379. Sex Matters | Helen Joyce

[0] Hello, everyone watching and listening.

[1] Today, I'm speaking once again, despite the best efforts of YouTube censors to author, journalist, and biological women's rights advocate, Helen Joyce.

[2] We discuss the much -delayed censorship of our last interview on this channel, are joint efforts at resisting the ideology that motivates such silencing the genuine UK tradition of natural rights and the harsh reality of what women and men both stand to lose on the tyranny and falsehood front today.

[3] And we do more than touch on the great adventure of the truth.

[4] Well, it's good to see you again, and it's interesting that we get to talk here once again for whatever the hell good, that's going to do just after YouTube polled our last discussion, which was actually quite shocking to me, because YouTube has left me alone until now, but they've taken down three of my podcasts in the last month.

[5] Matt Walsh on the Transfront, because I talked to him about what is a woman, Robert F. Kennedy, which actually shocked the hell out of me because he's running an active presidential campaign, and the fact that a bunch of back, backroom, half -wit, trans -radical activists or their equivalent, would dare to interfere with an ongoing presidential campaign, especially given that he's a lead Democrat contender, just beggars my imagination.

[6] I can't believe we're in that situation.

[7] And then they took down my conversation with you.

[8] And, you know, you're completely reprehensible.

[9] You know, you were just an economist journalist for years, and there's hardly anything respectable about that.

[10] And so if this is the situation we're in, And it's a pretty bloody, sorry state of affairs, that's for sure.

[11] And YouTube is particularly terrifying entity in some ways because it is the world's number one broadcast network, and it's transnational.

[12] And so it's beholden to no master except whatever idiot ideology happens to grip the imagination of the half -wit sensors operating behind the scenes.

[13] So anyways, what do you think about the YouTube cancellation?

[14] It was like a year after we had our conversation, too, or more.

[15] Exactly.

[16] I mean, people had listened to it already, many, many of them.

[17] I wonder why the complaints had suddenly appeared at that point.

[18] And I understand they didn't say exactly what we had said was hateful, but I'm guessing that it was to do with referring to Ellen slash Elliott Page as a woman and she, So I think that shows how the creeping idea of hate speech and hate is a freestanding, floating signifier as opposed to being an aggravator to something that is already a crime, is colliding with the idea that referring to people's sex is a hateful thing to do if they don't want you to.

[19] And suddenly we're in a situation where making totally straightforward factual statements is something that can get you censored and possibly even convicted for a crime.

[20] Yeah, well, let's let's down walk down that delightful route.

[21] So I've been watching to the degree that it's possible the events unfolding in Ireland.

[22] I mean, this is wonderful to see this happening in the UK.

[23] That's really something to be terrified of.

[24] And so back in 2016, I burst onto the political scene, so to speak, as a consequence of objecting to this bill C -16 in Canada, which was the first bill that I could see in a English common law derived society, that mandated the content of private speech, right?

[25] You could do that to some degree on the commercial front.

[26] And this was despite the fact that the American Supreme Court in 1942, I think it was 42, made it unconstitutional to do so in the U .S. I thought, well, there's no way I'm letting, especially the Trudeau liberals, have control over my tongue.

[27] And I don't give a bloody goddamn what the reason is because it's always some faux -compassionate, we're caring for the oppressed lie to accrue power to the tyrants.

[28] And the legal experts I debated at that point said, oh, well, you know, it'll never come to jail or prison, and this won't go any farther, and you're just being impolite and all that complete nonsense.

[29] And here we are.

[30] So what's happening in Ireland?

[31] We're trying to pass a law that creates a standalone offense of hate.

[32] Hate is undefined in it.

[33] It is anything that is regarded as offensive.

[34] I mean, as far as we can tell, offensive by people who have certain protected characteristics and it's added gender identity to the list of protected characteristics, which it defines circularly.

[35] Your gender identity is your gender identity, padded out a bit.

[36] And then it does a bunch of other really terrifying things.

[37] Like you have to just possess the material.

[38] If you possess the material, the assumption is that you want to spread it.

[39] And it's up to you to show that you don't intend to spread it.

[40] Right.

[41] So just having something on your computer.

[42] of guilt.

[43] Yeah, yeah, so it's up to you to say.

[44] But I mean, if you're writing a book, obviously the intention is to spread it.

[45] And there's a carve out for works of, I forget the exact wording, but it's basically legitimate artistic or scientific merit.

[46] Oh, yeah, and who's going to decide that?

[47] Exactly, exactly.

[48] I mean, the same people who don't want me saying that Ellen Page is a woman are the same people who say that saying that is Nazism.

[49] So they're hardly going to say that it's legitimate scientific or artistic merit to say that.

[50] And then there's a bunch of other mad things about it, like it specifically says that having it on servers could be caught.

[51] And Ireland is this major offshore sort of centre for a bunch of the world's social media companies.

[52] I mean, lots of places are headquartered there or keep their servers there for tax reasons.

[53] And then when you say something like, well, what about just misgendering, could that be hateful?

[54] They'll say, oh, no, no, don't be silly.

[55] You know, that won't be.

[56] But, I mean, it is on the face of it, something that people could complain about.

[57] And when we both or will complain about, absolutely 100.

[58] Absolutely will.

[59] The activist types know perfectly well how to weaponize investigative boards.

[60] I mean, the Canadian College or Ontario College of Psychologists has gone after me in Ontario trying to strip me of my license because half -wit activist, narcissist types all around the world have used their online system to complain about me doing such things as poking fun in a relatively, you know, uh, what would you say, aggressive manner at Trudeau and his former chief of staff and an Ontario city counselor.

[61] And, um, and in terms of specifying exactly what the nature of the offense is, you mentioned that on YouTube.

[62] No one does that.

[63] The one of the bloody complainants submitted the entire transcript of my three -hour discussion with Joe Rogan as evidence for my, I think on that particular, I was complaining about, uh, these idiot climate models that equally idiot economists then build shaky forecasts on top of.

[64] And I was pointing out the absolute bloody genocidal stupidity of that.

[65] And apparently that's also, you know, a crime against my profession, which I am apparently bringing into disgrace.

[66] So that's all unfolding in Canada at the moment.

[67] So they don't seem to understand anything about the chilling effect.

[68] Like people, so they're like, don't worry, that won't be covered.

[69] But how can you not worry?

[70] You know, okay, I'm now all in.

[71] I've decided that this is what I talk and write about.

[72] And that's a decision.

[73] I may, but most people are not in that situation.

[74] Most people are getting on with a different job.

[75] They're teachers or their nurses, or, you know, they go into an office every day.

[76] And they can't afford to take the risk of saying something that just might be reported.

[77] Yeah, well, that's the whole point.

[78] Yeah, and then get investigated.

[79] They don't understand.

[80] They don't, it isn't that they don't understand the chilling effect.

[81] It's bloody well 100 % that the chilling effect is the point.

[82] Exactly.

[83] Look, there is a burgeoning literature.

[84] There's 10 studies now, 10 studies on the structure of left -wing authoritarianism.

[85] Yeah, psychological studies.

[86] So the first finding, which is a finding my lab generated in 2016, was that there was a coherent set of beliefs that looked progressive on the political front, but that are allied with the willingness to use fear, compulsion, and force to impose them.

[87] And that's left -wing authoritarianism, as opposed to just your standard left -wing political belief.

[88] And then we looked at what predicted that from a psychological perspective.

[89] Okay, so the biggest predictor was low verbal intelligence, and it was a walloping correlate, right?

[90] So when you say, well, how can people be foolish enough to stupid enough, let's say, to buy these ideas, the answer is, well, you know, if you're not that bright and someone hands you a one -size -fits -all and explains everything explanation, it's all power, well, then first of all, that's very attractive because it's simple, but also you don't have the critical faculties to think it through.

[91] The next best predictor was being female.

[92] The next best predictor was having a female temperament over and above being female.

[93] And since then, there's been accruing studies, and the most terrifying of which was published in the last year, showing that you can predict left -wing authoritarian beliefs using dark tetrad personality traits, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and they had to add sadism to it because the first three weren't enough.

[94] And the correlation between those traits and that left -wing authoritarianism is so high that they're almost indistinguishable on the measurement front.

[95] So this isn't a political issue.

[96] This is an attempt by narcissistic psychopaths to use compassion to mask their all -out grip on power.

[97] It's really what it is.

[98] And they're enabled by social media.

[99] It's really not good.

[100] Yeah.

[101] So when I went to Ireland a couple of weeks ago and I addressed a meeting called at the Shannas, the Senate, the Upper House.

[102] And about four or five senators came and various journalists and so on.

[103] And one of the senators who came, a woman called Eileen Flynn, she had to leave halfway through, but she was there afterwards and she talked to me and she said, I haven't read your book, but I've heard that it's well written and I must have a look at it.

[104] And then she went into the session of the Shannad that evening and said that she'd had to walk out because so much hate was being spewed in this meeting.

[105] It was me and a barrister, an Irish barrister and an Irish woman who is doing a lot of campaigning, John Nesbitt and Lorkin Price.

[106] And so I don't know which bit she thought was so hateful.

[107] But I did take the opportunity to say, I'm going to say some things that I think are now going to be criminalised.

[108] For example, that there are only two sexes and that you can't change sex.

[109] So I thought it was extraordinary that somebody would then straight away afterwards in a meeting that was dominated by the Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, saying, we are not going to criminalise saying these things.

[110] That this woman then stood up and said I was at a meeting where somebody said these things, and I felt I had to leave because there were so much hate.

[111] Like, it kind of gives it away, doesn't it?

[112] And then, you know, there's been remarkably a little commentary, remarkably little commentary in Ireland.

[113] The Irish Times, they've only done an op -ed on it, and this op -ed was great law.

[114] You could just add a definition of hate, and that would make it perfect.

[115] It's like, what would these people on?

[116] Why would journalists stand up for free speech, hey?

[117] I mean, that used to be the sine qua non of the profession.

[118] It really used to be, but this was actually written by an academic, this op -ed, but it was pathetic.

[119] It was absolutely pathetic.

[120] And he came to this meeting and just sat there and listened to me saying, look, these are the things that I will be reported for.

[121] And by the way, this is unconstitutional.

[122] Why shouldn't, why shouldn't a viewer of this program?

[123] I mean, we know I'm already beyond redemption, so there's no sense focusing on me. Why should someone who's watching or listening to this video not assume that you are precisely the sort of hateful, you know, bigot that these well -meaning people in Ireland are only trying to protect the oppressed from?

[124] You know, like, if, and I might as well push you because we might as well establish this.

[125] It's like, what makes your position on this credible?

[126] And like, why aren't, why aren't you the sort of person who could be criticized by the leftists in the following matter?

[127] It's like, well, you're white, you're privileged, you've got a posh accent, although I wouldn't know that because every accent, British accent, sounds posh to, like, what would we call it?

[128] To Irish people, I sound really posh.

[129] Yes, exactly, exactly.

[130] Because I've picked up a lot of English.

[131] You're using your freedom of speech, which really doesn't exist, just to buttress your position in the power hierarchy, and you don't mind tromping around oppressing people, especially those who are truly on the margin, like those.

[132] confused about their sexual identity or even worse, trapped in the wrong body.

[133] And so why aren't you exactly the sort of hateful bigot whose views should be suppressed, given your pension for what the UN now calls symbolic violence?

[134] I mean, it's a great question because that's, I mean, you've perfectly laid out their argument for doing it, that there are people who are oppressed or who are minoritized in the, in the jargon, and that if, we allow people to say what they like about those people, then those people will be harmed.

[135] So, I mean, I've basically, I'm never interviewed in Ireland and mentioned.

[136] I mean, I am Irish.

[137] I'm from Dublin, although I know I sound quite English.

[138] I've lived in England for a long time.

[139] And normally Irish girl goes abroad, writes book that does well, gets on, you know, Sunday Times bestseller list.

[140] They interview you.

[141] Like, in Ireland, like you're a big cheese then.

[142] So it's really strange that I haven't been on the national broadcaster or in the Irish Times.

[143] Anyway, I got invited on a community radio station last week.

[144] and the interviewer said to me, you know, we've got a lot of immigration now.

[145] We've really large amounts of numbers of people coming from Ukraine, you know, from the Middle East, you know, Ireland is still open to immigration from all over the EU.

[146] And there's a lot of tensions.

[147] So isn't it really important that we stop people from being insulting about these people?

[148] And, you know, I've just lived through Brexit, and I've seen what happens when you stop people from saying what they think about political developments for a significant amount of time.

[149] and it isn't that they come around to being right thinkers, according to the people who are stopping them.

[150] It's that it builds up and then it breaks out.

[151] So I actually think it's even more important that Irish people are allowed to say what they think about large amounts of immigration.

[152] I mean, it's a plim and democracy for a start, but also you need to be able to say what you think in order that the country can stay together, rather than have people feeling resentful and silenced and then taking it out by voting for people who I genuinely would think are extreme.

[153] So that's one argument.

[154] You also need to let people say what they.

[155] First of all, you need to let people say what they think so they can think because most people think by talking.

[156] And all of us think by listening because then we get exposed to what other people think and have more than one brain to rely on.

[157] And so it isn't that free speech is just another hedonic right.

[158] It's actually the process by which we transform our adaptation and renew the state.

[159] And so it's actually the linchpin of any healthy psyche and polity.

[160] So it's not merely a matter of, you know, people having, well, what would you say, the right to go to hell in whatever handbasket they choose and to mouth off.

[161] But it's also the case, you know, that you want everyone to be allowed to speak freely so you can see what the hell they're up to.

[162] Because if you drive, let's say, people whose views are somewhat warped underground, all that happens is that those views fester and spread and deteriorate into a bitter kind of resentment and then explode into violence, which is what the bloody leftist radicals want anyways, because they thrive in that environment.

[163] Yeah, and you also, it shows a profound lack of confidence in your own ability to state your case.

[164] You know, if the Irish government is so sure that the levels of immigration are right, and listen, I'm not taking a position on that.

[165] I don't tend to comment on things that are outside my area of expertise, I really don't know whether what they're doing is the right policy.

[166] But they should be able to defend it.

[167] They should be able to tell voters, this is why we're doing it.

[168] This is why we think it's good.

[169] These are the things we weighed up against each other.

[170] These are the downsides.

[171] These are why we think the upsides are more important.

[172] If they can't do that, it shouldn't be their policy.

[173] And so, yeah, the thinking allowed thing is very important.

[174] Like when you think aloud, like when thinking is allowed, you have to think allowed.

[175] Like, I can't just do it by writing.

[176] I have to have discussions with people.

[177] And then what I said when I talked to the senators was that there's a bunch of things that I very urgently need to say, especially in Ireland where gender self -ID has been the law since 2015 and where we're seeing extraordinary capture of education so that children are really going from having been brought up in quite a small C conservative system where, you know, change was slow.

[178] Like when I was smaller, we looked at England and saw, oh, they're bringing in, you know, radical changes to the way they teach and we didn't do that in Ireland.

[179] We just went slower and we were very much better for it.

[180] But now in Ireland they're teaching children like the most radical version of gender ideology.

[181] You know, real full -blown sexes a spectrum.

[182] You see, you know, it's bigotry to say there are boys and girls type stuff.

[183] And they're thinking of making that much more the case.

[184] And that's what we know causes gender dysphoria.

[185] We know it makes children distressed.

[186] We know that it leads them to transition.

[187] And we know that if they medically transition young, they will be medicalized for life.

[188] They will be sterile.

[189] You know, they will have their sexuality destroyed.

[190] and orgasmic, you know, these are incredibly important things to say because actually we're looking at an unfolding medical scandal.

[191] So I say these things not to be hurt for.

[192] Enforced sterilization, by the way, is a crime against humanity by the only position.

[193] Definition, right.

[194] And that's where I think we're at, you know.

[195] And I wrote a telegraph article about this about eight months ago, something like that, calling for the imprisonment of the butchers who are performing this surgery.

[196] but I fail to see altogether how this doesn't qualify as a crime against humanity.

[197] Because if it's minors who are being subjected to this, I cannot in the least see how it is that that isn't being enforced.

[198] Because if you're a minor, you are under the dominion of your idiot lying therapists, all of whom who if qualified know that every single bit of the gender -affirming nonsense is not only a lie, but a truly unethical lie.

[199] You know, as a psychologist, you are duty -bound by the ethical codes of your profession, not to rely on simple self -report as a diagnostic marker.

[200] You are bound to use multiple measures to specify diagnosis, and you can be called for professional misconduct if you don't do so.

[201] And the American Psychological Association has not rescinded those guidelines, and simultaneously now insists that you have to abide by self -description.

[202] Now, obviously you can't do that because an anorexic is going to describe herself as too thin and how the hell you're supposed to make the distinction between an invalid claim of self -identity and a valid claim of self -identity.

[203] Well, the answer to that from the radicals is see in court, buddy, and make sure you don't fall prey of our idiot regulations.

[204] Idiot, internally inconsistent, reprehensible, and self -aggrandizing regulations.

[205] Yeah.

[206] To call it sickening is barely to enter the, the fray.

[207] And it's also linguistic.

[208] I think, you know, it's not by coincidence that the same people want to push self -ID and want to police people's speech.

[209] Because when you look at what it means to identify as something, it is a linguistic thing.

[210] Like they've stripped out, even the things that the old style transsexuals would have done, which involved surgery or, you know, dress clothing when we had more rules about how people dressed.

[211] There's nothing left now except the simple statement that you are a member of the opposite sex.

[212] And it's regarded as gender policing, if you say it should be anything more than that.

[213] So if a person is able to say, I am a man, I am non -binary, and that brings that state into being, you know, just by the linguistic utterance, it's essential to shut up everybody else.

[214] Because when they speak, they create a reality.

[215] Like if you're in this place where words create reality.

[216] And it's like a parasite that's come in and taken over an older idea of what human rights are about.

[217] which is more about coexistence and rights can collide.

[218] And sometimes, you know, one person's right to privacy impacts on another person's right to speech.

[219] And we have to think about it and weigh them up and everybody try and work out what the best way forward is.

[220] But this has snuck in because there is no way of comparing, you know, my right to say, I am immortal, I am an animal, you know, I am a man with somebody else's right to say, well, that's not what I see.

[221] and that's not the sort of species that humans are and those claims are not the sort of claims that have any evidence behind them.

[222] The things are incommensurate and one side just has to shut the other up.

[223] Carl Jung, back in just after the Second World War, I think, said that the logical conclusion of the Protestant Revolution would be that everyone was their own church.

[224] And we see this abetted by the humanists, I would say, particularly on the psychological side, that the self, the self -determining self, now is the omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent onlooker.

[225] And the trans -activist types, the ones who proclaim self -identity, say exactly the same thing to everyone that God said to Moses, which is, I am that I am, right?

[226] I'm the thing that defines itself.

[227] And so we're seeing a quasi, we're seeing a religious transformation with the elevation of the self to the highest position.

[228] And then this accompanying insistence that you pointed out that no one is allowed to challenge that because, of course, that's a challenge to this central, what, this central spirit of predominance.

[229] That's exactly what it is.

[230] You know, and what's appalling about this from a psychological perspective, and this is also why I'm appalled at my, at the infinite legions of cowardly therapists, especially psychologists who are abetting this, is that every bloody psychologist worth his salt, no. that at the transition from the age of two to the age of three, you move from subjective self -identification, which is like the rampaging two -year -old's proclamation that what he or she wants right now is what's going to happen or else, to the state of negotiated identity, which is the state of play, where if you want to make a friend, you have to decide to meet in the reciprocal middle.

[231] And children who are incapable of that become alienated and miserable for the rest of their life and tend to drift off into antisocial behavior and it's accompanying tantrums.

[232] And all the lying psychologists who are abetting this self -identification frenzy are foregoing their elementary knowledge of developmental psychology and insisting that subjective self -identification is actually what an appropriate social tactic and as well as, as well as an unerring diagnostic marker.

[233] I'm so embarrassed for my profession.

[234] The only thing that could possibly be worse for me, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of shame, is being a former faculty member or potentially a member of the surgical college.

[235] Because, you know, the therapists are lying, but the sadistic surgeons are butchering, and, you know, that's actually even worse.

[236] And by the way, among surgeons, psychopaths, and sadists are overrepresented.

[237] That's a nice little fact just to throw into the fray.

[238] And, you know, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out, because if you tend to be particularly empathetic, let's say, you're going to end up as a family doctor or a psychiatrist, not as a someone who, you know, is willing to draw blood.

[239] And I'm certainly not saying that every surgeon falls into that category, but I'm saying that if you do fall into that category, surgery beckons just the same way being a Boy Scout leader, seconds to the pedophiles.

[240] Yes, yes.

[241] And the other thing that happens in the medical front is that there's like a distributed chain of responsibility.

[242] And when everybody's responsible, nobody's responsible.

[243] Like, you know, in comes a kid who's unhappy and the gender, the GP, the family doctor, that person doesn't sterilize this kid.

[244] They just refer.

[245] And the gender clinic looks and they diagnose gender dysphoria, but they don't sterilize, they refer to an endocrinologist.

[246] Well, the endocrinologist doesn't create the definition of gender dysphoria.

[247] You know, the gender, the endocrinologist just checks that, you know, you haven't got diabetes and your weight is in a normal level or whatever, and they prescribe you maybe puberty blockers across sex hormones.

[248] But, you know, they didn't diagnose you.

[249] They were told that you were the right person for this.

[250] And then they refer to a surgeon.

[251] And the surgeon is at the end of that chain.

[252] And, you know, I agree with you.

[253] Anyone who cuts off a child's genitals or who cuts off the genitals of somebody who was gender distressed, you know, during their childhood and has now arrived at adulthood, that person is doing a really truly terrible thing.

[254] The The only thing that I can see that there's any mitigation is they didn't make that decision.

[255] There were at least three or four other people before them who were meant to have said that this is the right child.

[256] So nobody sterilized the child, but now the child is sterile.

[257] You've put your finger on the underground rationale for the collectivization of responsibility.

[258] Because if you distribute it as you, and this is a well -known social psychological phenomena, if you distribute responsibility in that fashion, everybody steps away from the plate.

[259] And so if you're particularly manipulative, you figure that out and you can use it to further your own dark agenda.

[260] Now, you did a pretty good job of defending free speech, I would say, when I pushed you on the question.

[261] But I don't think you did a very good job of defending yourself as a credible, say, commentator.

[262] So why don't you just walk people through a little bit about your history and why it is that you shouldn't be regarded as what we say, a right -wig, conspiratorial, anti -oppressed person bigot?

[263] I mean, I'd take two parts to that, and one is that I think that there's two, we jump too easily to saying this person's speech is suspect because they're right -wing or they're religious.

[264] Now, obviously, there's far -right, and there's crank religious.

[265] But loads of people are right -wing, and loads of people are religious, and they've every bit as much right to say what they think as other people do.

[266] So I'm not willing to just answer as saying that I, as it happens, I'm not right -wing.

[267] I'm not.

[268] I'm pretty centrist.

[269] I'm also not religious.

[270] Those things are true.

[271] But I don't think that somebody who's sitting here in front of you who's saying, you know, I'm right wing and I'm evangelical, and this is what I think.

[272] They've got every bit as much right as I do to speak.

[273] So that's the first thing.

[274] But the second thing is, I'm just a very establishment person who's saying a very ordinary thing.

[275] You know, I'm saying what most parents would say, which is that children don't know their own minds and need to be protected by the people who know and love them until they're adults.

[276] And sometimes that will involve saying to the child, no, I don't agree with you.

[277] I think you've got to wait.

[278] I think you've got the wrong end of the stick.

[279] I think that you're being over -influenced by your friends.

[280] I mean, my mother would have said if everyone else is going to run off the cliff or you're going to run off the cliff.

[281] Like, no, no, no, no, you protect your children, you wait.

[282] Most people feel like that.

[283] And then also the things that I'm saying, like, God, I could have so much more out there opinions than that there are two sexes and that you can't change sex and that in some circumstances, you have to pay attention to what sex people are when you make decisions about your own life.

[284] Like when I go into a space that's meant to be female only and there's a male person in there, this impacts on me. It doesn't just impact on him.

[285] It impacts on me too.

[286] And what is the impact exactly?

[287] I mean, this is a relatively difficult thing for men to understand, obviously.

[288] I mean, if I went into a change room and there was a woman there, you know, I'd wonder what the hell she was doing there and there'd be a certain degree of perplexity.

[289] I'd probably ask her what the hell she was doing there, that'd be my guess.

[290] But I wouldn't care, you know, but you might be embarrassed.

[291] You might be embarrassed.

[292] Well, that's all I wouldn't be, because look at me after all.

[293] Yeah, but it's like suppose, like one of the things that women don't remember about these sorts of situations is lots of men are genuinely worried about being put in a situation where there might be false allegations made against them, in fact.

[294] Oh, oh, yes.

[295] Well, that's, that's, well, look, on that front, you know, before I left the University of Toronto, So my colleagues were advising me that if I ever had an undergraduate female in my office or a female of any sort, for that matter, that I was to keep my door open, that that was the best thing to protect me. And that seems a very reasonable thing to do.

[296] Well, I mean, that might be just a reasonable thing to do.

[297] No, but in the situation, in the situation where we are, you know.

[298] But the same girl, if she says she's a boy and she comes into the changing room with the men and she strips off because she's a boy, because there are people that deluded.

[299] Like, everybody else is in an impossible position.

[300] Like, either you're meant to pretend that this girl is a boy or you're being put in the position of being a voyeur.

[301] Like, it's just bizarre.

[302] So, I mean, funnily enough, and I want to reclaim this word, which is intersectional.

[303] Like, obviously, intersectional is one of those words.

[304] It's like a big claxon alert, idiotic thing is about to be said.

[305] But the idea of saying intersectional in the first place was that you would try to think about lots of different sorts of people.

[306] So now think about an Orthodox Jewish person.

[307] an observant Muslim person, a woman who's a survivor of rape or child abuse, a very shy person, somebody who's had the experience of having unjust allegations made against them.

[308] There's just a lot of different sorts of people who also have rights, also have interests, and on occasion we'll want to be in a single -sex space when they're vulnerable, when they're sleeping, when they're undressed, when they want to talk about experiences that are specific to one sex or the other.

[309] you know, if you've got a group in a rape crisis center where people are talking about their experiences of childhood abuse, those experiences are very different for boys and girls.

[310] You will probably want to have single -sex groups.

[311] So under what circumstances do you think that same -sex gatherings, let's say, should be permitted or required?

[312] Because this is actually a very tricky issue, right?

[313] Because my wife and I have talked about this a lot, and she's actually a little hard.

[314] on this front than me. And she thinks that women invaded men's spaces so badly that this is part of the backlash.

[315] But underneath that, there's a real complexity, right?

[316] Because I might say, well, is it okay for rich men in London to have a men's only private club?

[317] Because that's a good question, right?

[318] That's a border issue here.

[319] And it begs a more sophisticated question bearing on what you described, which is, all right, when is it necessary for the sexes to have their own spaces?

[320] And what are your thoughts about that?

[321] Like, where should we draw the line?

[322] Because part of this argument, culture war, is about where we draw the eternal line.

[323] Bathrooms seem, at least until recently, as what, an unquestionable bastion of same -sex privacy.

[324] But we've obviously blown way past that and made it almost mandatory for that to disappear.

[325] Change rooms as well.

[326] You know, Riley Gaines, the swimmer, was thrown with all of her compatriots into a change room which the bloody NCAA deemed unisex moments before the swim meet in question.

[327] They were thrown in there with this six -foot -two narcissist who claims to be a woman and then were pilloried by the officials and then the university that they came from for being prejudice against poor William.

[328] And it's William, by the way, not Leah, because I'm done with that nonsense.

[329] So where do we draw the line as far as you're concerned?

[330] I mean, when should the sexes have their own space?

[331] So freedom of association is an important right.

[332] And if people want single -sex faces, like if somebody wants to set up a man -only book group or a woman -only book group, I don't think they should have to explain themselves.

[333] I can see the issue with, you know, dining clubs and so on where a lot of politics happens and where a lot of power play happens and so on.

[334] If you keep women out of those spaces or you were to keep black people out of those spaces, you would be hoarding power.

[335] And I genuinely think that's a difficult question in law, because it's hard to say of one space, you know, that's where the backroom brokering happens and of another space, well, you know, that's harmless, that's just people who have interests in common.

[336] And then when it comes to spaces like, toilets.

[337] I mean, it's amazing how fast people forget things, but when women started to do factory work during the Industrial Revolution, there were no single -sex toilets.

[338] So women had to use the same facilities that men did, which were not exactly sanitary or nice or private.

[339] And those became spaces where women experienced a lot of violence, a lot of sexual violence.

[340] So women, factory girls, would go to the toilet in groups and protect each other and watch each other, or indeed go out on the street and just rely on the fact that they had big skirts.

[341] So that's why women go to the toilet in groups.

[342] Of course, that's why.

[343] Because sure, that's why.

[344] In decent ones, but in decent separate toilets, no, you just go to gossip.

[345] But yeah, women would not drink water during the day, so they didn't have to go to the toilet.

[346] So there was actually a decades -long fight to get women's toilets and women's facilities.

[347] And in most countries, labor laws will still say that you must have women's toilets in workplaces where there are women.

[348] And then in sport, it's obvious why you separate the sexes, but actually you can separate the is a little bit differently in sport, you can do it as female only and open.

[349] Because if a woman is, you know, unusually large or strong or something, and she can compete maybe at the lower ranks of the men's divisions, why shouldn't she?

[350] It's not a problem for anyone.

[351] So you just, you close, you protect one category.

[352] It's the same as, you know, a 17 -year -old.

[353] It's a problem for men.

[354] I remember when I was a kid, so there was this girl who fell into the category that you just described.

[355] You know, she was a pretty husky, tough farm girl.

[356] And she was genuinely tough.

[357] Like, there were definitely boys that were afraid of her.

[358] And I would say that was all boys.

[359] And there was a reason for that.

[360] The first was, well, she was actually pretty tough.

[361] And so if you were playing shinny hockey on the street and she gave you a check, you pretty much noticed.

[362] And but it was, but there was an additional complication, which was if she took you out, well then you were pretty damn pathetic because you'd been flattened by a girl but if you fought back you were even more pathetic because then you fought back with a girl and so you know you might promote the open category but that puts men in a terrible conundrum because there's a real rule for good men there's a real rule and the real rule is do not pick on women like that's number one rule of good men right and under any circumstances whatsoever at the cost of your reputation.

[363] So in anything that's got physical violence involved in it of any sort, that would, I'd include rugby, say, or American football in that.

[364] You can't if the sexes compete because it's not just about strength.

[365] It's about things like the way the neck is made, the thickness of the skull.

[366] You know, women are really not evolved to protect themselves against punches the same way that men are.

[367] But in sport more generally, so I actually come from a very sporty family.

[368] I have a bunch of very good cricketers as brothers and sisters.

[369] and my sisters would play on the boys' team when they were little because there weren't girls' teams.

[370] So the girls had to jump from 11 to 15, and there was no under 13s.

[371] And, I mean, when they were 11, they were teeny tiny.

[372] They couldn't be playing with the 15 -year -olds.

[373] So they went on to the boys under 13s.

[374] And the thing is, the boys then did complain.

[375] This is a good long time ago.

[376] They complained because my sisters were so good.

[377] And indeed, the girls were taken off.

[378] But, I mean, this is cricket.

[379] There's no genuine complaint there.

[380] It's just not wanting to lose.

[381] So I think, you know, you can conceptualize it in like 90 -something percent of the cases that the female category is like the under -18 category.

[382] A 17 -year -old is allowed to compete as an adult, a 19 -year -old is not allowed to compete as an over -18 -e.

[383] Right, right, right.

[384] Yeah, well, it seems like a tentative solution, at least.

[385] On the freedom of association front, so what if I said something, you know, rather radical, like, well, let the bigoted half -wits hang out with whoever the hell they want.

[386] And so if people want to set up a man's -only corporation, for example, well, have Adder.

[387] I mean, you've just cut yourself off from 50 % of the talent pool, which probably isn't the wisest move in the world.

[388] And maybe even if you want to do that with prejudice in mind on the racial front, you should be allowed to do that too, in the hopes that such behavior would be immediately revealed as self -defeating and eradicate itself from the public commons.

[389] Because the alternative, that's the freedom of association argument in some sense, right?

[390] You get to hang around with whoever you want.

[391] And the ultimate experience, of that, by the way, is sexual Congress, right?

[392] Because the most discriminating form of behavior that any of us ever indulge in is on the sexual front, where we discriminate madly on every grounds you can possibly imagine constantly and, in principle, to our own advantage with no care whatsoever for the disadvantaged and oppressed, right?

[393] And we regard that as a cardinal right.

[394] I don't have to sleep with anyone I don't want to or don't want to.

[395] It isn't even need.

[396] You know, in Huxley's Brave New World, that went by the wayside, and it was a sign of immorality to say no to anyone who asked you, who offered a sexual invitation.

[397] Oh, well, we're heading that direction.

[398] I mean, there's even a book called The Right to Sex.

[399] I mean, there are arguments now about how, say, an ugly or a fat or a disabled or an elderly or a poor man, you know, he's not going to get anyone to sleep with without paying.

[400] So we have to have prostitutes for those men.

[401] And, well, what if he's poor?

[402] Well, then the state has to pay for them.

[403] I mean, these arguments are seriously being made in some corners of academia.

[404] And it's easy to brush them off because it's corners of academia.

[405] But we have seen what happens when you take casually absolutely crazy ideas.

[406] required.

[407] Women should just be required to make themselves available at a moment's notice to everyone who, you know, this is the least bit of interest.

[408] Yeah, it's the end.

[409] I think a partial answer to what you're asking might be to think along the lines of Adam Smith who saw two different spheres.

[410] And in the wealth of nations, he talked about the invisible hand, which governs the market.

[411] But then he also talked about theory of moral sentiments, which was the realms where the market didn't go.

[412] And at the time, that was larger than now, because it included the formation of families, and now with dating apps, you can apply economic arguments to how people make decisions on dating apps.

[413] Like, it's a lot more marketized than it was.

[414] But there is a realm where the market does not go.

[415] And traditionally, we have thought that everything that happens behind your front door is that.

[416] Right, right, right.

[417] You don't do care.

[418] Yeah, but also with care.

[419] Like, the reason that a child cares for their aging parents isn't because of the child.

[420] the parents cared for them when they were small, it's not a market exchange.

[421] But of course, the market is coming in there.

[422] It's coming into childcare.

[423] It's coming into elderly care.

[424] And as soon as you do that, the government has opinions about how it's done.

[425] Like, if the government is providing any of the care, well, the taxpayer has opinions on whether you're a good enough carer or not.

[426] So I think we're in a state of flux where we're marketizing a bunch of things that used to live in the theory of moral sentiments realm.

[427] And that is part of what we are seeing happening, and I think it's part of the answer to your question.

[428] You know, if something is freedom of association, it's in the non -marketised part.

[429] But if what you're talking about is, say, how an entirely government -funded operation like the BBC hires, I think that's in the public domain, and that might be somewhere that you would have rules that say, this isn't about freedom of association, this is about transparency, that you were, you know, doing things in the fair and open way, you're advertising all your jobs, you know, that sort of thing.

[430] But inside your house and certainly inside the bedroom and when it comes to care, those aren't the rules that we play.

[431] Yeah, well, the market exchange, the direct market exchange arguments, an interesting one.

[432] So if there's, if there's direct exchange of money for service, let's say, or goods, then, then the standard non -prejudicial rules should apply and otherwise it's in the private domain and you can go to hell in a handbasket in whatever you men or you choose appropriate.

[433] But the example that you give of, you know, rich men, you know, having a club that's only for rich men, when we all know that is where the next candidates are going to be chosen for election, and it is where, you know, quiet words will be had about who's to be the next governor general of the BBC or whatever.

[434] That's the genuinely difficult, the edge case.

[435] Is that theory of moral sentiments or is that wealth of nations?

[436] And I don't have a strong, I don't have a guiding principle to say where exactly that border lies, just to say that those are difficult questions.

[437] But the question of whether you want to undress in front of somebody is not difficult in the same way.

[438] Like, women do not have single -sex changing rooms in order that we stitch up the world inside that changing room behind that closed door.

[439] That is not why we have it.

[440] We have it because nearly all ex -lations and boys are men.

[441] They talk about it as privilege.

[442] Like, I've seen white women described as the equivalent of the white women who would have kept black women out when these white women are saying, I'm just keeping men out.

[443] Like, that's the standard argument in America that women arguing for single -sex toilets and changing rooms are, like the bigoted women during Jim Crow, who would have kept black women out.

[444] Whereas, you know, I don't think women's desire to keep men out of private spaces has anything in common with white people's desire under Jim Crow to keep black people out.

[445] It's safety, it's privacy, it's dignity.

[446] But, I mean, they will make these arguments explicitly.

[447] They will literally compare you to racists.

[448] So I think, I mean, the obvious ones for women are privacy, safety, dignity, consent.

[449] Like, we used to think that consent was a thing.

[450] I thought we thought that until about a half a second ago.

[451] And a woman who says, you know, I only consent to having, say, a hystereoscopy, which is an operation that does require you to undress from the waist down and does require, you know, more than one person sticking things up you and it's, you know, pretty undignified and painful.

[452] A woman who says, I will only undergo this with other women is making a statement about her bodily autonomy and integrity.

[453] And a man who says, well, I'm a woman, and therefore I'm entitled to do this, is a man. man who's overstepping consent in an incredibly rapy way.

[454] So it's amazing to me that that man is something to be...

[455] Oh, that'll definitely get us kicked off YouTube's.

[456] Now you've gone and done it.

[457] Yeah, well, I think you're just going to have to put your videos up somewhere else now, aren't you?

[458] Yeah, well, luckily that is a possibility with Twitter and with Spotify.

[459] And so far, you know, there are, although YouTube, the problem with YouTube is it's the market monster.

[460] And if it kills us, they're really trying to kill me. I think they're probably the plan of the radicals who are pushing this.

[461] probably to see if they can take me out.

[462] And they're definitely doing that with everybody who's involved on the daily wire front.

[463] I mean, it's to make you an object lesson.

[464] It's so that other people just don't even go there.

[465] It's the same with J .K. Rowling.

[466] Like, you know, she's big enough to defend herself and she has done brilliantly.

[467] Yeah.

[468] And of course, it's only, yeah.

[469] So, no, I think she will really be able to do it because she has, she's like the Beatles equivalent of bigger than God, you know.

[470] Like she is the, the author.

[471] Yeah, well, there are ways of taking people out that aren't verbal, you know.

[472] know, that are pretty damn final.

[473] Yes, but even if we just look at the verbal thing, what they're doing is they're making it so incredibly painful and difficult for her and taking up all her time that anybody who is not at the J .K. Rolling level thinks, I can't do this.

[474] Which is everyone else in the world, including even the Queen of England, let's say, I know it's king now.

[475] Yeah, it's to make everybody else think this, you know, just don't go there.

[476] Like that's what I'm always here.

[477] I always hear people saying, like, you're very bright.

[478] to do what you do.

[479] I couldn't do it.

[480] And, well, I can see why.

[481] Yeah, well, okay, but let's tell.

[482] They're doing the same thing to me in the Canadian front, by the way, with regards to the College of Psychologists.

[483] Because the College of Physicians weighed in on the side of the College of Psychologists this week, trying to insist that they had the same ability to regulate their physicians, all of whom are terrified to open their mouth about anything contentious now, by the way, because I've talked to dozens of them, hoping they can make of me an object lesson, which luckily isn't going to be as easy as they first hoped it would be.

[484] They've been threatening to take me in front of a disciplinary board for months, and according to their own idiot regulations, we're supposed to do that in 150 days.

[485] And so far, they've shied away from that opportunity because they actually make those public.

[486] And I'll put that on my damn YouTube channel in a second, and we'll see what happens at a face -to -face disciplinary board, where they're arguing that these bloody butcher should have free access to children.

[487] So especially now that what, it's seven European countries have backtracked on that front with a fair degree of amazing rapidity, including the Netherlands, which is where all this idiocy started to begin with.

[488] So we can see who's on the wrong side, the Joseph Mengele side of history, let's say.

[489] You'd think the bloody Democrats in the U .S. would wake up to that, but they're not known for their consciousness.

[490] So we'll see how that plays out.

[491] Yeah.

[492] So, hey, so what's it like being Helen Joyce at the moment?

[493] You know, you, well, there's a couple of things.

[494] First of all, you know, you said you understand why people remain silent, but you don't.

[495] So, like, you know, I'm getting increasingly tired of being sympathetic to people who remain silent when they have something to say.

[496] Like, I do understand it.

[497] I've met 200 people who've had their lives flipped upside down by being canceled.

[498] It's not pleasant.

[499] But inviting the woke mob to dominate the world, that's not all that pleasant either.

[500] It looks like a choice between various forms of hell.

[501] Now, you wrote this book.

[502] So tell me what's, we haven't talked for like a year and a half, something like that.

[503] What's it been like for you to have published that book?

[504] And what's life like for you in the practical sense at the moment?

[505] So, I mean, I'm having a ball.

[506] I think that the big difference, the big question on this, whether people are living a nightmare or actually enjoying themselves, it's not so much about whether they've been cancelled, because you will be, you will be.

[507] Like, it's just going to be, you know, they go after you.

[508] It's whether it's inside your house or not.

[509] So there are quite a lot of women who, and also men, by the way, who talk to me, who are living absolute nightmares because of things that are happening to their children in particular.

[510] Or women whose husbands have transitioned and who have, you know, spent all the family money and gone through these weird surgeries and now say their wives are lesbians, and if the wife doesn't think of herself as a lesbian, you know, she's a bigot.

[511] And so people go through these horrific, horrific nightmares.

[512] And those people typically can't speak because there's typically people whose privacy, they must protect their own children.

[513] And I'm never more sorry for anyone than when I meet one of these people.

[514] I meet them all the time or I get them on my inbox.

[515] And they're living a nightmare, not just because of what's happening inside their house, but because the whole of society is gaslighting them.

[516] So the child's school will be saying, congratulations, you've now got a daughter.

[517] you know, this sort of thing.

[518] They'll get told they get referred to social services.

[519] If they go to their family doctor, that person doesn't help, their own friends say their bigots, if they don't go along with something they can see as really harmful for their child.

[520] And then there are some of us who have come into it in other ways.

[521] For example, we were just trying to do decent journalism.

[522] And we've now got quite a lot of support from each other.

[523] And I mean, I now work for an organisation, Call Sex Matters, where there's several of us and we can, you know, we have a great time when we feel we're getting some traction with the UK government.

[524] And for us, this is an important civil rights movement, really.

[525] Like, I know that our opponents think that we're trying to reverse equality and civil rights, but no, we see ourselves very much as in the grand tradition of the suffragettes and in the grand tradition of the civil rights activists.

[526] You know, we're fighting for human rights, in fact.

[527] So we're having a great time.

[528] But every day I have to remember that there are people who agree with me on everything are silenced and are having the absolutely most miserable time because it's inside their house.

[529] And that's the distinction I'd make.

[530] It's not really about how bad the activists come after you because, you know, I know, I didn't go back to the economist, by the way.

[531] The last time we talked, I was on a year's leave of absence.

[532] And they were very supportive and were very happy to have me back.

[533] But actually, I just felt I was doing something more important, really, than editing some pages of the world's best weekly news magazine.

[534] But I just had something else to be doing.

[535] So I'm having fun.

[536] And, um, I'm finding it very interesting.

[537] Well, okay.

[538] Why did they get away with it?

[539] Yeah, exactly.

[540] Well, this is the critical issue.

[541] You're not J .K. Rowling, right?

[542] Yeah.

[543] And there are other people who have decided to speak.

[544] I talked to Andrew Doyle yesterday, and he's a good example of that, right?

[545] There are people who've decided to not to remain silent and who aren't, haven't been taken out of the fray entirely on the personal or the social, fronts, and you're definitely one of them.

[546] So why are you lucky, or what did you do right, do you think?

[547] So on the not taken out, it was very much because the economist didn't fold.

[548] And not, yeah.

[549] Yeah, it's about employer.

[550] So I wasn't facing destitution.

[551] You know, what I said, like my friend Maya Forstetter, who founded Sex Matters, she and I talked about these things around the same time, 2017, 2018.

[552] I had started to think about this as something to write about, not just in the economist, and actually in the end, not in the economist elsewhere.

[553] And I met her.

[554] She was still working at the Centre for Global Development, which is an American -Washington -based think tank, which has a European arm, and that's where she was working.

[555] And she wanted to write things like, when you're thinking about global development, it's important to remember that there are two sexes.

[556] Because that, and that used to be a truism.

[557] Like, everybody understood that.

[558] You had to think about mothers, you had to think about child mortality.

[559] You had to think about maternal mortality.

[560] It used to be obvious that if you gave money to the mother rather than the father, like it would get spent on the children, you know, there were all these sex -based issues.

[561] Violence is very, very sexed as well.

[562] And she was just saying these very ordinary things, and she was told by the Washington office to stay quiet.

[563] But she and I would talk a bit, like not often, but we met a few times, and we were both saying the same things.

[564] And when the people in the Washington office complained about her at CGD, she ended up losing her job and had to go to employment tribunal and still four years later, just finishing off that process.

[565] Whereas when they came to the economist, the editor said, we fully stand by, Helen Joyce, she's an excellent journalist, and they went away.

[566] You do not have to be very strong to stand up to the bullies.

[567] No, they can only take you out one at a time.

[568] Yes, and they're like sharks.

[569] They can smell the blood in the water.

[570] So if there's no blood in the water, they just go and find someone else to go after.

[571] So it wasn't even as if the economist had to put much effort into this.

[572] It was just the most basic business of saying, no, we're not bound to bullies.

[573] And it wasn't even that the editor agreed with me. She didn't.

[574] She didn't disagree with me either.

[575] She just hadn't got any opinion on it.

[576] She just said, I don't like bullies and I do like free speech.

[577] And it was that simple, just saying, I don't like bullies and I do like free speech.

[578] So it was really her, because I'm curious about why the economist did support you.

[579] I mean, for a long time, although I think the economist has become, what would you say, reprehensibly quasi -woke from time to time in recent years.

[580] And that's really been a loss, as far as I'm concerned, because it was one of the world's great magazines, and maybe the world's greatest magazine.

[581] I think you could make a case for that in some ways.

[582] But despite the fact that they have tilted in the climate hysteria direction, let's say, and so forth, at least on some occasions, they did stand behind you and was now why was why was that what was it about the economist in particular that made that possible because especially at the time when this blew up around you in some ways it would have been easier for them to hang you out to dry right plus they could acclaim moral virtue while doing so and we know how delightful that is especially when you don't earn it i mean really it is because the editor has a backbone and you know it like it sounds so simple but you know i don't think she agreed with me. I don't think she thought the topic was interesting.

[583] She just reflexively wasn't going to let people push her around.

[584] And if only there were more people like that.

[585] And also, The Economist is a place, I mean, I would never speak ill of them anyway.

[586] I would, you know, because I wouldn't speak ill of an ex -employer.

[587] But actually, I had 17 very happy years working at The Economist.

[588] It's a place with a wonderful ethos and a very strong collegiality and somewhere where our editorial meetings, it is not just accepted, it is expected that you put forward on popular opinions if you have them.

[589] And so I have stood up and I have seen other people do that in those editorial meetings and stood up and argued against...

[590] So, for example, the economist really had a strong line in favour of having a second referendum on Brexit.

[591] And I really opposed that.

[592] I thought it was a terrible, terrible mistake and a terrible judgment.

[593] Although I was very anti -Brexit.

[594] Like, as far as I was concerned, and it was anti -democratic, like once to try to have a second referendum.

[595] And I stood up and gave it my best shot over about a three -hour editorial meeting that we really shouldn't go for this.

[596] And the editor and the deputy editor came by my office several times over the next two days and said, you know, what about this, what about this, what about this?

[597] You know, they really regarded it as a valuable contribution and then wrote the editorial saying the opposite.

[598] So, you know, that collegiality and that long history.

[599] Thinking and believing in the Socratic method as well.

[600] that you're challenging each other, that the person who says the opposite to what everybody else is saying is the person who's helping you most.

[601] And not just doing it in a reflexive sort of, you know, need -your -contrarian way.

[602] But, I mean, I think that's a problem in journalism in general is as it's become a graduate profession, and it's not just, like, I have a PhD in mathematics, so I'm a rather unusual graduate to have gone into journalism.

[603] But it's mostly people who will have studied, like, you know, great subjects like English or history or the economists, lots of economists, obviously.

[604] But then also sort of the studies type things, like lots of people who have done social studies or media studies or journalism itself.

[605] And so they become more homogenous, more distant from what the population is like.

[606] Like you used to come into journalism by going into the local press.

[607] You probably weren't a graduate.

[608] You spent your years doorstepping the families of murder victims, going and reporting on council meetings.

[609] you learned through shoe leather and if you were good you worked your way up through the ranks and you might arrive at a very senior position in one of the great newspapers of the world not having a degree and having an awful lot of common sense and experience and now that's just not there because local journalism is dead so people go straight into those institutions the pay is much worse from the universe of people yeah so it tends to have to be people who have some money behind them because the pay is so bad and you need to live in the capital city and yeah, you've just got a very homogenous graduate, like liberal in the American sense, not the 19th century British sense, like hyper -liberal actually.

[610] Like you've got papers like the New York Times that say that they actually have to like really try to get anybody who's right wing to work for them.

[611] And then when they do that, like they get Barry Weiss or somebody, you know, she ends up having to leave because it's so unbelievably unpleasant as a workplace.

[612] Right.

[613] Yes, and it's a pretty damn weird work.

[614] where we think Barry Weiss's right wing.

[615] Exactly.

[616] I mean, it's just beyond comprehension.

[617] Yeah.

[618] So, yeah, yeah.

[619] So, okay, so let's delve into this.

[620] Let's delve into this little further.

[621] So, you know, we were commiserating with those who wish to remain silent because of the miseries that might be visited upon them, and those are real enough.

[622] Jay Baticherea, who's a physician at Stanford, you know, he was taken to task by his erstwhile compatriots when he did nothing but stand up bravely and tell the truth.

[623] and he lost 35 pounds in three months.

[624] And I've talked to plenty of other people who were basically hounded into asylums by the woke mob.

[625] And those are strong people, and this is not fun.

[626] But you did this.

[627] Now, you even transferred careers.

[628] So what the hell are you doing now?

[629] Like, what are you up to exactly?

[630] You're not working for the economist anymore.

[631] And what's your goal?

[632] Why do you think it's a valid goal?

[633] And then even more, why are you managing not only to make this successful instead of absolute bloody hell, but something that you seem fully on board with and actually pursuing to, what would you say, to some degree of success?

[634] How are you managing all that?

[635] So I work part -time for Sex Matters, which is now an organization that has, it's funded almost exclusively by people paying five to ten pound a month to support us in attempting to shore up the existence of.

[636] sex, binary sex in law and life.

[637] Like, it's that simple.

[638] We're standing up for sex -based rights, right?

[639] Human rights that involve recognising that there are two sexes.

[640] That's sex matters, right?

[641] And where can people find out more about that?

[642] Sex -matters .org.

[643] It's that simple.

[644] I mean, we publish an awful lot of material.

[645] I would say that it's very focused on law and regulation, and that's part of why it works is because in the UK, the laws and regulations are actually pretty good.

[646] Like the practice is appalling, but we still have, we have, you know, we haven't wandered off into Bill C -16 and into American, you know, Title IX covers gender identity instead of sex.

[647] We still have pretty decent laws.

[648] It's just that practice has wandered away from them.

[649] So the idea is to drag practice back to where the law is, you know, if we need to take legal challenges or judicial reviews, we will.

[650] But also we can engage politically.

[651] We can, you know, do mass actions and so on.

[652] That's part of what I spend my time doing.

[653] It's not well paid because this is going to become a charity.

[654] and charities are not highly paid workplaces.

[655] That's fine.

[656] I write a newsletter.

[657] That's doing okay.

[658] So if people want to find me, that's the hellenjoyce .com.

[659] And I also do writing tuition, which was something that I used to do anyway, and I make some money from that.

[660] So it's not what it used to be, money -wise, but it's fine.

[661] My children are nearly going on.

[662] Hey, my son and I developed this app you might be interested in called essay.

[663] S .a .com.

[664] Yeah, and it teaches people how to write while they use it to write.

[665] It's a word processor that has production and editing tools built into it.

[666] Okay, you're making people like me obsolete then.

[667] No, no, no. It'd be something that people like you could use to their great advantage because it would take some of the busy work element out of what you're teaching because it runs people through the elements.

[668] So, for example, it has tools that help people understand that when you write a paragraph, you should think about reorganizing the sentences.

[669] and that when you write a sentence, you should think about writing variants of the sentence and picking the best sentence.

[670] And you should think about reordering your paragraphs and has tools for all of that.

[671] So anyways, we have a lot of subscribers.

[672] Yeah, essay.

[673] Dot app.

[674] It's a very, very good program.

[675] And for the typical bad writer, it'll improve the quality of their writing by 50 % if they use it once.

[676] Just because it helps people understand what editing means.

[677] So, essay.

[678] Dot app.

[679] There's my little ad for today.

[680] So, and your book, by the way, is a portfolio career, you know.

[681] I mean, that's the answer is portfolio career.

[682] Oh, I also have a column in the critic.

[683] So, yeah, it's fine.

[684] I'm fine.

[685] Right.

[686] Okay, okay.

[687] So you're distributed widely enough so that it's not easy to take you out.

[688] And you're competent enough as an entrepreneur and as a practitioner to make all those things work.

[689] And do you have any, well, apparently, do you have any financial security in the fundamental sense?

[690] My God.

[691] and I'm not privately wealthy, unfortunately, no. I guess, do you know what?

[692] I have to be honest, and I have to say that I was already so far in that it was too late to go back before I knew I was taking a big risk.

[693] I had already written about quite controversial things.

[694] So I was a foreign correspondent in Brazil, and while I was there, you know, I wrote about political corruption.

[695] I, you know, I wrote some quite scary things.

[696] And then I also always liked controversial topics.

[697] So I wrote a piece about, you know, what paedophilia is and how you might treat, you know, how you might deal with paedophiles.

[698] I wrote about pornography and the effect on children.

[699] I always liked those hot topics and try, you know, I like hot topics that you can try and treat in a cool way.

[700] And I don't mean cool trendy.

[701] I mean cool, low temperature.

[702] One of the great bits of device I got from my editor when I was writing my book and then when I was reading the audiobook is she said, the hotter the topic, the cooler your tone.

[703] Yeah, yeah, that is good.

[704] That is good advice.

[705] It is good advice.

[706] And it was very good advice when reading it.

[707] She said, when you get to the bits where you're talking about, you know, this child's life is going to be destroyed.

[708] She said, take a deep breath, slow down, and just let your voice sink.

[709] And so I've always been like that as a writer.

[710] You know, I specifically, but I thought journalists were meant to be like this.

[711] I've always liked the bits where you find the most controversy and the most, you know, most heat and least light.

[712] That's where you think you can do the most useful journalism, I thought.

[713] So I had found this topic.

[714] I got interested in it.

[715] I wrote about it.

[716] I got a level of pushback I did not at all predict.

[717] And by then it's too late.

[718] Right.

[719] Well, it's too late.

[720] It's very interesting that you describe it that way.

[721] Because, you know, what I saw on the faculty front was, so undergraduates will write what they think their professors want to hear because they're just undergraduates and they have no power.

[722] And then graduate students do the same for the journals and the – professors that they're working under.

[723] And then assistant professors are terrified because they don't have tenure.

[724] And then newly tenured professors are terrified because they're not full professors.

[725] And so everybody in the whole chain thinks, well, you know, once I get to a position of security, all be brave.

[726] But after you've sold your soul for 15 years, there's nothing left of you that's brave.

[727] And the idea that you become brave because you have security, it indicates nothing but a profound misunderstanding of what constitutes bravery.

[728] And, you know, what you tell me, indicates to me that you're just doing now what you've always done, essentially, like you're on different fronts, but you know, you actually wanted to be a journalist and go investigate difficult things and think and dig around in the muck and try to find some light, and you're just continuing to do that.

[729] And that is relatively rare.

[730] You know, one of the things I've really learned since 2016 is how rare that genuine faith and courage truly is.

[731] You know, it's like one person in a hundred possesses it.

[732] And I've always wondered, for example, how 30 % of Germans, East Germans could end up as government informers.

[733] But after watching what happened in the lockdown in Toronto, I realized, you know, very rapidly that we were still exactly like that and that 30 % of people in Canada would wear a mask happily for the rest of their life if they could come to inform on their neighbors as a consequence.

[734] You know, and so that cowardly, what would you say, alignment with the powers that be for personally self -aggrandizing purposes, that's the norm and that courage to dig around and to speak the truth, especially on uncomfortable topics.

[735] You know, I was reading the story of Abraham today, you know, there's a real cool passage in that Abraham goes with two angels to Sodom, to sort out the city, which is like a fairly daunting task.

[736] And before he does that, he has a little discussion with God.

[737] And God has basically said that he's going to destroy the city because of its iniquity.

[738] And Abraham says, well, how about if I find 40 people there that are good?

[739] And God says, well, if you can find 40, I won't destroy the city.

[740] And Abraham bargains back and forth until he gets down to 10, which is very interesting story, because it proclaims that you can strike a covenantal contract with reality itself, that you can bargain, which is a very interesting idea.

[741] But more importantly, that if even 10 people in a doomed city are still willing to speak, that the entire thing won't come tumbling down, you know, and I do think that's eternally true, is that freedom itself, the absence of totalitarian hell depends.

[742] on the willingness of a very small minority of people to lift their heads above the turrets and to say what they believe to be true.

[743] And it's a very tiny percentage of people.

[744] It's like the thing that economists say that prices are set at the margins.

[745] Like, I think this about free speech as well.

[746] And it's why sometimes, you know, some of the women that I talk to a lot who would be, you know, atheist, feminist.

[747] I mean, again, I am an atheist.

[748] This is not me trying to position myself on a religious spectrum here.

[749] They don't like, like working with religious people on anything, on anything at all, not even on very narrow things like free speech.

[750] But the thing is that if you're not, if you're an atheist, if you're not religious, like, you have to be a bit mad to think that it's worth the personal grief in the one life that you get when you're going to be nothing after you die to stand up against what is obviously a mad issue, but nearly everyone agrees with you, but like always somebody else could do it.

[751] Like most teachers know very well.

[752] that you shouldn't be teaching children that sex is a spectrum.

[753] Like, really, most of them know that.

[754] So why do most of them not stand up?

[755] Well, because there's other people.

[756] It's like the bystander effect.

[757] Other people could do it.

[758] Why should they do it?

[759] The only people who are going to stand up on this, by and large, are the people who think they're immortal solas on the line.

[760] And so I think that they are the people who set the boundaries of free speech is people who have what are quite unusual opinions.

[761] That puts you in an even more mysterious category then, doesn't it?

[762] But here's a little twist.

[763] on that, you know, that I think is relevant given your, the details of your biography.

[764] So here's one thing I've come to realize about truth.

[765] So if you enter a conversation, like I could have come on to this conversation and thought, well, you know, what do I want to extract from Helen to make my YouTube channel more popular?

[766] And if I had thought that way, I probably wouldn't have talked to you at all because the probability that we're going to be canceled and that that'll be a risk to my YouTube channel is very high.

[767] And so I'm not thinking instrumental thoughts when I talk to people.

[768] I'm thinking something completely different, which is I'm going to say what comes to mind in the clearest manner I possibly can based on the presupposition, two presuppositions.

[769] Number one is that whatever happens if you tell the truth is the best possible thing that could have happened, even if that isn't obvious to you in the moment.

[770] Right.

[771] So that's an axiom of faith, right?

[772] It is.

[773] That's faith.

[774] Yeah.

[775] You bet.

[776] Truth is truth.

[777] Truth is truth.

[778] sets you free and brings the habitable order that is good into being, right?

[779] Yeah, yeah.

[780] Despite the evidence, okay, but there's another thing that's very cool, too.

[781] And I think this is something that also appeals to J .K. Rowling, you know, and to you.

[782] And you tell me what you think about this.

[783] So if you just say what you think, you don't know what the hell's going to happen.

[784] You have to let go of the outcome, right?

[785] Because there's no instrumental manipulation associated with it.

[786] And you might think, well, that's a hell of a risk, because maybe the mob will come, to you.

[787] But I can tell you what's very interesting about that, which is that it's a hell of an adventure.

[788] Because you don't know what's going to happen next.

[789] Now, you know, you seem quite pleased by the fact that you're able to see what you think and all these weird things are happening around you.

[790] And, you know, you're sailing your ship out on the high seas with plenty of storm.

[791] But, you know, imagine you would remain silent.

[792] You wouldn't be the person that you are and you be having the adventures that you're having.

[793] So I think that truth is adventure.

[794] That's what the story of Abraham is about, by the way, the notion that truth itself is an adventure.

[795] It's an adventure that justifies life.

[796] That's really interesting.

[797] And I think that the two things that that immediately makes me think are, one, you know, and this is just a personal characteristic thing, it's neither good nor bad.

[798] I'm a very unanxious person.

[799] You know, I'm not someone who feels nervous about things.

[800] I'm not someone who finds giving talks scary or anything like that.

[801] I don't ruminate, you know, I didn't lose any sleep over the idea that I might lose my job or anything like that.

[802] And so I think that's maybe unusual, especially unusual for women.

[803] And I don't know why it's the case, but it just is the case.

[804] So I just never worried.

[805] I always had faith that I would be able to find, you know, something else to do.

[806] And also my biography, I've changed my job a lot of times.

[807] I trained as a dancer.

[808] I went and studied mathematics.

[809] I became a journalist and now I'm a campaigner.

[810] It always worked out.

[811] I was always able to make it work out.

[812] So that's one of the two things that I thought, listening to what you were saying.

[813] And the other thought that immediately came to mind is that I really find cognitive dissonance almost unbearable.

[814] So the idea of having to pay some sort of lip service to a not just idiotic, but an internally contradictory, belief system really bothered me, like, bothered that I lost sleep about.

[815] Like, I would, I would stay up late at night.

[816] I would lie in bed thinking, like, but how can they think that sex is self -identified?

[817] How can they think that it's right to tell children that you aren't just a boy or a girl and don't attach too much meaning to that?

[818] It's just a fact.

[819] So, so I think that's just saying.

[820] Okay, okay, so that's very interesting.

[821] So let's, let's elaborate on that.

[822] So I'll tell you something else I learned well delving into the biblical corpus most recently.

[823] So there's a prophet, Elijah.

[824] And Elijah is a major league prophet.

[825] When Christ is transfigured on the top of the mountain, it's Moses and Elijah that appear with him.

[826] And it's pretty obvious why it's Moses, but it's not so obvious that it's Elijah, right?

[827] Because he's nowhere near as major a figure as Moses.

[828] But I'll tell you what Elijah figured out.

[829] This is a revolutionary realization.

[830] Elijah set himself up against this God named Ball, and Ball was a nature god.

[831] And so you can imagine in the Middle East at that time, there was plenty of speculation that the central divine spirit of the cosmos made itself manifest in the storm and in the thunder and in the lightning and in the hurricane and in the earthquake, right?

[832] these massive natural occurrences that are awe -inspiring, right?

[833] And what inspires awe is divine, and so nature is divine.

[834] Now, Elijah wasn't very fond of that idea.

[835] And he's the person to whom the still small voice first came.

[836] And he's the person who realized that whatever the God of the Old Testament was, the God of Israel, was not a nature god per se, but something that made itself manifest inside that was akin to the voice of conscience.

[837] So I want to ask you, you know, people abide or they don't by the dictates of their conscience.

[838] Now, you said you're not a nervous person by temperament, but that you were kept awake by what?

[839] A sense of internal incoherence or discontinuity?

[840] And is that conscience?

[841] And if so, like, what do you make of that exactly?

[842] Like, what's calling to you to sort things out and separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?

[843] And why did you decide to abide by that instead of taking the easy route?

[844] I mean, for me, it didn't feel like the easy route.

[845] It was that thing of like I could do no other, you know?

[846] And I didn't think of it as conscience.

[847] I have to think more about that.

[848] What I thought about it is the same thing that made me interested in pure mathematics.

[849] You know, I like proofs.

[850] Well, that's logic, you know.

[851] Yeah, it's logic, but it's consistency.

[852] It's consistency.

[853] Right, well, but that's part of logos, right?

[854] That's part of logos.

[855] You know what I mean?

[856] Technically speaking, it's part of the notion that there's an internal coherency and transparency and comprehensibility to the cosmos itself, right?

[857] And that that's something we're called to put ourselves in alignment with.

[858] And if you're a mathematician, obviously that calls to you on the aesthetic and intellectual front in a very, very profound way.

[859] Yes, absolutely.

[860] Okay, so it's illogic for you.

[861] incoherence, but I would, like, I understand that aligning that with the voice of conscience is not a self -evident proposition, but it's worth contemplating, right?

[862] Because there's something about that incoherence that, why does it grate on you, do you think?

[863] Why can't you just swallow it?

[864] I mean, I've asked myself this many times, like, what are the differences between people who can swallow this and people who can't?

[865] And I don't think there's any one rule, but all I can tell you is just having said that I'm not an anxious person, I'm feeling my throat close up at the idea of stating something that I know to be a direct falsehood.

[866] And not just a direct forcehood like, you know, I mean, if I look over at something in this room and I say that something that I can see is blue and then I say it's actually red.

[867] Like, that's not giving me this sense of anxiety because it doesn't impact on anything else.

[868] It's just a meaningless falsehood.

[869] But the thing that you say in mathematics is, you know, like what does an equals mean?

[870] the equal sign is something beautiful and special.

[871] And if two things are equal, then, you know, that's got a unity and a perfection to it that's unchanging.

[872] And then you can do the same thing on both sides of an equation and it's still a true equation.

[873] And true is such a beautiful word.

[874] So if you've got two things that are equal and you multiply them both by two or you add ten onto both of them, you've still got an equation.

[875] And then you could say, like if you didn't know anything about how all mathematics is internally coherent and it's all connected with everything else, inside mathematics, you could say, well, take one little tiny equation just over in the corner of your eye, not an important one.

[876] Like, not a, not a theorem that we need for building bridges or, you know, running supercomputers, just some tiny little equation over here.

[877] We'll break that equation.

[878] Like, what's the problem?

[879] What would the harm be?

[880] The harm is you've broken all of mathematics.

[881] It's all connected.

[882] Because if you've got a false equation, you can add that to any other equation, and straight away you've got a forcehood.

[883] Anything can be equal to anything.

[884] And that's chaos.

[885] So now I'm feeling anxious because now you've got like the equal sign, but it's not equal.

[886] So now.

[887] Well, that's extremely interesting.

[888] Okay.

[889] So the case you made is that, first of all, that your mathematical sensibility is aligned in some manner with your reverence for what's true and beautiful, right?

[890] Yes.

[891] So there's an aesthetic element to it.

[892] Completely.

[893] And all pure mathematicians, all pure mathematicians will tell you that.

[894] Now, it's a long time since I've done any pure mathematics.

[895] But people will say, I knew that this was, this theorem, this proof was going in the right direction when they've proved something because they can feel that it's beautiful.

[896] And a lot of mathematicians will talk about, you know, that's an ugly proof.

[897] Like, it's a shame that it's such an ugly proof.

[898] Can we find a more beautiful one?

[899] And so what's beautiful?

[900] It's elegant, it's simple, it's minimal in the machinery that it uses.

[901] And once, you know, if you've got all the requisite knowledge and the requisite concepts, Once someone shows it to you, it's as if you always knew it.

[902] You think, like, how did I not see that before?

[903] You feel like you just looked around and noticed something that you hadn't noticed before, and now you have that theorem, rather than it being 90 million lines of code, you know?

[904] And I didn't have to work out all the ways that it broke everything, but it actually does break everything.

[905] When you introduce a falsehood, it breaks everything.

[906] Okay, so here's something interesting about the Abraham story again.

[907] I hate to return to that, but it's on my mind because I've been writing about it.

[908] So when Abraham undergoes a name change from Abraham to Abraham, which is a transformation of identity, right, a profound transformation of identity, and he goes from being the utmost father, which is what Abram means, to the father of multitudes, which is what Abraham means.

[909] So there's a shift in status, and it appears to occur because he's been diligently pursuing a moral pathway, and that produces, catalyzes an ethical transformation in him that's so deep that it's as if he becomes another person.

[910] It's like a rebirth phenomena.

[911] And he does that.

[912] That happens to him, according to the next, because he's striving to be perfect, right?

[913] And there's a gospel phrase that Christ refers to much, much later, that you should be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.

[914] And part of the reason for that is that if you want to enter into the kingdom of paradise, nothing perfect can come with you.

[915] Nothing imperfect can come with you.

[916] Now, you trod on that territory in your explanation of your affinity for coherence and beauty because you said, and this is very interesting, that if you take a system that's coherent logically and you allow yourself to falsify even one of the minor propositions, even one, that you risk demolishing the whole damn edifice, right?

[917] And there is a moral claim that's driving you, I think, that is associated with your fear of doing so, right?

[918] that is associated with your interest on the aesthetic front with mathematical perfection, and that's your realization that if you voluntarily falsify anything that you see or communicate, that you risk contaminating the entire enterprise.

[919] And then, you know, you might say, and tell me what you think of this, that enterprise has two elements.

[920] One would be that you contaminate your own psyche, because now you render yourself unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood.

[921] But that's not as bad as it gets, because, and I've thought about this a lot on the totalitarian front, you know, it's the individual willingness to swallow the lie that enables the totalitarian mob.

[922] So if you allow yourself to assent to something you know to be false, no matter how small, not only do you put your own soul in immortal peril, you might say, but you also destabilize the entire polity by doing so.

[923] And that's on you.

[924] That's the right thing to be afraid of.

[925] It's no bloody wonder you feel anxious when.

[926] when you're apprehending that, because it means that you can actually see reality for what it is, as far as I can tell.

[927] Yeah.

[928] And, you know, what you're talking about when you talk about the coherence of everything and everything being attached to everything else and speaking honestly and rightly, it's the opposite of queer theory, because the point of queer theory is to destabilize categories and to have things interpenetrating to look at something like, you know, what is a child and what is an adult.

[929] and, okay, there's a blurry categories, and we introduce a hard line at 16 for some things, 18 for others, so they're not like zero and one in mathematics.

[930] But equally, they're not like nothing.

[931] It's not like a two -year -old can be an adult or a 60 -year -old can be a child.

[932] So just because, but these people, they're so obsessed with the fact that some categories are fuzzy or that there might be a different cut -off for different things or that it might depend on the use case, that they're, they just, they turn the whole thing upside down and they try and say that, you know, a child can be more knowledgeable about, say, their gender identity than an adult can be.

[933] Like, you hear this all the time from parents who are brought into this stuff.

[934] They say, my child leads me. I learn from my child.

[935] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[936] You know, and that's just one little...

[937] There's a tiny grain of truth in that.

[938] You can learn.

[939] Yes, there's always a grain of truth.

[940] It's amazing.

[941] Yes, of course.

[942] All these claims that the queer theoretic people make, you find yourself saying yes, but, and by that time, you've already lost the moral clarity or the clarity of explanation.

[943] Because once you have to say, well, I agree, okay, sometimes children are wiser, yes, okay, in some ways they know themselves better, da -da, da, da, you know, you need to get to the point that that's not what they're saying.

[944] What they're saying is they want the child to be supreme and the adult to follow.

[945] They want the child to teach and the adult to learn.

[946] That's the wrong way.

[947] No, they want their, they want their use of their child for the purposes of self -aggrandizement to be paramount.

[948] Completely, completely.

[949] You know, 50%.

[950] Here's a fun statistic.

[951] 50 % of mothers who have children with gender dysphoria have borderline personality disorder or its rough equivalent.

[952] Right, right.

[953] 50%.

[954] Yeah, that's a lot, given that the prevalence of borderline personality disorder in the population is under 1%.

[955] Right, and I watch these people sacrificing their children to the public proclamation of their own inclusiveness and tolerance.

[956] and I think you'd have to go a long ways into the depths of hell to find a deeper abyss than that, right?

[957] When you're willing to sacrifice your own bloody children and the progeny of your children to your own moral claims, you have committed the worst possible sin you can manage as a mother.

[958] And if you're the kind of idiot father that's abetting that, you're doing exactly the same thing.

[959] And you ask yourself, how could somebody do that?

[960] because I don't think that they are speaking with clarity to themselves in which they say, you know, I am an evil person and I wish to do evil.

[961] Like, obviously our capacity for self -deception is pretty much limitless, but what is it that they're thinking?

[962] And it has to be this reversal.

[963] Like a friend of mine, Eliza Monda Green is her pen name.

[964] She's in Canada, actually.

[965] She's in Quebec.

[966] She's an American graduate student.

[967] And she recently said that these gender doctors and these parents, and so on, they have given their allegiance to what she calls the trans altar.

[968] Like, it's not the real child that's in front of them.

[969] They've given their allegiance to this self -created being.

[970] And the thing is that once that's the person that you're looking at, you can perform any atrocity on the body in order to release that, you know, created or mythical sort of person.

[971] You know, you sterilize the child in order to, in order to do, like to bring their body in line.

[972] Exactly, exactly.

[973] Exactly.

[974] And so these, once you start this business of calling things by not their right name and by saying that zero equals one or that, you know, any sort of break, everything becomes broken.

[975] And you find yourself not just doing atrocities, but doing like literally the exact opposite of the thing that you're meant to do.

[976] So if you're a child safeguarding organization, you find yourself deliberately and specifically putting children in danger.

[977] If you're an organization that's anti -censorship, you find yourself, of deliberately specifically and actively trying to silence people and so on and so forth.

[978] You know, women's organizations in America now spend their days arguing for the rights of men to overstep women's boundaries.

[979] Like, you know, the sports women in the girls who were having to compete against trans athletes in America, they reached out to all the big women's organizations, including the law ones and, you know, national organization for women and all of them saying, you know, we are women who are having men intrude upon our spaces in a way that is destroying our rights, but those organizations are now actively men's rights organizations.

[980] So it's this reversal that you see.

[981] It's absolutely extraordinary, and that is the consequence of breaking one little bit of an interconnected logical system.

[982] But that's what queer theory wants you to do.

[983] It wants you to be unable to define anything.

[984] In the biblical corpus, that's expressed symbolically as heaven turning to iron.

[985] Oh, I don't know.

[986] Because heaven isn't obviously an aerial place, right, and a light and aerial place.

[987] And when everything flips upside down, it turns to iron and everything turns upside down, right?

[988] That's permanent carnival, by the way, you know, the carnival as a symbolic expression, was a time, this happened in medieval times, where for one day all the rules were turned upside down, right?

[989] Well, it's the equivalent of the Pride Month now, except it didn't last year.

[990] Or a drag queen, like that's what drag is.

[991] You know, drag is, and drag in its own place, I have no problem with it.

[992] I'm not interested, but it's not aimed at me. It was gay men in nightclubs.

[993] You know, I'm not a gay man and I don't go to nightclubs.

[994] It's completely fine.

[995] It was just meant to be transgressive fun in the evening where people are drunk, you know, whatever.

[996] And then it leaks out.

[997] And then you're like, why would those be the people that you're trying to get into libraries to read three -year -olds?

[998] Like, specifically that.

[999] Like, and that's the one and only thing, the one and only group they're trying to get in.

[1000] And you think like...

[1001] Well, I do think, too, that that has something to do with the elevation.

[1002] of the narrow self to the highest place of worship.

[1003] And it's not even a selfishness, say, because if you're truly selfish in the highest sense, then you serve other people, because there's a lot of other people.

[1004] And if you serve them well, they will reciprocate.

[1005] And that's what you do if you're mature and wise.

[1006] But if you're immature and self -centered in that immature way, then you will want gratification for what you want right at the moment, no matter what.

[1007] And the insistence that the drag queen types get to read to toddlers, let's say, is what?

[1008] It's the logical extension of that claim of infinite short -term subjective supremacy.

[1009] I get to have exactly what I want, right bloody now, and damn the consequences for everyone else, including me tomorrow.

[1010] And that's such a temper tantrum two -year -old way of looking at the world that it brooks no interference whatsoever and has no limits.

[1011] You know, and if you watch a two -year -old have a temper tantrum, you know, you could have watched that.

[1012] Oh, the world is exploding.

[1013] Yeah.

[1014] It's amazing.

[1015] I've seen adults do that in my clinical practice.

[1016] I've seen adults have a temper tantrum.

[1017] And believe me, man, that is something that will put a chill on your heart.

[1018] It is something to see that that absolute chaotic rage burst forward in an adult.

[1019] But that is, that temper tantrum of a two -year -old is that's the central spirit that animates the subjective self -identity of the worst activist types.

[1020] Nothing gets in the way of that.

[1021] You know, a two -year -old will hold his breath till he turns blue, which is a hell of an accomplishment on the anger side.

[1022] You just try that and see how much will it takes.

[1023] Yeah.

[1024] And the extraordinary thing is it's so tedious.

[1025] Like, these people are meant to be doing something that's entertaining.

[1026] And I can't think of anything more boring.

[1027] Like, you know, what any normal adult finds interesting or entertaining has some element of difficulty and continuity to it.

[1028] You know, you become good at something and then that becomes enjoyable.

[1029] You play an instrument and you don't just bash on the keyboard as you learn to play and then that becomes more enjoyable as you get better at it.

[1030] Or you do, you know, you become a football or you want to get better at it.

[1031] Like, whatever it is you're doing, it's got some project.

[1032] Drive to mastery, drive to mastery.

[1033] Yes, exactly.

[1034] Playful drive to mastery.

[1035] But if what you're doing, you're doing it, is just tearing things down.

[1036] Like, it's not just that there's no skill to it.

[1037] It's tedious.

[1038] I often look at these people who are doing these horrifically boring and stupid PhD Theses about, you know, the experience of pregnant men, i .e. women who are taking testosterone or something like that.

[1039] And I think, like, oh, my God, you know, we still have malaria.

[1040] We still have cancer.

[1041] Or you could just be making.

[1042] Child sexual trafficking.

[1043] Yes.

[1044] Or you could just be making coffee for people, you know, a bunch of people want some coffee in the morning.

[1045] you've just been making coffee for people and making the world a better place in your own small way.

[1046] And instead, you're wasting your one and only life on total boring nonsense.

[1047] And it's not just that it's nonsense, it's that it's boring.

[1048] Well, there you go.

[1049] So, well, then, you know, you've circled back there to that notion of truth as adventure.

[1050] You know, so let's say you decide to admit a falsehood into the theater of your consciousness, right?

[1051] That's like inviting the devil himself to come in and play.

[1052] Well, your proposition as a mathematician is, well, you've, risk the integrity of everything by doing that.

[1053] Okay, and that's utter chaos and terribly anxiety provoking, and your apprehension of that anxiety is enough to make you anxious and you're not even an anxious person.

[1054] But then you put your finger on something else, too.

[1055] You let falsehood in to disrupt your proper aim, let's say, and that's what happens.

[1056] Then you end up pursuing something that's so goddamn meaningless that it just puts you into a pit of despair, especially when trouble comes to visit.

[1057] You know, like, one of the things, I was very ill for about three years.

[1058] And one of the things that kept me going through that intense period of catastrophe, because my wife was also mortally ill at that time, and my daughter was extremely ill too, was the fact that I had something insanely exciting to do.

[1059] I was writing a book, and I was trying to make it a truthful book, and I think I did that to the best of my ability.

[1060] And I could get up and sit at the damn computer and write for a couple of hours, you know, despite being in so much pain that it's almost undescribable.

[1061] And that was because it was worth doing.

[1062] And the reason it was worth doing is because it was true, you know, and then you have the bloody adventure of your life instead of descending into the kind of resentful, bitter misery that wants you to take out the whole goddamn world.

[1063] And solipsism as well, you know, like if you're, suppose you're writing a thesis that's about, you know, the experience of cland, masculine parents, meaning women who are pregnant but call themselves men, right?

[1064] Like, there's no constraints to what you can write, because it's just nonsense beginning to end.

[1065] So you just write nonsense.

[1066] There's no, there's no criterion for what would be a good thesis on that field.

[1067] Like, it's just stupid.

[1068] So how do you get yourself up in the morning to do it?

[1069] Like, you know, you've written a book.

[1070] I've written the book.

[1071] It's one of the hardest things I've ever done.

[1072] How are they doing it?

[1073] When Kane, when Kane extracts revenge on Abel, right, he pulls down his own ideal, right?

[1074] Because that's what happens.

[1075] Kane is a and bitter because he isn't able.

[1076] That's why.

[1077] Right.

[1078] So he's insanely jealous and he shakes his fist at God and then he kills Abel.

[1079] And then he tells God my punishment is more than I can bear.

[1080] It's a bit of a mysterious phrase, but what it seems to mean is something like this.

[1081] What's left for you if you destroy your own ideal?

[1082] How the hell do you get up in the morning?

[1083] You've torn everything down.

[1084] You can't put pen to paper because there's no criteria for quality.

[1085] It doesn't matter whether you write or whether you don't write and even if you don't write.

[1086] And even if you get up in the morning, you've torn everything down.

[1087] You've torn everything down.

[1088] You can't put pen to paper because there's no criteria for quality.

[1089] It doesn't matter.

[1090] It doesn't matter.

[1091] It doesn't matter.

[1092] It doesn't matter.

[1093] It you do write, it doesn't matter what you write.

[1094] So how can you be anything but hopeless in a situation like that?

[1095] And how can that be anything other than a punishment so great you can't bear it?

[1096] Isn't it interesting?

[1097] I mean, it looks easy, but then, I mean, the fascination is with what's difficult, isn't it?

[1098] So why, you know, why would you not, why would you not want to try to do something that was hard and that you mastered it and you achieved?

[1099] And, I mean, you know, I look at these people and they're churning out all this stuff.

[1100] And then, and then it gets, it gets picked up in schools.

[1101] It gets picked up in laws, unfortunately.

[1102] And I mean, in laws are one place that you have to have some consistency and some logic and some meaning to them.

[1103] There was this great thing we found recently at Sex Matters, which was a great English jurist.

[1104] Edward Cook is his name.

[1105] It looks like Coke, C -O -K, but it's pronounced Cook.

[1106] And he was the guy who said that Parliament was supreme, that Parliament was where the authority flowed from, as opposed to say Divine Right or from the monarchy.

[1107] And he was trying to say, where was the limit to what Parliament could do?

[1108] Because Parliament can't do anything, like laws can't do anything.

[1109] And the example he chose was it can't make men women.

[1110] Like, Parliament could say men could be women, but men will still not be women.

[1111] And it's so funny to see now we're in a place where...

[1112] I think you could argue, and on psychological grounds, from an evolutionary perspective, and this has to do with this axiomatic certainty that you were describing in the necessity for that.

[1113] I think that the distinction between male and female is the most fundamental perceptual distinction and that if it goes, everything goes.

[1114] I think it's more fundamental than dark and light because you can survive blind, right?

[1115] I think it's more fundamental than up and down because sex evolved really in an environment, in an aquatic environment where up and down were fundamentally more or less irrelevant.

[1116] Like I don't think there is a single equation more fundamental than man does not equal woman.

[1117] I think you're right.

[1118] So then if you swallow that, if you can force people to swallow that, they will swallow absolutely everything you try to force feed them.

[1119] And so then the question is, well, what's the nature of the spirit that is trying to convince us to falsify our perceptions at that level?

[1120] Because it's a real mystery, like what the hell's going on here?

[1121] You know, you said, well, why drag queens and toddlers?

[1122] And the answer is something like that.

[1123] Well, if you won't object to that, there's nothing we can do that you won't object to.

[1124] And if we want to be able to do absolutely everything we want to you at any given moment, that's a good place to start.

[1125] Yes, and even if people don't believe you, like one of the things that people say about propaganda is, did people believe the ridiculous claims in Soviet Russia?

[1126] Like a lot of the time, no, they didn't believe it.

[1127] but the point is they didn't believe anything.

[1128] The point wasn't to make them believe the lie, it was to make them believe nothing.

[1129] And then why do you want people to believe nothing?

[1130] It's because you want them to do nothing.

[1131] So that's the chain of it, is, you know, force people to at least pay lip service to an obviously absurd proposition that nobody would have paid lip service to even 10 years ago, or else stay silent.

[1132] And then either you've confused them so much that they do believe something really nonsensical, which means they're so confused they'll believe anything, or at least they now don't believe.

[1133] anything.

[1134] Like if we live in a world where formerly respected institutions like the BBC can seriously use phrases like sex assigned at birth, can seriously take it as axiomatic that people are boys or girls depending on what they say and not depending on what they are, then why would I believe anything else they say?

[1135] And if I don't believe what anything, the BBC says, then why would I believe anything?

[1136] And so now I've got to start constructing my own, you know, my own understanding of who's telling the truth and what is true.

[1137] And what is and so on from the ground up, which is not somewhere I thought I was.

[1138] I mean, I'm 54.

[1139] I'm nearly 55, so at 50, to have suddenly discovered that institutions that were built up over, in some cases centuries, have been so eaten away by termites that we are in a place where just the most basic, the most axiomatic thing about our species.

[1140] Like, I can only think, like, other things that are as obvious about our species don't distinguish between us.

[1141] It's things like, you know, that we breathe air, not water.

[1142] But we all breathe there.

[1143] and not water.

[1144] So what's the thing to break?

[1145] We can't put us all under water and have us all die and then claim that we can breathe water.

[1146] Like this is the only thing that we are split, that we are divided on that is really fundamental, that we're divided into two sexes.

[1147] So now you can claim that one sex is the other.

[1148] There's nothing else you could do that with.

[1149] You can't say we're immortal because the fact is we actually do die.

[1150] You know, the body is there.

[1151] It's gone.

[1152] The person no longer moves.

[1153] And we're not there yet on not giving birth or not needing to have both sexes for reproduction.

[1154] You know, these are the fundamental things about what it is to be a mammal.

[1155] And here we are, and we're saying that, like, the most, one of the most fundamental things about what it is to be a mammal that there are two sexes.

[1156] Yeah, well, and, you know, it's no wonder that that rates of anxiety and hopelessness are skyrocketing among young people because, and this goes back to your observation about shaking the foundation.

[1157] You let a profound falsehood in, and it takes out everything.

[1158] And when it takes out everything, there's no direction.

[1159] And so that's anxiety, virtually by definition, because anxiety emerges in the midst of directionlessness, and there's no hope.

[1160] And so not only do we risk subjecting confused children to medical atrocity and insist that that's the moral thing to do, but we demoralize them with confusion as profoundly as we can possibly manage.

[1161] You know, and I knew that was going to happen back in 2016, which is why I objected to that goddamn bill to begin with, because I thought, for every trans kid you hypothetically save, and I mean hypothetically, you will confuse a thousand into hell.

[1162] I knew it.

[1163] I knew the literature on psychogenic epidemics, and that's exactly what's happened.

[1164] Well, we should stop this part of the conversation.

[1165] I guess I'm going to turn over to the Daily Wire side of the conversation now.

[1166] For those of you who are watching and listening, as we illustrated in this conversation, the Daily Wire crew, including me, are under a certain degree of assault from YouTube at the moment, and that's not a good thing.

[1167] And God only knows what the consequences of it will be, especially once we post this video, which I don't imagine will make them particularly happy.

[1168] So if you're inclined to throw some support the Daily Wire way, you know, this isn't a bad time to think about doing that.

[1169] And because my, what would you say, alliance with them has been very productive and seems to be increasingly necessary.

[1170] So anyways, I'm going to talk to Helen maybe a little bit more on the optimism side on the Daily Wire Plus channel to see where we think we might head in the future.

[1171] So you could join us over there.

[1172] Thanks for your time and attention, everyone.

[1173] And to the film crew here in Toronto for facilitating this, the Daily Wire Plus for making it possible.

[1174] And Helen, well, it's always a pleasure talking to you with your mathematical clarity and your love of the true and beautiful and your courage.

[1175] So, like, good on you.

[1176] Thank God.

[1177] You're one of those 10 people that's stopping Sodom from being annihilated by fire and brimstone, let's say, so far.

[1178] And we'll go over to the Daily Wire Plus side and continue our conversation.

[1179] Well, thank you very much.

[1180] And to the film crew here, too, by the way.

[1181] Oh, yeah.

[1182] And your book, just so everyone knows, her book, which you shouldn't read unless you want to be reprehensible.

[1183] And then to have your phone confiscated, let's say, by the Irish authorities, if you ever happen to visit that fair green emerald.

[1184] Well, let's see, I may be a test case, Jordan.

[1185] No kidding, no kidding.

[1186] Trans, when ideology meets reality.

[1187] And you can tell Helen is a reprehensible type because she actually believes that there's a distinction between ideology and reality and is willing to express that sentiment whenever challenged, including in writing.

[1188] So pick up the book, trans when ideology meets reality.

[1189] Yeah, and you can also wander over to her website, and that's what Helen, you said, Helenjoyce.

[1190] Dot.

[1191] The helenjoyce .com.

[1192] There's some poor woman who has got that website first.

[1193] Yeah, yeah, thehellenjoyce .com, right.

[1194] She's good to follow on Twitter too, which is a place where you can still follow her.

[1195] Thank you to Elon Musk.

[1196] Okay, good.

[1197] off to the Daily Wire, we go.

[1198] Thanks, Helen.

[1199] Thank you.