Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters." – Interview with Author Abigail Shrier

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

There was a sudden and severe spike in teenage girls identifying as trans during the 2010s. The thing is…today, young girls are easily getting their hands on body altering hormones to begin transitioning genders despite having no history of gender dysphoria. So, why is no one stopping them?Alex Clark sits down with Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” to get to the bottom of the phenomenon behind gender dysphoria. Alex asks Abigail the...

How many trans people did you go to school with? Zero, four, seven. When you were in school, had you ever even heard the word transgender before or was it a common daily topic? If you did know people who identified as trans in school, were they mostly girls identifying as boys or boys identifying as girls? Now, I'm a young millennial. I graduated from high school in 2011 and I didn't know anyone that identified as transgender. The main topic of conversation in media as I was growing up wasn't trans issues for teen girls, but eating disorders.

Almost every movie or TV show that was targeting teens in the early to mid-2000s had a storyline tackling anorexia or body dysmorphia. And because my career has always required me to be hyper aware of pop culture trends and stuff like that, I started noticing a few years ago how slowly everything started to start. turning to this topic of transgender when it came to young girls. And I thought it was just going to be a fad, but obviously it's gotten louder and louder and is now one of the main topics among activists. We went from girls being uber feminist and proud to be a woman to girls hating everything about their femininity and getting their breasts removed before they're even 20 years old. And so

I wanted to understand what change. I wanted to know what was causing what seemed to be a social phenomenon, and yet the adults in the room were silent. Parents were giving teen daughters damaging hormones that would permanently alter their bodies. Healthcare professionals seem to almost be encouraging these transitions, and in some cases, before these girls can even drive. And as we know, schools in America seem to be purposefully putting the idea in kids' heads as young as kindergarten. So I started doing some research, okay? We know that I like the true crime mystery stuff. And I thought, this is something that needs solving.

And there was one name that kept popping up as someone who was truly on the front lines trying to figure this out. Someone who had done extensive investigations into the sudden influx of teen girls wanting to transition into being boys and why it was happening. And even more interesting was this person was, journalist for the Wall Street Journal who decided to write a book about her discoveries. And yet, Amazon, Target, and other major companies were trying to pull her book off shelves and hide it in search algorithms to prevent people from reading it. The journalist and author is Abigail Shrier.

The book is Irreversible Damage, the transgender craze seducing our daughters. And she is my guest this week on the spillover. I have so many questions for her from, you know, why this is happening to how these girls are getting the drugs, how easy it is to transition and what parents can do to fight back against this dangerous, woke gender ideology being taught in schools. And if you've thought of the question, I can almost guarantee I ask it in this interview. I'm Alex Clark, and we're talking to Abigail Schreier next on the spillover. All right, welcome back. I am with Abigail Shreyer, journalist and author of Irreversible Damage, the transgender craze seducing our daughters. And Abigail, conservatives know that I have been talking about your book for over a year now.

And I think what really clicked for me as a millennial is that in Irreversible Damage, you talk about how pre-2010 the social phenomenon plaguing Teen Girls was really eating disorders. But then once the 2010s hit, you said that there was a huge change. Something had shifted. So can you explain what that change was? Sure. All of a sudden we were seeing an incredible spike in teenage girls deciding they were transgender. And it was out of nowhere.

This was a surprising thing. See, gender dysphoria, which is the underlying condition of severe discomfort in one's biological sex, that goes back 100 years. And it always began in early childhood. This is not something we don't know about. We've been able to study it for over 100 years now. It always began in early childhood and it was overwhelmingly male. But in the 2010s, as you said, out of nowhere, teenage girls with no childhood history of gender dysphoria were deciding they were transgender.

And what was more is they were doing it within friend groups, whole friend groups, over 50% of them would suddenly decide they were all trans or non-binary or some other gender identity. So the question was why? And so you kind of go into that in your book. I'm like, I don't want to give too much away because I want people to actually read it. But one thing that I thought was interesting is that the families that you interview in Irreversible Damage, you talk about how none of them were conservative, right? These were all liberal, pro-LGB families, but they just were very insistent that their daughters were not actually transgender, right? That's right. Overwhelmingly, the parents who have called me, and at this point I've probably talked to over a thousand, but overwhelmingly the parents who call me are political.

progressive. They are people who very much supported gay rights and gay marriage long before it was legal in this country. And they just, you know, didn't see this coming. And I think they weren't necessarily skeptical of when their kids joined the Gay Straight Alliance at school, they thought, okay, we're allies. We support that. And they didn't realize what the GSA had really become and what the teachers in school were really doing. And they were really indoctrinating an entire generation. And the idea that only they know their true gender and they might be a boy or they might be something else. And so who do you think is actually failing to understand these girls more? Is it the right or the left? I really think both. And I'll tell you why. The way conservatives talk about this issue, I think, is sometimes

very unhelpful. They accuse all parents who go along with this with being child abusers. They talk about transgenderism. To this day, I have no idea what transgenderism really is. But the problem is these parents, they weren't, you know, by and large, they were not child abusers. They just trusted the family pediatrician. They trusted the teacher. They trusted the therapist. And they were a little naive, but they weren't looking to harm their daughters. They thought being an ally was a good thing.

And in other circumstances, you know, you could say that it is. The problem is, is that really what it was was a space, a parent-free zone in which they could bring in trans-accharacterial. activists and indoctrinate the children. And that's what happened over and over. Activists were teaching the teachers. They were instructing the teachers in this extremist ideology. And they were going in, starting in kindergarten, teaching these kids that only they know their true gender.

They were telling them not to trust their parents. And they were keeping this a secret from the parents. And lo and behold, it became very popular in schools. And more and more teenagers decided they were transgender. First, they would say they were a lesbian. And parents would say, okay, I can support that. And what they didn't realize was this was just it became a first step and a really radical process of now I want testosterone. Now I want my breasts removed.

Right. And you brought up the child abuse issue. And so I guess what should parents and adults say to a minor who is threatening suicide? They're saying, well, I'm struggling with depression. I'm struggling with these suicidal thoughts if they don't let them transition. And so, you know, we hear a lot about empathy, especially. from those on the left, you know, this is a conservative show. And so we always hear this, well, you need to be empathetic. But I guess my question is, what is the true empathetic thing to do

when it comes to these struggling kids? Like what you're saying, parents freeze in that moment. Well, what do I do? Do I let them transition even though I know they're not trans? I'm scared. My kid's going to hurt themselves. Right. So here's the thing. A lot of therapists have outright lied to parents and doctors as well. And way overblowing the risk of suicide if you don't transition your child. Okay. So these parents were lied to. Many of them were. And I would say number one, always take a suicide threat seriously. Okay. That must always be taken seriously. There's no question. But we actually have no good evidence to show that any kind of transition improves the mental health of these children. So they are rushing them to radical and experimental and dangerous

treatment with no good evidence that this will even improve their mental health problems. And in many, many cases it doesn't improve it at all. That's why other countries are now cutting back on all these treatments. Only the United States is full steam ahead. And how easy is it actually for these kids to go through a medical transition? I mean, do they just, you know, show up and it's, I mean, how easy can they even get hormones? Very easily. So the age of medical consent depends, varies by state. In Oregon, it is 15. In Washington State, you can get mental health services, which may include gender dysphoria, which does include gender dysphoria at age 13. Kids are getting empowered to make these decisions, these life-altering decisions younger and younger.

They are ordering testosterone over the internet. They are low-dosing tea in middle school and high school. They have no idea how dangerous these medications are. And frankly, our medical establishment has completely whitewashed how dangerous they are because they're afraid of their own activists. Right. And so what happens to the doctors that actually are brave and enough to speak out and say, I don't think that this is right. I think we're jumping to conclusions with some of these kids, giving them life-altering medicines. They don't even know what they're getting into. What happens to them once they say something? Well, I talked to one yesterday who was fired, well-known psychiatrist who was fired. Several doctors have been in Canada,

the world expert in gender dysphoria, Ken Zucker, was fired. Again, totally activist-led. This was a, this man literally wrote the definition of gender dysphoria for the psychiatric. manual. He oversaw it. He had been treating kids successfully with, with, you know, therapy that explored the whole child did not focus on gender only. And he was treating these kids successfully. Most of them were outgrowing it. Even the ones who had real gender dysphoria. I don't think that most of these teenage girls do have real gender dysphoria. But he was treating real cases and he was treating them successfully. Nonetheless, he was fired because activists demanded it. And that's what we're seeing across the board that good doctors are being silenced they're really afraid of losing their

jobs and i you know speaking of just medical care i saw you tweet something about planned parenthood saying that they were the top one of the top providers of testosterone in the country and then did they delete that statement off their website or something what happened with that yeah i think alex desantis over at um on the federalist report yeah i don't remember which outlet she reported on that they had, after I had tweet, after I had written that article, apparently they deleted that. They don't want everyone to know they're making all their money with testosterone today, but they are. They're making a tremendous amount of money with testosterone. And, you know, we know that teenage girls are having sex at much lower rates.

They're getting pregnant at much lower rates, but they are really keen on testosterone. And Planned Parenthood can't wait to provide it. And what my article was about was an ex-employee of Planned Parenthood had contacted me or I had reached out to her. because she had posted about privately on social media. And I reached out to her, I was able to get in touch with her and verify that she had worked at Planned Parenthood. And she said girls were coming in in groups of friends giggling in the waiting room to get testosterone.

This is not what gender dysphoria looks like. If you talk to any older, what we used to call transsexuals, they weren't doing this because of pure approval. They were doing this because of, you know, real genuine dysphoria. But what's going on today is very, very different. And what is the health care experience of the people, the professionals at Planned Parenthood that are administering these hormones? Well, sometimes there's no doctor on site. They do a quick check list. They do some blood work. And then you're off and running. You get your testosterone that day. The whole appointment can be an hour long and you can walk out the same day with testosterone. You know, there are clinics now. There are some, apparently, you know, people have said there are as many as 300 gender, pediatric gender clinics in the country now up from two a decade ago. And, you know, I can tell you that,

you know, depending on the state, you don't even need parental approval and you almost never need a therapist note to begin hormone therapy. So it's given out very easily. And it has the permanent lasting and very negative effects. I get DMs a lot from parents saying, you know, well, this gender stuff in schools is only happening in places like L.A. and New York. This would never happen in my, you know, small town public school. What is the reality? Are private schools and public schools actually safe from this kind of ideology or not? No, no, no, this is happening all over. This is certainly happening all over. Kaiser gives it out. Planned Parenthood gives it out. I mean, these, you know, medical institutions are all over the country. But also it's absolutely

in the private schools. The first time you get a woke teacher and the woke teachers are everywhere, they start creating what they call a safe space. But what they really mean is an unmonitored space where we shut out the parents and even lie to them and don't tell them we're indoctrinating the children in these extremist ideologies. And that's what they proceed to do. So if that's happening, I mean, what are parents supposed to do? What rights do they have if they find out that a school or a teacher has been keeping info about their child from them. Actually, we don't have enough rights on this. Even schools are deliberately avoiding FERPA. That's a federal privacy act that entitles them to children's educational records.

They're getting around this by keeping the gender identity that they have helped the child realize. They're keeping that secret. The child can go by a new name and gender for an entire year without the parents knowing it. I know because I've talked to the parents and I've seen the documents. And they just keep this record separate from the school's other educational records. So it's not subject to FERPA.

We really need federal legislation to give parents the rights to see every document that has to do with their child. I just don't understand what is there, you know, what does the health care industry, what do these schools, what do all these media institutions, Hollywood, what does everyone gain from pushing this ideology on kids?

What is the purpose of trying to get these kids hormones and, you know, helping them transition genders? Well, start with the, all right, so let's, I can answer that a few ways. Start with the name and gender markers. So you say, why would you call a kid by a new name and gender? You know the parents are eventually going to find out. Yes, but it buys them time because when a child has been identifying as, you know, Jimmy, they'd actually don't use that. They choose a cooler name like Blake. Right.

When they've been going by Blake for a year and, you know, hanging out and identifying as a boy, it actually is really hard to get them out of it. They go through a certain kind of programming or indoctrination. What do they get by putting them on hormones? They're really creating chaos in the population. And we see this in so many ways. Just like critical race theory turns children against each other, turns children against their white parents sometimes. You have, you know, African American children turn.

against their white parents or being told that their parents are privileged and don't understand them. We're doing the same thing with gender. We're teaching kids to hate their bodies, hate themselves, and hate the cis or non-trans world, non-queer world. So it's just, it's dividing and conquering from a political perspective. So. Yeah, they teach the kids that parents are unsafe. Right.

Do you think that a lot of these kids that are being told that they are struggling with, you know, transitioning and that. that they're actually transgender? Do you think they're being misdiagnosed, that they're actually struggling with something else? Yes. So I think a lot of these girls who say they have gender dysphoria. They have, you know,

what we used to call borderline personality disorder. They have a lot of pain. There's no question. They're online. It makes them miserable. They see violent porn at very young ages. They are scared of sex. They are extremely awkward around each other.

They don't spend enough time online. And their mom, you know, They're only with mom online. They don't have a real separate identity. And so they go online and online, there's, you know, all these coaches available to help them find this new exciting, you know, trans or non-binary identity. And then there's so many doctors who are so excited to profit off this confusion. Yeah, that reminds me of the glitter family that you wrote about. There was a kid looking to transition and didn't somebody online tell them like, oh, well, you know, your parents don't support you.

That's okay. Some stranger on the internet. So we'll be your glitter family. Yeah, that's right. That's what they do. And look, the number of lies that are told by the activists is what makes this hard because they just come up with another lie. So, for instance, they claim that they are curing these people.

You know, these doctors are abiding a Hippocratic oath. Of course they are. They're just helping someone, you know, go from one gender to the other. Well, they're now starting with nullification surgeries in San Francisco to eliminate both sex characteristics. So they'll give you what the appearance of basically a doll, no genitalia. That's the newest surgery. So they're no longer even taking you from male to female. They're taking you from male or female to nine.

But why do all these activists not want us to procreate? Because I would feel like they want to create activists who will give birth to more activists. Isn't that like grow their voter base? So I don't understand making it so nobody can have any babies. Right. I don't know that the primary goal is to stop fertility so much as it is to cause chaos. But revolutionaries have always sought out other people's children. They've always targeted other people's children.

Every extremist movement does. And this is just another extremist movement that's really looking for recruits among other people's children. Do you feel like kids who have endured significant childhood trauma? Do you think that they're more likely to kind of dabble in different? sexual identities or gender identities? You know, conservatives specifically tend to ask me that. And I will tell you that from my, the parents I have talked to, the answer is no. Interesting.

The girls who went through this. Now, I'm talking about the girls who were, you know, sudden onset gender dysphoria. These girls generally came from two parent families. They tended to be politically progressive, but they were white and up middle to upper middle class girls. The same girls who fell for anorexia. and really fall into a lot of these hysterias. And they were girls who were going off to school

and they were hearing nothing good about being a white girl. There's nothing girl about being a privileged white girl. So they very much wanted to fit in. They very much were socially awkward. They were often very bright girls. But they didn't fit in. And they really wanted to stop being berated, I think, for being such a, you know, rotten identity that they were walking around with.

Yeah. Can you touch on the pervasiveness of non- binary and why some girls might prefer to be non-binary instead of identifying as transgender. I think a lot of people don't understand that, like, you know, explain the differences and why they might prefer one or the other. Sure. So I'm happy to do that, but I just want you to say this is all gobbledygook, meaning there's no such thing as non-binary.

Right. It's a completely made up social media designation. But what is it? Because they just proliferate. If you, you know, point out the inconsistencies of that, they say, oh, oh, now we've got a new thing. It's just a hydra's head. It goes on.

We see it every day. It's on TikTok trends. Right. So they'll just come up with a new one. But for right now, non-binary, the non-bary, they say is neither gender or somewhere in between. But the truth of it. So these young women tend not to go on, they tend to not go on testosterone, but they do get

the double mastectomy. They want this in-between look and experience. But here's the thing to know about them is that the entire phenomenon, these girls aren't looking to be men. They're not really. They just want to escape womanhood. And that's why they don't do the characteristic things men tend to do. They're not out hitting on women. They're not lifting weights generally. If they get tattoos, they're very girly tattoos. Sometimes they wear makeup or nail polish. They're not really trying to pass as men. So they don't really have what traditionally looks like gender dysphoria. See, I hear that and I think, you know,

doesn't that speak to us as a whole in society and culture for so many decades, you know, the feminist movement and stuff telling women like we need to be more like men. You know, women aren't good enough. That's like, you know, it's not okay to have normal feminine traits and different, you know, feelings and wants and needs and everything. You need to be more like men. And I wonder if that kind of contributes to that feeling of just I just want to be anything but a woman. Absolutely.

I think it does. I think that we all bought into these ideas, you know, feminists, but other people too bought into the ideas that, you know, wow, if there's a pay gap, the men must have them better life. Yeah. You know, why aren't there enough female CEOs? We all should want to be a CEO. Well, you know, obviously these, you know, I point out in the book, CEOs often live pretty immoderate bad lives. I mean, they have, you know, their families fall apart. There's high rates of divorce.

A lot of women very sensibly don't want that life. And for whatever reason, we've insisted on telling our daughters, actually, we should, you should want that life. If you don't want to be a boy, if you don't want the things that young men want, there's something wrong with you. Wow. Yeah. And how often are these girls then growing into their early adult years and saying, oh, my gosh, I feel like I've just made a grave mistake? So we're seeing that more and more. The numbers of detransitioners coming out every day saying this was a mistake.

I talked to a man where it ended tragically, you know, just the other day of father. But, you know, more and more women are expressing regret online about this. And they are coming out. They are fortunately being, you know, are able to post some YouTube videos and go on Reddit and share their experiences. But they write letters to the New York Times that don't get published. And they, you know, write letters. they want to go on and they don't appear on the mainstream media because they won't have them on. But they do.

They went through. They really regret their experience and think that they transitioned for the wrong reasons. That is so unbelievably heartbreaking. I mean, it also reminds me of just, you know, when you had like the Jeffrey Epstein case come out, news organizations saying, oh, this doesn't fit our agenda or we want to protect people involved. We don't want to call certain friends out. So we're just going to bury the story. I can't believe that they're getting letters and different things of kids trying to talk to them about this or young adults saying, I made a mistake.

People need to know. And they're not even letting them share their story. I haven't heard that before. I mean, what is Generation Alpha? So I believe that's what the generation after Gen Z is going to be called. What does that generation look like with so many of their parents then will have struggled with gender identity? Yeah, it's interesting. So I think, right.

So some of the alpha, they're going to be the kids of generally millennials. So the generation after that is actually because it is going to be. And what will they be like? I don't know. I mean, you know, obviously the rates of marriage have gone way down. Sex has gone way down. I mean, this is a, we know that Gen Z is a quite unhappy generation. And I just want to say that's why I wrote the book.

if these young people were changing their identities, changing their bodies, but they were so happy and they were forming families and they were thriving. I might say, okay, that's not my choice, but they're happy. I'm not going to write this book. I wrote the book because they're so miserable. They go through these transitions and they're not a happy group. Yeah. Do you feel like the process of writing irreversible damage changed your mind at all on the left or the right or both?

It did. It changed it a lot. I no longer saw our political fights in terms of left and right. I actually no longer care so much about those divisions. It doesn't mean I don't care about those issues. But I now today regard the most important political fault line as conservatives and liberals against the woke. And to me, that's the most important thing because they don't respect due process, equal protection, religious liberty, free speech. and if we lose those things, we lose everything.

So I just don't care anymore enough about the looming debt crisis because I think we're just, we just can't worry about that when our kids are coming to such harm. I agree. Culture is, I think, the most important thing right now that we're facing. And I know that you had a close friend react negatively to irreversible damage after you wrote it. You talked about that in the book. So what advice do you have for? young women who are going through the same or similar disapproval from their friends for their beliefs?

We just say that more people than you could ever know would agree with you. I mean, I have made so many friends through this process. The number of people who have reached out to me has been astonishing. And it's been across the political aisle. I mean, I never expected that many people on the left. Even the hard left would reach out and say, listen, you know, obviously you and I are not going to agree on a lot of things, but I think what's going on with our kids is crazy. And I just say, like, you know, you may lose some friends that that's fine, but you'll, you'll, gosh, you'll learn, you'll win a lot of

friends. And people will respect you for having integrity. And integrity is so rare today. And it's so important. That's what I tell them do. I'm like, okay, yes, I did lose a few friends, you know, whenever I started working for Turning Point USA and I started really posting about my conservative beliefs. There were definitely girls that I was their bridesmaid, you know, one of their bridesmaids in their wedding and stuff that never spoke to me again. But I was like, I have gained so many more close friends that I will have for life, you know, through just being like, this is what I believe, standing strong in that. And so you will gain more people. So I think that's great. And you have said at times how, you know, writing this book was so emotionally taxing to write just because you were

hearing firsthand from girls who regretted their transition like we talked about. Now they're faced with lasting medical repercussions. Some of them, you know, finding out, oh, I'm not even able to have children, which is my worst nightmare. And so because of how hard it was to write this book, I was wondering if you were planning on writing any more investigative books, maybe surrounding this issue, this topic, or if there's any other social issues that you're interested in investigating. I am. I'm very interested in I'm returning to Gen Z and figuring out more about, you know, why they're in so much pain and why the way that we've raised them seems to have hurt them, even though we tried to raise them to be the most psychologically healthy and happy generation,

and we ended up producing the least happy, most psychologically frail generation of Americans. So most radical, most frail. So I'm really interested in exploring that again. But I would just say to all your younger listeners, you know, the hardest people to talk to were actually not the detransitioners who have gained a lot of wisdom, despite going through something very hard. It's actually the parents. And you've never heard torment like a parent who's watching their child hurt themselves

and is completely powerless to stop them. Yeah. And just go hug your mom. Absolutely. And, you know, one other thing, too, is even the rap music, Abigail, is sad for Gen Z. Even hip-hop, which is supposed to be the most lively fun. Like, it's even sad. So I know exactly what you're talking about.

everything is depression and anxiety, sad, sad, sad, everything, I think, which is definitely an interesting trend. And that's kind of a stereotype I feel like of Gen Z, you know, millennials, I'm a millennial. So we have a stereotype of not wanting to work hard for things. We just want everything given to us. And I think that Gen Z is definitely the sad generation. And I also wonder how, you know, the pandemic and those types of things is going to affect them and how they grow into adults and parent and stuff too. Right. Exactly. I mean, Millennials are a happy generation. They are confident.

They're happy. They believe they can change the world. They've tested this. Gene Twenge has done this research. Gen Z is the opposite. They believe they are powerless to change anything. They don't want to become entrepreneurs. They just want to be given rules.

They just want to wear their masks indoors. They are a sad crew. And gosh, they need a lot of help. Yeah. So what are a couple quick action steps? I don't know, three, five steps or something that a parent can take if they see. this type of ideology being taught in their children's schools or if they're a student. If it's somebody that is a current high school college student and they're like, I do not like what I'm

seeing on campus. What can people do to fight back on this? Okay, so a few things. If you're a parent, get your kids out of that school. You can't trust the school if they're indoctrinating the children. Should they be homeschooling? Is that the best option? It might be. I have my kids in a religious school that doesn't truck with this kind of stuff, but I would just say, you got to get their kids. It's like dropping your kids off to the moonies. I mean, you can't send your kid to a cult

and the woke cult of many of these schools. You just can't trust them with your kids. Yeah. They keep secrets from parents actively, and I've reported on that. If you're talking about yourself, here's what I would say. I don't think you have to pick needless fights,

but I also don't ever believe it. And look, if you're in school, get yourself through school. I don't want you to jeopardize your, your grades or your future or anything like that. But then you get to be an adult. You're out in the real world. And I have to say, you don't lie.

Don't engage in other people's lies. Don't repeat them. And what I mean by that is you don't have to go around announcing your pronouns if you think that's ridiculous. Other people are free to use theirs. And if they want you to use their pronouns, I don't see any problem doing that. But you don't have to start, you know, reciting the prayers of the woke church if you don't believe in it. And don't worry about what non-binary is. You don't have to master it.

It will change tomorrow. That's so true. The goalpost move every day. Right. And I actually think conservatives spend way, way too much time trying to, you know, master the woke ideology, which is designed to trap them. Actually, Abigail, will you tell us really quick before we go, we're almost finished here. I am curious. So you don't identify as a conservative. Do you, I consider yourself to be more of a classical liberal. Would that be accurate? I mean, I tend to think of myself as a conservative. I just no longer speak about things the way many conservatives do. Okay, yeah. And my issues are not what most conservatives are. So what is the number one piece of advice that when it comes to, you said saying transgenderism is not accurate.

You said, I don't even know what that is. So when it comes to talking about this topic, I should say, what is the best piece of advice for conservative? what should we be doing different? I think instead of regarding this as, you know, a coherent set of ideals, which it's not, it's not coherent. Just speak about the rights that you or the issue that you have in front of you. So if you're talking about sex-based rights, say that. Okay. If you're talking about biological boys in girls' sports, biological men in women's prisons,

say that. You don't have to master their ideology. It's designed to trap you. And as in terms of consistency, conspiracy theories of where's the money going through and, you know, coming from and where's the, what's the goal? I don't think they have one goal. So I think you're going to come up short if you try to pin up, pin them with a goal that they don't, you know, they don't consistently have. They just shift it. That's right. Abigail, thank you so much. And I'm going to go ahead and plug your Twitter for you because you're one of my favorite people that I follow. So cute servatives, you can find her at Abigail Shrier. But also very quick, explain what substack is and how. to find your substack?

Sure. Substack is my newsletter. So I now write mostly on substack. And it's Abigail Shriar. substack.com, S-U-B-S-T-A-C-K. And that's just my newsletter. It's called The Truth Fairy.

Abigail, thank you so much for coming on. I just want you to know that you are, to me, the epitome of what bravery is. And I look up to you so much. And it is such an honor to get to talk to you on the spillover. Thank you so much. You're too kind. I really appreciate it.

Can we just. sit and bask for a moment in Abigail's fearlessness? You know that woman is a bounty on her head from the woke mob because she is one of the only people out there willing to expose this stuff. Now, one thing that may or may not be a little weird about me is that I love books about parenting. I've read bringing up BB about French parenting, battle him of the tiger mother about Chinese parenting. I just finished wild and free a few weeks ago, which is all about homeschooling. And here's the thing. I don't know. kids. I'm not even married yet. Now, God willing, I will be one day, hopefully sooner rather than

the later, but I'm on his timing. And I am fascinated by parenting books and just reading articles about the best ways to get your baby to sleep or teen girls claiming their transgender without displaying any signs of gender dysphoria because I want to be prepared. I don't want to do a late night cram session on the last day of my pregnancy one day trying to soak up as much information as possible with minutes to spare. My baby's got one arm in, one arm out, and I'm trying to figure out what the best pacifier is. You know, I'm just trying to get as much information now as I can. And I'm using these single years of mine as a season of preparing and learning. I'm preparing my body by getting off of birth control, which I think is slow release poison,

and preparing myself mentally for kids by talking to and learning all about different parenting styles and cultural issues facing today's kids. And I know that most of what you learn in parenting comes with actually becoming a parent and just living life day by day. I know that there are some things that you can't just learn about in a book beforehand. But if it makes me weird to inquire about what's going on in public schools and mentally mapping out my plan on what I'd like to do with my future kids, then I guess I'm weird. Something very valuable that I've learned in my late 20s is as a Christian and as a conservative. We will always be weird. Being weird is a given. We will never fit in. We're not called to. We will be cultural rebels. People won't understand. They'll attack us just

like they are doing, you know, to Abigail Schreier. They'll call her transphobic and a bigot and every horrible name that you can think of. Why? Because she's not afraid to ask hard questions. Sound familiar? Nikki Minaj, anybody? So where do we go from here? Run, for school board. You don't have to have kids yet to do that. Ask hard questions. And most importantly, be weird and save your country. Every Friday, I ask the hard, thoughtful questions that you want to know on the spillover. And I cover a huge variety of topics in culture, ranging from pop culture to true crime. And all of it is from a conservative perspective. We are the cut servitive generation. Show them we're not going anywhere. Subscribe to the spillover on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

leave a five-star review, watch every episode on the Popplitics YouTube, and TPSA Live, and check out my daily show Poblitics where I cover pop culture without the propaganda on Instagram. See you next week. Same day, same time.

Love you, Mean it. Bye.