Dr. Debra Soh joins Dave Rubin to detail her exit from academia due to hostility over her research showing 60 to 90 percent of gender-dysphoric children desist, often becoming gay adults. She critiques the "porn addiction" label, defends James Damore's biological arguments, and exposes how diversity quotas penalize merit while Asian students face discrimination. Soh argues that rapid-onset gender dysphoria in girls stems from societal pressure or autism, warns that affirming transitions ignores biological realities of sexual orientation, and urges women to stop generalizing men under the #MeToo movement. Ultimately, she contends that ignoring biology creates confusion and harms both children and scientific integrity. [Automatically generated summary]
I thought the best way to start this thing, I don't like to look at my notes up front, but you had a line on your Patreon page that I thought summed up the whole damn thing pretty perfectly.
Your Patreon bio says, creating journalism that defends science and free speech.
Yeah, so I mean, I decided to go back to school and do my PhD in neuroscience,
and along the way I had the chance to do a placement in sexology.
So, I'd never heard of sex research before.
I had no idea what it was, but it was so fascinating to me, and I thought, it's crazy that we have the technology to look at people's brains and look at sexual arousal in the brain, and it tells us so much about what it means to be human.
So, from there, I was hooked.
I loved it.
My PhD was in Using brain imaging to look at paraphilias, which are atypical sexual interests, and hypersexuality in men.
And I love research, I always will, but I made the decision to leave academia and work full-time as a journalist now because the climate had changed so much, even between when I started my PhD and when I finished.
Yeah, and that's why the stuff that you're talking about really is at the nexus of everything that I'm doing here, because now you're on the journalist side, but it's because of the hostility that you were facing on the academic side.
So what is it that you were unearthing or studying that was so triggering to people?
And even with brain imaging, I mean, that's definitely...
a growing field.
The technology is legitimate.
But no matter what, I think because sex is still considered very taboo, people will either
project their own ideas and beliefs and values onto it, or they just don't see the value
and they think, "Why is the government funding this?"
I feel really lucky.
Being in Canada, we do have a pretty amazing scene in terms of sex research.
And my colleagues do manage to get funding, so I think that's excellent.
But my decision to leave academia, in the last two years I noticed things were starting to go a bit weird in terms of the climate and in terms of mainstream media I was seeing piece after piece about transgender kids and how young children were socially transitioning, getting on blockers, pubertal blockers.
And the media is basically saying this is the greatest thing, this is something that we should rejoice about, that these kids are so much better off after.
But from a scientific perspective, the research actually shows that the majority of kids who are gender dysphoric actually outgrow their feelings.
They're more likely to grow up to be gay in adulthood, not transgender.
And so it makes sense for them to wait, not for them to socially transition at a young age.
So, I wanted to write a mainstream piece about this, and there's been a very long-standing history between trans activists and sex researchers—a very ugly history of activists going after sex researchers if they don't like what someone's study says or what they say publicly.
So, I thought about it for a long time.
I wrote the piece, and I sat on it probably for about six months, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to put it out.
I asked a bunch of my colleagues and mentors and they all said, you know what, the science is solid but you know what's going to happen if you do put this out.
And at the time I wanted to stay in academia and I said, should I wait until I get tenure?
And everyone told me, even if you have tenure nowadays, it's not going to protect you.
You can still lose your job.
So I decided eventually I couldn't stay quiet, and I thought, I'm not going to stay in an environment where I can't speak the truth, and I can't even pursue questions that are meaningful anymore, because I have to worry about who's going to get mad, and then I'm going to lose my money, my funding, and I'm going to lose my job.
So that piece went out.
It was called, Why Transgender Kids Should Wait to Transition, and then I haven't looked back since.
Yeah, so I re-read, I've read the piece before, but I re-read it this morning before we got here.
And there's a lot here.
So, how much of this is just blatantly a misunderstanding of science?
Like, I think there's partly that you have a misunderstanding of science and then you just have activists who just want you to bow to them all the time.
Are you able to sort of quantify how much of the backlash is each?
I think, to be charitable, I try to look at the other side and give them, you know, credit and try to, you know, think that they have good intentions.
Maybe people—I mean, it's pretty consistent.
All 11 studies ever done on the topic of desistance, so this phenomenon I talked about where kids grow out of their feelings of gender dysphoria, all of them say the same thing.
So the final statistic is about 60 to 90 percent.
So, this is the vast majority of kids.
You can't really question those data.
So, I think what it could be is people—I mean, trans people have a history of having to deal with medical gatekeeping, of people telling them what they feel isn't real.
I do think gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon, and I do think we should have empathy for people who are suffering.
So I think it could be coming from that place of, well, we don't want people saying that this isn't a legitimate thing or that trans people should be forced to not feel the way they do.
But in terms of, you know, these children, we should be thinking about the best outcome.
So it doesn't make sense for them to transition if that's not actually going to help them in the long term.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I do think the activists They, on some level, I think they know that they can bully sex researchers because of that history.
They know that there's only so much an academic can do, and they've won a couple battles, so I think that's part of it as well.
Yeah, so I think you've already hinted at this, and I know your work otherwise, but...
So you have no issue with trans people as people, just to be clear.
This is purely about the science related to transitioning and hormone blockers and things of that nature of a certain age, where they're doing it as young as, I think you were writing about 14, right?
And I have to say, for transgender adults, and I'd say even kids who reach puberty and still feel that way, I think transitioning is totally up to you.
If that's the path you decide to go, then power to you.
I don't think there's anyone's business to tell you what to do at that point.
Well, there are in terms of—I don't work with children.
I don't do clinical work anymore.
But in terms of the research literature, usually clinicians will wait until puberty and see how the child feels at that time when the body starts changing, when they start having crushes on their peers and that kind of thing.
And the research does show that when kids start to, you know, have crushes and start dating, and that can play a role in terms of how they feel about their bodies and whether they do outgrow it.
But just at that point, your whole body is in flux, your mental state's in flux, your physical state's in flux, and as you said, what would, did you say a percentage on that of how many of them turn out to just, they happen to be gay?
So 60 to 90% of the children undergoing these feelings turn out to be gay, and then I assume the ones that don't transition, probably most of them end up being okay with being gay, I would imagine, roughly?
Yeah, and I would say even, like, I grew up in the gay community, I have a lot of gay male friends, and they've said to me when I was young, I told my parents all the time I hated being a boy and I wanted to be a girl, and I am a girl.
And why can't I become a girl?
And now, as a gay man, I'm so comfortable, I'm so happy, and they say to me, you know, I'm kinda glad I'm not growing up in this time, because I think I probably would have transitioned.
That's interesting what you just said about a certain amount of gay men that grow up, you know, they wanted to be, or felt more like a girl or whatever, and then eventually grow out of it and are okay, because I never felt that.
Like, I played sports, and I played video games, and Transformers, all the things that my friends did, and I never felt like I was a girl or more effeminate.
People always say to me, I don't seem gay, and I'm always like, I don't know what that, you know what I mean?
I'm married to a guy.
That's pretty gay.
But I never had that.
But that's sort of just interesting about the psychology of gay people in general.
There are gay people that grow up feeling very effeminate, and there are gay men that grow up not feeling that way, and I'm sure there's women that grow up feeling very Butch or whatever, and there's women that grow up that are, you know, lipstick lesbians and the whole thing.
Because I would imagine that the certain amount of people in the gay community that would want you to never go down that road because then you could end up in a place where, oh, we would be able to prevent people from being gay, ultimately, if we can really figure out the science behind all this.
And I mean, as a straight woman, I have to say, even I right now feel like maybe I shouldn't be saying these things because I'm not gay.
I can't speak for the gay community.
But as a former sex researcher, I'm very much a proponent of I'd rather you speak as a sex researcher than a gay person or a straight person or anything else.
So, I mean, it's crazy because Even my colleagues who have the best intentions, they're doing this research because they just want to understand, why are people the way they are?
It's not—there are no nefarious intentions there, but people are so quick to jump on.
I mean, there was—earlier this year, there was a study about using AI to be able to detect whether someone is gay by looking at their face.
And so, again, studies have shown that, on average, you can see differences between straight and gay people, both men and women, in terms of facial features.
And so everyone's freaking out about this study.
And I'm thinking, why aren't we saying this is amazing that we are able to know this?
And, I mean, I think I have really good gaydar.
I've always thought I have.
And now I think, great!
Like, there's actually some quantitative data to suggest that I'm not just making things up.
And the thing is then researchers see that and say, well, I don't want to go through that.
So then they don't want to touch that topic.
So now there's, they're eventually going to be only like two different things you can probably study unless you know that what your findings, what you're going to find is going to be politically acceptable.
In which case you shouldn't be doing the research because that means you're not actually doing science.
What do you think it is about you that makes you brave enough to do this sort of thing?
Because I've had a couple other people, we're going to talk about James Damore in a little bit because you've also written about him and why the whole thing about diversity and all that, but I've had a bunch of outliers in these communities on the show and I'm always curious what it is about the specific people that make them sort of put it out there and go, I'm going to do it whether you like it or not.
Yeah, I mean, I just generally don't really care what people think about me.
And I'm pretty stubborn.
And I feel very strongly about sex research being taken seriously.
And my decision to have gone into that field.
You deal with a lot of stigma.
As I mentioned earlier, you deal with it on both sides, you know, and when you make the decision to go into the field, suddenly—when people know what you do, they will judge you on a personal level.
So I think that was part of it.
You know, I grew a very thick skin from saying, I'm going to do what I find interesting, and people can assume whatever they want about me.
And I think that just translated into now what I do as a science journalist.
But I would say, too—and I'm sure you've probably went through a similar experience—once you speak out, it becomes much easier.
And yet at the same time, if I know for a fact, like I have a friend who for many years was my lesbian friend, my one good lesbian friend.
And she was, you know, dating girls all the time and all that.
Then about three years ago, we were sitting there and she told me that she met a guy.
And now she's been with this guy for about three or four years, and they're getting married.
And she identifies basically as bisexual now, but she's exclusively been with a guy for about four years.
But what I find interesting about it is that her lesbian friends have basically all turned on her.
And these are supposed to be the people of tolerance and we should accept your sexuality and all that, but when it goes the other way, suddenly it becomes this other thing.
It's like you find, you know, there are supposedly straight married men that on the DL are sleeping with other guys, but I'm pretty sure there aren't many gay men that are in relationships or married that are sneaking out and sleeping with women.
Yeah, I think also for gay men, when you come out, it's such a big thing.
And I think to make that decision to come out is really committing to this,
as much as we don't like identity labels, it is an identity label.
So I would see it as being less common for someone who's gay to be sleeping with women on the side, because he would have likely just stayed in that camp.
Okay, so you mentioned that you study a lot of this related to the brain, and how a lot of this is sort of built into us, and you study this across Is fetish the right word?
Yeah, but I mean, I find it super fascinating, and I guess it's my way of living vicariously, you know.
So, in terms of different paraphilias, I mean, there's voyeurism, you know, known as peeping toms, exhibitionism, so people who like to expose themselves, sadism and masochism, which are different from BDSM.
So BDSM is consensual masochism and sadism, so masochism being wanting to be humiliated, Sadism is one, just your partner being humiliated.
BDSM is very much about consent, so it's not true masochism or sadism because partners will negotiate beforehand and not do anything outside of particular boundaries and that kind of thing.
What else is there?
Frauderism, so it's when people like to rub up against unsuspecting people.
So with my research, when I was still a researcher, I found that for men who are kinky, when they look at kinky pornography, the same brain network activates as when non-kinky people are looking at regular or vanilla pornography.
So it suggests that Paraphilia is maybe akin to a sexual orientation, so that's not to say that's the same as being gay, but it's the same idea conceptually that it's someone's preference, it can't be changed, and it's with them from very early on.
Because I know you've written about porn addiction and things like that, where now all of this stuff is so accessible, where obviously even Fifteen, twenty years ago, it was a lot harder to get.
I think people are probably able to test out different things and go searching for things out of curiosity, but if you really like something, I don't think it's because you happened to find it on the internet.
And with porn addiction in particular, there's no research to suggest that's a real thing, that excessive porn viewing is akin to an addiction.
Usually, if you talk to someone with problems with porn, Across the board, there's always some other reason why.
Either they're anxious, they like to procrastinate.
Well, they don't like to procrastinate, but they use it as a way of procrastinating and avoiding other things.
It's not that they're actually addicted to pornography.
So when you hear, though, that people will say, well, you're getting that dopamine hit, isn't that partly what being addicted, wouldn't you become addicted to that?
Well, that's true, but dopamine is released during a number of different things.
If you eat a nice piece of food that you like, dopamine is released.
If you see a nice picture, dopamine is released.
I mean, it's a reward, but it's responsible for a lot of different things.
So I think that's one case of, I mean, I do have some issue with science journalists Watering things down and liking to take one finding or one study and kind of, you know, representing it or misrepresenting it.
So, it's not really an accurate take on it.
But I understand why people think that, because dopamine has been seen as the addiction neurotransmitter.
And you see so much about porn addiction, sex addiction, I'd say probably a year ago.
It was everywhere.
Everyone was talking about porn addiction and sex addiction, even though, again, there's no legitimate research to suggest either of those things are real.
So when you've studied all of these things, what are you finding out about the brain as a neuroscientist?
And can anything be done for any of these things if somebody was partaking in these things and either didn't want to or at least wanted to understand it or whatever else?
And so the difference between someone who has a parent... So meaning women's kinks or whatever will change with time, where a man would be less inclined to?
Yeah, that lesbians, it sort of burns very hot for that early period and then the U-Haul shows up as a joke and then just like the desire for sex just disappears.
Well, men on average do tend to have a higher sex drive, so I could see if you're in a relationship where it's two women, how their sex drive might be a bit lower.
So I remember when that news first broke that this sexist memo was going around and I read it and I thought, okay, this is not sexist.
And then I saw the statement from Google that he was perpetuating gender stereotypes.
And I thought, oh, no.
And so I wrote that column for The Globe and Mail to speak to the science and say, you know what?
The science that James cited was absolutely 100 percent legitimate, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with saying that.
And if you actually read his memo, you'll see that he's not a misogynist.
And we actually—so the podcast that I co-host with Jonathan Kaye called Wrong Speak, we actually interviewed him for our first episode.
And if you listen to him speak, you can see.
I mean, he's very much for equality between the sexes.
He says that if men and women don't talk to each other, that's going to harm both of us.
But it was much easier for them to paint him as a misogynist and as an alt-right figure, because I guess, you know, there's nothing else going on in the news.
Did you feel that the article, or at least when James was able to get out there and say what he thought, whether he did it here or on Rogan or a series of other podcasts, did you feel that that was able to break through to some of the people that it needed to break through to?
Like, I know it gets to the masses, right?
It gets to the people who appreciate maybe what happens in here or on Rogan or things like that.
But for any of the people that really need to hear it, the ones that are at Google or No, I think it's gotten worse, if anything, honestly, which is terrible.
and at schools and all that.
Is there any sign that any of this pushback against it has taken root?
No, I think it's gotten worse, if anything, honestly, which is terrible.
I think they are so set in that mindset that you really can't, you can't say anything.
I think reasonable people, if you talk to them—I was surprised, actually, at that time, because a lot of people that I knew that were really intelligent, really rational, had bought into this narrative that he was a sexist person who said that women are biologically inferior and are not capable of Engineering or working in tech.
Has all of this, and being part of this, and being very public about your opinions, has this changed your politics at all?
I find that it consistently has changed people's politics.
Usually it shifts people to more of what I would say is a classical liberal position, but a libertarian, just more of a less government position, because that's where I think At the moment, the most freedom lays.
Yeah, I would agree with that, and especially the idea of the government.
I used to be definitely more left, much, much more left.
I would still call myself a liberal, but definitely now that I see, because I used to think, well, it's good for the government to come in and help people and to kind of set the tone, but now I'm seeing things that are not hate speech are being considered hate speech.
Genuine facts—we're not allowed to say them anymore.
So I'm much more skeptical now of government intervention, of policies dictating what people can and cannot do or say.
Yeah, you're my kind of liberal, so you're good to go in here.
So one of the things that I think is fascinating about all of what we're talking about here is that it's not just about gender and sex and sexuality, but this is also leaking into all sorts of other things, talking about ethnicity and color of skin and all of that.
I have, yeah, I wrote about how university applications, and particularly Harvard, has been discriminating against Asians for decades, to the point where Asians, when they apply to university, will want to hide their ethnicity in hopes that that's going to give them a fair chance of actually getting into the school.
Yeah, so alright, so somebody that's watching this right now that doesn't know about this, they're going to go, wait a minute, why would Harvard discriminate against Asian people?
Because apparently there are too many Asians there.
If it's based solely on SAT scores and meritocracy, there's a very high proportion of Asian students, and so in the name of quote-unquote diversity and inclusion, Asian students get penalized.
So this, to me, is the most blatant example of why this diversity stuff is complete nonsense.
Because people, on face value, it seems nice.
We want to help people.
We want to help groups that maybe have struggled more, or for whatever reason.
And I think we should.
And there's probably many good ways to do that.
Maybe investing in more education, or whatever else.
I'm happy to hear your thoughts on that.
But what they take as a good thought, then they don't think all the way through, which means, okay, now we're gonna have to punish people who have worked very hard and done everything right.
And by and large, the Asian community, whether it's Chinese or Japanese or Korean or whatever else, have worked really hard and put a focus on education and family.
And then what is the result of that?
It's now harder, if not almost impossible at some level, to get into Harvard.
And the craziest thing, I don't understand why people think this is acceptable.
And even when I wrote that column, I had a number of Asians reach out to me and say, you know, don't, don't be used as a token for the far right, and I'm totally okay with this, this is fair, and I'm thinking, you know, what are you on?
I think especially for the kids who are applying to these schools and who are okay with having to score much higher on the SAT in order to get a fair chance.
I think they've just been told, you know, this is how it has to be.
But this idea that it should be an equality of outcome as opposed to opportunity is silly.
And it doesn't actually deal with actual differences in terms of, you know, in terms of the difference that we see and the reasons why there are these differences.
I got it across the board of, you know, many races.
So I was grateful for that, because I wasn't sure how people were going to respond to that piece, but I felt very strongly that I had to say something.
I sense that there's some massive minority groups that are breaking right now.
I think the Asian community because of the, I hate saying community, but you know, you have to use some words to describe some of this.
But I think the black community is breaking.
This is what a lot of what Candace Owens is talking about.
I sense this happening in the gay community.
I sense this happening in the Jewish community very similarly because of the Asian community because of Hard work and education and all that, and so then we decide we have to put you at the bottom of the oppression Olympics.
So there's an interesting, like, strange alliance now building up.
I see, well, we were talking a bit about this earlier about how the left is going to eat its own until there is only one person left, so it's only a matter of time, really.
We're all going to find each other and say, yeah, we've had enough of this.
I mean, gay men, you guys don't count, doesn't count to be gay anymore, so.
So in a weird way, I'm actually okay being thrown out in that regard of this pyramid because I don't wanna play that game.
But I think actually finally some gay men, especially gay white men, because now they're fully thought of as the enemy.
I mean, I've even seen things on college campuses where LGBT organizations are saying, well, you can't be a gay white man and be the president of the organization because you're one of the bad guys.
Well, I saw what you had to deal with, too, with that professor who said that the LGBT community doesn't want you at the, was it the University of New Hampshire?
Do you know that, so I didn't know at the time, so I think, much of my audience will know what you're referring to, but I spoke at University of New Hampshire and there were all these hecklers there, and there was a trans woman who I did not know was a professor.
I didn't know that until literally two months later, who was screaming at me how much I hate trans people and all this, and I kept saying, I want you to have equality under the law, and I want you to be treated with decency and respect, and I hope you find someone that loves you, and all of the things I would want for anyone else.
I just don't want the government using, dictating what pronouns I can use to refer to you.
And basically, she was calling me alt-right and all that.
And of course, it turns out she's a gender studies professor.
Yeah, I think because everything is, there's so much based in subjective feeling and validating people's experiences, you apparently can't question someone's experience.
So if someone's offended or they don't like you, What can you say?"
So, I could see that.
And it's very much rewarding people for being emotionally driven instead of—I think the best way to have a debate is to remove emotion and just try to look at the facts as objectively as you can, no matter what the issue is.
So, it's that.
It's that they don't really have any sort of method to how they do even their research.
They don't want facts to actually count because they believe in this postmodern drivel that facts have been arrived to by mechanisms that they don't believe in.
Yeah, but you know, I think on some level, I think some of these scholars know that what they're doing is very lucrative, and so they're just basically trying to shut people down in any way they can.
They can't really justify it, but, you know, they just keep screaming about it, and academics who have better things to do, like actually do real research, and they've got their courses and their students and a million other things
and their 80-hour work weeks, they don't have time to deal with this.
So this is why there's such a lopsided discourse in terms of what you see coming out of the
universities.
And there are some institutions that, you know, they won't allow academics to engage
with the media without permission first.
So that's part of it, too.
It's just it's really an unfair battle right now that's being fought.
How do you think we get to a place where, specifically related to sexuality and topics related to gender and sex, where we will be able to talk about it in a better way?
So, for example, the Me Too movement, where everybody, every, I think, basically thinking person understands that there were some really bad people here that did some really bad stuff.
obviously Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and some people that really, that drug people
and had years of history of doing all this.
And then there's all sorts of other people who seem like they're just getting swept up in it
or baselessly accused or all that.
Now, you can be for the idea of the Me Too movement without being for taking down all of these other people
or also, and I guess what the real issue is, is litigating everyone's history,
where we could all look back and go, I did this, someone did that to me, this, that,
College kids now have an assigned things before they hook up.
I mean, really where we're creating this situation where our interpersonal relations are gonna have almost nothing to do with the stuff that's hardwired into us, the stuff that you study.
I think Me Too probably started as something honorable, and I do agree that women and men have been dealing with harassment for far too long, and that it doesn't get taken seriously sometimes.
But it's to the point now where relations are so strained, especially between men and women, I sense men are terrified, and that's not going to be helpful across the board for anybody.
I think especially when you look at Shades of Grey, well, I mean, there's so much I could say on this.
Yeah, let's go!
The best place to start would be With consent, say, I think one message that's been missing
is women—I've written about this—women need to advocate for themselves.
And that's not to say if you experience harassment or if you were assaulted that you
are at fault.
I'm not advocating victim-blaming.
But I think what's missing from this narrative, women are portrayed as though they're helpless,
and if something happens to them, they're helpless, and that they're basically—they
no say in terms of how men.
And, you know, I've written about sexism in the sciences and how women are basically
being scared off, I think, of going into the field.
As someone with a Ph.D. in a science field, yeah, you deal with sexism, and it's unpleasant,
but I still got my degree, and now I'm speaking out about it.
So if you want to achieve something, you can.
Sexism is not so terrible in the world that women can't achieve what they want.
So, going back to consent, you know, I think women need, young women especially, need to be told, you know, you have a say in this.
If you don't like something or if you don't want to do something, say so.
Don't feel like it's on the man to I don't know, read your mind.
And I feel like I'm going to get in so much trouble for saying this, but I think that empowers women instead of telling them, you know, just really hope that this doesn't happen to you.
And if it does, then get on Twitter and use the hashtag and talk about how men are terrible and men are trash.
Men are not terrible.
There are lovely men in the world.
I love men.
You know, there are some bad men, but you can't generalize to all men.
I mean, you even see this, the amount of articles where I see, you know, we have to take down white, it's always white men that we have to take down, or now it's women's turn to rule the world, or all of these things, and it's like, well, a woman could be president, or a woman could be, you know, anything that a man could be, but it shouldn't be because she's a woman, it should be because she's...
But we've seen this sort of hysterical reaction to it, and I think that that now is just another one of these places where we're on this crazy pendulum just bouncing back and forth.
Yeah, I'm hoping it's going to come back to the middle, and hopefully not too much damage will be done before that happens, and that the, you know, relations between men and women aren't going to be so terribly strained.
I do think we're reaching that point, though, because there are only so many men left who haven't been accused of a Me Too moment, so, you know, it's only a matter of time.
I have a running joke with some of my friends that I know a lot of great, straight girls in LA that are single.
A lot of straight, great girls.
I don't know a lot of straight guys that I think are great.
I know some straight guys that are kind of whatever, but I don't know a lot of straight guys that kind of have their shit together.
So I have all these girls that are like, oh, can't you set me up with a guy?
And I'm like, Not the guys I know, which does show that there's sort of a crisis, I think, in masculinity or something.
And obviously Jordan Peterson is addressing this at some level, although now I've spent so much time with him, I think he's addressing it in a certain way, almost equally for men and women, although people only focus on the male part.
But do you know, is anyone doing research on sort of what is happening to young men in particular right now?
This sort of set of friends that I'm talking about, these girls, usually are in their early 30s.
And they're single, which often cases, a lot of them, their friends are married already, and they're on the hunt, and they've got good jobs, and they look good, and they take care of themselves, and all of those things.
And I just don't see the equivalent here.
I don't know, maybe there's an odd subset of, because L.A.
is a little bit of an odd place, maybe there's more gay people here, I don't know exactly.
Yeah, but I mean, it could be that for guys who are a certain age, there's a reason.
But the same thing for women of a certain age, and not to say they're your friends, of course, but, you know, if you're focused on your career, maybe you're not used to Yeah.
Do you think that the feminist movement, which I know is sort of...
Ancillary been talking about it this whole time, that they really did give up something very special by putting so much focus on work and success in that way.
I mean, you know, I think back to my childhood now, which I think in retrospect was so amazing.
She worked before, I'm the oldest of three, she worked before I was there and then she didn't work all the years that she was raising us and then went back to work after.
And that having someone at home that was Cooking and taking care of us and making sure we got to school and all those things Like that's like the greatest thing that anyone could do it happens to more often be the woman But that's a that's a pretty great thing.
Yeah, so the article you're referring to, there was this piece, I think it was in Newsweek, that these parents are raising their twins as Fabies, T-H-E-Y, babies, Fabies, and they're gonna let them pick their gender.
And it's like, You're going to create more psychological problems than you were trying to hide them from, most likely.
And the thing is, I've heard stories now where people are terrified of giving their daughters dolls, and what's really funny is you have some of these really progressive parents who raise their girls, they only have gender-neutral toys, or they give them boys toys, and then the girl obviously goes to school and sees girl-typical toys, and wants to play with them, and the parents are horrified, and they think, oh, this is the patriarchy coming in.
Yeah, but this is why when people say, I think, to a bunch of us that are in this space, this, oh, you guys are overstating what this thing is.
It's just a bunch of angry activists or whatever.
It's like, we've seen it infect academia, which you addressed already.
We've seen it infect the home and how you're supposed to raise your kids.
Even just thinking about this now, it's like, I think, I read something on this, and if not, there's definite proof of it, that Disney made a decision along the way, now that they have Star Wars and Marvel, that Star Wars was gonna be more marketed to girls, and Marvel was gonna be the boys thing.
Now I'm a big Star Wars guy, and I would see these commercials, and it was all girls in the ships, and girls with the lightsabers, I have no problem with that, obviously.
Rey, the leading character in the last one, is a girl, it's all good, the girls can do whatever they want, But pushing marketing on them seems odd to me.
And although I'm sure there are many girls out there that want to be Jedi, there's obviously more boys.
So the way that we even market, and I suspect they're marketing in a way that's hurting their bottom line, in the name of tolerance?
Right, so you're gonna get this odd thing then when eventually, after enough marketing, boys are gonna wanna play with the girl thing and then feel weird about it.
These people have too much time on their hands, yeah.
I just say let kids do what they want and acknowledge that as long as you give them free choices, you probably won't have too much say at the end of the day, but at least they'll be happy.
The only thing I would say is, with Wrong Speak, we just launched our first season last month, so we spoke with James Damore and Lindsay Shepard.
We also did an episode on rapid onset gender dysphoria, so it's this phenomenon of adolescent girls who are suddenly seeing their transgender, even though they've had no previous signs of gender dysphoria, and actually their problems have nothing to do with gender.
So they either will be diagnosed by a mental health professional, but the person will say, I can't say that I have to, you know, affirm your child's gender, because they can otherwise get into a lot of trouble and lose their jobs if they don't.
So technically a therapist or a clinician could feel that this is some other issue going on or something, but they have to actually affirm what the child says to the parents and in all the documents because they will lose their job.
And so, in Toronto, what happened—what the Preston case was, my colleague Kenneth Zucker, he had a clinic where he saw gender dysphoric children, and people said that he was practicing conversion therapy.
He was not.
So, conversion therapy, I do not stand for, it's trying to turn gay children straight, but
sexual orientation is not the same thing as gender. So gender in young
children is flexible and it becomes more stable with age. So when patients would
come to him and say, you know, I want to be the opposite sex, he would say,
So if you have, the example I've been using, if you have a little boy who says he's a girl, he will likely be a gay man, and he will likely grow to be comfortable in his male gender identity.
So for 99% of us, our biological sex is our gender.
Maybe, but I'm all about presenting the data and speaking to facts and the science and standing up for sex research, whether it infuriates people on the left or the right.
And it's like, There are a bunch of us that are not white, but I mean, I've been called a white supremacist, I've been called a Nazi, so that's the level that we're at right now, and they have nothing else, so I think it's a good sign.