The Truth About Trans Medicine - Christina Buttons
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the growing problem of youth dysphoria associated with gender dysphoria, and the lack of support for gender identity services in the United States, especially for youth transitioning. We also discuss the role of the transphobic medical establishment in promoting gender affirming care, and whether or not there is any good evidence to support it.
Transcript
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A lot of the doctors that have signed on and endorsed gender-affirming care
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believe that they are civil rights heroes they're taking on after the gay
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rights movement. Which is kind of ironic, isn't it? Yeah, because they're actually
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hurting mostly gay kids. What we see with detransition is that it typically takes
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between four to eight years for regret to occur. People are not receiving
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accurate information about their condition. They're lying to people.
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Christina, great to finally have you on the show. We kind of have stopped talking about trans as much
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as we have because A, we spent a lot of time trying to work out what a woman was.
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Finally succeeded, so now we know. We don't really want to talk about it. And the other reason is,
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as I think you're aware, in the UK we're actually making quite a bit of progress
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in terms of rolling back some of the extremes and the excesses of trans ideology and the way it's
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being implemented in medicine and maybe even in education and so on. But that isn't the case here,
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is it? No. US-based medical organizations have so far refused to align their guidelines with
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the best available evidence provided by systematic evidence reviews, which many European countries
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companies have done that found that the risks of youth transition outweigh any purported benefits.
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And they've, you know, significantly rolled back and halted the use of puberty blockers
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and are prioritizing psychotherapy now as a first-line treatment for youth who are experiencing any kind of
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Why do you think that is, Christina, that in the UK we've been quite good on this,
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Well, a few different reasons, but one of the big reasons was Kira Bell, her detransition
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lawsuit that she won. And the other is UK's National Health Service. It has been every year releasing its
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referral data. And we've seen, you know, so the first year available they had in 2009, there were about
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78, uh, youth referrals to the gender identity service. And as of the latest review, um, for probably the year
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2023 to 2024, it was over 9,000. And I think that represents like 11,500% increase in that timeframe.
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So I think the fact that the data has been more available, um, and we've seen this exponential
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increase, um, those are a few reasons why people are alarmed and recognizing that there's a serious
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problem. Um, but it's a little different in the United States where we don't really have like a
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national health service. We don't have any data on the over a hundred gender, pediatric gender clinics
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in the United States. And, you know, this is where the gender affirming model of care was born. It was
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created in the United States. Um, and us-based medical organizations have all endorsed it, but
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they've, you know, they've, uh, they've, uh, they've all been referencing each other for their endorsement of
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this particular protocol. Um, it isn't actually based on any kind of sound evidence or science.
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So rather than being lots of separate validation and verification, there's basically a very small number of
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people kind of quoting each other about how right they are on this.
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Yes. We recently had a systematic review come out at the same time as the cast review that found
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that, you know, the initial guidelines that were released by WPATH and Endocrine Society,
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who both co-authored the guidelines, um, they did what was called circular referencing. So there's
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a number of like national and regional, uh, medical organizations that relied on the endorsements
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from those medical organizations. And then when the WPATH and Endocrine Society released newer guidelines,
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they were referencing those regional and medical, regional medical organizations to support the
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endorsement of youth transition. And so what you get is just a whole bunch of
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medical organizations circularly referencing each other, um, which I would sort of liken to
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a citation cartel. Um, this is when researchers, you know, sort of inflate the number of citations
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that they have, um, in order to like increase their prestige. Uh, that's something that's done
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in research. That's a problem, but it's, there's no, there's no good evidence to support youth
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transition or this gender affirming model of care. It's all consensus based, but they,
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they portray it as evidence-based, but that actually, it has a specific meaning and they're
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really misleading the public by representing it that way. Explain that a little bit more when you say
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it's evidence-based and that term has a specific meaning. Tell us more about that.
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Well, Professor Gordon Goya, he is the pioneer of the evidence-based medicine movement. He reviewed
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all of the guidelines for adolescent gender medicine, and he came to the conclusion that they are
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untrustworthy and not evidence-based. Um, systematic evidence reviews, they represent like the pinnacle of
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evidence-based medicine and sort of the hierarchy, the pyramid of evidence, uh, and US-based medical
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organizations have not been aligning their guidelines with the results of the systematic
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evidence reviews. Um, and that's, that's a major problem. We, we want them to, uh, the AAP,
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American Academy of Pediatrics for years, members of this organization have been submitting resolutions
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every single year, asking leadership to align the guidelines with the results of systematic
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evidence reviews, and they have actively refused calls to do so. Except for last year,
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they finally said that they would conduct their own systematic evidence review. And we'll see what happens with that.
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Christina, do you think there's a financial incentive element here? Because obviously in the, in the US,
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people are making money from these types of, of these types of surgeries. I was talking to somebody
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who is a surgeon and they were saying, and look, this may be wrong, this may be anecdotal, that you can earn
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far more from doing trans-based surgeries than you can from doing regular surgery.
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Christina- There is that incentive, sure, I think. But I'm a little bit less cynical and I think that
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a lot of the doctors that have signed on and endorsed gender-affirming care believe that they are
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civil rights heroes. They're doing it because they think it's similar to being gay.
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Christina- They're taking on after the gay rights movement. They believe trans rights are almost the
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Christina- Yeah, because they're actually hurting mostly gay kids.
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Christina- Right. And it's not just gay kids as well. It's, and we see this and
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I'm taking this stat from the UK, but it's around about 40% of, I think it's mainly girls,
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are autistic when they identify as trans or say that they want to be transitioned.
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Christina- How many of these kids have autism in the US and is it higher amongst girls?
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Christina- Well, the study you're referring to is the 2018 study of kids. It found 35%
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Christina- had moderate to severe autistic traits, higher if you're considering like mild autistic
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traits and mild autism. But that's actually probably some of the best data that we do have is coming
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from kids. In the US, there are clinics where small sample sizes, but they're as many as 47%
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at an autism diagnosis. It's, they're highly overrepresented in the cohort.
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Jason- And what about, you mentioned gay, obviously we were talking about that.
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Christina- Well, based on all the research that we've seen on desistance,
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Christina- It's, it's very high. It's something like 70%.
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Christina- You know, we had like about 12 studies on
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Christina- Children who went into gender clinics when they were,
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this was prior to the gender affirming model of care, but in like the history that we know of,
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you know, 60 to 90% of the kids who didn't socially or medically transition would desist and no longer
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have a cross-sex identity by the time they became an adolescent. And I think it was something around
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like 60 to 70% would just grow up to be like a normal, well-justed gay adult. It's, that's primarily
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Jason- I mean, the awful thing about this is that these kids are being exposed to these types of
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medications and push back if I'm wrong about this, but a lot of them, we just simply don't know the
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long-term effects of them, do we? Do we actually know what the long-term effects of puberty blockers
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Christina- No, there's absolutely no long-term data on the safety and efficacy of any of these medications.
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And that's a big reason why we've rolled back in the UK. And I wish that we, the US would get on
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board and, and do the same. I'm hoping that will happen.
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Jason- And I think part of the reason why we've rolled back as well is because there have been,
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like you said, court cases, but that's, you know, when money gets involved, when compensation has to
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be paid. And that's really when the rubber starts to hit the road. Has there been those types of
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court cases in the US because, you know, as a society, you're far more litigious than we are?
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Christina- There's a number underway. There's a, I think at least like 14 cases,
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Jason- And, uh, I, do you think that, uh, if those are decided in their favor, do you think
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you're likely to see the kind of rollbacks that we've seen in the UK? Are you optimistic?
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Christina- I'm hoping so. I think I, a lot of times medical scandals and things of this nature
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end up, end with lawsuits, um, because medical organizations can't take
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the kind of risks that they're doing now. I don't know why they're taking them currently.
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Um, but that's what, that's what happened with the recovered memory movement as well.
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Jason- I mean, it was just this faddish type of therapy, um, ruined a lot of lives.
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Jason- Sorry to interrupt Christina, because there's a lot of people going to be listening
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to us that don't have, that are not aware of that. So if you could give us a little bit of
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background as to what the recovered memory movement is, because I'll be honest with you,
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Christina- The recovered memory movement took place in sort of like the late 80s and 90s.
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Um, and it came from therapists had this idea that people possessed these repressed memories
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of significant trauma that could explain, you know, why their adult patients were coming in
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to their office. They said that, you know, you're dealing with some kind of unresolved trauma,
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but what would end up happening is these like susceptible and vulnerable adult patients.
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Um, they were very, they're just highly suggestible. So therapists would end up like implanting false
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memories in them and they would become convinced that a lot of times they had to do with like
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incest with family members and they would become convinced that, you know, their dad molested them
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or something as a child and they buried the memory. And so they worked through the therapist to uncover
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the memory and confront their family members. And it ended up just destroying so many families. And it
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even when this kind of testimony was accepted in court, um, it even put some people in prison and they
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don't allow that kind of testimony anymore because it's shown to be complete pseudoscience. So that
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the recovered memory movement ended with lawsuits, um, from the patients who sued their therapists for
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basically ruining their lives and their family lives based on absolute junk science. And you know what
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we're dealing with today is junk science. That's what I, I use the term gender pseudoscience.
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I've been passionate about science and skepticism and debunking pseudoscience for over 12 years. And my
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focus now is on what I call gender pseudoscience and communicating what that is to the lay public. And
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gender pseudoscience is unfounded scientific claims about innate gender identity and medical claims about the
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gender affirming model of care that are presented as sound science, but in fact are not supported by any
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Wells theater. Get tickets at murbush.com. Well, on that subject, uh, if you were talking to somebody
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who's really not clued in, hasn't been paying attention, uh, who probably thinks, you know,
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the doctors and scientists have got us all under control. Of course they must be doing everything
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right. You know, blah, blah, blah. Uh, what, what would be a kind of summary that you might give them to
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explain what's really going on? Well, it's, that's the difficult part is it's not even just
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the medical organizations and the doctors it's, um, it's academia, it's research institutions, it's
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the Biden administration, it's activist organizations like gay and civil rights organizations, mainstream
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media. They're all sort of complicit in, um, promoting this particular narrative that gender
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affirming care is life-saving, medically necessary, evidence-based. And so in, in a lot of ways it's,
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it's like other medical scandals we've seen in history, but in other ways it's nothing like ever,
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we've ever seen before. So why is it like it and why is it not? So what are the similarities between
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former medical scandals and what is unique about this medical scandal?
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Well, former medical scandals, I sometimes liken it to like the opioid crisis that we saw. Um,
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it was these pharmaceutical companies who took a study or even, you know, it wasn't even a real study,
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but they used that to say that their particular new brand of opioid wasn't addictive at all. And
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they got it sort of pushed through the FDA and into clinics. And then we saw, you know,
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terrible things happen as a result of that. And we saw pain pills, uh, pain, um, they were called
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pill mills. There's these clinics that just popped up all over the country to meet patient demand rather
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than medical necessity. Um, and that's kind of similar to what we're saying with all these gender
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clinics. Like there were virtually none like 15 years ago. Now there's, uh, at least a hundred
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pediatric gender clinics and probably over 900 clinics that will prescribe medical interventions for
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the purposes of gender affirming care. So there are a lot of similarities to that, I think.
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And the differences, why is this particular scandal unique?
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Because it's sort of disguised in this couched in social justice
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framework. It's people, people think it's sort of a continuation of the gay rights movement. So
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they'll dismiss, um, and part of the other problem too, is how mainstream media sort of
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portrays it as, you know, something that only religious conservatives would oppose.
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So it's, it's become highly polarized and people will readily dismiss any concerns anyone has, even
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me, a liberal. Um, I regularly get called a bigot and a transphobe and anti-trans and anti-LGBT
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for basically just saying that I believe all areas of medicine, including gender medicine,
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should be aligned with the principles of evidence-based medicine. And that's something that,
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you know, really should not be controversial at all. I think we all want what's best for these like
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vulnerable groups of people. They deserve so much better than the current treatment they're getting.
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And Christina, you mentioned your own views. I, I, I, you're, you have a very measured demeanor,
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but what people want to see is, is that actually you're very passionate about this stuff. And I,
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I think it, it'd be interesting to, to, to talk about why that is in terms of your own background and,
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and views and so on. Yeah. I came into this after reading
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de-transitioner stories and finding so many similarities. Um, I mean,
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they'd be, it was like kind of reading my own journal or diary when I, I read their stories,
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because when I was a teenager, I had a lot of similar problems to what we see with the current
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cohort that is identifying as trans today, the ones that we consider sort of rapid
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onset or late onset who didn't have gender related distress as a child. But suddenly we see all
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these teenagers with, you know, psychiatric issues and suicidality, cutting, eating disorders,
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many of whom are, um, homosexual or on the autism spectrum or both.
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And I relate a lot to that because I had sort of a troubled teenage
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experience where I was in and out of hospitals. And even in the troubled teen industry, I spent a year
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at a residential treatment center because I was just having a really difficult time.
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Um, and that's what I see with de-transitioners today. So I feel pretty confident that, you know,
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if, if these beliefs about gender and these transgender narratives were kind of in vogue when
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I was a teenager, I don't think it would have taken much convincing, um, to believe that I was,
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you know, really a boy trapped in a girl's body. I think that a lot of young people are encountering
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these narratives online and attributing symptoms that they may be experiencing from other things
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to a trans identity and, and thinking that it's going to
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relieve them of their suffering and the distress they feel because that part is very real. And they
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are, I think they're just desperately looking for relief, but they're finding it in the wrong places.
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That's so interesting. So what you're saying is you feel passionate about it because when you were a
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teenager, you had similar feelings of distress and discomfort and all sorts of other things going on.
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And it's very understandable that young people who are distressed are looking for a way out
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of that discomfort that they're experiencing, but then they're being presented with
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a solution for which there is no evidence that it actually makes their lives better.
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And in fact, for some of them, it makes it a lot worse.
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Yes. That's what I'm finding. I've, I've done surveys with the transitioners too, um,
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all of whom were just immediately affirmed in their trans identity. There was no differential diagnosis.
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They weren't exploring any other kinds of factors that could have been contributing to this. I mean,
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there's no other area of medicine where the doctor relies on the patient's self-diagnosis
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and then immediately affirms it and immediately refers them for medical interventions. There's
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Right. So if I came into a hospital and I said, I've got a cracked rib, can you do
00:23:10.760
whatever you're supposed to do with a cracked rib? They wouldn't just like start injecting me with
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stuff. They would do an x-ray or whatever. Right. Exactly. Um, but that's unfortunately
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what we're seeing today. I think there's like over 20 states that have basically said that
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you cannot question a gender identity because that's considered conversion therapy.
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And so a lot of doctors now are just immediately affirming this self-diagnosis.
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And why do you think that is, Christina? Do you think that's because
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they've imbibed the ideology? Or do you think they're worried that they're going to be criticized
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or call transphobic or have professional opportunities curtailed?
00:24:00.280
Because it's considered the standard of care currently. This is, that's what the gender
00:24:05.320
affirming model of care is that's been endorsed by all of these medical organizations. It's in the
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American Academy of Pediatrics position statement. It's the immediate affirmation of
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their trans identity and then referrals for medical interventions.
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What is it exactly about autism? Because I think it's very difficult for people who don't have that
00:24:33.160
condition to be able to understand what it is to be autistic. So what exactly is it about autism,
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particularly autism with puberty, but I think especially for autism as a female, that makes you
00:24:47.480
want to transition that creates this profound sense of discomfort.
00:24:53.720
Well, what we know about autism in girls is that they typically don't get diagnosed until
00:25:01.000
they're an adult. For a long time, autism was sort of conceptualized as like a boy's disorder
00:25:07.880
because they believed that there were about like four to five males to every one female would get
00:25:14.520
diagnosed. But what research has shown in large scale population studies have shown is that that
00:25:22.200
ratio of male to female diminishes as they get older. So what we're finding is that, you know,
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if there's four to five to one in childhood, that ratio decreases to about two to one in adulthood,
00:25:38.920
once you control for like intellectual disabilities. So that sort of points to like a non-biological
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reason for why girls aren't getting diagnosed. And we found that there are a lot of diagnostic
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criteria and screening tools that were sort of created with boys in mind. So that's one reason
00:26:01.400
there appears to be a sort of female presentation of autism that goes undetected. Girls are also more
00:26:09.320
socially motivated and they're better at camouflaging their traits. So we don't, one of the other reasons
00:26:19.560
was Asperger's was sort of consolidated into autism spectrum disorder in 2013 in the DSM.
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And with the removal of that, I think we're seeing a lot of what we call like high-functioning autistic
00:26:36.440
females who are going, flying under the radar, going undetected. And I know from my personal experience,
00:26:42.680
puberty, it's very difficult. That's when social, social things start becoming a lot more important
00:26:52.040
and, and friendships start becoming a lot more important and not fitting in and not knowing
00:26:59.560
why you can't function at the level of your peers, um, causes a lot of young people to turn inward and
00:27:07.880
they desperately are seeking an explanation as to why and looking everywhere for it. And that happened to
00:27:14.760
me. I mean, I, I spent time sort of just trying on different diagnoses to see what fit and desperately
00:27:23.960
seeking an explanation for why I was different. And I think that's what's happening today with a lot of
00:27:31.000
young autistic girls. And I think it could represent at least part of the equation, why we're seeing so
00:27:39.080
many adolescent teens adopting trans identities today. At least a partial explanation can be
00:27:46.440
some of them just have not gotten diagnosed with autism yet, or they are attributing their autistic
00:27:53.080
symptoms or traits to signs of gender dysphoria or a trans identity. Because we have very high rates of
00:28:01.160
gender non-conformity in the autistic population. And those signs of gender non-conformity are really
00:28:07.720
easy to interpret as signs of gender dysphoria because all of these medical organizations and
00:28:13.640
scientific organizations have broadened what it means to be transgender. And they have conflated
00:28:22.200
a trans identity with common gender non-conformity. Um, and I think that's very confusing to young
00:28:28.680
people, especially autistic who have rigid thinking patterns, social communication problems,
00:28:37.000
identity issues, uh, issues with, uh, feeling, um, body connected to their body and a lot of different
00:28:51.000
other things like that. And it's surprising as well because we know so much more about autism.
00:28:58.840
We, we know, we know so much more about it. We're more aware of it as a condition. We're more aware
00:29:05.240
of the traits that you would think that people would be able to spot this more effectively.
00:29:10.360
Now, I take your point that it presents differently in girls and girls want to,
00:29:14.040
you know, tend to mask it far more than boys, but still, nevertheless, you'd, you'd think that,
00:29:20.280
you know, somebody would be sitting opposite a girl who's profoundly distressed, especially a
00:29:25.640
psychiatrist. And they'd be like, well, this girl is clearly autistic. We'll do a test.
00:29:31.880
Well, unfortunately, a lot of autism orgs have totally capitulated to activists and
00:29:40.280
they're completely on board with gender affirming care. I mean, we have like the most prominent
00:29:46.760
researcher at that sort of intersection of autism and gender dysphoria. And his work is extremely
00:29:58.840
troubling. I mean, he will, he's, he sees it as a good thing. He will endorse transition for
00:30:07.160
even autistic people who have intellectual delays. Wow. Yeah. It's, it's not a good situation.
00:30:15.000
No, it doesn't sound like it. And one of the things that people, uh, you know, becoming a father
00:30:21.560
has really influenced the way I think about these things, because I can't imagine the distress of a
00:30:28.680
parent who, whose child is struggling with life. They take them to get help. They're told your child
00:30:37.720
is a different gender or they now, they're now going to be called Stacy or whatever. And then when they
00:30:44.840
raise questions about it, they're told, well, if you don't do this, your child's going to kill
00:30:48.920
themselves. Is there, what is the evidence on the efficacy of transition or social transition or any of
00:30:57.560
these things that are being advocated as gender affirming care and inverted commas? What is the
00:31:02.440
evidence about their effectiveness, those interventions? Um, all they have is very short
00:31:11.320
term follow-ups and low quality studies that show maybe there's like a short term benefit in improving
00:31:20.280
their mood or something like that. It's, I mean, if you inject people with testosterone,
00:31:24.600
especially stressed girls, there's all, there's all, they're very low quality studies that
00:31:29.400
there's all kinds of other things. They also are getting psychotherapy at the same time. So it's
00:31:35.240
very, very poor, poor quality studies that show some kind of like short term benefit. Um, but what we
00:31:41.320
see with detransition is that it typically takes between four to eight years for regret to occur.
00:31:49.080
Um, and it's just terrible the way detransition is talked about in the mainstream media, because
00:31:57.080
it's mostly to downplay, diminish their experiences. You all the time, you see them citing studies
00:32:05.240
on low rates of regret, who these studies were on a completely different cohort than the ones that
00:32:12.920
people are most concerned about today. They were on adults with a completely different model of care,
00:32:18.600
rather than adolescents who are under the gender affirming model of care. And they have a very high
00:32:26.200
loss to follow up, tons of other kinds of method, methodological flaws. And
00:32:37.080
the, the best, the best research that we currently have comes from a comprehensive review of medical records
00:32:45.240
from, I think 2022, that showed about 30% of adolescents and young adults discontinued hormone
00:32:53.480
use after about four years. And that's much higher than, you know, the, the 1% studies that we
00:33:03.960
And in terms of regret, by the way, like I have a trouble admitting to my wife that I regret buying
00:33:09.720
a t-shirt that I bought. Do you know what I mean? Like once you've made a mistake,
00:33:13.400
especially one that really in like, in this case, really significantly affects your life,
00:33:17.640
you know, A, it's going to take time to get around to the idea that it may not have been a good idea.
00:33:24.200
And also some people will, you know, persevere and pretend to not have regret.
00:33:30.200
Like I know that I've done that. I'm not saying every, every trans person is doing that. And
00:33:34.120
I want to talk to you about trans people who are kind of happy with the transition, but just
00:33:39.480
instinctively, I would say that it's quite possible that not everyone who says in a survey,
00:33:46.440
I don't have any regrets actually has no regrets. Do you know what I mean?
00:33:49.800
Exactly. Yeah. There is a bit of like a sunk cost fallacy that I think. And you know, I want people
00:33:58.360
to be happy with the decisions they're making. I want people to be happy in the long term with
00:34:03.240
their transition, but I don't see that being possible right now because people are being lied to about
00:34:11.080
the nature of their condition. You know, gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition with a high rate
00:34:16.280
of desistance. But in my survey of detransitioners and desisters of a trans identity, I found that,
00:34:27.160
you know, of those who did get medical interventions, 85% said that their, their doctors and mental health
00:34:36.840
professionals conceptualize their trans identity to them as a medical condition that required medical
00:34:44.200
treatment or that being trans was a biological aspect that they had no control over. And they
00:34:51.800
were not told that this was a psychiatric condition with a high rate of desistance. And I'm thinking if
00:34:57.480
I was in their position with the sort of authority that a doctor has, that kind of power imbalance between
00:35:05.880
the doctor and patient, I would have transitioned to in their position. People are not receiving accurate
00:35:13.160
information about their condition. Their doctors are lying to them. Wow. It's, it's very, very troubling.
00:35:22.440
Do you think that one of the reasons that people are being lied to is there is a stigma around
00:35:28.600
saying that something is a psychiatric disorder in a way that there isn't about a biological disorder?
00:35:34.440
Like if, if you, if you get skin cancer, no one, no one is going to say, oh, you know,
00:35:39.560
something's wrong with you, you know, you're ill and you need treatment. Whereas with the psychiatric
00:35:45.240
condition, there has been historically a lot of stigma around that. Um, do you think that's part
00:35:51.720
of what's driving this? Yeah, that's a big part of what's, what's driving this is activists have
00:35:56.440
worked really hard to deemphasize the importance of gender dysphoria. And now they've moved on to
00:36:03.000
innate gender identity. Um, and this is what activist organizations have been working really hard to do
00:36:12.280
is try to obtain some kind of trait that they, some kind of immutable trait so that they can obtain
00:36:21.800
civil rights jurisprudence. So in American jurisprudence, if you can find an immutable trait,
00:36:29.480
you'll receive all of these civil rights protection. So they've sort of decided that
00:36:36.920
innate gender identity, which they sometimes call brain sex or neurological sex can override sex,
00:36:44.520
your biological sex. And this is, this is what we've been seeing. I mean, in, in some, it affects so
00:36:52.200
many different other domains besides healthcare. We see it with, in legislation as well is
00:37:00.200
a pseudoscientific concept of innate gender identity, but there is no empirical evidence
00:37:05.480
to support a biological basis for gender identity. And I've looked, I've spent the last two years just
00:37:12.440
obsessing over this. Um, there is research to support gender nonconformity, sexual orientation,
00:37:22.920
disorders of sexual development, but the, there is no evidence for, for an innate gender identity.
00:37:29.880
There's no blood brain or any other kind of objective tests that can differentiate between a
00:37:36.680
trans identified person and a non-trans identified person. Which brings us neatly just to finish this,
00:37:43.240
this line of discussion onto people who transition and who are happy with it.
00:37:51.000
Well, what I'd like to work towards is conceptualizing transgender person
00:37:58.120
as a lifestyle choice and one that, you know, I'm, we totally find accepting other people who decide to
00:38:07.080
live that way. I have no issue with it. Um, but I think that's what we need to work towards. It's,
00:38:13.720
it is a psychiatric condition. Um, and if there are some people who would prefer to live that way,
00:38:22.280
I don't see a problem with it. I just don't want people being misled about the nature of their
00:38:28.680
condition. Um, and I, but I do think that adults should be able to choose that lifestyle for themselves
00:38:35.080
if they want to. It's just, it's, those are cosmetic elective procedures though. They're not
00:38:42.440
medically necessary. And I think it's a huge mistake to, to frame them that way.
00:38:47.320
Christina, one of the things I really enjoyed about this conversation is, and one of the things
00:38:52.040
that I actually really like about you is that you're clearly a very empathetic person. You care
00:38:57.160
about people and you, and the reason you've got involved in this is because it directly affects
00:39:05.240
you and you want to help people in particular children. Do you get frustrated with the way
00:39:12.520
that this issue has been discussed by certain people online and it has become a cultural topic
00:39:19.160
for want of a better way of describing? Yeah, I do. I get pretty upset by it. I mean,
00:39:26.600
as much as I can get upset by something, I guess, but I, I don't like the way that people are demeaned.
00:39:35.640
Transgender people, I mean, are people first and foremost, just like us, but they're
00:39:49.400
struggling to reconcile fundamental human needs of identity and belonging. And I think that's something
00:39:55.320
we can all relate to. And we can relate to that as well. And I just think as well, and push back
00:40:04.040
if you disagree, that it's fundamentally unhelpful the way that some people are having this conversation.
00:40:10.840
Because you're going, what you're doing now is toxifying the debate. I think part of the reason
00:40:16.600
that we've actually managed to push back on this stuff in the UK is because it's not really a left
00:40:24.040
or right issue. There are people who talk about it on the right, but there's also people like JK Rowling,
00:40:30.520
the Labour MP, Rosie Duffield, who are, as far as I'm concerned, absolute heroes who've stood up to
00:40:38.360
the left and some people on the left and actually said, no, this is wrong.
00:40:42.680
And then there's Suzanne Moore, Hadley Friedman, like you could go down, you could find 30
00:40:47.160
left-wing, prominent left-wing women who've campaigned on this. Whereas you left the Daily
00:40:53.080
Wire partly over your concerns about the way that they were having that conversation, didn't you?
00:40:57.720
Yeah, I wanted to sort of publicly distance myself from public statements that were made.
00:41:04.600
I strongly believe that we have the evidence and the arguments and the moral high ground
00:41:12.520
and we need to lead with that and not attack individual people or make claims about eradicating
00:41:23.160
transgenderism from public life. I think that's a mistake to talk about this issue that way.
00:41:31.720
Yeah, because for you, what is the best way to talk about this issue?
00:41:35.560
I just focus on communicating to people, you know, what the evidence says and trying to explain to
00:41:49.560
people that this is not a continuation of the civil rights movement. I think a lot of people perceive
00:41:55.000
themselves as social justice warriors and this is, it's not that.
00:42:01.240
And what can you tell us about that? Because you kind of used to be a bit of a social justice warrior,
00:42:05.560
didn't you? Yeah. For a long time, I wasn't really involved in politics, but around 2020,
00:42:13.160
I became a social justice warrior during the, you know, I...
00:42:19.240
Was it BLM? Yeah, I didn't have any, I mean, I didn't go out to like protests or anything like that.
00:42:23.880
You didn't burn down any cities, mostly peacefully. No, I... I can't say going around large groups of
00:42:29.240
people like that. I wasn't... I love the way that's the only reason you didn't burn down cities,
00:42:33.720
like you just couldn't be in a crowd. Yeah. No, I just, I did enough damage online. I was a keyboard
00:42:39.400
warrior. Right. Oh, right. And what was motivating you? What got you into that? Because I trusted
00:42:46.840
all of these institutions and I trusted the mainstream media when they told me that we were
00:42:52.120
experiencing a racism pandemic. Um, and that, you know, I finally, I eventually came to my senses
00:42:59.400
and realized that something was, wasn't right with this narrative that they were pushing. Um,
00:43:05.960
and that eventually led me to look and see, like, I, I basically had to reevaluate everything
00:43:12.520
I've ever learned. I just, I feel like the mainstream media has lost its ability to be
00:43:19.320
objective. They, a lot of times are acting just as activist mouthpieces. And that's one of the reasons
00:43:29.080
I became a journalist in the first place a few years ago is because I want people to have access to
00:43:36.440
more accurate information, especially on this topic. It's, they're not getting it currently.
00:43:44.840
I mean, I think since I've, I, I, I started working at conservative outlets because there
00:43:51.320
was no other place where you could publish something that was even remotely critical of
00:43:57.720
the gender affirming model of care and the current sort of transgender narrative. Um, but thankfully
00:44:03.240
other outlets have sort of stepped up like the New York Times and Reuters. I mean, we're seeing some
00:44:09.720
progress on that front where even the Washington Post in the last couple of weeks has published two
00:44:15.720
op-eds that were sort of, you know, critical of the gender affirming model of care.
00:44:21.160
Does that frustrate you as a liberal that the left side of the spectrum, for want of a better way of
00:44:29.000
putting it, because I know it's not the best way, but let's just use that terminology for the set,
00:44:34.120
for the moment, that they were so slow to challenge what was happening.
00:44:40.600
It's, they're not doing their jobs. They're supposed to be journalists. They're not,
00:44:45.240
they're, they weren't doing their jobs. It's, it's, it's just, we're in a very strange place right now
00:44:55.160
in the United States where journalists have just basically been acting as activist mouthpieces. I
00:45:01.960
mean, Jesse Singel pointed this out the other week where there's a stock sentence that CNN.com will
00:45:09.080
use and it's in dozens and dozens of articles. Even in an article they were writing about the recent
00:45:15.080
cast review. They inserted it stating that gender affirming care is medically necessary and
00:45:20.680
evidence-based. Those words have meaning, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And you, they're lying to people.
00:45:33.080
Christina, I'm really grateful that, you know, this conversation may have seemed dry to some people,
00:45:38.840
but actually I think it's so, so important to have a conversation with less heat and more light.
00:45:44.840
And you bringing the evidence, bringing the facts in a calm and measured way is really,
00:45:49.400
really important because I think it makes it easier for people to hear when you see people,
00:45:53.240
you know, jabbing their finger in each other's faces and talking about this from a really
00:45:58.440
unconstructive place. I think a lot of people switch off from that. And I think you're very calm and
00:46:04.200
fact-based analysis is really, really important. So I'd encourage everybody to follow your work.
00:46:09.720
We'll put all the links in the description where they can follow everything that you're doing.
00:46:12.920
Um, and before we move to locals where we ask you questions from our supporters,
00:46:17.560
uh, tell us what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be.
00:46:23.080
I think we could be talking about autism more. Um, there's a lot of actual parallels going on
00:46:29.320
between trans activism and sort of the neurodiversity movement, um, which, you know, neurodiversity,
00:46:38.440
it definitely has, there's positives about it. Um, but there are a lot of problems going on there too.
00:46:45.800
Christina, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:46:51.560
Head on over to locals. We will see you there with your questions for Christina.
00:46:57.240
Do you believe in retroactive justice for the perpetrators of this movement?