The Matt Walsh Show - An Update On The Fight Against Gender Madness With Miriam Grossman

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Go to https://expressvpn.com/walshYT and find out how you can get 3 months of ExpressVPN free!    Dr. Miriam Grossman joins me for an update on the fight against the gender madness. Check out her new book "Lost In Trans Nation" wherever books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parents need to understand that while we certainly hope that our schools, our teachers, our principals, guidance counselors are all wonderful people who only want the best for their students, we have to live in reality and recognize that while some of them do have an agenda, and that may not be healthy for our children. Dr. Merriam Grossman, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists, also one of the stars of our film, What is a Woman, She now has a new book out, excellent, important book called Lost in Transnation, a Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of Madness. Dr. Grossman, thanks for taking the time.

Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for all you do, Matt, in this space. I was just this morning enjoying some of your posts on X and some of the other things you've done. And I really appreciate it. You're one of the leaders. Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate you as well. You know, you have a real important, insightful perspective on all the gender madness.

I'm curious about one thing. What did you think was kind of, or what do you think is missing from the conversation around this issue, or what point is not being emphasized enough or well enough understood that prompted you to, for example, to write the book? Well, you know, I want to start with some good news. Because I'm always presenting very disturbing information, and I will certainly answer your question, but I want to tell you, Matt, you may not be aware that our favorite pediatrician, Dr. Michelle Forsier, is being sued.

And if there's any of your audience who are not aware who she is, she is the infamous blue-haired pediatrician who posed that question to you, do chickens commit suicide in your documentary? What is a woman? Dr. Forsier is being sued. Finally, by one of her patients who detransitioned, and apparently this young woman was extremely mentally ill and had all sorts of psychiatric issues. And I have to say, the lawyers are jumping on these cases. And I'm so happy to see it after all these years. Yeah, that's the chicken lady, as we have come to call her, you're exactly right. And do you think that this is the beginning of kind of the floodgates opening? We've all been sort of waiting for this, that this was always the next step in the fight for team sanity was that we start holding these doctors accountable.

So do you think that there's evidence that this is like the beginning of this is just the tip of the iceberg? Yes, absolutely. And it's not only the individual doctors that are being sued, the American Academy of Pediatrics is also named as a defendant. So this is fantastic because the American Academy of Pediatrics that claims that they represent 67,000 pediatricians, has been for many, many years, completely captured by this ideology. And the way that it happened is that a small group of activists from within that organization simply took over this particular subject and started, you know, writing policy statements and articles and guidance for other doctors and for parents. And none of it is evidence-based.

They claim that it's evidence-based. it is not. It is a belief system. It's a belief system that's based on the irrational, unscientific idea that we are not, that our identities are completely separate from our bodies, that we can be born in the wrong body, and that that is not an emotional problem, that's a physical problem, and you need to modify the body to fit the feelings. These are irrational ideas, these would not fly in any other field of medicine. So yes, this is very big. I think the tide is definitely turning. There's been a lot of successful legislation. And now these lawsuits are beginning, like I said, not only against the pediatricians and the

therapist and the endocrinologists and the surgeons, but also against the medical organizations. So this is good. Very good. It's definitely very good. And I know you're not a lawyer, of course, but do you, and I always err on the side of being somewhat cynical about these things. So my worry is that obviously the victims that are filing these lawsuits should win easily, and they should win many millions of dollars, but you worry about the courts just being ideologically stacked against them. So do you feel good about the chances of like this particular lawsuit of having success, given that problem? You know, you are correct to bring up, you know, who's going to, who's the judge,

who are the attorneys, you know, if there's a jury who's on the jury. But then my experience testifying in court has been very positive, actually. And when you get a judge who is, you know, middle of the road, open wants to learn. Someone who wants to learn and to hear both sides, then definitely, you know, there can be a success at the end of it. But you're right. It does. It is going to depend a lot on the judges. But I'm still hopeful because it's certainly better than nothing. And, you know, we'll get the media coverage and we'll get more and more young people who went through a firm care will have the courage and the motivation to stand up and talk.

I'm curious about your general assessment of, I guess we've already kind of got into this, but your general assessment of the battle as it stands right now, are you, no, we talked about the lawsuits, the success with legislation, but culturally speaking, do you feel like we're making a lot of progress there. I actually do. I feel like even aside from legislation, and now we've got what's going on with litigation, which is really important.

But it seems to me that culturally is where we can really see the victory even more because it seems as though people are willing to speak out against this much more than they were back when we first started filming the movie back in 2021, for example. So do you sense that as well? Even more than a year.

Yeah, I do agree with you. The thing is, look, this is a battle that the truth is going to win. The question is how many, you know, what's the body count going to be? And the body count from where I'm sitting is very high. Because it's not just the kids who end up, you know, medicalized and forever disfigured. And some of them are going to be sterile and not capable of having biological. children, but you see the families. The families are also victims, the parents and the siblings and the extended family.

Because this battle that is created inside the home, when a child announces a new identity, an impossible identity, it can tear a family apart. It can end marriages. Sometimes the child is so indoctrinated that they believe anyone that is hesitant or has questions or wants to be cautious is the enemy and that their homes are toxic. They run away. There are websites. I talk about this in my book.

There are websites run by activists who are advising kids on how to run away, where to run too. They provide them with financial help. They tell them, you know, call this number or text this number and we'll come pick you up and take you to a friendly home, a home where they will affirm you. So there's a lot of terrible things going on, a lot of families in which these kids become estranged, a terrible pain and mourning that parents go through. So yes, there is progress, but at the same time, there's a lot of victims and there's a body count. Absolutely. You mentioned you talked about families and kids that fall into this through no fault of the parents.

So I wanted to ask you about that on a more personal and practical level, because I hear from parents all the time who either have kids who fall in victim. to this or they're worried that their kids will potentially fall victim to it. You, of course, have talked to many more parents than me on this issue. So I want to take both of those cases individually. So first of all, would you say there are some basic steps a parent can take proactively, especially if their kids are in public school or something, and they want to make sure, they want to inoculate their kids as best they can against falling into this? Yes. My book is an inoculation. I want parents to start really early. I mean, as soon as your kid is talking and kind of understands boy, girl, you know, that identity, it's not too early to say things like, you know, you've been a boy since the very first moment that you existed.

When you first started growing in your mother's tummy or however you want to say it inside your mother, your mother, you were a boy. that it doesn't depend on some random midwife or doctor who's in the delivery room. I want kids when they first hear that phrase sex assigned at birth. I want kids, even little kids, to stop and say, no. No, that's not right. Sex is not assigned at birth. It might be recognized at birth, although now we recognize it way earlier. It's established and it's established permanently at conception.

So you can begin early on with kids. And you can say to them things like, you know, you were always a boy or a girl and that's great. And there isn't only one way to be a boy or a girl. There are many infinite ways of being boys, girls, men, and women. And anyone that might come along and say, oh, you're a girl and you're not, you're not into fashion, makeup, you know, you're into playing soccer and you know, you're, I mean, all these regressive stereotypes, right?

That's a bunch of baloney. These stereotypes are a bunch of baloney and we have to tell our kids that you can be a girl or a boy in many different ways. There's no just one way. I also tell parents, it's important that they themselves, accept that their daughter may not be stereotypically feminine and their son may not be stereotypically masculine. It may not be the kid that you expected. Accept it. Try very hard to accept that your kid

and not only, I mean, you have six kids. You know all about raising kids. They don't always end up the way that we were expecting. But certainly when it comes to mass. masculinity and femininity. You want to accept who they are and what their interests are and not necessarily, you know, push them in the direction that you think, well, boys, you know, have to be X, Y, and Z. So you can do all of that. You also, of course, want to inoculate your child against so many of the ideas that are out there, not just the ideas about gender. I mean, that may that's the topic of my book but there's so many ideas that activists are just waiting outside your door or inside the computer inside the chat rooms and parents must get in control

of their of their kids internet use one of the appendices in my book i have seven appendices one of them is written by an iT expert and it instructs parents on all the different ways you need to get in control of your kid's internet use. If you're not in control of it and your kid is just wandering around on the internet, trust me, there are plenty of groomers out there that are just eagerly waiting to influence your child. And I've had one family after the next come to me and their child has been groomed into these beliefs of being the opposite sex on the internet. So that's one of the appendices. Another thing a family can do early on is put the school on notice. And I have an entire chapter about schools. Parents need to understand that while we certainly hope that our schools,

our teachers, our principals, guidance counselors are all wonderful people who only want the best for their students, we have to live in reality and recognize that while some of them do have an agenda. And some of them do want to influence our kids and influence them in ways that we wouldn't necessarily agree with and that may not be healthy for our children. So you want to put the school on notice. And the way that you do that is you download a form. I actually have it on my website. My website is miriamgrossmanmd.com. When you land on the website, you see a form putting schools on notice, you download it, you print it out, it's free, you sign it and you give it to the principal of your school. Your child may be in kindergarten. It's never too early. That form

is saying to the school, our family does not go along, does not agree with gender ideology. We do not give permission for our child to be exposed to any of those ideas, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's in a special assembly or meeting or a field trip to plan parenthood or a guest who's going to come and speak to the class, an after school club, like a GSA club, one of those, we are prohibiting that. We do not give our permission. And we hold you responsible for any damage that may result. We definitely do not give our permission. This form says for our child to be what's called socially transitioned,

which means to use a different name for the child, to allow the child to use the opposite sex bathrooms, etc. This is socially transitioning is not a benign process. It has consequences. And as far as we know, we don't have much research, but as far as we know, it solidifies the identity. So whereas many of these kids, after a while, they grow out of the unhappiness, the dysphoria that they have with their physical sex, if you, if you, and it makes sense, Matt, right? It's just common sense. If you agree with the child that their name is wrong and that their pronouns are wrong

and that they need to live their lives as the opposite sex and use the opposite sex bathrooms, etc. And everyone in their lives, all the adults, all the authorities are agreeing, then of course it's going to solidify the child's belief. And so I caution very strongly against any kind of social transition. Profiling, surveillance, and data harvesting are a few things not to like about tech giants. But what can you actually do about it when you rely on so many of their products? Well, the good news is it doesn't take much for you to take a stand.

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Use my link at ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh YT to get three extra months free. That's EXP, R-E-S-V-N.com slash Walsh Y-T. We only have a couple minutes left, but there's something obviously related to this that I've been wanting to ask you. And I don't even know if this is exactly true or not. But the way, you know, but it's an interesting pattern that I think I've noticed, which is at the kind of different age ranges, which sex between male and female is more susceptible to this. So we all kind of understand that among adolescent kids,

girls are falling into this much more often than boys are. It seems to me that younger than that, though, young kids, five, six, seven, most of the time when you hear about a young kid that age who's being, as you say, socially transition, usually it's a boy. And then you go into adulthood and you look at the people who as adults start suddenly identifying as trans. It seems like almost always, with rare exception, it's a man.

So, I don't know, have you noticed that? What do you make of that? What do you make of like, does the age range and the sex of the person make them more or less susceptible? It's a very important distinction. And I go through all of this in my book. We've always known about the little kids, the jazz Jennings, the little boys. who from an early age insist that they either are or have to become a girl.

And we've always known about the middle-aged men like Admiral Dr. Levine, who in their 40s or later decide that, you know, these are men who are heterosexual. They have enjoyed cross-dressing and going into women's spaces. they are sexually aroused by that. And we've always known about them. They also sometimes will decide to go through so-called sex reassignment. But now there's an entirely new population

of kids who are suddenly out of the blue without a history from childhood of being uncomfortable with their sex. And these are a majority, although there's still a lot of boys. I mean, my practice has essentially been 50% boys and girls. But you're right, in the research, we do see mostly girls. Now, that type of gender dysphoria is a social contagion.

It's very, very different than the little kids, the Jazz Jennings. Jess Jennings did not hear about the possibility that he was a girl from going online. He didn't hear about it from his friends at school, from a guidance counselor. Okay, it was something internally going on in him that caused it. We don't know exactly what. But if he had had the chance to go through normal puberty and he had not been medicalized at the age of 11, there was a very good chance that jazz could have outgrown his dysphoria. But yes, Matt, you're bringing up something very, very important.

What we're looking at now, and everyone, you see, it's being denied by the proponents of this. But those of us who are on the side of hard science and hard evidence, those of us that are seeing these kids in our office know. that it is a social contagion, and it is fueled by the internet, by social media, by friend groups. What is a social contagion? It's when ideas and behaviors and beliefs are spread within a friend group.

And it can be something benign like a haircut or, you know, a way of dressing, or it can be something that can be dangerous, like self-harming behaviors, eating disorders, and gender dysphoria, which places kids on a path toward harm. And look, I've had kids tell me I had a young woman in my office who told me that she never had any dysphoria, any unhappiness about her hips until one of her friends whose transgender identified started complaining about her hips. I hate my hips. They're so wide.

They're so feminine. Why can't I have narrow hips like a boy? All of a sudden, my patient starts having dysphoria about her hips. It is a social, and this is also why, Matt, a lot of kids who go into a psychiatric inpatient use, unit. They enter that unit not being trans. They leave the unit a few weeks later identifying as the opposite sex or non-binary or some other such nonsense term. Because while in the hospital, in that psychiatric unit, so many of the kids, probably more than 50, 60 percent of kids now,

who are in inpatient psychiatric units for adolescents do have some sort of gender issue. And so this is a big, I write a chapter in the book about the dilemma that a parent is in when they must place their child in one of these units because they are suicidal or they have some other acute emotional problem, but they don't want to do it because not only are most of the kids suffering from gender dysphoria on that unit and it will spread. But the staff on the unit, more often than not, they are proponents. They are often activists. They have been told by their professional organizations and by their hospital administration that the first thing you do when you meet a kid is you ask their name and

pronouns and you give them your name and pronouns. I had a psychiatric nurse write to me and she said, Dr. Grossman, I work with these kids on an inpatient psychiatric unit and I just can't, I can't believe what we're doing. We start off asking them their pronouns. They're just arriving. They made a suicide attempt. They're being bandaged. Their wrists are being bandaged. And we're supposed to begin with what are your pronouns, what name should I be calling you? And she ended up, she quit. She just quit. We have a big, big problem.

Yeah, that's, I guess I'm not surprised to hear that, but in another level it is shocking that they would start with that level of indoctrination when a kid is that. You could not possibly be more vulnerable. Obviously, there's a lot more to talk about. I wish we had more time to talk about it, but the good news is that your book, Lost in Transnation, child psychiatrist's guide out of madness can be purchased right now by anyone where all these

ideas are fleshed out in even greater detail. I want to mention also that I did the audio version. I actually narrated the entire book, took 40 hours. It was quite an experience. So people are loving that. So for people who don't want to sit down and read and they're commuting or they're busy in the house or they're jogging, whatever, you can listen to it on audio. Every family needs the information in my book.

Please, I'm begging you. And the fact that you've narrated your own audiobook, actually, as an audiobook snob myself, I always prefer for the author to read their own work. So I'm glad that you did that. And that's also a great way to access this information as well. Dr. Grossman, thanks so much for talking to us again. We really appreciate it. You're welcome, Matt.

Thanks for having me. Thank you.