Katie's NPR story was something like this: I play a little game with myself every time I listen to NPR. I guess whether they will mention race within the first two minutes of attorney it on. Everyday I guess yes, and everyday I'm right.
Lisa observed that identity is a kind of belief. You need to be careful here. Personal identities such as gender identity are just beliefs. But many other things that we call identities are a lot more than that. For example, being a woman. Being Jewish. These are facts about us that are more than just what we think.
A lot of the problem in identity politics is that those identities that are purely personal beliefs have been reified as if they are more real than real facts about us. When people who share a real life characteristic identify with each other because of that shared characteristic, that’s not the same thing as a bunch of people who share a political belief joining together to promote it.
This was one of my big frustrations in reading the Identity Trap. That Yascha Mounk views sex or ethnic background and gender entity as the same kind of thing. They simply are not the same kind of thing.
Religious identity has to do with who your parents are how you were raised. There are a lot of really solid facts here. I am not Jewish because I think I am Jewish. Any more than I could become Chinese by thinking that. There’s a lot more to it. Secular people often get confused about this because they think that religions are just lists of beliefs.
Question -- Do you know where these executive orders leave kids who have already begun hormones, or who already had surgeries and need to continue medical treatment? I know the schools, therapists, medical orgs, and media are captured agents of weaponized compassion using crappy non-science and forbidding solid science or disagreement.
But if kids who are already on hormones have to stop abruptly - could that be a bit of truth to the "taking away healthcare", and making families anxious (for real reasons), argument?
Or do the exec orders just mean children can't start the process of chemical and surgical mutilation?
Maybe this is addressed later in your podcast, I'm about half hour in now, but wanted to post this question in case anyone sees it tonight. A friend who has children (I don't), angrily responded to one of my facebook posts about people she knows with trans kids scared and anxious. I know much of that is the messaging they're getting, but what if their body has gotten dependent on things and then their access is cut off?
If someone thinks they're trans because of indoctrination, and they're stopped before they start on that pipeline, most likely they'll look back later in relief.
But if someone's already taking hormones, or recovering from surgery, would they be in worse medical shape if their care is just stopped? (I don't know, but want to learn)
(& about NPR, they're fully captured, but bless you for trying!! ... I think for any media on the left to find sanity, to heal the ruptures they've caused in perception, relationships, and the health of so many people (injured by both unsafe injections and attempts to change sex - both with no informed consent), their lies during covid also need to be grappled with, including the lies about early treatment, which was effective from day one, and the media lied about that.)
(Also - I agree Trump and Must deserve criticism when it's valid. I think whoever puppets Harris would be way worse, but I'm also in between worlds (on the left til I saw how the covid doctors were treated, and then learned what was happening to children under the guise of "affirming care".))
Some of what DOGE is unravelling needs to be brought to light, and maps the censorship industral complex / networks that lied to everyone about the safety of medical interventions pushed as safe, while the data all along showed they weren't.
The lies about safety of both "gender affirming care" and "safe and effective" vaccines have done tremendous damage to health, to humans' perception of reality and each other, and both elevate captured "experts" spouting easy-to-prove-it's-bullshit-bullshit, while harshly shutting out and demonizing anyone who disagrees, and gaslighting the injured.
I hear what you were saying Eliza about how there could have been a moment for an ideological shift, but it only happened with those that joined the Normies and the radicals are going to double down once again. I think the jig is up and enough regular people are saying, no thank you. Great thought experiment Cori. I think the populist movement (I don't feel like it is what we think of as Republican) on the "right" and the denouncing of the woke is a sign that the loud and assertive all-thing trans & anti-west fad is losing steam. (see short talk on where the trans movement might be going next as they are exposed for what they are: https://youtu.be/9L_vDe0vGiY?si=cZFCrQf2Xdy3epV1 The work now is to get this group OUT of areas of influence. Cori (living in Indiana) sees more Normies than Lisa, Ben and I due to where we live, it seems. I think this new derangement syndrome permeates in the air in Left coast cities and there are some like James Lindsay that worn about the "woke right," but I'm not ready to start worrying about that yet. Please don't worry about getting "too radicalized" the other way because it will close you off to important "vibe shifts" that could be pivotal in making Western culture/civilization cool again (see talk about this shift: https://youtu.be/Gzh_G8JEyd0?si=UC4z5rngswE9dVz0 But then there are the cluster B people https://youtu.be/Ww-nHDWJnb4?si=6GE6LgydUNe_luQ- that either went trans or are going to glom on to whatever is the most counter underdog movement and are extra vulnerable to algorithms--think the over-the-top Bernie Bros that switched to RFK. If the correct voices control the narrative, they will follow--that's why we need to be stronger than the ideological lunatics. Ben, I'm sorry you got canceled by a friend because you mentioned that strong language such as the boundaries set in the new executive orders may have been needed. But you were correct and that is hard for others to take that have been caught by the derangement potion. He or she took intolerance and fragility to another level, or maybe he or she is jealous of you;-) Or maybe it is what is happening to all of us, the woke have been trained to excommunicate instead of just temporarily unfollowing for 30 days like most of us people that were raised well would do. “As woke ideology – identity politics mutated to its most toxic form – faces cultural extinction, we can finally assess its casualties. Like a receding tide exposing a ravaged coastline, we now see clearly the psychological devastation left in its wake. The wreckage in our collective mental health will take generations to repair.” https://open.substack.com/pub/drmcfillin/p/the-psychological-casualties-of-woke?r=1042zs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false I do have one curious QUESTION/COMMENT: Our family lived in district 2 (it's was re zoned when we lived in Yorkville) when our children were young in the early 2010's and the crazy was starting to happen but we didn't realize it. Honestly, we had to leave the UES because I knew government school was BAD and private school was way over priced. My questions is, why does Lisa stay in the PS world? What about Emet Classical Academy https://emetclassicalacademy.org/?
I had a really hard time listening to all of you bash Trump. We finally have a champion who is literally making it stop and upholding truth. Can you not even say thank you? I think we all need to put politics aside and focus on how to get our children out of the gender cult.
Trump is a horrible man who has assaulted women and peeped on teenage beauty pageant contestants. He is also a cheat and a con man who is attempting to destroy our tripartite system and constitutional republic. So no, I won’t thank Trump for anything. But I WILL blame the Democratic Party for allowing the trans activists to serve the “pediatric gender transition” issue to Trump and his cronies on a goddamn silver platter.
We bashed Biden too. I’m afraid we’re all incorrigible ingrates, the shifty sort of activists constantly challenging authority. Alas, we’re useless in polite company.
Your conversation today was invaluable to help us all think through how to communicate during this extremely difficult time. I know a lot of us are grappling with this very thing, and it was tremendously useful to hear the four of you think out loud in your typically engaging way. On a positive note, I've actually had a few very good exchanges in recent times on these issues. I am discovering that there are other people out there who, like me, are progressives (in the old-fashioned sense), are very clear that the D party is on the wrong track here and are grappling, as you did so helpfully today, with how best to respond.
In this regard, once again, I thought Eliza’s closing remarks offered a beautiful blend of clear-sightedness and compassion. (I hope you will, once again, be able to make a clip of them to share around.) It made me think back to Eliza noting how Cass and Danielle Smith handled the change in policy, and also about Jamie’s anecdote on how a school for girls (I think it was?) handles this. I think one or both of Eliza and Jamie used the term “off-ramp,” and I am finding that’s a very useful frame in which to think about this right now.
Personally, I am among those who are absolutely horrified about what the current administration is doing to our government generally via DOGE, etc., to immigrants especially and to our standing around the world. While I have so far read two of the orders that interest us here and think both are generally well-thought out on their face, I am extremely concerned about the way in which they are already and will be implemented. What I am trying to do in my smaller conversations, then, while being absolutely firm that the harm that has been done to so many in the name of gender identity has to stop, is to encourage people to look for ways to work together, and push our Democratic electeds on this too, to stop standing in the way of the needed changes and focus on building a compassionate off-ramp for all those who have been harmed.
Tip of the hat to all of you, and to the marvelous Jamie. I look forward to listening to her testimony.
Lisa's post about her school's curriculum was really shocking. Seeing such pseudoscience be taught in public (and probably private!) schools is really disheartening, and makes you wonder how this is ever going to end.
I have two 12 year olds in a blue city in public school, and haven't heard about anything like this yet, although maybe it will come in later grades.
What I do know is that my boys will look at this stuff with disdain. We are a liberal family, but one of my boys has already adopted a decidedly "anti-woke" (and, too my horror, somewhat Trump-sympathetic) attitude, while the other, who has autism, has way too much advanced knowledge of science and biology to fall for this stuff. In fact, he recently told me that he had stopped watching the YouTube channel "SciShow" because they made a video about how sex is a spectrum, based on the existence of DSDs and chromosomal abnormalities. "That's why these are called disorders!", he said, "It doesn't mean the sex categories don't exist! So stupid!". He also, hilariously, said that he thought the narrator sounded like he was reporting this under duress, a gun pointed at his head to force him to utter such nonsense. All this was before we had ever talked about this issue.
Surely my kids can't be the only ones who view these teachings with skepticism, either because they are already fed up with the social justice rhetoric, or because they do actually understand biology and won't be misled like this. At least that's my hope.
I want to know how you raised such sane, bs-proof critical thinkers! I have twin 9 year olds and am terrified for them. Seriously if you write a parenting book I will read it
Thank you! I wouldn't describe my kids as sane (they have all sorts of issues of neurodivergence), but they are definitely independent thinkers. I think both of those things are mostly genetic...
I think we need to recognize that there are some people who can be reached with well/reasoned, nuanced arguments, and some who can’t.
The problem with the people who cannot, or at least are difficult to reach is that they have swallowed a lie (or lies), such as men can become women, there is no such thing as biological sex. Trying to reach these people is like trying to deprogram a cult member, or someone who has lived under a totalitarian regime and is a True Believer.
On the one hand, for the sake of political expedience it is more effective to try to persuade the persuadable. That is one problem.
But on the other hand, to echo Eliza’s point about the not exacerbating the fraught circumstances for those who have swallowed the lie, we need to be sensitive to their psychological condition and the complications that ensue. Here we need to draw lessons from the psychology of cults and totalitarian regimes.
My father was for a long time an unreconstructed Stalinist and ardent supporter of the Soviet Union. He could not be reached by rational or nuanced conversation. And he was likely to explode if confronted directly.
But eventually, one day, he told me, “We were Stalin’s biggest supporters (meaning, at the time, the Stalinists members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who had fought in the Spanish Civil War). We were wrong.”
How did that happen? I am not sure but I think it was the result of a profound crisis within our family over an accusation that was leveled against him based on so-called recovered memories. Something had happened that he could not fit into the rigid straitjacket of his thinking. And he began to open up.
I think that’s what happened. But this is the kind of question we need to be asking.
Trumps EO has solidified the frame that this is a right/left issue. i am dismayed by all the GC people who think that it's their lobbying that caused Trump to take this action, while totally ignoring Project 2025, and the Heritage Foundation, the real power behind the throne.
We do not have to accept or solidify the left/right framing at all. If Trump happens to say the sky is blue and it happens to be blue, if I am an adult I can affirm the sky's color without skittering around afraid that peers and/or meanies might call me a Trumpster.
I am speaking to the general perceptions of this issue, and the media's support of this perception. I have never considered it a partisan issue, but I'm in a tiny minority.
This is exactly the kind of conversation I wish I could have with people in real life (other than my long-suffering wife), and as far as I know this group is the only one having it publicly. So without an opportunity of my own I'm very happy to enjoy yours vicariously. Here's what I would have added if I were a part of it:
- On escalating online threats: n = 1, but I recently saw a comment in a trans Reddit space along the lines of "We had a Luigi. Maybe it's time for a Mario." I've seen several others referencing arming up for self protection.
- On why Democrats (at least the politicians) can't seem to let this go: I thought Kara Dansky made a good point in her recent interview on TransMuted. They're essentially in the same position of the parents who enthusiastically encouraged their kids through transition that Helen Joyce has noted; they can't let their minds go there. How could they back down and admit they were wrong after everything they've already invested? What does someone do when they have a tiger by the tail AND the tiger is pulling them over a cliff?
- On how public opinion might be changing and Cori's thought experiment: 1) Using myself as an example, I've gone from knowing the "right" answer but having question this time last year to, well, writing comments every week on Informed Dissent. Only three people in my real life would know that about me though. Take that for what it's worth. 2) I haven't heard any of my polite liberal friends talk about trans issues in over a year. When I've brought it up, none of them had any idea what the Cass Review was. It'll be interesting to see how people like them respond as more information leaks into their bubbles, particularly as the results of lawsuits come in. I predict a lot of quiet quitting in the months/years that will be hidden behind the front of extremely loud activism by the hyper-engaged.
-On the language in the EOs: I've been a big proponent of Eliza's argument that the language should have been less inflammatory. At the same time, I'm also open to the idea that maybe the Band-Aid just needed to be ripped off, and this is what that looks like.
- On talking to the middle: I absolutely agree that this is where a real difference can be made. How do we find opportunities to do that? Where does it happen? Related, I've been kicking around the idea of brainstorming strategies for how to talk about this to normie-libs who could potentially have their minds chnaged. If anyone has thoughts about that please feel free to share.
I’ve seen signs of this shift too. An ex-friend of mine who reportedly had been posting incessantly about “trans rights” from 2018 into early 2024, seems to post much less frequently about it now. Some true believers (especially parents of trans youth) might be stuck, but zealotry tends to be a matter of circumstance, not nature.
Two things that have given me hope throughout this:
-The tendency of youth to push back against the expressed orthodoxy of their elders
-The normie-ness of normies
Both like grass growing in the spring.
On changing people’s minds - people do change their minds about things all the time, but I think it’s maybe one of those things where the harder someone is obviously trying to change your mind from the outside, the less likely you are to do it, and the more likely you are to instead harden your heart against their ideas.
Like the classic fable of the North Wind and the Sun:
“The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.”
Wouldn't it be more useful to frame what is going on as an ideological capture of our institutions and the resistance to that undemocratic capture? It's not a negotiation, not a war, culture. And definitely not a culture war.
This was a particularly rich and focused discussion. Lisa is in the belly of the beast--she's correct about the power of that media world on that part of American society that she lives in. I sympathize with her frustration. But those media outlets are losing audiences, as Ben pointed out--they lost me, one of their most loyal readers/listeners. So if I could be alienated, so could others. And most of the electorate ignores PBS, CBS, and the NY Times.
Cori's point is significant: the 10% committed to this insanity are not reachable. Helen Joyce has famously said that the parents who have transed their children will likely never be reachable. But the vast middle are waking up--probably because of girls'/women's sports. And once the illogic of that penetrates, the rest of it tends to fall apart soon enough.
Eliza's concerns about radicalization are difficult to address. Maybe we need to think about this on two levels. First is the personal, social level: I am finding more success in conversations with people who have been affected by this. We can be nuanced, thoughtful, and caring in those private interactions. These young people need to find a way out--and no, it won't be through federal action but through personal interactions in the real world.
But second is the political level: I wonder if direct, non-nuanced action is what is needed. Sure, there will be upset people, but any fuzzing of the edges (making exceptions) is how this all got institutionalized (let men use the women's bathrooms, it will be fine!). Trump operates in shock-and-awe mode. It's not my preferred political strategy, but maybe that's what it takes.
Finally, Trump's EOs will open the door to many more lawsuits, more legislation, more boldness of the part of those trying to stop this now that they have the power of the federal government backing them up. It's not going to be over any time soon, but I'm convinced that when careers, grants, status, and money are no longer flowing to "gender care" practitioners, the availability will gradually decrease, and so will the extent of the social contagion. (It will always be with us of course, just as recovered memories are still with us, but maybe not as powerful or extensive.)
Katie's NPR story was something like this: I play a little game with myself every time I listen to NPR. I guess whether they will mention race within the first two minutes of attorney it on. Everyday I guess yes, and everyday I'm right.
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Thank you. So so great
Lisa observed that identity is a kind of belief. You need to be careful here. Personal identities such as gender identity are just beliefs. But many other things that we call identities are a lot more than that. For example, being a woman. Being Jewish. These are facts about us that are more than just what we think.
A lot of the problem in identity politics is that those identities that are purely personal beliefs have been reified as if they are more real than real facts about us. When people who share a real life characteristic identify with each other because of that shared characteristic, that’s not the same thing as a bunch of people who share a political belief joining together to promote it.
This was one of my big frustrations in reading the Identity Trap. That Yascha Mounk views sex or ethnic background and gender entity as the same kind of thing. They simply are not the same kind of thing.
Woman is a fact, not a belief. Religious identity—definitely a belief.
Religious identity has to do with who your parents are how you were raised. There are a lot of really solid facts here. I am not Jewish because I think I am Jewish. Any more than I could become Chinese by thinking that. There’s a lot more to it. Secular people often get confused about this because they think that religions are just lists of beliefs.
Question -- Do you know where these executive orders leave kids who have already begun hormones, or who already had surgeries and need to continue medical treatment? I know the schools, therapists, medical orgs, and media are captured agents of weaponized compassion using crappy non-science and forbidding solid science or disagreement.
But if kids who are already on hormones have to stop abruptly - could that be a bit of truth to the "taking away healthcare", and making families anxious (for real reasons), argument?
Or do the exec orders just mean children can't start the process of chemical and surgical mutilation?
Maybe this is addressed later in your podcast, I'm about half hour in now, but wanted to post this question in case anyone sees it tonight. A friend who has children (I don't), angrily responded to one of my facebook posts about people she knows with trans kids scared and anxious. I know much of that is the messaging they're getting, but what if their body has gotten dependent on things and then their access is cut off?
If someone thinks they're trans because of indoctrination, and they're stopped before they start on that pipeline, most likely they'll look back later in relief.
But if someone's already taking hormones, or recovering from surgery, would they be in worse medical shape if their care is just stopped? (I don't know, but want to learn)
(& about NPR, they're fully captured, but bless you for trying!! ... I think for any media on the left to find sanity, to heal the ruptures they've caused in perception, relationships, and the health of so many people (injured by both unsafe injections and attempts to change sex - both with no informed consent), their lies during covid also need to be grappled with, including the lies about early treatment, which was effective from day one, and the media lied about that.)
https://coronawise.substack.com/p/npr-propaganda-for-progressives1?utm_source=publication-search - Article from a beautiful soul, liberal peace activist psychologist, her theory is if the one thing different about the covid response was if NPR reported accurately, we would be in a different world now.
(Also - I agree Trump and Must deserve criticism when it's valid. I think whoever puppets Harris would be way worse, but I'm also in between worlds (on the left til I saw how the covid doctors were treated, and then learned what was happening to children under the guise of "affirming care".))
Some of what DOGE is unravelling needs to be brought to light, and maps the censorship industral complex / networks that lied to everyone about the safety of medical interventions pushed as safe, while the data all along showed they weren't.
https://sayerji.substack.com/p/laundering-censorship-the-bbc-usaid
https://drtenpenny.substack.com/p/usaid-corruption?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=931759&post_id=156646671&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3zl5l&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
https://sayerji.substack.com/p/breaking-us-tax-dollars-secretly
The lies about safety of both "gender affirming care" and "safe and effective" vaccines have done tremendous damage to health, to humans' perception of reality and each other, and both elevate captured "experts" spouting easy-to-prove-it's-bullshit-bullshit, while harshly shutting out and demonizing anyone who disagrees, and gaslighting the injured.
https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/new-studies-show-serious-risks-of-gender-transition/
Love and respect to all of you!!!!
Amazing conversation. Sanity. Clarity. Great conversation.
I hear what you were saying Eliza about how there could have been a moment for an ideological shift, but it only happened with those that joined the Normies and the radicals are going to double down once again. I think the jig is up and enough regular people are saying, no thank you. Great thought experiment Cori. I think the populist movement (I don't feel like it is what we think of as Republican) on the "right" and the denouncing of the woke is a sign that the loud and assertive all-thing trans & anti-west fad is losing steam. (see short talk on where the trans movement might be going next as they are exposed for what they are: https://youtu.be/9L_vDe0vGiY?si=cZFCrQf2Xdy3epV1 The work now is to get this group OUT of areas of influence. Cori (living in Indiana) sees more Normies than Lisa, Ben and I due to where we live, it seems. I think this new derangement syndrome permeates in the air in Left coast cities and there are some like James Lindsay that worn about the "woke right," but I'm not ready to start worrying about that yet. Please don't worry about getting "too radicalized" the other way because it will close you off to important "vibe shifts" that could be pivotal in making Western culture/civilization cool again (see talk about this shift: https://youtu.be/Gzh_G8JEyd0?si=UC4z5rngswE9dVz0 But then there are the cluster B people https://youtu.be/Ww-nHDWJnb4?si=6GE6LgydUNe_luQ- that either went trans or are going to glom on to whatever is the most counter underdog movement and are extra vulnerable to algorithms--think the over-the-top Bernie Bros that switched to RFK. If the correct voices control the narrative, they will follow--that's why we need to be stronger than the ideological lunatics. Ben, I'm sorry you got canceled by a friend because you mentioned that strong language such as the boundaries set in the new executive orders may have been needed. But you were correct and that is hard for others to take that have been caught by the derangement potion. He or she took intolerance and fragility to another level, or maybe he or she is jealous of you;-) Or maybe it is what is happening to all of us, the woke have been trained to excommunicate instead of just temporarily unfollowing for 30 days like most of us people that were raised well would do. “As woke ideology – identity politics mutated to its most toxic form – faces cultural extinction, we can finally assess its casualties. Like a receding tide exposing a ravaged coastline, we now see clearly the psychological devastation left in its wake. The wreckage in our collective mental health will take generations to repair.” https://open.substack.com/pub/drmcfillin/p/the-psychological-casualties-of-woke?r=1042zs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false I do have one curious QUESTION/COMMENT: Our family lived in district 2 (it's was re zoned when we lived in Yorkville) when our children were young in the early 2010's and the crazy was starting to happen but we didn't realize it. Honestly, we had to leave the UES because I knew government school was BAD and private school was way over priced. My questions is, why does Lisa stay in the PS world? What about Emet Classical Academy https://emetclassicalacademy.org/?
❤️
On this point, as someone on the left, I am finding many folks on the left who totally get this and are furious that this ideology is being considered left. So, please, let’s not count folks like me out. Instead, let’s boost what folks on the left who agree with us are saying. Here’s an example: https://substack.com/@beebaruchgee/note/c-92107630 (he describes himself as a Marxist socialist). And here’s a smart, thoughtful piece by another fellow who self-describes as a leftie: https://substack.com/@uncleskipsrodeo/note/c-91648276?r=16541&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I had a really hard time listening to all of you bash Trump. We finally have a champion who is literally making it stop and upholding truth. Can you not even say thank you? I think we all need to put politics aside and focus on how to get our children out of the gender cult.
Trump is a horrible man who has assaulted women and peeped on teenage beauty pageant contestants. He is also a cheat and a con man who is attempting to destroy our tripartite system and constitutional republic. So no, I won’t thank Trump for anything. But I WILL blame the Democratic Party for allowing the trans activists to serve the “pediatric gender transition” issue to Trump and his cronies on a goddamn silver platter.
We bashed Biden too. I’m afraid we’re all incorrigible ingrates, the shifty sort of activists constantly challenging authority. Alas, we’re useless in polite company.
Your conversation today was invaluable to help us all think through how to communicate during this extremely difficult time. I know a lot of us are grappling with this very thing, and it was tremendously useful to hear the four of you think out loud in your typically engaging way. On a positive note, I've actually had a few very good exchanges in recent times on these issues. I am discovering that there are other people out there who, like me, are progressives (in the old-fashioned sense), are very clear that the D party is on the wrong track here and are grappling, as you did so helpfully today, with how best to respond.
In this regard, once again, I thought Eliza’s closing remarks offered a beautiful blend of clear-sightedness and compassion. (I hope you will, once again, be able to make a clip of them to share around.) It made me think back to Eliza noting how Cass and Danielle Smith handled the change in policy, and also about Jamie’s anecdote on how a school for girls (I think it was?) handles this. I think one or both of Eliza and Jamie used the term “off-ramp,” and I am finding that’s a very useful frame in which to think about this right now.
Personally, I am among those who are absolutely horrified about what the current administration is doing to our government generally via DOGE, etc., to immigrants especially and to our standing around the world. While I have so far read two of the orders that interest us here and think both are generally well-thought out on their face, I am extremely concerned about the way in which they are already and will be implemented. What I am trying to do in my smaller conversations, then, while being absolutely firm that the harm that has been done to so many in the name of gender identity has to stop, is to encourage people to look for ways to work together, and push our Democratic electeds on this too, to stop standing in the way of the needed changes and focus on building a compassionate off-ramp for all those who have been harmed.
Tip of the hat to all of you, and to the marvelous Jamie. I look forward to listening to her testimony.
There often seems to be a moment in these podcasts when Eliza gives (as you say) a "beautiful blend of clear-sightedness and compassion".
And then there is a small pause, as everyone takes it in, and then one of the team says 'that's so beautifully put'...
I have been in awe of Eliza's articulacy and insight for years, and I'm so, so pleased for her that she has managed to secure a book deal.
Me too!
Lisa's post about her school's curriculum was really shocking. Seeing such pseudoscience be taught in public (and probably private!) schools is really disheartening, and makes you wonder how this is ever going to end.
I have two 12 year olds in a blue city in public school, and haven't heard about anything like this yet, although maybe it will come in later grades.
What I do know is that my boys will look at this stuff with disdain. We are a liberal family, but one of my boys has already adopted a decidedly "anti-woke" (and, too my horror, somewhat Trump-sympathetic) attitude, while the other, who has autism, has way too much advanced knowledge of science and biology to fall for this stuff. In fact, he recently told me that he had stopped watching the YouTube channel "SciShow" because they made a video about how sex is a spectrum, based on the existence of DSDs and chromosomal abnormalities. "That's why these are called disorders!", he said, "It doesn't mean the sex categories don't exist! So stupid!". He also, hilariously, said that he thought the narrator sounded like he was reporting this under duress, a gun pointed at his head to force him to utter such nonsense. All this was before we had ever talked about this issue.
Surely my kids can't be the only ones who view these teachings with skepticism, either because they are already fed up with the social justice rhetoric, or because they do actually understand biology and won't be misled like this. At least that's my hope.
I want to know how you raised such sane, bs-proof critical thinkers! I have twin 9 year olds and am terrified for them. Seriously if you write a parenting book I will read it
Thank you! I wouldn't describe my kids as sane (they have all sorts of issues of neurodivergence), but they are definitely independent thinkers. I think both of those things are mostly genetic...
I think we need to recognize that there are some people who can be reached with well/reasoned, nuanced arguments, and some who can’t.
The problem with the people who cannot, or at least are difficult to reach is that they have swallowed a lie (or lies), such as men can become women, there is no such thing as biological sex. Trying to reach these people is like trying to deprogram a cult member, or someone who has lived under a totalitarian regime and is a True Believer.
On the one hand, for the sake of political expedience it is more effective to try to persuade the persuadable. That is one problem.
But on the other hand, to echo Eliza’s point about the not exacerbating the fraught circumstances for those who have swallowed the lie, we need to be sensitive to their psychological condition and the complications that ensue. Here we need to draw lessons from the psychology of cults and totalitarian regimes.
My father was for a long time an unreconstructed Stalinist and ardent supporter of the Soviet Union. He could not be reached by rational or nuanced conversation. And he was likely to explode if confronted directly.
But eventually, one day, he told me, “We were Stalin’s biggest supporters (meaning, at the time, the Stalinists members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who had fought in the Spanish Civil War). We were wrong.”
How did that happen? I am not sure but I think it was the result of a profound crisis within our family over an accusation that was leveled against him based on so-called recovered memories. Something had happened that he could not fit into the rigid straitjacket of his thinking. And he began to open up.
I think that’s what happened. But this is the kind of question we need to be asking.
Trumps EO has solidified the frame that this is a right/left issue. i am dismayed by all the GC people who think that it's their lobbying that caused Trump to take this action, while totally ignoring Project 2025, and the Heritage Foundation, the real power behind the throne.
We do not have to accept or solidify the left/right framing at all. If Trump happens to say the sky is blue and it happens to be blue, if I am an adult I can affirm the sky's color without skittering around afraid that peers and/or meanies might call me a Trumpster.
I am speaking to the general perceptions of this issue, and the media's support of this perception. I have never considered it a partisan issue, but I'm in a tiny minority.
I believe that minority is growing, Sandra. People are edging away from the poison.
This is exactly the kind of conversation I wish I could have with people in real life (other than my long-suffering wife), and as far as I know this group is the only one having it publicly. So without an opportunity of my own I'm very happy to enjoy yours vicariously. Here's what I would have added if I were a part of it:
- On escalating online threats: n = 1, but I recently saw a comment in a trans Reddit space along the lines of "We had a Luigi. Maybe it's time for a Mario." I've seen several others referencing arming up for self protection.
- On why Democrats (at least the politicians) can't seem to let this go: I thought Kara Dansky made a good point in her recent interview on TransMuted. They're essentially in the same position of the parents who enthusiastically encouraged their kids through transition that Helen Joyce has noted; they can't let their minds go there. How could they back down and admit they were wrong after everything they've already invested? What does someone do when they have a tiger by the tail AND the tiger is pulling them over a cliff?
- On how public opinion might be changing and Cori's thought experiment: 1) Using myself as an example, I've gone from knowing the "right" answer but having question this time last year to, well, writing comments every week on Informed Dissent. Only three people in my real life would know that about me though. Take that for what it's worth. 2) I haven't heard any of my polite liberal friends talk about trans issues in over a year. When I've brought it up, none of them had any idea what the Cass Review was. It'll be interesting to see how people like them respond as more information leaks into their bubbles, particularly as the results of lawsuits come in. I predict a lot of quiet quitting in the months/years that will be hidden behind the front of extremely loud activism by the hyper-engaged.
-On the language in the EOs: I've been a big proponent of Eliza's argument that the language should have been less inflammatory. At the same time, I'm also open to the idea that maybe the Band-Aid just needed to be ripped off, and this is what that looks like.
- On talking to the middle: I absolutely agree that this is where a real difference can be made. How do we find opportunities to do that? Where does it happen? Related, I've been kicking around the idea of brainstorming strategies for how to talk about this to normie-libs who could potentially have their minds chnaged. If anyone has thoughts about that please feel free to share.
I’ve seen signs of this shift too. An ex-friend of mine who reportedly had been posting incessantly about “trans rights” from 2018 into early 2024, seems to post much less frequently about it now. Some true believers (especially parents of trans youth) might be stuck, but zealotry tends to be a matter of circumstance, not nature.
Two things that have given me hope throughout this:
-The tendency of youth to push back against the expressed orthodoxy of their elders
-The normie-ness of normies
Both like grass growing in the spring.
On changing people’s minds - people do change their minds about things all the time, but I think it’s maybe one of those things where the harder someone is obviously trying to change your mind from the outside, the less likely you are to do it, and the more likely you are to instead harden your heart against their ideas.
Like the classic fable of the North Wind and the Sun:
“The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.”
Great observations. This is exactly the kind of thinking we need to do.
Wouldn't it be more useful to frame what is going on as an ideological capture of our institutions and the resistance to that undemocratic capture? It's not a negotiation, not a war, culture. And definitely not a culture war.
This was a particularly rich and focused discussion. Lisa is in the belly of the beast--she's correct about the power of that media world on that part of American society that she lives in. I sympathize with her frustration. But those media outlets are losing audiences, as Ben pointed out--they lost me, one of their most loyal readers/listeners. So if I could be alienated, so could others. And most of the electorate ignores PBS, CBS, and the NY Times.
Cori's point is significant: the 10% committed to this insanity are not reachable. Helen Joyce has famously said that the parents who have transed their children will likely never be reachable. But the vast middle are waking up--probably because of girls'/women's sports. And once the illogic of that penetrates, the rest of it tends to fall apart soon enough.
Eliza's concerns about radicalization are difficult to address. Maybe we need to think about this on two levels. First is the personal, social level: I am finding more success in conversations with people who have been affected by this. We can be nuanced, thoughtful, and caring in those private interactions. These young people need to find a way out--and no, it won't be through federal action but through personal interactions in the real world.
But second is the political level: I wonder if direct, non-nuanced action is what is needed. Sure, there will be upset people, but any fuzzing of the edges (making exceptions) is how this all got institutionalized (let men use the women's bathrooms, it will be fine!). Trump operates in shock-and-awe mode. It's not my preferred political strategy, but maybe that's what it takes.
Finally, Trump's EOs will open the door to many more lawsuits, more legislation, more boldness of the part of those trying to stop this now that they have the power of the federal government backing them up. It's not going to be over any time soon, but I'm convinced that when careers, grants, status, and money are no longer flowing to "gender care" practitioners, the availability will gradually decrease, and so will the extent of the social contagion. (It will always be with us of course, just as recovered memories are still with us, but maybe not as powerful or extensive.)
Thank you all for such a thoughtful conversation!