To Sarah's point that the Democrats don't have a messaging problem but a problem-problem: to me this is similar to the left-progressive-Democrat tendency to dismiss opposition as bigotry.
The move is: You don't disagree with me for your stated reasons, you only disagree with me because you are bigot.
In both cases, there's no need to actually grapple with the disagreement. Democrats don't like boys in girls' sports: okay, we'll just give out extra medals. As if that is the problem--the number of medals! It's still refusing to cede any actual ground. Anyone who complains that more medals don't solve the problem can be dismissed as a right wing bigot. Case closed.
It's more than a tendency now. Over the course of my life I've watched it become a central pillar of how the left operates until I finally fell foul of it over the Trans issue. It pains me to say this but gay marriage was probably the tipping point for the left, after that it just didn't feel like it had to argue it's case on anything.
Ben, I loved your story about the conversation you had with other gay men about this topic. I have a gay brother-in-law in New York City, and I recently tried to talk about this with him. He was just reeling off all the talking points about how we needed to prevent "trans kids" from committing suicide by allowing them in girls' sports, and how this wasn't really a big issue anyway since there are so few of those kids, and it was just weaponized by Republicans. "If you're not harming anyone, why would anyone have problem with this?" I found it hard to convince him that people ARE being harmed.
He was receptive to the argument that we are transing away gender non-conformity, and harming gay kids, and that the whole thing is based on gender stereotypes (he was more receptive to that than to any argument about women's rights), but when I said that there were gay people opposing this for this reason, he said that they "must be pretty fringe". Clearly, he hadn't met any of them. I wish there was a way to convince him that this isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a "fringe" view among gays. Maybe, as you say, there are actually more people than he thinks who are critical of this, and he just doesn't know it because no one speaks up.
Maybe see if you can interest him in a conversation about logical fallacies, and bring up the example of the fallacy of hasty generalization (a.k.a. sampling bias), which is illustrated by a widely circulated historical anecdote often attributed to Pauline Kael, a film critic for The New Yorker. After the 1972 U.S. presidential election, where Richard Nixon won a landslide victory over George McGovern, Kael is said to have remarked something like, “I don’t know how Nixon won; nobody I know voted for him.”
You might ask him if he's thought very much about the fact that there's a whole world outside his little social circle that he is probably totally unaware of . . . and ask him, how he can be so sure his own worldview isn't the one that's "fringe."
Call me sentimental or silly, but I did shed a little tear when Eliza 'came out' as Sarah.
I've known and loved Eliza for a few years. Of course Sarah is the same person, but it does seem to have a significance, both on a personal level for Sarah, but also on a wider level.
When I first became interested in the Trans issue, I didn't use my real name - my 'fake' online name was Caspar, which I kept for a few years. And I only started using my real name when the climate seemed safe to do so, and that I wouldn't be cancelled at the drop of a hat for wrong-speak.
That the climate has shifted so much over the past few years is due in no small part to the work that this team, and many other people around the globe have been bravely doing.
I’m Sally. Another name that means “princess,” like Sarah. I’m named after my grandfather. His name was Sylvester, and “Sally” was a nickname. So my username here is another nickname for the same person. “Syl” is what my grandma used to call him.
Think about a moment when you unexpectedly find a piece of art so perfect for its setting that you just have to shake your head, snicker and ask the universe, how do you *do* this stuff? That's kinda how I feel about learning that our podcast pal is called Sarah Mittermaier.
You could not make this up. Come along with me, folks, we're in a gallery: is that a Klimt over there? Hmmm, "Portrait of Sarah Mittermaier, 1904." Yes!
Well done, Sarah's parents, for the name.
Ben, you appraised the Scheissfest that is the whole Queer Studies racket with great skill. Churning out a steady stream of castrati, poison-ingesters and knife-victims is just one of its functions. Separating the middle class (not to mention those below!) from hundreds of thousands of hard-earned or as yet unearned simoleons a throw in exchange for fouled hot air piped up their children's noses for four years is *not* what's going to keep us competitive, I reckon.
Haha, Jamie, this is what’s wrong with writing: we can’t hear tone of voice in it, unless we’re really, really good at characterization. You may be joking too about my Psycho comment, but I sure was! Just to make that clear. Don’t see Psycho if you don’t feel like it. You won’t want to take a shower ever again.
Yeah, I feel guilty for joining in with you. I think Silence of the Lambs should also be required viewing, but if horror movies aren't Jamie's, or anyone else's, thing then there's nothing wrong with giving them a pass.
Re: the breast cancer study in transwomen and estrogen. They stopped giving menopausal women estrogen based HRT despite all its potential benefits (heart protection, bone health) because of the increased breast cancer risk. And doctors frequently won't prescribe to women of all ages with migraines with auras any form of estrogen, including in the birth control pill, because of the increased stroke risk, even for really debilitating conditions usually treated by the pill. So either women are getting denied treatments that could really help them for reasons that are not legitimate or trans women should be asking why protecting their health doesn't matter to these doctors.
Voice training: go to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association's website and search for "transgender voice therapy." You will get over 360 results. Then"detransition" or "detransitioner" into the search box. You get zero.
Sarah, I was so clueless about your real name that when you sent me an autism document from an account using it, I didn't recognize what it was at first and almost deleted it without opening it because I thought it was spam. I'll admit that embarrassing story now that you have come out :)
The idea of the increased breast cancer risk comes from the WHI study in the early 2000s. That study was conducted in women who started HRT very late, like in their 60s. It also only found an extremely minimal increase of absolute risk. It is one of the big errors of contemporary medicine to have scared menopausal women away from this otherwise very beneficial treatment, or even denied it to them.
My gynecologist, who practices at a major research university, considers HRT very safe, if started early enough, with the benefits largely outweighing the risks. Marty Makary, our new FDA commissioner, has a chapter about this topic in his new book, Blind Spots.
I don't know what the situation is with transwomen, but it seems probable that the situation could be very different for people whose bodies aren't naturally made for estrogen.
I have no idea. I'm not a medical doctor, and I haven't read the trans study. I just wanted to point out that the "HRT causes breast cancer in menopausal women" narrative is questionable, and the benefits of HRT may vastly outweigh that risk.
That’s still up for debate. There are very limited cases - where endocrine system medicine (hormones ) have been put through higher quality studies and have a correlation with outcomes. There’s a shit ton of mythical or low quality studies that are widely shared by influencers to sell treatments for menopause.
What symptoms are you thinking of that have benefited from hormones?
Brain fog, headaches, fatigue, anxiety… all fixed by estrogen patch. Just like my debilitating PMS was controlled by the pill when I was younger. Some women are more sensitive to hormones than others.
For me, the long term health benefits are secondary to the immediate benefits of not being estrogen-deprived. And I’m not saying there isn’t more research to do, but it’s not just influencers that say the long-term benefits of HRT are likely large. Marty Makary makes a strong case for it as well, as does my gynecologist who is very versed in the research.
Glad to hear you have experienced such a benefit. Menopause has such different symptoms for each person. I hesitate to attribute such miracles to just hormones.
But I’m certainly not discounting positive and relieving experiences!
I had a terrible experience personally with the pill, and no one connected some symptoms that cleared up once I quit taking it. I’ve been able to resolve menopause symptoms in other ways, and attribute a lot of the brain fog to sleep deprivation due to being the sandwich generation..
Great episode! A question I had was what are some of the concrete next steps and general strategies for folks that are not aligned with gender ideology? What are some of the major goals? And, how should people speak about this issue to Democrats -- whether liberals or Progessives?
Jamie, have you asked the NYT folks why your personal situation was highlighted on The Protocol podcast, and not that of several of the professionals interviewed? Was that just because you volunteered it? It seems pretty darn biased not to provide personal background on all interview subjects if you are going to provide it on some... I'm curious what Lisa makes of this too, with her journalistic background. (Overall, found the piece more balanced than I had imagined it might be, tho of course it went off the rails at bit at the end...)
As a borderline Elder Millennial I think the perception of the Republicans as the anti science party is firmly rooted in their attempts to push Creationism into the classroom during the second Bush administration during the 00s. That plus things like Abstinence Only Sex Ed* and Climate Change Skepticism** kinda cemented them as the idiot party for a lot of people my age I think.
However, as someone who spent time on a lot of Skeptic and Atheist forums during that time period we were aware that some forms of woo were more common on the left. Vaccine skepticism was more of a liberal thing until Covid. In fact I'd say liberals were (and possibly have been for decades) more likely to be pro alternative medicine and most forms of spiritual woo (think crystal healing and touch therapy) than conservatives. It's just that those things weren't seen as a threat compared to Creationism, Abstinence Only Sex Ed, and Climate Change Skepticism which were getting pushed by the party in power. So what I think has happened is that a lot of people who lived through the Bush years just can't wrap their heads around the idea that the Republicans could ever be right about The Science because they were wrong twenty years ago when they were teenagers or twenty-somethings and they simply haven't updated their priors in over two decades.
* has anyone else contemplated the possibility that Abstinence Only Sex Ed might actually do less damage in the long run than what a lot of liberals now seem to be pushing into relationship classes?
** My belief in Climate Change caused by Greenhouse Gas emissions is still very strong, second only to evolution, but I'd be lying if I said I was still 100% on the issue. It's hard when the people I deferred to on the issue also believe that TWAW...
I was thinking about it too. Queer brainrot is one thing, another is grooming; in my life people who were thrilled about providing sex education to teenagers really behaved sexually inappropriately toward us, which I see as adult. Another thing is that oldschool model „no sex before marriage” was suitable for times without contraception and while yeah condoms exist and are useful, many many teens starting sex life are starting oral contraception too. Liberals are often in denial about downsides/side effects of the pills and bringing this topic meets with anger, accusations of misogyny, „misinformation” label. I’m not a doctor, idk if pills have any potential for developmental disruptions, all I can is that I experienced loss of libido persistent during all years on pills, it miraculously returned when I stopped pills, and instead of information about side effects of the pills The Great Sex Educated Ones suggested asexual identity. But back from my grievances to the point: liberal sex-positive ED kind of relies on contraception for teens and social incentives are for oral pills more reliable and comfortable than condones, so even in best scenario (no grooming, no TQ indoctrination) girls are pushed to medicalisation in young age, which can cause unpredictable consequences (psychological, if nothing else) down the line.
E: I’m not saying that abstinence only is the way, I’m sharing my concerns about sex-positive sex ed
Yeah, I'm not saying that Abstinence Only Sex Ed is good, just that it might be better than the most extreme examples I've seen of what the left is now pushing. AOSE is closer to doing nothing than contemporary Liberal Sex Ed, and sometimes doing nothing has less bad final outcomes than doing something. It's like with mental healthcare in schools, none might just be safer in the long run than a version of help run by people desperate to find more TQ kids...
That seems plausible to me; I also spent a lot of time of Skeptic and Atheist forums during that time period.
A number of atheist and skeptic bloggers I read later went on to transition, too. (Edited because as I thought about it, I realized these mostly people I encountered a few years later in my “online journey,” more around the Atheism+ era.)
Okay, I think I just mis-read your original comment a little. The atheist bloggers I knew who eventually transitioned were mostly people I learned of during the Freethought Blogs / Atheism+ era, which primarily overlapped with the first Obama administration. I was reading atheist and skeptic forums and blogs during the second G.W. Bush administration too, but those tended to be more anonymous, so I’m not really sure what happened to those people. Although, at this point, it would not at all surprise me to learn any of them had since transitioned. 😅
This also seems to tie into the point Cori made on today’s episode about meaning-making. Religion is one of those ways we create meaning together. I was a *very* devout child before losing my faith around age 15. “Horseshoe Theory” originated as a way of conceptualizing the political spectrum, but I wonder if something like that could be applied to the, ah, religiosity spectrum as well.
For those who weren’t Very Online during that era, “New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed” is a pretty good primer on what it was like.
"I remember one incident that for some reason I took note of, and which, for me, epitomizes that fork in the road, "Elevatorgate," when Rebecca Watson (aka Skepchick) made a complaint that a guy had invited her, during an elevator ride, to his room for coffee at the end of a day at the World Atheist Convention, 2011."
I was around for that and I sided with Rebecca. I remember the video where she made the "guys, don't do that" comment and I didn't think she was being unreasonable. It pains me greatly that she's now promoting giving men access to women's spaces.
"Richard Dawkins, ever the diplomat, wrote an excoriating piece, a sarcastic letter to an imaginary Muslim woman, appealing for her to have some perspective - never mind living under Sharia law, did you know a white woman, alone in a lift, was invited by a man to share coffee?!"
You left out that it was at 4am after a night of drinking, I'm pretty sure that was a part of the story. I wasn't a big fan of the Dear Muslima letter, given that the New Atheists were often accused of making mountains out of a mole hills when talking about how they were treated in The West. The argument being that Western Atheists shouldn't complain about their treatment in The West when we're regularly treated worse elsewhere. The same holds true for Feminists, who will often get hit with the "but what about women in the Islamic World, why don't you care about them?" argument when they complain about issues in the West, and it only got worse when Trans got added to the list of things women had to put up with until the situation in the rest of the world improved (but of course all cultures are equal so there's nothing the liberal left can actually do to improve the situation in rest of the world because that would be too much like an imposition of western values on foreign peoples).
Oh definitely! I’m trying to piece together the timeline. I read atheist stuff online from probably 2004 to 2013-ish? Then the developing social justice-y side of the atheist community became too insufferable, and for personal reasons, I became less interested in atheism in general.
secret lives of mormon wives is so fucking confusing LMAO probably partially bc i know nothing about their tiktok shit — but when they played whitney’s RSV hospital tiktok it had me screaaaaaaamimg
I want to move forward past trans topics, but just can’t. In part the driving factor is nonexistence of lesbian communities, so literally the GC substack is my only contact with other lesbians and also the only place I know where lesbians talk about lesbian (not queer) experience. Gays still have gay culture, gay visibility and places for gays, so don’t have to care. I imagine for you chosing to care means losing these connections.
The other factor it that when I really make serious efforts to phase out this kind of content from my life, the content catches me irl and I’m back to GC substack. I’m trying to understand the world and unpack weirdness of progressive left spaces
To Ben’s point about his friend taking the phrase “identify as a woman” at face value- this seems to be common that people often negate the role of social learning and culture in the way we conceptualize and label experiences. Some labels are closer to describing observable direct sensory experiences “I feel very fatigued” while others are very conceptual/symbolic/metaphorical “I feel like I’m dying.” It seems like a major problem has occurred that we fail to discern these two types of descriptions and recognize that while all ways of conceptualizing and labeling experiences can be influenced by a whole host of factors (culture, learning history, language, interpersonal function), conceptual ones are more likely to be influenced by these factors. Abstract language can also make it more difficult to know what the direct sensory experience is that they are trying to describe. When a male says they “identify as a woman” or “feel female”- given they have no direct experience of being a woman to anchor to, what is it they are describing? An emotion of envy of women that arises in specific contexts? A thought that “my life would be better if I was a woman?” Perhaps this also touches on Sarah’s “non-gender thing of the week” around how when we’ve decoupled “experiencing” from direct sensory input/embodiment, we’ve become more susceptible to taking highly conceptual/abstract language as a concrete “truth”?
Yes, and what I also see is the hijacking of "identifying as gay": coming out and announcing the identity has now been taken by the trans movement as the same thing.
So I can see how so many gay men and women believe that "trans" is a similar experience: something innate, something that used to be hidden, and today can be freely expressed.
Ben's friend may have been expressing a belief that to disbelieve the man who "feels like a woman" would be tantamount to disbelieving that he, the friend, is gay.
Yes, I’ve noticed that in the US, the phrase “I feel” is commonly used to actually describe thoughts, interpretations, etc. For example- “I feel like you don’t care about me”. Seems to get people confused about what an emotion or feeling actually is vs a cognition.
Dear and lovely Jamie! I'm afraid the Democratic Party as been just as guilty of "science denial" as the Republican Party . . . and arguably to worse effect, because their domination of academic circles has led to pseudoscience supplanting robust scientific inquiry and analysis throughout much of knowledge-making over the past several decades (the relentlessly declining quality of basic education at all levels has accelerated this process . . . ).
Scientism is what a lot of progressives have mistaken for "the Science" all along (particularly those lacking an understanding of many ways we humans delude ourselves that the scientific method is meant to guard against) . . . see "Cargo Cult" Science, a term for "Scientism" coined by Richard Feynman
But please don't feel crushed! It's a yin and yang thing . . . we need the loosey-goosey dreamers, the caring lefty-types, the crunchy granola idealists, to come up with the wild theories of how good it could be for all us humans someday, to incentivise all those "just the facts, ma'am" types to pick up their measuring tapes and scales and "it has to add up" efforts in the first place! It was your lefty-ness that drew you to working with gender non-conforming youth in the first place! And then the "make it make sense" materialist part of you drove you to push back against the woo! Read some Richard Feynman books, especially the one where he talks about the fine mind of the woman he loved. He was a totally liberal character with a child's unselfconscious curiosity, and I'll bet you'll identify with him. It'll cheer you up.
Hi Heather, I really like your first paragraph here. I have to say that I have met so many progressives that say they "believe in science" (hoo boy, could *that* be unpacked!) without having any scientific understanding whatsoever, or even command of some basic scientific factoids. Add to that the desire to show compassion, which unfortunately often manifests in refusal to set or uphold standards, or in the attachment of unjustified weight to "alternative ways of knowing." Make no mistake, those two things routinely increase bloodshed and suffering.
Add to that a sense of entitlement; a lack of humility; a ridiculously unwarranted confidence in their "education." So many of the folk in Progressive World exude a vibe that they no doubt want me to read as, "Already Enlightened." My receptors tend to translate this as "Incapable of Remorse."
The left are the new intellectual and class snobs. In the same way that they lost interest in helping boring old "cis" women they also lost interest in representing the working class as it is, probably because doing so might actually cost them real money.
A recent story of a NC University staff member admitting to his intention (and apparently the intention of his colleagues) to continue following the same ideologically "woke" policies, despite reform measure, together with the Jonathan Cowan's Politico article apparently advising the Democrat party to stay the course while merely inventing new euphemisms in order to boil the frogs just a little more gradually than before, shows this imperviousness to democratically-expressed preferences of these so-very-certain-of-themselves people. I'm afraid a sizeable portion of our population need to be removed from any position of authority, and the usual process for that to happen tends to happen in a very illiberal and ugly way (perhaps another "Red Scare"?). How do you shift an institution back towards classical liberal ideals while leaving the brainwashed and incompetent people who've corrupted it in their jobs?
Listen to any honest and informed person recount the realities of the post WWII era, btw, you will learn that there WERE actually a lot of individuals in the U.S. working towards communist revolution. (The fact that I feel dirty and embarrassed saying so reflects the conditioning of my entire academic life during which I was taught that this problem within the U.S. government was nothing but a figment of paranoid fantasy of ignoramuses like McCarthy.) Sigh . . . but sometimes the village idiot DOES see a danger everyone else has missed!
Anyway, here's the article providing an individual example of someone "Incapable of Remorse," let alone capable of noticing that the broader political climate has gotten waaay less suitable for this game of disguising unfairness and brutal injustices with euphemisms. (I cannot help but suspect this person stopped using her brain for much more than motor skills a long time ago.)
UNC Charlotte’s Assistant Director of Leadership and Community Engagement, Janique Sanders, was caught on hidden camera admitting the university continues DEI work despite state bans.
“So equity work is still happening on campus?” the undercover journalist asks.
“I can’t say that,” she responds to the journalist. “But… So we’ve renamed it, we’ve revised, we’ve recalibrated it, so to speak.”
In the video, she explained that front-facing DEI positions don’t exist, but rather, there are opportunities to do the work covertly.
“We just finesse the language,” Sanders says in the footage. “We do work that is covert.”
To Sarah's point that the Democrats don't have a messaging problem but a problem-problem: to me this is similar to the left-progressive-Democrat tendency to dismiss opposition as bigotry.
The move is: You don't disagree with me for your stated reasons, you only disagree with me because you are bigot.
In both cases, there's no need to actually grapple with the disagreement. Democrats don't like boys in girls' sports: okay, we'll just give out extra medals. As if that is the problem--the number of medals! It's still refusing to cede any actual ground. Anyone who complains that more medals don't solve the problem can be dismissed as a right wing bigot. Case closed.
It's more than a tendency now. Over the course of my life I've watched it become a central pillar of how the left operates until I finally fell foul of it over the Trans issue. It pains me to say this but gay marriage was probably the tipping point for the left, after that it just didn't feel like it had to argue it's case on anything.
Ben, I loved your story about the conversation you had with other gay men about this topic. I have a gay brother-in-law in New York City, and I recently tried to talk about this with him. He was just reeling off all the talking points about how we needed to prevent "trans kids" from committing suicide by allowing them in girls' sports, and how this wasn't really a big issue anyway since there are so few of those kids, and it was just weaponized by Republicans. "If you're not harming anyone, why would anyone have problem with this?" I found it hard to convince him that people ARE being harmed.
He was receptive to the argument that we are transing away gender non-conformity, and harming gay kids, and that the whole thing is based on gender stereotypes (he was more receptive to that than to any argument about women's rights), but when I said that there were gay people opposing this for this reason, he said that they "must be pretty fringe". Clearly, he hadn't met any of them. I wish there was a way to convince him that this isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a "fringe" view among gays. Maybe, as you say, there are actually more people than he thinks who are critical of this, and he just doesn't know it because no one speaks up.
Maybe see if you can interest him in a conversation about logical fallacies, and bring up the example of the fallacy of hasty generalization (a.k.a. sampling bias), which is illustrated by a widely circulated historical anecdote often attributed to Pauline Kael, a film critic for The New Yorker. After the 1972 U.S. presidential election, where Richard Nixon won a landslide victory over George McGovern, Kael is said to have remarked something like, “I don’t know how Nixon won; nobody I know voted for him.”
You might ask him if he's thought very much about the fact that there's a whole world outside his little social circle that he is probably totally unaware of . . . and ask him, how he can be so sure his own worldview isn't the one that's "fringe."
Call me sentimental or silly, but I did shed a little tear when Eliza 'came out' as Sarah.
I've known and loved Eliza for a few years. Of course Sarah is the same person, but it does seem to have a significance, both on a personal level for Sarah, but also on a wider level.
When I first became interested in the Trans issue, I didn't use my real name - my 'fake' online name was Caspar, which I kept for a few years. And I only started using my real name when the climate seemed safe to do so, and that I wouldn't be cancelled at the drop of a hat for wrong-speak.
That the climate has shifted so much over the past few years is due in no small part to the work that this team, and many other people around the globe have been bravely doing.
Ah, things have changed a lot!
I’m Sally. Another name that means “princess,” like Sarah. I’m named after my grandfather. His name was Sylvester, and “Sally” was a nickname. So my username here is another nickname for the same person. “Syl” is what my grandma used to call him.
Think about a moment when you unexpectedly find a piece of art so perfect for its setting that you just have to shake your head, snicker and ask the universe, how do you *do* this stuff? That's kinda how I feel about learning that our podcast pal is called Sarah Mittermaier.
You could not make this up. Come along with me, folks, we're in a gallery: is that a Klimt over there? Hmmm, "Portrait of Sarah Mittermaier, 1904." Yes!
Well done, Sarah's parents, for the name.
Ben, you appraised the Scheissfest that is the whole Queer Studies racket with great skill. Churning out a steady stream of castrati, poison-ingesters and knife-victims is just one of its functions. Separating the middle class (not to mention those below!) from hundreds of thousands of hard-earned or as yet unearned simoleons a throw in exchange for fouled hot air piped up their children's noses for four years is *not* what's going to keep us competitive, I reckon.
Haha, Jamie, this is what’s wrong with writing: we can’t hear tone of voice in it, unless we’re really, really good at characterization. You may be joking too about my Psycho comment, but I sure was! Just to make that clear. Don’t see Psycho if you don’t feel like it. You won’t want to take a shower ever again.
Yeah, I feel guilty for joining in with you. I think Silence of the Lambs should also be required viewing, but if horror movies aren't Jamie's, or anyone else's, thing then there's nothing wrong with giving them a pass.
Re: the breast cancer study in transwomen and estrogen. They stopped giving menopausal women estrogen based HRT despite all its potential benefits (heart protection, bone health) because of the increased breast cancer risk. And doctors frequently won't prescribe to women of all ages with migraines with auras any form of estrogen, including in the birth control pill, because of the increased stroke risk, even for really debilitating conditions usually treated by the pill. So either women are getting denied treatments that could really help them for reasons that are not legitimate or trans women should be asking why protecting their health doesn't matter to these doctors.
Voice training: go to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association's website and search for "transgender voice therapy." You will get over 360 results. Then"detransition" or "detransitioner" into the search box. You get zero.
Sarah, I was so clueless about your real name that when you sent me an autism document from an account using it, I didn't recognize what it was at first and almost deleted it without opening it because I thought it was spam. I'll admit that embarrassing story now that you have come out :)
The idea of the increased breast cancer risk comes from the WHI study in the early 2000s. That study was conducted in women who started HRT very late, like in their 60s. It also only found an extremely minimal increase of absolute risk. It is one of the big errors of contemporary medicine to have scared menopausal women away from this otherwise very beneficial treatment, or even denied it to them.
My gynecologist, who practices at a major research university, considers HRT very safe, if started early enough, with the benefits largely outweighing the risks. Marty Makary, our new FDA commissioner, has a chapter about this topic in his new book, Blind Spots.
I don't know what the situation is with transwomen, but it seems probable that the situation could be very different for people whose bodies aren't naturally made for estrogen.
@Kate do you think cancer risk for transitioned males could possibly be linked to breast growth after puberty?
I have no idea. I'm not a medical doctor, and I haven't read the trans study. I just wanted to point out that the "HRT causes breast cancer in menopausal women" narrative is questionable, and the benefits of HRT may vastly outweigh that risk.
That’s still up for debate. There are very limited cases - where endocrine system medicine (hormones ) have been put through higher quality studies and have a correlation with outcomes. There’s a shit ton of mythical or low quality studies that are widely shared by influencers to sell treatments for menopause.
What symptoms are you thinking of that have benefited from hormones?
Brain fog, headaches, fatigue, anxiety… all fixed by estrogen patch. Just like my debilitating PMS was controlled by the pill when I was younger. Some women are more sensitive to hormones than others.
For me, the long term health benefits are secondary to the immediate benefits of not being estrogen-deprived. And I’m not saying there isn’t more research to do, but it’s not just influencers that say the long-term benefits of HRT are likely large. Marty Makary makes a strong case for it as well, as does my gynecologist who is very versed in the research.
Glad to hear you have experienced such a benefit. Menopause has such different symptoms for each person. I hesitate to attribute such miracles to just hormones.
But I’m certainly not discounting positive and relieving experiences!
I had a terrible experience personally with the pill, and no one connected some symptoms that cleared up once I quit taking it. I’ve been able to resolve menopause symptoms in other ways, and attribute a lot of the brain fog to sleep deprivation due to being the sandwich generation..
Cori, this is not fedora
It's what I just happened to have lying around. I'll try to do better.
Great episode! A question I had was what are some of the concrete next steps and general strategies for folks that are not aligned with gender ideology? What are some of the major goals? And, how should people speak about this issue to Democrats -- whether liberals or Progessives?
„What does a fursona do for queer and transgender people of color?” - that’s the easy one, mental damage
Jamie, have you asked the NYT folks why your personal situation was highlighted on The Protocol podcast, and not that of several of the professionals interviewed? Was that just because you volunteered it? It seems pretty darn biased not to provide personal background on all interview subjects if you are going to provide it on some... I'm curious what Lisa makes of this too, with her journalistic background. (Overall, found the piece more balanced than I had imagined it might be, tho of course it went off the rails at bit at the end...)
As a borderline Elder Millennial I think the perception of the Republicans as the anti science party is firmly rooted in their attempts to push Creationism into the classroom during the second Bush administration during the 00s. That plus things like Abstinence Only Sex Ed* and Climate Change Skepticism** kinda cemented them as the idiot party for a lot of people my age I think.
However, as someone who spent time on a lot of Skeptic and Atheist forums during that time period we were aware that some forms of woo were more common on the left. Vaccine skepticism was more of a liberal thing until Covid. In fact I'd say liberals were (and possibly have been for decades) more likely to be pro alternative medicine and most forms of spiritual woo (think crystal healing and touch therapy) than conservatives. It's just that those things weren't seen as a threat compared to Creationism, Abstinence Only Sex Ed, and Climate Change Skepticism which were getting pushed by the party in power. So what I think has happened is that a lot of people who lived through the Bush years just can't wrap their heads around the idea that the Republicans could ever be right about The Science because they were wrong twenty years ago when they were teenagers or twenty-somethings and they simply haven't updated their priors in over two decades.
* has anyone else contemplated the possibility that Abstinence Only Sex Ed might actually do less damage in the long run than what a lot of liberals now seem to be pushing into relationship classes?
** My belief in Climate Change caused by Greenhouse Gas emissions is still very strong, second only to evolution, but I'd be lying if I said I was still 100% on the issue. It's hard when the people I deferred to on the issue also believe that TWAW...
Re: Abstinence Only Sex Ed
I was thinking about it too. Queer brainrot is one thing, another is grooming; in my life people who were thrilled about providing sex education to teenagers really behaved sexually inappropriately toward us, which I see as adult. Another thing is that oldschool model „no sex before marriage” was suitable for times without contraception and while yeah condoms exist and are useful, many many teens starting sex life are starting oral contraception too. Liberals are often in denial about downsides/side effects of the pills and bringing this topic meets with anger, accusations of misogyny, „misinformation” label. I’m not a doctor, idk if pills have any potential for developmental disruptions, all I can is that I experienced loss of libido persistent during all years on pills, it miraculously returned when I stopped pills, and instead of information about side effects of the pills The Great Sex Educated Ones suggested asexual identity. But back from my grievances to the point: liberal sex-positive ED kind of relies on contraception for teens and social incentives are for oral pills more reliable and comfortable than condones, so even in best scenario (no grooming, no TQ indoctrination) girls are pushed to medicalisation in young age, which can cause unpredictable consequences (psychological, if nothing else) down the line.
E: I’m not saying that abstinence only is the way, I’m sharing my concerns about sex-positive sex ed
Yeah, I'm not saying that Abstinence Only Sex Ed is good, just that it might be better than the most extreme examples I've seen of what the left is now pushing. AOSE is closer to doing nothing than contemporary Liberal Sex Ed, and sometimes doing nothing has less bad final outcomes than doing something. It's like with mental healthcare in schools, none might just be safer in the long run than a version of help run by people desperate to find more TQ kids...
I think generally sex ed isn’t very effective, not just AOSE
That seems plausible to me; I also spent a lot of time of Skeptic and Atheist forums during that time period.
A number of atheist and skeptic bloggers I read later went on to transition, too. (Edited because as I thought about it, I realized these mostly people I encountered a few years later in my “online journey,” more around the Atheism+ era.)
We're almost certainly talking about the same people...
Okay, I think I just mis-read your original comment a little. The atheist bloggers I knew who eventually transitioned were mostly people I learned of during the Freethought Blogs / Atheism+ era, which primarily overlapped with the first Obama administration. I was reading atheist and skeptic forums and blogs during the second G.W. Bush administration too, but those tended to be more anonymous, so I’m not really sure what happened to those people. Although, at this point, it would not at all surprise me to learn any of them had since transitioned. 😅
This also seems to tie into the point Cori made on today’s episode about meaning-making. Religion is one of those ways we create meaning together. I was a *very* devout child before losing my faith around age 15. “Horseshoe Theory” originated as a way of conceptualizing the political spectrum, but I wonder if something like that could be applied to the, ah, religiosity spectrum as well.
For those who weren’t Very Online during that era, “New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed” is a pretty good primer on what it was like.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/
"I remember one incident that for some reason I took note of, and which, for me, epitomizes that fork in the road, "Elevatorgate," when Rebecca Watson (aka Skepchick) made a complaint that a guy had invited her, during an elevator ride, to his room for coffee at the end of a day at the World Atheist Convention, 2011."
I was around for that and I sided with Rebecca. I remember the video where she made the "guys, don't do that" comment and I didn't think she was being unreasonable. It pains me greatly that she's now promoting giving men access to women's spaces.
"Richard Dawkins, ever the diplomat, wrote an excoriating piece, a sarcastic letter to an imaginary Muslim woman, appealing for her to have some perspective - never mind living under Sharia law, did you know a white woman, alone in a lift, was invited by a man to share coffee?!"
You left out that it was at 4am after a night of drinking, I'm pretty sure that was a part of the story. I wasn't a big fan of the Dear Muslima letter, given that the New Atheists were often accused of making mountains out of a mole hills when talking about how they were treated in The West. The argument being that Western Atheists shouldn't complain about their treatment in The West when we're regularly treated worse elsewhere. The same holds true for Feminists, who will often get hit with the "but what about women in the Islamic World, why don't you care about them?" argument when they complain about issues in the West, and it only got worse when Trans got added to the list of things women had to put up with until the situation in the rest of the world improved (but of course all cultures are equal so there's nothing the liberal left can actually do to improve the situation in rest of the world because that would be too much like an imposition of western values on foreign peoples).
Oh definitely! I’m trying to piece together the timeline. I read atheist stuff online from probably 2004 to 2013-ish? Then the developing social justice-y side of the atheist community became too insufferable, and for personal reasons, I became less interested in atheism in general.
2014 was around when Ophelia Benson got driven off FTB, that's pretty much when I gave up on them & A+ in general...
secret lives of mormon wives is so fucking confusing LMAO probably partially bc i know nothing about their tiktok shit — but when they played whitney’s RSV hospital tiktok it had me screaaaaaaamimg
Re: rabbit hole and gays who opt to not care
I want to move forward past trans topics, but just can’t. In part the driving factor is nonexistence of lesbian communities, so literally the GC substack is my only contact with other lesbians and also the only place I know where lesbians talk about lesbian (not queer) experience. Gays still have gay culture, gay visibility and places for gays, so don’t have to care. I imagine for you chosing to care means losing these connections.
The other factor it that when I really make serious efforts to phase out this kind of content from my life, the content catches me irl and I’m back to GC substack. I’m trying to understand the world and unpack weirdness of progressive left spaces
To Ben’s point about his friend taking the phrase “identify as a woman” at face value- this seems to be common that people often negate the role of social learning and culture in the way we conceptualize and label experiences. Some labels are closer to describing observable direct sensory experiences “I feel very fatigued” while others are very conceptual/symbolic/metaphorical “I feel like I’m dying.” It seems like a major problem has occurred that we fail to discern these two types of descriptions and recognize that while all ways of conceptualizing and labeling experiences can be influenced by a whole host of factors (culture, learning history, language, interpersonal function), conceptual ones are more likely to be influenced by these factors. Abstract language can also make it more difficult to know what the direct sensory experience is that they are trying to describe. When a male says they “identify as a woman” or “feel female”- given they have no direct experience of being a woman to anchor to, what is it they are describing? An emotion of envy of women that arises in specific contexts? A thought that “my life would be better if I was a woman?” Perhaps this also touches on Sarah’s “non-gender thing of the week” around how when we’ve decoupled “experiencing” from direct sensory input/embodiment, we’ve become more susceptible to taking highly conceptual/abstract language as a concrete “truth”?
Yes, and what I also see is the hijacking of "identifying as gay": coming out and announcing the identity has now been taken by the trans movement as the same thing.
So I can see how so many gay men and women believe that "trans" is a similar experience: something innate, something that used to be hidden, and today can be freely expressed.
Ben's friend may have been expressing a belief that to disbelieve the man who "feels like a woman" would be tantamount to disbelieving that he, the friend, is gay.
Yes, I’ve noticed that in the US, the phrase “I feel” is commonly used to actually describe thoughts, interpretations, etc. For example- “I feel like you don’t care about me”. Seems to get people confused about what an emotion or feeling actually is vs a cognition.
You and John might appreciate this from Amy Sousa: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1XdWbwLRft/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Newspapers in colonial era were partisan. That was normal—readers bought the papers that represented their party.
So-called objective journalism doesn’t really get going until late 19th-early 20th century.
Dear and lovely Jamie! I'm afraid the Democratic Party as been just as guilty of "science denial" as the Republican Party . . . and arguably to worse effect, because their domination of academic circles has led to pseudoscience supplanting robust scientific inquiry and analysis throughout much of knowledge-making over the past several decades (the relentlessly declining quality of basic education at all levels has accelerated this process . . . ).
Scientism is what a lot of progressives have mistaken for "the Science" all along (particularly those lacking an understanding of many ways we humans delude ourselves that the scientific method is meant to guard against) . . . see "Cargo Cult" Science, a term for "Scientism" coined by Richard Feynman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvfAtIJbatg
But please don't feel crushed! It's a yin and yang thing . . . we need the loosey-goosey dreamers, the caring lefty-types, the crunchy granola idealists, to come up with the wild theories of how good it could be for all us humans someday, to incentivise all those "just the facts, ma'am" types to pick up their measuring tapes and scales and "it has to add up" efforts in the first place! It was your lefty-ness that drew you to working with gender non-conforming youth in the first place! And then the "make it make sense" materialist part of you drove you to push back against the woo! Read some Richard Feynman books, especially the one where he talks about the fine mind of the woman he loved. He was a totally liberal character with a child's unselfconscious curiosity, and I'll bet you'll identify with him. It'll cheer you up.
Hi Heather, I really like your first paragraph here. I have to say that I have met so many progressives that say they "believe in science" (hoo boy, could *that* be unpacked!) without having any scientific understanding whatsoever, or even command of some basic scientific factoids. Add to that the desire to show compassion, which unfortunately often manifests in refusal to set or uphold standards, or in the attachment of unjustified weight to "alternative ways of knowing." Make no mistake, those two things routinely increase bloodshed and suffering.
Add to that a sense of entitlement; a lack of humility; a ridiculously unwarranted confidence in their "education." So many of the folk in Progressive World exude a vibe that they no doubt want me to read as, "Already Enlightened." My receptors tend to translate this as "Incapable of Remorse."
The left are the new intellectual and class snobs. In the same way that they lost interest in helping boring old "cis" women they also lost interest in representing the working class as it is, probably because doing so might actually cost them real money.
“Believe the science” is one of my pet peeves. Such an unscientific way of talking about science!
A recent story of a NC University staff member admitting to his intention (and apparently the intention of his colleagues) to continue following the same ideologically "woke" policies, despite reform measure, together with the Jonathan Cowan's Politico article apparently advising the Democrat party to stay the course while merely inventing new euphemisms in order to boil the frogs just a little more gradually than before, shows this imperviousness to democratically-expressed preferences of these so-very-certain-of-themselves people. I'm afraid a sizeable portion of our population need to be removed from any position of authority, and the usual process for that to happen tends to happen in a very illiberal and ugly way (perhaps another "Red Scare"?). How do you shift an institution back towards classical liberal ideals while leaving the brainwashed and incompetent people who've corrupted it in their jobs?
Listen to any honest and informed person recount the realities of the post WWII era, btw, you will learn that there WERE actually a lot of individuals in the U.S. working towards communist revolution. (The fact that I feel dirty and embarrassed saying so reflects the conditioning of my entire academic life during which I was taught that this problem within the U.S. government was nothing but a figment of paranoid fantasy of ignoramuses like McCarthy.) Sigh . . . but sometimes the village idiot DOES see a danger everyone else has missed!
Anyway, here's the article providing an individual example of someone "Incapable of Remorse," let alone capable of noticing that the broader political climate has gotten waaay less suitable for this game of disguising unfairness and brutal injustices with euphemisms. (I cannot help but suspect this person stopped using her brain for much more than motor skills a long time ago.)
see: https://www.carolinajournal.com/dei-disguised-undercover-footage-shows-unc-official-ignoring-ban-right/
UNC Charlotte’s Assistant Director of Leadership and Community Engagement, Janique Sanders, was caught on hidden camera admitting the university continues DEI work despite state bans.
“So equity work is still happening on campus?” the undercover journalist asks.
“I can’t say that,” she responds to the journalist. “But… So we’ve renamed it, we’ve revised, we’ve recalibrated it, so to speak.”
In the video, she explained that front-facing DEI positions don’t exist, but rather, there are opportunities to do the work covertly.
“We just finesse the language,” Sanders says in the footage. “We do work that is covert.”
OG Nazis also believed in their race science!