342. Regrets of a Trans-Care Specialist | Sara Stockton

[0] Hello, everybody.

[1] I'm here talking today with Sarah Stockton.

[2] Sarah is a therapist, and she was interviewed for Matt Walsh's documentary, What is a Woman.

[3] And she's been involved, well, in those sorts of issues for quite a long time.

[4] I watched the documentary and was struck by her testimony, and she also reached out to me, wrote me letter about how things had unfolded for her and her therapeutic practice over the last five, ten years, and we've decided jointly that a further conversation might be useful publicly and also, well, useful to people who are family members of adolescence suffering from gender dysphoria, but also useful for therapists who are torn ethically about how to proceed properly in this fraught, gender -affirming therapy environment.

[5] And so thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

[6] I'm sure that your decision to make your concerns public has been very hard on you.

[7] I have some real sympathy for that.

[8] Why don't you start by telling everybody how it is that you came to be involved, well, in this entire quagmire, but also why you decided to participate in the Matt Walsh documentary, which I'm also sure took a fair bit of soul searching.

[9] So let's, why don't you lay out the story?

[10] Yes, and I think we'll talk a little bit more about my experience, but I started in 2008 working in a special transgender team, and that's where I started my expertise and specialty in that.

[11] I had participated and co -authored the transgender assessment that mental health professionals used to assess transgender youth readiness to begin hormone treatment or medical treatment.

[12] I published that and I had worked a great deal of my first part of my career traveling, teaching doctors, teaching schools how to change their practice for, to be more gender -affirming care.

[13] That is a terminology that is more recent.

[14] That was not what I was using back then.

[15] Then I sort of came across in my practice a lot of concerns around this being 15 years in and treating a lot of sexual issues.

[16] I had some concerns with how it was developmentally being presented to our children.

[17] And so I kind of just stopped.

[18] doing that specialty, and I went on to just doing sex.

[19] And then as life would have it, I have children who are in grade school and coming across these issues and children coming into my practice with questions that I can only understand that they would have because of this presentation being even allowed to be taught to them at such a young age.

[20] And so what actually happened was a client sent me a clip of Matt Walsh on Dr. Phil.

[21] I had never heard of Matt Walsh prior to that.

[22] And I just happened to message Matt Walsh and told him, hey, I was a part of writing the assessment and I have some concerns.

[23] And he contacted me right away.

[24] And I had flown out within a week and did the documentary and spoke with him.

[25] All right.

[26] So we'll talk about a little bit about how that's impacted your life.

[27] Let's go back.

[28] What's your educational background?

[29] How did you train as a therapist?

[30] Yes, so I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, and then I went to Syracuse University, where I received my master's degree in marriage and family therapy.

[31] Okay, and then how did you get involved?

[32] This was back in 2008.

[33] You published a paper that was devoted towards assessment.

[34] Was it specifically assessment of gender dysphoria?

[35] What exactly was the paper?

[36] and how did you get involved in that particular issue?

[37] Why did that attract your attention?

[38] Okay, it's a very good question.

[39] So in my school, where we were going, we were the top place for actually developing the hormone assessment to start adults on hormone replacement therapy.

[40] So the professors there were very much in charge of being the first ones to ever be giving these letters, making these letters.

[41] So we were introduced to what you had an opportunity to get on what they would call a transgender team.

[42] And you would have to interview to be on this team.

[43] And I will be honest with you, I'm a young 22 -year -old, and my interest is in sex.

[44] And that was obviously an introduction into a complex thing that people were dealing with.

[45] So you would get on to this transgender team and we would have special training about body dysphoria, gender dysphoria, what are the sexual implications?

[46] And then we were required to see these patients at our clinic and get supervision weekly.

[47] What we, what at this time they were really recognizing was, would there be a better outcome for these individuals if there was early intervention medically.

[48] Therefore, the responsibility of my group was to take the original assessment that was used for adults and turn it into a comprehensive assessment to evaluate child's readiness along with their family, because this was a systemic program, to see if they understood the implications of starting hormone blockers or hormone replacement.

[49] surgery.

[50] Okay, so let me see if I've got this straight.

[51] So when you were about 22, you were pursuing your bachelor's degree, you had an interest in the broader domain of sexual behavior, and that was part of what was driving you towards a clinical path.

[52] You started working with adults who were transsexual or transgender, and how old would have they been on average?

[53] Oh, it was all ages, but I would say you're typically dealing with 30s, 40s, 50s.

[54] Okay, okay.

[55] So these are people in early middle age, let's say.

[56] And so they're being assessed for suitability for medical transition, which would begin with hormonal transformation.

[57] And then the idea emerges, well, you know, they're 30 or 40 or 50.

[58] It's pretty late in life to begin such a transformation.

[59] Would it have been better for them, let's say, had they discovered this route earlier?

[60] and if it was better, what would better look like and how might that be brought down the age chain so that it's made available for people who are very young.

[61] Of course, then that raises the specter of how young and also the problem of differential diagnosis.

[62] Now, let's make a slight foray here into a different area.

[63] So from what I understand of the clinical literature with regards to gender identity, dysphoria.

[64] There are two essential manifestations of what becomes something approximating transvitism or transsexual orientation.

[65] And one of those is relatively late onset, and people like, what's his name, Ken Zucker, his hypothesis was there are the autogynophilic late -onset transsexual types who tend to be men, who tend to dress up in women's clothing, generally for essentially sexual purposes.

[66] And they're dealing with issues, well, that are difficult to understand, but might have to do, if you're thinking about it from a psychoanalytic perspective, might have to do with the difficulty of integrating cross -sexual personality elements into their personality.

[67] that takes a sexual root among the autogynophilic types.

[68] And they're a separate group from children who develop body dysmorphia or gender identity trouble very early.

[69] And they tend to be, let's say, feminine boys, feminine by temperament, or masculine by temperament, which is maybe also why a very large number of autistic girls seem to be caught up in this.

[70] And they're a diagnostically distinct group.

[71] And conflating them isn't helpful.

[72] That's an additional complication.

[73] These people that you were seeing in their early middle age, do you think that they, what proportion of them do you think were temperamentally ill -fitted, let's say, to their biological sex, masculine girls or feminine boys?

[74] And how many of them do you think at that time, this is back in 2008, fit more into the autogynophilic category?

[75] Or did you make that distinction at that time?

[76] So, and this is one of the reasons, Dr. Peterson, why I'm having this conversation with you.

[77] I have to be honest, being taught under this terminology, it wasn't until I was in my practice on my own for many years that I was even introduced to the terminology autogonophilia.

[78] So I can promise you that in schools right now, they are not being taught that.

[79] They are not understood that.

[80] And it took.

[81] So, I mean, I think one of the really unique things about my life was that I had the opportunity to work with cross -dressers, which really showed me the difference between what we're calling body dysphoria and gender dysphoria.

[82] and the erotic nature of it.

[83] And not only that, I was introduced to a client who, in his late 70s, actually had his penis amputed.

[84] And it was a really unique case because he would have what we would understand as body integrity disorder.

[85] He grew up on a farm in Arkansas and really, hated getting up early and having to do all the work as a male would have to do.

[86] His cousin ends up getting her arm amputed off and therefore does not have to do a lot of work on the farm.

[87] This really impacts him throughout his life.

[88] He becomes an engineer as children, whatnot, but he has an extreme displeasure with the fact that he doesn't have something wrong with him that would stop him.

[89] he decided that that needs to be his penis.

[90] And he went to Philadelphia and asked to have the surgery, and they are said, you're not trans.

[91] And he was like, okay, but I dislike this body part of mine.

[92] And he took a pen and put it up his penis and let it go to gangrene.

[93] He was under no influence of alcohol or drugs.

[94] And ends up at the hospital and does get his, penis amputed and I was called in because there was no homicidal, no suicidal ideation, no under the influence this was the case where he was like I just do not like this body part now I did a lot of assessments around being trans this was a gender thing so that really showed me of like whoa there is a lot of things going on for people and the outcome of I don't feel as a child is very complex and that we weren't, I was not taught.

[95] Yeah, yeah, well, that's that, well, okay, okay, well, that, okay, so that's very much worth delving into.

[96] I mean, there's a very cardinal temptation for people who are wading into extremely complex territory to assume that the territory is a lot simpler than they think, to assume the problem is unidimensional, and then worse, to assume that the treatment is simple and unidimensional.

[97] And certainly, if you're wandering into the territory of paraphylic sexual attraction, let's say, to say you're in a minefield is to say almost nothing, because the limitlessness of human sexual pathology is enough to produce post -traumatic stress disorder in anyone who studies it in any depth.

[98] And so, and you said that when you were educated, that all of this was collapsed into something that's like a hyper oversimplification, right?

[99] And then there's a moralistic element to it too.

[100] I mean, Zucker's a really good example because Ken Zucker was probably the world's foremost leading authority on gender dysphoria and autogenophilia, which he separated very carefully clinically.

[101] He ran the gender dysphoria clinic in Toronto and was eventually hounded out of his life by gender -affirming activists.

[102] And what Zucker showed were, well, apart from the distinction between the auto -gynophilic types and then the kids who had cross -sex temperament, he showed that if you left kids who had body dysmorphia issues alone, 90 % of them would settle into their biological identity by the time they were.

[103] 18 or 19.

[104] But he also showed quite clearly that the early onset gender dysphoria kids were much more likely to be gay.

[105] About 80 % of them adopted a homosexual or manifested a homosexual orientation.

[106] And one of the terrible specters that that entices upward out of the crypt is the fact that the gender surgical enterprise hormone therapy, puberty blockers, all of that, overwhelmingly targets the gay population.

[107] And that's a very interesting issue on the political front, because in principle there's an LGBT alliance and community, except that the interests of the transsexual types, especially the radicals, couldn't be more diametrically opposed to the interest of the gay community, assuming such things exist, if it was designed to be antithetical.

[108] Okay, so now you were placed in a situation where, as a therapist, you were trained in a unidimensional, analysis of the gender dysphoria problem.

[109] And then you started to develop the assessment guidelines.

[110] And did you do that as a bachelor's student or as a master's student?

[111] No, it was with master's and PhD students.

[112] Okay, okay.

[113] And so walk me through the development of the assessment process and tell me what you were thinking then about assessment and about and what you think about it now.

[114] And I'm also interested, too, in why it was that it was.

[115] was through your interest in sex that you became interested in being a therapist?

[116] Yes, I mean, I think I have a little bit of, you know, comfort with discomfort or the things that people don't want to talk about.

[117] So I think that really hit for me. And one of the things I reflect on, because I kind of am embarrassed that I used to present on this topic.

[118] but I have a medical condition, I have a blood clotting disorder, and from the outside, many people can't see that.

[119] And when I would present with physicians around how to get their practice to be more gender -affirming, I would share that, that, you know, you don't know what it's like to have an illness that perhaps people don't know from the outside.

[120] And that really helped me relate to these children, I think, of like you're presenting with something that maybe from the outside no one understands, but from the inside.

[121] that it's there, but now understanding my diagnosis can medically have evidence, right?

[122] There's chemicals that can be diagnostically looked at, and that's not the case for the children.

[123] So I will say when we started doing this, it wasn't a lot of children.

[124] There wasn't like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds like there are now that need to be seen.

[125] These were children, like you said, that were presented.

[126] pretty young, presenting pretty young with aversions to their body, right?

[127] And these are, at this time, too, we don't have internet.

[128] We don't have internet in the same capacity, TikTok, right?

[129] Yeah, yeah.

[130] They don't know what they're talking about.

[131] So they're not telling us, I'm transgender.

[132] These were parents bringing kids to us saying something's going on.

[133] This kid is saying this, you know, my penis shouldn't be here and they're three.

[134] they are you know have consistently shown a certain way so this is what this is the cases that we were presented with and working with and we this assessment was supposed to be probably about a year or two year assessment right to fully assess the six domains of early childhood we would look at so how was their gender presented in early childhood does the way they present and discuss it connect with their with their family so that was a big part of double checking was wasn't just what the children said it was what the family were presenting as well of what they witnessed going on with their child physical history sexual um context school context and one of the biggest areas and domains that are no longer discussed and i and this is where developmentally i was really concerned is future expectations i mean And when I was doing it back then, these children understood they were never going to be that gender.

[135] So they were going to be a trans male.

[136] And I think that distinction was significant, whereas now it is magical.

[137] Like, no, I'll be a male because I said it.

[138] And one of the things that I can't assess as easily is do they know the implications to what they're doing back?

[139] Yes, well, even as adults, we rarely know the implications of what we're doing.

[140] So it's very, very difficult for especially hyper -confused kids.

[141] When you were developing these assessments, okay, so first of all, you said, we've kind of talked about why the idea of early assessment had emerged on the landscape, right?

[142] You're dealing with older people and the question arose, perhaps they should have been dealt with more efficiently when they were young, and so you could see a trail opening up in that direction.

[143] Now you're talking to kids who have body dysmorphia that their parents are bringing to the attention of therapists.

[144] And of course, that's a snake pit too, because there's endless numbers of reasons why children might develop body dysmorphia.

[145] Some of them would have to do with temperament body mismatch, but there's all sorts of other possibilities too that they're responding to unconscious prompts on the part of their parents, that would be particularly true.

[146] if they have narcissistic or psychopathic parents.

[147] And that's increasingly the case for the kids who manifest extremely early signs of so -called gender dysphoria now because their mothers often are making a display of their compassion by using their children's illness and their compassionate response to it as a, what would you call it, as a goad to their narcissistic display.

[148] Yes.

[149] You can see that sort of thing emerging everywhere.

[150] And so that's a bloody catastrophe.

[151] And then you have autistic kids who don't fit in very well, especially on the female side.

[152] And they do think in some ways more like males do because they're more thing -oriented.

[153] And you have the possibility of the early development of psychosis.

[154] And then you have the difficulty of distinguishing the children's fantasy play from genuine concerns about their identity.

[155] Like it requires unbelievably careful, multiple, multibly dimensioned diagnostic analysis.

[156] And you said, your vision, at least to begin with, was that there was no fast route, let's say, to puberty blockers or hormone treatment, you were looking at least a one to two year assessment.

[157] And I would think, given my clinical experience, that one year of weekly meetings with someone competent would be minimally necessary to sort any of that out.

[158] And so, and that was your vision.

[159] And now it's three.

[160] In 2008.

[161] It's three sessions.

[162] It's three sessions now.

[163] That's the standard.

[164] Okay, so tell us why you believe that to be the case.

[165] What have you observed?

[166] Well, I mean, I think.

[167] And tell us about planned parenthood, too.

[168] Yeah, I think a lot of things, I mean, one of the things I will say, it was obvious that this assessment was to get them on hormone blockers, to either, you know, pause, to see if, if this was what they want.

[169] And that was the goal of our assessment.

[170] And one of the things that is...

[171] Well, to get them on hormone blockers or to determine if that was the appropriate path?

[172] I want to say the first one, but I will tell you as soon as there was guidelines, people knew what they wanted.

[173] So they came in and just knew that I was step one to get where they want.

[174] I've already...

[175] Right, okay, okay, well, that's very interesting, eh?

[176] Because, see, you run into a therapeutic problem there right away is because people, especially if they're deeply confused, will clutch at straws.

[177] And if they feel that they've now got the answer to all of their problems, then the next thing they're going to think is, well, let's get this show on the road, right?

[178] Now, the unfortunate truth of the matter is is that if you're caught in an extremely complex psychological situation, it might take a year of painful analysis and introspection just to figure out what the hell is going on.

[179] And it's not like that's calming.

[180] In fact, at least temporarily, it can make things worse as you start to assess all the familial pathology, sometimes multi -generational familial pathology, that's driving this kind of behavior forward.

[181] But your observation, it was interesting to watch you pause there, because your observation was, well, as soon as this pathway became open, now there's pressure, you can imagine, there's pressure from the clients to get the show on the road.

[182] But then there's also pressure on the diagnostic and cost side.

[183] It's like, well, if really what we're doing is facilitating transition, why don't we do that as efficiently as possible?

[184] And then you see the collapse of your one to two -year assessment into three sessions.

[185] Now, I interviewed Chloe Cole, who's suing, she's a detransitioner who's initiated legal action in the United States, and when I interviewed her, I did something like a modified clinical interview, partly because I wanted to see if anyone ever even walked her through the basics of what was wrong with her, and the answer was 100 % no. So I told Chloe, for example, she hit puberty pretty young.

[186] And I told her, well, girls are.

[187] reliably experience an increase in negative emotion at puberty, and that looks like it's pharmacological, because the big difference in neuroticism between men and women doesn't emerge until puberty, and it probably emerges in women because they become sexually vulnerable, because the change in body size occurs at puberty, so women are now at a physical disadvantage, they're sexually vulnerable, plus they're going to have to take care of infants in all likelihood at some point in their life.

[188] and so it makes sense for them to be more sensitive to threat.

[189] That produces a spike in negative emotion.

[190] And with women in particular, because women are evaluated for their physical appearance to a degree that isn't the case for men, although men are also evaluated on that dimension, the probability that negative emotion will take the form of concern about body images extraordinarily high in women.

[191] And so I told Chloe, especially if you hit puberty early, I said, look, the fact that you were unhappy and concerned about your body when you were nine because you were undergoing puberty is entirely developmentally normal.

[192] And then she said something extremely interesting to me. She said she had had fantasies when she was nine or ten and starting to hit puberty that she would end up if she was fortunate to be a woman who looked something like Kim Kardashian with that hyper -feminine form.

[193] And of course, that's been enhanced in Kardashian's case and also celebrated madly in the requisite social media.

[194] And Cole realized that she was going to have a rather boyish figure.

[195] And instead of someone sitting down with her explaining to her that that was perfectly fine and that there's an incredibly wide range of male appreciation for variations in the feminine form, which is definitely the case, she developed the belief that if she couldn't be, you know, Kim Kardashian, she'd never be an acceptable woman or certainly not an ideal woman.

[196] She's also a bit autistic and had a hard time getting along with girls and found it easier to get along with boys.

[197] And so she started to develop this fantasy that like your gentleman who decided that he'd be better off without his penis, she started to fantasize about the fact that life would probably be better for her if she was just a boy.

[198] And then she was put on the gender transformation path, really without a moment's hesitation.

[199] And she ended up with a double mastectomy when she was, I believe it was when she was 15.

[200] And the wounds from that surgery never properly healed.

[201] So that's her life, low voice, quite masculinized, possibly sterile, although that isn't necessarily the case.

[202] Definitely, while her breasts are destroyed beyond repair, you know, she, well, it's a complete bloody catastrophe, and it's partly because she was never assessed even remotely competently, not in the least.

[203] And so, okay, so now we see the collapse of your one -to -two -year assessment, you know, which had as one of its implicit motivations the bringing forward of the possibility of puberty blockers and gender and then hormone transformation.

[204] You see that starting to be rushed as a consequence of client demand, but also as a consequence of institutional demand, let's say.

[205] Absolutely.

[206] So you start to see that unfold.

[207] Yes, and I see it unfold as if there's step one, two, three, four in order to be the next gender, right?

[208] So hormone blockers, surgeries, electrolysis, you know, that will be, that's all the focus was on, not even just treating the gender dysphoria.

[209] I mean, I think one of the things that we might talk about, later is when you talk about butchers and I think about all the children's bodies that I've seen butchered and also knowing about trauma -informed care, it's just really alarming to me that we're having therapists working with people who are chopping off their body parts and we're not even doing any trauma -informed care around any sort of trauma.

[210] goes on to your body.

[211] And there's no connection to those body parts, those emphasis on what you did.

[212] It's a very dissociative, disc -detached way of going forward.

[213] And I've seen a lot of concerns.

[214] One of the things that really surprised me in life was when I met my first detransitioner.

[215] And one of the things that was really surprising about that was when they were my client.

[216] Originally, they had no gender dysphoria.

[217] They had no body dysphoria.

[218] They moved away to California, and they were gay.

[219] And they transitioned.

[220] And fully facial reconstruction, I came back and I didn't recognize them.

[221] And they said they made a mistake.

[222] And I was like, how did this happen?

[223] I worked with you three years.

[224] I never heard you discuss body.

[225] And it's an option, like you said, about modern -day conversion therapy, that it would be probably just easier if I was female instead of being gay and they transitioned and they made a mistake and that was my first like, wow, this is happening to people who didn't even have body dysphoria as a child.

[226] Right, right.

[227] Yeah, well, it's a moral quagmire.

[228] You know, the capital, the world's capital for sex transformation surgery is Tehran.

[229] And the reason for that is the mullahs there have decided that gay is not acceptable.

[230] But maybe you're not gay, you're a girl.

[231] If you're a male, homosexuals say, no, you're not gay, you're a girl.

[232] And then if you go through with the surgical transformation, then that's ethically acceptable.

[233] And the consequence of that, as I said, is that Tehran is now the world's capital for gender transformation surgery.

[234] And that should really make us think, like long and hard, right?

[235] And so, and the notion that it's also very interesting to speculate about why the delusion that puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and then surgery is going to be an easier route forward.

[236] The idea that people take that for granted is also an indication of stunning diagnostic and assessment insufficiency.

[237] because I talked to Abigail Schreier about, in detail, about the horrendous complexity of, well, full surgical transformation, which, first of all, isn't possible except in the most, in the shallowest possible manner.

[238] I mean, you can build a man a vagina that will function badly for sexual purposes, but it has none of the other functions of the actual parts.

[239] And it's as if we've reduced, This is something I find particularly reprehensible.

[240] It's as if we've reduced the concept of woman to whole usable for sexual activity, because nothing else is transformed in the surgical procedure.

[241] And that's a pretty damn shallow definition of what constitutes a woman, and to brandish that in front of desperate young people who are confused beyond comprehension as a solution to their psychological problems.

[242] Well, that's why I wrote that essay, Butchers and Liars.

[243] It's so perverse that it's almost incomprehensible.

[244] And it's a miracle of a negative sort that we've actually got ourselves in a situation where this is not only the standard of care, but it's the mandated standard of care because across jurisdictions, across jurisdictions across the Western world, increasingly, if you're a therapist and you don't affirm someone's identity, which could certainly mean within the first three sessions, then you're actually on the hook for professional malpractice.

[245] And so that's just a jaw -dropping transformation in standards of therapeutic care.

[246] And it's interesting to see how that came about too because it came up, at least in part, as a consequence of legislation that was hypothetically designed to stop so -called conversion therapy, which was the therapeutic practice that a tiny, tiny minority of people used many decades ago to try to convince gay people that their orientation should and could be transformed.

[247] But virtually no therapists, certainly no therapist I ever met in my life practiced that.

[248] It certainly wasn't part of the standard training protocol for any reasonably well -educated clinical psychologists.

[249] And so the idea that that was an issue was just a complete bloody lie.

[250] But nonetheless, jurisdictions all around the world rushed in to show their, what would you call, ethical superiority on the woke front and mandated therapists adopt this gender -affirming stance.

[251] And so now, you were interested when you were younger in helping people who had gender dysphoria deal with it, you know?

[252] And so you were tilted to some degree in the gender affirmation direction.

[253] But what did you see, how did you see that grow and morph across time?

[254] Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of different ways.

[255] I mean, one of the ways of just, again, how people speak about it.

[256] And I don't want to, I hope no one hears disrespect towards the LGBT community.

[257] I work a great deal with them.

[258] But I want to go back to our professional standards.

[259] Just this year, in my profession, they released a LGTP plus.

[260] guidelines.

[261] And I don't mean to be funny, but that plus really makes me nervous.

[262] I don't know what that means.

[263] And I don't know what the protective class of that means.

[264] I will tell you that I have kids identifying as animals, right?

[265] Those things are happening.

[266] It was a joke when we started, oh, now you're going to have someone identifying as a lamp, right?

[267] And I'm telling you, people are coming in with the trans ageism is right there.

[268] I mean, if you can feel like a boy, if you can feel like a boy, you can feel like a child.

[269] And one of the things that concerns me, I'll just give you an example, the definition dead name.

[270] I mean, since I started, the terminologies continued to change.

[271] We never called it dead name before.

[272] It was, you know, birth name.

[273] And That is very alarming to me. We are normalizing suicide.

[274] There is, you know, we are killing a part of ourselves.

[275] And by calling it stuff like that, it is very dangerous.

[276] Yeah, well, we're also valorizing the idea that you can alter the past, you can do it by force, and you can punish other people who won't do it with you.

[277] You know, one of the reasons I got banned from Twitter, and I think it was the primary reason, it's very difficult to tell these things, was because, hypothetically, I dead -named Elliot Page, Ellen Page, which I'm now doing again, by the way.

[278] And this whole notion of dead name just came out of the void as far as I was concerned.

[279] It's like, well, who the hell came up with that idea?

[280] Why did it all of a sudden become a cardinal, ethical sin and what the hell do you mean that I can't refer to someone by who they were and that that's now a crime.

[281] I just don't understand any of this at all.

[282] It's so utterly preposterous that it's almost beyond comprehension.

[283] But we're primed for this and there's an underlying set of ideas that have to do with the notion.

[284] I guess we could get into this to some degree as well.

[285] So psychotherapists have adopted this shallow idea.

[286] And I think the whole field of clinical endeavor is, what would you say, guilty on this front, that the only valid marker of identity is subjective whim.

[287] And this is actually technically wrong, and good psychologists should have known this, because identity is a multidimensional phenomenon.

[288] And so, and the left insists on this, The left insists, for example, that your identity is partly a consequence of your group affiliation.

[289] But we could walk through that.

[290] Your identity is the manner in which you're situated in social space.

[291] Now, it's also something internal and psychological.

[292] It is who you experience yourself as being.

[293] But that's not all of it.

[294] You exist in relationship to your intimate partner.

[295] You exist in relationship to your family.

[296] You exist in relationship to your neighborhood and your community and your town and your state and your country, and your transcendent ideals of one form or another, and every single one of those aspects is part of identity.

[297] And the idea that that can be reduced, well, and then there's the biological and physical elements of identity as well, the fact that you have two eyes and not six, for example, and that you have a biological sex, whether you like it or not.

[298] And the idea that that can all be reduced to something internal, and subjective is a consequence of the derailment of a kind of liberal Protestant ethos of self -actualization.

[299] You know, it's the ultimate extension of the idea that the only person who can say what I am is me. And the problem with that is that it's simply not true.

[300] I mean, when you and I are sitting here talking, we have to modify our mutual identities in accordance with our desire to have the conversation.

[301] And so identity is always negotiated and the idea that it can now just be established by subjective fiat and that that establishment has the weight of the law behind it is an inversion of absolutely incomprehensible magnitude.

[302] And it's terrible for people who are confused because they're going to define themselves subjectively in a manner that is not going to be good for the more sustainable in a social community or sustainable in the long run.

[303] And I'm absolutely jaw -dropped in my amazement with regards to the cowardice of people on the therapeutic front who should know better than this and who do, who are saying absolutely nothing about it and just going along with the catastrophic flood.

[304] Now, for some reason, like this really hit home for you, you said in the letter that you wrote me that you read that article I wrote on Butchers and Liars and that really bothered you.

[305] But you were already bothered by what you'd seen.

[306] Why has this bothered you so much that you've risked, well, first of all, you're doing an ideological inversion in some sense, right?

[307] Because you're moving away from your initial set of presuppositions.

[308] And then you're exposing yourself to tremendous professional risk by going on Walsh's doc, by appearing in Walsh's documentary.

[309] And certainly by talking to me, like, why the hell are you doing this?

[310] Why has this become such an irritant to your conscience that you feel compelled to take this risk?

[311] Because like you said, I wasn't taught correctly, and I was taught very well, in my opinion, to be informed and to give ethical treatment and do no harm.

[312] It wasn't until I was about 10 years in that a parent came and handed me a piece of paper and said, the medication that you want to give your children, my child is not FDA -approved.

[313] Explain to me why I should give my child an non -FDA -approved drug.

[314] These hormone blockers for children are still not FDA -approved.

[315] I didn't know that, Jordan.

[316] I should have known that.

[317] Oh, wow.

[318] Yeah.

[319] And things like that really alarm me. And I will tell you, having children and going through so many things, one of the things they like to say that just drives me crazy is you are assigned at birth.

[320] That is not true.

[321] I have done IVF.

[322] I know the sex of my child five days after that sperm and egg meat.

[323] It is observed, it is observed at birth, if anything.

[324] It is not assigned.

[325] So children and teachers and psychologists are thinking that kids come out very ambiguous.

[326] And it's not ambiguous.

[327] That is a very rare thing.

[328] One of the things I come across in my child, he's 10, and he came home and he was explaining to me about his friend who transitioned and is now a female.

[329] And I, first of all, he had a lot of questions for him.

[330] me because he was going to school with that child for many years.

[331] So his first question, of course, was, did this child grow a vagina over the summer?

[332] And that showed me a lot, that this isn't even being presented as, no, this is a mental health problem that this person is going with or that this is gender dysphoria and this is what we're presenting it.

[333] This is now a female.

[334] So his friends are confused.

[335] Now does that make me gay that I like them?

[336] What do you mean?

[337] Can I grow a vagina over the summer?

[338] How do I know I'm not next?

[339] And my son asked me, well, how do I know if I'm a boy?

[340] And I was just like, this is scary, and it is disorienting our children.

[341] And disorienting.

[342] You couldn't possibly disorienting children more.

[343] There isn't anything you could possibly do to children.

[344] I don't think that confusing them about the difference between up and down would be more disorienting than confusing them about the difference between male and female.

[345] And I say that partly because the difference between male and female emerged biologically hundreds and hundreds of millions of years ago.

[346] There's almost no more fundamental perceptual category or, what would you call it, conceptual structure of orientation than the difference between male and female, partly because if you're not capable of perceiving it, you won't reproduce.

[347] And that's the end of that.

[348] And so the notion that this is somehow a social construct is so delusional that it's almost, it's surreal, it's beyond surreal, it's surreal.

[349] It's surreal to the point of incomprehensibility.

[350] And there's an arrogance about it that is Luciferian in its magnitude.

[351] The idea that we can subvert the entire natural order to the subjective whim of children is absolutely preposterous.

[352] And it must have been, so how did you feel?

[353] When your son came home and started asking you these questions, what effect did that have on you?

[354] It had a great effect.

[355] And not to mention what he was saying, there was lots of things going on.

[356] He asked me if he could be this person's friend.

[357] But one of the things he brought up was that they were in gym class and they were getting split up by girls and boys.

[358] So this child was now with the girls.

[359] And his friend was making a lot of comments about that.

[360] And that concerned me about bullying.

[361] So I went ahead and I read their bullying handbook and it did not say anything about misgendering.

[362] And I went and called the school psychologist.

[363] Now, I called the school psychologist without trying to give my son's name because I didn't think that was relevant to what was going on.

[364] But I needed to understand if misgendering would be considered bullying because we have kids being put.

[365] These are 10 -year -olds.

[366] Okay.

[367] So they're not on any sort of hormone blockers.

[368] This is just affirming by name.

[369] And I asked her if it would be considered bullying.

[370] And she gave me quite a bit of pushback.

[371] And she was accusing me of saying that this was a social contagion, which, you know, I...

[372] Which it is?

[373] Which it is.

[374] 100%.

[375] She demanded that I tell her who I was speaking of.

[376] And I said, with all due respect, are you telling me that you, how many male to female 10 -year -olds are at your school, and she said, define a lot.

[377] And that was the end of the conversation to me. How many kids are doing this?

[378] And I said to her, so let me ask you a question.

[379] In fifth grade, we split up the children, and we put them in a class according to their assigned sex, and they learn about the period or what happens to the male.

[380] Are you going to be allowing this child to go into the females with that?

[381] And she said, yes.

[382] And I said that you have no idea that dysphoria you will cause that child when they are sitting in that room and learning about the periods and they are never going to have the period.

[383] And we are telling them, but hey, you're a female.

[384] That is so scary.

[385] And so things like that is just...

[386] How did she respond?

[387] A female psychologist you were talking to?

[388] How did she respond to that?

[389] Very aggressively.

[390] And she told me at the end, I said, you might want to get a policy.

[391] She said it would be considered bullying according to intent.

[392] And I said, with all due respect.

[393] Right, intent, yeah.

[394] How is it a 10 -year -old went to school with this kid since kindergarten as a boy?

[395] And now you're telling them it's a girl.

[396] It's like a toilet and a shelf.

[397] Just because you poop on the shelf does not make a toilet.

[398] And they do not understand.

[399] You're not even presenting to them the concept of being transgender.

[400] My son did not know what that was until then, and I had to explain that to them because we have kids thinking they can wake up and feel a different way.

[401] Feelings are very sensual, and this is not very good to keep going on as feelings.

[402] Yeah, well, you know, let's talk about the American Psychological Association Guidelines for Standard of Care.

[403] So one of the great advantages to the practice of clinical psychology was it's grounding in the research domain.

[404] And so if you were trained as a clinical psychologist under the Boulder model, you were required to be trained as a clinician, but also as a researcher.

[405] And that meant that you learned how to analyze the scientific literature, which, by the way, is not the case for physicians and is generally not the case for clinicians who aren't trained under the bolder model.

[406] But if you learn to think scientifically, there's certain conclusions that you're obliged to draw as a consequence of that training.

[407] And one of the conclusions, and this is conclusions that are well instantiated on the ethical front, is that multiple techniques of measurement are required before you can formalize a diagnosis.

[408] And so if you're trying to understand someone's problem to diagnose them, let's say, One of the sources of information that you use is self -report.

[409] And self -report is essentially, it's not entirely reducible to feelings, but that's where you would put feelings.

[410] You'd put feelings and thoughts, all subjective identification.

[411] No, I feel, so for example, if you're diagnosing someone who's anorexic, they're going to tell you that they feel fat.

[412] Now, if you used only their feelings as the diagnostic marker, have to conclude that they're fat, but of course if you have any sense as a clinician, you'd note that if they're severely anorexic, not only are they not fat, but they're probably going to die of starvation.

[413] And so, but the point I'm making here is that we're already bound as clinicians who are research trained under the APA protocols to use multiple methods of measurement.

[414] And so, for example, if you wanted to clarify the nature of someone's so -called identity.

[415] You'd use self -report, but you'd use objective diagnostic markers, and sometimes that's questionnaires, and there's other ways of going about it.

[416] There's behavioral logging, for example, you can track people's behavior.

[417] You'd do that if you were diagnosing people for depression.

[418] You might have them fill out a mood inventory every hour, every day for two or three weeks, and look at the variation in their patterns.

[419] You'd use well -validated, objective questionnaires to, and there's a whole method for deriving those.

[420] And then you might also, gather information from family or friends or, let's say, significantly involved professionals.

[421] So, for example, if you're assessing childhood behavior in the classroom, trying to diagnose children for attention deficit disorder or conduct disorder, you might get the child self -report, you might get reports from their friends, you might get reports from their teachers, you might get reports from their parents.

[422] And then what you look for is convergence across measures.

[423] And if you have convergence across multiple measures, then you assume something like diagnostic accuracy.

[424] Now, just as a sidebar for everyone watching and listening, this is how you orient yourself in the world.

[425] Okay, you have five senses.

[426] They're qualitatively different.

[427] So hearing and seeing are not the same, and hearing and seeing are quite different from tasting.

[428] They're completely separate biological systems.

[429] and they use different sampling approaches.

[430] And what's happened evolutionarily is that we've converged on a five -dimensional solution.

[431] We essentially believe that if something is reported to you by five different measurement techniques, that's your five senses, that that phenomenon is real.

[432] Now, that isn't even good enough because we're so, it's so difficult to specify what's real that we also not only use our senses to evaluate the world, but then we go talk to other people and see if they see, hear, taste, and touch the same things.

[433] Right?

[434] Because even with those five senses, we can get locked into an erroneous subjectivity, and we need consensus and then empirical testing to ensure that we're not deluding ourselves.

[435] And that's when we're trying to strive, for the truth.

[436] If we're trying to delude ourselves for underground psychological purposes, let's say, things become even more complex.

[437] So the reason I'm going down this pathway is to lay out for those who are listening, the fact that it's already been established by properly, ethically oriented and well -trained clinicians that you have a primary ethical responsibility to use the reliable and valid means of diagnosis that are at your disposal.

[438] And that means that you are ethically bound not to rely on subjective self -evaluation.

[439] It's one input, but it does not override the others.

[440] And the fact that we've about faced on that, partly because of legislative pressure, but also because of ideological idiocy, is absolutely 100 % by the standards of the profession itself, an ethical transgression.

[441] And so, okay, so now we're letting kids, no, we're mandated.

[442] to encourage children to assume that they're only what they are as a consequence of their day -to -day subjective self -evaluation.

[443] And there's nothing stable about that either because the additional claim is not only are you only who you say you are or feel you are, whatever the hell feel means, but that can switch at your choice at any moment and no one has anything to say about that as well under threat of punishment of law.

[444] And then we think, well, are we confusing children?

[445] It's like, well, not only are they being confused as a consequence of that, we're setting out to confuse them as deeply as we possibly could.

[446] And I think one of the big things I want to talk about too is there was a push.

[447] And a court, like as I was doing this, that even diagnosing them with gender dysphoria or bodhisphoria wasn't accurate.

[448] or the best terminology, because this is a choice.

[449] I mean, that's one of my concerns around this is that we really have gotten away from, hey, we are treating people of severe mental illness.

[450] Like, someone who's going through this has severe pathology happening.

[451] Now it's just, if you choose, and that, I mean, when I started, they was not a thing.

[452] And a lot of people that I do know that are trans actually think that that discredits their, belief and supervising interns that come in and have children that say on Monday and Tuesday I feel like a boy and then on Wednesday and Friday I feel like a girl I don't know what we're what that means and what we're talking about anymore and and just you know well we might want to delve into that for me too it's like you know people will say something like I feel let's say I feel like I'm in the wrong body, or I feel like I'm a boy, but I feel like a girl.

[453] And then you think, well, what do you exactly mean by that?

[454] Well, on the, I don't feel like I'm in the wrong body front, that needs detailed analysis.

[455] It's like, well, exactly what it is about your current physiology that causes you distress, like precisely what it is it.

[456] So in Chloe Cole's case, for example, it turned out that her fundamental problem was that she wasn't going to have the kind of curvy, figure that she had viewed as ideal for a woman.

[457] Now, that's a lot different than I feel like a boy.

[458] Correct.

[459] Right, but if you don't delve into that carefully, you're never going to get to the bottom of it.

[460] And then on the subjective feeling front, it's like, well, what the hell do you mean that you feel like you're a boy, if you're a girl?

[461] First of all, how do you know that?

[462] Because you don't have privileged access to what it constitutes to feel like a boy, whatever that means.

[463] It's not even technically possible for you except in the realm of fantasy.

[464] You know, like I could imagine what it might be like to be a girl.

[465] Now, let's delve into that.

[466] So when my son was a kid, he was about two, and his sister was three and a half, and she had a little coterie of friends, you know, and they used to get together and dress up.

[467] And they often, for a period of time, dressed my son Julian up in these little girl costumes, you know, like really feminine costumes, fairy wings and like a little two -two.

[468] And they had quite the time playing out this game.

[469] And he would come upstairs and, you know, zip about and they'd chase him and so forth.

[470] And I was watching that thinking, okay, what the hell's going on here?

[471] Because there was part of me that I had some discomfort about that.

[472] And so I thought, okay, what's happening here?

[473] A, why is he doing it?

[474] B, why are the girls doing it?

[475] C, why am I uncomfortable with it?

[476] Okay, so I started with my own discomfort because I thought, well, you know, is something going on here that you should intervene in or not, or is it about you?

[477] And I talked to my wife about that.

[478] And as we laid it out, I realized that a young boy has to play out being a girl in fantasy.

[479] And a young girl has to play out being a boy, because unless you play it out, build a fictional representation, you can't understand the opposite sense.

[480] And so then I thought, oh, I see what's going on.

[481] He's just playing at being a girl.

[482] And the girls are playing with the idea of sex, and they're trying to calibrate what it's like to be the opposite sex and what it's like to be them, and that's perfectly within the bounds of acceptable pretend play.

[483] Now, one of the concerns I have at the moment is that our kids are so involved with screens that a lot of that early pretend play where sexual identity is truly established, is actually being completely interfered with.

[484] And I think a lot of what we're seeing on the adolescent front is the re -emergence of that fantasy play that was always suppressed.

[485] But in any case...

[486] Yeah, I have a similar story, Jordan, with my son.

[487] He, you know, was playing with...

[488] He wanted to play with dolls and Barbies, and I was obviously okay with that.

[489] And I remember asking him, like, why don't we buy Eric, like the prince?

[490] for Ariel and he said to me oh I don't want to play with boys boys are mean and I was like oh okay so this is how he was understanding the world and you know he's a little older now he doesn't really play at Barbies anymore but I was like okay this is how they're playing out and how he is representing how he understands women and and himself and I see a lot of parents I mean I'm not going to lie to you The moment my kid played with Barbies, I had to have the thought as a parent, would I be okay if my son was a girl?

[491] And where did that come from?

[492] And I don't think our parents didn't worry about that.

[493] I see my friends have to like, okay, I would accept if my child is this other gender.

[494] And that is in and itself bizarre that we're going down that path.

[495] Well, we can elaborate on that a little bit, too.

[496] So one of the biggest liars lies on the butchery and liar front is the following.

[497] Would you rather have a trans child or a dead child?

[498] And that really, really, to say it annoys me is to say almost nothing.

[499] And here's the technical reason.

[500] So in the APA guidelines for gender affirming care, there are two contradictory claims being put forward.

[501] It's very interesting to read the document because the first claim is that because of prejudice amongst researchers against the transgender community, there are no valid long -term follow -up studies of the mental health of transitioning people across the lifespan.

[502] Okay, so that's quite the claim, because first of all, this is such a new phenomenon that it's no wonder that there are no long -term studies.

[503] And the fact that there are no long -term studies might be tangentially related in some small degree to prejudice among the research community, which is about the least prejudiced community that's ever existed on the planet, by the way.

[504] But it's preposterous to assume that the dearth of long -term follow -up studies is a consequence of mere prejudice.

[505] It's just, well, it's a new phenomenon.

[506] That's the basic explanation.

[507] But the admission is there are no well -documented reliable and valid long -term follow -up studies.

[508] Okay, then three pages later, the claim is, well, unless you allow people or facilitate people to transform early, their mental health will be impaired to the point where their suicide risk is elevated.

[509] And I thought, okay, wait a second here.

[510] One of those claims can be true, even though neither of them are, but both of them cannot be true simultaneously.

[511] There are either valid long -term studies documenting the mental health consequences of transitioning, or they're not, or there aren't, and the evidence is either pro -transition or anti.

[512] Now, the truth of the matter is that the research that would be necessary to establish the truth of the proposition that early transition has mental health benefits has by no means being done.

[513] And it's also complicated by the fact, and this is a true complication, that testosterone itself has pharmacological antidepressant properties.

[514] So if you give dysphoric young women testosterone, or dysphoric young men, for that matter, then they do feel better.

[515] But it's not because they're transitioning.

[516] It's because of the biochemical consequences of testosterone.

[517] So it's a bloody mess.

[518] But the idea that we actually know that early transitioning for kids with so -called gender dysphoria is beneficial to their mental health, that is an utter lie.

[519] There is not one shred of it.

[520] Now, it's worse than that because, and this is, clinicians who are properly trained should have known this.

[521] So this is something else I want to delve into.

[522] So, the broadest category of psychopathology, the vaguest and most inclusive category, is probably something like the nexus between depression and anxiety, right?

[523] It's intense negative emotion.

[524] Virtually no one comes into the therapeutic milieu who isn't suffering from intense negative emotion.

[525] Okay, and there are a multitude of reasons why you would suffer from intense negative emotion.

[526] And some of those are biological, circadian rhythm disruptions, physical illness, onset of puberty, trait neuroticism, which is a huge contributor, which is also elevated among women compared to men, which is why women have five times the rate of depressive and anxiety disorders cross -culturally.

[527] There's lots of reasons to be miserable.

[528] Now, if you're miserable, that's amorphous, because you're miserable and you're confused.

[529] and so in some sense, you don't know how to be miserable.

[530] And that's where the cultural issue starts to become paramount.

[531] So if you go back to Freud's time, for example, there was a subset of women in Europe who were miserable hysterically.

[532] Hysteria, by the way, meant wandering uterus.

[533] That's the derivation of the term.

[534] And sometimes removal of the uterus was a cure for hysteria.

[535] It's very much analogous to what's going on now.

[536] And hysteria took on a very narrowly, culturally.

[537] defined pathway.

[538] So hysterical women were very dramatic, and the Victorian culture was very theatrical, especially in the upper -class echelons where hysteria was more probable, just like anorexia was more common among upper -middle -class girls in particular.

[539] And so it was very theatrical, it involved a lot of shortness of breath, it involved physical weakness, and it involved fainting, sort of dramatic fainting.

[540] And that became a psychological epidemic hysteria.

[541] And then there's waves of psychological epidemics.

[542] They happen very frequently, probably about one a generation, as it turns out.

[543] And there's a literature tracing the outbreak of psychogenic epidemics going back 300 years.

[544] The master document on that front is a book called The Discovery of the Unconscious by Henri Elenberghé, which is an absolutely brilliant book, an analysis of 350 years of clinical endeavor, a brilliant book.

[545] Anyways, when the pronoun controversy first emerged, I told the Canadian Senate that if we mucked about with these fundamental categories, we were going to produce a psychological epidemic because I knew this literature.

[546] When you were being trained back in your 20s, did anybody ever talk to you about the existence of, psychological epidemics.

[547] Not once, and not hysteria, not contagion, nothing.

[548] Okay, so we could list them out as they've manifested themselves over the last five decades.

[549] So cutting was a psychological epidemic.

[550] Anorexia was a psychological epidemic.

[551] Bulimia was a psychological epidemic.

[552] There was a satanic daycare abuse scandal epidemic in the 1980s.

[553] and that's well that covers about the last 60 years so that's a lot of psychological epidemics and it turns out to be the case that the people most prone to psychogenic epidemics are pubertal girls now why that is I don't know you know I think maybe it's because girls hit puberty earlier than boys and so they're not as prepared let's say neurologically to deal with the rapid demand for men maturation that puberty imposes upon them, but also that with puberty with girls, you get an increase in negative emotion and body sensitivity.

[554] So maybe that's what tilts girls in that direction, but we don't know, but boys are less prone to that contagion for whatever reason.

[555] And so it's certainly the case that the most accurate diagnostic decision with relationship to the massive the explosion of so -called gender dysphoria in the last five years, is that it's another example of social contagion.

[556] But you said when you were trained that none of that literature was even, you weren't even exposed to it.

[557] So you didn't know that that was even a possibility.

[558] Not at all.

[559] And nor, you know, again, way before social media takes off, you know, that that's not there either where the guidelines were out there.

[560] So, no. Hmm.

[561] Okay.

[562] So have you developed any expertise in the intervening years about psychological epidemics, psychogenic epidemics?

[563] Oh, absolutely.

[564] And I think that's a big piece of why I sort of stepped away.

[565] And one of the things I did notice when I was doing the training in adults, I would say my, so I did do both adults and children in my practice, right?

[566] I would say primarily I went with children because that's the fast.

[567] this growing career at that time.

[568] But when I was doing adults, the percentage of male to female, I would say it was 80 % male to female in adults, whereas it's the opposite with kids.

[569] So when I treated, and that's, I think, why one of your letters was even more profound was 80 % of the kids I treated were born female.

[570] And one of the things that, again, that's difficult about this is that we can't have conversations around this.

[571] And why wouldn't I see such an increase happening in adults if this was happening?

[572] If this is accepted and the literature is out there, I would expect that I would see a great increase of adults identifying as this.

[573] And I did not see that.

[574] So one of the counter, one of the counter claims that's been put forward with some degree, of insistence in recent years is that we're not seeing a psychogenic epidemic.

[575] What we're seeing instead is the fact that there was a lot more variability in sexual identity than the oppressive patriarchal culture had allowed to make manifest.

[576] And now that we've taken off the restrictions, people are just reverting or they're now allowed or encouraged to express their true identity.

[577] And so that's actually accessible because imagine now that we have a lot more people who are claiming attraction to both sexes on the sexual front.

[578] Now what you should see as a consequence of that is that the rates of cross -sex sexual contact would increase, right?

[579] But what's happening instead, as far as I've been able to tell, is that although up to 20 % of young people now claim an identity somewhere on the LGBT spectrum, LGBT plus, and definitely the plus is the crucial issue there.

[580] They claim identity on the LGBT plus spectrum, but if you look at their actual sexual behavior, that hasn't changed a bit.

[581] So, for example, most girls who claim to be bisexual, for example, have only sexual experience to the degree that they have any with boys.

[582] That hasn't moved at all.

[583] And so that's very interesting to me. It's actually quite surprising because I would have thought that the psychological pressure would have been sufficient to not only move identity claims, but actually to move behavior to some degree, at least to increase experimentation.

[584] But that actually doesn't seem to be the case, which is more evidence that that initial orientation, gender orientation and sexual orientation, is much more solidly set than the social constructionist, certain claim.

[585] And I think one of my things that I want to point out is I really felt that I was signing off on agreeing for a medical intervention, not an identity.

[586] And that's what we're signing off on now.

[587] And I do think it's very unique that this is the only medical thing I sign off on for children in my field.

[588] There is not one other medical diagnosis that I can give to a child that would give them medical treatment.

[589] And we aren't trained for that, let alone what they are coming back with, you know, in terms of cancer and sexual issues.

[590] And they are not going to receive orgasm.

[591] And most therapists aren't ready to talk about that with the typical client, let alone someone who now takes 25 minutes to drop urine in the bathroom now after post -surgery.

[592] So I just don't even think we understand what we're doing.

[593] Right, absolutely.

[594] It's one of the things that shocked me when I first interviewed Abigail Schreier because I'm a reasonably well -educated clinician, but I am not a physician.

[595] And so I didn't really understand the full ramifications or even the full extent of what's being referred to euphemistically in this pathological manner as bottom and top surgery.

[596] I didn't realize, for example, that in order to construct a penis that will never work properly.

[597] by the way, either as an organ of excretion or an organ of sexual pleasure or reproduction, that the victim's arm is going to be stripped of its musculature, essentially right down to the bone, leaving nothing for about a five -inch piece except bone covered with skin, so that the muscles can be harvested, so that a dysfunctional penis equivalent can be fabulous.

[598] And that's just one of the cataclysmic consequences of the full surgical nightmare.

[599] Nor do they understand that.

[600] And nor do they understand.

[601] I've had to teach people who are going to be presenting as male who want to have sex with males.

[602] And I have to explain to them, you know you have a cervical spine and sex will be different.

[603] They don't understand that.

[604] These kids that are doing it, they have no idea.

[605] that they won't have functional reproductive organs anymore.

[606] Well, and with Chloe Cole, for example, we delved into the issue of breast reconstruction.

[607] So she had a double mastectomy when she was 15.

[608] Now, the double mastectomies, first of all, I do believe they're a cardinal act of unforgivable butchery.

[609] I think that people who have done that to minors should be put in prison.

[610] That's my belief.

[611] Now, here's partly why.

[612] I mean, first of all, you don't remove healthy body parts from minors.

[613] That's like, let's make that rule number one.

[614] But the other issue there is the sheer destructiveness of it.

[615] Not only will those women, now they don't have breasts, they'll never be able to breastfeed, which is a real cataclysm for their children, because breastfeeding is actually necessary for children.

[616] Let's make that perfectly clear.

[617] They develop much better if they're breastfed.

[618] They're much more intelligent and they're more bonded with their mother.

[619] and that's a crucial part of early development.

[620] So it's not something that can be replaceable with formula.

[621] But in addition to that, not only are the breasts removed and then hypothetically reconstructed, but the nipples are removed and then replaced.

[622] Now, first of all, that might work and it might not.

[623] And in Cole's case, it didn't work very well because she never healed properly, but it also means that all the erotic potential of that area has now been permanently sacrificed.

[624] And that's a major loss.

[625] I mean, there aren't that many primary sources of pleasure in life and to eradicate someone's capability for erotic pleasure in that manner, in this high -handed way, at the age of 15, is absolutely, well, I think it's absolutely unforgivable.

[626] I think it's criminally unforgivable, and especially given that it's been rushed.

[627] You know, and I'd also like to point out for everyone who's listening just to make sure that this is as dark as it can possibly be because it should be, is that, you know, different professions attract different kinds of people.

[628] And so in media, entertainment, and politics, a disproportionate number of narcissists are attracted.

[629] Now, that doesn't mean that everybody in those domains is narcissistic, although that's a risk.

[630] What it does mean is that if you are narcissistic, you're going to gravitate towards professions where there's a lot of public attention.

[631] Okay, so let's think about surgery for a moment.

[632] Now, the upside of surgery is that you get to be a surgeon and that you can help people.

[633] But the downside of surgery is you get to cut people up.

[634] Now, if you're particularly empathic, the probability that you're going to be a surgeon is pretty damn low, Because if you're particularly empathic, the barrier to having to make the hard decisions and actually make incisions and that sort of thing, that's very high barrier on the empathy side.

[635] So generally speaking, you're going to get surgeons who are lower in empathy, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[636] But the ultimate extreme of that is that, and this happens in nursing as well, and it happens in child care, and it happens in the care of old people, is that there is a non -trivial percentage, of people in those occupations who have a sadistic bent.

[637] And if you don't think that's true, then, well, then you don't know.

[638] You certainly don't know enough to be a therapist, and you certainly don't know enough to formulate policy properly.

[639] And I'm certainly not saying that all surgeons are sadistic, but I am saying if you are sadistic and you have a medical bent, then surgery is a perfectly lovely place to end up.

[640] And I can't help but wonder in my darker moments just how much underground pleasure the butchers are taking in precisely their butchery.

[641] And so, you know, people might think, well, do we really have to go there?

[642] And the answer is, well, when you're starting to strip the forearm musculature off 15 -year -olds to build them a penis that will never work, and you're charging them $500 ,000 to do that over their lifetime, and you're putting them on the medical mill and you're funding your goddamn hospital not in -leased as a consequence of these surgical procedures, then yes, we have to go there.

[643] That Rachel Levine, who's the poster child for the trans movement in the Biden White House, has his emails documenting his rumination and concern about how to make the medical transition process maximally profitable have been well documented on, well, in the public now.

[644] And so if you don't think greed is driving this, this kind of narrow greed allied with the kind of sadism, then you're not thinking.

[645] The other thing that's happening, too, you can comment on this maybe as a clinician, is that, you know, when you make a cataclysmic decision in your life, like you're male and you think, I'm female, and then you go and do what's necessary to transform yourself into an ERSAT's female, there's going to be a big part of you that has some major doubts, and that's never going to go away.

[646] And you could deal with those doubts honestly and accept it as a, cost of your decision, or you could do this.

[647] You could decide to go out and beat the drum about just how right you were.

[648] And you could push that all the way to the point where you're now convincing children that it would be in their best interest to do exactly what you did, instead of facing up to the fact that, you know, maybe you have some qualms about your radical decision.

[649] And so that's rationalization and justification, externalization also, all of that.

[650] mostly rationalization, and that can become unbelievably pathological.

[651] And I certainly see that in the so -called trans community.

[652] It's like, well, not only are we like this, but everyone should be like this, including children.

[653] And I also see that kind of insanely narcissistic psychopathology emerging on the drag queen's story hour front.

[654] Because what I see when I look at that with a clinician's eye is that you have narcissistic mothers in particular who are dramatically portraying their creative openness and their compassion by exposing their children to adult males who are autogynophilic, who are dressed up in lingerie, who are dancing seductively in front of them as a display of the mother's moral virtue.

[655] and that's that's munchausen by proxy for all intents and purposes and of course I would also be curious when you were trained as a therapist to begin with did your instructors ever talk to you about munchausen syndrome or munchausen by proxy no and I had to come across that later in my practice which is really what that was kind of the final case where I saw in front of me a mother really present this for her child in a way that, you know, I think if you spoke to...

[656] Can you talk about that a bit?

[657] So I know you can't, you know...

[658] Yeah.

[659] Dispense with confidentiality, but what did you see?

[660] Yeah, I mean, so first of all, a parent presenting the case was a very unique situation of this is how it's happened, this is how my kid presented.

[661] and the kid not being able to articulate the same story, but going along with it.

[662] And I will tell you, I mean, for anybody who is struggling with mental health, a lot of times when you get a diagnosis, there's a freedom in that.

[663] There's a, oh, at least I know what's going on.

[664] So I don't think we get at that.

[665] When we give them an answer, that makes them feel good.

[666] At least I know what's happening.

[667] So for a kid, I saw him, like, being taught what was happening to him instead of it was already happening to him.

[668] And this was a very wild case in where I suggested to hold back and wait on giving them hormones and the courts overrode what I said.

[669] And the doctors went ahead, even though I suggested to hold it.

[670] hold and that father lost his rights and ultimately did take his life.

[671] Yeah, well, look, you could imagine.

[672] So here's the terrible, Edipal situation.

[673] So imagine that you have a mother who's very immature and narcissistic, right?

[674] Then she has a child who manifests some forms of misbehavior as old children do, but maybe a little bit more extreme, you know?

[675] And then the woman is casting about for reasons why her, relationship with her child is disturbed, which is causing her suffering.

[676] Well, especially if she's narcissistic and immature, the easy route out of that is to assume that there's something fundamentally wrong with the child.

[677] Okay, now then you allie that with the narcissistic desire for unwarranted status, and the mother learns very rapidly that if her child is trans, that's pretty damn trendy and cool, and she can get a reputation among her local community for being incredibly progressive and compassionate and caring, and she can shine in her virtue.

[678] So I'll give you an example of this.

[679] When Ron DeSantis went after Disney, one of the Disney executives, there was a video that was released where a number of Disney executives were talking about their efforts to push the LGBT plus agenda using the Disney entertainment apparatus.

[680] And this woman, who, if I remember correctly, was in charge of domestic programming for Disney, very well situated in the corporate C -suite office.

[681] And she said in the video that she had a five -year -old and a seven -year -old, and one of them was trans, and the other was pansexual.

[682] Okay, and so then I did a quick statistical calculation.

[683] Okay, so the probability that as a given mother that you would have a trans child, truly trans, by the definitions of 20 years ago, is one in 3 ,000 approximately.

[684] And the probability that you'd have a pansexual child, whatever the hell that is, because that only emerged like three years ago, is obviously less than one in three thousand.

[685] But let's call it one in three thousand.

[686] Okay, the joint probability that you would have a trans child and a pansexual child is one in nine million.

[687] And so what that means, diagnostically, is if you were evaluating that woman and her children, you would have a 2 ,999 ,9 to one probability that you were accurate if you diagnosed, her as narcissistic.

[688] Right.

[689] So, what is it?

[690] Nine million.

[691] Sorry, it's eight million.

[692] Nine hundred 99 ,99, 99.

[693] It's one chance in nine million that she's not a narcissist.

[694] Right.

[695] Now, narcissism in the general population, like at clinical levels, probably afflicts about four percent of people.

[696] So four percent of mothers, let's say, have that tilt towards narcissism.

[697] And, And there's going to be a substantial proportion of them, one tenth maybe, God only knows what it is, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice their children to their narcissistic delusions.

[698] And now that's not only being enabled by therapists, it's being demanded by lawmakers that therapists enable that.

[699] And so that's the, so you add, would you rather have a trans child or a dead child?

[700] And Chloe Cole's parents got caught in that trap.

[701] And that's terrifying for parents, you know, if they're facing severe distress on the part of their children and a medical professional says, well, you know, you're pretty prejudiced.

[702] And if you just drop the prejudice, your child won't cut their throat.

[703] And so you have a trans child and that'll be a problem, but better than them being dead.

[704] So they're terrified out of their skull on that front.

[705] And then you add the narcissism problem to that.

[706] And then you add the fact that now therapists are mandated by law to do gender affirmation care.

[707] and you add the sadism and greed of the people on the medical side, well, you have a perfect storm in relationship to producing a psychological epidemic.

[708] And so that's exactly what we have on our hands.

[709] And I do want to say this, and I hope it doesn't get me in trouble, and I'm sure that people will come and have the opposite to say.

[710] One thing I will say in with this obsession with identity, if this is really going on, I would see this.

[711] increase across races.

[712] I didn't.

[713] The majority of this is happening to white Caucasians.

[714] And I can't...

[715] Yeah, well, you know, that's a strange thing, because the same was true for anorexia and bulimia.

[716] Yeah.

[717] You know, and it was not only...

[718] And it's an interesting thing to speculate.

[719] You know, because it's not obvious why that is.

[720] We know that more liberal white girls are much more likely to be depressed and anxious.

[721] And I think so maybe the link with dysphoria is that radically unconstrained freedom is destabilized.

[722] Yes.

[723] You know, so here's an example.

[724] If you have a three -year -old kid and maybe they have 30 outfits in their closet and you open the door and you say, you can pick whatever you want, the child will also often be confused by that.

[725] And so, and if you say, look, you have to wear this, then they'll be annoyed.

[726] Yes.

[727] But if you lay like three outfits on the bed and you say, which of those do you like, the child will pick one and be perfectly happy.

[728] Now, there's a consumer choice literature like that too.

[729] So you might imagine, imagine you go to the pharmacy and you have only one shampoo to buy.

[730] Well, you're not very happy about that because there's one damn shampoo.

[731] I mean, who cares really?

[732] But you get the point.

[733] Now, imagine instead that there were 200.

[734] You think, well, that's great.

[735] Look at all the choice.

[736] But what you find is, well, if there's 200 shampoos, the probability that you pick the best shampoo is zero.

[737] Because, like, what the hell do you know about shampoo?

[738] And so it turns out that there's this nexus where there's the proper amount of choice.

[739] And it's a choice between a couple of alternatives.

[740] This is what you do when you play a game.

[741] You know, when you play chess, you can't use a basketball.

[742] But there's some things you can do, just the right amount.

[743] And the problem with the radical, liberal, subjective whim identity theory is that people drown in possibility.

[744] It's like, well, who are you?

[745] You're telling your kid.

[746] You can be anything you want.

[747] Well, do you mean, do you mean anything?

[748] Do you mean I can be a girl?

[749] Do you mean I can be a boy?

[750] Can I be both?

[751] Can I be neither?

[752] Can I change that moment to moment?

[753] Yes, dear, you can be anything.

[754] Can I be a pussycat?

[755] Now, you talked about.

[756] about furries.

[757] Let's talk about that for a minute.

[758] What have you seen on that front?

[759] Yes, and I actually got a lot of pushback off of this small piece in the documentary.

[760] Yeah, I have kids coming to schools and teachers saying we're not doing anything because they're saying it's a queer identity.

[761] Now, again, I hear from the queer individuals that they do not own the furries, so I want to make that very clear right now.

[762] But they are are coming to school with tails and meowing, and there is a subgroup, but I don't think people really understand the dangerous slope of these chat rooms and these rooms.

[763] And you talked about a little bit earlier, one of the scarier new trends I'm seeing is human sacrifice coming up and talking about it.

[764] Kids are playing human sacrifice out with dolls.

[765] And I've seen exorcisms and stuff, but where are they learning this?

[766] And it's actually being taught through rituals in the LGBT community and through these chat rooms.

[767] So these cosplay personas that they're taking on, again, this focus on identity.

[768] Who are you?

[769] And they are saying, I...

[770] Well, a lot of that does look like, again, that looks like pathologically suppressed pretend play.

[771] You know, Yacht Panksep noted when he was studying the development of play in rats that if you deprived juvenile males in particular of the opportunity to engage in rough and tumble play, that number one, their prefrontal cortexes wouldn't mature.

[772] Number two, they were hyperactive.

[773] And number three, that if you then allowed them to play, they would play extremely intensely and aggressively in an attempt to catch up.

[774] So imagine in these situations what you're getting is rebound pretend play, is that kids have been deprived of pretend play early.

[775] And so when they find these virtual forums where they can engage in fantasy, you know, too much later than should have occurred from a developmental perspective, that that can just go completely astray.

[776] You know, I think the autogynophilia that characterizes these 40 -year -old men is a form of repressed pretend play.

[777] Now, by that time it becomes sexualized, you know.

[778] When kids are three and four, there's not a lot of sexual impetus in their pretend play.

[779] There's some, but not much.

[780] But if it's suppressed until adolescence or later, then, well, the sexual element is also going to make, what do you say, make itself manifest.

[781] And these are also things that we understand virtually not at all.

[782] Let me close with another question, okay?

[783] And, well, look, you went into the therapy business as an empathic person with some interest in the domain of sexual behavior.

[784] And you strived to work as a compassionate person and to do what you could to act in the best interests of people who, let's say, were marginalized.

[785] And that went astray.

[786] why and what do you think what do you want to tell want to be therapists and currently practicing therapists about what you've learned and about how they should adjust their attitudes and behavior accordingly oh a lot um i guess i would say to therapists is to really give informed consent and think about that element of practice and what does it mean to inform someone about their sexual reproduction or mental, emotional health?

[787] I mean, not to mention 95 % of these patients will be on antidepressants for the rest of their lives and the training of that.

[788] That we've talked to each other.

[789] I think the scariest thing is that this isn't safe to talk about.

[790] now we are signing off on someone's identity for the rest of their life and just being able to have a dialogue where we have to now discuss detransitioners.

[791] I don't think we even understand the implications for most of these people are going to have cancer within 15 years.

[792] I mean, when you engage in hormones, that is the risk and that is what we're telling people.

[793] So we are telling people that the way to be validated, which by the way will only be outside life, is to get affirmation.

[794] To teach kids, one of the things I've heard more recently is people that are transitioning are not being honest to physicians about their real assigned sex.

[795] So they are going into procedures, not telling doctors their gender.

[796] So they are getting prescribed potentially harmful medications and really neglecting their health.

[797] So just advising people.

[798] Sarah, one other question, Sarah.

[799] So now you participated in this documentary, and Matt Walton's documentary, and now you were also talking to me, and this is going to cause you a substantial amount of grief.

[800] And so why have you done it?

[801] What has it done for you to decide?

[802] that you were willing to speak out about this.

[803] I mean, because there's a huge risk associated with it.

[804] First of all, you have to admit that in many ways you were misinformed to begin with and that that had some pretty devastating consequences for you personally, but for other people.

[805] And that's a bitter pill to swallow.

[806] But you're also exposing yourself to all sorts of, well, critical commentary and allegations of betrayal and transphobia and hatred.

[807] Like, why are you doing this and what has doing this?

[808] this done for you?

[809] I'm doing it for our children.

[810] I think they deserve the truth and they deserve the best outcomes possible.

[811] I think even if you speak to people who are trans, they would tell you that intervening in a young age is not the best, and we should maybe really reconsider this.

[812] I have, I'm not going to lie, personally felt very bad that I was a part of this and a part of realizing how quickly it became of how I was put in a position to affirm medical procedures that would impact them for the rest of their life.

[813] They are not allowed to get those medical procedures without a therapist letter.

[814] So there was no choice.

[815] I would have, I would have parents, I would tell parents to get a second opinion with this, what they're doing to their children, and to continue to get help.

[816] And just that I feel like I'm going to spend the rest of my life fighting for children not to be butchered anymore.

[817] You're at a university at the moment.

[818] Which university?

[819] I work out of two, primarily Syracuse University.

[820] and a SUNY Empire State College.

[821] Okay, and what's your position at those institutions?

[822] Faculty at one, and then I supervise interns at the other.

[823] Okay, and what's your faculty position?

[824] What's your title?

[825] Lecture in human development.

[826] Okay, so are you an adjunct?

[827] Are you in the tenure stream?

[828] I am an adjunct, but I've been there 15 years.

[829] Okay, do you have any tenure protection at all?

[830] No. No, well, that's one of the convenient things for administrators about adjunct faculty, and that's something we could just delve into slightly.

[831] So for everyone watching and listening, over the last few decades, the proportion of faculty members at universities who are true faculty members, and by that I mean permanent full -time employees with some status, administrative power, decision -making capacity, decent salary, and protections, like tenure protection, for example, which increases the probability of some degree of free speech, that's all being radically eradicated.

[832] So at least 40 % of so -called faculty members at most universities, even the high -end universities, are part -time lectures who get paid absolutely nothing, who serve at the whims of tyrannical, bureaucratic administrators who'd like to have it exactly that way.

[833] That's occurred because the faculty itself has become venal and cowardly and is perfectly willing to let the administration exploit adjunct lectures so that they don't have to do the full -time faculty too much teaching.

[834] So it's a pretty appalling business.

[835] I've heard from adjunct faculty members who are paid so little for their efforts that they have to sleep in their car.

[836] And so all right, so you can express some concerns about being fired.

[837] And, you know, the truth of the matter is that in your situation is you basically have no protection at all for your position at the university.

[838] So what do you think is going to happen to you as a consequence of talking to me, for example, which is certainly a reprehensible thing to do?

[839] And how are, why are you prepared to deal with those consequences?

[840] Yes.

[841] I mean, I have, my primary focus is clinical.

[842] So I can, in some sense, be prepared for that if I want to.

[843] I definitely enjoy teaching.

[844] But because Syracuse University is where I employ their graduate interns, by doing this interview, I'm more or less probably stating I don't agree with your ideology, and they might have concerns with that.

[845] People who do know me would know that I still will give an informed consent assessment and if someone would like, if they call, I let them know it might be one to two years.

[846] They usually do not continue.

[847] So my concern will be is that they're thinking that I'm against what they are for.

[848] And I'm not.

[849] I just want conversations.

[850] But I have talked to people about, like, you, and there seems to be no in between.

[851] I am making a declaration of something by going on to this show with you.

[852] So what are going to be the consequences for you personally, do you think?

[853] Like, you've thought about this, obviously.

[854] This is a non -trivial decision.

[855] I mean, lots of people won't even talk to me. You know, I'll give you an example.

[856] So there's a cabinet minister in Canada, his name is Mourneau.

[857] And he just wrote a book, critical of Trudeau.

[858] Trudeau is an extraordinarily woke politician, our prime minister, and I reached out to Bill Mourneau to see if he would talk to me on my podcast about his book.

[859] Now, most authors will, many authors, will jump at that chance because if they do a podcast with me, the probability that their book is going to sell more copies is extremely high.

[860] But Mourneau refused, and so did another former Trudeau cabinet member, Jody Wilson, Rabel, who was an indigenous woman who was basically, drummed unceremoniously out of the Trudeau cabinet.

[861] And, you know, I'm on the liberal, reprehensible list so thoroughly that I can't get people on the left to talk to me. And I get criticized for that.

[862] It's like, why don't you talk to people on the left?

[863] And the answer is, well, I've been inviting them for five years.

[864] This is particularly true of Democrats in the US, like, multiple times, and they just refuse to talk to me, which is, by the way, a pathology that's very unique to the left.

[865] You know, like, I think I've been pretty even -handed in my treatment, of people across the political spectrum.

[866] But one of the things I really have noticed is that, and this is going back 15 years, is that my liberal friends will refuse to talk to people.

[867] Bill, I had friends in Canada, I had this group called the Meta -psychological Club, and I invited a man from Western Canada, Preston Manning, who built a whole political party.

[868] He was conservative and fairly socially conservative, but he built a whole political party and then became leader of the opposition in Canada, which is a big deal.

[869] And I invited him to our group just to talk about how he built the political party because that's a really hard thing to do and very interesting psychologically.

[870] And three of my friends refused to come to the meeting.

[871] And like that's like refusing to meet, you know, I mean, I don't care what your political orientation is, but to refuse to meet the person who was next in line to, let's say, the prime minister, of the country.

[872] That's stunning.

[873] And I've seen the lefty types refuse to engage in dialogue constantly.

[874] I never see that.

[875] Literally, I've never seen it from someone on the right.

[876] They'll talk to anyone.

[877] Now, that doesn't mean they'll agree with them.

[878] But it's very interesting to me to see that emerging so comprehensively on the left.

[879] Well, now you're facing that cancel culture.

[880] And so, now you have a clinical practice that you can fall back on.

[881] Correct.

[882] And I have a group who was very supportive in who I am and what I speak about.

[883] Oh, okay.

[884] And are those family members and friends?

[885] Are they professionals?

[886] No, they're my professionals.

[887] The people that are my group practice that I pick, yeah, you know.

[888] Oh, oh, that's good.

[889] So you have a group of people.

[890] And why do they, why do they agree with you?

[891] I think they know me and that my heart is in it.

[892] I will tell you my biggest fear with going on it and was thinking about some of my clients.

[893] and some of my clients who wrote books and dedicated them to me, the trans clients, feeling that what I say would disorient who they are.

[894] And that was my biggest fear.

[895] And I think that's where I just want to come to is that I was never telling someone who they were.

[896] I was just agreeing that we assess these domains.

[897] Okay, so let's delve into that a little bit as clinicians.

[898] Okay.

[899] So we're now required by statute to affirm identity.

[900] And this really, really disturbs me because my sense of therapy, and this is, I shouldn't say that, if you're a properly educated therapist, and I don't care at what level you're practicing, you neither affirm nor deny identity.

[901] Now, the contract I made with my clients was that I never liked Carl Rogers' formulation of unconditional positive regard.

[902] And Rogers was called on that by a number of critics.

[903] Now, I'm a great admirer of Carl Rogers, by the way.

[904] But I don't believe that what you offer in therapy is unconditional positive regard.

[905] What you offer is something more like you swear to have the best in you serve the best in your clients.

[906] And so I would let my clients know is that I'm on the side of you that's trying to move towards health and well -being.

[907] I'm on that side.

[908] And I'll be an advocate for that.

[909] Now, it's not up to me to define what that is for you, partly because I don't know.

[910] And the reason I don't know is because people are quite idiosyncratic, right?

[911] We vary on five temperamental dimensions, and that's a lot of variation.

[912] And so for one client, radically improving their social connectedness might have been extraordinarily helpful, particularly if they were extroverted, but unpopular.

[913] But for another client, increasing the amount of time that they spent alone or in diatic relationship would have been the positive thing to do because they were introverted.

[914] And so you have to, this is just like having kids, your kids are different and there isn't a one -size solution fits all.

[915] And so what you have to do as a therapist is neither affirm nor deny.

[916] You have to inquire.

[917] And you said, you said that your sense was that proper inquiry in relationship to sexual and gender identity was a one to two year process.

[918] Yes.

[919] Okay.

[920] Why did you come to that conclusion?

[921] Now, we have to understand, you came to that conclusion despite the fact that you were tilted towards supporting people who might regard it as necessary to undergo a radical transformation.

[922] Absolutely.

[923] And we were, and during this time, we were denying people, too.

[924] And that was an important distinction that I saw was people that were held off, you know, that, and we didn't get to talk about it before, but Planned Parenthood came in to the picture in, you know, I think 2015 and was under the affordable care, we're giving hormones for free.

[925] And there is no psychological assessment and no baseline.

[926] I mean, one of the things, at least when you refer them to an endocrinologist, they were taking these kids' baselines.

[927] That's not happening at Planned Parenthood.

[928] And, you know, you can get all the estrogen and estrogen off the streets for very cheap, if not for free.

[929] And so that's a really scary aspect of us.

[930] Planned Parenthood had a gender euphoria special where you could sign up online, I believe, for $30 a month.

[931] So, you know, for five months, that's $150.

[932] In the medical world, that's no money at all.

[933] And be fast -tracked towards puberty blockers, hormone replacement, and then surgery, because that's a pretty rapid pipeline once it gets going with literally, not only with literally no clinical analysis whatsoever, but with every bit of evidence that your decision to be radically transformed with these incredibly powerful pharmacological agents, that would be facilitated as rapidly as possible at the lowest possible cost.

[934] And so they called that, I couldn't believe it, gender euphoria.

[935] So presenting this to kids as if it was going to be a pleasant, you know, top surgery adventure.

[936] And I can hardly imagine doing something more pathological than that on the clinical front.

[937] It's appalling almost beyond comprehension.

[938] So, okay, so you figured, let's delve into that a little bit more because one of the things I've really started to think about is, you know, I have a friend who I like a lot, liberal guy, very, very smart, and he has a relative who's, he thinks, genuinely transgender.

[939] Now, and I've met a number of people who've undergone full transition and lived as a member of the opposite sex.

[940] And before all this psychological epidemic, got started, you could peg that frequency at about one in three thousand.

[941] This is pretty damn rare.

[942] Now, I've been wrestling in my own mind about the reality of that claim, because it's gone completely out of hand, eh?

[943] And so you've got to go back to first principles.

[944] You have to ask yourself, well, are there situations where the best route forwards for someone is genuine surgical transformation?

[945] Or is that a Pandora's box we should have never opened in the first place and should close now.

[946] And so what do you think about that?

[947] One of the really life -changing relationships I had in my later life is a colleague of mine who's intersex.

[948] She was born intersex, true intersex, but she was actually a unique case because basically based on her presentation, their family decided to have her grow up being male.

[949] She did not find out she was actually intersex until she tried to join the military and her birth certificate said I. Now, she is now referred to as she because she transitioned in her 70s.

[950] I did a lot of conversations with her.

[951] Wow, wow, wow.

[952] Yes, I've had a lot of conversations with her about, you know.

[953] Is her chromosomal structure X, X, X. Yes.

[954] Yeah, okay, okay.

[955] And so the intersex condition was, was what external genitalia?

[956] Was it?

[957] Internal.

[958] Both internal.

[959] Okay, so she was genuinely intersex.

[960] Yes, yes.

[961] And genuinely didn't know, but what reported growing up, feeling off, right?

[962] And, you know, maybe understanding herself as gay and even going into the military was perhaps a way to reinforce the male identity that she thought.

[963] Now, they never let her know that she was intersex.

[964] So finding that out was very confusing.

[965] How old was she when she found it out?

[966] When she tried to join the military at 17.

[967] And so did they do a blood test or what happened?

[968] The birth certificate said I. Oh, I see.

[969] Okay.

[970] And they never let.

[971] So that must have been a hell of a shock.

[972] Correct.

[973] Yes.

[974] But talking to her and she's a really great advocate in the trans community because she doesn't buy into hormones make you this or this, you know, surgery will make you a certain gender.

[975] She, you know, talked to me a lot about brain scans.

[976] One of the things that I was taught early on that is now I realized was a lie.

[977] They, when we were training, they told us that there was a study done that they did brain scans of kids that were trans.

[978] And they said that a trans male's brain activity would look very familiar.

[979] very similar to born male.

[980] That study is not existent.

[981] Well, let's delve into that a little bit too.

[982] So, you know, there is a difference between biological sex and temperament.

[983] Now, I don't believe in gender identity.

[984] I think that's a very ill -defined term.

[985] And to the degree that there's anything to it at all, it's a derivation or a consequence of temperament.

[986] Now, it is the case that there are a non -trivial number of girls who have what on average would be a male temperament, masculine temperament, and there's a number of boys who have a feminine temperament.

[987] And the hallmarks of that would be women are slightly more enthusiastic than men.

[988] That's part of extroversion and slightly less assertive.

[989] They're higher in withdrawal and volatility.

[990] Those are negative emotion dimensions.

[991] and that's one of the big differences between masculine and feminine.

[992] Women are higher in politeness and compassion.

[993] They're more empathic.

[994] They're less competitive.

[995] And that's true cross -culturally, and those differences are bigger in gender -equal societies.

[996] On the openness front, women are more interested in aesthetics and fiction, and men are more interested in ideas and non -fiction.

[997] Now, that's not a huge difference, but it's there.

[998] On the conscientiousness front, women are slightly more orderly than men, and men are slightly more industrious than women.

[999] But amalgamated into conscientiousness, there's very little difference between the sexes.

[1000] And so those are the basic temperamental differences.

[1001] And then on the interest front, women are reliably more interested in people, and men are reliably more interested in things.

[1002] And that's actually the biggest difference we know, and that's maximized in gender -equal countries like Scandinavia.

[1003] So it's not cultural, it's biological.

[1004] Now, even with those differences, if you sum across them, and say you used a questionnaire to assess all these differences, and you had to guess whether a given person was a man or a woman, you could guess with about 80 % accuracy, maybe 85, if you really pushed it.

[1005] And that's pretty accurate, but it does leave one person in six miscategorized.

[1006] And that's not no one.

[1007] And so the idea that there is a difference between temperament and biological sex is true.

[1008] Now, you can add to that another observation, which is some people are creative, they're high in openness.

[1009] Now, I did an early study with a colleague of mine, Jill Hooley, at Harvard, where we looked at piercing and tattooing.

[1010] when that first became a cultural fad.

[1011] So before that, it was limited to some cultures, it was circus performers and criminals, essentially, and people in the Navy.

[1012] Some cultures used tattooing and piercing, but then it burst onto the public scene.

[1013] And we were curious at that point whether that was a marker for pathology or if it was an expression of natural temperamental variability.

[1014] And what we found was the early piercers and tattooers or tattooed people, and they'd be the same people with colored hair, let's say.

[1015] The big difference was in trait openness, no psychopathology.

[1016] And so imagine you have a feminine temperament as a boy, and you're high in creativity as well.

[1017] Your identity is going to be somewhat fluid because that's characteristic of creative people.

[1018] And so the idea that this temperamental variability exists is true.

[1019] Now, the question is, are there people for whom that temperamental, variability is so extreme, they're so mismatched, that they would be comfortable with a different body.

[1020] And originally that would have been no more than one in 3 ,000 people.

[1021] But then it's a mental health conundrum, right?

[1022] Because you don't know if what you should do as a counselor is assume that the person should settle into their biological identity despite the mismatch or whether they should undergo this radical transformation.

[1023] Now, I would say the basic rule of thumb is don't do radical things without radical evidence.

[1024] And so that's maybe why you need a two -year assessment period.

[1025] And maybe what do you do?

[1026] Is it possible to turn that decision as much as possible over to the person who's directly concerned?

[1027] Like would your role as a therapist only be exploration?

[1028] Yes.

[1029] What do you think?

[1030] Yeah, I mean, I do think it's, should be exploration, and there was something that you said earlier that I just want to go back to.

[1031] I think there is a difference, and I don't know how to research it, between men and women, too, that I've found that it's significant.

[1032] When a man considers being a woman, they have more of a creative, imaginative play around being taken.

[1033] um taken and i mean that sexually so whereas when you're female you mean to a to assume a submissive role is that is that it and correct and are you talking about the sexual fantasies that are part and parcel of that yes so a part of being a female is being almost take you know submissive yeah Whereas that is not what is going on typically in the minds of male to female.

[1034] There isn't this sense of I am now going to become maybe an aggressor per se.

[1035] Right, right, right.

[1036] So what do you think is happening on the female -to -male side that's different?

[1037] Well, I think it's powerful.

[1038] And that's why I think some of this, and I hate to say it, like when we talk about when things maybe should be considered, is that the male to female transition seems to me to fit a lot more consistent onset of when it happens, that it's been distressing, you know, before puberty, during, no connection to their body parts and what they can do, no initial desire to reproduce, that is not the case for females to male as much.

[1039] And I have wondered if we don't do enough scans of what is going on in these, I mean, because even typically it has been male to female that we have saw this happen to.

[1040] Right, right.

[1041] So your point is we shouldn't assume an automatic symmetry in motivation.

[1042] Yeah, I think that's, well, I think to the degree that there are differences between men and women that are biological and deep, we should never assume a pure symmetry of motivation.

[1043] Now, it is the case that on average on every trait, men and women are more similar than different, but that doesn't make the differences irrelevant, especially in aggregate.

[1044] And so it's certainly, for example, the difference between men and women in orientation towards people and things is enough to produce consistently about a 10 to one surplus.

[1045] of males to females on the engineering side and about a 10 to one surplus of females to males on the nursing side, right?

[1046] And so that's, you also see that in criminality.

[1047] So males are on average more physically aggressive than females.

[1048] It's not a huge effect.

[1049] So if you randomly select people, a pair from the population, male and female, and you had to guess which one was more aggressive, if you guessed it was the male, you'd be right 60 % of the time.

[1050] But you'd be wrong, 40%.

[1051] And that's quite a bit of error.

[1052] But if you took the one in a hundred most violent person, they'd be overwhelmingly male.

[1053] So the most aggressive people are male, and that's why the prisons are full of males and not females.

[1054] Now, I mean, it's not like women don't have aggression.

[1055] They manifested in a different way.

[1056] But you can have small differences at the center that have immense effects at the periphery, and a lot of selection is actually done at the periphery.

[1057] So you shouldn't assume equivalence of motivation, No, and one of the very scary things that we are denying now, and this is where I feel like we have said that a gender identity is a choice, is because this is one of the tells.

[1058] If I ask, for example, I have a 17 -year -old that comes in and says that they think they're another gender.

[1059] How long have you been feeling this way?

[1060] Two years.

[1061] Wrong.

[1062] That's not typically what we're seeing, you know, and what I was talking.

[1063] taught, and again, my assumption is that people would tell me that my training is outdated from 2008, that this should be something that was presenting for many years.

[1064] And that is what is scary, the amount of people that are transitioning at 16 and have only been contemplating this for five months.

[1065] Whereas the people that I were doing were for years, they were contemplating this for years.

[1066] Right.

[1067] So your intuition is that if the, if the, if the fantasy of transition is of short duration and emerges during puberty that that's a pretty good diagnostic indicator that they're caught up in something approximating a psychological epidemic and we're and i am suggesting that's in accordance with the right well i think that's in accordance with the solid psychological literature this ken zucker that we talked about briefly on the youtube channel um you know he did very credible work on the gender dysphoria investigation front and his conclusions are very similar to the ones that you just drew.

[1068] I mean, his first conclusion was the default treatment should be leave people the hell alone, right?

[1069] You don't move forward with puberty blockers or hormone treatment and certainly not surgery, except in an exceptional minority of cases, if ever, with extreme caution, and you certainly do that without exhaustive inquiry, which is exactly the clinical assessment.

[1070] Because you want to find out, like, you know, when someone comes to you and they're upset, there is an indefinite number of reasons why they might be upset.

[1071] And some of them can be pure situation, like they're in a place and doing things that would make anyone upset.

[1072] And some of it might be physiological.

[1073] They're actually ill in some manner that's destabilizing them.

[1074] And some of it might be psychological.

[1075] And, you know, I jumped to the last conclusion with resistance.

[1076] I always assume situational first, and then physical second, and then if I can't specify the problem with a situational or a physical analysis, then I think, well, you know, maybe you're bringing something to bear in the situation that's actually unique to you that's pathological, but you shouldn't make that assumption to begin with.

[1077] And so I think that clinicians who don't understand that a year to diagnose is not unreasonable when you're looking at something radical, they're absolutely failing up to live, they're failing to live up to the professional standards that are appropriate for their profession, to say the least.

[1078] And to rush people into this is, I think it's an unforgivable clinical crime.

[1079] And why aren't we questioning it?

[1080] And it's like, I think about it in hindsight, and I said this to you in the letter, I was taught to talk to 10 -year -olds about dildos and clitorises.

[1081] And again, I haven't seen any pictures of my naked bodies of any of my other clients, right?

[1082] And it was taught under the umbrella, it's LGBT, it's okay.

[1083] And why didn't I question it?

[1084] In hindsight, I consider myself to be intelligent.

[1085] and I am critical thinker, but I didn't even question that.

[1086] So I see these new clinicians who...

[1087] So why do you think you didn't...

[1088] Okay, so I mean, look, you had reason to, in principle, trust the people who were educating.

[1089] So let's leave that off the table, right?

[1090] But you said, you know, you have a certain capacity for critical thought, but you didn't question it.

[1091] Why didn't you question it, do you think?

[1092] Apart from the fact that, you know, your default assumption was that you could trust the people that were training you.

[1093] Did you have, in retrospect, do you, have you identified blind spots that you had?

[1094] Like, what the hell set you up to accept this, do you think?

[1095] I think it's just education.

[1096] Like, there wasn't, so you had to try out to get on the trans team.

[1097] I mean, there was definitely a sense of interviewing if you weren't an agreement of it.

[1098] You know, we would have people, and I still do, I supervise people from other countries.

[1099] This is, they don't have they in China.

[1100] That's not a thing that they're talking about.

[1101] So certain clinicians were not allowed to be on that team if you couldn't really understand it.

[1102] So I think I...

[1103] Right, so there is an ideological exclusion right off the bat.

[1104] So why were you willing to put yourself in the camp of people who were agreeing to begin with?

[1105] I mean, I understand you didn't know what that would imply.

[1106] But why do you think, what was it about you that made you more likely to be included in that camp to begin with?

[1107] I don't know.

[1108] I think I, because I know of cross -dressing and transvestites, that it must be a thing.

[1109] And, of course, I would want to give the care to kids the most informed way possible.

[1110] So I really thought I was providing help for people that would end up killing themselves early.

[1111] Right, right.

[1112] Okay, so you bought that initial presumption.

[1113] So the presumption was, there is a real danger here to life and limb.

[1114] It would be better to remediate that early rather than late, if possible.

[1115] And that was enough to tilt you enough so that you started to become educated down that road, and then everything else essentially followed.

[1116] Yeah, well, you know, people end up in hell one step at a time.

[1117] And whenever you look into historical atrocities, what you find is that people don't leap from normal to committing atrocities in one step.

[1118] There's like 10 ,000 steps, and each of them is accompanied by something approximating a moral justification.

[1119] And then by the end, when things are starting to get pretty dismal, people are so caught up in the net that they don't even know how to escape.

[1120] I mean, in your situation, you told me at the beginning of this interview that, you know, your job's on the line.

[1121] Now, you have a clinical practice, and you have people around you who are supportive.

[1122] So you can tolerate that, but for lots of people, by the time they put themselves in a position where their career is on the line, and they have a family, they're in so damn deep.

[1123] There's no way they can extricate themselves.

[1124] I never signed a document that I was unsure of.

[1125] And my fear is that there has to be counselors out there.

[1126] And that's the thing.

[1127] Anyone can do this now.

[1128] I was just reading in Seattle, you're going to have an associates level to write this letter of recommendation where you would say, I strongly suggest.

[1129] this kid starts medical treatment.

[1130] I just want them to know.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] Now, that's terrible.

[1133] Well, the thing about therapy is that, I don't know, I think the room for therapeutic malpractice is larger than the room for surgical malpractice.

[1134] And that's really saying something.

[1135] Being an informed therapist and doing a good job is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

[1136] You have to be really trained.

[1137] And I would say 90 % of people practicing are trained so insufficiently that they do more harm than good.

[1138] And so that's a warning to all of those of you out there who are contemplating counseling.

[1139] It's like, you bloody well better be careful who it is that you invite into the intimate domains of your life.

[1140] You better not teach people.

[1141] Yep, you bet, you bet.

[1142] People are not born wrong.

[1143] And in getting over that, I have not met one person that can get over being born wrong.

[1144] And if we agree with that, The consequences to that is, well?

[1145] Yeah, well, we're seeing them unfold, and we're not done with it yet.

[1146] You know, we are seeing some reversion to something approximating sanity in Europe, because England closed down the Tavistock Clinic, and they were probably the prime offenders in the world, and Finland has rolled back, and Sweden has rolled back, and Holland has rolled back, and we do have these emerging lawsuits in North America.

[1147] There's one in Canada now, and so, you know, it's possible that the tide is going to turn, but there's going to be a lot more kids mutilated and sterilized before we're done with this pack of idiocy.

[1148] Most hospitals, whole financial budgets are required on this, and I think that's a piece of it.

[1149] I became needed, you know.

[1150] I became a specialist, and I personally taught endocrinologists how to have a career that just rely so many surgeons.

[1151] And surgeons and doctors that I know don't have a career unless kids are sick with this.

[1152] So.

[1153] Jesus.

[1154] Yeah, that's something we didn't delve into at all, right?

[1155] So you have a whole bureaucratic apparatus that's predicating its financial viability on a endless stream of victimized children.

[1156] Yeah, my God.

[1157] You know, it's no wonder kids are playing out human sacrifice games on the web because we're certainly playing that out in our society.

[1158] Yeah.

[1159] All right, Sarah.

[1160] Thank you very much.

[1161] to me today.

[1162] Keep in touch.

[1163] Let me know.

[1164] Let me know how your university reacts.

[1165] Because one of the things we could contemplate is that we could document what happens to you over the next while.

[1166] And so I wish you luck in that.

[1167] I'm glad to hear that you have the supportive people around you.

[1168] That's extremely important.

[1169] I do.

[1170] I hope that you're able to keep your spine stiff and say what you need to say.

[1171] And also a piece of advice from someone who's through this many times.

[1172] Don't assume that being attacked is a disadvantage.

[1173] Okay, it's not pleasant and it's going to be rough, but that doesn't, A, it doesn't mean you're wrong and B, if you don't apologize and you don't retreat, it doesn't mean that the tide won't turn heavily in your favor at some point.

[1174] Now, that intervening period, that's like that two -year assessment, you know, that you should do before doing something radical.

[1175] That intervening period is not going to be pleasant.

[1176] But don't automatically assume that just because the adversarial process is aimed at you, that the net consequence for you is going to be negative.

[1177] You might come out of this a hell of a lot sharper and more informed than you were to begin with.

[1178] And that might turn out to be worth it.

[1179] Absolutely.

[1180] Thank you, Dr. Wilson.

[1181] All right.

[1182] You bet.

[1183] We'll be in contact.

[1184] Yes, thank you very much.

[1185] We'll talk soon.

[1186] You bet.

[1187] You bet.

[1188] Good luck with your.

[1189] with your travails in relationship to the university.

[1190] Yes, thank you.

[1191] Okay, well, thank you to everybody watching and listening on the Daily Wire Plus platform, and your time and attention is always much appreciated to the film crew here in Regina.

[1192] Thank you for your help, and away we go.

[1193] Thanks again, Sarah.

[1194] Bye -bye.