The Scientific Realities of Biological Sex || Debra Soh, Marco Del Giudice, & Buck Angel

and Gender series on this podcast. In this series, we try to make sense of the distinction between sex and gender and cover trans issues in a very thoughtful and nuanced fashion. We have balanced discussions from multiple perspectives, including scientists, activists, and a leading feminism scholar. This series will hopefully expand your mind and help you make sense of the current heated debate surrounding the distinctions between sex and gender as

well as transgender issues. The aim is to turn down the temperature on this very heated topic and increase understanding and integrate truth with love. I hope you will listen to this entire series with an open mind, in an open heart, and as always we look forward to hearing your feedback and comments on our website and on the YouTube channel, so that further ado I bring you this episode within the Making Sense of Sex and Gender series. Hello,

and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today, we welcome Debora so, Marco del Judas, and Buck Angel on the show. First, let's talk about doctor Debressaux. She's a neuroscientist who specializes in gender, sex, and sexual orientation. She holds a PhD in neuroscience with scientific expertise in paraphilias, hypersexuality, and child sexual abuse prevention. As a journalist, her writing has appeared in several publications like The New York Post, The Wall

Street Journal, Newsweek, and many more. In twenty twenty, she published her book called The End of Gender. Doctor Marco del Judasa is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He received his bachelors in psychology and Doctor in Cognitive Science from the Universe Turing in Italy. He has over one hundred scientific publications on personality, motivation, attachment styles, psychopathology, sex differences,

and other topics. In twenty sixteen, he was granted the Early Career Award of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Buck Angel is an adult film producer, performer, and motivational speaker who also works as an advocate, educator, lecturer, and writer. He has served on the board of directors of the Woodhole Sexual Freedom Alliance from twenty ten to twenty sixteen.

Buck Angel was born a biological female and conquered a lifetime of adversity to undergo his transformation and become the healthy, happy, self confident man he is today. Buck created the first FtM adult website in two thousand and three and became the first FtM adult entertainer and film producer. In two thousand and seven, Buck made history again as the first transsexual man to ever win the AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year Award, which is essentially the Academy Awards of

the adult industry. Recently, Buck has devoted himself to informing and enlightening the world, as he demonstrated in his speaking engagements at Yale University and Idea City twenty ten. Buck is not only inspiring people to think outside the box, he is redefining gender and educating an entire generation on the facidity of sexuality and identity politics. In this episode, I talked to Deborah Marco and Buck about the scientific

realities of biological sex. There is considerable opposition against the idea that sex is a binary or even that there's any biological component to sex that is meaningful at all. But my panel today argue that denying science because it doesn't seem to fit our gender beliefs or ideology can actually be dangerous. They argue that, as ironic as it seems, when we acknowledge biology, we can accommodate more variation better than our preconceived, rigid social norms. I really enjoyed this panel.

I hope you listen to it with an open mind and an open heart, and we've comments if you re act strongly in any way, we would truly love to hear from you. This is a really stimulating conversation for me. I really respect these individuals. I was glad to give them a voice alongside all the other voices in the series so that further ado I bring you Deborah, Marco,

and Buck. I'm so glad to have you three on this show today, and I want to just start by each of you just introducing yourself a little bit, talk a bit about your profession, your career, why you're interested in kind of topics and things that you talk about, and let's just start with Marco. This is random selection. So I'm Marco the Judice. I'm a professor at the University of New Mexico starting from next year at the University of Trieste. So I'm going back to Italy and

I what I stumbled. Actually, I stumbled on sex differences many years ago when I was doing some research and attachment styles, so styles of relationships between kids and their parents or caregivers, and I was analyzing videos and coding these videos, and I kept finding sex difference. So some categories of attachment were popping up much more e mails or in females, and so that's how I started to

get interested in being the topic. Really, I was reading a lot of evolutionary I was kind of getting into seriously into evolutionary psychology at the time, and so kind of at some point, well, at first I had my videos checked, like the codings. I thought I was doing something wrong because you're not supposed to get sex differences in attachment styles. And then they were still there, you know,

after checking, they were still there. And so I started kind of thinking about it and reading and kind of clicked in a different interpretation of what I was seeing and so there was the start of my kind of love affair with sex differences, and then I started doing

I probably got a bit more notorious. Maybe I started publishing some papers about how you measure sex differences and the fact that if you consider once, for example, in things like personality where you have multiple trades, usually what psychologists do when it do sex differences they do one trade at the time and measure the difference between the sexes on each individual trades, and then maybe you average them or kind of take some kind of summary measure.

And I introduced a multivariate approach to that. So what happens when you consider more, you know, many traits at the same time, and unsurprisingly, the sex difference is going to become larger and more robust. And I'm still doing quite a bit of that. I have three papers now in the working about trying to do some let's say, methodological and statistical innovations in how you measure and think about sex differences. And so I got into a lot

of interesting conversations since then. Thanks Mark, and I want to make sure that we talk a little bit today about that work versus the predominant view in certain circles that it's all mosaic, so I want to contrast that view with your view. So great, thank you and welcome doctor doctor Debra. So can you tell us a little about yourself. I am a former academic sex researcher. My PhD is in neuroscience and I was specializing in human sexuality,

so I used to do brain imaging of sexuality. I decided to leave academia to become a science journalist due to the political climate. I found it for myself just really difficult to pursue interesting questions. By the end of my PhD, I had written an op ed criticizing gender transitioning in children because it is not backed by the scientific research. And I knew that by doing so I would have to leave academia because basically I'd be blacklisted.

So I work as a journalist now. My first book, The End of Gender, came out with Simon and Schuster. It debunks nine myths that are commonly held about gender identity in our society taking a scientific approach, and I write about the science of sexuality, gender identity, academic censorship, criticize racial politics as well. I have a podcast called the Doctor Debriso Podcast. Well, welcome is that your book behind you a copy of your book for people watching. Yes, there,

she is excellent. And then, last, but certainly not least, we have Buck Angel. Please introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Buck and I am a transsexual man. I transitioned thirty years ago from living female to livings male. I am a biological female. I believe in biology. I'm even saying this is cracking me up, but this is actually a real thing. So I'm not an academic. I am more. I think I don't even like to use activists anymore. But I'm a person who believes in biology and transition for the

right person. I sit here today because I believe that we have gone off the rails when it comes to transitioning. And I'm one hundred percent against transitioning children. And that's kind of just I guess me and I have a background in pornography and sexual wellness products, and so I think I need to put that in there because a lot of people will say, well, he's a porn star, what do you have him here? So I'm proud of my pornography work, and though it's not for everybody, I

believe pornography can help some people. It helped me and it helped people like me deal with sex and our bodies. So that's me. Well, thank you for your introduction. And to clarify performing in pornography, A lot of people have a background in pornography. Yeah, I just watched Born, I have a background. Undersell yourself. You're understanding yourself a little bit here, right, That's right. It could mean a lot of things. So you actually were a superstar in the

pornography world. I guess so, yeah, I guess I'm my actual porn star. Thank you. Yeah. So really in my porn work, though, you know, it was really about exposing my body to the world in a way that was on some level helping people deal with those things. So gotcha. Great, Well, thank you for introducing yourself. And like I did with Deborah when I said, behind you, is that a copy of your book? Behind you? I'm only going to focus on one side of No, No, not that side. I'm

gonna focus on the Trampa hat right on. I'm a dress. You call yourself Trampa, people call you Trampa. They you know, your fans. That might be a really interesting way to kind of start this conversation. You're like an og of something, and I want to talk about what that something is because I was I saw a chart recently about the change and the use of the term from transsexual a transgender, and I saw about I'm visualizing my head right now, and I saw about twenty eleven there was a huge

spike in in a shift, a cultural shift. Up until that point, it was mostly the use of the term transsexual, but something around twenty ten twenty eleven, you see this huge shift, And I just wanted to get some of your thoughts on what all three of you, what is the cause in that shift, and what do you see as a difference between a transsexual and a transgender individual, if at all. Yeah, it's a great question because I get the question all the time, and as you all know,

I do identify as a transsexual, not transgender. And so for me, the reason I keep the word transsexual attached to me is because I believe transsexual is a specific one hundred percent, no variation, no, none of that. It's specifically a person who has been diagnosed from an actual therapist or medical professional with the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which I have, and it's somebody who wants to live in the binary space. And so for myself if I was born female and I wanted to live in a

male space. And so for transsexual people, we really do make an effort to what we call pass as a man and a woman and live in the binary space and just become that and have surgeries and medical intervention to emulate as much as we can that particular sex that we wish we were born as. It's real simple.

Where today transgender has become an umbrella term that has excluded the word transsexual and is now open to anybody's interpretation of what they think or feel or have or you could actually self id in that space without having any diagnosis, and people believe in that space that you don't need gender dysphoria to be trans. So for me, the transgender label is more of a self identification label without having a medical attachment to it, where transsexual is

specifically a medical position. And I do believe that they tried to remove transsexual so that everyone can self id and that it isn't called a mental disorder, where I do believe I have a mental disorder. Okay, thank you for that perspective. I don't see too many of you around, to be honest, that are outspoken and saying no, like transsexual is what I am, not transgender, And so you're

very You're in a very unique space. You must feel like in some ways you're constantly going up against a cultural current, you know, in some ways and the way I see it and I think this, and tell me what you all think about this, But you know, when you feel such a mismatch between your body and your psychology in terms of your gender, one route is to prioritize the psychology, and the another root is to prioritize

the biology. You're holding onto the biology when a whole it seems like the culture today is and especially since that trend in twenty eleven is sending the message terribyone that we should prioritize the psychology over everything else. What do you what do you all think of that framing. I think it's important for there to be a balance between the two and that I think it's important for

people to because you see both extremes. You see some people who say it's purely about psychology, it's purely about the mind, It's purely about internal feelings in terms of how someone identifies, and that should be the most important thing, and biology is completely irrelevant. And then you see the

other side of people saying biologies everything. So the body you were born with is the body you should have, and you should not even consider transitioning because there's no such thing as living as the opposite sex, And however you feel internally is just a feeling and that doesn't mean anything. So for me personally, I think both are important. I think there should be a balance between acknowledging that for some people like Buck, transitioning is the way to

go and that's going to help them feel better. For the people, especially with the newer wave that we're seeing that you were talking about, doctor Kaufman, in terms of people who are identifying as the opposite sex or a third gender now very quickly out of the blue, I think this is very much more of a social contagion. It's more about what's happening culturally, and it's about maybe internal distress that they have that they are attributing to their gender when it may or may not actually have

anything to do with identity. So I think a good clinician, and I say this as someone who doesn't do clinical work anymore, but I think a good clinician will take both of those into into consideration when deciding what someone's treatment pathway is and making that pathway very much specific to that person's needs as opposed to taking a sweeping approach, because what we are seeing now is that people are just saying across the board, however someone feels is what

should be taken at face value. Right. Yeah, And Marco, I'm going to bring you into this conversation because you taught you taught me something about this topic that I found very important in my understanding of this and the nuance of it. You taught me that, you know, the trends is an umbrella for actually multiple sometimes quite different mechanisms or sources or varieties of trans that we can't lump it all into the same phenomenon. That's something you

taught me. So can you maybe bring that perspective in a little bit. So I'm kind of cautious here because this is really not kind of my my area, Okay, So of course I've been dealing with sex differences that kind of happen to and I'm friends with people who actually are in this area as researchers, so I try not to stray too much. I appreciate that scientific caution. I think it's kind of obvious if you look at the pathways that people take kind of that take them

to at some point. Let's say, I mean, it depends what's the endpoint is right, because if endpoint is that's say, you know, taking hormones or surgery, that's kind of one thing. If the end point is just self identifying in a way that kind of doesn't match your biological sex or whatever, it's also different. It's more there's more, more pathways did into that. But I think it's pretty obvious that it's

not like one thing. If you're thinking about, you know, what doesn't mean to be transgender is actually multiple things, and people get there for multiple reasons, and it's different for males and females. It's different between different kind of decades, of course. I mean, what you see happening now is you have people who don't match the template of people who were like the typical say you know, a transgender

from Fran say even ten or twenty years ago. An accent I can put on this is that just by let's say, shifting the conversation towards more let's psychological and subjective right points of view, So from away from this and not been happening just about transsexuals to transgender to but it's been happening in psychology in general, from you know, sexual differences to gender differences to now something you know more and more kind of in a haze of meaning

in which meanings are kind of more fluid and harder to pin down. And so I think that's deliberate in a sense because if you you know, it helps kind of muddy the waters a little bit and also maintain if you let's say, not from an activist perspective, right, and not just one activist, but there's a galaxy of activists with also multiple agendas having words and meanings are kind of shifting and kind of hard to pin down.

Is actually you know, is a resource because you can so for example, it just you know, that's feminism for examsample, which is not the same thing as a transgender kind of activism has had a complicated relationship with biology, and even within what I see as you know, transactivists, there's there's different perspective and biology, and some people kind of embrace at least bits and pieces of it, some people kind of reject it as oppressive constructs and stuff, and

so because at different times or deal it with different topics, people to kind of you know, altern you know, embrace or reject different pieces of biology. Let's say it actually is a plus to have meanings that are not fixed and kind of very very uh liquid. Let's say it's actually a plus because you never kind of you can never be pinned down to your definition and to something stable. And so for example, I you know, that's the area

I know better talking about sex differences. I mean, people used to talk about sex differences until pretty much the sixties and seventies, or sexual differences or stuff like that, and then gender became a term that was and that

was adopted pretty enthusiastically by by feminist scholars, right. And the idea there was to introduce this kind of very you know, a clean separation between what's the domain of the body and biology, where maybe we have this kind of you know, binary males and females and all this kind of nasty hormones and stuff from the realm of behavior and psychology and and you know, personality, whatever cognitive ability is, identity, what people like to do, how they

present so forth with the idea that that part is essentially mostly a social construction, So you separate the body, which is anchored in biology, from psychology, which is more and again you you have to think this was the seventies, right, so in psychology had a very strong zeit geist for social constructionism and situations is like personality doesn't exist, it's all kind of expectations and stereotypes and precious pressure from

the social situation. So that that was the zet guys, And in that ze guys, gender is a way to kind of liberate the study of sex from the biology of sex and the body. But of course then you run into other issues because you can't really sustain this dicotomy because a lot of the traits that have to do with say, personality, generation, and behavior turned out not really disconnected from as people kind of thought, and so

it gets really messy, gets messy. And now if you're if you're going to talk I know you're going to talk to and Fossils Sterling soon. And she's been one of the people we need the feminist you know, scholarship, arguing that we should kind of stop talking about sex and genders, separate and kind of put them together into section gener gender. She has a phrase, she has a phrase. It's all on word. It's all on word, yeah, right,

you know. Do I welcome that? And it's kind of because I've been arguing that, you know, people have this illusion that distinguishing between sex and gender actually helps, but the way these terms are defined many times actually confuses things even more. It doesn't really help for clarity as much as people think. And so the I don't quite welcome this, this further move to this sex gender concept is that now you're basically, so here's the way it went.

You have this binary sex more or less, uh, and then maybe it's not that binary because you bring in intersex conditions and all sorts of things we can talk about probably we're going to talk about this more later, but basically, it's, you know, something at least root in biology, and then you have gender, which is kind of disconnected from biology, and it is free floating kind of you know, lots of social construction and tereotypes and enrolls, and and

then now by reconnecting them, I see that as in part as a move to take what's left of biological sex and make it conceptually as fluid and airy and kind of you know, uh, undefined as gender has become so I don't see that, and moved to ground gender into something a bit more biologically real. You stick by the move to take what's left of sex and and just dissolve it forever into this kind of you know, multi dimensioned combinary. One point, I really want to make.

Whatether you made that I want to zoom in on. Is there there is something quite profound here that if we if we step back a second and look at it from a larger picture, I do notice that a lot of feminist scholars, for good or bad, this is an observation I see is an observation is that there tends to be various beliefs that are correlated within them, one being that that sex is the gender is very, very fluid and in sort of extremely non binary way.

But also they often talk a lot about nature versus nurture debate and try to downplay the role of genes in anything as well. You very rarely see like a feminist scholar who's like a behavioral geneticist but also believes gender is fluid. I'm just trying to think of, like what would be the sort of the juxtaposition that'd be odd to find among a feminist scholar, But you see what I'm saying. There tends to be an overarching disdain for the idea that we can have unchangeable biology at all.

And I'm curious, first of all, why, like why is the G word so scary genes? When you know, as Steven Pinker has often made the point which I really like, would we want to live in a world where we were one hundred percent determined by our environment? That would sound that sounds horrible, Like isn't there something good to be unchanging within you? I would say there is something good? Right? Maybe I should just pause there and say, well, can you all kind of defend for me the value of biology?

It seems almost silly to say, can you defend the value of biology? But doctor debress so every time that she posts and I see you, doctor Debressau, But every time you post on Twitter, sex is binary, unchanging and immutable. You. I mean, that's a shit storm that is created every time you say, and you know a shit storm is going to happen. So I also want to know, like how do you deal with that psychologically? Like you know

it's coming. It's not like you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so shocked that that caused a shit storm, but yet you still feel a reason to defend that view. So could you maybe let's start with you. Can you just talk about when every time you kind of talk about that idea, why do you believe that it's important to say that? Yeah, First of all, I want to

say I love Stefinker. Secondly, why I think it's important to talk about biology is that it's reality, and I don't think we should be afraid of talking about the truth, even if it upsets people or if it is politically inconvenient. And to your point about why feminist scholars tend not to want to defend biology or acknowledge it and tend to be more focused on social constructionist ideas or the value of society and culture and sexism or whatever else.

I think because for many of them, or not most of them, their training is in a discipline that has no basis in science. And for some of these individuals, I'm sure they go through their entire academic training without ever taking a class in biology or evolutionary psychology, so they don't know anything about these disciplines. All they hear about them is that they are sexists and that they're

misogynistic and that there's no value to them. So I think that combined that ignorance, whether it's will wilful or otherwise, leads them to feel morally just in the way that

they present biological research and also in their ignorance. And I would say for scholars who are aware of the scientific research, like I've said this all the time, if you actually read studies about pre natal testosterone and the effects on the fetus in the womb in terms of the masculinization or otherwise or lack of masculinization, you cannot claim that prenatal testosterone is a myth or that it doesn't exist, or that there are no sex differences in

the brain. I don't think acknowledging sex differences, biologically based sex differences justify sexism. I say all the time, just because men and women are on average different, that doesn't say anything about individual people, not justify sexism against women. And if anything, I think it's sexist to say women have to be the same as men in order for us to be worthy of equal treatment. That's why I

speak out about it. I think I think it's such a shame that in academia I mean, I'd be curious to hear more about doctor Dela Gadchi's experience because I've left academia. I imagine it's probably very difficult to do with type of work if you do want to speak to any sex differences at all. And then because people think immediately you're suspect if you're interested, like why would you want to say that you must be a sexist person. And then if you actually show that these sex differences exist,

they have to be socially constructed. If they're not, then you are a sexist. So yeah, And I'm just honestly used to the criticism at this point because when people get upset about something, it's always internalized misogyny or you are what else is there? I mean, transphobic is like I get called transphobic, but you know, they can't actually come back with any relevant criticism because I'm totally open to that, totally open to that. But it's it's always

about you know, you hate women, you're xyz. And if anything, I think it's actually more harmful to women and patronizing to say that we are not in control of our own decisions and that the only reason we make the decisions we do say with the sex ratio in STEM disciplines science, math, and technology engineering, that that's due to sexism and women being criticized unfairly by men and not wanting to be in these situations and make them uncomfortable.

I'm thinking, just make women sound like we're you know, weak, empathetic instead of saying, you know what, yeah, sometimes you experience sexism, not always, but if you're really interested and you're passionate, like I have a PhD in neuroscience, and I just think it's when I listen to these scholars speak, they treat women like and they're terrifying girls into not going into these disciplines also, but they treat women like we're so weak and that we're not capable of making

our own decisions and that we're completely dependent on men's approval or men's support in order for us to be successful. I see book nodding. I just love de Bro. She's such a badass love because you're so straight on. It's just so beautiful to hear the common sense that comes out of your mouth, and that's why she gets shut down, you know, Buck, I saw a tweet that you wrote which just dovetails very much with what doctor Soder said, you wrote, it is transphobic to deny biology. I thought

that was a fascinating tweet. Could you unpack that for us a little bit, because you don't often it's not something a sentence you often hear. Right, well not, and doctor Debttes stated you have to be really solid in your beliefs and not be sort of scared of the gas lighting and the pile on because you believe in reality. And so for me, it's really about my space, right. I'm not here to speak for the transgender community. I

never have and I never will. I'm here to speak for what this did for me as a person and how it really was so instrumental. I mean being sitting here today and why I became a success and so many avenues of my life was one hundred percent transitioning to live as a male. Now that being said, if I did not acknowledge my biology, I would not be trans. The whole reason you are trans is because of biology. I mean, it's so simple, yet it's being so twisted.

Words are being twisted, ideas of what biology are being twisted. All of those things to me feel like gaslighting, Like that's not real. What are you talking about and even to me, when Debra, doctor Devra speaks, it feels like she's being gas lit constantly about her own way you know, of actual, real, real scientific facts. So when I talk about biology, I talk about it because it's important to me,

number one, because of health reasons. So if my biology was not attached to me, right, and I can tell you this from many examples, I can show you many examples of why my biology was so important because you know, I am being a biological female. I have a you know,

female body. I have you know, reproductive system, which is what a female has, and by injecting testosterone into the female body, it disrupted so many health problems down in that space of the reproductive system that if I didn't talk about it or the doctor didn't know about it, how are they going to say they saved my life because they knew that I was a biological female. And this is one of the biggest arguments I have for this nonsense that's coming out of the transgender sort of.

I call it an ideology because trans is not an identity choice. Trans is a medical condition. And that's where I run, you know, butt heads with the community, because I believe this is a mental disorder, and it does have everything to do with biology. And if we deny our biology, not only are we denying our transseness, but we're also denying our own health and how we move forward in the world when we're injecting cross sex hormones that don't belong. This testosom does not belong naturally in

my body, because if it did, why am I injecting it? So, you know, that's why I say things like that. It pushes against this new narrative that says you don't you know, biology doesn't matter. It's a social construct. Know, gender is all of these things that actually go completely against everything I am and have been and why I transitioned. Well,

thanks for presenting your perspective. Both you Buck and you doctor So have both said things that they're probably there are some listeners their head has exploded, you know, saying the combination of both of you saying trans is the mental disorder and it's a social contagion, which Doctor So

said would be enough for someone to completely explode. So let me play Devil's advocate then, because I know there's someone you know, I think it's good to steal man things, right, So let me say that, as a psychologist who recognizes biology, I would argue that our psychology is the result of our biology too. It's like, I think it's silly how we have separated our body from our minds in terms of one is biology and one is complete social construction.

I mean, I'm a big advocate of the neurodiversity movement, and no one would say, like autism spectrum way of thinking is completely a social construction, right. It's oid with very as doctor del Gucci has spent his career studying various biological markers interacting with society. So couldn't one make the case that there is something real, a transgender, real trans sort of psychology where your psychology feels so at odds with your with your physical characterist, I'm not distinguishing

biology from psychology. I'm saying it's all psych biology. It's all biology to a certain degree, but distinguishing the mismatch between your psychology and your biology that is real and that we should you know, a compassionate, just society is one that recognizes that and helps people and maybe even normalizes in a way that This is maybe where Trumpa really disagrees because I'm not there yet, where I say every instance of that mismatch with psychology as a mental disorder,

I'm not there yet. I'm not making I personally wouldn't make that argument. I think we have to kind of look at it a case by case basis in a lot of ways. So just playing Devil's advocate, would you when you say there's there's a space for helping people with that mismatch, of helping them change their psychology and ways that make them feel most self actualized, like they're living their best life, Like, what's wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with that. What I sort of advocate for

is maybe there's something else going on there. Maybe it's not transness. Maybe it's a different kind of thing that's happening, maybe a body just you know, dysphoria. Maybe maybe things are happening. We are not addressing other mental health issues. We are just saying, oh, well, you just feel trans, you're trans. That is not fair. That is not fair not only to trans people, but to that person because

we've taken mental health out of the equation. And when you take mental health and you just say anyone who says they're trans, you now have what we have today, which part of my language a shit show, and we have a huge amount. Whether or not anyone out there tries to push against me on this, this is a fact. We have a large amount of de transitioners, and that's happening because these trend d transitions were not addressed in

their mental health. And they'll even tell you that. So, yeah, mental health is definitely a part of what's happening here. But mental health is a huge spectrum. It's not just X, Y and Z. And just because you're autistic does not make you trans. Now that's a narrative. You're autistic, you're trans I think that's unfair to autistic people as well. So that's why I think, like really understanding diagnosis and understanding mental health care and how important it is seeing

what's going on with this kid, what's happening here. Social contagion. I believe in social contagion. I see it happening every day. It's easy to lure a kid into something. We all

want to belong to something. The goal of treatment should be about helping someone feel better, not to simply just give them treatment for the sake of it or because it's going to get you social accolades, and like buck is saying, there's so many transitioners who there, I don't doubt that they were struggling legitimately with something that was very distressing, emotionally difficult the way that I talk about this, and I was so worried for a long time that

the things I was saying about this newer wave of young people who are transitioning very quickly, that I was wrong. And when I listened to their stories, I would say, especially for those born female, almost every single one of them seem to have a history of sexual trauma that has not been addressed. And so when you mask over that with these other solutions, at the end of the day, that trauma is still going to be there, and that solution is not going to actually help them feel better.

So when they do come out on the other side living as a man or a third gender, or however they identify, they are not in a third gender. I say in quotations, I don't believe there's such a thing as a third gender, but they're going to still be dealing with that trauma, and so I think it really is doing a disservice. It has to be something that you know, for someone like as I mentioned, Obviously he's thriving,

he's much happier, and it's helped him. But I think that is part of maybe Buck, you can talk to this because I know we've talked about this before. It's had to do with an appropriate and effective assessment process and time and asking questions and ruling things out, as opposed to simply saying whatever you want, we're going to give it to you. This is what I'm hearing. I'm going to reflect the mirror back. Let me know if the summary statement I just wrote down it really agrees

with both of reviews. It seems like you're saying transactivism has prevented us from helping people who need help, perhaps in a different way than the activists say they need help. I will say that. That's when when I joined this today, I said I'm not an activist because I believe that even that word has been hijacked on some level. Activism helps create positive change on some level, and you know, what they're doing to me is hijacking a whole movement

in order for themselves. The trans community has become me, me me. If you listen to it, like just take pieces out of it, you'll see it's me me, me, that's not where I come from. Community is about us and about all of us, and it's a very diverse community. We aren't all the same. We don't transition a lot for the same reason. But that being said, mental health care has been actually removed from transition. You have affirmation therapy that is not therapy, that is just saying, okay, kiddo,

you said you're trans right on here you go. How is that therapy? That's just telling a kid they're right, And that's dangerous and we're seeing the dangers of that really coming back on us now. And my community is actually really upsetting because they're not speaking up about it. They all know. Don't think that people don't know in this community, they know, damn right. I'm one of the only besides like Blair White and a couple of other

of us. We're like the only ones who are like, hey, wait a minute here, And that gets us into a lot of trouble. And that scares me. The fact that people in my own community cannot stand up against what we see because they all see it. And here we sit today arguing if biology is real. I just am in shock about it and upset by it. Love Blair white and also want to say I think and I'm not transgender, so I never want to seem like I'm

speaking for the community. But I really worry about what the activism is doing to the community because I think most average people who are not paying attention, they see some of the crazy things that activists are asking for, and they actually think that represents transgender people. And I understand why people in the community probably wouldn't want to stick their net because I see the way that some like Bucket treated. Buckets called transphobic all the time, which

is absolutely ridiculous. But I do wonder now that we have more transitions coming out now we see what's happening and say women's sports, it's really putting people off of wanting to advocate for trans rights, which I think we should care about. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, thank you to both of you for speaking your truth there.

And let me let me put it this way, buck do you, if you were forced, you know, give give a bone to the transgender activists, like give them something that they're doing right, you know, so it's not all negative.

Do you think that there are legitimate I guess this is my direct question for you do you acknowledge there are legitimate cases within the transgender community that are not reduced to mental illness or narcissism, but where changing pronouns and the various other psychological and maybe even physical alter are very helpful to those individuals. Well, I'm going to say yeah, I would say so, but I would say that that's not like me, And that's why we need

to distinguish. There's differences within the transk and why I call myself a transsexual today. Trans is a self eydd space in anyway. And if that helps you and it makes you feel like you're solid in your space and you're an adult making that choice, I have nothing to say about that at all, because that's an adult making the choice. But the problem for me is that now we're pushing it this sort of space onto young people who aren't in a position to make those life changing choices.

And so I always distinguish the difference between adults doing this and the activism around that, which is I would consider that like sort of more non binary, because that's now under the trans label, and a lot more people are taking on non binary than trans at this point, yet they're equating both of them as the same. And but that's all again, if it makes you feel better, if you're moving through the world better. And I really feel like it's part of this sort of you know,

it's a community. Everyone wants to be part of a community. So it feels like these people are creating this sort of a community that is not what I am. And that's why I keep reiterating it is so important to understand the difference between somebody who acknowledges this as a mental disorder, which I do, and people who don't acknowledge it as a mental disorder. But consider if you think your trands, your trans you have to see everyone needs to see the difference of That's what the activism today

is about. It's about self iding, it's about creating a non binary space. It's like trying to get rid of biology, and that doesn't work for me. It's so fascinating. You have two sides here, one side and both sides are making are arguing the same thing in a way. They both think their existence is being wiped out. And so how do you as me, mister un peacekeepers. Hey, by

the way, I tried so hard. I don't know if anyone sold my tweet where I said, hey, anyone, I would love to have a respectful conversation between a transgender individual and a turm like who would speak to each other? And no one wanted to speak to each other, And every single person from either side they all said, why would I talk to someone who denies my existence? But

they're all that's what they're both saying. I couldn't find anyone from the transnitor community who felt comfortable to be part of this, which is why I made it a four part series, just so everyone's voice could be heard separately. But I would ideally like to live in a world where we can all I guess, stop the victimhood mentality for one second. Can I speak to that, my friend? Yeah? I put myself in positions to speak to the opponents,

you know that I get. I get asked to be on all kinds of places where I don't necessarily align with the way they think they hate me. I go on a lot of shows where people actually hate me. They don't think I'm existence, they don't. But I have to do that because I feel like I'm being wiped out from the trans community, and so because people hate us more. I transitioned thirty years ago. I have never

felt more hated in my thirty years of transition. Then I do that should say something to everybody out there, not only from my own community, but from the world. So that being said, the fact that says everything that you put that out there, can someone step up to the plate and have the conversation If they believed in what they were saying, they would step up to the plate. I believe in what I'm saying. I live it every day. I will step up to the plate to show you

people like me exist, we are real. We need this. I will die if I don't have it. And that's where I am butting heads with this community because they don't see this as a for me, for a person like me. They only see it about them, And that is where I have this sort of schism with them and this thing, because they're not willing to step up and have the conversation where I am. I was going to say, it's also because I think they are complete.

They have the approval of society right now, so why would they engage with someone like me because they only have something to lose. Maybe they on some level know that their perspective is not going to hold against my argument, But I think also because if they accept the invitation, they only have something to potentially lose by being associated with me or being willing to engage with me. Do you see a world, like I'm trying to think of

what a utopia to look like. Do you see a world where no one feels like their existence is being eradicated by another group? Like? Can we can? Can we have transsexuals and transgenders both coexist as real? Like where we acknowed you're real? You're like Oprah, You're real. You're real, You're real, You're real, You're all real? Like what if I got an Oprah mindset about this? Like? Can we

live in? Is that even possible? It just feels like every time I try to unite, or every time I try to have people listen to each other's perspectives, I'm the enemy And I'm like, why, why, why do we have to live in that world? You can't be in the middle. Yeah, you can't be, like you can't these days, these days it seems like you can't. That's a good point. I think my prediction is that of course there will always be And I don't even like to use the

word transsexual. I respect Buck's decision because obviously that's how you identify and that's your life. But for people who medically transition, I think there will always be people medically transition. I think this newer trend, this trendiness of the non binary, the third gender, and the gender fluid, et cetera. I think that is right now a thing that has to do with youth, that has to do with trying to

get cloud and attention and fit in. And once that movement eventually dies out, people are going to move on to the next thing. I think that will be hopefully within the next decade gone and we've forgotten about it. We'll hopefully not forgot about it, because I think there will be children who be dealing with the effects of making potentially the wrong decision for themselves, which I think

is devastating. But for the people who are jumping onto this as a way to promote their brand or to get ahead in their career or put their pronouns everywhere because that's the socially acceptable thing to do, We're going to move on to something else culturally, and I'm just really worried about what the afterfects are going to be because to me, this is not just about trendiness. These

are people's lives who are being affected. I can try to bring it to the context bit because and in a way, I'm going back to your question Scott about you know, offering a defense of why why do you want to you know, take biology seriously? And here's one thing that I kept thinking while listening to devn back is you know, there's, of course, again there's parts of what is right now the same transgender movement that have very different motivations and very different you know, social correlates.

Part of that might actually die down if the interest kind of dies down. But there's also I think something that comes through is we have lost nu once in

our thinking about sex and males and females. So you actually end up with a you know, after whatever fifty years of kind of trying to detach our understanding of psychology from the understanding of biology, you really end up with not with a model of males, you know, men and women that's more rich and more kind of you nu once, And but it seems to me you end up with something that's a bit more impoverished and very rigid.

And so you end up with this thing where every kind of you know, we can't think about variation anymore. It's like you you have to. You know, you have these very rigid categories, and if you don't think you fit all the you know, check all the boxes, you must be kind of out of the categories. You're not

you know, neither males or females. There's all there's whole thing about you know, non binary, gender queer, whatever I think it betrays at a cultural level and even an academic level, because there's a strong contribution from academia is the kind of loss of ability to think seriously and

in really nuanced ways about variation within the sexes. And my one of my defenses of biology is that there's a bus understanding, which is because you know, the biological understanding of sex starts from something that is functionally binary, right, you know, two roles and reproduction, two kinds of gamuts. So you have this kind of very strong kind of

conceptual binary at at the root of that. The misconception is that this idea of a strong binary you know, gets carried out to all the levels including behavior and psychology and development and so forth. But actually, you know, if you if you really understand the biology of sex, there's also pressures in there that favor variation and divergence and you know, and differentiation within males and within females.

You know, we probably not going to talk about sexual selection, but sexual selection is a powerful mechanism in biological evolution, and one of the things it does many times is to produce divergence between the average say traits in inmas and females. But one of the other things does it can actually create variation within a sex for a bunch

of different reasons. And so this idea that you know, thinking biologically about sex puts everything into a very rigid books where there's no variation and all the variation and interest and differences come from the culture to see culture or learning or whatever. I think that's a fundamental misconception, if you know, that's one of the most powerful defenses

of biology. Actually taking biology seriously and not as the cartoon version of it helps you not just thinking about sex in the the in a more kind of categorical terms, but actually helps you deal with variation in a way that's more nuanced, more interesting, and I think more also more personally, you know, meaningful for a lot of people

than a purely social constructionist perspective on that. There was some mentions of autism here and there, right, And again, I that's one of the topics I've published a little bit on. I've been trying to take an evolutionary perspective

to autistic traits, so the autism spectrum. And again, I don't know if I have the right explanation, right, but I have one one model of that, and the model is basically that what you have is if you look at the entire phenotype, not just the cognitive traits that everyone focuses on, but also let's call the motivational background.

So the you say, sexuality of people on the spectrum or there, how they behave and how they they you know, they function in, say romantic relationships or friendships or competitive interactions and so on and so forth. UH, and you

try to explain this kind of together. I think my hypothesis is that this could be a kind of mild male biased UH strategy in a biological sense that actually fits into the fact in ours we have a lot of parental investment also from others, so you have male provisioning instead of just female provisioning, and we have a

variety of ways in which we can do that. And the idea is that there's been in our species selection for kind of you know, long term relationships, so people who kind of fit well into long term relationships and end up providing and investing in their kids, but doing so indirectly by basically doing other stuff and providing, you know, because of the things that do outside so developing say let's let's call them technical, cultural skills and whatever, which

is what the you know, kind of the autistic might kind of excels at like systemizing and learning about stuff and becoming technically proficient in something. So that's you know, there's a very short cartoon of it. But the idea is from these hypotheses, you predict that people on the spectrum, and again it's not there's also it changes when you're talking about autists that's more severe because I think it's really not the same thing as the milder forms. Is

just there's evidence for that. But if you talk about see the mild version from let's say normal variation in artistic traits to people, we can mild diagnose this. What you expect to see is a bit of a mosaic of traits. So what you expect to see from this perspective is a profile that from the cognitive point of view, is, as bear on Coin would say, like an extreme mail brain. So there's a shift toward a more male typical version of things like you know, visual b it is and

some some cognitive skills and so on. But from a motivational perspective, when you're thinking about you know, air bonding and sexuality and so for what you see is actually shift in the other direction. And that again from the standpoint of this hypotheses is no is no accident. You actually have a potentially selection for combinations of trade that all go in the same direction of being more female typical or male typical, and that could arise as a

result of biological processes. That's an example I would say of how biology have to think about things in a way that's not the how other people, you know think, Yeah, right, you're you're absolutely right. And this is what is confusing me right now, because I've gone my whole life just taking for granted that I'm a man like for me, as I said to a trans individual who was on my show, I said, can you tell me what it's

like to be trans? Because I don't know, like I've always just I'm like, I'm a man, like I don't think about it, right Like, but here's the thing, Like I'm now going to all confused because if it's technically true that, I mean, we could say are not just our psychology is a mosaic, but our physical is a moasaic too. I mean, I got like so many dude physical characteristics, right Like I got chest hair popping out

of my shirt right now. But I'm sure if you you looked at my eyebrow you'd be like, oh, the eyebrow was statistically more like the average female than you. I bet if you started like picking apart all the pieces of me, you would say, that's female and average. That's male and average. And the same thing with my psychology, Like there are various aspects of my psychology that are so stereotypically dude, right Like I have agents, you know, let's go, let's do it. But I also have compassion,

which is sometimes stereotypically female. So it confuses me because given that we're all kind of this misaic and both like, what is like, how do I know what anymore? What I am is what I'm saying, Like, how do you know I'm a man now because I'm getting all confused. Where I think these arguments kind of you should not take it is the extreme of saying, oh, we're all just kind of random mosaics, that's okay. I think to try to kind of dissolve the existentially having an existential

quandary there a crisis. Yeah, I mean, but this is so fascinating. And this is where I for me, at least the conversation really gets kind of exciting. What I think is the is the benefit potentially of an evolutionary perspective on this is that you can think about function and again, at least I have some hunches about how some traits or combination of traits may actually be advantages or arises by product maybe of other things. But at

least you know, find a functional grounding for that. And if you do that, I think you will find that some let's say, constellations for example, of personality are better understood as mosaics in a sense from a masculinati femininity perspective, So you actually have some an in other cases not so much. And at the same time, statistically and not just statistically but also functionally, you see that for most people, the traits tend to go together a certain way, so

you don't want to you know. I think there's there's a balance again to be found between acknowledging that what are the big statistical trends, but not just looking at them only as statistical trends, also trying to understand what's the functional base. So there's there's meaning there, there's it's

not random. There's a reason why some tracts tend to go together with others, and and also there might be sometimes biological reasons why for subsets of people it makes sense biologically to to not follow the big trend, let's say, but to end up in some less crowded corners, let's say, of of this space of masculine and feminine phenotypes. I would just not not want to apply this mosaic concept in a blanket way, as some people do as a way to argue that, well, because we're all mosaic. You know,

what does it mean to be typically made or feeling? Yeah, because we're all mosaics, that's why sex doesn't exist. Yeah, I've heard that argument, So thank you for helping me. I was having there. Okay, there's an easy resolution there because you know, if biology actually worked as as some people think it does, like you know, or should like pushing just the sexes, all males and one to one side, all females to the other side, that would be a kind of a paradox. But that's not how biology was.

It can create you know, variability and alternative strategies and you know, different ways of being males and females that are not just kind of socially meaningful but may have a biological ground in two And when you get to that point, you really have to party in carefully and you can just have you know, a simple catch all, you know, solution of your questions. If that's the case, then this is the million dollar question. Is there a

room for psychology to be part of that? That's really the million dollar question because when I ask the chat ai what is a woman? Because I was curious what the artificial intelligence machine would answer it, their answer was that it's either by all an adult an adult woman based on their physical characteristics, or it's their gender identity. They're leaving a more expansive definition that It's like, you could it could be anything, right, That's my million dollar question.

There is like, yes, if we are expanding our notion of what it means. Do we allow for gender identity to be one valid answer? That's really the question on the table here, isn't it? Yeah? Speaking to that, I am very concerned about how this definition, the definition of woman is being changed, because we're saying more and more it's not adult human female, it's not based on gammets,

it's based on identity. And if you can change the definition of woman, what else can you change the definition of I think this is only the start of something else that's going to continue going on and is potentially very destructive to society. Give me a fear that you have, give me something that you think would be ridiculous, Like just even you probably probably aready think this is ridiculous. Something that you think even more ridiculous if if we

went down that's that. I think it speaks to this larger theme of science denial, in that if we can change the definitions of things based on people petitioning for it, then why do we have to pay attention to evidence or data? Why can't we just make things up based on how we feel or what we think a good social outcome would be. And so with say I think sex, the denial of sex difference is the denial of biology

with regard to gender dysphoria. These are I mean, we're seeing this happen in real time, and I don't think this is going to be the end of it. And also to piggyback on that, I wonder why it's only about women. Why are we not changing the definition of man? Why is every wonderful question? Yeah, I I do. I see it all the time. I put it out there. I'm like, why are we only sort of on some level pushing against the women's space and what it means

to be a woman and anyway and so on. On the other side of that, I also think it's dangerous. And I can give you examples like when you self id as a woman and you're a man, And let's is the example of prison. And here in California, any man can identify as a woman now, which means that that we have to respect that. And now that man who identifies as a woman, and this why biology matters to me, now is being put in a woman's prison.

And things are happening because biology happens, and this woman, who is a biological man is doing things in these prisons that are absurd and ridiculous, and these are why, this is again why biology matters. This man who's identifying as a woman is going into a space where a biological woman is. They think differently, they act differently, they are different, and rapes are happening, bad things are happening. So you know, for me, don't I'm not academic, so

I'm not speaking in those terms or that way. I'm speaking in a more sort of my own observation as a transsexual personal experience as well. Yeah, my real life experiences. And I don't care if a man wants to identify as a woman, go right ahead, but respect women when you do. And they're not they're not I'm gonna just say it here. They're not there. They're doing this. That's why they're trying to dismantle what a woman is. Because when you dismantle what a woman is, anyone can be

a woman. And that's just not true. And why we need to distinguish the difference between a trans woman and a woman. And I say it all the time, it's like they're not the same, they'll never be the same. And so also I want to talk about this idea of children know who they are. What happened to gender

non conforming, what happened to getting better of gender stereotypes? Now, if a little kid says they're a boy, we're immediately medicalizing them, putting them on all these drugs and having surgeries. And anyone who goes against me on this, I will I will debate you to the end. They are giving children surgeries, and they are doing hormone blockers and cross sex hormones, and sixteen year old kids are kids fifteen. I know a thirteen year old who actually had top surgery.

So these are the things that are really disturbing to me because we are pushing young people into this again binary space when all I hear on this message from this community is non binary. Binary isn't real? Yeah, why are you doing that to children? Then? Why are you immediately shoving them into a binary space because they said

they're about boy or a girl. So what was told to me in another interview I did, which is part of the series from a trans non binary individual, They said that there's nothing automatic about it when a kid says they want surgery, that there's a that it's very very they take it very seriously. Not sure there's a very a whole team of people. I'm saying, I want their voice to just be heard for one second, because they because I can't bring you all together. I'm trying

to think of people's voices to bring in. I'm trying their folks. I'm trying. Yeah, I apologize. I just get very upset about the lies. They're actual lies. I interview D transitioners, right, and oh, I don't think anyone's denying that they don't exist, but that it's it's it's not automatic. Surely it's not like a twelve year old walks into the doctor's station and says, please remove my breast and

they immediately do it. Right. Oh well, I'm going to tell you from my own experience dealing with D transitioners. Many of these people had literally less than an hour with a therapist or a clinician before they started to And these are fifteen year old kids. If you don't think fifteen year old is a kid, then the conversation is over. That's a fifteen year old is a kid.

They can't make these choices. And so these people are also saying those things because they don't want you to know that they're getting fifteen minute twenty minute hour intakes and literally getting testosterone that same day. So that's just the start of the process. And then if they have the they can go to a There is an actual person in Florida who's doing top surgeries on minors and

sometimes doesn't even ask for the parental consent. So I don't know what, Yes, I don't know what these people. That's what they're hiding from you. And you say, you know, I know this because I talk to the transition to the transitioners, you know, And I would kind of agree that, you know, there's there's lack of good comprehensive data, so you know that there's not like a source people can put And I think this is especially true of the

States because of the messy, you know, headcare system. And I also suspect that the fact that in other countries people are doing more of a you know, are able to review what's going on with say transgender you know, medicine and so forth, like you know, whatever's with them or the UK, the healthcare system I think works in a way that makes it easier to keep track of

what actually happening. And in the States it's kind of impossible to know because you have all these you know, entities, and so it's all very indirect and you see what I mean. So I'm not I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that from if you're an outsider and you're like, you know, okay, let me, you know, I want to make my mind out on this. What you hear essentially is you know, my world against your word.

You know it's right, because I mean I have on the one hand, I have a bunch of people telling me that it's really easy to get, and then I have, on the other hand, I have people telling me it's extremely extremely hard. And I try to look for data on this and actually that everyone disagrees with each other in the psychology, in the literature. I would say for people listening who might might not be convinced either way, might be trying to make up their mind on this,

think about the people who are speaking out. What is their inventive or incentive to speak out? What do they have to gain or lose? So you have the people who say that, oh, this is a very long drawn out process, it's very cautious, no one's being rushed through. What do they have to lose by saying that I mean they're coming from a place of probably wanting to protect access to care for trans people, which I think should be something that we are supportive of appropriate care,

not rushing people through. But then you see the d transitioners who get completely ripped apart for speaking up about their own personal experiences. What do they have to gain from speaking out about this? You know, you have a way the two and really ask yourself. I feel on one side it's they're protecting a narrative and the other side they're trying to speak truth to something that's really happening. Yeah,

and it sounds like equally. You know, you can have multiple people trying to come from a good place, and it sounds like you all are coming from a good place too, And they're coming from at least intentions right, Like you're trying to protect children. In their view, they're trying to protect children too, right. I think most of the voices on various sides, I don't think there's that many evil people. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I think people are seeing it a different way. Now.

Buck might disagree with that they're denying science though, when they're in their form of so called protecting children. They're denying the scientific research on desistance, They're denying the scientific research on rap it onside gender dysphoria, They're denying the studies on the transitioners showing that these young people are de transitioning very soon after making the decision to live as a third gender or as male. So I agree with you. I think we should be having a conversation.

I do think most people, hopefully are coming from a good place, But when you are actively shutting down voices and silencing people, to me, that's not acceptable, especially when it is coming from a place of actually having numbers and data to support your argument. Yeah, look, I agree with that. I agree with that, And my friend Jesse Single has just beautifully I think, talked about the nuance of this in a way showing that there are really

serious concerns here that should be taken seriously. That does pain me when I see activism shut down the truth. So i'm that I can take a stand on that. One. I only want people to have what I have. I would never not want somebody to transition who doesn't need it. What I want is a safety system. I went through a safety system, right, I went through a whole a whole thing to get where I am today. I never looked back ever, made the just choice as an adult

have made my life so amazing. Transition is amazing for people who actually need it. We don't have a safety system. We have a sloppy medical system that I really feel is sort of using the trans community in a way that on some level experimentation, on some level money and what you said, Marco is it's so messy here. We don't have any We're not even like documenting what's going on here. On top of that, why do I get shut down from the trans community when I just want

to have a conversation. All I want is for this to be safe. That's all I want. Yet I get constantly shut down. I get constantly called the transphobe turf you know, I'm a boot liquor. I mean, how dare people say that to me? I've been in this community for a long Yes, it's sick what they yeah? You know, meaning that meaning that, like I'm citing, I'm siding with the wrong people. If they really cared, they would hear all sides through the story and they would hear everything.

Because I care, And it's not that I want to shut down medical. I want medical to be tightened up. I want us to understand what's going on here. I don't want kids to be rushed through a system when you rush. This isn't a rush. This should never be a rush. This is something slow, methodical, maybe even you can get the person out of it. You know. I don't want to be trans I wish to God I was born a man, but I'm not, and I have to fix it. That being said, why are we not

helping these people get out of that disorder? Instead were like literally shoving them back in the disorder. I thought mental health care was to help people sort of acclimate, do things, even possibly move them forward throughout to get them out of that situation. I don't see that. I see this desire to create this transgender space so big and so powerful. Yeah, not my area. So talking about, you know, the issues with treatment, I just got to listen to you know, Tobac and maybe that she has

more more ground in there. Let me let me kind of go back to a theme that I kind of find it interesting and I kind of let it go. This theme of identity. I would I would be fascinating. I would love to hear what people think about the way identities kind of used in relationship to you know, sex,

gender and so forth, because it's it's meterial. Why so, first thing, I think there's a mixing up of of two issues, and one is people getting to you know, use this kind of self identification or this kind of identity or self self construction or self uh say, self certification. Let's say you have identity right in an instrumental way, so the idea that you can you know, whatever you want to go to women's prison and so your self efference. But that's very kind of instrumental and obviously kind of

insincere and so on. But the other it blends into something that I find more interesting, which is how do people construct and develop their own identity with respect to sex and gender? Uh? In a in a space of discourse where if I'm right, you know, we are not we just you know, we're not helping people think clearly about these things, and things become incredibly confusing and incredibly kind of in a way, let's say, ungrounded from from reality,

at least biological reality. But that doesn't end up, in my view, in a place where everyone is just you know, creative and free to determine their own very special personality. It actually ends up in a place where people seem to adopt this kind of very rigid and kind of constraining views of gender. And so it's kind it's a bit paradoxical. And what I think is that you know, when you're talking about so I talked about sex and gender,

this this this connection that was introduced. It was really introduced at some point between the biology the body and sex from gender, which is kind of in the mind and in a sense in society, you know, come from from societies and reinforcement processes and so on. And then there's a third step, which is you're moving from this thing about gender, which is still measurable because you can you can study sex differences and study say sex differences

in personality or behavior in certain conditions. You can do you know, run expert ements some people and see, you know, how amazing females react to different kinds of conditions. You can you can measure see cognitive abilities in man and women, so you can you're still an objective level when you're moving to gender identity. It's not just an extension of the same thing. You've really cross the boundary because do

you see what I mean? So because you're in real now when in two ways, one is you're you're really entering a place where it seems to be all about subjective, the subjective perspective. You're kind of cut all ties to to even what's kind of measurable and objective and consensual. And on the other hand, you know, I don't know if I agree with that, but right, but get But that's what I think. It would be interesting to know how everyone is thinking about this. And then identity is

so fascinating because it really is. You know, that's one place where I think everyone agrees or should agree if they're if they agree with me. Social construction really is a thing, right, It's a there's a big, really big chump in a way we develop our identities of construction. And I you know, one example, you know, let's say you drink, you stop drinking, you have problems with drinking,

and then you stop drinking. What are you? Right? Are you a person who had a problem, you know, a drinking problem and now you recover or you know, so if you go to AA, that's not the way it works out. You actually you're strongly encouraged to adopt an identity of I'm an alcoholic, right, and I will always be blah blah blah. So and that I'm not criticizing it could be therapeutic in some in some context, right, So I'm not disputing that it can have a function.

But it's interesting because whether you end up being you know, Okay, I'm just this person who had a drinking problem, versus I'm an alcoholic and that's my identity. Part of my identity really depends on the kind of social you know, what's your social environment, kind of you know, directs your attention to the way you explain certain things to yourself and the kind of explanations and interpretations that are offered

to you. And you know, porn addiction. I'm friends with some people who do research on Some people argue that's not a thing. By the way, I would say, yeah, I'm on the fence on that one, right, But one of the let's say, one of the readings of the evidence is that porn addiction is not not really about the behavior of people. So it's not like you really have a disordered behavior, particularly with respect to other people.

It really has to do with the way people come to interpret what they're doing in terms of their identity. You see what I mean, so like shame, like they feel shame for their activities, whereas the ones be a bunch of different things. But there's there's a construction process at the end of which you're saying, I'm a porn addict, or I'm I don't know, I'm I'm I'm a sinner, or maybe like an identity. I never want to adopt

I'm a porn addict. Even if I am a porn addict, I don't want that to be my idity, right, I would say to that because I studied hypersexuality before and so called porn addiction, and I want to acknowledge that definitely, excessive porn use exists. Problematic porn use exists. There are some people who use porn to the point of it negatively affecting their day to day life, impairing their work, their relationships. That is real. But is it an addiction

or is it a poor coping skill? And if you actually talk to these individuals, like I agree, I think there's an aspect for some people who use it as an identity, because when you say that to other people, they immediately understand what you're referring to to some extent, and I think it also shifts the responsibility to say this is a problem as opposed to these are potentially bad choices I am making in terms of my day to day life. So I don't think we should shame

people who struggle with pornography. I think definitely like good treatment, same thing with anything. Good treatment is very important, and I think I think there should be less shame around talking about it. For people who do talk about their issues, applaud them. I think that must take a lot of courage, because obviously there is a lot of shame and stigma around talking about that. But again, it's about going to the evidence and doing it in a way that is

not political. Is not about appealing to particular activist groups or whomever. It's about really trying to figure out what is this about, regardless of whom it might anger. And I just can I just go back to Buck's earlier

point about prisons. As someone who has worked with sex offenders, many of the people who are advocating for self id policies, I imagine they have probably never sat down face to face with a sex offender, because if you have, you know that this is a completely different type of person that you're dealing with. You cannot take anything that they say at face value, and especially not when if they are convicted on a rape. You do not put them in a place where they potentially access to more victims.

So it's just beyond me that this is happening. And in terms of why we are talking about the definition of woman as opposed to what is a man, I always just say to people, look at who was advocating for this, and that will tell you why you go. So you're making some really good points about cases where there's queer potential violations. But do you all agree that it's perfectly fine for children, children and adults to change their pronoun if they want to. Do you see any

problem with like more innocuous things. It doesn't infringe on the rights of others, but it's validating their own inner experience. Well that I feel like there needs to be a little nuance attached to that because some of the stuff I'm sort of reading and hearing about is that if we don't sort of socially transition these kids, they'll grow out of their just for space. Right now, that being said, I was raised in that space of male. You know, I was a tomboy and my parents called me, you know,

a book. I was, you know, that way, and on some level, that would be considered social transitioning, right, So I'm not I can't say that I'm one hundred percent sure. Again, I always go to the kids, you know. That's sort of my focus today and me being in these spaces and when adults want to do things, I just you know what, come on, you can do what you want. I really do feel like who cares. I don't care decides they want to be a different program. I don't

care what they do. To be honest with you, I'm sad if they make mistakes medically, but I don't don't really care. I really so I'm wondering if we do give this sort of space to children. I live in California, and California is implementing many things in the school systems, and you know, in the younger school systems that I disagree with, And so I wonder if letting a kid who's ten or eleven sort of be a he or she is that social transitioning or is that just playing

around with you know, their gender space? And you know, so I'm kind of stuck. I'll be honest, I am stuck on that with kids, because again, I just want kids to be free and do whatever they need to do and hopefully they'll just grow up and be okay with themselves. But you know, so to just like put these stamps of male and female on them when they might feel or be born the other way feel feels sort of we're pushing them into a space. But on a sense, I don't understand a ten year old taking

on the non binary. There are ten year olds taking on non binary now, and I wonder to myself if that's dangerous. I start having a problem with this kind of stuff when you're what you're doing, more or less consciously is introducing false explanation, right this, Yeah, so it's that What really bothers me when you say introducing you know,

see you can change your products, can you. You know it's not the thing itself That bothers me is when by doing that, you're kind of introducing a whole way of thinking about what it means to be saying male and female and so forth, that is, uh is false. That's where I start having so to take the portant addiction, and again I'm not taking a stand on on the evidence because I'm not that familiar. But I think it's just an interesting example. And of course my intention was

not to shame any one with you know, problems. We know, we know trying to shame people. It's but that's the that's a perfect example because in that case, we feel we can and should have a debate about whether people who say I'm a porn addict actually are porn addicts or not. You know, you're that's your identification with a

certain thing. But we're we're debating. Doesn't make sense to say that because it matters because if we say, you know, because we could say, okay, well what if some people want to say their porn addicts, you know, were good for them, but that you actually have a problem now because it implies, you know, if you if you validate that, it implies that pornography, say it works in a certain way, it can make you an addict, just like drugs can.

You know, there are implications for our understanding of the world that might actually matter quite a bit. I have no battery, right, no battery? Do we feel let's say, do we feel we can't have the same kind of conversation. It's like, Okay, I understand, I get why kind of you're you're saying that, but does it make sense say that what you're interpreting as being non binary actually is

being do you see what I mean? So I do asymmetry though, but the you know the other side would say that you're privileging physical characteristics over psychology as the truth. This is what they would say, you know that because uh, and that's what would probably makes their blood boil listening to what you just said, is that you're saying that like one is real and the other thing isn't real.

But I think that the point you made is a really good one actually, And I gave you an example that everyone can relate to, and you you found it funny when I told you this, But I really think no one's given me a good challenge to this. And let's take the field of gifted education. Okay, imagine if all of a sudden, giftedness was purely based on self report, that there was no objective, do you know what I mean?

Like suddenly, like any child can just show up to the school be like I'm a gifted student, like I deserve special resources and everything. Like we'd be like maybe like there is something that can be scientifically needs to be measured here that you are going to actually benefit

from those resources in some way. But I would almost not be surprised if educators will be like, sure, if you identify as gifted, you are gifted education programs, Well you're right, because gift we're seeing a trend Gifted education programs are being cut because there's not a high representation of African Americans in gift education. So instead of believing in African Americans that they are capable of excellence at all,

they're just cutting the programs. And I don't think that's the right message we need to be sending to African Americans children, is like anyway we need to believe in people.

But so you see my analogy there, and no one's been able to really kind of, you know, challenge to challenge that in a way that I've been satisfied with because I don't think we do want to live in a world where everything is self report all all of a sudden, And I think that's a lot of what you all are are trying to say, like, hold up, we don't want to move to that. And Deborah's in

her yeah, in her head sees the apocalypse happening. Where we do go we do like Deborah sees it sees the she's going to the nth degree in her head of where this is all heading. You know, I can I just speak to one point. I think Buck and I this may be the only point in which we have a different opinion in terms of the social transition of kids, and that research has shown that for kids who socially transition, they are more likely to go on

to persisting in their gender dysphoria. So I agree with you, Buck, I think I don't think kids should be tied to gender stereotypes. I think let kids play with the toys they want, have the friends they want, and an ideal situation. When this issue was less political, less politicized, you could let a child live however they want it and use whatever pronouns and whatever, let the child eventually decide how they want to live. But nowadays I would I mean

here from parents all the time. If you have a little boy, say who is even slightly feminine? Everybody wants to jump on that and say, oh, you must really be a girl. Are you a girl? Have you thought about being a girl? And talk to parents about it. It's and it's like these are children, you know, kids

say all types of crazy things. They want to experiment, and we give them that freedom and space instead of wanting to make this something so concrete, and especially with the so called non binary children, I think this is just creating more confusion for these kids, because no, there's no such thing as non binary, and children need their parents to say to them, you know what, if you have a boy who puts on a wig, he's not now a girl, or he's not somewhere in between male

and female. He's still a boy just wearing a wig. Otherwise, they don't have any understanding of gender and the fact that gender is permanent for the most part, right except for the what is it six and one thousand people who are transgender in adulthood. And then also with regards to pronouns, I think adults should be able to identify how they want. They them. I'm not a fan of

just because it's not scientific. You're not a fan of they them, Well, that's a valid it's a valid gender identity, right right, I mean even I mean you can identify is that I'll call someone, I'll call someone they them, but don't tell me that's what signs and don't say that you're also the same as someone who that your perspective, I would say, should be taken as much weight as someone who has actually medically transitioned, because to me, that

comes across the disrespect. Thank you, thank you for saying I'm not the same, I'm not the same as a non binary. Yet now we're put under that we're completely I mean, you can just put as side to side, you know, beside each other. There is no way we are the same. We're not the same. Problem for me with just self iding as non binary. For example, I'll

give you another example. We had a horrible shooting at called Club Q, and all of a sudden, that shooter decided, I don't know, maybe they were maybe they are non binary. I don't know, because now we don't have any basis to sort of push against somebody who shot up a bunch of people and then all of a sudden said I'm a non binary they then and the community was like, no, they're not, they're not non binary. They look like a man.

I mean, some of the stuff that was coming out of their mouth was so hypocritical and so contradictory and be phobia, what kind of phobia? And be phobia, which is phobia of envs or non binary people, which I'm joking. Oh, I've never heard that one before. Okay, it was actual non binary people, actual non binary people denying that this person takes that identity of non binary, saying that they

only did it because of the shooting. Sure it's hypocritical, but going back to the fact that there is there is there are more than one thing in play here. So the purely instrumental kind of manipulative adoption of all identities for some purpose, and people who actually sincerely take on an identity because it explains about them. That's exactly my point. And I'm not saying that someone doesn't feel

non binary. But the problem is, now anyone can just be non binary and then does that put them into a space. You can't say anyone can identify as non binary and then at the same time say, well accept them. Of course, people don't think the way the way they say that. I completely agree with that. Trampa, Yeah, can I call you trumpa of course I was. I was not arguing that non binary is not a thing. That's

the That's the crucial point. I'm trying to make Actually, if there are people who say, you know, genuinely identify and say I feel I'm non binary, I'm extremely curious to know, you know, what they why they're thinking that, what they're feeling, what kind of phenomena they're referring to. Can we maybe is it all? I don't think it's all subjective, by the way, because when people tell you why,

you know they're so. For example, some of the and it's a constellation of categories, right, but some things within this non binary gender, queer gender fluid, they do capture stuff that's real. So the fact, you know, people who they feel male or female depending on the day or right, it changes, that kind of seems you know, if you take it from one perspective, it's like, you know, yeah, whatever, But you know, from a different perspective, it's through that,

you know, personality does fluctuate a bit. People do feel differently. They have the hormonal fluctuations we have, you know, different social contests kind of bring us different sides of our personalities in play at different times. So the phenomena can be quite real. And what my argument would be, because we don't have a shared kind of a sophisticated vocabulary for talking about this kind of variation. People end up, you know, converging on these labels that seem to you know,

say everything and nothing at the same time. But I'm not saying them binary is not a thing. But as for foreign addiction, I would almost going back to it's of a thing. What she's saying is this, you know, there's some people who actually do have some let's say problematic or patterns of behavior that actually make them suffer for whatever reason. So it's not like it's not real. The question is is addiction the best framework two actually understand this thing? And I would make exactly the same

point about non binary. I'm not saying that people identify as no binary, you know, don't have reasons for doing so. But I think we should be able to have a debate about whether non binary, from a scientific point of view, is you know, a good description of what's going on or not, and also about whether it's actually helping people are hurting people in the sense that is it is it a byproduct of being only able to think about

males and females in extremely rigid terms. So whenever you feel your kind of outside the balance of these rigid boxes. Then you feel you must be you see what I mean? So yes, right, So that would be my point. And again as a as a you know, biological psychologist, I would say, uh, it's not all about biology, but I would think that biology does give you some tools to sometimes make sense of this, you know, interesting things that happen to people in relation to their sex and gender

and so forth. That's why I keep saying non binary is not trans, it's it's it's not me, it's completely my gender identity whatever you want to call it. Being a male never fluctuates. I don't fluctuate. One day I feel like a woman, one day I don't. I actually wanted to get rid of that. I literally shut that down. Well, I interviewed a non binary trans person as part of this series, and I found their perspective valuable and interesting.

That's fine, but I'm not the same as them. I'm not the same as them, and that's why they're needs. I find your experience valuable. I'm saying it's not zero synge, but we need to move away from they speak for me, because the non binary people are over speaking me constantly and saying, but you don't identify as non binary trands. So you're not even in, not even anywhere near that. I'm not even anywhere IM binary male, walk the world as male. I don't walk the world as a trans person.

Trans is my disorder that I have learned to live with, and I do not identify as trans, identify as a man. I want to be a man, and I walk the world as a man. That is the complete opposite of what is happening on that other side. And that's what I want people to here, is that we cannot be I cannot have these people representing me because I don't even agree with things that they're saying. And how can

I be put under that same umbrella. Well, my friend, I hope you feel as though we represented your voice today. You did. Yeah, I just want to make a quick point. I would argue that everybody to some extent is non binary in that yes, we all have these fluctuations, don't we all have? But but that is not that's not a reason to then say, I believe you, But why do we have to turn upside down this idea that gender and sex are binary. That's right to acknowledge that

there can be difference, there can be variation. I feel just people who want to be special. Yeah, you know, doctor doc. I'm gonna call you h Deborah. I adore you, Deborah. But you can be savage. Let's be honest. And I know that's why I know a lot of people love you because of that. I mean, you can be You remind me of like a character from one of those Quentin Taran Taro films. But you just like come in and like the Asian you know. But here's the thing. Look,

and I say that with love. I absolutely I want to hang out with you more. You know, I want to. I really want to hang out with you more. You're You're super fun. But I get a little bit of facts. Don't care about your feelings vibe from you sometimes and I guess I like me. You know, I'm not there yet because I feel like, on the one hand, I'm I'm gonna do two hands here. On the one hand, I do think that feelings are a particular truth. It's not generalizable truth. We can all agree on that, but

it is that person's truth. And there is something there's there's value in the field of psychology for studying that through qualitative methods and then various things there's value to that, but you know we do, we do need to as you make this point that's not generalizable truth. You care a lot about science, I know you do, and you care a lot about generalizable truths, and you care a lot about and it drives you bonkers, as it dries

me bonkers too. When someone makes a statement that is clearly untrue from a generalizable point of view and they make a truth claim, that drives me bunkers too. My head explodes too. So I'm with you on that, but I am kind of like one hand to hand about it in that way. If that makes sense. No, that makes sense. And I do think it's important to be compassionate, and I don't think being a truth tell it necessarily

means that you're not compassionate or not empathic. And in some cases, I think almost the way society is going that we value so much feelings and emotions in people's experiences is detrimental in some cases to them if those experiences are not warrant some amount of pushing back or challenging in a gentle way, because if it isn't so, say for someone who says they want to identifies whatever they want to identify as if it's about something else

like sexual trauma or sexism, or say not being comfortable with their sexuality, or because they are on the autism spectrum. Shouldn't those be the topics of discussion and seeking to have greater compassion standing for what they're actually going through as opposed to this band aid solution, which is that you are this so called persecuted gender minority that doesn't exist. And so especially when I see the way that I'm

going to get you in so much trouble. But I think the way that we're going in that we we can't do objective studies anymore about this in academia. You just can't. I think you have to be savage in response to that, because they're otherwise not going to listen to you. Well, I don't know if you have to. You know you you you take the rip the band aid off approach, like you will tweet. Look, sex is binary, it is, it is and change unchangeable. But you know,

whereas I would like maybe make that point. Secondly, first I would say, all, you know a subjectively, but that's all that's all. I was like before you shove it in when it works with different although it works with different people always saying yeah, some people actually in defense of the blunt approach. Okay, okay, okay, free speech. That's why we have free speech. And I'm a proponent of

free speech. Some people actually, you know, benefit from being kind of you know, walking up from from there from their slumber. Well, clearly doctor So is doing something right. She's a huge falling right. You have a lot of people that stand by you, and tramp pall over here is not every time you speak. I love her. I love her too. Yeah, so you know, I want to be respect of all your time. Today, this might be

a good time to kind of end and just thank you. Also, unless there anyone, did any of you wanted you, like dying to say or make a point here today? No, we can Okay, thank you, Thank you so much to all of you. Thank you so much. This is super fun. And uh, and if people disagree with things we said, like write comments, you know, that's what the free speech is about, right, Like, we value your comments and we value your perspective as well. It's uh, it's just that's

just how we live. That's called Thanks everyone, and have a good one. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus psychology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page

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