Sept. 20, 2024 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
52:34
WTW61: That Time Jon Ronson Both Sides'ed Trans People's Lives
Part 5 of our series Jon Ronson's Things Fell Apart Falls Apart Alright, this episode of Things Fell Apart is what really did it. S2E5. This is the one that made us absolutely certain we had to do this series. Jon Ronson introduces listeners to January Littlejohn, a "concerned mother" in Florida, and what happened when her child began questioning their gender identity. However, in his neverending quest to both sides literally every topic, Ronson misses some major plotholes to the story, and allows harmful rhetoric and misinformation to stand virtually unchallenged; thankfully we have Lydia to help fill in the gaps that Things Fell Apart listeners didn't get to hear! If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
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What's so scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 61.
I'm Thomas.
That's Lydia.
How you doing?
Hello.
I'm doing pretty well.
Just so excited we've been getting these out.
Yeah, and I'm particularly excited for this one.
I just want to tell everyone that Lydia did such a phenomenal job with this.
You know, it's funny.
As I was editing, I realized I said this was the worst both sides.
Which is actually, it's both, I had made the point in the previous one that like, oh, this isn't the most consequential both-sides-ing, but it's the worst.
And then in this one, I had forgotten that I'd made that, I'd said, no, this is the worst both-sides-ing like four times.
And I don't, I actually, it's a tie.
I can't actually decide.
They're both so bad.
This one is terrible, has a couple of different both-sides that are horrible, and is the most harmful.
You know, I feel like this one takes the cake.
Yeah.
I think this one probably deserves a bit of a content note.
This is Jon Ronson both sides-ing trans people in a way that's really, really irresponsible.
And just want a heads up that we're going to hear from anti-trans bigots and we're going to hear a lot of bullshit.
But, you know, don't worry.
You're also going to hear me yelling about it back when my voice wasn't shitty.
So, you know.
So trade off there, loud volume, but a clearer quality voice.
Cause I wasn't sick back then, but this is truly frustrating.
This is one where, as I was editing back, I was like, God, I'm, I'm more mad again.
This isn't accidental.
It's not accidental.
This one is very intentional.
Let's see.
So I've got my content note, audio note for the audio minded people.
I did actually pipe this in kind of accidentally mono.
I don't know why I did that.
I just like the track I armed to listen to it was mono.
And so it does sound a bit weird, but honestly, whoever produces that podcast pans stuff too much and I get tired of it anyway.
So I'm kind of glad, but it does make some of the like spacey stuff phase cancel.
So anyway, it sounds a little off, but like just letting you know, that's why.
I learned something today.
Also, before we get started, a huge shout out to Ian Pinovich for gathering transcripts, essentially, of all the episodes for us so we wouldn't have to keep listening to this over and over and over again with Jon Ronson.
We could kind of just look at the transcript instead and piece together how we were going to put together this entire series.
So thanks, Ian.
You're the best.
And we've never said Ian's name, so it could be Pinovich or something.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Let me know.
Thanks, whoever you are.
You mean a lot to us.
No, that was super helpful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Here's another thing I want to say.
This transphobic stuff and this medical misinformation that you're going to hear, John, be too cowardly to endorse, but like, it'll definitely help it along.
It's wrong.
It's medical misinformation.
It's incorrect.
It's harmful.
I don't know how many people listening will have any sympathy for the TERF point of view, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some people who might feel a little bit unsure about certain things.
And I did want to say that one of the things that the TERF side is using really effectively is this CAS report.
I came out of the UK and it's so fucking frustrating that we live in this kind of world where the side that is just objectively incorrect has power and the ability to put out a fucking bullshit report that's completely wrong.
But because it has the word report in it and you found someone to put their name on it, someone who has some credentials.
And then they all go to bat for it.
They all talk about it like this cast report was this bombshell, blah, blah, blah.
I'm bringing it up because it wasn't.
It's lies.
It's absolutely lies.
And we have a good serious inquiries only.
What happened was some actual people who know what the fuck they're talking about did a kind of a reply report that just outlines all the ways the cash report is just lies or just incorrect or out of context and all those things.
And so if that's something you've heard of, the cash report, and you're worried about it, and you're worried about in the sense that like, oh, what if the TERFs are right about anything?
You don't need to worry about it.
They're not right about anything.
They're completely wrong.
This is medical misinformation.
And we'll have the SIO out, the serious inquiries only out, to really help drive that case.
All right, final teaser before getting to the episode.
Remember how in the Judy episodes, the last thing we played was a video that Lydia found that basically completely undercuts the entire thing?
Yeah.
Well, Lydia found a bombshell for this one that is so fucking good.
It might be better than that.
And it's, I can't even believe it.
And so just as a, just as a teaser, you know, look forward to that.
Look forward to another massive, I can't fucking believe that I'm hearing what I'm hearing because Lydia found the perfect bombshell video.
So I can't wait for y'all to hear that and I hope you enjoy it.
So here we go.
Content note for transphobic.
Fucking shit.
But here it is, the episode about season two, episode five of Things Fell Apart.
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So hun, it's time to talk about episode five of Things Fell Apart.
Yes.
And this is one that was so bad and so frustrating that not only is this the second recording we're doing on this, which never happens, like that almost never happens, but it was like, we can't, we didn't get it all in the first one.
There's so much that I think we have to just go through it.
Otherwise we're going to be frustrated that we didn't call back to that one point or we didn't say that one thing.
And like, we were so overwhelmed with things to say that I think that's the best way to frame this and the best way to go through it.
Yeah.
Make sure we don't miss anything.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I expect we'll be here about five hours going through.
It's a 36 minute episode.
So, you know, multiply it out.
You go with like gam rules, right?
And how long it's going to be.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
What do we need to know to set this up?
All right.
To set this up, the title of the episode, episode five, is Things Weren't Going Back to Normal.
The tagline when you open up like your podcast player, there's just a very quick tagline on the main page, and it says, a family schism is co-opted by powerful culture warriors.
Right.
I was just going to add, I had written down in my notes from episode four, I have written down, play for Lydia, how he previewed this episode.
So let me go to the episode prior, while we're here, while we're doing it.
We're being thorough.
Lest we mischaracterize this.
Let's see how this next episode is sold on the previous episode, episode four, Spicy Brando.
Next time on Things Fell Apart.
The story of how a difficult relationship between a mother and her child that fell apart during lockdown was inflamed by politicians and journalists, powerful culture warriors with vested interests.
Some of the people at school decided that her daughter was really a boy and wanted to identify as a boy.
So they changed her name, they changed her, quote, pronouns, they did these things without telling the mother.
Okay.
My mind is blown by how slow that is at 1x speed.
I can't even think about it.
I've been listening to this at like 10.5 speed.
Oh my God.
Or even just at least like 1.6 or something.
Sure.
And this is so slow.
My brain can't even hear it.
All right.
I want to keep this framing in mind.
So I went to the transcripts that were so generously given to us by Ian with the help of some AI.
And I just want to keep this framing in mind before we even start.
So this is the previous episode selling this current episode we're going to be on.
It says the story of how a difficult relationship between a mother and her child that fell apart during lockdown was inflamed by politicians and journalists, powerful culture warriors with vested interests.
OK, we'll keep that in mind.
Yeah, I'll just say I have no idea who the journalist is that he's talking about.
Yeah, sorry to spoilers for you folks, but there's no journalist in this one.
There's not a journalist, yeah.
That could even be talking about, but, well, okay.
And then the summary on the podcast player itself says, how an argument between a mother and her teenage daughter during lockdown led Governor Ron DeSantis To enact new and far-reaching laws in Florida.
So I think it's interesting, just to kind of start this here, that the way that he previews the episode and the way that that, like, high-level tagline is, he says, you know, culture warriors and, you know, kind of approaches it in this sort of broad, you can't really tell, like, what he's thinking there.
And then, like, once you click in, he only calls out Ron DeSantis here, which is strange.
I don't know what's happening specifically with this, But nowhere in that, like right away, the listeners, you know, assuming they don't know any of what we're talking about and they haven't heard this.
Yeah.
How a schism between a mother and her teenage daughter during lockdown contributed to Governor Ron DeSantis enacting.
So like, as you say, it's very passive voice, except the only active person in there is Ron DeSantis.
So for all we know, it's just a schism.
So there's some sort of schism.
We don't know what that is.
Passive voice contributed.
I don't know if that's technically passive voice, but it's like, there's no description of what anyone's doing except for Ron DeSantis.
I think that's interesting.
When he enacts.
Yeah.
Okay.
Should we just press play?
Oh, shall we jump in?
I have to do this at least 1.2.
I'm so sorry.
This might make it too fast for the listeners who listen to us at 10 point whatever, but I can't, I will die.
We will never finish the episode.
So I'm doing 1.2.
Okay.
That's just how it's going to be.
You're lucky I don't do higher.
From BBC Radio 4, this is Things Fell Apart, Season 2.
Teachers were being trained that parents in this area are a danger to their children. - I was not a danger to my child.
This story is about a difficult relationship between a parent and her child, one that fell apart during lockdown, and how it was weaponised by a politician in his quest for power.
It's about how two sets of equally held convictions collided with each other.
Two sets of equally held convictions.
Interesting.
OK.
So the first chunk of this episode we hear from someone named Brandon Wolfe.
Brandon Wolfe is a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
And when he lived in Florida, he worked for Equality Florida.
And that's going to be important a little bit later.
Since then, he has moved on to a human rights campaign.
So he's over there now as the national press secretary, and he is a black and queer man in America.
So we hear about his experience of moving to Florida, finding community, and what it felt like to have that community impacted and lose people that were very close to him because of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Yeah, very gut-wrenching.
And I credit to Ronson and the show for putting this part of it on.
I do really appreciate telling that story.
I mean, it's really horrifying to listen to.
I think I'll just start kind of where he summarizes what happened, essentially.
So credit to that, but I do just want to note that in terms of the both-sides-ing we're doing, it's good that we're hearing from what's ostensibly the not-anti-queer side, I guess.
Because again, we've been told, we've been set up by Jon Ronson.
What happened in this overall episode that we haven't even gotten to yet is something that resulted from two sides Tearing this relationship apart.
You know, two sides.
Equally held convictions.
Yeah.
Equally held convictions.
I do appreciate that he has given some time to this man's story and yet nothing that he said has anything to do with the central issue.
Right.
It's like if you had a climate change debate and then you just asked the like actual scientists about his background and like, how'd you get into this whole thing?
Hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, now let's go to the other side to hear why climate change is a hoax.
It's like, well, You gave equal time, I guess, but like, not really.
Yeah, but an opportunity to speak to the same issue.
Yeah.
That's a bit of an exaggeration to bring up the climate change thing, but that's kind of what it's like.
It's a little weird to me that we don't hear and we'll go through the whole fucking episode.
We don't really hear much of his side of the, by the way, the correct side of these arguments.
Yeah.
And so we can pick up after that story he tells and then we can get into, I think, the central story of the episode.
Four years later, and 250 miles away in Tallahassee, Florida, a family called the Littlejohns were trying to make the best out of lockdown, unaware that their lives and Brandon's would soon collide, and many other lives would get impacted as a result.
Interesting.
At the beginning in Florida, the lockdown rules were pretty strict, right, at the very beginning.
What was that like?
We just really tried to make it silly so that the kids weren't scared.
This is January Littlejohn, a stay-at-home mother of three, We would have Dress Up Friday, where I would dress up in a costume.
But after that two weeks was up and we slowly started to realize that things weren't going to go back to normal, that's when my daughter's mental health started to really deteriorate.
January means her oldest daughter, then aged 13.
We've had no contact with her daughter during the making of this program.
January says she's very protective over her privacy.
And so we only have January's telling of the story to go on.
Yeah.
Pretty major caveat, I would say.
Yeah.
And so I will note that her daughter is probably 17 right now.
So I don't know what's going to happen when she turns 18, if she'll come out and share her story herself or if she's moved on.
I have no idea.
I feel like if she wanted to, she probably could have, right?
I mean... Maybe?
I don't know.
And something else was worrying January.
The culture her daughter was starting to enjoy.
Interesting.
My daughter had difficulty fitting in.
She's extremely naturally artistic.
And when she initially started sixth grade, she found a friend group that seemed to be interested in the same quirky books and activities that she was.
What kind of books?
A lot of fantasy.
They were just, you know, quirky books like Wings of Fire, Warrior Cats.
Just books that maybe other kids aren't necessarily into.
We were thrilled and we were excited that she was making friends and they all seemed to get along well.
But then we started to see some red flags.
Because of lockdown, parents were becoming more privy to what their children were doing online in their virtual classrooms and their social lives too.
So I just do want to note that, like, she started with some very normal school struggles, especially as someone with ADHD.
I'll tell you, you don't need to be on lockdown to have those issues.
I couldn't do just normal homework on the computer.
I had the same problem.
Well, middle school is a big shift, too, when you're talking about homework from, you know, like elementary school.
Point is, extremely normal, whatever, like not a big deal, especially with someone with ADHD.
And then she like is linking that, so that's like, in your mind, you know, in the listener's mind, we're primed for like things are going wrong here, you know?
And then she links to that too.
And then the crowd she started hanging out with is reading these fantasy novels or something.
Yeah.
Just interesting.
January's daughter and her friends, like other fans of Warrior Cats, were speculating on which of the Warrior Cats might be gay or non-binary or trans.
And most, if not all, of these children had no romantic experience, but yet all of them were identifying as some identity in the LGBTQ spectrum.
So it ranged from bisexuality to pansexual to gay.
And then those slowly started to morph into the transgender identity.
Yeah, we gotta stop here now.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, so I'm someone who was, you know, 12 and 13.
I think that this is very normal exploration.
As a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid, this is something where, like, looking back at how I played with my American Girl dolls when I was 12 versus how I played with them when I was 8, like, it definitely shifts.
That way that you engage with play, the things that you're exploring, the topics that you're engaging with your friends about, that all is very, very normal.
So I don't really get why this was a big red flag for the Little Johns.
I don't understand it.
It's completely very normal stuff being told like an after-school special.
Are your children speculating about the sexuality of cartoon characters, book characters?
Who cares?
Also, the other thing that's frustrating about this whole thing is that we just have absolutely no other version of the story at all.
I just think you can't really do that.
I'll be honest with you.
With something like this, which as people can already tell, this is an anti-trans bullshit thing happening, with something that important, I don't actually think you can just tell one side of the story.
I think you need to be like, all right, well, we better find a different parent or a different, you know?
Or speak to the school.
Yeah.
Find someone where we're able to speak, well, they probably wouldn't, but find someone where Maybe somebody who is now 18 who's willing to talk about it.
There's plenty of trans people in the country.
I think what is really bothering me about this series is how much the effort to both sides stuff compromises journalism in a few ways.
For one, you're so desperate to tell the right-wing side of it that you kind of don't really care who you talk to as long as they talk to you and have an interesting story.
To the point where it's like, we can't verify it.
Really, every single friend is identifying as some non-straight sexuality.
Every one of them?
She even points out they have no sexual experience.
Okay, well then why does it fucking matter?
That sounds like just a game they're playing or a label they're putting on something.
Or exploration, right?
Like trying to figure out what their place in the world is and how they want to engage in the world and experimenting.
Very, very, very normal.
Yeah.
What are the stakes of this?
And furthermore, when it comes to those characters, And all that that she presents is this horrible thing.
It's like, come on.
Honestly, I can't be the only boy who took the clothes off of Barbies as a little kid.
Well, and that's what I was getting to with my American Girl doll example.
I played with them in a very particular way when I was younger.
And then when I was in, you know, middle school and stuff, my friends and I started engaging with them in a separate way.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, that's what humans do.
And as long as it's straight coded or whatever, then it's whatever.
It doesn't matter that little boy, little girl are making the Barbie doll naked and doing all that stuff.
But if it's two Ken dolls, holy shit, we've got an epidemic.
We've got a social epidemic going on.
I'm sorry, just fan fiction, right?
The whole spectrum of fanfiction that you get from kids all over the country, it's not, you know, just adults writing fanfiction.
A lot of it is young kids kind of experimenting with their favorite characters and changing things and having it combine in different ways and stuff.
I know my sister wrote a lot of fanfiction and it's never like I'm going to preserve, you know, what has been told in this story like Harry Potter.
He passed up on a really good tie-in because the whole Stephanie Meyer thing was the fanfiction for Oh, yeah.
Wasn't it?
Yeah.
Am I remembering that right or am I mixing up things?
Twilight?
Yeah, Twilight.
Oh, no.
Oh, so wait, the fan fiction of Twilight was Fifty Shades of Grey.
Is that what it is?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so never mind.
Not quite the time.
I don't know.
Worth mentioning.
It ties together as much as this backstory that we skipped over that happens to share the same town as something else.
Poor Brandon Wolfe.
Yeah.
This is nothing.
This is not at all a concern.
Who cares?
So far.
But it's being presented like it's this really worrying, concerning thing.
Just a concerned parent here.
I wonder why she's so concerned.
And now an important new battlefront in an already ferocious culture war was about to begin right there in January's house with January's daughter coming to her parents with some news.
So the lockdown happened in March of 2020 and she came to her father and I in May and she said she didn't feel like a girl.
And we were completely caught off guard.
Several of her friends had come out as gender fluid or non-binary And I think I even said to her at one point, statistically, this is impossible.
Transgender identities are very rare.
And she was just very flippant about it.
You know, oh, well, so-and-so just changed his name.
She would use the proper pronouns that the child wanted.
Panicked, January started to cool.
Yeah, statistically, this is impossible.
Impossible.
Can't be.
Can't be.
And I think this is one of the things where, like, you gravitate towards friends that might be similar to you in ways that you don't even understand yet.
Yeah.
That sounds pretty normal to me, too.
Yeah, plus I just want to remind everybody what are the fucking stakes.
Like, I get it.
Look, I could see being a parent, and if this is all true, which I doubt it even is, but let's for the sake of argument say, okay, she's got a friend group and they've all taken on a different trans identity.
Yeah.
No, that's statistically interesting.
It could be, but like you say, it could be that for all we know, she's the legitimate trans person and all of her friends are just like going along with her.
For all we know, you don't know.
Cause you apparently aren't close enough with your child to have actually had her or him, I don't know what pronouns to use, I guess, come to you with this in a way, probably like sooner, you know, in a way like, like earlier in the process, maybe, I don't know.
Yeah, I think her characterization of being completely caught off guard, I think that's fair.
I think that there are plenty of instances in which kids are going through something and don't tell their parents from day one, right?
And eventually it's built up to a point where now, okay, I'm going to go up to my parent and come out or speak to them about what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking.
And so I think that's a perfectly reasonable response from January Little John and her husband to feel like, whoa, where is this coming from?
But what follows after that is what matters.
I cannot imagine a world where I would say, wait, this is statistically impossible, saying that to one of our kids when they're trying to come to us and open up about something that they're going through.
I just don't.
I mean, that's anti-trans rhetoric beginning there.
When I was a kid, I was so sure like, oh, I bet I could make it to the NBA.
Forget that I couldn't even like start on my fifth grade basketball team, but I was going to make it to the NBA.
I remember my parents being like, that's no, you're not possible.
Look at the statistics.
And it's like, that was kind of a bummer.
I don't really know why that's necessary.
Like, even if let's pretend this is a completely pretend thing that January's Child is going through and it's all pretend who fucking cares man Like what be supportive in case it's not by the way, maybe it isn't pretend approach it like that But whatever there's no thought crime law against being skeptical like whatever if you feel like you know Your kid and your kid isn't this identity keep those thoughts to yourself.
It's fine.
You have them whatever.
Yeah, I And then, like, there's just no low stakes.
There's no stakes to this.
This doesn't matter.
We're not talking about surgeries or anything like that.
Like, she's just talked about, like, pronouns and maybe wanting to shift how she's identifying at school, right?
Yes.
Yeah, we will get there.
I was unaware of non-binary and gender fluid and trans masculine.
And if you Google, I think we're up to 72 different identities to choose from.
Okay.
You got to stop there because like literally, okay, I'm going to Google right now.
How many identities are we up to to choose from?
How many transgender identities are there?
I think Google should just be like, dude, why are you asking that?
MedicineNet.com is where she's getting her 72.
MedicineNet.
MedicineNet is her source from what I can tell here.
All 72 genders list.
And it includes a variety of things.
Affectu gender, Aesthetagender, Amaragender.
I've never heard of any of this.
It's so ridiculous.
It's so fucking absurd.
Also, we're up to.
Who's the we?
Like, the country, the world?
I think it's like, you know the periodic table of elements?
Right, right.
That's exactly what it is.
Some of these genders only exist for like a fraction of a second in the lab, but they're like, we've discovered another one.
It exists in the world.
It's a nice round number.
Someone identified as it and then disappeared like right away in the lab.
It's just ignorant.
I mean, like that comment specifically is like, okay, so you're just ignorant about this entire issue.
Yeah.
And here's the thing.
We have, we have, we know so many trans people, like to your point of the people seek out the people that they, whatever, like so many people in the atheism movement, the skepticism movement, or just like left-wing podcasting.
Like a lot of these things go together where the kinds of people.
Progressives, yeah.
Yeah, progressive.
It's a lot of things going.
It's not a one-to-one, obviously, but it's a lot of like, sort of probability clouds of people.
Venn diagrams.
Yeah, tend to find comfort in parasocial relationships, maybe if they're isolated in a queer identity in a place where people don't accept them.
It's unsafe.
Yeah.
For whatever reason, or for, I think for those reasons, there's like so many trans people in our audience that we know.
And I have never heard of any of these things, like these, these identities for the most part, like it's, yeah, it's non-binary or it's people identifying as a woman or a man.
That's for the most part's it, you know, like I, that covers.
I don't know, 90 something percent of all people that I've ever heard of about this.
And those are pretty easy to comprehend.
Like I don't, you know, it didn't take that long to figure out what any of that meant.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Am I crazy?
I mean, I can't think of anyone I've ever met who I... I mean, I'm sure there's somebody.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but, like, just trying to use this list of 72 things as though... Oh, yeah, it's a scare tactic.
Yeah, as though, like, that's what... Like, if you meet a trans person, there's, like, an equal probability there are any of those 72.
Well, yeah, it literally is a way to say you will never understand your kid if you let them be trans because they could be one of these 72 things.
They could change their mind at any point in time.
This is not a real thing.
It's very dangerous rhetoric that I think she's being very careful about how she's presenting in this environment.
Of course, yeah.
We're up to 72.
That you can be a boy, a girl, neither or both.
There you go.
There's four.
I mean, literally anything goes.
You have children starting to identify as part animals called furries.
No, that's not fair.
That's not what that is.
Yeah, okay.
I don't know much about any of this, but I believe I pointed this out to you that that's not what furries are.
Furries don't identify.
Oh, I'm aware.
Yeah.
Oh, Lydia's a furry, everybody.
I forgot who I told.
No, there's two different things.
Isn't there other kind or something?
I don't know.
There's like two different things she's combining there and she's mixing them up, I think.
But like, furries aren't trans.
Am I crazy?
I think we have some furry listeners, too.
We probably do.
And would love to hear your take on being considered as, you know, that you're a part animal.
I'm just realizing I haven't yet done January Little John running through the forest and then the tie-in with the We're all a tiny percentage furry just based on that movie, everybody.
That movie, Lion King, please.
that there's ever just understandably yeah robin hood's hot and the main marion's hot i said what i said we're all a tiny percentage furry just based on that movie everybody that movie lion king please everybody's been doing this for years but genuinely please educate me I didn't think furries were trans.
That is also my understanding.
Just making sure.
As a parent, when you're trying to get information, very little comes up other than you need to affirm and that not affirming is harmful and could even lead to suicide.
Yeah, it could.
I just love that.
As a parent, when you're trying to Google misinformation to tell you the things you already want to hear, It's hard to find anything other than the accurate medical information.
Well, if she's on medicinenet.com, like, trying to find, like, how to support my child or convince her she's not.
All the sources of legitimate medicine were telling me that I need to, like, reinforce my child's trans identity and accept them for who they are.
Otherwise, there's a danger that, you know, real danger.
And connect them to resources so then they can have those conversations with trained professionals.
Because my role as a parent is to be supportive and love my kid no matter what.
Yeah.
Look, who knows if any of our kids happen to be trans, who knows exactly the process and how that will go.
Obviously, we'll accept them.
But I get that, like, we're the wokest of woke here.
I get that.
I don't want to shame parents for having a difficult time with this.
And I think that's very important because the right will point out, and they're not wrong, that a lot of this is incredibly new to them.
It's incredibly new to, like, normies.
It's not new, you know?
It's not new in the world.
Yeah, Mosestown's been around forever.
But, like, to sort of normies, to like your run-of-the-mill Meat and potato is American.
Traditional.
Yeah, like this is new, very new to them.
And from their point of view, they've been shown a very new weird thing to them that they've also been told the stakes are incredibly high because if they don't affirm, there are major consequences.
And that's all true.
I'm not saying we shouldn't say that.
That's all true.
But like, I think that this has been a very effective issue, a wedge issue to draw people to the right.
And so what I would like to do is if there, I don't know if any of our listeners would be this, but maybe if there are any listeners who are like, well, I'm on the left, but like, you know, I'm a little.
Skeptical of this particular issue.
We have seen how many people have been pulled hard right by this exact issue.
People who have written novels that have sold bajillions and bazillions of dollars.
People who have more money.
They're definitely not grifters.
JK Rowling, she's not a grifter.
She has more money.
She has all the money.
There's no more money to do.
There are people Who otherwise might be pretty much lefties who were sucked into the rabbit hole on this issue.
And so all I want to say is I have all the empathy in the world for not really knowing, especially if you're not super woke, especially if you're like centrist-y, whatever, not understanding what's going on here, being a little skeptical, being a little worried.
But you can be skeptical and worried and still be a good parent.
Yeah.
You could be skeptical and worried and still treat your child, like give them the dignity of like taking them seriously.
Believing them.
And trying to express any reservations you might have in a healthier way or not express them.
I don't know.
I, again, I haven't, it kind of depends on the facts.
Yeah.
If it does look like literally they just came out of nowhere to you, if that's what it feels like to you, I understand you're going to be skeptical.
Maybe you'll think there's some amount of like social contagion, whatever going on.
But like, there's a way to do that and still be a good parent.
And this isn't it.
And then I would also recommend getting connected to therapy.
Yes.
In events like that.
Family therapy, you know, individual therapy for the child, for yourself, to help navigate those challenging thoughts and emotions.
And having a safe place to do it that's not going to weigh on your kid and potentially damage your relationship.
You might have trouble with your child's gender identity.
I don't want to beat someone up for their feelings, but it's what you do with the feelings.
Right.
And you might have all the conflicted feelings in the world.
I could imagine, you know, I could imagine there's a lot wrapped up in like gender identity of kids, weirdly enough, like all their clothes that you picked out, their name that you picked out.
I would understand feeling a bit of a sense of loss there as a parent.
I mean, we feel loss as our kids are growing up and they're no longer like the baby that we remember, you know, the toddler that we remember.
So I think that is very understandable.
You feel like you're losing the person you knew.
You're not, but it feels like that.
Yeah, and to your point, if those are feelings you have, talk to somebody that's not your kid about it.
Yeah.
Your kid is already going through something pretty difficult, honestly.
Burdening them with that additional thing?
Not good.
Not a good way to do it.
Nope.
But don't guilt yourself to death for having those feelings.
Have those feelings.
If those are feelings you have, have those feelings.
Work on them on your own time.
As a parent, when you're trying to get information, Very little comes up other than you need to affirm, and that not affirming is harmful.
As a parent, very little comes up on these vaccines other than they're safe and they seem to just be effective.
Where's my resources?
That you should go get.
All of my resources!
For your kids.
How do I find the proper resources?
Everything I'm seeing is like, take the vaccine, it's super safe, and it's going to prevent the disease.
Where do I find the good information that I want?
And could even lead to suicide.
We love our children more than anything in this entire world.
And for any parent, the mention of suicide is enough to bring you to your knees.
But January didn't want to affirm because she thought that her child was just going through a phase.
She had no previous... Okay, so right after talking about how, you know, not affirming is harmful, could lead to suicide, the mention of suicide is enough to bring you to your knees.
But January didn't want to affirm.
January didn't want to affirm.
Because she just thought her kid was going through a phase.
Okay.
But I don't want it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Immature.
And I love how like it's just that's just presented.
Yep.
Yeah.
She didn't want to affirm.
Okay.
Didn't feel like it.
Over her sex at all.
And I suspected at the time it was through her friend group.
She had latched on to her gender being the reason for all of the discomfort she had ever had.
And she genuinely thought that this was the solution.
This was all escalating very quickly.
She was casually talking about hormones, asking questions about puberty blockers.
I'm sorry.
This was all escalating very quickly.
She was talking about hormones.
She was casually talking about... Because that sounds like escalating the proper amount.
First, you're like, I think I might be a different gender identity than I historically have been.
Let's talk about that casually.
What options might be available to me?
What is the proper timeline for that?
Well, first you go four years without talking about it.
Then you just silence.
No radio silence.
Then you can allude to it.
Like, I don't understand.
How much slower are you supposed to go than casually talking about it?
Right.
And I also want to just pin in the line right before that, or shortly before that, and I suspected at the time it was through her friend group.
Pin in that.
Why did you suspect that?
I don't know.
Whatever.
All right.
This was all escalating very quickly.
She was casually talking about Hormones, asking questions about puberty blockers.
And so I reached out to a teacher.
I let the teacher know.
Now I see where the don't say gay stuff comes from.
If you view talking or asking questions about something as like dangerously too fast on an issue, maybe, yeah, maybe I see why you're doing that.
I thought this was the free speech crowd.
No, it's not.
That is like 10 years ago.
And so I reached out to a teacher.
I let the teacher know what was going on, that we were not affirming at home, and I left it with the teacher that I'm gonna let my daughter handle this.
Okay.
I'm just pausing to say that as a listener with no background, which is you, you presume your audience knows nothing about this.
As far as I know, as a listener, casual listener to this, this is a concerned parent whose child she thinks is not trans, but is like pretending to be for some reason.
And she has emailed the school and said, Hey, we're not affirming at home, but I'm just going to let my daughter or son, I don't know what pronouns to use, uh, handle this.
Okay.
Whatever.
Why, why are we talking about this?
That feels like fine, you know, fine.
Let's see where this goes.
January emailed the teacher, quote, she is currently identifying as non-binary and prefers the pronouns they, them.
I told her if she wants to go by her new name with her teachers, I won't stop her.
I'm going to let her take the lead on this.
She added that the school should do quote, whatever you think is best.
Cool.
And then at the end of August, 2020, Florida schools reopened.
One day you picked your daughter up from school and she mentioned a meeting that she'd had with the school.
Yes, that's correct.
My daughter got into the car a couple of weeks after school had started and she said, Mom, I had a meeting today at school and I changed my name, but they asked me which restroom I wanted to use.
I was immediately taken back.
She's a female.
It never occurred to me that they could have a meeting with my child without inviting me.
I immediately emailed the guidance counsellor.
When they called me back, they said they could not tell me anything that occurred at the meeting because my daughter was now protected by a non-discrimination law.
Eventually, Januay discovered that the school had completed a six-page support plan with her child.
It included questions like, which sex do you prefer to room with on overnight field trips?
And, how should we refer to you when speaking to your parents?
And this was to effectively deceive parents that these plans were even taking place.
Oh, you mean like, if you want us to not tell your parents, we won't?
Correct.
They were colluding with children to keep secrets from parents.
All right.
Let's stop.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, we need to talk about the support plan.
We need to talk about the support plan.
So it's six pages long.
That is correct.
And it includes things like what they mention here.
Which restroom do you want to use?
Which sex do you prefer to room with on overnight field trips?
Or does it?
So, six pages, and those are the two things that they call out there.
Let me read to you a little bit from the support plan that existed at the time.
Since then, this has been changed, and we'll get into why.
But at this time, what January's daughter filled out here, it starts with This statement, the U.S.
Department of Education and the U.S.
Department of Justice interpret Title IX to require that when a student or the student's parent or guardian, as appropriate, notifies the school administration that the student will assert a gender identity that differs from previous representations or records, the school will begin treating the student consistent with the student's gender identity.
Upon notification of a transgender or gender non-conforming student status, school staff should complete a transgender gender non-conforming support plan within 48 hours.
The checklist below serves as the initial intake for a student who self-discloses that they are transgender or gender non-conforming.
After completing the intake and setting up a meeting, Part B is to be Completed Part B provides guidance to administrators and others in setting up an action plan for ways in which the student's authentic gender will be accounted for and supported at school.
School staff, caregivers, and the student should work together to complete the plan.
That's the intake.
Things like the date of the meeting, they do comments about if the student information system data reflects what the student would like, or if a change is being requested, who the parent or guardian is, if they're aware of this situation, and if they're supportive of this situation.
It also includes who the school contact person will be for the student and a safe word.
This, I mean, this is a thorough process.
Hey, you know why?
Because some people's parents will fucking kill them if they do this.
Yeah.
Part B starts with this statement.
The purpose of this document is to create a shared understanding about the ways in which the student's authentic gender will be accounted for and supported at school.
School staff, caregivers, and the student should work together to complete this document.
Please note that Part C is a separate document.
We don't have to get into that.
So essentially, In these documents, Part A, Part B, it does not say exclude the parent.
Within the document, it says, hey, is your parent supportive of how you're feeling about your gender?
If the answer is no, and then they say, are you comfortable having your parent be part of this meeting?
And the answer is no, then the school is going to believe the student that there could be an unsafe situation going on here.
So there's tons of stuff in Part B regarding the parent-guardian involvement.
They talk about confidentiality, privacy, and disclosure.
Not just about how to interact with parents, but how to interact with other teachers, other students.
What things is the student comfortable being public about versus what they'd rather be It has an entire list of different situations and how they're supposed to try and manage it.
If there's a substitute teacher, is that something where the student is comfortable sharing that information so they are affirmed still in their class?
They talk about, like, library cards, student cards.
If they're being summoned to the office, if there's an announcement over the PA, you know, how do they want those things treated?
So when you drill down to just which restroom do you want to use, and are you comfortable having overnight sleepovers on school trips, this is fear-mongering.
Yeah, is that one in there?
They are in there, yeah.
But the way that it—so it's the use of facilities section.
Restrooms, changing clothes, showers.
And the big part of this is that when it comes to restrooms, it specifically says, you know, the concern is about discrimination.
And so it's that the student will not be made to use a restroom in the office.
as their restroom.
Like they are allowed to engage in the facilities of their school, just like every other student.
And so that's really what they're trying to get to here.
Changing clothes.
They might feel more comfortable for her daughter, for example, identifying as non-binary.
Maybe they feel more comfortable changing in the boys' locker room, but they do want like some element of privacy still within there.
And the school would accommodate that.
So there's a huge number of things that they would do here.
I do want to note that eventually when the little John saw the support plan that they filled out with the daughter, she said she still wanted to use the female restrooms.
So they lost their mind about this and said that she wasn't capable of making these decisions on her own.
But there was like truly just no threat here.
The other thing that I want to get into this is, you know, things like social dynamics.
If there are siblings that go to the same school, how to approach that dress code.
You know, how would they approach those things?
And then, of course, like which staff should be aware at the district level, the school level, teachers, other students.
What happens if their privacy has been compromised?
And how will the staff member respond to questions from other students, staff, parents?
This is incredibly comprehensive, incredibly thorough, and earmarked for monitoring and revisions over and over and over with action items like listed at the bottom of like who's going to do what when, you know, just a very incredible thing.
Now if this sounds like a lot, if you're not a parent, we did some stuff for Arlo that was like about his, you know, where he is with like speech and stuff.
Yeah.
And it was like this many questions.
Like for anything like this, they need to be thorough so that they make sure they are accommodating.
It's just by law.
Like they don't, this isn't like a special only for gender would they put in this kind of effort to whatever.
It's like, no, this is like, it's sensitive.
It's stuff that they don't want to get sued about.
And they specifically cite it at the beginning of the support plan, saying that the current way that Title IX is being interpreted by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice is this.
And so we are pursuing our support plan in that manner.
It has since been changed, so now it's like three pages and not as thorough, but you know.
And is that because of the state or like a federal level?
No, I think it changed because of some of this stuff.
Interesting.
Well, anyway.
Yeah.
And it's also just an intake, like any patient intake asks a bazillion things every time.
And like, I could see being alarmed by the idea that like all of a sudden my kid is going to be using bathrooms or changing rooms.
For one, I never had any of that until high school, but maybe because I had a tiny school or whatever.
We didn't really even change in front of each other for PE or anything.
We just did it in our normal clothes.
That aside, I could see being alarmed by that.
I could see being a parent of other kids and being like, wait, what's happening here?
Is this really happening?
I could see being perhaps concerned about that, but it's also like, I don't know how they're handling that.
And that's a question that I would prefer to have like actually addressed.
You know what you could do is just tell me how that's handled.
I don't know.
I'm just a listener.
Is it true that at school, the minute someone identifies as a different gender than they previously were, they get to just go into the different locker room or something?
Is that how they're doing it or not?
Do some fucking reporting.
Yeah, yeah.
You are dealing with a high stakes issue here.
You're dealing with an important, and I think he understands that this is a culture war issue, but it's not just, it's belittling to call it a culture war issue.
This is a matter of people's lives.
Yeah.
And at least do the due diligence to say, what is actually happening there?
Because maybe this is an intake and they ask them the question, but that doesn't mean like they're instantly going to get whatever they say on there.
I don't know.
Does it mean that?
I'm not sure.
Maybe it means they will coordinate and they'll figure something out.
But like just the mere existence of a form after, by the way, she had already said, like, however you want to handle this.
It sounds to me, even by her own telling in this episode, it sounds like she consented to this and was like, all right, however you want to handle it.
Yep.
Trust you guys.
Yep.
A hundred percent.
And I mean, I think the other piece of this too is like there's an element of student safety that's included in these documents for the support plan and how to approach safety for that student, but there's still processes available for harassment, discrimination.
So if something happened where another student using that same bathroom felt uncomfortable, they have avenues too.
Yeah.
They can reach out to the school administration and experience what that intake is like, because that's a whole separate support plan that I looked at as well.
But to your point with the emails with the teacher, the way that the email specifically is phrased is, this has been an incredibly difficult situation for our family, and her father and I are trying to be as supportive as we can.
She is currently identifying as non-binary.
She would like to go by the new name blank and prefers the pronouns they them.
We have not changed her name at home yet, but I told her if she wants to go by the name blank with her teachers, I won't stop her.
And then she went on to write, whatever you think is best or blank can handle it herself.
Boy, that sure seems like she's given permission to kind of just handle this.
Right.
And I think it's also interesting because based off of what January said in this email, the way that it's characterized in the email itself is we're trying to be as supportive as we can.
We haven't changed her name at home yet.
The way that she talks about this in other places is not like how her email is actually stated.
And I think it's interesting because like if the teacher just went off of this, is that truth?
Then I would say, OK, it sounds like they're aware and they're trying to be supportive.
I wouldn't call that unsupportive necessarily.
But her daughter was asked in that meeting, are your parents aware?
Are your parents supportive?
And I have a feeling that her daughter said they're not supportive.
Oh, interesting.
Because that's why the parents weren't then invited and they didn't disclose this information to them.
So there is so much more to this story, but we don't have time.
So I'm going to make you wait for the rest of it where we're going to dive more into January Little John and how John Ronson decided to approach this episode in particular.
And you'll just have to wait.
What do you mean?
I've already heard the entire thing in one convenient episode.
Oh, that's because I'm a patron at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
That's why I'm way ahead and I've heard all of this without ads.
Well, you make smart choices.
Yeah.
I see.
But for this feed, we're going to have to divide it up and keep people in suspense.
And if you don't want to keep waiting, patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Cool kids are there.
So next time on where there's woke, part two.
I don't know.
Let's see what happens.
We're going to be talking a lot more about how January approached the situation post-support plan and what she did with the school district as a result.
Here, I think I can get a generic one that'll work for any of the segments.
Okay.
Next time on Where There's Woke, I don't think this January Little John is on the level.
