Susan Stryker

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dachshepard.

[2] I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth.

[3] Wow.

[4] Monica Mouse.

[5] It never, it hasn't gotten old yet.

[6] I mean, you've said it only twice, but so far I love it.

[7] I think it'll be a hundred plus before you don't like it.

[8] Wow.

[9] The Duchess of Duluth.

[10] It's so nice.

[11] The Duchess of Duluth, miniature mouse.

[12] Of Padman.

[13] Yes, off Padman.

[14] Okay.

[15] So today's guest, Susan Stryker, is a professor and author, a filmmaker, and a theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality.

[16] As you'll learn in this interview, this is someone that I was exposed to in a documentary who I became really interested in because she spoke on the history of the trans experience in the U .S., which I was pretty unaware of to a large degree.

[17] And I found it really interesting, and I had decided that I don't know nearly enough about it, nor do I, nor am I personally friends with any trans.

[18] folks.

[19] And I just have a kind of a big gaping blind spot on the whole topic.

[20] So this is the first attempt to familiarize myself with the stories that exist within that community.

[21] Yeah.

[22] And she has several books, Gay by the Bay, a history of queer culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, the transgender studies reader and transgender history.

[23] And of course, she appears in the phenomenal documentary, the Lady in the Dale, which is where I discovered her.

[24] So, oh, I guess, trigger warning maybe I definitely take the position a couple times in this of what I perceive to be some public pushback on some of these issues involvement of trans athletes in the Olympics yeah so maybe that's worth mentioning yeah if that's upsetting to hear my view of that yeah your your questioning of it yes yes yes my questioning of it thank you Monica and thank you Susan Stryker.

[25] Please enjoy Susan Stryker.

[26] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[27] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[28] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[29] So with deep sincerity, I want to say every now and then, and this is the best part of this job, is I see somebody somewhere and I get super interested in them and I say to Rob and Monica like, oh my God, I'd love to talk to Susan.

[30] Do you think that's possible?

[31] And then through the help of Adam Kirsch, we get to talk to you.

[32] So you were one of the people, I'd say once every two months, I feel like I see someone in the world and I desperately want to talk to them.

[33] And then we get to and you're here.

[34] Yeah.

[35] Well, you know, flattery will get you many places.

[36] So glad that you, you know, found it interesting.

[37] So, of course, that intrigued me about wanting to show up and be on your podcast.

[38] So I discovered you on The Lady in the Dow, which is a great documentary on HBO, produced by the Duplas brothers in conjunction with many other people.

[39] And it tells this great story of Elizabeth Carmichael.

[40] And for people who did not live through that exciting drama in the 70s, Elizabeth had created a three -wheel car at the height of, you know, of the fuel crunch when people were in lines, not unlike yesterday in Georgia, were in lines for fuel.

[41] As a response, it was supposed to get incredible fuel economy.

[42] She was able to get investors, pre -sell some stuff.

[43] And then, of course, the whole thing went bust.

[44] And it went bust for a lot of reasons.

[45] Some of them, I think we'll talk about in great length.

[46] But you were regularly cut to to give kind of a historical context of what it was like to be trans and America or anywhere in the world.

[47] And full admission, I had not, shamefully, had not ever wandered down that road.

[48] I just hadn't.

[49] I would say if I had to sum up my views, I'm in favor of trans people doing anything they want.

[50] I don't think there should be any legal limitations.

[51] I think people should marry whoever they want.

[52] I think people should live out whatever gender that they identify with.

[53] all that said, that's about the extent of it.

[54] That you've thought about it.

[55] That I've thought about it.

[56] I've had the privilege of being friends with many gay men and women, so I've learned their story personally.

[57] So I think I just had a lot more empathy for what gay people in America went through.

[58] But I don't think I've ever really thought much about what trans people go through in America.

[59] And I think I probably just lumped trans into the LGBTQ.

[60] Like, oh, it must be the same experience, but profoundly different in many ways.

[61] Yeah, I do think it's different.

[62] And, I mean, different issues come up about being trans.

[63] But when I was listening to you talk, the thing that I most heard was, I didn't know much about it.

[64] Okay, many people don't.

[65] But I also heard you say, like, it wasn't a thing to me. Just like, in a world where, like, so much, like, need your hostility or fear or anger or misinformation can be pointed at trans people.

[66] Just that sense of, it's like, yeah, some people are.

[67] You know, I didn't know anything about it.

[68] It's like, that's actually a really good place to start.

[69] Well, let me also own my bad stuff, too.

[70] And half the reason I, I don't want to call it a change of heart watching you on that documentary, but definitely.

[71] Enlightened you too.

[72] Yeah, it enlightened me in a lot of ways.

[73] And it really made me just think a lot about it as I had just not done.

[74] And so one of the things I can own is like, I have been someone who's been like, oh, I got to know what someone's preferred pronoun is.

[75] I am going to mess this up.

[76] I fear I'm going to fuck that up.

[77] So that feels inconvenient to me. So I've not been like as embracing of that.

[78] So that's a bad thing I've done.

[79] We later, I would like to do it towards the end if we could, is I have a position on the Olympics that might be up for evolution.

[80] I just know that I need to know a lot more about it to truly have an opinion on it.

[81] Okay.

[82] Well, so consider yourself scolded and shamed for like doing bad things.

[83] But let's talk about the things that you're interested in.

[84] Yeah.

[85] Well, so in this documentary, Elizabeth launches this company and there is a newscaster in Los Angeles.

[86] I feel like it's relevant to point out.

[87] It was later revealed in the doc that it is the father of Tucker Carlson, which I found to be almost impossible coincidence in the middle of this whole thing.

[88] But this particular news anchor is infuriated with Elizabeth and the car of the dale.

[89] He has an obsession with her and the company.

[90] And he does expose after expose.

[91] after expose about Elizabeth, and underlying all of it becomes quite evident is he thinks she's a man and he's going to expose her.

[92] And then we learn another obsession of his was a tennis player in Orange County competing in completely irrelevant tournaments that he needed to expose that that woman was a man. And you see, oh, this person had some obsession about this.

[93] And the way he talks about it in public was very eye -opening of how you could talk about it in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

[94] So derogatory, so not human, so punch -liney.

[95] All of it just, I went, oh, fuck.

[96] To be Elizabeth at that time was uniquely horrible in many ways.

[97] Yeah, you bring up important things.

[98] So for your listeners who haven't seen the film, The Lady and the Dale, As you were saying, it's like it is at some level about a car made in 1974 that promised amazing fuel efficiency, and that was a very hot topic right at the time.

[99] And then it comes out that the person who's promoting this car is a transgender woman now, somebody who was, as they say, assigned male at birth, had a male biology, but then didn't live as a man, as an adult.

[100] And so that what this film looks at is the relationship between how Liz Carmichael, she's a messy, complicated person.

[101] It's like, she was a con artist.

[102] I mean, there isn't any way to, she would say that about herself.

[103] I mean, she had been involved in forgeries and scams and check kiting schemes.

[104] I mean, she was a career, small -time criminal.

[105] Who had lived on the run for many years.

[106] Yeah, she'd lived on the run for years.

[107] I mean, she was married, she had kids, and like the whole family, it was like they were an outlaw family, you know, always on the run.

[108] Like, come on kids, the cops are coming, pack up, let's go, out the door, jump in the van.

[109] So that was who Liz was.

[110] But what was interesting in these conversations about, well, is this car, the Dale, a scam?

[111] Really, a car that gets 75 miles per gallon that's only going to cost X number of thousand dollars?

[112] Really?

[113] Is it too good to be true?

[114] Well, when questions started coming up about the car and about some of the dodgy financing, Liz was actually eventually convicted of securities fraud.

[115] It's like she was taking investor money, but actually using it in ways that, you know, the SEC said you're not really allowed to use investor money that way.

[116] You're getting people to give you money to do this thing and you're not doing exactly the thing you're supposed to do with that money.

[117] And let's just say it was illegal.

[118] She did crimes.

[119] But then what becomes interesting is the way that her criminality and her con artistry get conflated with her status as a trans woman.

[120] And the way that it kind of got posed in the media by Dick Carlson, it's kind of like, well, of course the car is a fraud because the lady is a fraud.

[121] That's the lady.

[122] Snatch the wig off.

[123] Going to reveal who this person really is.

[124] I think what I loved about the show, The Lady and the Dale, and, you know, so appreciated the Duplas brothers doing and bringing in trans people into the production as Zachary Drucker was co -director and producer on the show.

[125] And like what they were all able to do so well was to use this hot mess of a train wreck of a story to like not only tell a rip, roar, and good true crime story with like, OMG exclamation point.

[126] can't believe that happened, to actually use that as a way of doing some education around trans issues about saying like, no, no, no, no, she's a trans woman who is a criminal.

[127] Being trans isn't criminal deceit.

[128] Even if the audience isn't like thinking about it in that term, like they get it.

[129] They get it through the storytelling that maybe it's more complicated than they were thinking.

[130] And there's lots of little light bulb moments like the one you were having I'm going like, huh, never thought about this.

[131] I just learned something.

[132] Well, it does remind me of that they were trying to pass some law driven by the parents of the child.

[133] So it's super sympathetic.

[134] But an illegal immigrant, quote, illegal immigrant in a drunk driving accident killed a young child.

[135] But the legislation that was trying to be born out of it had all to do with immigration.

[136] It had nothing to do with drunk driving, which was the culprit in this horrific situation.

[137] And I feel like similarly, what people wanted to do is connect dots about her transness.

[138] By the way, she had been on the run.

[139] So they were saying, oh, she's obscuring her true identity or gender as to get away with her previous crimes or present herself as someone new.

[140] Despite the fact that she had been living that way long before she had started the Dale company.

[141] Yeah.

[142] And that's such a common way of people thinking about trans women.

[143] that I think ultimately is rooted in a kind of really pervasive cultural misogyny.

[144] It's kind of like, look, if you had all the perks of being a guy, why would you want to be a woman?

[145] It's like, that's not a good thing to be.

[146] It must be for some ulterior motive.

[147] Oh, it's criminal disguise.

[148] They're pretending to be this thing that nobody would really want to be so that they could do some crimes.

[149] That's it.

[150] And just the idea that's like, you know, some people are trans.

[151] It's just like some people's sense of self -developing.

[152] in a way that is, like, different from the way most people feel about themselves.

[153] It's like, it's just a way that you can be.

[154] Think about it being, like, left -handed.

[155] Just like, I happen to be left -handed.

[156] Oh, me too.

[157] Yeah, so think about transness as a kind of gender left -handedness.

[158] Most people aren't, but it's just another way that you can be.

[159] Well, I'll have to say one thing that prime me forward a little bit is, even though I avoided this in this morning's interview, I've got to bring it up now.

[160] Sorry.

[161] So I learned in anthropology that as we look at other cultures, there were many, predominantly most cultures have a binary category of male -female.

[162] But in some of the islands in Polypenesia, you have third options, right?

[163] Where they were neither male nor female in the way.

[164] We would think of male nor female.

[165] So I guess in some way, like in college, I was primed with this notion of like, oh, yeah, it is a mental construct.

[166] That's interesting.

[167] The notion gender -wise of male -female, that's something we have created and we've defined and we put things into what makes either of those binary options thrive, and yet to see cultures that have existed that have a third option.

[168] Well, okay, well, if there's a third option, then there's no reason there can't be a fourth option or a fifth option and so on.

[169] Yeah, I think you're right in pointing out just to how complicated it is when you look cross -culturally as well as trans historically, that we have a belief in our culture in the presence about what the body means or how many genders there are.

[170] I'm really glad you brought up the question about how what we think of as sex or gender is something that actually is not carved in stone and it's not necessarily as biological as we believe if you look cross -culturally and if you look trans historically across human cultures, across long spans of time, human societies have come up with all kinds of ways of categorizing people.

[171] Like you call that kinship, you could call that pronouns.

[172] It's like there are a wide range of cultural practices for sorting bodies into categories of people.

[173] And it's not just two, that there's two, that there are non -binary or multiple, not just two -term, like three and four term categories, some societies.

[174] But what I think is really important, one of the things that makes it hard for people who are kind of grounded in a modern, Eurocentric, materialist, scientific framework, is that we have a cultural belief that the meaning of the body is stable, and that biological difference is the most important way of sorting people into categories.

[175] And so why a lot of trans people catch flack or experience violence is that other people think that we are denying something that is fundamentally true.

[176] It's like, but you were born with a penis.

[177] You're a man. And like, well, why do we have this cultural belief that it's just like biology is what is the appropriate thing that anchors you in a category, that male means this.

[178] If you have a male anatomy, it means you have a masculine subjectivity.

[179] which means you prefer he -him pronouns, which means you're heterosexual, which means this, that or the other thing, and that it could be otherwise, right?

[180] Well, I do think people do have a general, if, like, so I think throughout this conversation, we'll both take turns making, not excuses, but I would argue explanations.

[181] One is people are drawn to definitive statements.

[182] They're drawn to black and white.

[183] They are afraid of nuance.

[184] nuance is a lot harder for all of us.

[185] We have evolved biologically to be categorical to go, oh, those look poisonous, that looks healthy.

[186] We're fighting through a lot of things, I think, to explore this.

[187] Yeah, the thing that I just feel is increasingly important to focus on is that I think queer trans people run into problems having the same civil and social and human rights as other people, it revolves around that question of what are you really and what's your motive for like saying you really are something or pretending to be something that you're really not in ways that that raises up the whole trains of association about deceit, deception, criminality, mental illness, what have you.

[188] But I just think it's really important to think that the problems trans people face now are rooted in our beliefs about what biology means.

[189] Not that there is biological difference, but that we believe that the meaning that we attribute to biology is somehow etched in stone.

[190] And the thing that I feel increasingly aware of as a historian and as somebody who thinks about gender and how gender works is that I think that the sort of mainstream dominant beliefs about the meaning of biological difference are actually rooted in, maybe this sounds like a bit of a stretch, but rooted in histories of racism, enslavement, and colonization, that there is a particular way of thinking about the meaning of biological difference that came out of the European experience of like world colonization, because there was a belief about the meaning of bodily difference that became important for upholding the slave economy.

[191] It's like saying, like, if your body looks like this, if you're skin looks that way, your hair looks this way, your nose looks this way, that means that you are bound into a perpetual condition of enforced labor.

[192] It's like you're not treated as a person.

[193] Those beliefs that develop over centuries that are eventually like propped up by scientific racism, by eugenic theories, by sexology in the 19th century, it's like they're all rooted in cultural beliefs about the meaning of the body that are functionally useful for perpetuating colonialism, global capital.

[194] That is the deep structure of power that is at stake.

[195] And trans people call it into question by saying, you know, your body can mean something other than what your culture tells you it is quote unquote supposed to mean, which is what you see when you look cross -culturally and over long histories of time, that there are other ways other than a modern Eurocentric framework for organizing a viable society and for living a good life.

[196] I think you're right.

[197] I think so much of the history of biology in the European Western history is trying to justify why they should not be working in the field and these other people should.

[198] Because there was some nagging question of like, what would give us the right to do this?

[199] I think of even like anthropometry was a big field in anthropology, but it got abolished because it was so mishandled, which the Aryans want to say we're better than Jews, but we need some criteria or metrics.

[200] So we start measuring facial pragmatism.

[201] But really they're in search of a reason.

[202] And then they went out and basically measured and measured and measured until they found some distinction by, which they could hang the whole argument.

[203] It wasn't a test that revealed a conclusion.

[204] It was a hypothesis they went out to confirm.

[205] Yeah, it's a use of cultural beliefs about science, not science itself.

[206] And I'm going to use that cultural power to prop up my belief about something.

[207] It's exactly what you were saying, the idea that you're using the cultural meaning of science to create a social hierarchy based in ideology, based in belief.

[208] And that what I would say that sort of trans people need to do is to push back against the cultural power of science to define the meaning of your life is different than saying, I don't believe in science.

[209] Can we drill into some basics?

[210] And you can, again, I'm fully open to some correction on this.

[211] But if we do drill into genetics and we start with males are xy, 45 and 46 chromosome.

[212] If you get a Y, you're a boy.

[213] If you get an X, you're a girl.

[214] Conventionally, this is what we were taught in biology.

[215] Now, I think a lot of people get frustrated that, well, no, you either are X, Y, or your X, X, X, X, even within the nature of biology, there is.

[216] There's X, X, Y, there's X, Y, there's all these variants of X, Y, that exists just in nature.

[217] Forget about culture for a second.

[218] You're just looking at people's DNA.

[219] We already see things other than just X, X, X, or X, Y. And then another important thing that biologists talk about all the time is the difference between genotypical and phenotypical.

[220] So quite often there's disparity between what the recipe says it should make and what actually results, the phenotype.

[221] So you could have, let's just as an example, you could have your genes said you were supposed to have blue eyes, but then through something in the diet, some other weird thing, you could have a baby with brown eyes.

[222] So it's phenotypically different than it is genotypically.

[223] So that happens all the time as well.

[224] We observe that nonstop.

[225] And all babies in the womb have ovaries inside.

[226] And then at a certain point in the pregnancy, if the mom reads it's a boy XY, it'll send down testosterone, which makes the ovaries drop and become testicles.

[227] Like, we already start is this one thing that through this chemical enacts this change.

[228] So I guess I'm trying to lay out how much variety already exists biologically speaking.

[229] Yeah.

[230] And to just bounce off that, it's like what I hear is we have a cultural belief that there are two kinds of bodies, male and female, that fit into two kinds of categories, man and woman.

[231] You're just sorting pink blue, pink blue into the right boxes.

[232] And the thing that you're pointing to with like the genetics is that, well, just without even like talking about the whole like hairball of trans identity or trans rights, it's just like there's genetic difference in human populations.

[233] There are intersex conditions.

[234] There are other kinds of genetic conditions that complicate the whole X, Y thing.

[235] And it becomes hard to think about because we have the cultural belief that we are determined in every aspect of our identity by our genetics.

[236] It's that belief that the specificity of the body properly anchors that person in an unquestioned, seemingly natural social category.

[237] And as you were just saying, well, what do you do with intercept?

[238] What do you do with more than X, X, X, Y genetic patterns?

[239] Is that just blow your mind up?

[240] It's like, how do you think about it?

[241] I don't want to overestimate.

[242] But I think people have some awareness of sodomy laws, laws that were clearly designated to criminalize gay behavior.

[243] What's the, like, legal history?

[244] Well, I would just say on the sodomy question that we do tend to think about sodomy is something gay, but that sodomy just is, like, in a lot of Christian and political thought from christenedom, sodomy just means, like, unprocreative behavior.

[245] But exclusively used to criminalize gay folks.

[246] Yeah, it's like the criminalization of non -reproductive sexuality.

[247] Oh, I wanted to ask you real quick.

[248] When you were laying out Elizabeth Carmichael and saying, you know, it's a messy story.

[249] It made me think, have you ever listened to More Perfect by chance that podcast?

[250] I will confess, I am not a huge podcast listener.

[251] I'm more of a podcast talker than listener.

[252] Sure, sure.

[253] That's fair.

[254] But no, I haven't.

[255] So hit me up.

[256] Tell me. Oh, I was just going to say, it's a spinoff of Radio Lab or it's produced by Radio Lab.

[257] And they go through really landmark Supreme Court decisions.

[258] And one of them was a sodomy law down in Texas.

[259] because the only way to get rid of them is to find them unconstitutional in court.

[260] There's no appetite for some politician to try to get it off the book.

[261] So there's a lot of civil rights attorneys that are basically waiting for a case to come up so they can bring it to the Supreme Court and get rid of it.

[262] And in this case in Texas, these cops respond to a call, they go inside, they believe they're seen sodomy, they arrest, the civil liberties attorneys are so thrilled, they're going to have this case.

[263] And then the guys are just, they're probably the worst two guys you could want to be the face of this thing.

[264] They're both like hardcore addicts.

[265] It turns out they weren't even engaged in sex, but the lawyers are like just roll with it.

[266] They get in fist fights before the trial.

[267] The episode was just kind of about quite often.

[268] They're not always Rosa Parks, the person that you need to lead a movement.

[269] Sometimes it's not.

[270] Yeah.

[271] So the trans angle on that, it's like I will just say I am not a big legal theorist.

[272] I do more sort of like cultural studies kinds of work and historical work.

[273] If you really want to talk trans legal history, there's a guy at the ACLU Chase Strangio, who's like been arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court right now.

[274] He's the one who argued in the employment discrimination case that came up last summer.

[275] I'm going to forget the person's name, Amy, who worked at the funeral home, who was fired when she came out as trans.

[276] Yeah, we won that one, you know, basically saying you can't discriminate on the basis of gender identity and expression that that constitutes sex discrimination.

[277] So Chase is the person who argued that case.

[278] You should bring him on, but you're just kind of in a general sense.

[279] It's like, yeah, like so much about being trans of like not having the male, female, masculine, feminine man, woman thing line up in a straight way.

[280] isn't just like a head scratcher for people.

[281] It's like it's a crime.

[282] It's been criminalized.

[283] That usually, I would say, it's sometimes trans people run afoul of the law for, you know, what you were calling, sodomy.

[284] Back in the day, it's like, if that was a woman, that would be heterosexuality, but snatched the wig off.

[285] That was a man. So that's sodomy.

[286] Trans people do fall afoul of the criminalization of homosexual behaviors.

[287] but they also run afoul of laws that regulate public appearance and dress.

[288] And we don't think about that sumptuary laws.

[289] It used to be like back in the day, it's like, oh, you can't wear lace on your collar unless you're a member of the aristocracy or bakers have to wear those white hats so that everybody knows that they're a baker.

[290] I mean, there used to be really explicit sumptuary laws, and we don't tend to think that we still have them, but anti -cross dressing laws are sumptuary laws.

[291] It's saying, if you wear that clothes and you have that body, that is a crime.

[292] It is illegal.

[293] I'm regulating dress.

[294] And I think these laws are actually related to laws against hijab.

[295] It's like, you can't wear that.

[296] We have to see your face.

[297] And then, like, what does it say about masking during the pandemic and ways that, like, people have, like, so many opinions about, like, what is good or bad, right or wrong, about a piece of cloth that somebody wears next to their body.

[298] There's a lot that's at stake there.

[299] symbolically.

[300] We're cross -dressing laws rampant across the country?

[301] Starting in the 1840s through the 1870s, you do see a wave of legislation going across the U .S. that they're all municipal ordinances.

[302] The federal government doesn't care.

[303] State governments don't care.

[304] It happens at the city level, that you will see these ordinances that basically something like it shall be illegal for a person to appear in public in a dress, not.

[305] belonging to his or her sex.

[306] And that these laws might be used against, say, like, feminist dress reformers, like Amelia Bloomer, who's like, oh, we should wear pants because those skirts, they get so muddy when you cross the street and they get horse poop on them.

[307] It's just like, we should wear pants, you know, with high boots, just like the men.

[308] So basically, it's like, who gets to appear in public how is something that is increasingly regulated, starting in the 1840s, regulating dress.

[309] There hasn't been a lot of historical work done on the different cities where you start to see these cross -dressing laws being enacted.

[310] But what I would say, what we can see thus far is that they all happen to be places that experience rapid population growth, have a really heterogeneous population, and that there are a lot of immigrants.

[311] St. Louis is like one of the earliest cities.

[312] And St. Louis was like the jumping off place for people from the eastern U .S. who were going to like take the overland trek to the west coast.

[313] St. Louis, the gateway city, people coming there from all over.

[314] Not a lot of organic unity to the community.

[315] So many newcomers, so many people from so many other places.

[316] And they outlaw cross -dressing.

[317] San Francisco, boomtown, mining cities.

[318] It's like it went from like 4 ,000 people to 50 ,000.

[319] people in like two years.

[320] And it's just like, boom, outlaw cross -dressing.

[321] Denver, another gold rush mining boom, instant city.

[322] Chicago, which was a, we would now call an intermodal transit hub where railroads and steamships and Great Lakes navigation.

[323] It's like Chicago was becoming a really rapidly growing heterogeneous city.

[324] Houston, Texas, Memphis, Tennessee.

[325] These were the cities.

[326] It wasn't New York City.

[327] It was these newer cities experiencing rapid growth during rapid industrialization, where you suddenly have lots of people who don't know each other living in close proximity to one another.

[328] And that's where you get anti -cross dressing laws.

[329] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[330] What's up, guys?

[331] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back.

[332] with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest okay every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation and I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy Polar Kell Mitchell Vivica Fox the list goes on so follow watch and listen to baby this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast we've all been there turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains debilitating body aches sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[333] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[334] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[335] Hey, listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[336] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[337] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[338] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[339] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[340] Wow, again, forgive my ignorance, but I could list to you 40 historical people who were gay, right?

[341] Like, I'm just reading Leonardo da Vinci book, and he's gay.

[342] There's so many well -documented, very famous figures from history that we now know were gay.

[343] I don't have that list for trans.

[344] I don't know if this is something that people were living out always.

[345] If there was some height of it, was there famous people that, you know what I'm saying?

[346] Like, that's another big, just blind spot.

[347] It was an interesting question because the word transgender is pretty new.

[348] It's like its first recorded usage is in actually 1970.

[349] 65.

[350] But most people think of it's like, oh, transgender, that's something that overprivileged liberal white kids at small colleges on the coasts who were overly concerned with their pronouns made up because they were listening to all of these professors who want to school them in gender ideology and like fill their heads full of post -structuralist gobbledygook.

[351] I'm one of those people.

[352] But I just think of transgender as kind of our word today for being curious.

[353] about the phenomenon of gender diversity and complexity.

[354] I think anything that falls outside the, no, there's two bodies, two categories, two kinds of people.

[355] If you say like, yeah, there's more or, and you can change categories.

[356] If you say that, that's transgender.

[357] So in that sense, transgender is something that is endemic.

[358] You know, like I said, that one of the things you can just see so easily when you look cross culturally and trans historically is like the wide range of ways that human cultures and societies have grouped bodies into categories of people and assigned them to different kinship and socioeconomic functions.

[359] So in that sense, trans is always with us.

[360] In any given moment, there's going to be somebody who's like, do it a little differently than somebody else.

[361] And it's just routine.

[362] But do we want to call Joan of Arc?

[363] We want to call Joan of Arc a trans man?

[364] It's like, well, I don't know.

[365] It's somebody who was assigned female at birth who thought they needed to dress as a boy to lead the troops into battle.

[366] Was she trans?

[367] Should I say, oh, he was trans?

[368] This way that we try to use contemporary categories to interpret the meaning of people's lives in the past.

[369] Yeah, I'm inclined to do so even while talking to you and trying to broaden my thing.

[370] Yeah, I guess I feel safer knowing, oh, yeah, that's an example of someone who was living out what we're talking about today.

[371] I just, I want to add.

[372] Growing up, I was taught two things like transvestite meant you dressed as another gender, and transsexual meant that you either had begun some process to transition, and then that was the full scope of what was told to me, which I know now is not even a term.

[373] That's kind of the way you would usually hear it.

[374] Transvestite means cross -dressing, and transsexual means you're cutting up your junk and getting shot up with hormones.

[375] So that's the common way of thinking about it.

[376] And where that word transgender, how it was taken up by, just call them communities of gender variant people, is that there were all sorts of folks out there who said, like, well, I'm not a transvestite, because like, to me, that to know it's a kind of quasi -erotic or even kinky kind of practice of cross -dressing for fetishistic reasons, it's a psychopathology.

[377] And then also saying, but, you know, I'm not a transsexual.

[378] I like my anatomy.

[379] But what's different is my sense of being a man or a woman or a sense of what are my social relations with other people.

[380] How do I want them to talk to me?

[381] Like, how do I want them to relate to me?

[382] Which pronouns do I want them to use for me?

[383] and that kind of middle ground, I think, between the idea of transvestism as a temporary kind of short -term change of gender through clothing and transsexualism being like a highly medicalized and capitalized procedure for like changing your body permanently to accomplish a permanent change in your social status, that transgender initially meant that, well, I want to change something about my gender.

[384] It might be in a longer -term way.

[385] It might involve some kinds of medicalization, but maybe not all the whole enchilada.

[386] And so that way of using transgender starts to become common in the later 1960s until throughout the 70s and 80s, up to around the early 1990s.

[387] It's like you start to see yet a newer meaning of the word transgender that some people started saying, well, you know, it's not transvestites on one end and transsexuals on the other with transgender in the middle.

[388] Like, it's all transgender.

[389] We all just exist somewhere on a spectrum of possibilities.

[390] It's like it's that middle ground is the whole thing.

[391] Yeah.

[392] Yeah.

[393] Transgender also became politicized in the early 1990s.

[394] Before that, it was either a term that some medical people might want to use, but that was mostly used within trans communities to mean that.

[395] the not transsexual, not transvestite, but around 1991, 92, largely through the work of a leftist activist, Leslie Feinberg, he wrote this pamphlet called Transgender Liberation, a movement whose time has come.

[396] Leslie is somebody who was explicitly Marxist in their thinking, like their dying words where I want to be remembered as a revolutionary communist.

[397] And they happen to be trans.

[398] And they I started using that word transgender as a movement whose time has come almost to mean a kind of like pan gender.

[399] It's like everybody who is socially oppressed because of gender, whether you're like a cisgender female person who like can't get access to reproductive health care or contraception or whether you're an effeminate gay man or whether you're a trans person or what have it.

[400] It's like if you are oppressed because of the way you express your gender or the way you.

[401] you understand it, you're on our team.

[402] Yeah.

[403] Well, and again, my own evolution of it, like, as I said, being just told that there are these two options, transsexual and transvestite, then as starting to hear interviews with more trans people, hearing an interview on a really fascinating, I want to say it was a radio lab or something, with a woman who said, oh, well, sometimes I'm female and sometimes I'm male.

[404] Like, it switches, I have different hormone schedules.

[405] I'll have periods where I identify as this, and then I have periods where I identify with that.

[406] And then me going, okay, so even resist the urge to go like, well, okay, I get it.

[407] It's someone who identifies as female.

[408] And the end of story.

[409] So I think what happens for people is some anxiety that they're never going to wrap their heads around it, right?

[410] Like, is you learn more information.

[411] You're like, okay, I think I got this.

[412] And then no, there's more information.

[413] I guess the real plea to people just be like, try to surrender the notion that you're going to have finally figured anything out maybe as part of the equation.

[414] Yeah, I think that's a great attitude.

[415] I think of that as like respectful curiosity, which I think stands us in good stead whenever we deal with questions of difference.

[416] People are different from one another, right?

[417] And so like, oh, how do you deal with that difference?

[418] Do you want to like walk up and tell that person who's different from you exactly what you think about them and why and what the meaning of their life is because that's what you think?

[419] Or do you go like, huh, that's different?

[420] And I think if you approach that difference with a sense of respectful curiosity, I think people are often quite willing to share something.

[421] If it's like you encounter somebody who lives in a different culture and they're performing some religious ritual or preparing food in some way, then you just like don't even know what the hell that's about.

[422] And you want to ask.

[423] And I think if you're not couching that as kind of it's like, ooh, why are you putting that disgusting plant product in your mouth?

[424] Yeah, if there's a genuine curiosity and desire to know about people, I think people generally want to tell you who and what they are about.

[425] We desire.

[426] Right.

[427] But like you said the word anxiety.

[428] I do think that trans people, when they are visible or perceptible to other people, as trans.

[429] Some people can feel anxious about that.

[430] I mean, you said earlier on, it's like, I don't want to get your pronouns wrong.

[431] Oh, I don't want to say the wrong thing.

[432] So like there's that kind of social anxiety.

[433] But at a deeper level, I think some people can find the awareness that someone has had a different identity than they were sort of expecting.

[434] That can be like really profoundly threatening at a deep psychical level for the person who encounters the trans person.

[435] It's like it can result in murder, the trans panic defense.

[436] It's like some guy is looking up with some trans woman who did not disclose her trans status, and then he finds it out, and then he thinks, oh, that makes me gay, I'm going to have to kill you now because it's like that.

[437] So I'm going to shore up my masculinity.

[438] So like that anxiety is real.

[439] I think it goes back to the thing I was trying to say earlier about what our cultural beliefs are, that trans people fly in the face of a lot of dominant constructions of what counts is real and true.

[440] It's like, no, you were born with a penis, so you must be a man, and anything you do is just a cosmetic alteration.

[441] It's like, you're still that thing because it's nature or it's God.

[442] And yeah, it's just like trans people dealing with non -transgender people's anxiety about us.

[443] That's a heavy lift.

[444] Oh, that's like, we talk about it all the time where like Monica has to comfort the people who have inadvertently been racist around her and then apologize and then they get so, sad that they've done.

[445] Now she's, she had to first take it, and now she's got to comfort them.

[446] It's about other people becoming comfortable with groundlessness.

[447] Yeah.

[448] It's like the idea of the stably sexed body is like a foundation for everything else.

[449] And you kick that foundation out and people are flailing around and don't know how to think and feel and they're panicking, literally flailing, flashing out sometimes.

[450] And if you could just think, like, well, you can swim.

[451] Can you be comfortable and move through a liquid, fluid environment in a way that it's like you're not going to panic.

[452] Can you learn to swim around transness?

[453] Well, I think it's relevant to go through some of the layers right now because there's so many happening.

[454] So one is you just have people who are bigoted and hateful and they don't want to be inconvenienced with learning pronouns.

[455] There's like one category of objection.

[456] Then there's another category of the anxiety you're talking about, which maybe I experience, which is like, I don't want to offend this person.

[457] and now I'm terrified that I'm going to do exactly that, right?

[458] So I have some anxiety about, I worked with someone who transitioned, and we went to a baseball game, and I said, you guys at one point, and I was like, I got in my head of, oh, fuck, well, I always see you guys.

[459] Now I kind of want to tell her, I always see you guys, even if I'm talking to my wife and my daughters, whatever.

[460] So that's one point.

[461] You know what?

[462] I do the same thing.

[463] Okay, good, good, good, good.

[464] But there's another thing that you were just kind of hinting at, which needs to be acknowledged and thought about, which is we have mirror neurons, right?

[465] So when we see someone get hit with a two by four, it gives us a feeling because we know what that feels like.

[466] That's why physical comedy works in movies.

[467] So for me, as a boy who grew up in Blue Collar, Michigan, in the 80s, if I see in someone else that they are living out loud, this thing I was in terror of appearing to be, I do have a little panic.

[468] Like my own sense of security is like, oh, no, this person's doing things that could get you killed.

[469] on the playground.

[470] I'm uncomfortable because it's actually triggering this mirror neuron fear I have.

[471] And so like that thing's at work.

[472] And I'm not even aware of it per se, but it's in there.

[473] Thank you for sharing that.

[474] My response, again, kind of glib, is to say like, that's you, not me. Yeah.

[475] I want to be ultra clear.

[476] I am not offering excuses.

[477] I'm offering like explanations of what people should be running through their mind.

[478] Why am I having a feeling of anxiety?

[479] Is it this?

[480] Is it that or is it until we identify, I think, which of those things it is, we can't really address them personally.

[481] So, yeah, I'm just trying to explore, like, the many things you could be feeling.

[482] Yeah, and it's a chance for personal growth, I would say.

[483] You know, like, oh, like, I had this reaction and wanted I have this reaction.

[484] What about that is me?

[485] Why am I triggered by that?

[486] And to me, like, that gets to the respectful curiosity piece, again, kind of like, somebody saying like, oh man, I just totally had this like head trip about something and it's like, you know, I can hear that.

[487] I can hear you say what you just said and you're like, yeah, I get it.

[488] I also, it's a little different, but it's like I also had, let's just call it a boyhood, even though I didn't identify with it.

[489] Sociologically, this is where I got slotted.

[490] That's what I was exposed to.

[491] So like for me dealing with my sense of being trans, yeah, I have to negotiate exactly those same stigmas, the same kinds of, violence.

[492] The complicated thing for me was going like, well, yeah, gay, but not like that.

[493] You know, like, I've always been oriented towards women.

[494] Just like, that has been my thing.

[495] And it's just my relationship challenges were being involved with straight women who at some point, it's like, this isn't working because you're actually wanting me to be the guy here.

[496] And I'm into you because I'm a lesbian.

[497] That's different.

[498] And that was a hard thing to kind of come out about.

[499] Or people were like, you know, you faggot.

[500] It's kind of like, no. wrong word, not anti -homo here, but it's just like, that's not right.

[501] And then you can't blame them because you're not out to them, right?

[502] Yeah, it'd be a weird request that go, like, insult me correctly, okay?

[503] I want you to get this insult right.

[504] That's dyke to you.

[505] Oh, my God.

[506] Oh, my God.

[507] I really, I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but I'm in, like, in awe of that you could grow up with all those things stacked on you and have found an incredibly productive path because I think what also needs to be acknowledged is like the limitations that are immediately on you, which is employment.

[508] Employment is going to be a thing.

[509] That's going to be a challenge.

[510] Relationships are going to be a challenge.

[511] Family, the safety of family, that's going to be a challenge.

[512] Like all the cornerstones that would prevent someone for becoming a re genetic like I did, they're not there.

[513] I do think it's a huge triumph when people thrive from that cauldron.

[514] find that patronizing at all.

[515] It's like you recognize something about challenges that another person can face that maybe you didn't face.

[516] I do think that one of the things that I most like about being trans oppression.

[517] I mean, there's something that's like very deeply significant and enlivening about it for me. That kind of the way I've said it in some of my public more rah -rah kinds of talks is that I think that trans people, for the sake of our own survival, have discovered that true change is really possible, things that you think are carved in stone are not.

[518] Things that you think are just like, that's just what reality is like, is not.

[519] But there's a possibility for deep transformation and how we understand ourselves in the world and our relationships to life on Earth, to the cosmos.

[520] That there's something about being trans.

[521] You discover.

[522] for the sake of your own survival, how deeply different things can be.

[523] And that if we as trans people have a function in society right now, it is basically to say to others, this is a capacity that is within all of us.

[524] For me, it's like trans is a resource for knowing that even at that vast scale, change is possible.

[525] We can become otherwise.

[526] I know this.

[527] I know this in my flesh.

[528] It is inspiring.

[529] And then then of course, because I'm a cynic, made me think of another reason people are probably triggered by trans folks is so many of us aren't living our true selves.

[530] And the true selves, there isn't even a huge hurdle to live our true selves.

[531] And we know that.

[532] And so when we see someone that is trans, recognizing the fucking confidence it takes to be true to yourself is probably also triggering for people.

[533] I think that could be it.

[534] I feel like so much of the ways that I am trans in the world are also like really deeply informed by my kind of like hippiness, my bohemianness, my like having lived most of my adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area that there is part of it.

[535] It's just kind of like, y 'all, just chill out.

[536] You know, like, why do you care so much?

[537] You're like, take this.

[538] Let me drop a little knowledge on your tongue.

[539] It's like, it's okay.

[540] Let go.

[541] That is my sense of being trans.

[542] It's like, oh, honey, you are so wound up and, like, gender.

[543] Just, like, let it unspool.

[544] Yeah, take off the heavy jacket.

[545] Yeah.

[546] Well, you know, it's funny, too, because as I was preparing to talk to you, it did occur to me that, you know, the left is not flawless in this by any stretch.

[547] I was just thinking about how the left, we kind of weaponized cross -dressing in reference to Jaeger Hoover, which is not even a confirmed thing per se, but the left took great pride in pointing out that he was a cross -dressing.

[548] dresser.

[549] Like that that exposed what a hypocrite this person was.

[550] Trans misogyny.

[551] Let's just call it that.

[552] Yeah.

[553] Okay.

[554] Yeah.

[555] Trans misogyny.

[556] I feel like I am part of a really diverse in many respects, LGBTQ community.

[557] But I do sometimes see some gay men who are like are really weirded out about trans women because like they think it's like, I don't wait, don't cut it off.

[558] Or that there's a fear that they are having or you might have lesbians or they're like, I don't.

[559] no, you're not really a woman.

[560] You can't come in this room.

[561] There can be cisgender prejudice about trans people, whether or not that cisgender person is gay or straight.

[562] There's like intercommunity cross tensions as well as sort of like the bigger tensions between the left and the reactionary, right?

[563] Yeah.

[564] And yeah, the left doesn't do as well sometimes as it should.

[565] Yeah.

[566] Can we tackle one topic that I'm probably on the wrong side of history of?

[567] and I want you to tell me why.

[568] Of course.

[569] So the Olympics, let's just say, for example, let's say that Caitlin Jenner was Caitlin Jenner in the 70s and she wanted to compete against women in the decathlon.

[570] My argument against it is this.

[571] I do recognize the right of Caitlin Jenner to be who she is and if she's an athlete, be able to compete.

[572] But I also think it potentially comes at the expense of all women.

[573] So I see it as prioritizing one person's right over perhaps every woman who's dedicated her life to the decathlon.

[574] So I'm confused by it.

[575] My position on it is being protective of women.

[576] Well, and so what I would just say is the way that you're framing it is that you're defining woman as cisgender woman.

[577] Like you just said, Caitlin Jenner and women.

[578] And women will be harmed by the presence of a trans person who I'm excluding from the category of woman.

[579] I accept who she is, but she's not a woman because I just said a woman is this.

[580] thinks of, we just point that out.

[581] The other thing is that I would say that feeling is rooted in the anxieties that we have about bodies that call into question the dominant cultural sense of like biology is what anchors someone in social category.

[582] Some of the conversation that comes up about trans women and women's sport.

[583] Yeah, all right.

[584] And so are you basically saying, well, you're a trans guy.

[585] You're not going to hold up to a real man. So it doesn't matter if you compete because you don't threaten anything.

[586] Whereas, oh, because of my beliefs about masculinity and maleness, it's like this person could put on a dress and pretend to be a woman and compete in this unfair way.

[587] And there's a way that I hear that sense of like the, I hear the fear.

[588] Caitlin Jenner could have just said she was a woman and competed in the decathlon and blown people away.

[589] It's like, that's not structurally any different.

[590] than the argument about like, well, we can't have like gender neutral restrooms because that means like trans women can't use the women's room because it could just be a guy who puts on a dress and then as a predator, it's like he could just say he is a woman for that day.

[591] And it's like, oop loophole.

[592] And so like the idea of linking the presence of a trans person to the notion of harm to others.

[593] It's just like something I really want to strongly push back on.

[594] And then the other question is like some of the anxiety or confusion, I think, or resistance is about which body properly belongs to which category and that the proper body and the proper category is the thing that guarantees fairness somehow.

[595] A lot of the conversation about trans women in women's sports is, well, that wouldn't be fair because you have a biological advantage where you're imagining that it's somebody who is a normatively cisgendered male person who is claiming femininity in a way that produces something that is inequitable.

[596] But it's like, it's a really complicated question.

[597] It's about how long has somebody been on hormones?

[598] What kinds of body modification have they gone through?

[599] You know, like, what's the event?

[600] Like, what's actually being tested?

[601] It's like, do we have women's sports as a way of, like, creating, like, special protected preserves for people who are imagined to be unequal and can't compete against men?

[602] There's other questions I would have about, well, why are you getting so, not you personally, but, like, the idea of, like, oh, the trans woman in women's sports, that's not fair, but, like, what about, like, differences in, like, class -based differences in training facilities?

[603] Or, like, you know, rich countries do better in the Olympics because they have better trading facilities.

[604] It's like, do you want to say it's not fair for people to compete across class differences?

[605] Well, I wonder if we could start, though, with what we agree upon, which is the goal is fairness.

[606] So the things you just pointed out about class, those are issues.

[607] And those are things that we would hope to neutralize.

[608] That in itself is something we would strive to flatten that difference.

[609] And do we both agree that there's several standard deviations and the outcomes of male and female categories in the current Olympics, the weightlifting record, the wrestling, the sprint, the mile.

[610] We would agree that there's a big difference in the outcomes of these two categories.

[611] Yes.

[612] And I would also say that range of physical capacities within the categories, man and woman or male and female are greater than the sort of aggregate differences between men and women.

[613] And so it's not necessarily.

[614] that being male is going to be an advantage in all circumstances.

[615] Like there's a wide range in that.

[616] Yeah, but we're not comparing the total population of the planet.

[617] We're comparing the Olympians.

[618] And there's a big, big difference between the squat record for females than it is for male.

[619] Okay, but what you're imagining is that the trans woman participating in that sport is really a male and that you're having some idea about, like, what their physical capacity is without knowing what Their history of embodiment has been, without knowing things about their musculature, without knowing what their hormone regimen has been.

[620] There's an assumption about what it means to have a trans woman in women's sports.

[621] And basically, what it boils down to what I'm saying is, like, it's complicated.

[622] It's not like a one -size -fits -all question.

[623] And that there are people, I mean, the NCAA and the Olympics Committee, there are very complicated and precise and not always, I think, accurate or useful ways of saying who qualifies to be in which category.

[624] There were protocols in place that were agreed upon by athletes and administrators about who can properly compete in which category.

[625] And so a lot of the pushback that we're seeing right now on particularly trans girls in girls and women's sports, it doesn't come from experts in the field who are the people who know the most about it, it's like it's coming explicitly from Christian fundamentalist people, like, you know, like alliance defending families.

[626] It's like there's like the same language and the same legislation is being introduced in state after state after state, after state using the low -hanging fruit of anxiety about trans people to like say that there is a problem.

[627] It's like, where are the, of people pretending to be trans to compete in women's sports who are winning, or like, where are all of those cases of trans women who are like blowing the competition out of the water?

[628] Like, usually not the case.

[629] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[630] I totally agree with you.

[631] And I just want to point out, though, that I don't believe there's a binary response to this.

[632] So, yes, there's one that is probably just, to penalize anything that is not, as stated in the Bible.

[633] But there's someone like over here, like me. I'm not challenging whether Caitlin Jenner is a woman.

[634] I am not challenging her identity.

[635] But what I'm asking is, if Caitlin Jenner was Caitlin Jenner in the 70s, and you had this whole field of young women who had dedicated their lives to it, can we look at that specific example?

[636] and is that not problematic to the women?

[637] If the kind of the fantasy informing the question is like, what if Bruce Jenner just put on a short skirt and said, I want to run in the...

[638] I'm not even giving them an intention to cheat.

[639] What if Caitlin Jenner came out as a teenager and had been on hormones for five years and had had everything that the NCAA or as a college athlete or the Olympic organizing committee had said like, yeah, yeah, These are the criteria for trans people to compete in women's sports.

[640] If she had done all of that, would it even be a question?

[641] The question comes up and how one imagines the trans body.

[642] What I'm saying is like trans bodies are really complicated.

[643] It's not one size fits all.

[644] That people think they answer a question when they say, oh, that's a trans person.

[645] But I think it just raises more questions.

[646] It's like it can be when you say trans.

[647] What do you mean?

[648] Like being male gives you an advantage.

[649] Do you mean it like, it's like more muscle?

[650] Testosterone.

[651] I mean, I think what you're talking about is testosterone levels.

[652] Yeah, testosterone creates more muscle mass than estrogen.

[653] So what do you do about somebody like Castor Semenia, who like is not trans, has quote unquote naturally occurring levels of testosterone?

[654] And you're like, oh, no, okay.

[655] Well, actually, we have to exclude her too because what we mean when we say woman is somebody whose testosterone levels fall within like this.

[656] range.

[657] And so it doesn't matter how does she think of herself, what was she assigned at birth, what's reproductive anatomy.

[658] It's just like, woman means this testosterone level range.

[659] And so if a trans woman meets that range, why should she be excluded?

[660] Because she had an endogenous means of delivering testosterone for a certain period of her life.

[661] I do think maybe like moving forward, gender might become less and less of the brackets for the Olympics.

[662] I think it should be more, this bracket is this level of testosterone.

[663] This bracket is this level.

[664] And some men and women, like, it might be all cis men in one.

[665] It might be all cis women, but there's definitely going to be some overlap.

[666] And I think this idea of fairness when it comes to super athletes is crazy.

[667] Like Michael Jordan is biologically a more apt basketball player than Rob.

[668] And they're both men, but he has an advantage.

[669] He has a biological advantage just by what he has been given.

[670] And so it's already unfair.

[671] Like there's already going to be levels of, it's not like if all the basketball players did exactly what Michael Jordan, did they be Michael Jordan.

[672] He's just better.

[673] So I do think these like bracketing in men and women may start dissipating as this conversation continues and there can be different brackets by which we categorize people that are more fair.

[674] I like what you're saying there about like that if the basis of categorizing people differently is to create fairness across different registers of whatever kind, then for me, idea that knowing that somebody is trans automatically tells you which bracket they're supposed to be in, it just doesn't.

[675] And that's partly because like we imagine, I don't have a simple talking to the public way of talking about it.

[676] It's like we imagine one sex or gender is like one thing that it is whole, that it is unitary, and that if we know the answer to that, then it's like, then we know how to categorize them.

[677] And part of what transness shows, I think, is that we routinely compact a lot of different things together that could be pulled apart.

[678] Like genetics, what's your chromosome status?

[679] What's your hormonal status?

[680] What's your culture of rearing?

[681] What levels of training have you had?

[682] There's all kinds of things that can be different about bodies and about preparation for a certain kind of competition.

[683] And the idea that we know the correct answer because we know whether or not someone is trans or even whether someone is a man or a woman.

[684] It's just that status doesn't maybe like give you the information that you're looking for.

[685] That's relevant to make something fair.

[686] Fair.

[687] Right.

[688] Yeah.

[689] Although this is the question I'm most scared to ask what I'm going to ask it.

[690] So there's another part of me that also thinks this.

[691] So if I have limitations on me given my identity, there are things I can and cannot do.

[692] I have accepted some limitations.

[693] Becoming a trans woman, you know and you accept, I'm not going to carry a baby in me currently with today's technology.

[694] That is something I just have to accept.

[695] That's part of this.

[696] I'm not going to carry a baby in me. I'm proposing is something that you could accept as trans as I'm not going to compete in the Olympics in the women's category.

[697] Like, are there some things that, like, are not too much to ask someone to accept?

[698] For me, I mean, it's a good question.

[699] I think you're talking about apples and oranges or, like, the idea of, like, you know, reproductive capacity versus social belonging.

[700] And that I would say, in some ways, I don't feel like I'm the right person to ask because I'm not a competitive athlete, right?

[701] You know?

[702] And I would say that I don't think that any kind of person should be excluded from a kind of activity.

[703] And so to not even make it a trans question.

[704] It's like, what do you do about intersex people?

[705] Like Castor Semenya, who seems to be intersex.

[706] Do you say like, oh, competitive sports are only for people who embody these like binary categories of sex gender in some normative manner?

[707] And so dealing with that question of like, if we're going to categorize people, recognizing that there can be a wide range of physical capacities and qualities within category as well as across categories seems important.

[708] And it's like what Monica was talking about with basketball players.

[709] It's like the NBA doesn't discriminate against short people.

[710] It's just like it's a tall person's game.

[711] And it's like you've got it.

[712] It's like you've got game.

[713] And if you don't, you better hope you're Steph Curry, right?

[714] Yeah, yeah.

[715] And they also don't exclude people from being too good.

[716] Right.

[717] Like, they're not like, oh, these people are extremely good, so they shouldn't be included.

[718] Nobody should have a hang time that long, you know?

[719] This is not fair.

[720] I would recommend talking to people like Katrina Carcassiz and Rebecca Jordan Young, who wrote this really great book on testosterone recently, or like a sociologist of sports, Travers, who teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

[721] Like, there are people who have really expert knowledge about trans and sports, and I'm an amateur.

[722] Like, I think about transness a lot.

[723] Like, I don't think about sports a lot.

[724] There could be people who can, like, give you much better arguments than I could from a much more knowledgeable position.

[725] But what I would say is that I think where a lot of the freak out happens is Michael Jordan in a dress saying, I want to play in the NBA.

[726] There's this fear.

[727] There's this fear of, like, somebody will verbally claim to be something that they actually are not, right?

[728] I'm trying to work through this for me, and I'm saying I'm not denying that Caitlin Jenner is a woman.

[729] And so, look, this is one of the hardest topics in the whole realm of the topic.

[730] I wasn't suggesting that you necessarily were having that fear, but that I think the fantasy that informs a lot of the freak out over trans people in sports is imagining, like, you know, maybe you'll call like the worst case scenario.

[731] Like, what if somebody just says, today, I am a woman, and you're going to, like, go and compete in a way that is unfair?

[732] And that the common sense thing would be to say, oh, yeah, well, clearly, like, that person's not really that thing, or they're claiming it for some illicit reason of some kind.

[733] And so common sense says, well, yeah, it's like, maybe we should, like, exclude trans people from this because it's not fair.

[734] And what I'm trying to say is that real trans people do things that change their bodies often that are about fitting in and belonging to the social category that they identify with.

[735] And so it becomes a really technical and expert question.

[736] It's like when you say woman for purpose and competing in event X, it's like what kinds of – Yeah, it has to be Uber specific.

[737] What kinds of things are you saying are salians?

[738] Yeah.

[739] Knowing somebody's trans status or sex status doesn't necessarily in and of itself give you the information that you're looking for.

[740] Like just a related example that's not about sports.

[741] It's like I've seen a lot of chatter on trans Twitter about vaccinations.

[742] They were saying like, are you male or female?

[743] A lot of trans women are going to like, well, why are you asking?

[744] Why is that significant?

[745] Well, they've seen some, there could be like pregnancy complications or whatever.

[746] and you're like, well, okay, then say, like, are you pregnant?

[747] Oh, uh -huh.

[748] Well, yeah, even there was a differing outcome with the European version.

[749] And they found six cases of it in the Johnson Johnson.

[750] Yeah, where it gives blood clots to women.

[751] And so at that point, maybe it becomes medically significant to know whether you're a trans woman or a cis woman.

[752] But it's like just asking the question, are you a man or a woman?

[753] It's like, well, it doesn't actually give you the information.

[754] And so what are you asking and why?

[755] and that sometimes it's only, I would say, trans and intersex people who are going, there's a distinction here that you need to be paying attention to that your question is actually not sophisticated enough to capture the information that both you and I agree might be salient and significant.

[756] So like ask me that question again, what are you wanting to know?

[757] Well, it's like people asking Monaco, where she's from?

[758] And she's like, Georgia.

[759] And they're like, no, but where are you from?

[760] Yeah.

[761] It's like, what do you want to know?

[762] Where are my family's from?

[763] You want to know where I, yeah, it is.

[764] Yeah, and I do that, too.

[765] Like, I was raised in a military family.

[766] It's like, where are you from?

[767] It's like, do you mean where was I born?

[768] Where have I lived most of my life?

[769] Where do I live now?

[770] Ancestrally, what are you even asking me?

[771] I don't even know what your question means.

[772] Where am I from?

[773] Yeah.

[774] Yeah, what are you trying to get at?

[775] What do you get?

[776] It's like, and I think the trans question is often that.

[777] Just like, we tend to make assumptions about what man -woman means, and we make assumptions about what trans means.

[778] And so to like talk about should trans women participate in women's sports?

[779] It's like that is such a broad brushstroke thing that needs to be unpacked in so many different ways.

[780] Like, yeah, I'm sure your opinion would vary as mine would all over the map if you kept laying out different examples.

[781] Yeah, this is like back to your other questions about like curiosity and comfort and anxiety.

[782] It's like we want gender to be clean and clear and we want to know what the answer is.

[783] And if we don't know what the answer is, we're uncomfortable and somebody's going to die and maybe it's you.

[784] So, yeah, it's just like getting that sense of comfort with the uncomfortableness, you know, the sense of curiosity about difference, the sense of like you exhibited so clearly at the beginning of the podcast was kind of like, I'm just learning about this, I want to educate myself, I'm curious, and that you're coming at it from the place of respectful curiosity.

[785] So it's like, I think if there's more of that attitude in society about transness, and I'm like, why do you think my mere presence, not you, but like, why is it like my mere existence on the face of the earth, something like, it's going to make people's heads explodes?

[786] Well, are there resources?

[787] Are there places that people who want to help support?

[788] Is there a current issue that you want to shine a light on before we let you go?

[789] Oh, gosh.

[790] It's a big undertaking, but I'm a historian by training.

[791] And so I'm not necessarily the person who is totally plugged in to like all of the front lines of activism and all of different organizations and all of the different movements.

[792] Maybe it's just sort of a more global kind of comment.

[793] Right now, trans issues are one of the hot button issues in the culture wars.

[794] There is a really concerted anti -trans backlash that is happening right now.

[795] It was 2014 that Laverne Cox is on the cover of Time magazine.

[796] and then the cover story says, is America at a transgender tipping point?

[797] And there was sort of this idea of like, oh, here are trans people, the spunky new minority showing up, claiming their place at the table of social inclusion.

[798] Are we there yet?

[799] Can we invite the trans people in?

[800] Tell us your story.

[801] Like, that was 2014.

[802] And 2015 is City of Houston repealing an anti -discrimination ordinance because right -wing Christian fundamentalists are trying to.

[803] to frame it as a bathroom bill or any man at any time can come into a women's room and harm women and girls.

[804] When you brought that up, I wanted to say the one thing that occurred to me during the height of that.

[805] And I think in North Carolina, there was a big dust up about it as well.

[806] And my thought was there's also this layer of misogyny in it.

[807] I don't mind that that, quote, predator is in with the boys.

[808] Because normally the predator, I guess, if they had their way, this unknown predator who's going to dress as a woman to go prey on young, girls, that predator is now in with the young boys going to the bathroom.

[809] So that's not an issue at all.

[810] Like, oh, we cleaned it up.

[811] So there was this predator who preys on children, but he's no longer with the girl children.

[812] He's with the boy children now.

[813] So all is good.

[814] Like, what are you even saying?

[815] Like, what's the outcome of this?

[816] How is the person your theorizing exists been dealt with by getting them in the boys' bathroom?

[817] Right, because you can't even imagine that there could be something called homosexual rape.

[818] Right.

[819] Yeah.

[820] Oh, don't want to go there.

[821] Yeah.

[822] And I would encourage people to watch The Lady in the Dale because, again, like me and shamefully so, I've not consumed that personal story and getting to see it and care about a lead character in this documentary.

[823] Recognizing the great danger that she was put through when the court said, no, she has to go to a male prison.

[824] And just how fucking life -threatening that was.

[825] And how anyone could make that decision looking at her seem so barbaric.

[826] Eric, and recognizing what a incredible mother she was and all these things.

[827] Like, I really recommend people watch that and get kind of a sense of what that experience was like and continues to be like, because it certainly made me curious.

[828] Good.

[829] I'm glad that it piqued your curiosity.

[830] You know, I do think that was a really compelling viewpoint character.

[831] I really appreciated being able to participate in that as a historian who's like, yeah, let me help you think through the transness here.

[832] That was my role in the show, was like, let me, like, connect the dots.

[833] It was great.

[834] I loved your participation in it.

[835] It really made it for me. As did I. So I'm glad it worked for you.

[836] And I think the directors, Nick and Zachary did a great job.

[837] I think Duplas Brothers did a great job.

[838] I think they're so good at telling sophisticated stories.

[839] And I really appreciated that.

[840] If your audience is interested in reading more trans history, I have this little book called transgender history.

[841] Very literal, very literal.

[842] It's a gateway drug.

[843] It's a little starter.

[844] Just a little starter.

[845] Transgender history.

[846] Yeah.

[847] I'm going to read that.

[848] There you go.

[849] Yeah, I'm going to read it.

[850] I'm going to buy it when I hang up with you.

[851] Well, I just learned before I got on the call with you today when I was checking email between the dissertation defense that I had to sit on and getting on this podcast that my publisher let me know that Target wants to profile my book is one of their Pride Months books that they're going to be flogging at Target.

[852] So you can go to Target and buy my book.

[853] I will.

[854] I love going to Target.

[855] It's one of the...

[856] Don't we all, right?

[857] Yes.

[858] It's a great adventure every time.

[859] That's right.

[860] Cheap accessible design, you know, for your phone.

[861] Well, Susan Stryker, appreciate so much your time and your patience with me. And it was really, fun and informative.

[862] So thank you.

[863] Well, Dax and Monica, thank you so much for having me on.

[864] I love to have an audience for spieling.

[865] Talk to you anytime.

[866] Okay, wonderful.

[867] We will do it again.

[868] All right.

[869] Take care.

[870] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[871] Hi.

[872] Hi.

[873] You know what's really interesting?

[874] I know the second time I'm bringing it up.

[875] But the whole thing yesterday with the drifting on track in the car the race car when i would finish i was sweating bullets and i was exhausted like i i was like i had sprinted i'm like the physicality in this car is not shouldn't warrant that yeah i was like oh is it just the adrenaline of how on the edge this thing is yeah that my heart rate's really high and then i was wondering am i holding my breath during it you know how you're gonna hold your breath during stressful things you shouldn't but yeah you shouldn't you're supposed to learn That's what boxers learned to breathe and all these athletes learned to breathe through it.

[876] And then I thought, oh, maybe I was holding my breath.

[877] Anyways, exhausted today physically.

[878] And I work out strenuously all the time.

[879] You do.

[880] And I don't get exhausted.

[881] I don't feel worn out from that.

[882] Yeah.

[883] But I'm feeling worn out from this.

[884] You don't sound very compassionate about this.

[885] It's just, I don't know what to say.

[886] I'm sorry.

[887] Oh, yeah.

[888] That's fair.

[889] It's a complaint.

[890] But you're all done.

[891] You're all done.

[892] shooting your show, which is very exciting for you, because it was a lot.

[893] Yeah, the last six weeks was a lot.

[894] In general, the show wasn't overwhelming.

[895] It just was the top gear is what we're talking.

[896] Top gear, America, and the last push to finish the season before everyone else had to do other things got a little crazy.

[897] Yeah.

[898] Like out of town every single week for four or five days.

[899] That fucking suitcase.

[900] I took the suit, mind you, I love it, away luggage, which they were still a sponsor.

[901] Pulled the away bag out of my trunk, and then I carry it up the.

[902] stairs to the bedroom, which I do every week a couple times.

[903] I was like, I'm so fucking happy to not.

[904] Have to do that.

[905] Yeah.

[906] Just living out of a suitcase.

[907] I don't love it.

[908] Yeah.

[909] Are you a person who, I wonder if we've already talked about this on you, we probably have.

[910] Are you a person who, when you get to the hotel, you open your suitcase, you take everything out, you hang it, you put your watch in the drawer.

[911] Do you do that or do you leave everything in your suitcase?

[912] It depends what kind of trip I'm taking.

[913] So if it's a vacation, I do.

[914] I unpack.

[915] I never do that.

[916] You don't ever do it.

[917] No, I never do it.

[918] Oh, my gosh.

[919] I just leave everything in my suitcase.

[920] Sometimes I try to partition, you know, like these are dirty.

[921] Yep.

[922] Or sometimes I'll make a pile of dirties on the floor.

[923] I like to make several piles of dirties.

[924] They always start by buy my suitcase and then that gets confusing.

[925] So then I put them in the corner.

[926] And then there's just little clumps of dirty clothes everywhere.

[927] Yeah, all dirties.

[928] Little antlers.

[929] But I don't like hanging.

[930] I'm always a, I think I always have a fear that I always have a fear that I'm more likely to leave it there.

[931] I've done that.

[932] I've left a big chunk of clothes in New York once because I hung him up in the closet.

[933] People have different modes, M .O .'s in hotels.

[934] I know, like Charlie, perfect town Charlie, he likes to arrive and hang up everything and take us time.

[935] He's that kind of guy.

[936] Maticulous guy.

[937] Very.

[938] Hungry guy.

[939] Very.

[940] I don't know.

[941] That just made me think, you know, I don't, can I even think of it?

[942] I don't think I've ever gone to New York on vacation.

[943] I don't think I've bought a plane ticket to New York.

[944] Really?

[945] Yeah.

[946] Other than when we do live shows, but I consider that work, too.

[947] Oh.

[948] I've not just been like, let's go to New York for a week.

[949] Oh, I have.

[950] Oh, I know.

[951] I feel like I should do that.

[952] Oh, my God.

[953] I'm dying to go.

[954] I think, oh, my God, this is so exciting.

[955] I don't know if I'm allowed to say it.

[956] Oh, this could be.

[957] I got offered an opportunity.

[958] Oh my gosh, what kind of opportunity?

[959] I got offered an opportunity to possibly cook with your hero.

[960] Yeah, to cook with my chef, mentor.

[961] Your mentor.

[962] And it requires, well, it doesn't require me to go to New York, but we were talking.

[963] And she said, you're in L .A. right?

[964] And I said, yes, but I'm dying to come to New York.

[965] So that would be a great excuse.

[966] So I might be going soon, and I can't wait.

[967] On that topic, you hosted a. a girl's dinner party on Monday, which you do often, like once every couple weeks.

[968] Yeah, exactly.

[969] And Kristen came home, and she was just raving about your meal that you had made.

[970] You had done a salmon in the house against my better wishes.

[971] Yeah, and you try to talk me out of it.

[972] Thank God I didn't listen to.

[973] Yeah, it's one of those times.

[974] And she said it was just unbelievable the salmon.

[975] It was an Alison Roman recipe.

[976] I mean, every single thing I've made of hers is good.

[977] But even the fish that made the apartment smell, the food was good, and that is my apartment's fault.

[978] And this salmon did not make anything smell.

[979] That's great news.

[980] It was a salmon with a brown butter, harissa sauce.

[981] I don't even know what horisa is.

[982] It's like a pepper paste, basically.

[983] Oh, pepper paste.

[984] I love a paste.

[985] Yeah, it's a paste.

[986] And then I had like a little gem salad with shallot and lemon.

[987] Jam.

[988] And I made some pharaoh on the side.

[989] I'm Ronan Farrow.

[990] You're not allowed to come to my parties.

[991] Because I'll say the people's names.

[992] Yeah.

[993] And I used a garlic stock to make that Pharaoh.

[994] Ah.

[995] It was delicious.

[996] Yeah, she said it was off the charts delicious.

[997] She was raving.

[998] I'm glad.

[999] Anyway, New York.

[1000] New York.

[1001] We love it.

[1002] Yeah.

[1003] We like it.

[1004] We approve.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] Armchair approved.

[1007] All right, Susan.

[1008] Susan.

[1009] Susan Stryker.

[1010] This was great.

[1011] We needed this.

[1012] we haven't had any trans people on our show.

[1013] Like you said it in the intro, both of us have some blind spots around it, around trans issues.

[1014] So this was great.

[1015] I'm really glad we did this.

[1016] We had our blinkers on, as Harry would say.

[1017] Yeah, exactly.

[1018] Okay, what's anthropometry?

[1019] You mentioned it quickly.

[1020] Scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the human body.

[1021] You said they stopped doing that, right?

[1022] Yeah, like you could have majored in anthropometry, and now you can't.

[1023] There's no such things.

[1024] Some of those things are being done, but generally with early hominids and stuff, they're not measuring skulls of Europeans or anything.

[1025] Right.

[1026] To determine anything.

[1027] Right.

[1028] I'll say that it is tricky because there are things that are fascinating that are learned about different populations of people.

[1029] I guess it's just the intentions have always been so shady that in some ways the baby may have gone out with the bathwater a little bit.

[1030] What's useful that was taken?

[1031] Well, like, here's something.

[1032] The way that they know that Native Americans came from Asia is because Asians have dished incisors and Europeans and Africans have triangular kind of bicuspity incisors.

[1033] If you feel on the inside of your incisor, you'll feel a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a person.

[1034] projection or a ridge.

[1035] I bet you don't have a dished incisor.

[1036] I don't really know.

[1037] I don't know what that means.

[1038] So this, this tooth here that I'm pointing to, on Asians, on the inside, it's concave.

[1039] On me, it comes out in a triangle and on every European and on every African.

[1040] Wait, on this pointy one?

[1041] Yeah, on the inside.

[1042] Mine's pointy.

[1043] On the inside, there's a hidden pointy, right?

[1044] Wait.

[1045] I hope everyone that's listening is feeling their incisor right now.

[1046] If you scrape up on the inside of your incisor, my nail immediately gets caught on this protrusion.

[1047] Yeah, I have a protrusion.

[1048] That's right.

[1049] Asians do not.

[1050] There's this dished.

[1051] It's concave.

[1052] It's smooth.

[1053] Mine is curved.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] I would need to feel yours, but I'm pretty sure you have a protrusion on the backside of that incisor.

[1056] It's not concate.

[1057] It kind of is up until you get to the top.

[1058] And there's a protrusion, correct?

[1059] And it's not pointy.

[1060] Okay.

[1061] I would have to put my thumb in your mouth, which I'll do.

[1062] Anyways, whether you have it or not, Asians have a difference.

[1063] dished incisor.

[1064] Yeah, I think I have a pointy.

[1065] Okay.

[1066] And Native Americans, they too have a dished incisor.

[1067] So that is how we kind of conclude, oh, this must have derived originally from this Asian population.

[1068] Oh, that's cool.

[1069] That's identifying distinctive features of populations, which can be misused.

[1070] It can be weaponized.

[1071] Yeah.

[1072] Different groups of people have different olfactory glands.

[1073] It's interesting, but what does it do?

[1074] Well, in this case, the outcome was we figured out where Native Americans originated.

[1075] This is what I just looked up.

[1076] The researchers discovered almost all Native Americans have shoveled incisors.

[1077] Same thing you're saying, I think.

[1078] Prior to the arrival of Europeans, today, nearly 40 % of Asian people share this dental trait.

[1079] Oh, ooh, there's pictures.

[1080] I think it's because they ate less meat, too, that it didn't, they didn't pay a price for not having that extra tearing mechanism.

[1081] Wait, this is the picture I'm seeing.

[1082] I'm not understanding.

[1083] Yeah, but it's a picture of a bunch of rotted out teeth.

[1084] I don't even know what that is showing us.

[1085] It's not even just the incisor.

[1086] So there's nothing inherently wrong with figuring out the distinguishing characters of a population of people.

[1087] When you use those distinguishing characters to summarize superiority or inferiority, there's a big problem there.

[1088] Tay -Sax disease, you know, finding out that Jewish people are at high risk of TASX.

[1089] That's like, that's a distinguishing characteristic of that population.

[1090] Yeah.

[1091] And helpful in finding out, oh, we should monitor this.

[1092] in the genetic brief you get when you're about to have a kid.

[1093] Oh, do both parents carry Tasex mutation?

[1094] We should watch for that.

[1095] You know, there's, there is tons of reasons you'd want to know the differences between populations.

[1096] Yeah, that's true.

[1097] Susan talks about sumptuary law.

[1098] Summptuary law, any law designed to restrict excessive personal expenditures in the interest of preventing extravagance and luxury.

[1099] The term denotes regulation restricting extravagance in food, drink, dress, and household equipment, usually on religious or moral grounds.

[1100] Oh, so the Amish would be like the apex of sumptuous laws here.

[1101] No electricity.

[1102] Exactly.

[1103] She said, didn't the Trump administration ban trans people in the military and then Biden removed that ban?

[1104] Yes.

[1105] Trump banned transgender troops from openly serving, but courts put the ban on hold.

[1106] And then in January, Joe Biden overturned former President Donald Trump's ban on transgender.

[1107] troops openly serving in the U .S. military.

[1108] I somehow misunderstood that when it was happening.

[1109] I now realize.

[1110] Uh -huh.

[1111] I thought the objection was that the military would have to pay for gender reassignment surgery.

[1112] Oh.

[1113] I thought that's what was kind of on the table that the issue was.

[1114] Oh.

[1115] But I guess that's not even part of it.

[1116] I don't think.

[1117] Maybe it's part of it.

[1118] I don't know.

[1119] That's not what I'm seeing.

[1120] Okay.

[1121] That's a dicey question.

[1122] Do you think someone, let's say you, of course, can be openly trans in the military, and the military has an obligation to handle all your medical expenses.

[1123] What do you think the ethics are of someone joining the military just to get that expensive procedure performed?

[1124] Well, people join the military to get free college.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] So if people are already joining the military to get those bonuses.

[1127] For other reasons, yeah.

[1128] Yeah, if you're going to go die for the country, maybe the least she deserves.

[1129] I kind of think so.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] Okay, you got me. That's all for Susie.

[1132] That's all.

[1133] Well, we could talk more about Olympics, but we covered it, I think, thoroughly.

[1134] And I hope people heard it as a discussion and not a, we're drawing lines on what we 100 % believe and what we don't.

[1135] This is a good opportunity for me to err a grievance.

[1136] Oh.

[1137] It was very few and far between, but it happened.

[1138] Okay.

[1139] When you and Seth and I debated whether or not the Georgia shooting was a hate crime, I had some people, you know, blasts me for that opinion on social media.

[1140] And then they would virtually, what they would say for their point was exactly what you and Seth said.

[1141] So like I understand if you write in because your opinion wasn't presented thoroughly, the opposition wasn't presented.

[1142] But it was it was more than thoroughly presented.

[1143] It was two against one.

[1144] And so when you hear a debate and both sides are covered and we just have a different opinion and none of us know that shooter personally, it's all conjecture of what his motivation was, you shouldn't be offended.

[1145] You just heard debate.

[1146] Like you heard non -biased, both sides represented debate.

[1147] You heard the two opposing viewpoints.

[1148] I don't believe you have a right to be offended at hearing the opposing debate.

[1149] As long as it's done respectfully and the other side, is there was a real effort made to represent the other position.

[1150] I don't think it's fair to criticize that.

[1151] I think that's exactly what debate is serving.

[1152] Yeah, I agree.

[1153] And so I just want to say, we just debated the Olympics with a professor who's very skilled at presenting that side of the argument.

[1154] It's okay to hear both opinions.

[1155] Yeah, but I think people, when we have open debate like that they feel like they want to be a part of it so it's not necessarily like sometimes it's anger whatever but i think it just when you hear someone debate it gets you personally riled up and makes your own opinions come up and so they want to share that so that's part of what's happening and i would love saying i totally agree with monica and seth on this but the attack that i shouldn't have been presenting that opinion i don't appreciate yeah and i go yeah yeah i mean that's part of what we do is present both sides and have a thorough discussion on it.

[1156] Yeah.

[1157] Yeah.

[1158] And sometimes it's more or less lopsided.

[1159] Like often you and I agree on something, so it's not really, you're not even hearing the opposition.

[1160] But in that case, you really got a fair trial of both opinions.

[1161] And I hope people feel that way about today's debate.

[1162] Yeah.

[1163] Well, that's it.

[1164] Good night.

[1165] Good night.

[1166] Sweet dreams.

[1167] See you in the morning.

[1168] armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1169] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[1170] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry .com slash survey.