The Bens—Ryan and Kawaller—took to the streets on Sunday to speak with queer people about gender identity and transition at this historic turning point in LGBTQ history.
Why put a prosthetic on an amputee? Because it is helping a physical problem, not a mental one. Cutting off or changing healthy body parts due to a mental delusion is not helping, it is harming.
His example is such a backward way of looking at this. Amputees get prosthetics not because they IDENTIFY as an amputee but because they are. Give a fully intact human a prosthetic leg simply because they identify as an amputee is ridiculous.
Does an amputee identify as wholly intact (not longer an amputee) once they get a prosthetic? Do we remove functional limbs simply because it’s kind to affirm the identity of those who identify as amputees but are physically aren’t?
These comments are really clueless. I have concerns about kids transitioning, but gender dysphoria is real, and treatments help people be happier. You don’t have to buy into gender ideologies to be compassionate to people who are suffering in these ways.
Suffering can be real and gender can be a way of expressing or locating your generalized pain, discomfort or isolation. Just like cutting or anorexia was the expression of previous cohorts’ unhappiness.
I agree. People, and especially children, that are considering transitioning should be screened for other conditions that could be the true underlying problems--see the Cass Report.
Per the Cass review, "treatments" for gender dysphoria are not medically appropriate, as there is no way to accurately determine if a child was, as they say, born in the wrong body. The entire field of pediatric gender medicine should be considered experimental and conducted as such through clinical trials with all of the oversight they entail.
The mistake is that people and especially adolescents are fickle and apt to change their mind. T may make a young person feel "happier" in the moment, but may feel entirely differently 18 months down the line after permanent changes have occurred.
"I've been objectified a number of times because of my boobs so I want to rip them off and I'm getting top surgery in a couple of weeks."
My god. So it is now progressive and the kind thing to do to tell women who have been objectified to dissociate from their bodies and cut off their breasts to stop the objectification?
And the autistic woman: "I felt like I was failing at being a girl because of my autism" so she cuts off her breasts and starts synthetic hormones that will cause serious longterm health effects and the kind, progressive, non-ableist thing to do is say, "yes you are right. You did fail as a girl. Because there is only one right way to be a girl and autistic isn't one of them."
These sound like ideological criticisms from the gender critical community that you would be skeptical that's really the case because certainly no doctor, therapist, or progressive would approve of this and no trans person would admit to such regressive and self-hating reasons, but here it is coming out of the mouths of the trans people themselves, confirming all of it.
**And please note that all of my anger, criticism, and judgement are aimed at the people who told these young women these messages, NOT the young women referenced in my comment. I feel deep compassion and concern for them being told to believe these things about themselves
In conservative Christian communities women are told they must dress "modestly" so as not to "distract" men or "tempt" them with impure thoughts and we rightly call that out for the sexism it is. Here the women are encouraged not just to cover up but to literally cut off the "tempting" parts and it's celebrated and called progress.
Is it sexist though? Men who would show as much skin as women try to sometimes would get similar feedback I imagine.
The reality is that the way that we dress can be excessively distracting in professional or school contexts. That’s why we have dress codes, for both sexes.
Trying to morally equate reasonable dress codes to something like requiring veils or head covering or burqas is ridiculous.
It can be simultaneously true that
1) Women get an unfair amount of scrutiny on their style of dress in some contexts, and
2) Women are more likely than men to try to push the boundaries of what is considered appropriate dress in some contexts.
So sad. Many of the answers reveal how they internalized gender stereotypes. What used to be a last resort treatment to alleviate deep gender dysphoria has fully grown into a consumer industry like cosmetic surgery.
As someone who delved heavily into this topic by reading the research, attending gender conferences, listening to hours of videos pro and con transition, seeing the horrible health side effect, and tracking all of the extremist politics around it, the thing that’s really soured me on trans the most is the narrative of gender dysphoric people themselves. It just all reflects mental and physical unwellness, as this video clearly demonstrates. No, these people should not be allowed to go into elementary schools to do gender trainings any more than someone who is sticking their finger down their throat to control their weight should.
This made me feel so sad. That poor autistic woman. Really drives home how lost this movement is. I also was so interested to note that the only person who seemed “true trans” (holding the sign) just seemed calmer, more confident, and, tellingly, she was clear that a child should wait until post puberty (14 or 16) at least, to transition.
Wow! That was a lot for 7:30 in the morning. Excellent job guys. I'm not sure what kind of future those young people have but I don't think it will include critical thinking anytime soon. And it is sad, I hope they find what they are looking for.
What a powerful and sad watch. Mostly I see young victims of a society that's failed to provide them with models for what a healthy gender non-conforming adulthood can look like, adrift on a sea of poor quality information and wishful thinking.
I can imagine someone inclined to be critical of your reporting accusing you and Ben of cherry picking the most extreme examples for your video. What would your response to that be?
We were specifically interested in people visibly invested in "challenging the gender binary." The only two such subjects we didn't include were a cis gay guy who didn't have a particularly interesting point of view and a trans-identifying person we recorded on a muted mic 🫠
Thank you for adding this context! That's so interesting that they perceived themselves as "challenging the gender binary" because it came across to me as young people rigidly holding onto and controlled by the gender binary. I wonder if it's a generational or philosophical difference in how they define "challenging" or the "gender binary?"
Yes, what the other Ben said. We weren’t looking to cover the cross section of LGBTQ people, but wanted to talk to people who challenged the gender binary.
We have a massive psychological crisis underway, and insane people are affirming and celebrating it, like someone walking into a raging fire and claiming its just a little toasty.
Maybe we need some sort of time out room for the victims and their virtue signalling rescuers alike.
Transgender does not exist it is an invented term for an invented genre.
Reinforcing it only does humanity a great disservice.
It is indeed an invented genre and furthermore the greatest medical scandal of our time. I hope every therapist and physician who has “affirmed” this insanity is sued into oblivion.
I was introduced to Ben K's reporting at TheFP, and was wondering what he's been up to since I haven't seen him pop up there lately. Great to see him collab with Ben R!
It really struck me as odd that person chose to use cigarettes and alcohol as a defense against the concerns about the side effects of blockers and hormones.
Thanks for making and sharing. I’ve always struggled to understand the internal processes and sense of self of people who identify as non-binary or genderfluid because those concepts and experiences, as I understood them, felt so foreign to me. This video set a lightbulb off in my head, which is that I was thinking about this in a completely wrong way. The people interviewed seem to describe a much more concrete way of thinking about gender and their own sense of self.
But don’t kids change their minds? Isn’t that supposed to happen. ? Kids think stuff… think that’s how it is… and will always be… then as they grow… experience the world… they change. ??
Didn’t we all go through that?
You’re talking to kids who will swear by a narrative of their in group. It’s what kids do. It’s how they other themselves from parents etc.
It used to be punk and goth and mods and beatniks etc.
Good grief. I would say “freak show” except that I have some small measure of sympathy for people who are so obviously deluded. It’s a cult, and people in cults are unreachable by reason and logic and evidence.
What I don’t have sympathy for is the entire bonkers ideology and those who promote it. Every therapist and physician out there who colludes in this ideology is guilty of medical malpractice and deserves to be sued into oblivion. And lose their license.
These are respectful, thoughtful interviews, and it makes them a powerful record.
Thanks, that was our goal!
I agree- beautifully done!
Why put a prosthetic on an amputee? Because it is helping a physical problem, not a mental one. Cutting off or changing healthy body parts due to a mental delusion is not helping, it is harming.
His example is such a backward way of looking at this. Amputees get prosthetics not because they IDENTIFY as an amputee but because they are. Give a fully intact human a prosthetic leg simply because they identify as an amputee is ridiculous.
Does an amputee identify as wholly intact (not longer an amputee) once they get a prosthetic? Do we remove functional limbs simply because it’s kind to affirm the identity of those who identify as amputees but are physically aren’t?
Cassandra nails their world framing here.
Post modernism allows them to obscure the difference between sickness and health, function and dysfunction.
These comments are really clueless. I have concerns about kids transitioning, but gender dysphoria is real, and treatments help people be happier. You don’t have to buy into gender ideologies to be compassionate to people who are suffering in these ways.
Suffering can be real and gender can be a way of expressing or locating your generalized pain, discomfort or isolation. Just like cutting or anorexia was the expression of previous cohorts’ unhappiness.
I agree. People, and especially children, that are considering transitioning should be screened for other conditions that could be the true underlying problems--see the Cass Report.
Per the Cass review, "treatments" for gender dysphoria are not medically appropriate, as there is no way to accurately determine if a child was, as they say, born in the wrong body. The entire field of pediatric gender medicine should be considered experimental and conducted as such through clinical trials with all of the oversight they entail.
The mistake is that people and especially adolescents are fickle and apt to change their mind. T may make a young person feel "happier" in the moment, but may feel entirely differently 18 months down the line after permanent changes have occurred.
"I've been objectified a number of times because of my boobs so I want to rip them off and I'm getting top surgery in a couple of weeks."
My god. So it is now progressive and the kind thing to do to tell women who have been objectified to dissociate from their bodies and cut off their breasts to stop the objectification?
And the autistic woman: "I felt like I was failing at being a girl because of my autism" so she cuts off her breasts and starts synthetic hormones that will cause serious longterm health effects and the kind, progressive, non-ableist thing to do is say, "yes you are right. You did fail as a girl. Because there is only one right way to be a girl and autistic isn't one of them."
These sound like ideological criticisms from the gender critical community that you would be skeptical that's really the case because certainly no doctor, therapist, or progressive would approve of this and no trans person would admit to such regressive and self-hating reasons, but here it is coming out of the mouths of the trans people themselves, confirming all of it.
**And please note that all of my anger, criticism, and judgement are aimed at the people who told these young women these messages, NOT the young women referenced in my comment. I feel deep compassion and concern for them being told to believe these things about themselves
In conservative Christian communities women are told they must dress "modestly" so as not to "distract" men or "tempt" them with impure thoughts and we rightly call that out for the sexism it is. Here the women are encouraged not just to cover up but to literally cut off the "tempting" parts and it's celebrated and called progress.
I have noticed, anecdotally, that a lot of ftm trans people are from conservative Christian backgrounds.
Is it sexist though? Men who would show as much skin as women try to sometimes would get similar feedback I imagine.
The reality is that the way that we dress can be excessively distracting in professional or school contexts. That’s why we have dress codes, for both sexes.
Trying to morally equate reasonable dress codes to something like requiring veils or head covering or burqas is ridiculous.
It can be simultaneously true that
1) Women get an unfair amount of scrutiny on their style of dress in some contexts, and
2) Women are more likely than men to try to push the boundaries of what is considered appropriate dress in some contexts.
So sad. Many of the answers reveal how they internalized gender stereotypes. What used to be a last resort treatment to alleviate deep gender dysphoria has fully grown into a consumer industry like cosmetic surgery.
Not like cosmetic surgery—it is cosmetic surgery which our bizarro world has allowed them to elevate to a human right.
As someone who delved heavily into this topic by reading the research, attending gender conferences, listening to hours of videos pro and con transition, seeing the horrible health side effect, and tracking all of the extremist politics around it, the thing that’s really soured me on trans the most is the narrative of gender dysphoric people themselves. It just all reflects mental and physical unwellness, as this video clearly demonstrates. No, these people should not be allowed to go into elementary schools to do gender trainings any more than someone who is sticking their finger down their throat to control their weight should.
Mental illness should not be shepherded towards being trendy. At that point it’s just sadistic abuse and neglect.
That’s exactly my argument. The ‘advocates’ are the abusers.
This made me feel so sad. That poor autistic woman. Really drives home how lost this movement is. I also was so interested to note that the only person who seemed “true trans” (holding the sign) just seemed calmer, more confident, and, tellingly, she was clear that a child should wait until post puberty (14 or 16) at least, to transition.
Wow! That was a lot for 7:30 in the morning. Excellent job guys. I'm not sure what kind of future those young people have but I don't think it will include critical thinking anytime soon. And it is sad, I hope they find what they are looking for.
What a powerful and sad watch. Mostly I see young victims of a society that's failed to provide them with models for what a healthy gender non-conforming adulthood can look like, adrift on a sea of poor quality information and wishful thinking.
I can imagine someone inclined to be critical of your reporting accusing you and Ben of cherry picking the most extreme examples for your video. What would your response to that be?
We were specifically interested in people visibly invested in "challenging the gender binary." The only two such subjects we didn't include were a cis gay guy who didn't have a particularly interesting point of view and a trans-identifying person we recorded on a muted mic 🫠
Thank you for adding this context! That's so interesting that they perceived themselves as "challenging the gender binary" because it came across to me as young people rigidly holding onto and controlled by the gender binary. I wonder if it's a generational or philosophical difference in how they define "challenging" or the "gender binary?"
Ben, Is it the "gender binary"? Because what is binary is sex..........(only sperm and egg, etc.)
Yes, what the other Ben said. We weren’t looking to cover the cross section of LGBTQ people, but wanted to talk to people who challenged the gender binary.
We have a massive psychological crisis underway, and insane people are affirming and celebrating it, like someone walking into a raging fire and claiming its just a little toasty.
Maybe we need some sort of time out room for the victims and their virtue signalling rescuers alike.
Transgender does not exist it is an invented term for an invented genre.
Reinforcing it only does humanity a great disservice.
It is indeed an invented genre and furthermore the greatest medical scandal of our time. I hope every therapist and physician who has “affirmed” this insanity is sued into oblivion.
Natural selection, bruv.
Darwin didn’t say it’d be pretty, he said it’d be final.
Keep talkin’ wild — nature’s got receipts.
Meh, Occam tears them up...as fast as they can be printed
The little things, like it’s irreversible or damaging to their youth.
That is telling. Seriously naive.
Sadness personified.
We’ll see how little those things are, when time passes and the joyful-right-on affirmation brigade stop cheering from the sidelines.
I was introduced to Ben K's reporting at TheFP, and was wondering what he's been up to since I haven't seen him pop up there lately. Great to see him collab with Ben R!
I don't prescribe cigarettes to patients.
It really struck me as odd that person chose to use cigarettes and alcohol as a defense against the concerns about the side effects of blockers and hormones.
Thanks for making and sharing. I’ve always struggled to understand the internal processes and sense of self of people who identify as non-binary or genderfluid because those concepts and experiences, as I understood them, felt so foreign to me. This video set a lightbulb off in my head, which is that I was thinking about this in a completely wrong way. The people interviewed seem to describe a much more concrete way of thinking about gender and their own sense of self.
But don’t kids change their minds? Isn’t that supposed to happen. ? Kids think stuff… think that’s how it is… and will always be… then as they grow… experience the world… they change. ??
Didn’t we all go through that?
You’re talking to kids who will swear by a narrative of their in group. It’s what kids do. It’s how they other themselves from parents etc.
It used to be punk and goth and mods and beatniks etc.
You can walk those back if you choose.
But not this. This, you live with.
Just different than all of you who have made judgemental comments.
Good grief. I would say “freak show” except that I have some small measure of sympathy for people who are so obviously deluded. It’s a cult, and people in cults are unreachable by reason and logic and evidence.
What I don’t have sympathy for is the entire bonkers ideology and those who promote it. Every therapist and physician out there who colludes in this ideology is guilty of medical malpractice and deserves to be sued into oblivion. And lose their license.