00:02:38.100It's like not a pejorative, just actually, you know, and I was proud of it.
00:02:41.260And I was very like into that progressive stuff.
00:02:43.160And then, well, long story short on that one, I got very disillusioned with it when I saw that it didn't actually marry up with like reality.
00:02:51.720And there was a bit, there were some good, good seeds, seeds of truth in there.
00:02:58.060But I was really, really passionate about the truth and doing the right thing and doing what's good and right in the world.
00:03:03.660And that's kind of why I never really kind of make fun of or, you know, I don't think people are stupid on the other side,
00:03:12.420because I'm like, I know a lot of them are really well meaning.
00:03:15.560And a lot of them, they just, they want to be, they want to do the moral right thing in their lives.
00:03:20.580And that was what was given me at the time.
00:03:22.440Anyway, so I, then I got really into listening to Douglas Murray, he was the gateway drug to basically leaving behind a lot of the leftism that I had at the time.
00:03:38.440I was really passionate about, yeah, getting to the truth.
00:03:41.500And I just saw these people, that a lot of people have been on the show, speaking this truth that I realised just wasn't, wasn't marrying up with what people said about what these people are.
00:03:54.680Like, these people are evil, racist bigots.
00:03:56.600And I was like, well, if I actually listen to what they say, that's not the case.
00:03:59.740And so I kind of flipped from being on the far left to being, well, not on the far right.
00:04:10.100And then I'm a bit, I'm a bit like that.
00:04:12.280I go to extremes and I've been finding, finding, finding my place on, on that stuff.
00:04:17.380Anyway, but then, so I started listening to a lot of this stuff and then I found trigonometry in, during the lockdown, actually, the first lockdown.
00:04:25.580And I was just like, someone said, my friend Ruth was like, oh, just check this out.
00:05:32.540There was a lot of stuff like, I think what sucked me into it in the first place was this kind of revelation of like everything is socially constructed.
00:05:42.100So, for example, you look at things, people come to you and they say, well, why do we have blue as the boy color and pink for the girl color?
00:05:50.580And you go, oh, yeah, they're just arbitrary colors.
00:05:53.120They, you know, but we've assigned this to them.
00:05:54.880And then a lot of stuff was you see stuff and I still see online about like children's clothes.
00:06:01.780And it's like all the boys clothes are like building and fighting and, you know, triumphing.
00:06:06.940All the girls clothes are like be kind, you know, be sweet, lovely.
00:06:10.460And at the time, the narrative was everything is socially constructed.
00:06:15.560So there's no difference between men and women at all.
00:06:17.580It's literally just how we socialize them in society.
00:06:20.060And I've really bought into that even to the extent where I didn't believe that there was such thing as someone being subjectively beautiful.
00:06:25.540Like I remember arguing with someone being like, are you only think she's beautiful because, you know, you've been socialized that way and all this kind of stuff.
00:06:34.280So I was like online in line with the thinking, even like the kind of thinking you see now, which is like, no disrespect, but people being like obese with a shaved head and like loads of piercings.
00:06:46.300But saying like, I'm, I'm a 10 and I'm just as attractive as this person.
00:06:50.560You just don't understand it because you've been, you know, anyway, but, but the crack.
00:07:01.520And not stupid because you're an incredibly smart person and you're very intelligent, but for you to believe something that factually incorrect is quite incredible, right?
00:07:13.860Because our standards of beauty are based on biology and hip ratio and all of that.
00:07:27.880Well, the thing is, I'm a bit of an all or nothing person.
00:07:31.500And so when I was, saw the seed of this, I jumped into it and I started seeing everything through that lens.
00:07:36.360And actually quite quickly, because I went into it full throttle, like I, I saw the, the faults in it very quickly as well, because, you know, it was just like, it's a sort of a blessing and a curse because it kind of means that I can throw myself into something and I can be in it, like fully in it.
00:07:57.580And then see the problems like very quickly as well.
00:08:00.280But yeah, so I started to see how this just doesn't marry up with reality.
00:08:03.720And I started to understand, well, actually, you know, there are reasons.
00:08:08.500I started learning a little bit more about the differences, like between men and women, like neurologically and, you know, in terms of our bodies and everything.
00:08:17.440And it became quite clear to me that it's just like, no, that's not the case.
00:08:21.300And again, even with the thing about, as I said, school, sorry, not school, clothing in like shops, it's the message that you get at the time was, you know, boys and girls are blank slates.
00:08:33.220And we've socialized girls to be into flowers and pretty things and the boys into this.
00:08:38.440But the reality is, is that the market is following the response.
00:08:43.920The market isn't interested in like churning out like strong boys and weak girls or whatever.
00:08:49.500The market is just following what people like.
00:08:52.200And yes, there is probably an element.
00:08:54.260Well, there's definitely an element of girls get socialized into it because that's the majority thing.
00:09:00.140But it's also like the reason that, you know, if they started, you know, putting loads of, if they put them boys clothes stuff on a lot of the girls clothes stuff, you know, when they're old enough to choose their own, they're not going to choose it.
00:09:14.200They are, the girls are more likely to choose the kind of princess dress over the Spiderman outfit, like, you know, most girls.
00:09:22.120So, yeah, I just realized it's more complicated than that, than what I'd initially thought.
00:09:48.340Well, that was around, well, actually, I always kind of knew it because I had sensed it in many ways.
00:09:56.260Actually, funnily enough, a lot of the things I've discovered about autism, I had no idea, were connected to autism at the time when I got diagnosed.
00:10:07.060It's not actually, it's not actually that uncommon to get diagnosed that late in life.
00:10:13.300For most girls, actually, that's changed now because people are thinking about it a lot more.
00:10:17.780But most women who are diagnosed were diagnosed in adulthood because they manifest differently in terms of the boys tend to kind of act out and have meltdowns and are very explosive in school.
00:10:29.440And the girls are just kind of like, I like rules and just like working and like high achievers.
00:10:36.000I was like that all the way through school.
00:10:37.300It's like achievement, you know, and I did my school, my, you know, college, uni.
00:10:43.500And then, but the problems didn't really arise until after uni because everything up until that point was very structured.
00:10:52.100And then you finish uni and it's like, I literally have the entire world of choices and I don't know what to do.
00:10:57.820And like the paralysis of that and other problems that I had with not being able to respond to change, executive functioning skills, so life management skills, just got me to a place of complete breakdown, really.
00:11:13.960Like I literally, like just not being able to function in the world.
00:11:16.700And I was very ashamed of that because at the time I didn't know it was autism.
00:11:19.280And so I just thought, I don't get it.
00:11:22.060Like I'm really high achieving and get high grades and, you know, a good degree and everything, but I can't like do the washing up.
00:11:28.060And, you know, and a lot of that's due to sensory issues as well.
00:11:33.440But yeah, so there was a lot of shame that I had attached to that and for other reasons, which we'll go into.
00:11:39.300But yeah, the warning signs were always there.
00:11:41.220But it is the black and white thinking and the kind of really extreme thinking, you know, which leads you to sometimes call me an extremist.
00:11:48.340But also as well, I mean, you tell that story from your PE lesson and obviously tell it because you're going to tell it a lot better than me when it comes to identification and gender ID.
00:12:09.680Sorry to interrupt because I think the issue that we've talked a lot about on the show, as you well know, is how I, I mean, and this is why I asked you about wokeness because it just shows you how ideology is so powerful.
00:12:25.000That it can convince you, even a very smart person like you and like me and like everyone, really, of things that are just patently not true.
00:12:35.120But ideology is a very powerful thing.
00:12:36.980And one of the things we've talked a lot about on the show is the rise in transgenderism and young children in particular identifying out of their gender and so on.
00:12:48.680How that marries up to, you know, a lot of the other stuff, particularly in relation to autism.
00:12:54.320I mean, there's a clear link between people who are autistic and people who are transitioning.
00:12:59.560And a lot of people essentially are making the argument that the overwhelming majority of the increase in recent years is basically autistic and gay children.
00:14:33.740Um, and it was kind of like that all the way.
00:14:36.080Like I default into thinking that I was male and that other people saw me as male.
00:14:41.840Um, and that carried on all the way through my life really pretty much until, well, until some stuff happened later that, you know, has alleviated that.
00:14:54.620But, but yeah, like I had that all the time.
00:14:56.780And like, um, and even when I was like 25, like, um, my friends, um, I had my hair cut and my friends were like, oh, you know, you should get some lipstick.
00:15:09.980Um, cause at the time I, I, I don't think I'd really worn makeup apart from when I'd been forced to for a special occasion.
00:15:15.180But, um, I didn't like, you know, girls stuff at all.
00:15:19.220I was completely like, I was just always with the boys and I was just a massive tomboy.
00:15:40.840It's like a little sort of coloring in book at the start of the day, every day, which is fun for me.
00:15:44.940But like the, we went there, they, they put the lipstick on me and I just genuinely felt like just really like ashamed.
00:15:54.020Because I just felt, well, I felt like a clown, first of all.
00:15:58.220Um, and then when I walked home wearing the makeup, I was just like expecting everyone to look at me like, you know, like, you know, cause I thought that they were seeing a man.
00:16:09.560The way people might look at a man wearing obvious makeup.
00:16:13.080And I thought that they were, they would see a man walking down the street in drag.
00:16:17.560So I thought I'd draw, you know, stairs, but then I had to remind myself, oh no, you're a woman.
00:16:23.520And so they're seeing a woman wearing lipstick, which is normal for them.
00:16:27.140Um, and so like, and that was, as I say, when I was 25, before I was diagnosed.
00:16:30.820So, um, that was kind of my story all the way through life.
00:16:35.140And, and it wasn't the done thing back in those days to, especially not for girls to, um, do anything about it because you don't, you just, you just say, I'm a tomboy and I'm comfortable with these things.
00:16:48.780Also, there's no, like the reason why, um, up until very recently with the whole explosion of girls identifying as trans, it was pretty much all boys.
00:16:58.280And I think the reason for that, one of the reasons for that is that there's no socially safe way for a boy to sort of, um, gender bend, as it were.
00:17:07.740Like for me, I just wore shorts and t-shirts and whatever.
00:17:12.960So I could wear boys' clothes, but it didn't look like I was cross-dressing.
00:17:16.600Whereas if you're a little boy and you, you hate being a boy and you want to be a girl, you know, you, you, you'll start wearing dresses and then, you know, you're going to very quickly, it's going to be evidence to everyone around you that there's some incongruity going on there.
00:17:28.860And Sophie, did you feel, apart from this one instance with the makeup, did, did this cause you particular distress?
00:17:34.520Did you feel a sense of discomfort or disgust for your own body, which is what some people talk about?
00:17:52.060I had, because when you, when you don't have a choice to opt out of your gender, as so many teenagers are given the choice now, you just get on with it.
00:18:01.620And, you know, realistically speaking, there's not too many moments in one's life where your sex actually comes into play.
00:18:11.460And so, you know, you learn to use the bathroom with this symbol on it, the lady symbol.
00:18:26.060I mean, there was a bit of a, there was, it did hurt not being able to join in with the boys.
00:18:34.620And like, so I explain when I talk about gender dysphoria now, which is what it is, you know, it's the, it's defined as the persistent discomfort and distress associated with your, your sex.
00:18:48.460Um, when I, yeah, when I experienced that, I talk about it in terms of like two separate categories.
00:18:57.260There's, there's the actual thinking I was a boy and then there's the wanting to be.
00:19:02.700So as I, the wanting to be wasn't there when I was young, but when I got older and I would have a reminder that I'm a woman, I would then have feelings of.
00:19:13.040Oh, my life would be so much better if I were a man and everything would be, I don't know.
00:19:20.080Like I just got really annoyed with the seemingly arbitrary things that were foisted on me as a girl to, to, that seemed to be valuable to other people.
00:19:33.100Like in terms of looking after your appearance or whatever, like, I mean, like.
00:20:21.560And she feels bad about that because she thinks people will think that, you know, that she's an evil mother.
00:20:26.520But I think it was the right thing to do, to be honest, because it did make me buck up my ideas a little bit.
00:20:30.380But, but, but yeah, so, so there, there were, sorry, there were like those, those feelings.
00:20:38.600But I think one of the interesting things is I see a lot of people who are going through gender dysphoria online talking about their hatred for their bodies.
00:20:46.000But I was different in that I, I never thought about my body.
00:20:49.880Like, I don't think I realised I had a body till I was like 23 or something, which is obviously that's a little bit exaggerated because of course, you know, you have a body.
00:20:58.700But what I mean is I never thought about it.
00:21:01.460Like, you know, I probably thought about my body as about as much as you think about your capillaries.
00:21:07.940Like, I know they're there or, or maybe like choose something that you can actually physically see.
00:21:12.580Like, I don't know, the crook of your elbow or something.
00:21:14.500It's like, I know it's there, I can see it, but I never think about it.
00:21:17.860And I didn't think about, yeah, so I actually, you know, contrary to, yeah, what a lot of people kind of experience.
00:21:28.700With their sort of hatred of the body, I was just completely disassociated from it.
00:21:32.300And I actually, so I had the blessing of never being in any way dissatisfied with my body because I just never thought about it.
00:21:40.280So I was just like, it's working, it's functioning, it's fine.
00:21:43.400Do you think that's part of the problem now is because of social media and gender ideology that kids are now being encouraged and in fact could be argued, manipulated into an obsession with their own bodies?
00:22:06.380Yeah, so we didn't really have social media.
00:22:08.180So it was, there wasn't that fixation on, I mean, girls around me were always kind of, you know, especially in school, the girls were like, you know, doing their hair and makeup and stuff.
00:22:20.620But, I mean, I actually, yeah, I think I developed quite a lot of sexism really against women because of, because of that, because I didn't understand the value of it.
00:22:39.100Like I had a, I, when I was working through, so obviously we will come to like how, because, you know, basically there was an alleviation of my gender dysphoria.
00:22:54.520But, but yeah, I realised that because of the autism and my black and white way of thinking, there just wasn't any space for like, um, there wasn't any space for nuance.
00:23:08.480I mean, I try really hard to do it now because like, I care so much about the truth and the truth is nuanced.
00:23:15.020And so you have to, like, I have to actively go against the type to really, really work on that because it's important to me.
00:23:21.880But I basically would just look to the girls were like, like, you know, why would you rather play with a Barbie than an action man?
00:23:31.220An action man abseils and shoots missiles and, you know, does cool stuff, you know, rock climbing and whatever.
00:23:40.140And, and the Barbie is literally just standing there with like a mirror.
00:23:42.620And I was just like, and so it blew my mind that other girls would choose this.
00:23:47.080And, you know, like now, as I say, with a bit of nuance, I understand that, you know, dolls and things like that are very good, like, um, social tools for learning many things as, um, and they're very, very useful.
00:23:59.360And there's nothing wrong with choosing a Barbie.
00:24:01.620But at the time I just had so much disdain for girls and that made me disassociate even further to the point where I didn't even consider myself one of them.
00:24:11.380Um, and so I had, when I was working through trying to get over my gender dysphoria, I met with one of the, um, pastors of my church, um, Stephen, and he, you know, I was talking about it and I was like, ah, like, what, I don't want to be a woman.
00:24:29.720Women are so, um, boring and just airheaded and all they care about is their appearance.
00:24:36.160And, you know, like, and I'm, I'm really like, um, passionate about like philosophy and, and, and history and all these important intellectual things.
00:24:45.160And, you know, and they're just, they're just not on my level.
00:24:48.380And, and he was like, yo, you're being really sexist.
00:25:03.300And what I'd done is I'd conflated all of the worst things I'd seen about, um, this sort of picture of femininity I built up in my mind to almost make an enemy.
00:25:15.380So if you've got an enemy, you can run away from it or fight it or whatever.
00:25:19.100Um, and then I just realized that, I mean, obviously that was sexist.
00:25:25.180And I'm, and I'm being a bit over the top about it, but so, but yeah, I had to work through that because I realized that there's just so many, that's so not true.
00:25:36.380And like some of the things that I had a problem with are just women, just being women in the same way that a lot of people have problems with the things that are masculine.
00:25:47.600And they, they, they just, you know, it's just men being men a lot of the time.
00:25:51.580And it's like, it's not, it's just, it's just that I was an outlier on the bell curve that I resented that.
00:25:57.700Yeah. So can we come back chronologically a little bit because, um, one of the narratives in the modern world is that a lot of, uh, young people experience all of these sort of feelings and thoughts around puberty because that's when the shock of reality of their biology comes in.
00:26:17.700Yeah. I know it's an intimate question, but I think it's relevant to this conversation.
00:26:21.860You would have gone through, did that not have an impact on puberty?
00:27:12.760Well, this is the thing that I think a lot of people, people know now that it does connect.
00:27:17.300I think several years ago I was tearing my hair out because I was just like finding out about my, how the, the, the fact that I was autistic, getting diagnosed was what helped me to, which was, which helped me to heal really from gender dysphoria.
00:27:31.760Maybe not heal wasn't the right word, but like it alleviated it as I understood my autism because it just explained it all.
00:27:37.800And, um, yeah, so I was looking into, um, when I found out that I had autism, when I got diagnosed, I started looking into the neuroscience of it because obviously autism is a neurodevelopmental condition.
00:27:54.520And so I started looking into neurodevelopment. Um, I read this brilliant book by, um, Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University.
00:28:04.620He's like the, he's like the world leading, uh, authority on, on autism really, or one of them.
00:28:10.420Um, but he's also like, um, world leaning in, uh, cognitive sex differences.
00:28:15.880So the way men and women's brains work differently.
00:28:18.580So he's about five minutes away from getting cancer.
00:28:23.400Uh, I was reading his book. He wrote a book called The Essential Difference, which, um, if it was brought out, if it all brought out 10 years ago, probably would have been torn to shreds.
00:28:31.980But it was about, I think it's about 20 years old now, but he basically distills all of the scientific literature on the differences between the way men and women think into this, you know, very readable book.
00:28:44.100But, um, one of the things that I learned in that book, um, was, um, the differences between men and women in terms of, uh, what's called, um, empathy, empathizing and systematizing skill sets.
00:28:59.220And so, like, this is kind of, this is just putting the scientific label on what we already know, which is that generally speaking, uh, the majority of men are more interested in things and concepts and systems and like problem solving and that.
00:29:13.380And the majority of women are less interested in that and more interested in, uh, the kind of, um, emotional side of life, uh, uh, relationship building, uh, looking after children, nurturing, um, building that kind of thing.
00:29:26.880Um, so yeah, I think summed up really, it's that most men are more interested in things and most women are more interested in people.
00:29:34.680And, um, those, those are the bell curves.
00:29:36.860And obviously there's outliers, which we'll come back to.
00:29:39.560But anyway, so, um, then I learned about, uh, the extreme male brain theory of autism, because the amazing thing that, you know, that, you know, the combining is two fields of autism and cognitive sex difference.
00:29:56.880Is that if you look at the, uh, brain of someone with autism, their brain is like an exaggerated version of the male brain, right?
00:30:08.580So, um, really high systematizing, really low empathizing.
00:30:13.800Um, and, um, that's, that's the same for men and women.
00:30:19.280I mean, I've got a little graph that I can put up, but it shows the differences that, you know, you've got the men and the women.
00:30:25.880The men are less empathic and the women are more empathic, but they're quite similar.
00:30:30.660And then down the other end, you've got, um, really unempathic, uh, men and women with autism.
00:30:37.600Anyway, um, obviously to learn that the autistic brain is like a male brain on crack, you know, started to answer my questions.
00:30:51.320Because I think at that, before that I'd, I'd thought there was something wrong with me, you know, like I was, I was deeply ashamed because I, I felt like a failure as a woman before, which was one of the reasons I ran away from it.
00:31:06.660Because I had such low levels of empathy.
00:31:11.620I'm in like the second percentile for compassion.
00:31:15.280So, you know, a hundred people in a room, there's like one person with less compassion than me.
00:31:19.320Um, and that's way lower than the average for a male, um, let alone a female.
00:31:23.240And so I'm a Christian, as you well know, a top level chrizo, as you call me.
00:31:30.080And for me, one of the really important things to do is to love people and to, to be loving.
00:31:36.940And, and I think I, again, like that's probably why I got involved with feminism.
00:31:41.600Cause at the time I was like, I want to fight.
00:31:44.020I want to make the world better for women.
00:31:46.720Um, but yeah, so this injunction to be loving was so important to me, but I didn't feel loving feelings, right?
00:31:57.260Cause I didn't have these compassionate, empathic feelings.
00:31:59.380And I was surrounded, particularly in the church with loads of amazing, um, compassionate, like pastoral women.
00:32:06.880And they were just, and I just felt nothing, you know?
00:32:09.940And so I felt really deeply ashamed of that.
00:32:15.020But then when I, so I thought I was defective.
00:32:17.020I thought I was a failure really as a woman.
00:32:19.940And then when I started learning about the extreme male brain stuff, I was like, well, like I'm autistic.
00:32:27.760I'm not, I'm not, you know, I realized that I was just, um, I wasn't a man, you know,
00:32:34.160I realized that I was just a rarer type of woman.
00:32:37.020Um, and, and that was the key really, that just unlocked everything, you know, because, uh, I mean, it was gradual.
00:32:44.020It was like the key turned and then the door opened really slowly.
00:32:48.240Um, because I, yeah, I did move quite slowly into appreciating that, but it, it started to explain everything because I was like, well, okay.
00:32:55.880Um, I don't need to, I, I was, I did try, I went for a few years of trying really hard to sort of be what I thought a woman should be, um, in terms of, I try, some of it stood me in good stead now in terms of like helping people.
00:33:14.260But I, I, I took a lot of like lessons and training and like pastoral care.
00:33:19.160And so like, I can, I know the right things to do.
00:33:22.080Like if someone is in distress or like, I'm not, you know, if someone is grieving or stuff.
00:33:26.940So I, I, I've learned actually a lot of practical skills, but it doesn't mean the feelings there.
00:33:31.100But anyway, um, another one of my elders or, you know, pastors, same thing at church really helped me with that.
00:33:36.360Because before I was diagnosed with autism, I went to him and I was saying, you know, I, I feel really bad because I haven't got these loving feelings and I want to be loving and I want to, you know, you know, following Jesus' footsteps and, you know, love people.
00:33:50.500And he said, you know, like, um, you know, that he basically said, you're, um, perhaps you could be the one person in a room where there's like a crisis and everyone else is overwhelmed by their emotions.
00:34:06.360And, you know, you know, but you can be like, see through it and, you know, be like really, um, helpful in that situation and just use your gifts.
00:34:17.840And, um, uh, yeah, that really helped me.
00:34:21.580That really stuck with me because I realized that, that, yeah, I, I was, I was trying to, you know, I was trying to be the opposite of what I was.
00:34:33.240Um, and now I see actually that the love primarily isn't about feelings.
00:34:41.340Um, like any parent knows or, you know, you have to be a parent, but you were a teacher.
00:34:47.660Um, I think you mentioned it once or twice.
00:34:50.240Um, and also isn't your mom from Venezuela?
00:35:02.640Well, not even necessarily like you can, this is a problem I think that we really just kind of messed up with over the last few years that we, we think to be loving to someone is to just go along with everything they want.
00:35:16.740And, you know, like if you're a loving parent and your child wants like chocolate, like just before bedtime or whatever, you just say, no, you can't have that.
00:35:27.440And that's being loving in the moment.
00:35:29.380Um, and they feel like, you know, you hate me or whatever.
00:35:32.400Like you want me to die or, you know, and, but it's just like, you actually know what's best.
00:35:37.280And what you're doing is loving and you're the, but I think at the moment we are so, I think that the, one of the only values that we, that we kind of hold to in this kind of sort of post-Christian-y sort of fade, failing liberal kind of Western project is one of the only things we have is be kind.
00:36:12.100They want to be on the right side of history.
00:36:13.780And what they're told now is the loving good thing to be is to be kind, is to be really kind.
00:36:22.340And so, but it isn't tempered by truth.
00:36:25.900And, you know, I think, so here's some chrizo stuff, just pre-warning, but like the Bible says of Jesus that he was full of grace and truth.
00:36:39.240And I think that the Western project has only flourished in as much as it's held to those, that Christly balance of grace and truth.
00:37:47.140And, and, and, and, you know, there's some beauty to that and some craziness, but going the whole hog, I would have done that with transition.
00:37:59.820I would have, you know, it would have been, it just wasn't a solution at the time.
00:38:03.760But like, I look back at that, I'm just like, I can't believe that, I can't believe that we're getting to, we've gotten to a place in society where we think, oh, it's okay.
00:38:17.320Like, that, that's the loving thing to do.
00:39:20.940Like the Tavistock, like the CQC report on the, the Tavistock, the JIDS clinic for the, for child gender transition is like 50% had autism or ADHD, which is very similar in some ways.
00:39:38.980And there's also a report, an article written by two of the previous JIDS members of staff that say that 50% of their, like they did a strategic sort of analysis and 50% of them are autistic.
00:39:50.500There are so many reasons why it's such an appealing prospect to autistic people.
00:39:59.400Um, yeah, one of them is, you know, like obviously on the female side of things, you've got that kind of, yeah, that neurological shift to the male direction.
00:40:09.840So of course, all your interests are going to be similar to your male peers, all of everything you see, like everything that's expected of you, which is kind of, again, as I say, it's, it's, it's natural.
00:40:21.320And it's based on the, it's based on the majority, like everything we have in society is based on the majority.
00:40:26.000So it's like, um, if you're an outlier, that's, that's going to affect you badly.
00:40:30.320But so, uh, I think Francis' question was more about why is it that we don't look at this obvious thing that's staring us in the face as a society dealing with this issue and we're not going, well, look, if autism is, let's say it's a comorbidity.
00:40:54.380Um, the only thing I was just going to say about the, uh, the other side of it, which is the boys thing is that, cause you could say, oh, well, the boys are getting an extreme male brain.
00:41:02.280So surely they should be more manly, but there's so many other things that come along with autism that are, that are gonna affect you in terms of your social impairment.
00:41:12.080Like if you are, um, if you're just socially delayed and, and autism is a delaying thing, you know, like I was like the last in my class to learn to read.
00:41:23.000I was, um, yeah, say I didn't know about my body until I was, you know, in my twenties, I, I, I didn't, um, yeah, I didn't make a friend until like I was 10 or something.
00:41:36.520Um, so, um, there's, there's that delay.
00:41:40.300And if you've got that delay and you're, and you're a boy and you're gonna be socially less confident as well.
00:41:45.520And the girls would tend to, uh, make friends with you more like the autistic guys I know, you know, like they, most of their friends are girls because they're more accepting of your quirks or your, your, your uncoolness or whatever.
00:41:59.420And so they take you under their wing in a way. Um, and so you, you kind of get on the boy side. Um, why don't we recognize it as a problem in society?
00:42:08.500I mean, we are saying, oh, it's one of the many comorbidities. You say, oh, you know, a lot of people, um, who are transgender, they are some, you know, a lot of them are, you know, ADHD or a lot of them have autism.
00:42:22.000Um, but it's just like, we've totally neglected to understand that there's a difference between having a comorbidity and something being the cause of something.
00:42:30.340Um, so like there was a study in 2019, um, with that, that showed that of, um, what was it?
00:42:41.680Of those who identified as trans and non-binary, 42% met the criteria for an autism diagnosis.
00:42:47.920Um, and, you know, obviously the normal rate of autism in the general population is about 2%.
00:42:54.680So, um, and Dr. Stagg, who led the study was like, you know, I don't know if he was a whistleblower, so to speak, more probably just following the outcome of his study.
00:43:06.260But it was just like, we need to be screening people for autism.
00:43:10.400Anyone who comes in to ask about gender stuff.
00:43:13.840And yeah, as I say, the tragic thing is that we haven't looked into it, but I think I know the reason why we've been so rubbish at looking into, um, all of the comorbidities and problems and causes.
00:43:28.800I mean, like, if you look at the, like the stats on the Tavistock from Hannah Barnes' book, um, Time to Think, which is excellent piece of journalism.
00:43:40.400It's like 2.5% or something of the intake didn't have any kind of major, like, um, issue with, uh, like abuse or, um, uh, yeah, neurodivergence or, uh, I think 25% of them had been in care compared to 0.67% of the population.
00:44:02.740Like, a lot of them had had, like, 10 times more likely to have experienced, um, abuse, like sexual abuse, I think.
00:44:10.180Um, there are all these things, like, there's self-harm, there's OCD, there's, there's all these different things, and they weren't looked at, but I think I know the reason.
00:44:16.480Um, and the reason is, like, well, I, I split society, I split life, as we know it, history, into two eras.
00:44:26.240So I think there's the era of old trans and the era of new trans, and the era of old trans goes up to about 2017, I'd say, around that period, and then new, the era of new trans is everything after that, and these are two wildly different, uh, ways of looking at, uh, the trans experience.
00:44:46.360So, um, up until 2017, um, the way that we thought of the trans experience was, like, if you, it wouldn't have been, like, because I lived in Brighton, as I say, I live in Brighton, and you would sometimes see a fella in a dress 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
00:45:08.160Um, and, but if you'd spoken to him at the time, and you said, like, um, oh, you know, why you, why you wearing a dress, he might say, well, I know I'm a man, but, like, I feel more comfortable in women's clothes, and I've always related to women, and I always, you know, I've always identified with women.
00:45:25.020Um, but then, when this shift happened around 2017, people went from saying that they identify with women, to identify as a woman.
00:45:37.200And so, we went from saying, I feel like something, to I am something, and the repercussions of that, that little shift, affect literally everything.
00:45:50.520Like, it is all, the entire problem that we have now is all down to this shift, and I can give you myriad examples, but, like, the, so, I mean, we had Marcus Evans on the show, a whistleblower from the Tavistock.
00:46:05.240Like, he'd been there for, like, 35 years, um, you know, consultant, psychotherapist, I think, and he said, you know, like, in the old days, you know, before this big shift and everything, if someone comes in saying, you know, I'm really distressed, you know, like, I feel, like, trapped in the wrong body or whatever, the treatment pathway for them was exploratory therapy.
00:46:26.140So, it's like, um, let's look at your life in the round, let's look at, um, you know, your relationship with your parents, relationship with your peers, um, has there been any abuse, any trauma, um, what are your expectations of what actually means to be a man or a woman in the world?
00:46:44.160Well, you know, talk us through that, um, and all these different things, and they explore those things, but when this new kind of way of thinking of saying it's your identity, and it's who you are, rather than just feelings that you have, came in, you can't do that anymore.
00:46:59.160Because if your gender is who you are, um, and you, it's not that you feel like a boy, you can't treat something that you are.
00:47:10.320Yeah, quite. Yeah. I mean, if it's like, it, because it would be transphobic, it'd be like, or it'd be like someone with Down syndrome going into the doctor, they don't try to cure your Down syndrome, or they try and cure you of being black.
00:47:23.960Like, it's just like, um, because it's, that would be, yeah, well, no, it's not even your identity. It's who you are. It's intrinsic to your, so this is the thing. So like, there's, in the old days, it was seen as, again, the reason I'm giving this 2017 cutoff point is because something strange happened there.
00:47:46.000I think it might be to do with people needing to shore up their sense of being a good person in the wake of Brexit and Trump. Very, very polarising year 2016, and people were desperate to kind of, I think, know, convince themselves and others that they were on the right side, and this was the thing that came along.
00:48:05.160And, and you have certain things that came along around that time, like India Willoughby, former guest of the show, was on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018.
00:48:13.400I'm a real woman, Amanda. I want you to know that. A real woman. Okay. I'm glad that's sinking in. I'm going to say one more time, so it really penetrates. I am a real woman. Okay.
00:48:25.080And then obviously, around that time, you see the emergence of the phrase, like, trans women are women. And, and so, and in fact, if you think about it, when was the last time you heard someone say, identify as a woman? They don't do it anymore. They don't even say that anymore. So it, so the identify as a woman dropped. So, so now it's, it's who you are. And as I say, so once, yeah, I thought, so when I read Time to Think, the book about the Tavistock, I thought, I had this idea in my head that
00:48:51.720the kids are coming along to the Tavistock being referred and there must be some, like, it, it can't just be that they rubber stamp them and said, oh, you know, puberty blockers.
00:49:03.500There's adults in the room. It's all not the way that people say in the media. It's all being properly looked into.
00:49:08.140And you would think that because you're like, this is a place of clinicians. It's on the NHS. It's, it's being overseen. There's no way. And you read the book and you're like, oh, flip, it actually was like that. Like there was so much intervention from, from like mermaids
00:49:21.500and other like politicized bodies and such a culture of fear, um, that they were literally just being like, okay. Uh, what they had this thing called, this model called gender affirming care, which is, um, you know, an Orwellian sort of, uh, uh, twisting of words really, because, you know, it's like, you know, the, to really affirm someone who would be to say, you're, you're brilliant just the way you are.
00:49:47.500You don't need to change, you don't need to try and fit into these sex stereotypes and, you know, you go for it. But anyway, so this affirming care, which comes in with this idea of it's who you intrinsically are, um, that just made everything a problem.
00:50:03.280It sort of solidified it and it became the gold standard, not just the gold standard of care, but like the American Psychological Association and all these top bodies said, this is the way to care.
00:50:13.420And if you're not doing that, if you're just exploring it, like in the old days, you're kind of casting down their problems, uh, sorry, you're casting down on their identity and who they intrinsically are.
00:50:24.580And it's not that they've got a problem. They've just discovered the truth of who they are. Um, and, but, but this, this problem, this shift from, I feel like to, I am this old trans way of thinking and this new trans way of thinking has affected everything else as well.
00:50:38.660So it's not just, um, you know, autistic and gay and other vulnerable children being, um, treated because of this, um, you know, in my mind, a massive medical scandal, um, and that medical neglect, but it's also, um, we see it in every area, like in terms of women's spaces.
00:50:59.820Um, because it's, again, it's like old trans, you've got a man who, you know, he feels like a woman, he feels comfortable in the clothes, fine, but it's not going in the women's change rooms because he's not entitled to, he's not a woman.
00:51:11.820But now it's like, well, he is a woman and therefore, you know, he's entitled to that, that space. And this is why, this is why I think people, a lot of people just think, I don't get this trans argument.
00:51:24.900Like, why can't we just live and let live? And why can't they just reconcile? Because it can't be reconciled.
00:51:32.920It's a conflict of rights. And so the only way that we can deal with these problems is by going back just a few years ago, just what, like seven, eight years ago, whatever, to, you know, live and let live, wear what you want, call yourself what you want.
00:51:52.760Like, that's fine. And I don't mind, I don't care. Like, no one cares how someone dresses and chooses to live there, you know, express themselves.
00:52:00.640But, but I'm sorry, we can't overreach into the area of you actually are this. And we just, but this is, this is, this is the great news.
00:52:10.320Because, as I said before, like, the, I think the trans experiment has failed, because we are seeing all these dominoes fall, when people are suddenly realising that the negative results of what's happened.
00:52:25.960People are suddenly realising that the negative results of what's happened, because it started, as I say, 2017, 18, started building up online, then we go into lockdown, everyone's in their homes or online for a few years.
00:52:42.280Because the real world implications of this new trans worldview aren't manifested. We come out of lockdown, we try to apply those, that, that new way of thinking in the real world, and it's an absolute catastrophe in so many areas.
00:53:01.500And so you see people starting to backtrack. And, and like, so in the last few months, we've seen like, in terms of women's sports, we've seen great, like changes in that in terms of like world athletics, like world cycling, world aquatics, pardon me, all deciding, you know, look, we want to be nice.
00:53:21.840But at the end of the day, we do have to recognise that your bodies, you know, are different, isn't talking about male athletes. And so they've said, look, we don't want to discriminate, but we're gonna have an open category. So it's going to be female category, and an open category. So the, you know, the dominoes, dominoes have started to fall in the sports area.
00:53:42.240You know, we've seen public backlash to the gender self ID stuff, like, in terms of the double rapist that was put in a women's prison in Scotland, you know, caused this great, you know, people didn't realise this was going on. And again, even someone like me, who's really involved in it, I still had to say, I need to check the sources here and make sure that this is actually happening. Are actually men being placed in women's prisons?
00:54:10.020Because I thought, no, it sounds like a sort of Daily Mail made up thing. No disrespect to Daily Mail. But you know what I mean? It sounds like one of these sort of like...
00:54:18.360I think there's quite a lot of disrespect to the men in the Daily Mail in that statement.
00:54:21.500Okay, sorry, sorry, Daily Mail. But you know, I mean, it sounds like they're putting men in women's... But they actually are, like, around the world, and they have been doing so. And so there's been pushback on that. This rapist has been moved out of the women's prison. And that's, you know, people are calling for more of that.
00:54:39.540That's taking a turn. That's taking a tumble. Then you've got, like, changing rooms and stuff, like Primark Institute, gender neutral changing rooms. And then, you know, surprise, surprise, people are coming on, you know, TikTok.
00:54:55.020Sophie, and I think you're making great points, by the way.
00:55:23.020The thing is, I understand why you say it's mental.
00:55:27.060But I don't actually think it is mental.
00:55:29.420Because I think if you do, if you, like, as I said, when I was a feminist before, if you accept that everything is a construct and everything is up for being constructed, then, because what they've done is they've said,
00:55:42.980we're going to expand the categories of the word man and woman.
00:55:49.820They're not saying, I think people think, oh, someone's saying that someone can become the opposite sex.
00:55:54.480They're literally just saying that the word woman used to be, you know, like, hogged by biological women.
00:56:02.280And now we're expanding it to what it truly should be, which is to include, you know, women, biological women, and men who want to be women or call themselves that.
00:56:12.980I think the big problem here comes from the invention of the concept of gender itself.
00:56:18.300Feminists don't like hearing this because they're the one that popularized this aspect of it.
00:56:22.360But it was kind of created as a way of being able to opt out of femininity so that you could say, well, I am a woman, but I'm not going to behave in the stereotypical ways that women are expected to behave.
00:56:36.500And I understand the need or at least a desire to do that.
00:56:41.040But if you invent the concept of gender, everything else follows.
00:56:45.380Gender isn't a word that applies to human beings.
00:56:52.140But once you create the idea that there can be a difference between your sex and this other thing, this is where you end up inevitably, which is why you say it makes perfect sense.
00:57:57.120And then, but now, as I say, like, if you add identity onto it and you're saying it's an inherent, like, innate thing about someone that they have an identity.
00:58:08.280Sorry, that they have, like, a sort of a gendered soul, as people have talked about.
00:58:12.640But then, yeah, that causes all these problems.
00:58:18.240And so I was chatting to the boys, production boys, and I was trying to work this out.
00:58:24.560And I was saying, well, look, if the word gender didn't exist at all, right, but you wanted a word to explain what gender is,
00:58:35.060which is basically, ultimately, I think it's about your feelings and how you fit in with your sex.
00:58:41.780That is it, really, because it's dependent on your sex, like, by definition, because it's in relation to your sex.
00:58:50.740So it's like, you know, if you're transgender, the idea is that you, there's a transition from, you know, your sex.
00:59:03.220So I said, like, if we didn't have the word gender, which is confusing so many people because people think sex, gender, same thing.
00:59:09.360And we just use the word fit thing, as in how you fit in and feelings.
00:59:16.060And you just said, I have a fitling and everyone has a fitling, right?
00:59:20.260OK, so or fitling, if you want to pronounce your T's, but I'm from Essex, so I don't pronounce my T's.
00:59:26.300But yeah, so and if you said, you know, no form is going to ask you for your fitling.
00:59:33.020Every form is going to ask you if it's relevant for your sex and the word gender doesn't exist.
00:59:38.180So and then you come along and you say, well, you know, I really feel that I have a blue fitling or I have a pink fluffy fitling.
00:59:48.480Whereas, you know, I think the reason it's so confusing is that people actually think that because it's the word gender, which they know and associate with something that's real in their mind, they can, they sort of, I think it confuses a lot of ordinary people that, do you see what I mean?
01:00:29.580Because for me, one of the most worrying things as a former teacher, everyone can drink, obviously, is gender neutral toilets in schools.
01:00:36.120And when I saw this come in, my head was in my hands because I just thought, these are people who have no understanding about what it is like to be a teenage girl going through puberty and the vulnerability that these people, that these women feel, girls feel.
01:01:38.280And they've got this massive profit incentive that we don't have over here, which is, you know, one of the main reasons why I think that it's continuing to go along there.
01:01:46.320But I think people are starting to push back.
01:01:48.600And, you know, we are seeing, we've seen so many things.
01:01:50.920This is like, I was talking about these dominoes falling or if you want to think about it in terms of a Jenga block, you know, like all these things are being pulled out.
01:01:58.660Like you've got, you know, like the Tavistock being closed down and like the massive public shaming of what happened at the Tavistock and everyone's realizing it's such a scandal.
01:02:09.060And then you've got over 1,000 families suing the Tavistock.
01:02:12.960I don't even think, I think it only saw about 10,000 people in the last five, six years or something.
01:02:20.720And like over 1,000 families are suing it.
01:02:25.420It's like we're not like in America where they just sue anyone at the drop of a hat.
01:02:28.980You know, we're not a litigious society.
01:02:31.580But 1,000 families suing the Tavistock.
01:02:34.700Very public, lost coverage, you know, stories of like, you know, you actually see in mainstream newspapers like The Times and Telegraph, Richie Heron, the detransitioner had his story out, Kira Bell, like these things.
01:04:47.440So many people came on TikTok being like crying and saying, oh, someone was filming me in the changing rooms that they did a U-turn and they reinstated, you know, single sex spaces for changing.
01:05:00.520All these things are falling into place.
01:05:03.640And I think we are going to come out of this in almost like a dreamlike state in a few years being like, I can't believe that we let a very, very small minority of incredibly political voices just, yeah, as you say, run rampant.
01:05:19.600And we thought, well, you know, they're progressive and we want to be progressive and good people and they seem to know what they're doing and they've got degrees in like gender theory and queer theory and stuff.
01:05:29.740And, you know, I want to, you know, you know, I'm a liberal person and, you know, I love gay people and, you know, and I don't care if someone wants to wear a dress.
01:05:37.780So, you know, people think they outsource their thinking of this and they assume the experts, especially someone like the NHS, they assume that they will be, you know, competent enough.
01:05:48.540And then you realise, like you did a brilliant like Twitter thread in the video about like why we've lost trust in institutions.
01:05:56.020Turns out all these institutions just didn't have, you know, the backbone or the principles to stand on.
01:06:03.900This is why I said before about truth.
01:06:05.900Well, it comes back to the other thing you said, actually, which is about children, because you talked about how it's all about kindness.
01:06:12.440But what you didn't mention is as part of the demonisation of men, it's not actually about men.
01:06:23.280And part of that is strength and authority, which we fear more than anything in modern society.
01:06:29.160And to exercise strength and authority is seen as, I mean, quoting Jordan Peterson here, but it's seen as automatically being conflated with tyranny.
01:06:37.620Right. And so to say to somebody, well, we understand that you have these feelings, but we are a medical profession.
01:06:53.800It's a denial of medical treatment that you need out of the kindness that we're supposed to act with.
01:06:59.280And so I think part of what you're talking about societally, where this comes from, is an unwillingness of people to essentially be adults.
01:07:13.720I think that something's happened in the millennium generation or slightly before that, maybe, where we all kind of communally took a puberty blocker.
01:07:25.560And we literally, like, I think a couple of decades, we just decided, I mean, like, the trans identifying thing is a way of opting out of reality at the end of the day.
01:07:38.460It's, it's your, there's something about yourself that you don't like, and you're trying to disassociate yourself from it.
01:07:57.160But we were given this kind of opt out of adulthood.
01:08:00.820And, and that's where you get a lot of adolescent, adolescentish men who are kind of your age.
01:08:07.620And you're, you're not in this, this camp at all.
01:08:10.360But it's like, instead of like, instead of the puberty blockers, we've got like, porn and just weed and gaming and just casual sex and like.
01:08:50.680I mean, I, you know, the story, because I've told you, but I was dreading hiring, not you specifically, although you specifically as well, but just hiring anyone.
01:08:57.600Because I was like, we're going to have to manage this now.
01:09:31.020Largely Christians, actually, who had what I talked about, that balance of grace and truth.
01:09:40.560You know, as a society, we can go too far towards, you know, truth at the expense of, of being gracious.
01:09:48.920And, and we have done that in the past, and Christian societies have done that in the past.
01:09:53.280You know, if you look at sort of Dickensian Britain, and you know, it's just like, you know, if the poor would rather die, then they better do it and decrease the surplus population.
01:10:01.300You know, if anyone thinks I'm smart for knowing Dickens, that's straight from Muppets Christmas Carol.
01:10:10.840And so I'm not saying Christianity is perfect, but that's why I'm saying, like, if you do it right, like, and so Christians are speaking to my life being like, doing what, what the gender clinics were doing back in the day, which is exploratory therapy, and being like, okay, so there's a reality of who you are.
01:10:25.940And so it, so it really helped me to be like, so I knew with the help of other people, and with the help of the scripture as well, because I, that, you know, it was, it's evident to me, there's just no concept of gender identity in the Bible.
01:10:40.820It's like, you know, you get amazing characters like King David, and he was like this amazing king.
01:10:47.300And he was also like, he was a warrior, but he was also a poet and a musician and a harp player.
01:10:54.760And there's nothing in the Bible about like, well, he was being really manly when he was being a warrior, and he was, but he was exploring his feminine side.
01:11:01.420It was just like, no, he's just a man.
01:11:03.260And so like, you know, there was that, but the kind of holding on to grace and truth really, really helped me to come to peace in that,
01:11:15.600because I realised that I was a woman with a mind that was disconnected from reality at times.