The Ben Mulroney Show - Teacher and Student Go Viral In Heated Exchange Over Gender

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes back Dr. Laura Targownik, a Professor of Medicine at U of T and co-host of Agree to Disagree About Gender. Laura helps unpack a viral video of a teacher arguing with a student over whether there are only two genders. YouTube: @AgreetoDisagreeAboutGender If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Standard messaging and data rates may apply. Well, I've shared before the story of the very first time when I was in high school, the very first time I can remember having what I viewed as an independent thought. Despite what my teachers were saying, I came up with something else and it ended up being a spirited debate between myself and my history teacher. It was a very formative moment for me because it sparked an interest in me that had never existed before an interest in history. I ended up pursuing that in university. And to this day, it's a passion of mine to read up on history and learn history and talk history.

So it was a really formative and defining moment in my life. and it was the first time I felt like I could, I had the confidence to push back on a teacher, push back on an authority figure. And I don't know where I would be today if I had not had that moment. I don't know what would have happened to my life. I'm sure something else would have sparked joy in me somewhere else,

but that's what happened to me. And I became the person I am in part because of that moment. And so with that in mind, I want you to hear a record, that occurred in a California high school where a teacher was arguing with a student. And the topic may be germane, it may not. But the topic was how many genders there. I want you to hear the teacher.

I want you to listen to the student. Tell me which one sounds like the authority figure and which one sounds like somebody who should go back to school. Adults? You said there's only two genders. You're saying I'm a bigger. And I said you're wrong. I guess I'm thinking of my argument. They said, no, there's only two gender.

So if you're going to act like you know what you're talking about, you better know what you're talking. So stop talking. Why are you going to say? Because you keep talking. I don't ask you a question. No, you didn't ask you a question. You told me I was wrong. No.

All right. We're going to play it down. See, if that had been me in that classroom talking history with my teacher, I don't know that I'd be sitting here today. the person I am. I think that would have snuffed out any intellectual curiosity I had. Now, I want to be very careful because, like I said, the issue of gender identity could be essential to this conversation. It might not be. And that's why I want to have a conversation with a guest I've had before. I'm very glad to have again, Dr. Lord Targovnik. She's an associate professor of medicine and also a trans woman in her 50s. Doctor, thank you. Welcome back to the show.

Yes, and thank you for mentioning my age. Oh, I apologize. I apologize. You know, you can blame, you can blame Danny Vaugh, my producer, who Danny is, is, and while that could be man, or when, it's a woman. Say, I blame Danny. Blame the lady producer. But no, but thank you for joining me. And like, so when I heard this, I was of two minds.

I was like, do I, do I go down the political rabbit hole and make it about the subject matter? Or do we talk about what's happening in our class? more generally, or is it naive to think those are two separate conversations? Yeah, so I think that's worth getting into because like yourself, you know, I value the role of intellectual debate. You know, I'm a, I'm a physician at a teaching hospital. I'm surrounded by medical trainees all the time. And a lot of the way that our trainees learn best is by asking good questions, and often controversial questions. And I really like it when one of my students comes to me and says, after I said something, said, hey, you know, I just read something different.

or I had a different experience because this is how I learn and how I stay sort of on top of my game. So I agree with you completely, Ben, that there's a lot of value, even as someone who's very senior in my field, to being questioned and particularly being questioned by students. And so, you know, we don't want to close the doors on intellectual debate. And I think also like yourself, I also value free speech, that there should be very few topics that are beyond, you know, beyond the pale when it comes to discussion. And so, you know, we have this issue of gender. And, you know, I want to bring it back to gender because there was a long time where

if you were a gender advocate, you would say there's absolutely no debate on this. If you brought this up, people would sort of stand up and say, hey, we don't talk about these kind of things. And it's now moved into a time where we are now feeling a little more open to talk about this. So when we talk, you know, I was just listening to this clip that you played. And, you know, we can always start off by saying, when you sound like the angry person, you know, it's going to put you in a bad spot. You know, anytime you, you know, the student definitely sounded like the composed person, the teacher sounded like they were kind of not really in control.

And anytime you sound not in control, you're kind of losing the battle to start. And doctor, if I could jump in, we've seen lots of these clips before. It's entirely possible because it's a clip that we all heard, but I don't know it's provenance. And for all I know, it's entirely possible that the student knew that this was an emotional thing for this teacher and somebody in a classroom, uh, record. it knowing that they were going to get this result. I don't know. But it does speak to a level of, of an emotional level that I don't know necessarily belongs

in any classroom on any topic. No, well, okay. Well, let's talk about that a little bit because we recognize gender is a contentious issue. There are some people who are going to be triggered by it. And at the same time, like, well, we want students to ask good questions. We also probably recognize there are certain kinds of questions that are beyond the pale. You know, so if that student had asked something like, I believe that, you know, that Jews have a disproportionate amount of power in the

finances and in politics, would we expect the teacher to be, oh, let's talk about that? Or if you said something, that was a straight fact, like, I believe the earth is flat. How much time do we want the teacher to give to those kind of statements? So we recognize, while we do want to have intellectual discussions around some topics, there are certain kind of things that we recognize are probably not appropriate for the classroom setting and the difficulty and the challenge here is the lines are shifting in terms of where we draw those lines. It's easy to pick out an example that we clearly wouldn't talk about. It's easy to pick on an example that is clearly open for discussion. And we have things that are

sitting right on the border. And I think gender is one of those things. Well, you know, I remember a few years ago, I think it was Brock University. It was in the, in the middle of the explosion of emotion on college campuses across Canada. I want to say it's Brock, but I could be wrong. I believe they were the first university to put forth a policy of institutional neutrality, meaning we're going to fly the Canadian flag and provincial flag and the municipal flag. That's it. No more flags. No more days of this. Because once you open that Pandora's box, everyone wants in on it. And so that's a long way of saying, you know, a really easy way to avoid, and I'm putting this out there for discussion with you. An easy way to avoid things like this

is to just not have them in the classroom, be it this, be it, current political events that are definitionally oppositional. And so the argument could be made, hey, this is a classroom where we should be having intellectual conversation, not digging in our heels over our personal politics. Yeah. So like once again, I agree in principle. We really want to foster an intelligent debate.

We really want people to be questioning authority. You know, these are good things to have. But like the question still comes down to, how do we decide what kind of topics are open for debate? And what kind of things are beyond the pale. And I've given you some examples of things that if you were the teacher in that class and someone had brought that, had brought that up to you, like, you know, saying that this race is better than that race? Or, you know, like, is this the kind of thing that should be open to discussion in the class? And we recognize over time these boundaries shift. There are some things that were clearly not up to debate, which are now getting open debate.

and I think our teachers sort of have to recognize that these are now issues that are open for debate and create a space of how we talk about these subjects while remaining respectful to the people in that class. Now, you're right, I don't know who is in that class. Maybe there were some transgender students. Maybe this teacher is known is transgender. Maybe this teacher has transgender people in their family.

And, you know, you have to sort of recognize, well, how do we talk about these things while framing this as a political issue and not a personal issue? And that's where it becomes very challenging. And framing it as a political issue that requires rigorous a rigorous educational conversation

in order for people to either find common cause or respect each other's positions. And I have a problem with a teacher telling anybody you're wrong. I get it in science, yes, in math, one plus one equals two. And if you say it's three, you are wrong. But on issues like this that we,

I think we have to have grace for kids and we've got to recognize that people you know, when they leave the school, they're going home to different values and different interpretations of X, Y, and Z. When we're going to take a quick break, Doctor, but when we come back, I'd like to expand this into sort of your domain a little more,

meaning the university campus. My kids are gearing up to go to university in a few years, fingers crossed. And if they do, I'd like to know what sort of world they're stepping into. Because I want to raise, I want to raise respectful contrarians. And I, from what I've seen,

from a distance, that concerns me a little bit. So let's continue this conversation when we come back. Dr. Laura is going to be sticking around, and we're so thankful for her time. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney Show. A few months ago, I saw a study of university students in the United States.

It said between 20 and 80%, this is a big swing of college students report hiding or altering their true opinions on campus, depending on whether the survey measures active self-censorship or frequent intentional conformity. In a lot of cases, going with the flow is the path of least resistance. And that flies in the face of sort of what I enjoyed in college, which was kind of being the outlier every now and then,

especially if it was in furtherance of fiery debate. And we were joined in our previous segment, so glad to have Dr. Laura Targovnik sticking around with us to talk about what happens in an edge of, educational environment when a topic is broached that can be deeply personal, deeply, it can be deeply emotional, and in a lot of cases, deeply political, that can stifle the notion of critical thinking and independent thought. Doctor, thank you for so much for sticking around. Yeah, thank you. You said, oh, please go on.

No, no, no, I thought that's your question, but go ahead. Well, I was going to, I want to go back to something you said off the top of the first segment, which was when you're in an educational setting in your department, you may have a student who will say, I disagree because I read something different. Now, again, context is key. And I have to believe that in your setting, when a student says that,

it's because they read a peer-reviewed paper or they read, they had an interesting conversation with fellow students who are all steeped in knowledge and a desire to learn. In a lot of cases, we're dealing with people who live in their own silos and listen to their own. echo chambers and get their news from TikTok. And that's unhelpful on on every level for both sides of any debate. Yeah. So, you know, there's this push and there is this push and pull with the

universities, which are, you know, universities are, are creations that are devoted to understanding the world, to sharing knowledge, to increasing what we know, and, and to finding the truth. You know, this is one of the fundamental missions of university. At the same time, we are serving a population that is diverse, that often comes in with their preconceived notions of with their own values. And those values might, and so there's often this push and pull between when we are in the process of seeking the truth, are we seeking a truth that might have negative effects on certain populations? And how do we talk about this in a respectful way without sort of discrediting people's opinions or without potentially opening up certain populations to harm?

And this is a, this is, it's often, it is often a delicate balance. And so part of the challenge for having universities is finding out, finding a way to have these conversations respectfully so that people who are from, let's say, marginalized groups or equity seeking groups, I don't feel threatened by these conversations when there is a chance that the pursuit of the truth might lead to discoveries that might ultimately undermine some of the things that certain populations hold dear. And this is an admitted challenge. Doctor, it feels to me, again, it's somebody who's just a third party observing it from a distance.

You know, years and years, we heard lines similar to, you know, the simple act of asking a question would make somebody feel threatened or would put them in harm's way. And I have to wonder what the impact of that line of thinking is on somebody who eventually becomes a teacher, who then comes face to. face with minds that are still in the process of being formed and ideas and there's still in the process of being formed inside those minds, where then if they say something that flies

in the face of what this person believes, that teacher believes, is a truth or their truth, they will feel attacked and they will feel in danger. I can understand the fight or flight response in that moment, but I don't know that it's necessarily reflective of the reality of the classroom. Yeah, it is, but like I'm saying, when that pursuit for the truth interacts with, let's say, identity. It creates a lot of challenges. Like consider a situation, let's say you were homosexual. A homosexual male, and someone sort of presented some data that showed or that suggested said,

I read a paper recently that suggested that children of homosexual parents have worse outcomes on some measure than children of heterosexual parents. I'm not saying that's true, but let's say someone read a paper, wanted to open this up for intellectual debate. And you can imagine if your child was gay and they were sitting in that class, or if you were gay and sitting in that class and you heard that conversation, you might feel some emotions around it. Now the question is, how are you supposed to balance this type of conversation of which the results might lead, like if you're trying to say, like this might lead eventually to a policy change that might say ban adoption for gay parents, how is that person supposed to, on one hand, say, okay, well, this is just an intellectual pursuit, no harm done here, versus, be very much asking this question might open up a conversation that might lead to a very bad outcome to people with my identity. At first blush, when I hear you say that, what I would say is like, I would say exactly that if I were the teacher.

And I would say, you know what? If you read that, I would like to see the paper. I would be careful about mentioning it as fact or positing it in a way that could do any harm to people in this room or outside this room. So how about this? let's make it let's make a deal we'll both read the paper we'll come back we'll talk about it in this classroom tomorrow but I'm not armed with the information that you seem to have so before we talk about it or before I make any judgment about you for bringing it up I would like to know what

it is that that's what that's my first instinct yeah so so that sounds that sounds like a good approach until that student goes home and talks to either their family let's say you know let's say it's a question of a religious or an ethnicity they talk to their family or they talk to their peer group and it's like, and you have these people who feel very strongly because, you know, if you're a member of a marginalized group of a group that's traditionally been on the lower end, you know, traditionally been discriminated against maybe times right or now, but people worry about that slipback of like people worry. People have genuine worries about do these conversations, will they have impacts on my freedoms, on my way that on my ability to live a life that makes me

feel respected. But, Doctor, is that the, and I'm asking you as somebody who's on these campuses, is that the actual case on college campuses because what I see is a place, the most progressive places you could possibly imagine in the Western world where, where, where I mean, I hear the stories of conservatives who have to pretend not to be conservative so they, so that they're not accused of being far right fascists. Sure. Yeah. And it's like I said, I, I don't, like I said, I'm not somebody's trying to close the door in an intellectual debate. And I sort of appreciate your, your approach of saying, like, we have to be thoughtful when we're bringing up contentious topics. And when we know, like, we're smart enough when we're in university to recognize when a conversation

is potentially going to be difficult for people in the room, when it is challenging core assumptions about people's identities, we have to be ready to say, how can we talk about this in respectful way so that people are going to engage with the data in the conversation and not take it as a personal threat? And you're right. If we were to look back at the last five years, a lot of these conversations were foreclosed because people were privileging identity over the pursuit of the truth. I think we are starting and it's slow and it's gradual. We are starting to see a pushback on this and having conversations about how to have these conversations just like you and I are having here today. And see, and I'm glad we're having this because I don't want ever, I don't want to

ever have a conversation where everything swings so far into the other direction that the, that the other side of that pendulum needs to dig in their heels in an even more polarizing position. I would rather us have the discussion right here in the middle and the pendulum swing and we figure out where it's going to land as opposed to as a reaction to somebody being angry over that clip that we are. I don't want to go that way. Yeah. And we are saying the pendulum is already in like some universities, states, particularly in more conservative areas in the states. We can look at places like Oklahoma and Texas

where they are banning, for instance, conversations around. gender identity or saying something like, you know, we have this conversation started on gender, that you cannot talk about anything trans at certain universities in Texas and Oklahoma. So it does go both ways. Yeah. You know, you know, you know, we're seeing a little bit of like the woke right, as it's often called, you know, sort of, you know, now that they have some power of exerting that power and saying, well, now these are the conversations we can have and these are the conversations we can't

have. And you know that inevitably that pendulum, those guys are going to do what they're going to do until they muck it up. And then the pendulum is going to swing the other way. and we're going to have a new series of victims and different mobs and different priorities. And it's just, I just, I just want my kids to be curious and not be afraid to explore their curiosity when it comes to debate inside a classroom. I don't think it's too much to ask. Doc, I wish we had more time.

I agree with you. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for taking time. I know that these can be dealt. I hope my questions weren't too dumb. But I think sometimes you guys are basic questions. No, no. These are part of conversations we have to have.

Well, I appreciate you very much. And please come back anytime. Oh, have me back anytime. Thank you, Ben.