The Sean McDowell Show - The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender (ft. Kyle Mann)

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

What have you wanted to know about gender but been afraid to ask? Search no further! In this interview, Sean talks with Kyle Mann, managing editor for the Babylon Bee, about his team’s latest book: The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender. This interview is both fun and informative. READ: The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender (https://amzn.to/46qnyUV) READ: Chasing Love: Sex, Love and Relationships In A Confused Culture, by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/3LKh0rG) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What is happening in the gender revolution all around us? And what does the Babylon Bee have to say about it? Our guest today, Kyle Mann, is the editor-in-chief at the Babylon Bee, and he has a new book out called The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender, which we're going to discuss. We're in kind of a weird and unique position

at the Babylon Bee to be able to comment on this stuff using humor. Boy, do I. Stop saying boy. It's not one of the approved genders to pick from. I do think that gender is kind of the new battleground in a lot of ways. Kyle, you and your team have written many books, such as The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, which we had a conversation about here.

Tell me what makes this book unique. Yeah, you know, the topic of gender and, you know, and worldview when it comes to gender identity has been discussed a lot. And obviously there's a lot of interest in that from a Christian perspective. So we've seen a lot of books come out about that. But we're in kind of a weird and unique position at the Babylon Bee to be able to comment on this stuff using humor. And it's a challenge, you know, especially you get to a sensitive topic like gender where you know it's like can we really laugh about this there's so many horrible things going on um you know in that in that space so um so it's been a fun and unique challenge and that's been one of the one

of the challenges that we've had to overcome you know as a satirical outlet is how do you how do you comment on very serious topics uh using? And that's, you know, you don't, if you look at, you know, gender issues and all that, you don't see too many books out there that are tackling it from the perspective of humor, trying to get people to laugh, and then maybe trying to get them to think a little bit. So that's kind of what makes this one unique, I think. Well, we're going to get into some of that tension for sure. But I'm curious as a whole, you've written other books and your team has on wokeness. You've done some on like capitalism and socialism.

How would you rank kind of the current gender revolution and in particular questions around gender ideology on your list of current cultural concerns? I mean, I would put it way up there you know uh does pineapple belong on pizza number one maybe um you know the Star Wars sequels Disney trilogy number two and then right after that gender you know I think I I do think that gender is kind of the new battle ground in a lot of ways and you know, we'll take some criticism as Christians and then specifically us as the Babylon Bee, we'll take some criticism for, you know, oh, you make so many jokes about gender or pronouns or identity. You know, why are you guys so obsessed with it? And it's like, I mean, that was kind of the talking point about the church 20 years ago when it came to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. You know, why is everybody talking about this? Well, it's what the culture is pushing right now you know so in some ways it's

what we're reacting to and what we're commenting on i think as as a humor outlet our our goal is to make fun of whoever's being the most ridiculous and at the moment it does seem like uh it does seem like the the people that are pushing kind of that fringe gender theory seem to be the ones who are most worthy of ridicule at this current time. So what's the goal of a book like this? Is it entertainment? Is it persuasion? Is it to rally conservatives? In some ways, when I say conservatives, you have people like Bill Maher and quite a few other people who wouldn't fit in that category.

They're strange bedfellows, so to speak. But is it to rally one side against the other? Are there multiple goals? What's the point of this book? Yeah, a lot of times when we put humor out into the world, there's not one specific mission or goal that it goes on to accomplish. Like you want to write something that's funny. And I think it should be funny in a vacuum. It should be funny regardless of what the reaction is to it. We just want to write a funny joke. But because of our worldview and because of the things

that we believe, that's going to come out in the humor. And the effect of it is that some people's minds are going to be changed, you know. For us, you know, our audience that already agrees with us might be more galvanized or might, you know, I, you know, you read a book like this, where we're writing a lot of jokes about pronouns and gender identities. And, you know, it might be a little bit of an eye opener to some people, because, yeah, we're making up goofy jokes and goofy genders and stuff for the book the book but it's it's also you know actually communicating this is the logical um outworking of this worldview so i hope i hope it wakes some people up within our own camp um i hope it helps people to laugh at something that's serious you know in

a way because i think that's um that's one of the really difficult things is that we we can get so depressed um and we can we can get so angsty over the news and i don't know it's really depressing to scroll you know conservative twitter or christian twitter sometimes and you know people post look at this crazy tick tock video of this elementary school teacher you know or you know that's woke and is indoctrinating our kids. Our, you know, Western civilization is over and all this stuff. And it's nice as a humor outlet to be able to like

bring some levity to that, even though it is a very serious topic. So yeah, multiple goals, multiple things that we're hoping to accomplish. I don't know how many liberals are really going to even pick up this book, but maybe it'll, maybe if you put it out on your coffee table and relatives come over for Thanksgiving, it'll spark some conversation.

Fair enough. I was curious about what the audience would be. Now, the opening chapter in the book is called The Wacky World of Gender. Describe what you and your team, there's a whole team that wrote this book, what, five or six of you, is that right? Yeah, yeah, we had a team of graphic artists and authors working on it, yeah. So what is this wacky world of gender as you and your team at the Babylon Bee see it? What's going on out there? Yeah, so the wacky world of gender chapter is kind of introduction into like you know if you haven't uh if you haven't been paying attention to the news for the past few years uh here's where things are at because it does feel it does feel like if you uh you know if you didn't turn on the news for the last five years you would just like be like what is going on you, you know, who's the spokesperson for Bud Light? You know, there's like, so such a huge cultural shift in just the last few years. And it's all based on this very

fringe, you know, idea of identity politics, and specifically gender identity politics. And so that's kind of, you know, where we lay that groundwork in a in a funny, satirical way. The voice of the Babylon Bee being these guides is always like, we are saying how great this thing is. It's actually terrible. So. So, so I was curious, is that, I know there's different ways to try to be funny. Like sometimes just the truth is funny. Sometimes exaggeration is funny. When you guys are writing this, are you taking something and just saying, how do we draw

this out to such absurd like possibilities that people begin to think maybe there's something rotten in the ideas themselves? What is the mindset behind coming up with a lot of the jokes and examples that you have? Yeah, I mean, different jokes kind of require different sort of tact or a different mindset. You know, sometimes you approach a joke like, I really have this point that I want to make. You know, what's the most effective way to reach the audience with this point? I do tend to think, well, those are fun and funny and they can be really strong. You know, those tend to be not my favorite jokes because

my favorite jokes are when I just think sometimes I write down the weirdest little things, you know, I'm just like, what is, you know, I'll write things down like Kool-Aid man. And then it'll just be sitting there in my notebook or in my email, you know, drafts or whatever. And I'm like, why did I write this down? You know? And I'm like, oh yeah, because I thought the Kool-Aid man was funny and maybe we could use them in an article, you at some point so it's like what like what really makes me laugh it's like three people stacked on top of each other inside a trench coat or raccoons make me laugh um you know uh people stepping on you know it's in the cartoons where they step on a rake and it and it slaps them in the face that like you try to think of like what is a universally funny thing

um that we that we've all found funny as humanity and we've all arrived at this is the funniest thing and how can we take those references and jokes and kind of work them into this shell where the topic we happen to be talking about is gender so it just it kind of depends on the joke but yeah you do approach it in different ways ultimately just trying to write the best joke possible. So give us an example of one that people might find in the book. Now, I realize you told me beforehand that some of the interviews you've done, people literally have the book and you don't even have one yet. I got a PDF, so I don't have a physical copy or I would hold it up. But just give us an example of one kind of example or story that you use that that stands out to you yeah i mean so a lot of our a lot of the book is like these

lists of things like uh you know genders or gender flags and those are those are fun vehicles for jokes because once you have that setup of like oh it would be fun to list a bunch of fictional gender flags, then it's easy to fill that out, or fun at least, to fill that out. Once you have, I call it like a gag machine, you have this joke, like a gag machine or a joke machine, then you can just turn out 30 different punchlines for this joke. And that works really well in these graphical guides. A lot of the book, you know, stemmed from us also wanting to do some, some very basic, like classic man versus woman humor, like husbands and wives, you know, what makes the difference between those. So we had a chap, we have chapters early on that are like, what is a man? What is a woman? And we get to

talk about like, what men are good at, you know, opening pickle jars, fixing stuff, breaking stuff, you know, bring all groceries in in one trip, you know. And then we have the things that men are not good at and we have the things women are good at. I always like that stuff because I feel like since the dawn of time, humanity has been making jokes about the differences between men and women. I did enjoy that. There were some pretty funny ones in there. That was one of my, I think one of the best sections personally. Now on page nine, you say the heart of this book is to educate you on what exactly gender means. All right. Educate me, Kyle. What is gender? Is it a synonym for sex? Educate me. Go. Well, if you want me to explain it in terms of the voice of the book,

then I'm very confused about what gender is because it's everything you want it to be, and it's nothing, and it's fluid, and it's changing, and it's everything you, it's everything you want it to be. And it's, and it's nothing and it's fluid and it's changing and it's imaginary, but it's also the most important thing about you. Um, and that's, that's really what makes, that's really what makes this gender identity thing so crazy, you know, is that it's very, uh, it's very much like it's how you feel, you know, and you look at some of these, you look at some of these gender descriptions where people are like, oh, I've come up with my own new gender. I'm a I'm a pocket watch gender, you know, and you're like, well, what what does that mean? And they explain it and they go, well, it means that today I feel very punctual and improper and mechanical. And you're like, OK, so it's just it's just like your mood or okay or

personality it's like it's like a personality it's almost like those uh like the Enneagram or I was the other one the Myers-Briggs test like yeah people people like having that box to fit themselves into and to describe them when I was growing up it, are you a Sega Genesis kid or a Super Nintendo kid? You know, that's where you found your identity. And I think that same impulse to identify with something has just latched onto this thing that just happens to also be incredibly destructive in a lot of cases.

So if you were going to step out of the book's voice and give a definition of gender, what would you say? Would you be comfortable with the way it's often used in terms of somebody's expression of their sexuality? Or would you say it's a synonym for sex? Or where would you go with that? Yeah, I mean, I think the entire, that framework, you know, we need to reject as Christians that it's it's something separate. It's an expression of sex. I don't I don't think that's the case. And I think that's a very recent phenomenon that has that was invented by these people that are purveying gender theory. You know, that's that's a very recent distinction that we made. C.S. Lewis had a really interesting quote about gender that I think about a lot where he says

that, I think he said something along the lines of gender is not the same thing as sex or something, but he said gender is more eternal than sex. I'm probably going to lose a lot of people, but he said that God made them male and female. But before there was male and female, there was masculine and feminine, you know, and he was expressing these kind of objective eternal truths through sex. So it's not that it's not that there's sex and then there's this lesser thing, gender. It's that God has divided a lot of creation into these two kind of frameworks

of masculine and feminine. And he uses the example of like words in Latin, you know, where they're not assigning genders to things. They're recognizing the spiritual reality that, you know, a mountain is masculine or whatever, which I thought was like, that was a real noodler for me. And'm not sure I 100 agree with him but I get where he's coming from that sex is this thing that God God created the sexes you know to express something that's deep and eternal and it's integrated into each one of us in this in this really profound way it's so essential to who we are that you can't separate that from

gender now doesn't mean every every guy has to eat meat and mow the lawn and shoot bears or something you know but there's gonna be a spectrum of kind of yeah how masculine how feminine but but ultimately it is tied to that that eternal truth of gender I think so you made a comment earlier about identity but there's a chapter in the book on identity politics so maybe explain what identity politics is and what is its connection with the issue of gender and you can choose kyle's voice or the voice of the book this is a choose your own adventure interview i'm a calvinist so I don't do the choose your own adventure thing. But no, the identity politics we addressed a lot too in Babylon Be Guy to Wokeness, you know,

and it's the broader term for this phenomenon and this movement. And then we brought it more to bear in this book on gender. But identity politics is the concept that you can you can find all these intersections of identity of who you are. It's kind of like that Myers-Briggs thing I was talking about, that if the more the more intersections of identity that you can identify intersections of oppression. you know i'm a muslim in a wheelchair with you know like with a with with a mental illness that i've diagnosed myself on tick tock or whatever like the whatever it is you know not that those people can't experience oppression or can't experience real challenges in life but it's trying to put yourself in this, classify yourself into these different, into these different classes. And you want to be in the oppressed class. You know, you want to be in the, to show that your problems are not your fault. All your problems are external. It's the, it's the world that's holding you down. It's society that's holding you down and you have

grievances. And, and it's society's job to make those grievances right to you. And it's a very kind of entitled, the world's not fair. And a way to explain your problems in your life coming from outside yourself, not within yourself. And it's just it's basically just that applied to gender, you know, gender identity politics of the more like unique or oppressed genders that I can align myself with, then the less I have to bear responsibility for anything I might have contributed to the problems in my life. You know, I teach a class for undergrads at Biola, and we talk about kind of critical theory and identity politics. And I have a huge chart in which I've worked out what it means to

be an oppressor and i literally walked through him and i said you want to see what the face of oppression is it's me i literally dot every i and cross every t kyle my sex male religion christian i'm able-bodied i'm cisgender just to that term, because that's the way the term is laid out. I am my age. You know, sometimes young and older people are also oppressed. I'm heterosexual. Are you young or old? What category are you?

Are you young or old? Well, so there's adultism. There's a sense where youth are being oppressed and the older are being oppressed. So if you're middle-aged, you're not being oppressed and the older are being oppressed so if you're middle-aged you're not being oppressed that's how a lot of the language goes so i'm right in the middle literally every single one no i'm not rich but i live in southern orange county so i have to have a certain level of income i live in a wealthier place you might say so i tell my students i say if i don't strike you as the face of oppression, then maybe something is wrong with the metric we're using to gauge this.

Just maybe. And I let it sit. But it's helpful to think about the issue of gender in terms of larger question of identity politics and critical theory, because I think it's a piece of that. All right. We may be covered this one. So let me ask it this way and see if anything else jumps to mind. You have different chapters on men and women that you're discussing earlier. In regard to both men and women, what are some of the cultural ideas that you take issue with and how do you do so? What are some of the ideas you push back on and challenge that are coming through as a part of this gender revolution that you just don't buy well yeah with with men and women you know it's it's a lot of like we were just talking about critical theory you know and

it's that men are oppressors and and that masculinity is inherently toxic, you know, that masculinity is a bad thing, a thing to be, like, a thing to rid yourself of. You know, that's kind of like, what was it, James Cameron, the guy that directed Titanic and all that, you know, he's like, he said something about that, you know, we got to get rid of toxic masculinity, I need to purge it from my body. Like, like it's this weird, you know, and obviously are there, are there traits of masculinity that could be overemphasized? You know, absolutely. But there's traits of femininity that could be overemphasized. You know, that's one of C.S. Lewis's things about the Christian life is, is that there's no one trait, there's no one impulse that you should follow at all costs. You know, even motherhood could could be an idol and even motherhood could keep you from the kingdom of heaven if it's an idol to you you know so yeah there are obviously things that could become toxic

if we want to subscribe to you know the language that they use for this stuff but like being you know i guess the serious message if there is one is one for the man and woman chapters in our book, is like, it is good that you were born the way you were. You were not born in the wrong body. And it's good for you to become the man that God made you to be. And it's good for you to become the woman that God made you to be. You know, that is one of the most depressing and discouraging things about gender theory, the message that it gives to our young people. You remember how awkward it was being a kid in high school or a kid in middle school, and you're like, I don't know where I fit in. And now you have these people coming in and saying, well, the problem is not you.

It's your body. You were born in the wrong body. How horribly destructive that is to tell's your body you were born in the wrong body you know like how how horribly destructive that is to tell people like your body is wrong and it goes against their entire message of like body positivity and you know that was kind of the thing 10 years ago 15 years ago was like you you are the way you are love yourself and now it's like well love yourself but also cut off parts of your body and get really expensive surgery. That's the only way you'll ever be happy. on this a little bit in the book but it's not really it's the purpose is not to answer for questions Christians whether they should use preferred pronouns or not but uh what what's your take on that um it's a it's a simple question

and it's also but I understand that it's complex for people and their personal life and application so like I think from a principled stance it it's like you can look at it from a Christian perspective. You can also look at it from a from the perspective of living in a free society that we can't force. We can't compel speech on people that don't agree with you. And like it is it is such a weird thing because it comes from this place of reality has to conform to me it's not that i have to change myself to conform with reality um you know if i find something off or something askew or that like what is what why am i out of step with the world and and what you know trans ideology says is well it's the world that's wrong, you know, not you. And I think that's I think that's such a such a profound shift.

And it's something that's been coming for, you know, 50 years, 100 years in our education system is just telling people that, you know, there is no objective standard that you have to conform to. But with the pronoun question, it's like. I don't I don't recognize, you know, that you can just say, well, my, my pronoun is this, and then you just declare it. And then everybody must call you that, you know, at the same time, obviously, like as Christians, and you know, if you're, if you're evangelizing to someone, you're talking to someone and you feel like, you know what,

this is going to be a roadblock. You know, I don't know. I mean, is it a sin to sit there and affirm that fake identity for them? I don't know. I mean, maybe as a stepping stone, as you're kind of working your way towards talking to them about this stuff, does it just turn them off immediately? Like, I would probably not. Well, here's the other, here's the other funny thing about this question is like, how often do you even use somebody's pronoun in front of them, right? It's true. I'm talking to you. I'm not saying like him or she or he or whatever. But it is like, I think each of us does need to kind of think about it in a particular situation but i would my goal would be to get to a point where i could have enough respect for someone and they could have enough respect for me where we understand each other and it's like hey i'm i'm not going to recognize this this fake

identity in you but it doesn't it also doesn't mean we have to be like jerk based conservatives that are like you're a him and shouting at people. So it's a little bit of a balance, but generally I don't think I would, I would subscribe to the idea that we should, we should affirm people's, people's sin and, and maybe even mental, mental challenges. One of the challenges I've gone back and forth in my mind, is it a question of wisdom or is it a question of morality in many circumstances? It sounds like you're saying there could be times where it's a question of morality, but a lot of it is a question of wisdom with somebody. Is that fair? Would you say it can overlap and be some of both depending on the

circumstances? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, obviously God will have grace on us as Christians trying to navigate this confusing time, you know, and I don't think we're going to get to the gates of heaven and God's going to be like, you know, he's going to pull the lever for the trap door because you use the made up pronoun at one point. But I do think, you know, as Christians, our goal should be to ultimately to uphold truth. And it's not loving to these people to affirm their sin ultimately. But yeah, there is a, obviously there's a wisdom question. I think God will have some grace depending on how we handle these questions. So you've got a chapter on the nuclear family and we've seen this with the Black Lives Matters organization, not necessarily the phrase. Most recently said they're trying to like destruct

and dismantle the nuclear family why do you see gender revolution come into such conflict with the nuclear family what's the tension that's there and why must it must it be overthrown, so to speak? Yeah, I think that's one of the main things that any revolution is going to try to attack first, because the nuclear family is how we pass on tradition. This is what Chesterton called the democracy of the dead. We as humans arrived at these ideas. And as Christians, you know, we believe that a lot of these ideas are eternal ideas that God has also communicated to us through his word and through nature and creation. But mankind recognized these things. And and and Chesterton says that, you know, mankind voted on them by by, you know, all the traditions through all the years that have been passed down and have and have landed at this point of like, it's good to be married, one man and one woman. And it's good to have children. And, you know, it's good to be in community with each other. And it's good to go to church and like these kind of basic things that we all believed as a society, maybe not always as individuals,

maybe we didn't always live up to them, but as a society, we kind of just generally agreed on these things. And without the nuclear family, you don't have the mechanism to pass those things on. You know, you have kids just being, kids in broken homes that are just being educated by whatever's on TV or TikTok or public schools or whatever.

And you have to break down the nuclear family because we're the ones who are shielding our kids from that and are passing on these democratic ideas that humanity has arrived at. Fair enough. So I thought one of the most interesting chapters, again, was on the kind of the church of gender. Now, at first, I thought you were talking about gender ideology seeping into the church. And then I realized you're talking about kind of this gender movement as if it's a religious movement itself. So do you see it as a religious movement? And talk about the Ten Commandments, the heretics, about some of the things that

overlap with a traditional religious movement. Yeah's really fascinating you know and this is there's another sense in which just politics in general or or leftism in general really any any extremes on the political spectrum become so religious and it's such an interesting thing to watch you know that people are like i've rejected god and religion and now i've've replaced it with basically the same thing. You know, it's just different figures and different prophets and different priests and different mandates. And, yeah, with the Church of Gender, there is a religious and even a cult-like element to gender, you know, that it is that. Like we were talking about breaking down the nuclear family. That's one of the hallmarks of a cult is that you have to break them away from their family that would otherwise guard them against these ideas.

And these people become your family. And you see this in messaging online about gender from people on the left. Like, you know, if your family doesn't affirm your identity, cut them out. You know, I was just watching a TikTok that was posted on twitter the other day about this you know that uh uh if your family if your family doesn't uh doesn't recognize your neo pronouns or whatever like well you don't need your family leave them come to us we're your family now like what like that is such a cult-like mentality you know um so so yeah we had a lot of fun with that. Hopefully we didn't stray too much into the,

into the blasphemy sphere with this. That's always a danger when you're doing jokes like that. But yeah, we have the 10 commandments of, of queer ideology. We have some verses that we made up as one does. All kinds of fun stuff. We talk about who the prophets are, who your new, uh, who your new pastor is now that you're inducted into the church of gender and all

of that. I appreciated the verses that had all the three dots, just literally saying, we're making this say whatever we want it to. That was pretty creative in that, in that area. So that jumped out to me because I look at all sorts of movements. There's kind of an environmental radical movement that becomes religious. All sorts of things. When you get rid of God, it was Chesterton who said, you replace it with something else that functions like a religion and gender ideology certainly can be one of those things. You see it on the left and you see it on the right in different ways. All right. Now, are you concerned with gender ideology seeping into the Christian church?

Now, you don't talk about that in this book. This is not technically a religious book, but you're an outspoken Christian. Do you see signs that certain kinds of gender ideology is seeping into the church? Or do you still think those are kind of the exceptions that are out there? Yeah, it depends you know obviously like mainstream um mainline denominations that have already abandoned uh you know the inerrancy of the word of god and the primacy of the word of god you know and they don't they don't submit to it in all things and those those movements are completely susceptible to this because why not you know you're just you're just being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine that comes and that includes the doctrine of the

church of gender um i in in more uh mainline's not the right word, but in more conservative, but not necessarily politically conservative, just your standard regular church you might see on the street corner that's not in one of these mainline denominations. I haven't really seen it seep in because I think I've seen a pushback, honestly, from a lot of people that maybe have more conservative or traditional tendencies. And hopefully that trend continues, because I think it's just so ridiculous on its face. But, you know, let's not count on being culturally conservative to ultimately prevail against this kind of stuff. We have to have our churches be submitted to the Word of God, or we're going to

be—we're not going to have any kind of foundation to fight against this stuff. Is there a way that somebody can embrace both? Say I'm a Christian and I just hold gender ideology, or are these things in direct conflict, cosmologically speaking, on a worldview level? If so, it would seem the question would be, how do we then live with our neighbors who have a very different radical worldview than us, and these are not reconcilable? That's where the political question would come in. How much do we give and take? But let's start with the first one about, can you be a Christian and embrace gender theory, or are they just simply opposing views of the world?

I mean, I think you can be a Christian and believe a lot of stupid stuff. You know, like technically, right? Like I'm probably wrong on a lot of stuff, and God will have a lot of grace on me, right? So there's a thing about being an immature Christian and you don't understand yet. And I know people that they were converted and the moment they were converted, they still had a lot of ridiculous ideas. But I do think the worldviews are inherently opposed. And a Christian, as they're being sanctified, if they do still cling to some of this stuff, they'll start to question it. And ultimately, hopefully, God would purify them and rid them of those beliefs because because they are you know,

they are based on atheistic, materialistic and self-centered existentialist worldviews where everything revolves around you and your identity. And it doesn't revolve around emptying yourself of all your grievances and emptying yourself of any charge that you would have against God. And instead saying, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to submit myself to Christ and I'm going to lose my life to save it. Not, not make, make everybody conform to me and bend the knee to me and what I think. Kyle, I've probably read, I don't know, maybe half a dozen books on gender theory, queer theory, just to read primary sources. And a lot of the books that I've probably read, I don't know, maybe half a dozen books on gender theory, queer theory, just to read primary sources. And a lot of the books that I've read start with individuals who just felt like they didn't fit certain cultural stereotypes. And the idea of certain postmodern language and critical theory was actually really liberating to them. So it's interesting to read that. It gives me some sympathy and empathy,

even though I see the world very differently than many people do who embrace gender theory. What do you think is at the root of this for those who are promoting this, what we would call a new gender revolution? What's at the heart of it, do you think? Well, I mentioned existentialism earlier, and I think this is, you know, ultimately this isn't really about gender. You know, it's this battle between transcendentalism or the idea that there are objective realities that are greater than ourselves. You know, obviously the Christian worldview fits more into that, where God is eternal and his precepts are eternal, and we find ourselves living in his world, and we have to navigate, okay, how then do I submit myself to his will? Whereas the world and the message that's been pushed in disney movies for the past 70 years

you know is that you follow your heart and you believe in yourself and you uh live your truth you know and that is the that is the goal and purpose of life and gender theory is just to me it's just the outworking of that um that and it's just a logical conclusion of it that even something so inherently biological and immutable as gender as as who you're born as your body even that must bow to your wishes and your desires and then everybody around you has to affirm those things because that's what we've subscribed to as a society is that you follow your heart and believe in yourself and nothing can go wrong.

You know, and I think that's, this is the destructive outworking of that ideology. So one of the last questions for you is, I'm curious, the highest commandment in the Bible is to love God and to love others. I want to know how you balance that with doing satire, which would certainly be interpreted by some as hate, with the command to love. Yeah, I mean, there's a few ways to answer that. Obviously, you can look at the examples of the prophets or Christ and who, you know, you can't argue that Christ didn't love God and love others with every breath he took and every thought he thought. And yet, there's times where he was pretty brutal. You know, there's times where he called people broods of vipers and said, oh, you thinkraham's your father

actually your father's the devil you know that's not and if you look at some of the language from people that kind of hem and haw over satire it's like uh that bring their hands over that stuff it's like well that's not very loving like you're not loving others in that moment so there must be a broader definition of loving others than just affirming people all the time you know um now all that to say I I kind I do shy away a little bit from the argument for making the argument like well the prophets did it you know Jesus did it so I can do it the prophets also hacked people into pieces and you know and i'm not arguing that that would be appropriate for me to do and i think we need to be really cautious about i think we need to be

really cautious about um satire c.s lewis famously said he didn't want to write screw tape letters any any more screw tape letters because um he he started to think like a demon you know and i think that's i think that's a strong i think that's a strong warning for us that we need to we need to be really targeted with our satire and make sure it's not getting too mean and make sure it's not consuming who we are. Because because you can you can get to a point where you're mocking so much that you don't believe in anything anymore. You know, it's a real danger. C.S. Lewis. Sorry, I keep quoting C.S. Lewis. that you don't believe in anything anymore you know i i it's a real danger c.s lewis sorry i keep quoting c.s lewis is at the end of abolition of man he talks about how the point of seeing through something is to see something through it and you can't go on seeing through things forever because

then you see nothing you know and i take that like satire deconstructs things and it breaks down ideas but we want to break down false ideas to point people to something that's transcendent, to point people to what's true. And if you just start using that mocking satirical mind on everything, well, now what? Now you're mocking the Bible. Now you're mocking God. Now you're mocking the very idea of church instead of just the silly church traditions that have built up. So you need to be targeted and you need to be careful. I think you really need to be grounded with satire because it does need to have a moral basis that you're pointing to. So if I'm not mistaken, your team is consistently pushed back on the right, like wokeness,

this, I'm sorry, on the left, wokeness, gender, socialism. Would you ever do like the Babylon Bee Guide to Christian nationalism or something that maybe hit home with your audience a little bit more? Or would that be like, ah, I'm shooting folks potentially in the foot who might be in my audience? Or is it not big enough? Or is there some other crazy movement on the right that you think could be made fun of? Talk about the potential of something like that. Yeah, I'd love to do we we sketched out with the Bama lumpy guide to Christianity would look like

and I would love to write that I think it would run the risk of you know anytime you make jokes about church you have a lot of upset people really think like yeah just no matter what it is there's people that are get upset about it because it's they think you're making fun of the eternal idea of the church and not the silly American way that we do church. You know what I mean? So I would love to do something like that. I do think, you know, like I said, we need to mock whoever's being the most ridiculous and that's why we do stuff like this. The other thing is that we do get to make those kinds of jokes in books like this as well. Our last book was The Babylon Bee Guide to Democracy.

And what was fun about it is we have a page of jokes about Republicans and then a page of jokes about Democrats. And it didn't sell as well. So we have to own the libs. And that's the only way we can get people to buy our books. Interesting. So that's fair enough. How do you resist that on one level is it just you just own that's the way discourse is today and you choose you make fun of and you know your audience like at what point do you just kind of go well we've got to weave in enough on the other side to kind of have

some integrity and balance i ask that because even on my channel, I have certain convictions and it's easy to kind of go the lane. I know with certain interviews, I'm like, oh, if I own this side, I'll get a lot of views and people love it. But there's a pause for me sometimes that says, okay, am I being integrous with this? Is this fair? Am I being balanced? Now, of course, my lane is different than the Babylon B lane. So there's going to be some crossover and some differences. But how do you deal with kind of that challenge that comes up? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of what I was talking about is trying to throw in the jabs the other way. Sometimes if you read a Babylon B article that's making fun of Democrats or Biden or something, the last line of the article will be like, meanwhile, Trump, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so there's a little bit of Trump stepped on a rake. There you go. But that's a little bit of

how, you know, we do it is like, yeah, maybe the headline is a little punchier and people are like, oh, yeah, it's making fun of liberals. But then I want someone who clicks on that because they're conservative to read through it and not feel super comfortable. There should be a discomfort when you're reading comedy or you're consuming comedy. That's what makes the late night host so boring. You know, a lot of times it's because it's like they agree with their audience. The audience agrees with them 100 percent and they're never really going to go for the jugular of making fun of their own people it's

fun to go to a comedy show when you know you're like kind of agreeing with the person and then all of a sudden they're like and bam and they tell a joke about you and you're like oh man that's totally me you know that's that's what's fun about comedy is it can surprise you in that way so i think we do need to do that um we we do, we do make, we do make jokes about the right often and, and, and about Christians, obviously probably more than any other group. So we're, we try to do that as much as possible. Do you have any guests or I hate to use the word prophecy, but just hunch of where this whole gender discussion is going. Like if we look five years from now or 10 years, do you have any guess or is it such a wild, wild west that it's literally could go any direction? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I hesitate a little when I read,

you know, there's people on Twitter that'll go both ways. There's people that will say, this is the end of Western civilization. You know, there's no coming back from this. And then there's people that kind of, you know, go the other way and say, you know, huge pushback and we're reclaiming culture. And I don't know, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle there. There's probably going to be some polarization. You're going to you're going to have a lot of people pushing back because of the blowback from this kind of stuff. But there's no denying that the tools that the left is using, like TikTok and public schools, are creating many, many disciples.

You know, so there there is that danger, too, that culture could sway past a tipping point. I like to think about I'm i'm i'm doing one of my rereads of lord of the rings right now and i love tolkien's perspective on uh on the passage of time and the time that we're born in you know is like uh outside of our control and yet what's inside of our control is how we react to it you know so it's like be be merry be a joyful warrior fight back and ultimately the grand sweep of civilization is going to happen whether no matter what i do um but i can i can tend my little farm i can i can i don't actually

have a farm but you know what i mean. I can tend my Southern California suburban property and raise my kids well, you know, and be happy and be joyful and be a light to the world, regardless of where civilization is going. So it's almost the wrong question for the Christian when people are like, well, is America, can we reclaim America? And I get where they're going. I don't, I'm not going to like denigrate them for having that heart. I do think like ultimately Tolkien, when he was writing, like he's, the hobbits are, now I'm just talking about Lord of the Rings, but the hobbits are, you know, they're not interested in the grand sweep of politics. They fight because the Shire is under attack, you know, and that's kind of a lot of where I think we need to be. It's like being as local as possible and as committed to our churches as possible,

and that's how we impact the world, I think. That's fair. I like that call a lot. Some of my friends who are not believers and look at the church have said similar things to me as well. Did I miss anything? Anything else about the book or any ideas you want to get across to folks to understand? Or actually, let me ask you this. This will be the last question. Should I give a trigger warning for people reading this book? Because I know the spirit of it.

I laughed at it. There's sometimes I cringed. I'm like, holy cow, I can't believe these guys said this. Sometimes I laughed out loud loud went to my wife should people have a trigger warning when reading this book or just dive in and you want to kind of shock people uh I I'm always surprised when people say like oh I gave my kid a copy of the Babylon B guide to wokeness. And I'm like, Oh, okay. You know, they're going to find some interesting stuff in there. So maybe, maybe, uh, have a talk with your teenagers before they read this book. But, uh, there's definitely some stuff in there that,

that we attack in a very on the nose straightforward way, um, where we just kind of say, tell it like it is. And, and that'll, that'll certainly, uh uh surprise some folks fair enough did i did i miss anything i asked that question before you want to get across or did we cover it we just need everybody to buy 100 copies there you go if everybody bought 100 the book would explode well i i enjoyed it you guys make me laugh, make me think. I wish I could tell jokes the way that you guys do. I'm not gifted in that way, and I fully own that. But it's called Babylon Bee Guide to Gender. Check it out.

And I would definitely agree underneath it, you guys are telling jokes, but there's a worldview ideas that emerge through it that you can kind of see, oh, if I take this belief to its logical extension, here's what it might lead to. So despite what some people might think, and you get the reputation of just being somebody who's funny and not thoughtful, this book is definitely both. So check out The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender. And before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe.

I've got a lot of other interesting interviews coming up on a range of worldview and cultural topics and if you thought about learning how to do apologetics we would love to have you in our MA Apologetics program it's fully distance program now information is below and if you're like

I'm not quite ready for a master's we have a certificate program and there's a significant discount below we'd love to walk you through basic apologetics training and help you be more effective Kyle enjoyed it when you guys come out with new books and new stuff that's going on, we'll keep having this conversation. Always appreciate you coming on the channel. Awesome. Always appreciate it. Thank you.