender, with these studies, we don't know if those brain differences we're seeing are due to them feeling transgender or feeling gender dysphoric or due to the fact that they're attracted to people who share their birth sex.
00:14:49.400And there was one study, I believe it was last year, that got a lot of attention, media attention, because it was showing in children with gender dysphoria that their brains are similar, again, shifted in the direction of the sex they identify as.
00:15:01.620This shows that these children really are the other sex and that we should support early transitioning.
00:15:07.320But again, the sexual orientation of those kids was not reported.
00:15:12.180And so you can't make that assumption.
00:15:14.740and deborah you are quite critical in the book about allowing children to transition
00:15:21.640now to me this seems as a former teacher this seems fairly common sense but could you explain
00:15:27.360to people why is it that we shouldn't be allowing children to transition especially at a prepubescent
00:15:33.840age as well as i mentioned a little bit earlier in the interview the vast majority of these kids
00:15:40.160who feel that they were born in the wrong body when they reach puberty they're going to outgrow
00:15:44.740those feelings of gender dysphoria and they're more likely to identify as gay in adulthood and
00:15:49.880so it doesn't make sense for them to transition at a young age before this point because it would
00:15:55.320be completely unnecessary and and research has shown that children who even if they socially
00:16:00.120transition because critics will say well social transition is nothing all you do is they you know
00:16:04.600you give them a different name and they can easily change their minds but social transitioning is
00:16:09.620associated with persistence of gender dysphoria so children who do take on a name of the sex that
00:16:15.380they identify as and are treated as though they are they are the opposite sex are more likely to
00:16:19.520go on than to seek other interventions in terms of medically and it's it's difficult i think too
00:16:25.780for kids to come back from that i mean i think people really underestimate how difficult it can
00:16:32.620be for a child to say you know i thought i was the opposite sex but now i'm not and i've talked
00:16:37.200to detransitioners about this we can talk about that too who will say that it's it can be very
00:16:42.420embarrassing to get everyone in your life to call you you know the opposite sex and a new name and
00:16:47.460say that you're sure about this and then say actually no i i wasn't sure about it i'm actually
00:16:52.000curious but when you say that for instance about you feel as a teacher that's obvious why is that
00:16:56.440because the feeling i get from a lot of people is that well of course we would help them transition
00:17:01.220why wouldn't we i mean that's actually what i used to think i used to think of course put them on
00:17:04.700on these drugs to help them. Well, no, the reason I thought is because I know children and a child
00:17:10.080is not capable of making those decisions at such a young age. Well, you would know far better than
00:17:15.320me, but a child is not able to, I think it comes at the age of 14, 15. Well, but it certainly is
00:17:21.460a 10, 11 year old. They're not able to understand consequences. A lot of the time you see teachers
00:17:25.860telling off a child and saying, well, what do you think would happen when you did X? And the kid
00:17:29.980shrugs its shoulders because it doesn't understand consequences so essentially you're asking a child
00:17:35.300to make a life-changing decision before they understand that concept to me it seemed ludicrous
00:17:40.600but then maybe i'm just problematic but you see this also i mean kids as young as age three are
00:17:47.420being taken to gender clinics i'm thinking three years have no three three they have no idea what
00:17:53.300they're saying at that point and parents i think part of it is parents are seeing all of this in
00:17:58.360you know news coverage and they're talking to their parents and they they're some of them I
00:18:02.540think genuinely think maybe that their child needs treatment but I think some other parents
00:18:06.780are really excited about this because it means their child is special and that this might be
00:18:10.880you know some form of I don't think the majority of parents feel this way but I think there are
00:18:14.940some who who really revel in that and what is the rate of detransition with these kids is it quite a
00:18:21.840lot of them a significant amount of them or is it quite a low amount so there was one study in
00:18:26.820sweden that showed that two percent of people who underwent a change in terms of the sex marker on
00:18:32.880their government id subsequently went and changed it back to their birth sex but that is in adults
00:18:39.160and that that study the data collection i believe was done in 2011 so there we don't have data in
00:18:43.860terms of young children we don't have data in terms of especially this more recent spike in
00:18:48.500terms of rapid onset gender dysphoria which we're seeing in predominantly young adolescent girls
00:18:54.560So I can talk about rapid onset gender dysphoria as well, but we just don't know at this point.
00:18:59.580So I see it being very, very unfortunate and ugly what's coming in a couple of years.
00:19:07.800And you talk about rapid onset gender dysphoria.
00:19:09.980It might be helpful for our audience if you define it.
00:19:11.760But if I give you my kind of layman understanding is over the last few years, there's been a massive increase, like 4,000% or something crazy in the number of young girls.
00:19:23.600and young women who who seem to decide to transition in clusters in other words it like
00:19:30.620happens at a school that a lot of the girls there suddenly all transition is that broadly speaking
00:19:35.880correct yeah yeah it is um so what will usually happen is one of these young women their their
00:19:43.040close friend will come out as a trans boy and then the next thing you know she comes home from school
00:19:47.860and tells her parents i want to be a boy and the parents are really at a loss because if you take
00:19:52.040a child to a gender clinic they have to affirm that child so uh in terms of the the prevalence
00:19:58.280so lisa lippman did a study in 2018 about this and she found that among friend groups 40 percent
00:20:05.160of uh these girls would have at least half of their friend group identifying as transgender
00:20:10.420which is a lot and this is 70 times the what you would normally find in the general population in
00:20:16.200terms of statistical prevalence of adults who identify as transgender so and why are girls more
00:20:21.500More likely now, because it used to be that it was mainly males that would transition, effeminate males, let's say, I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, just in a kind of descriptive way, they would transition, they were much more likely to transition than women.
00:20:36.160Now that seems to have been completely changed in such a short period of time.
00:20:40.040Why do you think it is that girls are doing this?
00:20:44.480I think for many of them, they're experiencing discomfort in their bodies, which is very normal.
00:20:48.820that's a normal part of growing up reaching puberty and adolescence everyone feels awkward
00:20:53.580and uncomfortable but instead now they're being told on social media and and everywhere basically
00:20:59.920that if you are uncomfortable with your sex that you must be the opposite sex so if you are a woman
00:21:06.000who doesn't like having her period or you don't like male attention potentially that that means
00:21:12.940you should be a man and no one is saying to them because it's considered transphobic to say so to
00:21:18.080say it's okay to feel different as a young woman and especially for a lot of them they have other
00:21:23.260mental health conditions like autism a lot of them have anxiety they have eating disorders
00:21:28.060they're self-harming and this is a way for them to cope with the way they're feeling and i think
00:21:34.460too you know i'm very critical of a lot of feminist dogma but i do think in some ways society can still
00:21:40.220be sexist and for these young women it's an easy way to avoid sexism or homophobia also if they're
00:21:45.760lesbian a lot of these young women are lesbian and so to them it's it's easier to be a man than
00:21:51.920to be a lesbian woman and do you think part of the problem as well again going back to my teaching
00:21:56.860experience i saw social media come in particularly instagram particularly the pressure it puts on
00:22:01.920young girls to look a certain way their bodies to be a certain shape or whatever else and it's just
00:22:06.980a very easy way just to go i want no part of this i'm going to be completely different and now i'm
00:22:13.480going to be i'm not going to have to abide by those rules yeah i would agree with that and i
00:22:18.560think also pornography from what i've been told by speaking with these young women who have
00:22:22.540detransitioned they they will be exposed to porn at a very young age you know that's just how it
00:22:27.580is everyone on the phone now it's it's you know very easy to get access and they'll say i don't
00:22:32.200they think that that's what sex real life sex is going to be like they don't realize that
00:22:37.040pornography is entertainment and this is really the peak moment of of sex between two people or
00:22:43.660however many people so you know they think i don't want that i don't want to be objectified like that
00:22:48.340they don't want to be objectified by society understandably so and so again this is a way to
00:22:52.780just avoid the whole thing you know it sounds so tragic what you're describing because you know
00:22:58.720you're saying that you're what you're basically saying is these young women are already vulnerable
00:23:03.540and we've created a structure for them that affirms choices that don't actually match who
00:23:11.860they are but at every step of the way the adults are going oh yeah yeah this is the right way for
00:23:16.920you to go uh now if if you are right and i suspect that you are then that wave of detransitioners
00:23:25.700that you're talking about is coming and i mean that's going to be even worse because there's
00:23:31.360going to be thousands of people who've gone through a very invasive process in many cases
00:23:36.740being i mean just horrified at what what they've done to themselves and what the adults around them
00:23:44.800allowed them to do isn't that is i mean is that coming oh yeah yeah it's i mean it's already
00:23:49.980partially here i would say over in the uk i think you guys are seeing it the start of it before
00:23:54.820north america people are still very much in denial about it because what you will hear when
00:23:59.900if you talk about detransitioners detransitioners are supposedly a quote-unquote myth and then it's
00:24:05.720it's statistically so rare it never happens but those people were never really trans those people
00:24:10.520were never really gender dysphoric and that that's not true and you know i also criticize in the book
00:24:15.480the non-binary movement because i think this is similar in that so before it would very much be
00:24:21.720if if someone wants if uncomfortable with their birth sex they will identify as transgender now
00:24:27.500there's also non-binary which with that community comes for many people having a double mastectomy
00:24:34.560so again i have no issue people want to try on different genders or identities i think that's
00:24:39.080normal as part of the development developmental process but when you start getting involved with
00:24:44.000surgery and when we're not actually talking about what this is really about you know that's that's
00:24:50.260my issue i think it's one thing if we could have these conversations and these individuals were
00:24:55.340saying i still think this is the right thing for me then i would feel a bit more comfortable but
00:24:59.620you can't have that conversation i think people are going to be very upset by what i say in the
00:25:03.440book because these are things you're not supposed to say but i think they need to be said and do
00:25:08.700you think part of the problem as well is that you know these people these children are identifying
00:25:12.640as trans without realizing that if you're a trans person you're essentially going to become
00:25:17.260medicalized for the rest of your life yeah and at that age like you're saying they're they're not
00:25:22.540fully developed cognitively in terms of their emotional maturity. I don't think they're
00:25:27.740necessarily thinking that far ahead. And this is why I'm appalled at the adults. Why are parents
00:25:33.340and medical professionals not seeing this for what it is? But I think they similarly have been
00:25:38.420cowardly. They're afraid of being called transphobic. In some cases, you can lose your
00:25:43.200license. We actually have a law in Canada that's trying to be passed right now to actually send
00:25:48.620someone to prison if they conduct so-called conversion therapy, which conversion therapy
00:25:53.300for sexual orientation is not acceptable. I don't support that at all because it does not work. It's
00:25:58.020not ethical. Conversion therapy for gender identity does not exist. If you have a clinician
00:26:03.160who sits down with a child and wants to understand what else is going on in their life that may lead
00:26:07.580them to feeling gender dysphoric, that's considered conversion therapy now, where gender identity in
00:26:12.280children is more flexible with age. So a child, again, who says they are the opposite sex can grow
00:26:18.040to feel comfortable in their birth sex with age and i don't think it's considered it should be
00:26:21.860considered transphobic to say that but now mental health professionals cannot have these conversations
00:26:27.160they cannot do a proper assessment with these children so they really just have to allow them
00:26:32.220anyone to anyone who wants to transition is basically the complete opposite of medical
00:26:35.980gatekeeping now so anyone who is against this they they don't work with these patients anymore
00:26:41.340so so so what what do you do as a parent so for instance a friend of mine her daughter at the age
00:26:48.040of 11 years old told her that she wanted to transition and she didn't say if she said when
00:26:53.320i transition what what does a parent do if every all the authorities all the medical professionals
00:27:00.380seem to be pushing this kid down one particular path which is going to change her body and
00:27:08.320mutilate it forever i think the number one thing for parents every parent that i've spoken to has
00:27:14.440said that taking a child to a gender clinic actually makes things worse because the it it
00:27:20.160feeds into it doesn't they don't challenge the child right so then it becomes an issue of
00:27:25.340the child is then turned against the parents and now these kids are being encouraged to if your
00:27:31.800if your parents or people in your life your family don't support you cut them off so that can be you
00:27:37.900know very very devastating for the parents i would say just love your kid i have some suggestions i
00:27:42.960interviewed one of my colleagues dr susan bradley who is a world expert in autism and gender dysphoria
00:27:48.680and so she had some really good suggestions in terms of what to do and help to keep the
00:27:53.340conversation going with your child and and i think just one thing i would say is try to limit the
00:27:58.480exposure your child has to social media which is i guess something to start at a younger age just
00:28:02.540to try and keep them off those platforms as much as possible because that's really
00:28:06.000where this ideology starts and it's it's really strong because kids you know they are very
00:28:11.400malleable and when they're exposed to this and they think I feel different and this is the
00:28:15.700solution to the way I feel I think it can be really a an addictive thing to grab onto
00:28:22.660and there is a link as well between autism and children that transition has that been fully
00:28:31.400explored or is that just something that we're noticing no it's very very common and even in
00:28:36.680that study uh on rapid onset gender dysphoria i can't remember the exact number the percentage
00:28:41.040but there was definitely a correlation there so that's the other thing because you know i think
00:28:45.840people with autism again deserve respect and love and and we should be able to say you know if this
00:28:51.860is some if this is what is leading you to feel a certain way because for some people who are
00:28:56.320with autism they are very um they fixate on things so they'll go through periods of being
00:29:03.200really really into especially children they'll go through periods of being really into one thing
00:29:06.800like a toy and then they'll be into something else and something else and so gender could be one of
00:29:10.880those topics that they latch on to and they're really into for a while but eventually it will
00:29:15.880pass not to say that's the case for all of them because there are some kids right who do end up
00:29:20.060persisting but um i think in today's climate you it's really difficult for us to be able to tease
00:29:25.640apart who's going to legitimately persist and who's going to desist or not feel that way anymore
00:29:30.000because we're again we're not talking about that we're not talking about any other any other
00:29:34.480potential explanations for the way someone feels so what would be a healthy way to treat people
00:29:40.620who present as having gender dysphoria as in a discomfort about their sex and gender being
00:29:47.440different what would be a healthy way for us to deal with that well i should state i'm i'm not
00:29:53.480a clinician, I don't do clinical work anymore and I don't work with these children or this
00:29:58.380population. But I would say more broadly, just from conversations I've had with my colleagues
00:30:02.160who do this work to just get a sense of what else is going on in the child's life. Are there
00:30:06.900other reasons for them feeling this way? For a lot of kids who say they are the opposite sex,
00:30:11.180because that's usually what critics of someone like me will say, well, these kids, you can tell
00:30:16.980the ones who are truly gender dysphoric from the ones who are not, because they will say,
00:30:20.600I am the opposite sex. But a lot of kids will say that just because that's the only language they
00:30:25.580have to communicate. They want to do things the opposite sex does. So if the parent says,
00:30:30.560you're a little boy, you can't play with the easy bake oven, the little boy will say, well,
00:30:34.740I am a girl as a way of saying, well, I should be able to do things that girls do. And I think
00:30:39.440also to look at the family dynamic and look at other ways that the child may be using their
00:30:44.200gender to maybe get attention from their parents or get praise, things like that. And I mean,
00:30:49.220i even feel bad saying these things now because i feel i don't want to make life more difficult for
00:30:53.260this you know trans people but again no one is saying this stuff and these are things that are
00:30:58.520just taken for like we know in the field that this is these are important questions to be asking
00:31:03.680it makes a lot of sense listen let's talk about men and women a little bit and it's a great
00:31:09.620frustration for francis and i because we get someone who's extremely intelligent well educated
00:31:16.900who's written great stuff, who's done amazing research like you or Jeffrey Miller or Dana
00:31:21.980Fleischman or evolutionary psych, Brett Weinstein, whatever. And we end up saying, Deborah, please
00:31:27.820tell us the difference between men and women. Like, like no one knows what it is. You know
00:31:31.860what I mean? But, but just let's talk about that because I think one of the crucial points you make
00:31:37.740in the book is it's not necessary for people to be treated equally. It's not necessary to pretend
00:31:44.380that we're the same right so what is a man and what is a woman i'm a man mate
00:31:50.920is that how you identify now is it yeah country to all evidence
00:31:58.640well i was gonna say i have a chapter in the book about sex and dating and i think i'm i'm
00:32:04.760actually amazed the number of young people who reach out to me who are experiencing mass confusion
00:32:09.200about how to approach romantic relationships, even casual sex. I mean, it just feels like,
00:32:15.800it sounds like an absolute jungle. And so, you know, I write in that chapter about there are
00:32:21.300differences between men and women in terms of our sexual systems. And this serves us very well from
00:32:26.240an evolutionary perspective. And we don't have to pretend that men and women are identical in the
00:32:30.800bedroom for us to have equal rights and to have respect in our relationships. And I'm just, I'm
00:32:35.780amazed at how much misinformation is out there and i'm you i would think that most people like
00:32:42.060you're saying know these things but i feel like there's so much indoctrination i don't know if
00:32:48.400it's because this is what people are being taught in university but i sense young people really have
00:32:53.140they're lost they're completely lost so what are some of the key points that people should
00:32:57.840just be reminded of well i would say something like um with casual sex i think there's a pressure
00:33:05.460for young women to feel like they should have casual sex or they should enjoy it. And for the
00:33:09.660most part, I mean, almost consistently in the research, well, consistently in the research,
00:33:13.880men prefer casual sex more than women. And this would make sense from an evolutionary perspective
00:33:18.200because for men, the investment from sex is much smaller than for women. For women,
00:33:23.960there's a chance of pregnancy and then also raising the child. And evolutionary psychology,
00:33:28.440I think it's a really bad reputation because people think it's outdated. They say it's sexist.
00:35:57.540and shut down any other opposing perspective because it could potentially be misused or
00:36:03.040misconstrued. What I find quite interesting about this whole worldview is that it's almost sexist
00:36:08.640in the way that it's designed and that it's saying like male quality is good, female quality is bad.
00:36:15.060And you're then forcing women, as what Megan Murphy was saying, you're forcing women to think
00:36:20.820that in order to be quote unquote good, you have to be like men. You have to think about sex and
00:36:26.200relationships like men when really that's just we're just not wired in the same way are we
00:36:32.680right and that's the thing i do think if we pretend again if we go back to gender being
00:36:37.640a social construct if we say that then that means that men and male sexuality remain the gold
00:36:43.340standard and then female sexuality is basically an aberration of that and so women are going to
00:36:48.500constantly be pressured to conform to being like men and i think it should be perfectly fine for
00:36:55.060women to be respected as they are and but maybe i'm going to misquote you here but deborah didn't
00:37:01.560you believe some of these ideas early on before doing the research and then realizing they are
00:37:06.920insane as as it were well why did you believe these ideas because that's what i was told and
00:37:13.980i would i you know the before i started studying sexology i wasn't exposed to any of the research
00:37:20.000data on the other side. So as a young woman who has always been very outspoken, I thought to be
00:37:28.000an independent, empowered woman, these are the views that you hold. And then when I did start
00:37:32.960studying sexology in graduate school, I realized that none of those ideas are based in science.
00:37:38.660And I think it's actually quite harmful for young women to be told basically lies because that's
00:37:44.740not empowering. I think you walk around with a false sense of empowerment, but you're not
00:37:49.620informed so that's not helpful and it's curious you've said a couple of times now you kind of
00:37:55.400just to remind everybody that sexism exists right because sometimes it can feel like people are you
00:38:01.020know on your side of the argument are perhaps skipping over that so what are the areas where
00:38:06.980you think sexism is still a powerful force in our society i definitely would not say in stem i know
00:38:15.200that's one very common argument people say that the lack of women in stem is due to sexism and i
00:38:20.700disagree with that in the book i i go through a number of studies that show that you know actually
00:38:26.140when it comes to hiring in terms of preference for male or female candidates there's actually
00:38:31.560a bias in favor of female candidates for academic positions um i think that's not just true sorry to
00:38:38.900interrupt it's not just true of academia i mean whether it's you know comedy going on a panel show
00:38:45.200as a comedian whether it's working at the bbc you know in the mainstream organizations i suspect if
00:38:53.500you were to look now to 30 years ago unquestionable bias and favor of men you look now i think it's
00:38:59.420either par or very much in favor of women right um but but but i am interested to think about
00:39:05.620You know, you said several times that sexism is still an issue. And I think sometimes people who are trying to have a conversation on our side of the fence, if you like, if there is a side of the fence, you know, sometimes skip over things. So where do you think sexism is still an issue?
00:39:22.120well i think on an individual level it's not possible to go through every single person in
00:39:27.480society and to cleanse their mind of any negative thoughts of women or anyone who believes that
00:39:33.440women are inferior in some way to completely eradicate that so i think in that way but i
00:39:38.960don't think it's it's at a systemic level and i don't think it's in a way that's really seriously
00:39:43.420holding women back certainly not in western society so there's a few assholes basically
00:39:49.720just still walking around right and that's not that yeah and that's not to say that those
00:39:54.240interactions aren't um uncomfortable for somebody or upsetting for somebody but i i do think in the
00:40:00.840grand scheme of things you can choose in life what you want to focus on and what's going to
00:40:04.340motivate you or hold you back and i you know i write in the book of about some some situations
00:40:08.920i experience with sexism but i think if you stay focused as a woman and you just keep moving
00:40:13.440forward then there's nothing that's going to stop you in that way agreed and anyway that's enough
00:40:18.280about constantin so let's move on right i was gonna i can't even argue back it's my culture
00:40:25.320it's my culture what can i do yeah i'm problematic right now um but deborah one thing that really
00:40:31.500came forward in your book and i think that i found very interesting is you made the point
00:40:34.660that we are having these these incredibly complex nuanced conversations and a lot of people hosting
00:40:40.700these conversations are quite frankly not qualified to do so he's talking about me and you
00:40:46.700at least we don't pretend to be qualified but do you think that why do you think that's
00:40:57.220bad and do you actually think it's quite dangerous as well well when you say their
00:41:02.360hosts are not qualified in what way are they not qualified so like people commenting about
00:41:07.000sex and gender are not people from a scientific background they're people from the humanities
00:41:11.900and arts and as somebody who's got a degree in the arts i can say i'm qualified for nothing
00:41:16.060but i would say even experts this is the this is what's so crazy right now is that i feel bad even
00:41:23.560using the word crazy because that's now supposed to be a problematic term but you know that even
00:41:27.540scientific experts some of them have become ideological and that they will say things like
00:41:34.040you know there are no biologically based differences in the brain between men and women
00:41:38.280and you see the new research that's coming out saying these things so it's it's really a frightening
00:41:43.820time because now the scientific papers themselves are compromised because scientists know it's one
00:41:49.320thing to say whatever loopy idea you have but it's not until you publish that in a paper and
00:41:54.680then you can point to that paper and say oh yeah in this paper that we published we showed this
00:41:58.420magically you know it so that's that's where we are right now but i i don't see maybe i'm not being
00:42:06.640how can how but surely science is science it's fact isn't it if you are a good scientist you
00:42:13.480will design your study in a way that it's not biased and that you will be open to whatever you
00:42:17.400find at the end. So I don't want to necessarily point fingers at people in terms of what they're
00:42:21.520doing, but definitely in the field, when a paper comes out that says something like there are no
00:42:26.600biologically based sex differences in the brain, you can, if you look at all of the previous
00:42:32.520research, I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of studies suggesting otherwise. And when most
00:42:38.840of the experts in the field if not all who are not ideological are saying this is not this does
00:42:44.040not look right and you go in and even so for say one study that was published showing there are no
00:42:48.220sex differences when a different group of my colleagues analyzed the exact same data from
00:42:52.120the study they found that you could tell the difference between male and female brains at a
00:42:56.360rate much higher than chance so i mean i think again i don't want to be pointing fingers but
00:43:02.060you can if you want to promote a particular agenda even as a scientist you can find a way to do that
00:43:08.500Right. And what will happen to the way we have these conversations? Because one of the other things you talk about in the book is essentially people who want to do authentic science, unbiased science. They know the punishment, as you said yourself, even tenure won't protect you.
00:43:25.560and then of course those people leave the field and we've seen a lot of people um leaving different
00:43:33.200academic branches because they recognize that they can't do the research that they want to do
00:43:39.140because if they find the wrong thing they're going to be punished for it uh and will that not lead
00:43:44.840over time to essentially a replacement of true scientists with agenda driven ideologically
00:43:51.100driven science and then all of the stuff that you're saying is scientifically not true will
00:43:57.240become scientifically true right that is what we're seeing right now and especially when it
00:44:02.960comes to gender if you look at well the research pretending to say children with gender dysphoria
00:44:08.120i'm not really questioning what new studies are going to find because we know that we see what
00:44:15.200happens if you try to question or challenge transgender the trans what narrative is being
00:44:21.900put forward by trans activists there was a study that was published last year that suggested that
00:44:27.260gender dysphoria may have something to do with sensory networks and that it may not necessarily
00:44:33.380be due to having the wrong brain sex in someone's body so i think that's not necessarily the case
00:44:39.700for everybody but i do think that paper was published for the purpose of uh sparking debate
00:44:45.540that's that's why the journal published it and then it ended up being put under review again
00:44:51.700and then it was eventually retracted because there was such an outcry over it because people
00:44:55.840were saying this could be misused to say that trans people should not transition i think that's
00:45:01.540usually the key fear and i understand that fear because again medical gatekeeping did exist and
00:45:06.740And I don't think trans people, I think they deserve support and care and to be able to access, you know, the interventions adults should be.
00:45:14.600And so now no one's going to touch this subject.
00:45:18.200No good ethical researcher is going to touch the subject.
00:45:20.580So instead, all the research that's coming out is going to be activist led.
00:45:24.340And we've talked about the impact on trans people.
00:45:26.980And I think it's important that all of us, just like you have, emphasize that we want people who are gender dysphoric to get the support that they need.
00:45:59.960Well, there's two ejaculators, the question we'd like to ask.
00:46:02.420is uh you know women feel very strongly about this issue as we've discovered over the time
00:46:10.620we've been doing the show uh francis smacking his lips there yeah yeah women do feel very
00:46:17.720strongly about this issue uh what do you have a particular view on that because uh you know it's
00:46:24.500become a big contentious issue in fact i would say almost all of the contentiousness comes from
00:46:29.880that women feeling like they're under attack by some of this um do you what's your take on that
00:46:37.060i think with regard to because i think the broader conversation is about are transgender women
00:46:42.440the same as women who were born women full stop because the implications of that are much different
00:46:48.540from if we were to say trans men are the same as men full stop because when it comes to women's
00:46:54.380spaces uh women are arguably going to be affected more so if someone who is a trans woman is and
00:47:03.480when i when i cite these criticisms my issue is not with trans people it's because the policy
00:47:08.200then opens up the opportunity for individuals who are male who are not transgender for them to abuse
00:47:15.760the ability to access these spaces and it comes back to biological differences men are bigger
00:47:20.660stronger blah blah blah right and also i mean they are more likely to perpetuate sexual offenses
00:47:26.600not all men of course but um that's just the reality of someone who has worked with sex
00:47:31.460offenders previously in research and clinically um so i think it's important to be able to talk
00:47:37.320about this issue depending on the particular context and the factors involved so bathrooms
00:47:42.280prisons sports shelters you know i think right now people are taking a very much a sweeping
00:47:48.100approach saying either either if they're in favor of trans rights they say 100 trans women are women
00:47:53.060that's that's the end of it and you know to suggest otherwise is bigoted and then on the
00:47:59.120other side people are saying no trans women shouldn't are not the same as women and you know
00:48:04.000so uh i mean we can talk about maybe the specific context right well let's talk about it because how
00:48:10.780do you resolve that for example you know you take a kind of balanced sensible view of it uh
00:48:16.200should trans women have access to female only bathrooms prisons sports i mean they're all
00:48:23.180slightly different but um you know just talk us through your view on those on those contexts
00:48:28.720i think my my biggest point of contention would be prisons 100 you cannot i mean we we are seeing
00:48:34.980now with male sex offenders so they they will commit sexual offenses against female victims
00:48:42.700and they will be arrested and then they will they will identify as female and they will have to be
00:48:48.140not only recorded as female by the police but then they will be potentially housed in a women's
00:48:54.180prison and i just i it's just beyond me i don't know as anyone who works in forensics
00:49:00.640should know that that is not a good idea so this is actually happening um i think again it's it's
00:49:08.900very possible that a prisoner may decide to come out as trans. Maybe they are truly gender dysphoric
00:49:14.020and so in which case, yeah, that should be taken into account. But I think, you know,
00:49:18.540a psychologist, when you are evaluating these populations, your job is to determine what is
00:49:23.380the likelihood of reoffending. That's the biggest thing, like level of risk that someone is going
00:49:27.480to recidivate. And it's almost like that's not being considered at all in these discussions.
00:49:33.300It's very much all about identity. And that's really, really not helpful and it's dangerous.
00:49:38.900Yeah, there's a very famous case in the UK with a person called Karen White, who's a male sex offender. I think a rapist, actually, identified as a woman, got put in a women's prison and lo and behold, went on to sexually abuse three or four women. And you do start to think at that point, has society and the world taken leave of its senses?