Sorry to comment again; feeling feisty today. For what it’s worth, Dr. Gallagher has harmed boys and men too. She did my friend’s vaginoplasty; he was one of her earliest patients. He still has chronic pelvic pain and has required multiple revision surgeries. “Evil” is warranted in my opinion too.
I don't remember opining on Americano, but I must say that I love my La Pavoni old style espresso machine and I also have an Aeropress for travel - good stuff.
On the HHS report, I think you all should have another episode going over that because it's huge and you were light-staffed when it came out. The Washington Post editorial staff just had a decent piece about it, so there's your hook.
Non-gender thing of the week: The Sailor Moon table-top RPG from the 90s. My friend acquired the rulebook, and is planning to run a one-shot gaming session next month. I was over at her house today making my character, Sailor Vacuum. (“Vacuum” after the vacuum of space.)
Another fun episode giving me lots of chuckles throughout! Much of the content of these is difficult for me to follow. I'm not sure how much that's due to being a Brit, how much to being old and how much to being on the fringes of these culture wars and not very well read. I'll just blather a bit...
I don't know if you changed a setting on whatever videocall app you use, but it's better later when the order and size is fixed instead of the pictures skipping about and changing size.
I was struck by the difference in coffee-drinking culture between the USA and UK, although of course the latter is rapidly turning into the 51st State in most things (sorry Canada, get in line).
I'm old skool. I pick up a jar of second-cheapest instant in the supermarket and almost always drink coffee at home. I'm not alone in this by any means, and it used to be almost ubiquitous here, perhaps with ground coffee for special occasions. Now we're all having coffee pod machines and other gizmos pushed at us for the home, but there's also more "doing" coffee, which I gather means friends traveling to town to consume it together inside a glass box on the high street.
Over recent decades, Brits have been infected with the virus that drives normal people to leave their homes (which once had, and many still have, foodstuffs therein) and travel to somewhere else to purchase the same at massively inflated prices, where they probably discuss the terrible rise in the cost of living. In the main street near me (interestingly, a place called Starbeck, from whence a certain family came who founded a certain similarly-named coffee-house chain {ETA: my mistake - it's a more complicated connection involving some whales and a certain book}), there seems to be a new takeaway opening about every month, replacing small enterprises that used to sell all manner of useful items, from clothing to hardware to fresh fruit and veg. My partner and I buy vegetables and cook a meal each night. Dinersaurs, you might say.
I'm genuinely unsure about Jamie's coffee-shop question, but for me I think I'd be at least as concerned about the social and climate costs - not that I can assess these in her case, of course. And in my case, I know I could pay more attention to those costs in choosing the things I buy. It's easy to see the damage done to a young life when they're in front of you, less easy to see - often even to find out - how much is involved in the global conveyor-belt behind our purchases.
Thanks for the laughs, and the links. I'll check some more of those out. I tried chick-fil-a.com and the site gives a "403 Forbidden" - they have a .co.uk site though, and I see they're coming to the UK. 3000 outlets in North America just of that one chain - holy crap, the avian carnage.
Oh John, you remind me of 1987 when I attended University College London as an exchange student. I think the reason Brits drink so much instant coffee is that they all had nice kettles for making tea (and pour-over was not a thing back in the day).
My younger daughter buys fancy Japanese instant coffee and it's, um, drinkable.
"I don't know if you changed a setting on whatever videocall app you use, but it's better later when the order and size is fixed instead of the pictures skipping about and changing size."
Now that you mention it that has been bothering me for the last few episodes. I definitely prefer the hosts in fixed locations.
"but there's also more "doing" coffee"
I'm from NI and have been "doing" coffee since the mid 00s. It's just a fancier version of going to a café for a cuppa tea and a fry. I do feel guilty about the costs though and periodically retreat back to instant coffee at home to assuage my guilt...
Apologies for quibbling, but the coffee shop was named for a fictional character, Mr. Starbuck the coffee-loving chief mate in "Moby Dick." IRL the name Starbuck was common in the whaling industry and there are streets named Starbuck in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod. Most likely related to a Starbeck family from England?
Nearly died laughing at Eliza saying “my wife, my other wife, my girlfriend, and my goblin” must be imaginary 🤣 agree with other comments that goblin likely referred to a child, in any case L O L
Love you all so much for this episode! It felt therapeutic. If you will allow some notes:
A) I have met someone who goes by “Goblin” it’s an affectionate term for a young woman (mostly?) who feels messy relationship wise, and seems more used by the NB kids. Goblincore is one of the aesthetics popular on Tumbler and IG.
B) “voice training” as I’m sure you all know is a big part of the fetish Sissy CDTW Dominatrix world, to see it mentioned so casually in an academic discussion is WILDLY inappropriate.
C) please keep seeking out the indie coffee shops ❤️
So I’ve been a regular listener to the Gender Reveal podcast for a while now. It’s one way I keep up w/“trans discourse”; I note that I started out with exactly the same motivation Lisa describes, of wanting to know if there’s something I needed to learn, a compelling argument I hadn’t yet encountered. (Deep respect for that, Lisa. <3 )
And it’s where I first heard Jules Gill Peterson. Lisa, I too was struck by the unusualness of this person’s speech.
JGP’s retelling of the salary negotiation while getting hired by Johns Hopkins is really something to hear. It starts @ 42:11.
Ben, the sample you read *perfectly* captured JGP’s Butlerian knack for stringing together lengthy clauses containing esoteric terminology so as to sound SO much smarter-than-thou. (And I agree about the “Right?” tic.)
P.S. I must lift up the part of the conversation which begins at 11:24, with Cori’s effective modeling of the kind of intellectual humility and openness the world needs more of— “I’m not completely confident in my thinking around these things, so I try to get other points of view so that I can work out what’s happening better.” I’m older than you chronologically, Cori, and yet I sometimes think of you as a wise elder/role model. Much love and respect. <3
P.P.S. Ben, I pre-ordered your book today!! Looking forward to November!! <3
It didn't have narrative opening, but I interpret that collections of facts, interviews, her own movies and her irl on tape as question for the viewer: did Leni knew about Holokaust? It's such a hard question to answer, because Leni itself has awful personality (no wonder she and Hitler had vibe check), denial is her coping mechanism of choice and hysterically avoids answering directly questions about her views lvl Jordan Peterson. She's narcissistic af; vain, extreme perfectionist, must be better than her friends, extremely tightly controls perception of her, outburst of rage, strong denial, lack of autoreflection, cultivates positive self-image, aura of dominance. Ultimately I reached conclusion she didn't know at the time, because she really didn't want to know. Like, she was a true believer tunnel-visioned on good things and surrounded by fellow true believers, lacked curiosity and in self-protective effort ignored warning signs. She resigned from role of war correspondent in 1939 shortly after invasion of Poland, because she accidently - inprecise wording - sentenced 22 jews and poles to death, who were shot in her presence. She denies later that this happened, but well she denies basically everything unpleasant. Yet is able to admit Holocaust and gas chambers are well documented historical facts. So I think she can't disavow her work, because she's damn proud of it and it's not within her mental capabilities, and is too annoyed by being presented as bad person to actually engage in conversation - but she still didn't know, her focus were elsewhere.
My uncomfortable reflection of the day (mind you, I was exposed today to just a sample size of nazi propaganda) is that Riefenstahl’s works and Nazis in it weren’t about hate or Jews, but represented optimistic, positive strive for social progress, love for the people. Like this all had equally progressive vibe to rhetoric of progressive left today, just different social elements were enemies of the progress to achieve.
The utopian part of naziism is often overlooked: purity, purpose, and beauty. Should remind us that all utopian ideas are inseparable from evil outcomes. Especially transgenderism.
I haven't finished listening yet but hearing Ben read off the quote from Jules really reminded me of how the guru my father followed in the 1960s would speak. I heard rambling, free association, hitting certain rhetorical buttons that people would nod at, and the sounds of profundity but it's absolutely empty of real meaning.
Unsupported generalizations and undefined categories ("white women") are used to conclude what every listener expects: in Jules' case, the belief that oppression and liberation have anything to do with trans; in the guru's case, it was the coming of the Age of Siva Kalpa (the end of the world as we knew it).
I guess I tend to try to take Cori's approach in talking to people about this, when I do. I try to be curious. And patient. Patience is important. Or like with talking to Sailor Strawberry about this - he started transition over twenty years ago and has mostly just been living a normal life as a not-very-online transsexual since then. His perspective on this is very different from mine. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, but likewise, neither do I. I try to remind myself most people haven't been following this since the “Hell is empty and all the devils are all on Tumblr” years, or earlier. Most people aren’t like me, or us. And there's been so much obfuscation and misrepresentation.
One of the main criticisms I’ve gotten of the TTA sub is that it’s a “hugbox.” Given that the entry point characterizations at this point of players in the discourse often seem to be: for “TERFs,” “Nazis who want trans children to commit suicide and for trans adults to be for forcibly detransitioned at gunpoint,” for trans women, “perverted, mentally ill sex criminals,” for trans men, “intellectually incompetent trendfollowers,” for detransitioners, “grifters who won’t take responsibility for their own actions,” and for parents of “trans kids,” “willingly mutilated their own child” or “heartless and wants their own child to kill themself,” depending on which course of action they decide on, maybe a little hugboxing is called for, Christ. This entire situation is a nightmarish clusterfuck and while there are some bad actors, I genuinely think most people are just trying to navigate it the best they can. If Critical Social Justice is indeed, as I've been calling it, enmity as religion, grace is the only thing that will save us.
Haven’t listened to the episode yet, but I saw “TERF Industrial Complex” in the notes, thought, “What?” and clicked it. Stopped scrolling when I saw Grace Lavery’s name. Ah.
(It was an event from the summer of 2020. “The TERF Industrial Complex: Transphobia, Feminism, and Race.”)
THANK YOU for pointing out the "right?" habit! This started bothering me a couple years ago and it's almost unlistenable once I start hearing it on something. I'm glad I'm not alone in this.
Sorry to comment again; feeling feisty today. For what it’s worth, Dr. Gallagher has harmed boys and men too. She did my friend’s vaginoplasty; he was one of her earliest patients. He still has chronic pelvic pain and has required multiple revision surgeries. “Evil” is warranted in my opinion too.
I get my lesbian haircut in Boston by a MAGA straight woman and she is the best! We have gender critical conversations during appointments 🤣
But if I ever lose her, it’s going to be trouble.
Love you all back!!
I don't remember opining on Americano, but I must say that I love my La Pavoni old style espresso machine and I also have an Aeropress for travel - good stuff.
On the HHS report, I think you all should have another episode going over that because it's huge and you were light-staffed when it came out. The Washington Post editorial staff just had a decent piece about it, so there's your hook.
Yes, agree!
Non-gender thing of the week: The Sailor Moon table-top RPG from the 90s. My friend acquired the rulebook, and is planning to run a one-shot gaming session next month. I was over at her house today making my character, Sailor Vacuum. (“Vacuum” after the vacuum of space.)
Another fun episode giving me lots of chuckles throughout! Much of the content of these is difficult for me to follow. I'm not sure how much that's due to being a Brit, how much to being old and how much to being on the fringes of these culture wars and not very well read. I'll just blather a bit...
I don't know if you changed a setting on whatever videocall app you use, but it's better later when the order and size is fixed instead of the pictures skipping about and changing size.
I was struck by the difference in coffee-drinking culture between the USA and UK, although of course the latter is rapidly turning into the 51st State in most things (sorry Canada, get in line).
I'm old skool. I pick up a jar of second-cheapest instant in the supermarket and almost always drink coffee at home. I'm not alone in this by any means, and it used to be almost ubiquitous here, perhaps with ground coffee for special occasions. Now we're all having coffee pod machines and other gizmos pushed at us for the home, but there's also more "doing" coffee, which I gather means friends traveling to town to consume it together inside a glass box on the high street.
Over recent decades, Brits have been infected with the virus that drives normal people to leave their homes (which once had, and many still have, foodstuffs therein) and travel to somewhere else to purchase the same at massively inflated prices, where they probably discuss the terrible rise in the cost of living. In the main street near me (interestingly, a place called Starbeck, from whence a certain family came who founded a certain similarly-named coffee-house chain {ETA: my mistake - it's a more complicated connection involving some whales and a certain book}), there seems to be a new takeaway opening about every month, replacing small enterprises that used to sell all manner of useful items, from clothing to hardware to fresh fruit and veg. My partner and I buy vegetables and cook a meal each night. Dinersaurs, you might say.
I'm genuinely unsure about Jamie's coffee-shop question, but for me I think I'd be at least as concerned about the social and climate costs - not that I can assess these in her case, of course. And in my case, I know I could pay more attention to those costs in choosing the things I buy. It's easy to see the damage done to a young life when they're in front of you, less easy to see - often even to find out - how much is involved in the global conveyor-belt behind our purchases.
Thanks for the laughs, and the links. I'll check some more of those out. I tried chick-fil-a.com and the site gives a "403 Forbidden" - they have a .co.uk site though, and I see they're coming to the UK. 3000 outlets in North America just of that one chain - holy crap, the avian carnage.
Oh John, you remind me of 1987 when I attended University College London as an exchange student. I think the reason Brits drink so much instant coffee is that they all had nice kettles for making tea (and pour-over was not a thing back in the day).
My younger daughter buys fancy Japanese instant coffee and it's, um, drinkable.
That's a coincidence, our cheap stuff is, um, drinkable too!
So you know about kettles. Knowledge is dangerous, and you know too much. :D
"I don't know if you changed a setting on whatever videocall app you use, but it's better later when the order and size is fixed instead of the pictures skipping about and changing size."
Now that you mention it that has been bothering me for the last few episodes. I definitely prefer the hosts in fixed locations.
"but there's also more "doing" coffee"
I'm from NI and have been "doing" coffee since the mid 00s. It's just a fancier version of going to a café for a cuppa tea and a fry. I do feel guilty about the costs though and periodically retreat back to instant coffee at home to assuage my guilt...
Apologies for quibbling, but the coffee shop was named for a fictional character, Mr. Starbuck the coffee-loving chief mate in "Moby Dick." IRL the name Starbuck was common in the whaling industry and there are streets named Starbuck in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod. Most likely related to a Starbeck family from England?
Ooh no, we like quibbles! Thanks for the correction.
Nearly died laughing at Eliza saying “my wife, my other wife, my girlfriend, and my goblin” must be imaginary 🤣 agree with other comments that goblin likely referred to a child, in any case L O L
You gotta feel sorry for the goblin in that context, regardless of what a goblin might be!
i was thinking maybe i’ll start referring to my morning bowel movements as my wife my other wife my girlfriend and my goblin
Love you all so much for this episode! It felt therapeutic. If you will allow some notes:
A) I have met someone who goes by “Goblin” it’s an affectionate term for a young woman (mostly?) who feels messy relationship wise, and seems more used by the NB kids. Goblincore is one of the aesthetics popular on Tumbler and IG.
B) “voice training” as I’m sure you all know is a big part of the fetish Sissy CDTW Dominatrix world, to see it mentioned so casually in an academic discussion is WILDLY inappropriate.
C) please keep seeking out the indie coffee shops ❤️
I didn't even connect it to Goblincore lol
Neither did I, but I did assume it was a child. I call most small children hobgoblins for some reason.
So I’ve been a regular listener to the Gender Reveal podcast for a while now. It’s one way I keep up w/“trans discourse”; I note that I started out with exactly the same motivation Lisa describes, of wanting to know if there’s something I needed to learn, a compelling argument I hadn’t yet encountered. (Deep respect for that, Lisa. <3 )
And it’s where I first heard Jules Gill Peterson. Lisa, I too was struck by the unusualness of this person’s speech.
JGP’s retelling of the salary negotiation while getting hired by Johns Hopkins is really something to hear. It starts @ 42:11.
Ben, the sample you read *perfectly* captured JGP’s Butlerian knack for stringing together lengthy clauses containing esoteric terminology so as to sound SO much smarter-than-thou. (And I agree about the “Right?” tic.)
I was about to call the following tidbit another highlight, but “low point” seems more apt: you can hear JGP saying “Let’s literally get the most plastic surgery possible” in the final 11 seconds (in an outtake): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gender-reveal/id1330522019?i=1000568710361
P.S. I must lift up the part of the conversation which begins at 11:24, with Cori’s effective modeling of the kind of intellectual humility and openness the world needs more of— “I’m not completely confident in my thinking around these things, so I try to get other points of view so that I can work out what’s happening better.” I’m older than you chronologically, Cori, and yet I sometimes think of you as a wise elder/role model. Much love and respect. <3
P.P.S. Ben, I pre-ordered your book today!! Looking forward to November!! <3
🙏🏼 🙏🏼 🙏🏼
Non-gender recommendation: documentary movie about Leni Riefenstahl https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32249940/
It didn't have narrative opening, but I interpret that collections of facts, interviews, her own movies and her irl on tape as question for the viewer: did Leni knew about Holokaust? It's such a hard question to answer, because Leni itself has awful personality (no wonder she and Hitler had vibe check), denial is her coping mechanism of choice and hysterically avoids answering directly questions about her views lvl Jordan Peterson. She's narcissistic af; vain, extreme perfectionist, must be better than her friends, extremely tightly controls perception of her, outburst of rage, strong denial, lack of autoreflection, cultivates positive self-image, aura of dominance. Ultimately I reached conclusion she didn't know at the time, because she really didn't want to know. Like, she was a true believer tunnel-visioned on good things and surrounded by fellow true believers, lacked curiosity and in self-protective effort ignored warning signs. She resigned from role of war correspondent in 1939 shortly after invasion of Poland, because she accidently - inprecise wording - sentenced 22 jews and poles to death, who were shot in her presence. She denies later that this happened, but well she denies basically everything unpleasant. Yet is able to admit Holocaust and gas chambers are well documented historical facts. So I think she can't disavow her work, because she's damn proud of it and it's not within her mental capabilities, and is too annoyed by being presented as bad person to actually engage in conversation - but she still didn't know, her focus were elsewhere.
My uncomfortable reflection of the day (mind you, I was exposed today to just a sample size of nazi propaganda) is that Riefenstahl’s works and Nazis in it weren’t about hate or Jews, but represented optimistic, positive strive for social progress, love for the people. Like this all had equally progressive vibe to rhetoric of progressive left today, just different social elements were enemies of the progress to achieve.
The utopian part of naziism is often overlooked: purity, purpose, and beauty. Should remind us that all utopian ideas are inseparable from evil outcomes. Especially transgenderism.
Yeah, just about nobody thinks they're the baddies.
LET THE EX-HAIRDRESSER SPEAK
lol!
I haven't finished listening yet but hearing Ben read off the quote from Jules really reminded me of how the guru my father followed in the 1960s would speak. I heard rambling, free association, hitting certain rhetorical buttons that people would nod at, and the sounds of profundity but it's absolutely empty of real meaning.
Unsupported generalizations and undefined categories ("white women") are used to conclude what every listener expects: in Jules' case, the belief that oppression and liberation have anything to do with trans; in the guru's case, it was the coming of the Age of Siva Kalpa (the end of the world as we knew it).
Now that the Washington Post is also calling for “more research,” I would encourage you to move this topic back to the front burner.
I guess I tend to try to take Cori's approach in talking to people about this, when I do. I try to be curious. And patient. Patience is important. Or like with talking to Sailor Strawberry about this - he started transition over twenty years ago and has mostly just been living a normal life as a not-very-online transsexual since then. His perspective on this is very different from mine. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, but likewise, neither do I. I try to remind myself most people haven't been following this since the “Hell is empty and all the devils are all on Tumblr” years, or earlier. Most people aren’t like me, or us. And there's been so much obfuscation and misrepresentation.
One of the main criticisms I’ve gotten of the TTA sub is that it’s a “hugbox.” Given that the entry point characterizations at this point of players in the discourse often seem to be: for “TERFs,” “Nazis who want trans children to commit suicide and for trans adults to be for forcibly detransitioned at gunpoint,” for trans women, “perverted, mentally ill sex criminals,” for trans men, “intellectually incompetent trendfollowers,” for detransitioners, “grifters who won’t take responsibility for their own actions,” and for parents of “trans kids,” “willingly mutilated their own child” or “heartless and wants their own child to kill themself,” depending on which course of action they decide on, maybe a little hugboxing is called for, Christ. This entire situation is a nightmarish clusterfuck and while there are some bad actors, I genuinely think most people are just trying to navigate it the best they can. If Critical Social Justice is indeed, as I've been calling it, enmity as religion, grace is the only thing that will save us.
Haven’t listened to the episode yet, but I saw “TERF Industrial Complex” in the notes, thought, “What?” and clicked it. Stopped scrolling when I saw Grace Lavery’s name. Ah.
(It was an event from the summer of 2020. “The TERF Industrial Complex: Transphobia, Feminism, and Race.”)
Just did the exact same thing!
THANK YOU for pointing out the "right?" habit! This started bothering me a couple years ago and it's almost unlistenable once I start hearing it on something. I'm glad I'm not alone in this.
Another excellent episode. I really hope Cori writes an essay on the intriguing analogy he mentioned with the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Thank you all so much for doing this podcast. I eagerly look forward to it every week.