The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - From Gay Rights to Gender Ideology: What Changed?

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Ben Kawaller. They discuss his podcast Strange Bedfellows, the evolution of the LGBT movement, gay marriage, Pride culture, trans politics, free speech, Andrew Sullivan and why some gay activists believe the movement has fundamentally changed. Ben Kawaller is the lead reporter on the Reflector podcast’s three-part miniseries, “Strange Bedfellows,” about the evolution of the LGBT movement. Ben's writing and video reporting have appeared in the Times of London, the New York Post, Racket News, and The Free Press. He’s also written humor for The American Bystander, The Advocate, and Salon, among others. www.benkawaller.com https://x.com/benkawaller CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction & Ben Kawaller 06:13 Why Ben Made Strange Bedfellows 07:17 From Gay Rights to Gender Politics 15:36 How Gay Marriage Changed America 20:19 Has the LGBTQ Movement Reached Its Goal? 26:19 Why Gay and Trans Issues Are Different 35:00 The Matt Walsh Debate 42:30 What Should Kids Be Taught About Gender? 46:04 Closeted Celebrities & Gay Culture 50:17 Judging the Past Through Today's Lens

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the World Famous Comedy Cellar, available wherever you get your podcasts, and in particular on YouTube for that multimedia experience. This is Dan Natterman, here with Nome Dwarman, the owner of the world famous comedy cellar with locations in New York's historic Greenwich Village and Las Vegas, Nevada. We have Peria Lash and Brand joining us as always. And in studio our special guest, Ben Kowler. Well done. Lead reporter on the Reflector podcast, three-part miniseries,

Strange Bedfellows about the evolution of the LGBT movement LGBT. I think you forgot a few letters and a plus sign there. And Ben's writing and video reporting have appeared in the Times of London, the New York Post, racket news, and the free press. An impressive resume. Thank you. Welcome to our show, Ben Coaller, like the bear, but with an R. With an er.

With an er. The New York Post has become like a kind of a little high for LGBTQ, conservative heterodox. I don't want to out anybody, but I'm aware of. I think I might be the only, I'm the only person coming to mind who fits that description. Who else is? Or maybe he's not there anymore. Okay. You know, the thing is, I'm a freelancer.

I don't, I've never, I've barely even been in the building. So I can't speak to it. All right. Before we get into it, and by the way, we should talk about Perry L. ridiculous knicks hat like talk about bandwagoning or whatever um i you know i i i just did a chatchy god a i has just overnight changed our lives i like do anything without uh is this my is this me going out do you do anything without um ai anything anymore i'm completely addicted to claude i had claude right i was like what if they asked me you know hey what was this podcast

about why did you do it and what did you find out so i had it right Really? Yeah, I couldn't trust myself to speak extemporaneously for 30 seconds. It's completely rotted my brain. Stembranians means like off the top of her. Shut up. I'm still, really, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about my Nix hat. Oh, I have so much. Okay, we get that.

I was going to say chat GPT. I asked Chow Chb about Ben really quick. Oh, amazing. It says, it says you sit at the intersection of comedy, gay politics, heterodox liberalism, elite cultural formation, and field reporting. I didn't even know There was an intersection That's exactly what I would have said

Heterodox, what? Heterodox liberalism That's the only thing hetero about the guy. Oh, very good. Very good. All right, so can we talk about Perriol's hat first?

I don't talk about Ben's heterodox liberalism. Periel, you've never, since I've known you, you never mentioned the Knicks, you never talked about the name, you never talked about sports. You have literally never asked me one question about my life.

You've taken seriously. interest in any of my extracurricular activities. Okay, but I know, I know all your Yenta interests. What else do you know? What do you know? Tell me, you like, what do I like? Art and photography and posing naked in pictures and, and, uh, you like good food and you like, you like telling people how you're friends with people of color and you want to those? Yes, she is. Oh, wow.

That's ridiculous. and things like that, but I've never heard you mention any sports team. I'm not going to embarrass you by asking you to list any players on the Knicks. I could happily list players on the team. Would you like me to list the players on the team? Go ahead. Well, anybody you say, I wouldn't know. Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Carl Anthony Towns, Muhammad DiWara,

I haven't heard of me. Ogeana Noby. How do you know all this? Nealbush. Just because I fucking like the Knicks. I'm a New Yorker. I was born and raised in Queens. One of my best friends from middle school started working for the Knicks when we were in our 20s.

No. Oh, it's okay, go ahead. Anyway, all right. Lobby Juan Canobi? What was that guy's name? And really, I mean, it's ridiculous. And even if that weren't the case, why isn't a person allowed to be excited about it? Yeah, I tried to be excited about the Knicks the other night because I heard everyone was

excited because they were apparently playing a game in New York. Yeah. That's what I think. That's what I was told. And so I texted a friend and I said, are you watching the game? Do you want to have someone there asking stupid questions? And he said, come over, buddy. And I did.

And then it wasn't even like an important game. It was like game three of seven. It wasn't even going to be. I want to tune in for the last one. No, no, that was a very important game. I'm not as important. No, it wasn't decisive. Didn't.

By important, I mean, look, I have limited time. Okay. I want to come in for the last game. I want to be there. I want to find out the ending. I want to feel the excitement. I can't, you know, we limit it. time of, this is peak content.

If it's anything less than five-star entertainment, like, I don't have time for it. And you had time for us. That's right. Okay. As a seller, by the way, was reasonably full on game night, so I don't know what that says.

Apparently, we were full. I was thinking about watching the game night. I don't know if I didn't do a survey, but I guess there's probably more out of towners than than normally would be. Wait, I'm not done here. We have a guest. I know, but you can't talk shit

and then just, you know, ride off into the sunset. The second thing is, is do you know that in the 40s, I think it was, there were six Jewish players on the Knicks. The Knicks used to be a very Jewish team. A lot of basketball was lost. Well, what does that have to do with you defending against the charge of bandwagoning? Nothing. I just, it's part of my interest in the history of the team.

And it's like I can't move to here from like Wisconsin last year. That was like one of the like talking points they told me in sociology and in college that like, oh, Jews used to be basketball players. therefore there's no differences between the races. We used to be basketball players, apparently. Boxers and mobsters. Yes, I did hear that. Well, you know, we excel.

Whatever we'd set our minds to. I feel very vindicated. So, Ben, I don't know much about you. What are the things that you like to engage in conversation about at the intersection of gay politics and heterodox? Well, I mean, I'm here at a person. promote this podcast that I did with Reflector. And that was, um, this, and this was my favorite topic was like, I'm an, I'm a G in the LGBT Q plus whatever. And I've been very frustrated over the past,

like, you forgot us, A's. Oh, the Aces. No, the Aces. No, the Aces. Yeah, the Aces. Yeah, which I've been for a few years now. Really? Yeah. Do you march with us? No, no, I don't consider myself, you know, true asexual, because I do have sexual desires. I just haven't been active. I see. Okay. But I'm not an in-cell. Because I have opportunities. Oh, yeah. It's just they're not good You're a vol cell. What's that? You're a volselle. What's that? A voluntary cell. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nice. You guys have a term. You go, girl. You guys have a term for everything. I guess so. Okay, you're a G, and you've always been a G. I mean, as far as I know. Yeah, great. And I've been watching sort of the, if it can be called the two sides of this, of our country, just like completely

talking past each other on this issue in particular. I think, on the gay issue? Well, no, on queerness, on LGBTQ plus on those sort of rights. I think there's a feeling on the left that these rights are perhaps suddenly under attack and that the criticism of much of the things that the LGBT movement is pushing now is coming from a place of bigotry, hatred, religiosity. And while that may be partially true, I don't think that people... What I want to do in this project is sort of chronicle how the LGBT movement went from being a movement about civil rights and became in the past around 10 years a movement

to really redefine the way all of society thinks about gender. The things that we are that are in the conversation now, pretty much all having to do with gender, were never a part of what the, I mean, I think 20 years ago, if you told people about some of the things that we, that we're talking about, I don't think anyone in the gay rights movement would have anticipated it. We always thought the end game was having sex with dogs. That was where we thought the slippery slope was gay. It was going. We've discussed that at length on this show.

Right. But all this other stuff, I think to a lot of gay people, perhaps it kind of came out of nowhere, especially people who aren't really involved in the movement. And, you know, I think there are sort of hidden tensions within these letters, LGBTQ, you know, wherever you want to cut off the abbreviation.

It's like pie. I know. We'll stop at the thousands of things. There's two spirits as well. Two spirit. Well, this I have heard was an invention of some academic in the 1990s, but there are people within the LGBT, within the movement that think that among indigenous communities,

there was a subset of humanity called two spirit, which were people who were neither men nor women, you know. So Andrew Sullivan, I've heard him say some of the things that you're saying. I don't know if you're a fan of his or not, but on this issue, I think you guys are aligned. I love Andrew Sullivan. And Andrew Sullivan is, you know, Andrew Sullivan, unfortunately, I mean, I think he's a wonderful writer, but the subtext of Andrew Sullivan's writing, which may also be true of my writing, is, this is how it is, you idiot. And I remember sending an Andrew Sullivan piece that I just thought laid this out beautifully to a couple friends of mine. And the reaction was, like, atomic. Like,

it just, it was, it was really bad for our friendship because... This, this is, this, on his, on, he was writing on subject of homosexual things? Yeah, you know, his gay shit. Well, the gay, like, the, like, sort of the, the queering of the gay movement. I mean, this has been what he's focused on a lot for the past, you know, since this has been going on. And he, they should, I mean, if there's, if there's anybody who deserves a statue in gay history, it's Andrew Sullivan, right?

I mean, this guy is essential to the story of gay marriage. and in my opinion, he had tremendous insight and vision as to how gay marriage would reverberate and change society. In a way, I didn't see that at all. And, you know, I mean, I think that his central argument was that gay marriage was something that allowed gay people to partake in American life in the way that everyone else could. I mean, this was always the sort of moral case for gay rights was like, we don't want a of special treat. We just, you get to get married. We get to get married. You know, fair is fair. That was, it was never about, it didn't require that people approve of it. It didn't require

that people celebrate it. It was, well, up until then, I thought the gay movement was making a huge mistake. I can remember the first time I went to the, I didn't even know it existed, even though I grew up in the village. I went to the pride parade, which is coming up very soon, right? Oh yeah, last Sunday in June. It's had to be in like the, like 1990. 95, 96 like that. And I'd never seen anything like it. It's just like dildos and naked men. And it was like, it was like everything that I was supposed to,

that I would have been accused of being a homophobic or a bigot for ever associating with gay people. This is what they were leading as if, as if on the Israeli Day parade, it was just dollar signs and, and marionettes and puppetry and you'll be happy. So let me finish. And I remember saying, I was saying like, no, if I were in charge of the gay movement, I would-

I'd lock all these faggots up. No, well, that too. But I would have people show up to a parade in their work clothes. I would have firemen show up as firemen and lawyers show up as lawyers. And the point being, we're just like you. This is what the movement should have been fighting.

And it wasn't doing that, but I think Sullivan had that insight. It's like if we want to make inroads here, we don't want to scare people. by showing up dildos and chaps and show them that we're just like them. Well, you'll be happy to hear that it's now mostly women, children, and drag queens. So a lot less sexualized. It seems like an obvious point.

Yes. But why was it then lost on the gay community? Because they're out of their minds. Yeah, because all we think about it. You do meth and go out in the middle of the same. No, I mean, it has, look, I can't speak to. to why, you know, it's a free country. People are going to go and do their gay pride

and be their sexy. I think I know the reason. It's because the people who think that way were busy with their lives. And it's the people, very often, the agitators in a group are not representative of the broader population. By the way, which I think is the case in the trans,

a lot of the trans controversy, like the trans people I speak to, I like, oh no, I wish they would stop with that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, that generally people who are important are too busy to antagonize people. I don't know. I mean, I can see it feeling like an affront.

I don't remember those kinds of displays. I don't think. I mean, I guess, sorry. I don't think it's antagonistic. I mean, this sort of celebratory debauchery is part of gay culture. It always has been. No, I mean, I mean, she's right. Yes, but it's, but it's, yes. But you also have like, you know, it's not like you don't have. Even like the lawyers and the doctors partake in the fun stuff.

Yes. But if you, everybody has to be a strict. strategist in everything they do. Well, I don't know. What about like carnival, which I've never been to, but, which I'm just assuming is a very debauchous sort of psych or sexualist. You know, it's not like when straight people get together, you don't have occasions for this kind of, uh... Well, we'd have more, but we'd have more, but women have a problem. That's the thing. This is the problem with women, not with gay men.

No, I do, I do hear what you're all saying, and I have a significant sympathy for that. However, if you are at a pivotal time and what you're trying to do when you're, you have to prioritize, like if your priority is to move your agenda along. Right. And you know that the resistance of that agenda is because like, I don't want these people teaching my kids.

I don't want, what are they capable of? And then you show that when you have your day, you actually display everything that the people, the bigots who hate you are claiming is what you are. this is not going to move your agenda along, which is fine. I understand what you're saying. And look, throughout the gay movement, I think throughout any movement, there's always people who are the more the radicals,

the more kind of like shove it in their faces, fuck these guys if they can't take it. We, you know, like, there's that. And then there's the more kind of assimilationisty, Andrew Sullivan types who are like, it's important to be liked. It's important to, you know, and certainly the most,

up until fairly recently, the more successful, like the face of the gay movement, was always the people who, I mean, the political face, the ones that got, that made progress. It was always through attraction, I think. I mean, a lot of this was like, you know, Will and grace and all this TV stuff in the culture. You know, Will was never thrown an orgy on Will and grace, even though in real life, of course, he would be having a occasional orgy here and there, but, you know, and they should have made that episode, really. Where was that? What was it going with What is it?

So, and then, and then some, and then there was his breakthrough. And then gay marriage succeeded beyond, I think, and very few people's. Including the, the establishment. I mean, there are a lot of people in the establishment who did not want this going to the Supreme Court. They just didn't think that they would have the votes for it. But just the overnight change in attitudes towards gays is unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. But how much is that permeated the culture? If I went to a small town in Texas,

very much. I was going to say, I was feeling very much. Yeah. I mean, having, you know, in the traveling I have done, I haven't, you know, I used to go to these small towns and talk to these people who seemed like these caricatures of people who would be racist, homophobic, whatever. I never got anyone, like, giving me any kind of, I mean, that again, they had cameras trained on them.

So there is that. But I just never experienced this supposed sort of level. of seething homophobia that is in the heartland of them or wherever I went. I think there's something else also. You tell me, if I'm wrong, I'll analogize it to when my wife had a miscarriage. I've had a miscarriage a long time ago. And when we told people about it, all of a sudden we found out that everybody, we knew had a miscarriage, right?

But it's something people don't really talk about. And I think there were many, many, many, many, many families who had somebody gay and they were kept it quiet. They were embarrassed about it or if that's the right way. And this all of a sudden exposed it. Actually, no, this is pervasive. And you thought you were the only one you were trying to keep it as secret.

Actually, right next door, there was another family and around the corner is another family. So in fact, the gay rights movement was like solving problems for these people. We were like, no, we're all like, it's normal. You don't have to be freaked out about the fake law. So it was a built-in urge for acceptance, actually, by all these families and cousins, whatever,

who was like, oh. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it's okay. We're not so odd. It's actually, everybody has miscarriage. But I don't think it was overnight. I mean, one of the things that became... Not to compare it to miscarriage in that way, negative thing, you know.

It's fine. I don't know how overnight it was. This was, the gay rights movement, like, began. I mean, it's hard to say where it began. Like, the Mattishing Society was something that began in, like, the 19th, like 1950 was, was, I think, one of the early, the earliest gay rights movements. And it wasn't until, you know, what, 65 years later that gay marriage became the law of the land in 2015.

So it wasn't so Sure, overnight Well, that it was like gradually and then suddenly Because in the 90s I was still aware of stories of gay bashing. Of course.

Like just the most horrifying things even around here, you know? And then very, very, so it was whatever it was... You know the most famous one wasn't true, right? And the Stonewall? Matthew Shepherd. Oh, yeah, of course.

Yeah, did you know that? No. That what? That it was not motivated by homophobic, or there's not... I did a whole story on this for the free press. Yeah, that this was a, that they knew each other,

that they were all involved in, not all, but the Aaron McKinney, the guy who actually killed him, he and Matthew had known each other. There's evidence to suggest they'd had sexual relations with each other, and they were both involved in meth and in drug dealing, and that Matthew was killed while they were trying to steal either money or drugs from him. I mean, there was a great book about this called The Book of Matthew by Stephen Jimenez, which came out in 2013.

And 2020 reported on this in 2002. This isn't like some crackpot thing. But that story is very controversial amongst the gay rights organizations. I mean, there's a lot that book caused a lot of backlash. So I went to Laramie with the Free Press a couple years ago, you know, for pride.

And started asking people around Matthew Shepard. And it was quite amazing to see how people both sort of like knew, some part of them knew that this was a mythology, but that it was also like really important and people really didn't want to sort of let it go because it had such political potency but anyway anyway so just let's just tie us up and have another question so and then

so you have the movement and it and it's it's succeeded and now it's like many movements is nobody ever wants to say okay mission accomplished see ya where there's that part of it disband. Right. So there's always, as I always say, you double the magnifying of the microscope and you say, oh, look at these new problems. Look at these. And now we're like, you know, 512 magnification.

And the problems, and I think what you were sort of implying is that now there is, there was diminishing returns and now maybe it's backfiring a little bit. People are like, you've seen, you're pushing it too far now. Yeah. Support for gay marriage has dropped. You know, like within the trans movement, there's always been, like I said, there's always the radicals versus the more centristy types. You know, there were people in that movement

who were like, the project is to upend our understanding of gender, is to sort of fuck the gender binary and sort of deconstruct all that stuff. And there were people who felt that the aim was to have access to healthcare and to just have acceptance that there are people who are comfortable in this life. Access to health care, be a visitation in the hospital,

keep apartments, do all the things that. Sure, anti-discrimination, all of that kind of stuff. But regarding just the just the job. G's and the L's for a second. Are there any mountains left to climb for those categories? Or you've sort of the movement's gotten what it wants? Honestly, like, I think I should, I'm a little embarrassed because I think I should know whether, like, it's legal for, like, gay adoption is legal in all states.

I don't actually know that. But it's nothing, but I never hear about it. I don't know what, in terms of gay lesbian rights, certainly in the conversation, I don't hear anything. It's all about LGBTQ rights. It is. And all of that is tied in with gender. All of it, at least in...

Steve says it's legal in all 50 students. Yeah. By the way, I should confess, I was not... Being against gay marriage is too strong would imply that I was bothered by it or something. I wasn't. But I wasn't...

Constitutionally, you're... No, I... This was my feeling at the time. First of all, I felt that... Like George Bush, there was another option, which was civil union at the time. and in some way I felt that calling it marriage at the time was intended.

It was like it seemed so outrageous that they would ever would be gay marriage. It almost seemed like this was intended to like be folk religious people in the eye. I just say I don't feel this way anymore. But as to the civil, more importantly, as to the civil union, my position at the time, and I still think there's some sense of this, was that, It's none of the government's business who's having sex and who's not. Correct. Meaning that marriage implies a sexual relationship.

But what you just said about, and I knew this firsthand because of my particular upbringing, the fact that a dying person couldn't have his gay companion in the hospital, which I knew that story firsthand, that you couldn't easily pass on your property, that this should not have to be defined by any kind of, a proclamation or representation to the government that this is a person I'm having sex with. The government shouldn't be able to tell you who your family is.

You should be able to say who your family is, meaning like I should be able to say, you know what, Dan is the guy that I want to have all those rights in my life. Well, you can do that? I mean, you can make a will, you can... Well, no, but I mean, as of law, in other words, not a will.

I'm saying the idea of a civil union like that, I can say, I don't know why. These people are my family. And these people have all the rights. And whether I'm fucking them or not, but none of your fucking business, right? That was my thinking at the time because,

and only because I didn't get the effect that it would have. I remember joking, yeah, every legal immigrant busboy is going to get married to another guy. Like, like, I just thought of, I just thought of this as this whole thing was going to be like a workaround to everything. Really? But I'm speaking 30 years ago, right?

It's a safe space now. But I need to. But I didn't. I didn't understand, which would have moved me, the effect it was going to have on society. And then I immediately, the day that it, I guess it was in the Supreme Court approved it, and Obama lit the White House up in all the colors.

Remember that? Are you old enough to remember that? Wow, I love it. That was like 10 years ago. You gay people, you look good. 2008 was when he got in. And there was just joy and like effusive. ecstatic reaction and immediately at that moment I realized oh no I was wrong about this because I because like

how could how could this be wrong here's this huge joyful reaction across the country no victims yeah like that that was always the thing it was like who is getting hurt by this no one's getting hurt from a strict constitutional a question you know I don't remember the reasoning was pretty much like oh let I It was like, oh, let's be nice. I mean, that's probably not fair. I really should have, I shouldn't say something. It was, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was two lawyers, a conservative. Yeah.

And a liberal, both arguing the same way, kind of a libertarian. And I thought the arguments were pretty, kind of, it was an equal protection clause. Stronger arguments than Obama was no, there was no, there was no legitimate state interest in denying people the right to, in denying gays the right to marry. And that, and there was a sort of this. moment in one of the cases kind of leading up to the Supreme Court where that was asked. It was like, what does this cost anyone in one of the sort of subcourts? And the lawyer did not have the answer.

That's not a legal argument, though. The argument is. No, it is. If it's a violation of equal protection, then there has to be a compelling state interest. But it has to be a violation of equal protection. Well, the point is the guy couldn't answer the question. What's the compelling state interest in barring people from getting married to who they want? and he didn't, you know, couldn't do it.

But the counter argument is you do it. You had the same rights. You could marry a woman too. I mean, I guess that was the argument. Yeah, I guess that way, but it's just, you know, that was the argument, yes, to me. That was like the, the scullia argument. So now, now, and I also felt,

that was an onion joke, actually. That was in the, I remember the onion made that joke. It sounds like an onion joke. And I'll, and I also felt, and I think that it's coming to this, I said to tell parol that if I were gay, I don't know why, like to me, being gay is more similar to being straight than it is to being trans. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing now. It doesn't, I mean, not that necessarily being trans necessarily requires this, but the version of trans that has become dominant requires redefining words in ways that are quite foreign to people and also challenges the idea that like there's such a,

thing as biological sex to begin with. I mean, a lot of these kind of postmodern ideas about gender have taken root in, certainly in classrooms, in law, that were not part of what it meant or people's understanding of what it meant to be trans 15 years ago. You know, you can describe being trans without, in language that everyone can get behind, although I think a lot of trans people wouldn't like. But like, for instance, here's an interesting thing that happened. I spoke to, one of the trans people I spoke to, Jameson Green, trans man around 70, been at this for a while. But trans man meaning female to male.

Sometimes I get confused. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I said to Jameson, I said, if I had to describe your transness to someone who didn't understand transness, I would say, you are a female who has taken hormones and perhaps had surgery to appear as if you are male and you live your life as if you are a man. Have I said anything there that is not true or that rubs you the wrong way? And he said, no, that's about it. Well, I get the same formulation to Jenny Finney Boylan, who's a prominent trans writer.

And she said, that's terribly offensive. I'm not a man pretending to be a woman, or a man who became a woman. I'm a woman who became herself. And there are, so this is, presents a real problem in terms of speaking in a common language. And when you don't have a common language and you can't agree on the definitions of words, that's when you get a lot of tension. and I don't know that that tension always comes from bigotry. I mean, if you are, especially if you're teaching children about gender,

because one of the things we looked at is how a lot of this stuff has boiled up in the schools and like school board meetings. And, you know, once parents are learning that their kids are learning about, or learning that sex is assigned at birth, for instance, there are people who say, wait, what? And when you can't speak about this stuff in a sort of common scientific language, it just, it makes... So to go back to what you're saying about

gayness and straightness, gayness doesn't require understanding reality or the definition of words in a different way. But I don't think that... I don't think that like you're pretending to be

another gender is an accurate way to explain being trans. I mean, I do think that it's a common language to be able to say, like, I was born... Did you say,

I didn't say that. No, I didn't, no, no, you said... But I mean, your point remains. I see what you're saying. That, you were born biologically one sex, but you feel, and you have, in many cases, always felt another way. Right. Well, that...

So I understand what she's saying, that it's like, you know, I've always felt this way, and I've now... Oh, come on. People need to stop taking offense. It's not about, no, I don't think it's about taking offense. I think that it's like... But his point is that he's trying to describe something accurately so that someone who, like, from another planet,

if you want to explain to them with a trans man, like, how could you explain it to them in a way that doesn't offend somebody? You couldn't, right? Could you repeat what you said to the trans man? You said, is this an accurate description? I forgot exactly what you said. I said, you're a female who has taken hormones

perhaps had surgery to appear as if you are male and you live your life as if you are a man. And the subject of that is sure, is pretending. But I think that we were all sort of like on board with that, that, well, yes, you may not actually be female, but we're going to go along because for the sake of, what do we care if you live your life this way? We just sort of want to be nice and make things, you know.

I have two statements about it. Yeah. Number one is, it's always bothering me. He's saying, trans women or women. That already is a contradictory statement because if trans women are women, then what a trans? Like, why are you calling them trans women? Like, there's, like, we understand it.

There's trans women are different than women. But a chief Jew is still a Jew. So maybe that's what they mean. And, yeah, and you want to put them within the broader category. But we understand if something is trans women. And then you say, okay, what, let's, let's look closer at what, at this category, trans women. What are the, how do we know that somebody's a trans women?

And then you have to say, well, they were born. male. But you're not supposed to say that. Number one. So it's just like you can't just put walls up around the ability to discuss this. Number one. Number two, just my other point is that gay men or gay people are attracted to people of the same sex, heterosexual people are attracted to people of the opposite sex. You like the color red, I like the color blue. This all makes sense. trans people have another psychology, which has nothing to do with those questions. It's not about, we don't even know who they're attracted to. We literally don't know.

And it depends on the sort of types of. So they combine trans people and gay people. And, you know, at a certain point it made sense because what they had in common is that they were fighting for their rights for acceptance based broadly on society's bigotry about sexual matters or something like that or what they call prefer whatever it is right that's more or less yeah accurate but at some point um then the gay gay people got all these rights and then the the the the cracks begin to form which is well actually we found common interest for a while but now we don't the common we have to start looking at well we're actually not part of a similar cause we're not

we're actually more like, now that we have the same rights, we're actually much more like the heterosexuals. We live our lives the same way. We don't, we're very, we don't have any issues about who we are, what we are, feeling the wrong body, whether they're psychological, genetic, some common, we don't, nobody even knows why somebody's trans, right, or what that even means. But we do know in some ways, what I've said, it's like, sort of like an anorexia, you know, where you look in the mirror and you, what you see doesn't match up with what you think you're supposed to see, which has nothing to do with being gay or straight, right? So that's, that is what it is. I guess you're asking, how did it get lumped in this? No, I explained, I think,

how it got lumped in, but I think I'm also explaining why I think it's coming apart a little bit. Yeah. I think that's, I think everything you've said is accurate, is accurate. And I feel like you were about to say something. Yeah, go ahead. We don't, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we can all grant is that women shouldn't talk someone. Go ahead. No, I just, I mean, I think that, you know, what I take issue with is something that seems like it might be, you know, a detail, but I think it's actually important. I think that it's not that it's like this pretending thing or I want to live my life as. I think that many trans people feel that this is how they were born and that this is, they're now living the life that they were supposed to live in the body that they were

supposed to be born in. I don't think anything I've said negates that. I mean, if you, there, we can get into all like the different sort of types of trans and there are all, I mean, this is, this is a lot. But if you just take what trans sort of original, traditional trans said, OG trans, OG trans as it's, as it describes itself, this feeling that one is in the wrong body, you can describe that in language that I think is accurate and I don't know, you know, that it's, it is the phenomenon, a phenomenon we don't understand completely. It is this phenomenon where

people have a conviction that they, that they are, in essence, the sex opposite to what their body is. So the fact is, though, that sex is something that has a definition. It has a physical, like bodily, body-based definition. Biological. It has a biological definition. And so, you know, I hate that the person who got to claim this question is Matt Walsh, because Matt Walsh is so hateful. Such a creep. But because like the left has not looked at this question, it's seeded it completely to the right. And so Matt Walsh gets to make the documentary where he asks, what is a woman, instead of someone who's a little less brimming with contempt. This is a common phenomenon where like nobody wants to talk about like legitimate issues at the border.

So you seed all that to the racist and people who hate immigrants, you know, as opposed to, this is the same thing. Like, you see it to Matt Walsh because no one else is ready to talk reasonably about it. And he really is a piece of shit. You just see that movie where he's reading the book to the kindergartners and he's making fun of trans? It's just, it's just. Well, I think that's, is that the movie What Is a Woman? Maybe it is. It's awful.

Just he should be ashamed. You, you, I mean, I thought, what is a woman? Look, he cannot do comedy. I didn't see the movie. I only saw the clip. Oh. I mean, that's a, that movie was more successful than Am I Racist, which was also not bad, but, but like in a sane world, and so in Am I Racist, he kind of goes undercover into the sort of diversityist DEI type spaces. And in a lot of these sketches, he's just antagonizing people.

And it's like, it's uncomfortable. And in a better world, like Sasha Baron Cohen would have made that movie. Right. Because, and he could have exposed that this way of thinking about people is really dehumanizing. and racist and not productive. And because like all the liberals have shut up about it, or those that have, you know, actually that's not even true, but the ones that speak up then get labeled as conservatives

and now, you know. But I call them a piece of shit for the following reason. And it's a very simple point. When you have a group of people who are what they are through no fault of their own, whether it's a physical, genetic, psychological issue, result of trauma. I don't know why people are trans.

If you are going to use that as an excuse to belittle them, to disparage it, to make fun of them, you're a piece of shit because these people are not, they can't help it. They fucking can't help it, right? You have people hundreds of years ago putting on women's clothes at the risk of death and tortured, all this stuff,

because they're so compelled to do it for whatever it is So don't make fun of them that way. Make fun of the people who are saying ridiculous things. But he's making fun of them to kindergarten students. I don't remember, it's been a while as I saw what is a woman. So there may be some validity to your critique there. But what he is making fun of are the ideas. And he goes, I mean, yes, I don't remember this scene with the kids.

But what is, the books for children about gender are full of ideas that are, that just come from these sort of queer. theory ideas about that are not coherent, that don't rely on any sort of sense or definitions of things or, I mean, there's a lesson that, I mean, the lesson that kids take away from, like, literally the lessons that you can find in sex education materials are that, that you, that everyone has a sort of metaphysical thing called a gender, and that the way you know your gender has to do with your interests, your behavior, the clothes you wear. So the message to children is, oh, so if I'm not stereotypically like a boy or a girl, maybe that means I'm not really a boy or girl.

And so, you know, what is more likely? Like a tomboy girl who's 10 years old and doesn't like to wear dresses and wears pants instead, like, she's going to read these lessons. And the message is, oh, well, maybe I'm, I have, I'm a gender. I have something, something is different about my gender. My gender is not totally a girl. When, in fact, the more likely thing is that like, oh, I'm a lot of the, I'm a gender. to be a lesbian in a few years.

You know, I mean, like, not always, but that's... No, the ideas don't even make sense. Gender is a social construct, but you're born this way. Like, they don't, they're not compatible. And then I'll say one of the things, since we're just kind of freestyling about this stuff, another difference between the movement is that, in my experience, once the risk of living as gay in society... was lifted, it seems to me gay people are equally,

if not more happy than everyone else. I don't know about that. In other words, the fact of- We're in fever marriages. Maybe that's why you're happier? No, no, no, no, no. The problem of being gay is only, seems to me, is only a problem based on a psychological atmosphere,

an environmental atmosphere. trans people on the other hand as again I'm based on my much less experience of it but I right they think they're going to be happy once they transition but often they're never happy they are they are it's it's I hope this doesn't sound like I'm not saying because I'm actually this comes from sympathy it's very to me it's tragic in a way I had one person actually say to me she she thought I thought I was I thought everything would be better for me once I transitioned actually I'm I feel exactly the same way but I suspected this Because no matter what, and maybe this will change, you know, you can't ever, you'll never look in the mirror and see.

Well, at least not with today's tech. Would not, maybe at least not what is today's tech. And, and, um, this is, it's just a different problem. This was outside of the scope of the podcast and, and my expertise. Nonetheless, I will say. Yeah, go ahead. Don't let this stop. Well, wait. Don't let that stop.

That, that I believe that most of the evidence for, um, transition is anecdotal. and that there is not strong evidence that as a policy on the whole transition makes people is good for mental health. But I would not swear by that statement. Whatever is, it's not like all your problems are solved. It's a tricky thing. But nobody, I don't think anybody would think

that all the problems would be solved, but maybe some of the problems. They sell it to us. I've heard a lot of trans people say that having their gender reaffirmed by either medication or surgery or some combination of both has been life-saving for them. Me too. Yeah, me too. Absolutely.

Life-saving is, but okay, whatever. I don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm going to leave it there. But I do have, you know, anecdotal evidence gets a bad rap sometimes. Because at some point, you gather enough real-life experience and you have enough, you know, as I say, close experiences with things. And unless you are really, really, really bucking the odds, it's not ridiculous to draw some generalizations based on, you know, your experience with seven or eight people, all who seem to have similarities.

They say, well, I just got lucky. These seven or eight people have no relationship to the broader population. That's why I've tried to tell people about the Jews. What's it after the Jews? They mean seven or eight Jews. They don't judge us by random seven or eight. You gotta look for the other one. At least nine or ten.

At least nine or ten. Anyway, okay, enough of this. Well, one good question, though, you had said, you know, when you tell kids, well, but if you don't, you know, strictly conform to the, you know, the gender, uh, stereotypical or whatever, yeah, then, you know, maybe you're fluid or whatever. But what should, should we, what should we tell a kid? What's interesting is, and all the people I spoke to, it's like we're all on the same page when it comes to values.

We all want, so many of the folks that I spoke to who are part of the, who contributed to what's called the National Sex Education Standards, this ingeniously titled document by this, that is a basic, it's sort of like a curriculum. But so they all say, we want kids to know that they're okay. However they are, they're okay. And you don't have to be, just because you're a boy doesn't mean you have to like trucks and just because you're a girl, like that your body should not have anything to, you should have no bearing. on what you think you can be. And all of that, I think, is, I agree with it. So I can be a pro boxer? What'd you say? Oh, I can be a pro boxer? I believe you could be.

You should start identifying as one. So we all agree. So we all agree about that. But so to make gender nonconformity, something that is acceptable. I mean, this was the project of feminist. This was the project of when I was growing up. I mean, this was a lesson that they wanted kids to know.

You know, in the 80s, I went for as long as I can... Oh, they didn't tell us that in the 70s. Yeah, it was, that was sort of the beginning. It's free to be used. Matter of fact, I'll go one further. But teachers would make gay jokes. Really? Yeah, I mean, I had one teacher saying, hey, Dan,

there was a chain of appliance source called Two Guys. So my music did you say, hey, Dan, I hear they named a store after your parents, two guys. Wow. But this, and I had a ninth grade... That's very good. A ninth grade... But this was the...

That's insane. Yeah, but I don't think... Can you imagine? It would never... And I don't think it was rare. And can you imagine if you are gay in that environment? I had a ninth grade English teacher that also made a gay joke and you're a gay kid and like, oh my God. And there's no weird.

You don't even... You could be the only one for all you know. You know, it must have been a horrible time. I'm going to have to admit to still making some gay jokes. You just made one. But you're not a teacher talking to their student. No, I wouldn't make it to student. But like, I don't know.

And Jewish joke. I don't think two guys is, I think I went bankrupt. I'll bet that that guy who made that joke was not the world's worth human being, and I would not want him to be fired for saying that. I mean, I think that, I mean, nowadays, maybe. I'm sorry. That's fucking crazy. I think it's a horrible thing to say.

It's true. I mean, I think that this job of letting children feel okay with however they are is of paramount importance, yes? Let me clarify. I wouldn't want to go back in time and have that guys, you know, I wouldn't want that to be used against this guy now. I can't imagine any teacher saying something like that now. Can you imagine you being a little boy and, you know, and somebody, and a teacher saying that to you?

It's horrible. But if I lived in that time, that teacher saying that would have just been a reflection of the, of the culture that I was in, which would have been very difficult and sad, but also just sort of like what reality is. And it would be a struggle. And that, and it is the struggle that gay people have. have risen to. I mean,

the culture was like that to us, and we charmed them into letting us have rights and accepting us. All right. Let's ask a question here. Name for me three people. On the Knicks. In the public eye that you believe are in the closet. Oh, my God.

You don't want to do that? They're all the lame ones that, like, everyone knows. Okay. Well, they'd say Tom Cruise. Yeah, like I was going to say

Tom Cruise. I don't, you know. Travolta. Yeah, that's, I was going to be a basic bitch and just say Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Let me ask you a question. What about Stephen Colbert? I don't get a gay vibe from him. Do not get a gay vibe from him? No. Isn't he like an ultra- Are we really doing that? Oh,

Steve, is he like an ultra- I think he's, we've never had an ultra- I know, I know, I'm happy, I'm happy to do this.

Yeah. Next question? Who else? What was, related, but I was just, for some, you know, coincidentally, I was watching these videos of James Baldwin speaking. He was old interview with Dick Cavett. He's always struck me as gay. And black. But, by the way, he's a magnificent speaker. Oh, fantastic. Incredible. And I had no familiarity with him. But was he out even then? Yes. Yeah. He was writing books

about being a homo. That's, you know, so that's a real pioneer because nobody was. Oh, yeah. He was. I mean, Truman McApoena. There were no famous gay people back then. On a TV show, I forgot with who, but a very famous interviewer. And he said, you know, you have all of these things against you that you, how do you feel that you're black and you're gay? And he goes, darling, I've hit the jackpot. Would you hear with that? 60? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you should be imitating a black person.

But okay. I don't know. I wasn't black. I hope it's any complaints. By the way, what's funnier about or equally funny about the past. is the people that passed as straight that weren't obvious. So like Paul Lind, you know, Paul Linz? Liberace.

Liberace, that's who I was going to say, Liberace. People didn't know. So funny. Okay, I'm going to use the F word now. But so I remember my father, because you know, in the village, we were ahead of our time in terms of knowledge of things. Anyway, so Elton John had an album called Caribou. And inside had a poster.

and it was, I told us, Elton John are like a feather, maybe you can find it, Steve, an Elton John Carrable poster. It's like, he's in like a feather vest and I don't remember, like a fur, it's like ridiculous, you know, outfit. And, you know, I'm a boy,

and I put Elton John poster on the wall. No idea, right? My father walks, he goes, who's the faggot on the wall? Like, but my father was not anti-gay, okay, this is, like, believe me, as my, my father used to tell me that, I mean, I'll just, just,

to let you know, he used to say that the one bigotry, which is still allowed, meaning like that, that, uh, he was, he was complaining about it. The only bigotry, which is still normalized and acceptable is anti-gay bigotry. And he drummed this so much into my head that when I went to law school and you have to sign up, everybody in law school has to sign up for a, uh, what do you call it down? Like a, legal writing? Yeah, no, like a, like a, like a cause. Like a legal, no, it's like an extracurricular cause. Okay. And, um, you did the gay is. I signed up for gay rights. Nice.

And I go to the first meeting. And I'm like, oh, I misunderstood. Oh, you got hit on? It was just, it was just, it was like this is where all the gays went to meet each other. I had no business there. Really? Yeah. Did you leave?

There's a, there's a, there's a cover. Oh, oh, look at that. There we go. Or is that the poster? Yeah, maybe that is the poster. That's pretty good. And so I, like, when I was a kid, you could dress like that. And nobody even had any inkling that this meant you.

Your father did. My father did. My father did. I was like, what? So you didn't. stick around? You got scared of all the homas and you left? I left Judge. Oh, wow. They didn't want me? They're like,

you? I'm like, no, no, no, not me. But, and by the way, my father couldn't care less that I had the guy in my wall. Like, he wasn't like, he didn't maybe take it down. He was like, what's going on? The Barachi is also really insane. That people

didn't know, like, I mean, they were just adamant. It isn't even if they didn't know that they were adamant that he was straight. Yeah. How could he be? But you know, these things are important because sometimes we look back and we judge people in the past very harshly for things that they did which are outrageous to us now and how how could they not have known how cruel this was how bad it was how right what and you know it's very hard to process yeah but in some way examples like this are can inform us in trying to get a grip on that

like it's equally impossible and it's like how could anybody How could women have been attracted to Liberacee thinking he was straight? Like, you can be completely out of touch within a time. Or it doesn't excuse certain things that they certainly should have known were wrong and must have had some inkling. They were doing something wrong. But it's still interesting to see cold, hard proof of how people in good faith can be completely oblivious to something, which to us seems like you can't.

That's no fucking way. It's also fair to say that, you know, and I think important to acknowledge that it was, you know, career ending at that time for somebody like Liberace to come out. You know what a better. She's remarkable. It's insane. He was also a monster, by the way. Oh, I don't remember that from the, a lot of the law movie, which of course is all I know about Liberation. The book.

In the movie. Behind the candelabre by Scott Thore. or by Scott Thornton. And Tom Papa's in it. Who is in it? Tom Papa. He is? He's in the movie.

He plays his manager or something. Oh my God. That book is insane. Really? Yes. So like, you know, better than like slavery or things which are obviously

should have, people should know we're wrong. But like, like ubiquitous anti-Semitism. The fact that every single of Voltaire and Dustyowski, everybody with Shakespeare, just, you know, like how could they, this was just the way it was.

right? It was like water or air. And you got to forgive these things. So why do you forgive that and not people that thought the black people were inferior? I do forgive the people who thought the black people were inferior. I don't, inferior is a low bar. It's much harder to forgive. I totally forgive the people who think that, who thought that black people were inferior. Why would they even have known otherwise? I mean, if you, if you, if from, at the height of like European culture, you went over to Africa and you saw people who had no technology

and know this and know that completely. Like within the frame of mind of somebody from that time period, you wouldn't, you can't forgive the fact that they might have thought they discovered some inferior people. I totally, but that doesn't mean you can forgive them taking them as slaves.

And it definitely doesn't mean you can forgive the cruelty that was then unleashed upon people. You know, each step you get, more and more obvious defilement of the morality of that day. In other words, less and less able to justify it,

even with the things they believed were right and proper at that time, which is why one of the arguments about the Holocaust being kind of a singular event is because the Holocaust didn't happen in the 1400s. It happened in Germany, you know, the highest degree of civilization and, you know, was it Odejoys, Schiller and Goethe and all these, right, you know, yeah, I can't

pronounce the German name. Goethe. Geuts. Nice. I'm not going to try. So, yeah. But I had no idea this book existed, by the way. Have you read Into That Darkness?

I can't remember that. Okay. Why do we not all know this book? It's based on interviews mostly with Franz Stengel, who was the head, like, like, head commander of Treblenko, which was like the largest of the extermination camps in the Holocaust. I also didn't realize that there was a difference between concentration camps and death camps. So this was a death camp, really bad. And this book from the 70s, I mean, she interviews this guy about like how he came to be rising up in the Nazi party

and found himself commanding these, this death camp. it's incredible. I mean, like, I just don't, it's amazing that I hadn't heard of this. But anyway, everyone should check it out. Into the dark. Into that darkness. Into that dark.

Right after you read behind the candle. In the behind. Which is dark back there behind that candlel arbor. What else can we say that might get us in trouble? You've covered a lot. Since I've been defending Israel for three years, I feel like I'm impervious to anything. You had no reaction to my James Baldwin knowledge.

surprised I didn't get, like, oh, I can't believe you know who that is. I am impressed parol. And I told you she likes to brag about her. Familiarity with people of college. I actually have a photograph of James Baldwin in my office. And I recently had to look up. I was obsessed with him in college and grad school. But, and I used to teach his work when I used to teach undergrads.

But I... Whoa, whoa, whoa, you used to teach undergrads? Yeah, when I was in graduate school. I told him he knows nothing about my life. What did you teach? I taught English. I taught writing. Oh, I'm so honest.

Oh, my God. Or maybe, I don't know. You must have had to read so much crap. Do you ever tell a kid you should give up? No, maybe, probably. No, I don't know. No, but I had to recently look up what James Baldwin thought about Israel, because I was like, oh, my God. He was not keen on the Jews.

I didn't find that. He was a real, like, you know, he was very peace-oriented and equal rights-oriented. But he wasn't like a rabid anti-Zionist, like T.S. Eliot, who is another one who I loved, who actually. I don't know about Zionists, but. Anti-Semite. I mean, T.S.I.E.E.E.E.E. It was a rabid anti-Semite. They all were. They all were. And they all are. And they're coming back. It's coming back today. Any reason? Everywhere. Any reason...

Well, it makes you wonder to know... I mean, did they have a point? It does make you wonder. It does make me wonder, but then when I... I'm Jewish, by the way, I feel I have to say. It does make me wonder. But then I read about the USS Liberty and how insane the people are that say that it was on purpose.

And I say, oh, yeah, maybe they're the crazy ones. It's not us, it's them. You mean the shift that was turned around? What are you talking about? The USS Liberty was bombed by the Israeli. There were no gays on it. You're not interested in this. But the point, probably a few.

You know, which brings to mind... No, they're not allowed to be in the military. But this brings to mind the accusation that Jews use blood to make bread. And so I forgot who... Somebody wrote something and said, this should make us happy because we know we don't do that. So we know that they're the crazy ones. That it's not us.

It's them. It's always interesting to be that, like, the Jews, they're so crazy. They won't eat this. They won't eat this. yet they're using human blood in their matzah. Like the one, like what could be more of a violation of Jewish dietary law? Leaving everything else aside, right? They just would never, never do that.

This is my son, Mani. Oh. Hello. You have to say. Speakerphone. No, I'm doing my podcast now, son. But we're talking about gender and stuff like that. I'll talk to you later.

Okay, practice his bar mitz for Saturday. practice your bar mitzvah your haftaura your haftaura and your speech okay promise okay I love you bye any any reason what gender has he picked for himself he's he's a guy he's I have I don't I don't push him he will decide when he will decide when he's ready they will decide they they will decide they sorry I had to instruct chat GPT to stop saying they oh yes sir I'll stop that any reason why you know You know, there's a trans man that works here, and I'll be damned if I don't fuck up those pronouns constantly.

But I don't seem to do it with trans women. Any ideas, any theories. I think that people, that the less ought to, that if you don't have to think about it, they've sold it well. I mean, like, when I think of the trans women that I spoke to in the show, you know, like, it would seem very weird for me

to refer to Jenny Finney Boylan as he. I mean, like, she's just someone who seems she like. She's selling it. What can I say? For me, it's only been an issue of whether I knew them before. If I knew them before they transitioned, I'm telling you, it's almost impossible for me to keep it straight. But if I meet them as, you know, their blossomed gender, I have no problem at all. Well, it's a question of, I mean, part of the reason why this youth stuff is so important to a lot of trans people is that, The idea is that if you can arrest puberty, that you can then more easily pass as the opposite

sex if you're, if you, you know, if you sort of induce the opposite puberty in the body with hormones. And so that's why, that's why this is very important to a lot of trans people because it makes, it makes it easier to not have that problem. But also the idea of passability is something that used to be really directly correlated to safety, right? Like people were worried about, you know, them being able to be clocked, right? Because then suddenly their safety is at risk. Like, there are trans people taking the bus home from work. Like, God knows what hours and that sort of stuff, right? Sure. Sure. Look, the universe is cruel. It seems unacceptable, but I think it's true that a certain number of people are born. It's not just trans people,

but for all different sorts of reasons. With the odds of their happiness stacked, against them for whatever it is that they're burdened with psychologically, physically, appearance. There's all sorts of ways, you know, that you can be burdened in your life. And I don't know where I'm going with this, but this is, you know, this is how I see a lot of these issues. And it's, and we are supposed to be compassionate and accepting of, of, of, things whenever we can. But for some reason, when this crosses over with something sexual or gender, it brings out the worst in many people. If you could just imagine something on the order of trans, but it had nothing to do with anything sexual, right? Just somebody who had some feeling

I'm this or I'm tall or I'm not sexual. It's not sexual at all. It's it's beyond, it's a bigger conversation. But there's there's a sexual component to to this stuff, or at least there is literature that strongly suggests. I'm really curious as to what percentage of this so-called agenda is real and how much of it is this like paranoid imagination of the far right. Like I... Which, what agenda are you talking about? Of this like, you know, confusing children or like using this language.

Like I could tell my son anything. Like he's going to identify. She can tell me that he won't understand it anyway. No, I mean... No, seriously. What I was talking about. Like, could you change your, like, you can't turn somebody gay, right? Like, I mean.

Yeah, but you can make your kid act away to make you happy. That's Stephen. Sorry, but you can't. Like, I'm just saying, and my nephews are in L.A., and they had a much different education than my kids in Jersey. And I don't know. No. I'm going to answer this in another one of your talk.

Yeah. This was where I was lucky in my life. my father always knew for some reason he was sure of it that you couldn't turn somebody gay. This was something that he just intuited. He tried and tried and tried. And he had total confidence in it such that he didn't care if I was over at some gay person's house. He didn't care if I gave. He couldn't care less.

He just knew this. However, most people, it's not at all ridiculous for somebody to think you can turn somebody gay. Yeah, I disagree. No, you have a whole wealth of knowledge and reading and isn't that. No, no, no. It's the same way. You can't. But to liberal people of which you're one, which I'm not one, who believe in general that upbringing and environment and all these things are very, very influential on a person, why would you cordon off this? We can make them smarter.

We can make them more music. We can make them kinder. We can make them, you know, more aggressive. We can do all these things if we just raise people the right way. but obviously you can't affect their sexuality. I have one answer. I have a really good answer for you. Yeah.

You know that you can't turn somebody gay because you know that you can't turn a gay person straight. We don't know that. We even know gay people who've taken themselves to conversion therapy. Yeah, and it never works. Yes, but you know this, but the point is that you cannot universalize what you happen to know because you have a lot of knowledge about this and experience

with somebody in Ohio who has. Are you just, is your point just that there are people out there who think that you can turn kids gay through education? I'm saying that there's not, there are obviously there are people out there who think that their kid might turn gay if they're, if they're exposed to certain things. But I'm also saying that it's not an obviously absurd notion. But what we've seen in the past 10 years is a really sharp increase in the number of children who are identifying as a different gender than they are, especially as we've seen as the definition of trans has gone from binary transgender to gender expansive to non-binary trouble. I think, I mean, I just read something, my friend Ben Ryan, who's reported on this really extensively.

One in every 250 teenage girls in Oregon is on testosterone. As an average over the past 10 years, I think I'm saying that right. It does seem like a social contagion. So, you know, so when kids, so parents who are, yes, it would be, I think, ridiculous for a parent to think, oh, this is going to turn my kid gay. Like, you just have to have no grasp of, like, human psychology and sexuality to think that, like, some lessons are going to, like, turn your kid. But, like, if the lesson is, this is how gender works, you know, my eight-year-old niece asked me about a friend of mine. I have a friend who has a beard. He's just very, he's very faggedy, but he's clearly a man.

and my eight-year-old niece asked me, what is Axel's gender? And she got that question. Someone taught her what gender is. She would never have asked, is Axel male? She knows he's male. So, you know, and I am with you, like, in terms of the suspicion of, like, how much of this is sort of... I don't disagree with you. I think that there must be some portion of this that is, like, trendy.

but I also do wonder if now that it is more socially acceptable, if some people are more comfortable being more... That's absolutely one factor. But does that explain everything? Does that explain all one in 250 people? Or the rise in like natal girls who have felt this way when this phenomenon was mostly historically about natal boys who then transitioned to girls.

It was in the 2010s that you saw this. explosion of teenage girls who never as kids identified or had this feeling that they were let me put it this way until we and then we have to go i think lizzie wants to talk about israel until until we have a predictive model of being gay it's perfectly reasonable to hold open the notion that for some number of people, a life experience or the way you were raised could have an impact on it. What I'm saying is that identical twins

have the same eye color. They have many things identical. Identical twins are not necessarily both gay. So there's something else going on. Something environmental. Probably in utero. Probably, but we don't know that. Until we know what that is,

you know, it's not, it's rational to say, well, we don't know what that is and we know it's something and we know it's not just genetic. You can't test for gay, like you can test for many things. So maybe something happened. Maybe it's something when in uteril, maybe something in early childhood. Maybe who knows, right? So it's like as a scientific matter, as a deductive reasoning, we don't know. Lady Gaga says you were born this way. Yes, yeah, that was a good song, but she doesn't know what she's talking about. Yeah.

That's, I mean, I think that's, I'll be right. I think it could be who gets, who gets more access to hormones, among the identical twins, but I'd say, to have a predictive model, we can't say we know. All the thing we do know is that there is some, it seems to be some environmental issue here. There are, there are, there are,

I can't remember their names right there, but there's two stand-up comments. Yeah, the Stone-Brother. Yeah, who, they're identical. twins and one's gay and one isn't. Yeah. But they have sex with each other on state. We should have them.

Are they Jewish? They are. Yeah. We should have them. We should have them on the show. We could talk about this and Israel. No, we should. That's interesting. All right.

You know, I have to go, you should come on the show again. I'm sure we can talk about more about it. Delightful. Is this all you people talk about? But, you know, I haven't been following what's going on with 60 minutes. and Scott Pelley and the free press and Barry Weiss and all that stuff, which I really, a lot of drama. I need to follow that stuff.

But I am very much team Barry Weiss. People seem shocked that the editor-in-chief might want to exert some influence on the editorial direction of a newsroom. Seems to be a real, real shock to some people. I mean, I can intuit from my own life experience is exactly what happened. And I do have some actual inside knowledge, too, but it's really not, I'm not bringing that to bear. you take over a new organization and you say to yourself,

okay, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to tell them, look, I want to be friends, I'm going to, we all want to make the best news show. I may want to make some changes, but my office is always, and it's all sincere, my office is always open and let's work together.

Obviously, we know there's been some excesses we like to correct, but blah, blah, blah, blah, and as I was called, the deep state just closes ranks and they immediately react against you and not only, and they vibe you, and any idea that you have, no matter how good it might be,

they will see to it that it fails. Because it's not just about an idea, it's about the execution of an idea. This is very common. I've seen this a million times trying to run a business, trying to arrange music, like you have a musical idea,

and it really depends on executing the musical idea. And people don't like the idea, they will just do it half-fast. And before you know what, it just devolves and devolves, and at some point then the new boss has to say, fuck it.

You know what? I really did try. and I realize now I have to clean house. Oh, well, now the variety is reporting that she can be a bit distant and... Imperious or something. Regal or something like that. Wow, can you imagine that the person who came at people with all of this warmth, only to be repaid with everyone's scorn, is going to be a bit guarded.

She is not imperious, and she is like famously warm and charismatic. They always do this to women. They did the same thing. to Annie Leibowitz. They never talk about men this way. It is... You are a bit much. Well, so are you, but nobody dares say that out about. I had the same, I remember reading some quote that someone was saying like, oh, she really doesn't seem like she knows how to do her job. And I did wonder, like, would that, would he ever said that about his new male balls? No, of course not. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he had very much the same experience.

I don't, when I took over a business, I had very much the same experience. It could be... That's also a good point. But it's very common. And I forget what the other point I was going to make. But, you know, she's got her work cut out for her there. And I think she, I think that she will prevail. But we'll see what happens. I hope she does.

Because from that letter that the guy published that he had written to Scott Pelly, where he said, I said, I tried to meet you here and I tried to meet you there. And, like, that seemed very compelling to me. I felt like I was, I mean, I didn't listen to his whole. interview, but it just, to me, it sounded like I was listening to a teenager. Oh, I bet what you're saying. If you look into it, all the great, all the like founding minds behind 60 minutes were Jews. Were Jews from the newspaper business. They were not TV people. They were journalists from the

newspaper business who came in and they brought that sensibility to a news magazine. This notion that... I know nothing, by the way, but any... of what you're talking about. The whole Barry Weiss thing, I know there's an issue, but I haven't been... The notion that... Email me if you want to talk about something, maybe. The notion that it... You just all be prepared, because I don't know...

Jesus Christ. Who knew, I mean, who knew that we were going to be talking about this? Okay, well, if it was just, you know, if we didn't know, that's fine. Are you all right? No, I'm just saying I know zero about this, and if an email, maybe I would have read up on. The fact that he knows zero about it, he's holding a guy stuff. Well, I can't know everything about everything. I mean, it's a pretty major thing that happened in the culture.

Anyway, all I want to say is the notion that a CEO of 60 Minutes, a seasoned journalist and a rabid consumer of television news products for an entire life with access as a kitchen cabinet to all the top TV people in the world can't run 60 minutes because she comes from, you know, a different media background is obviously absurd. It's fucking absurd. And the guy that she brought in does have a background in documentary filmmaking, apparently. It just seems, I don't. If she had the right politics, they wouldn't say a fucking thing about her background. It seems that everyone is freaked out that there's a centrist running CBS news. And they try to make her a conservative. She is

no conservative. I don't think any Republican thinks of her. All the Republicans are like, oh, that Lib Barry Weiss. Yeah, I don't. She has a sister named Susie. That's right. That's all I know. I was on her podcast a couple weeks ago. Yeah, she's fantastic. She was on ours talking about Ozempic. Oh. Okay. Okay. Okay. My wife's been calling me three times because no matter how many times I tell her I do my podcast at this time, this is, and she never calls me. This is the time she calls me. Okay. Okay. Well, Ben Kowler, everybody. This and when I'm with my mistress. And, uh, and you have that Yep, that podcast series. Yes, Reflector is the name of the podcast.

I have three episodes called Strange Bedfellows. Look it up. And also, you guys should follow me on Instagram because I'm chronicling my testosterone journey. Oh, I'm talking about this. Tell me about this. You're taking testosterone? I started taking testosterone. You have low T?

I'm on the low end of normal. That's good enough for the people at TRTNation.com to sell me testosterone. So, yeah. Andrew Sullivan wrote a book about this, too. He did? Yeah, about taking testosterone or an article. I think it was a book, but definitely an article. Well, Carol Hoeven, who got canceled from Harvard,

wrote a book about testosterone, I think called testosterone. I got to read it. But anyway, yeah, so I'm trying to become more effectual. Is this why you're so aggressive? That must be it. I'm worried I'm going to start getting into fights. No, you're not. Do you feel very different at taking it?

I have found that I've had more stamina at the gym. That's sexually. Endless sexual stamina as well. Is that true? Oh, it's been... Don't fuck with me. No, because I'm... I haven't been able to stop since...

No, I... Well, you know what, I've had a stomach bug completely. So it's hard to say. It's only been like a week. Do you feel hornier? I don't know. You know what? I would love to feel less horny.

That's the one thing I'm like, I hope this, you know, I... I hope I'm not too horny. Why, do you want more or less? Do you want more horny? More horn? No, I'm feeling okay. I'm 63, and a lot of people I know are doing this. A lot of people.

And they all, when they talk about it, makes you want to do it. But then, you know, you have to be careful what you wish for because if everything's okay and you're like your sex life, do you really want to put yourself like you want to have sex twice as much as she does, which is more like 10 times much as she does? Well, what if she also went on testosterone? Because it works for women too. She might get a little hairy, but she will get horny. but that will have a

if he gets hairy that'll have an effect on his horn it's like an O'Henry story that's right it's like I had a friend who had a wife who was from another country and he barely spoke her language

and she barely spoke English and they were happy and he signed up he signed up for like immersion courses in Thai oh no don't take tie are you an idiot

well did he learn Thai and then she found out you can imagine like no shut up But the good news is... Turns out you're an idiot. The good news is you'll never learn, Ty. Yeah, that's fucking much too hard. Yeah.

All right, next time we're going to talk about testosterone. Okay, Ben Kowal, everybody. What I really like to do is maybe we should just take it for a month and then talk about. Let's both take it. Yeah, well, you're already taking it. And they'll give it to anybody. I think they'll give it to anything. I don't think it's that hard to get.

Did you... You go into Planned Parenthood if you're a woman. They'll give it to you right off that. You probably, there's an intake process. I'm not really kidding. There's an intake process, I'm sure, but I... You just walking, like, I'll like, yes, okay, we got you. I knew that was coming.

I bet it's a test. Anyway, Ben Kuala, thank you for joining us. Dan Natterman, that's me. You can catch me. I'm a regular at the comic strip on the Upper East Side. Sometimes I work here at the cellar as well. Okay, good night, everybody. Good night.

Thank you so much.