Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1: Diversity of Trans* Part 1: A Transexual's Critique of Transgender Activism

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Miranda Yardley is an engaging writer, an astute thinker, and a atheist #transsexual (Miranda's preferred term) who's been very outspokenly critical of many tenets of trans* activist ideology. In this episode, we talk about #autogynephilia, the meaning of sex and #gender, human nature, why it’s impossible to change sex, the role that porn plays in the rise of youth exploring sexual and gender identities, and many other things.  Check out Miranda's work here: https://mirandayardley.com/en/ Pre-order my book Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say from this website to recieve pre-order incentives: https://davidccook.org/books-preston-sprinkle-embodied/ Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

All right, you guys ready for this conversation? What a way to begin a podcast slash YouTube conversation. Today I'm starting a series called The Diversity of Trans. I'm going to have six different guests on the show for the series. And one of my goals is to highlight the diversity of trans perspectives and experiences so that people who are not either trans or don't identify as trans or are not really part of this broader conversation can understand that there is a great deal of diversity within this conversation. This series also surrounds the launch of my book, Embodied, Transgender Identities of Church and What the Bible Has to Say, which comes out on February 1st. So I'm going to do a few shows before the launch, one show on the day of the launch, a few shows after the launch of the book. So I encourage you to go check out my book, Embodied, where books are sold.

Basically, yeah, go to Amazon and you can check it out and order it. It's basically an overview of the Trans Conversation from a Christian perspective. There's a lot of science, a lot of theology, a lot of ethics, a lot of ontology in the book, and a ton of relationships that are woven throughout the book embodied. So check it out if you're interested in engaging a Christian perspective on this conversation. On the show today, we're going to kick things off with Miranda Yardley. Miranda does not fit any of your categories. Miranda identifies as transsexual. That's her preferred term, not transgender. And she explains why a little bit in this episode. Miranda is incredibly sharp, incredibly provocative. In fact, Miranda introduced herself to me as the world's most

hated transsexual. And I think when she says that, she means hated by those who would be on, I would assume the far left. Miranda is a transsexual who is very critical of a trans activist ideology. And that's largely what this show is all about. Miranda's perspective is one perspective. And we're going to highlight various other perspectives that might differ from Miranda, as you'll see if you keep listening to the series. And Miranda's actually really excited about that. Miranda is an atheist who loves churches. She's a transsexual who's very critical of a transgender ideology. But anyway, without further ado, please welcome to the show, the one and only Miranda Yardley. We started our conversation just from my audience.

I typically talk offline with people for a little bit and hit record, but Miranda, you started our offline conversation saying, as an atheist, I obviously have a great love for old churches. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So how does that work? What do you mean, as an atheist, you have a great love for old churches? That's a very fascinating way to introduce yourself. I think most atheists love a good church. Because they, I mean, you know, churches are very historic places. They are, you know, they are often built by the people who lived in an area and, you know, built with blood and sweat and tears. And with all of that comes a load of history. And as I was explaining, the place that I live is just outside a place called South End-on-Sea.

I live in a place called Leigh-on-Sea, and it is in the Thames estuary. And the history of this area is all intertwined with a need to defend London from either the Spanish or the French or the Germans or the Dutch or some other group of marauders. And there are histories of, you know, there are rich histories of piracy and smuggling because, course there's you know it's it's on the english channel and often you know you've got the english channel meeting the north sea and it's you know it's just that type of area that attracts you know ruthless pirates and smugglers and you know is it is it strictly because of the historical significance of old churches or is there something mysteriously, I don't know what term to even use, spiritual transcendent that is interesting for somebody particularly who would be an atheist or if that makes sense? I think one of the great things about old churches is, of course, that they are they usually very quiet. Yeah. You know, you go into a church it's very quiet and um or i i love peace and quiet and i'm i love being in the quiet i love you know i'm happy to sit at home reading a book in

a tranquil environment and just like you know just have quality time yeah and just you know just enjoy i i love my own company um you know i don't need continually need people to affirm my existence or make sure that i'm okay or anything i just like you know like my own company i I like interesting things. Churches are interesting things because they are often in this country, we get a lot of churches with stained glass windows and ornate carvings. I was mentioning to you the church in Peglesham, which is, you know, it's medieval. It's got these amazing primitive carvings on the floor of skulls and crossbones. And, you know, it's stuff like that really interesting and yeah you know it's quite cool to do that um and this this

church is in um a village called Pagansham which is it's very remote um it's there's probably 100 people that live there and it's remote by English standards it's probably 100 people that live there, and it's remote by English standards. It's probably six kilometers from the nearest settlement, you know, the nearest decent-sized settlement. And, you know, to the north, you've got various tribishes of other rivers, and the North Sea to the east. You've got the North Sea to the East, you've got the North Sea to the South. There's not an awful lot. It's just quite

remote and it's actually quite nice being out there because this part of Essex is all very flat. You get all this big sky and it's just a really nice way to spend an afternoon yeah exploring somewhere like that and just being on with with yourself well let's uh for for my audience i mean i would say most of my audience um i'm largely a christian audience

um maybe half maybe probably more than half would say they're um of an of a kind of evangelical which when i hear um atheists describe what an evangelical is i would say oftentimes it is more describing a fundamentalist evangelical my audience is not going to resonate with the fundamentalist brand of evangelical for the most part they're not going to resonate with that they would be more of a kind of just mainstream christian audience but i would say i'll only say that because most of them might not know your name or um your writing so why don't you give us a bit of a biography of yourself and and how you became interested in in if I can say it, a very interesting voice in the broader trans conversation.

Well, I often describe myself as being the world's most hated transsexual. And I don't think that I'm – I think Debbie Hayton is making a good attempt to usurp that particular throne. But I don't think that – I don't think Debbie's quite there yet. Got a bit – a little bit further to go. By my nature, I like to i like i'm interested in things i like to be uh i like to think i've got a sense of self-awareness and um i i got into this whole thing maybe gosh seven years ago maybe okay might be might be a bit longer might be a bit less time ago uh i'd read something online about how awful uh these these women were

feminists radical feminists about how awful they were to trans people and that the lives of trans people were being threatened and were put you know that we as a group of people were being ostracized and subjected to tolerance of abuse and hate and all sorts of allegations of being attempts to keep us out of public life and all these dreadful things these women were supposed to be doing. So what I did was I went onto Twitter and decided to look up some of the names of these women who were reputed to be evil, awful individuals. And I checked out their Twitter accounts and saw that they were having conversations with people who were claiming to be trans.

And they were saying, you know, they were being a bit, you know, taunting them by saying, have a good day, sir. And, you know, and emphasizing the fundamental role of one's biology in dictating whether or not one is a man or a woman. And I looked at what the women were saying and I thought, well, I'm not seeing many death threats here or anything like that, but being a bit mean to the poor trannies. And I drilled down into a few threads. And then I saw what it was that these trans people who were not just kids, but who were adults, who were adults, who were known trans activists and known campaigners for what they considered to be the rights of trans people, these invariably trans women, were saying to women. And I could not believe the utter misogyny and the hate

and the utter intolerance and the lack of empathy that I saw with women. I found it absolutely repugnant that this group of people who were there, who were supposed to be on some level part of my own social group, whose contempt not just for women but for themselves was such that they would go on you know that century they would spend that they they were and continue to spend their entire lives trolling women baiting women i would still see it today so you know the same culprits that i saw then i see them there i see them now using the same tired old arguments banging their same old drum of saying the same old thing and demonstrating in spite of their many years of having lived as a woman,

their utter callous lack of empathy for women. Wow. Can you unpack that a little like where does that come from and i and i assume when you're talking about um the trans activists who were berating gender critical feminists radical feminists um that these were any woman really who disagrees with them really i mean that's that's the way i read it um there's this this um word that's been banded around for for years this word turf which is supposed to be trans exclusion radically feminist and it's glued to anybody as being anybody who disagrees with transgender ideology is called a radical feminist um i don't think there are many people who are being called turs who are actually radical feminists in the sense of people who, you know, who deconstruct the way that the reproduction role of women is instrumentalized as a tool of oppression.

and who campaign for women's support groups and women's centres and groups like that. I don't think that many of the people who are being branded as being TERFs are the sort of people doing the work that radical feminists have historically done. Like, for example, the women's groups behind things like the Vancouver Rape Relief Centre or the anti-prostitution campaigning that Julie Bindel does or, you know, the writing and activism and sheer insistence that women work hard on themselves and their ideas that Andrea Dworkin did. It's not these type of women who have been called radical feminists, or not these type of people being called radical feminists. Radical feminism is just being demonized. The idea that these

are women who are feminists, these uppity uppity women are is that is that is what is being used against women essentially uh what what they're saying is that women's groups that exist for women are and are a pejorative and just tells you everything you need to know about the way that transgenderism and transgender activists see see women and women's groups yeah yeah i think some of my audience might be familiar with that but others might not you know yeah turf trans exclusionary radical feminists it is a slur that people who are against the uh their what they're talking about have used of that i think gender critical feminist is the ones is the phrase that they would use of

themselves even radical feminism they would say we're not being radical we're just being consistent i think is what they would say um gender critical feminist um and so within even in even from our audience who majority might be evangelical you know we're very used to liberals and conservatives you know dividing across the line on all these issues or whatever i tell them you know when it comes to the broader trans conversation there are no liberals and conservatives. It's one big hot mess. And you have people who would be very much not politically or socially conservative, very much at odds with certain kinds of ideologies but i want to back up a little bit because my audience might be scratching their head so you are transsexual um and yet you're very critical of various forms of trans ideology can can you unpack that how is your experience would you say different than what is

maybe being popularized in the broader culture if that's the again if i'm not even wording it correct you please correct me that's okay it's okay um i think that there i think there are probably three things that separate me from um most of the uh the trans activists out there that you see today um i think the first thing that separates me from them this is going to sound terribly arrogant is that i can think for myself um and i see what what i see within trans activism and i've written quite a few things on this mainly because it gave me a chance to quote liberally um from um on liberty by john stewart mill one of my favorite thinkers i'm a massive fan of john stewart now i know that some of his ideas on democracy and government weren't particularly good but um as a thinker i'm fascinated by his work and i'm fascinated by the work of Harriet Taylor as well, who I've written about. And the way I see, what I found

is that, or what I have found, is that a lot of the claims made by trans activists don't respond very well to sunlight. What I mean is if you look at some of the claims that they make, like, for example, what was the claim that one in 12 trans people die before they're 30 or kill before they're 30? If you look at the etiology of that claim, it was some sort of throwaway comment on a blog that it became a meme and entered the mainstream. There's absolutely no truth to it. If you look at the message behind Transgender Day of Remembrance, the idea is that trans people are killed at a far higher rate than anyone else. It doesn't stand up to daylight. You look at the trans women who are murdered and in in great numbers and it is generally very patriarchal very

very violent um i don't mean that patriarchy is synonymous with violence or or do i um but but you look at the very patriarchal societies where you see a lot of trans people getting or a lot of trans women getting killed or a lot of trans women getting killed it'll be countries like mexico and brazil and ecuador and even italy there is quite a high comparative death rate there and you look at the deaths in countries like brazil and mexico both great examples and the usa predominantly they are black or Hispanic and you see in the reports that are made that there'll be a group of seven

shot and you'll think well that looks like some sort of gangland killing so you're thinking that's going to be drugs or prostitution and it's difficult to underestimate it's difficult to underestimate

It's difficult to underestimate underestimate which was in it No, it's difficult to overestimate how little in common the white middle-class computer programmers in North America who are standing there? Campaigning for their trans rights or in the UK campaigning for their trans rights. It's difficult to overestimate how little these guys have in common with the poor black and Hispanic trans women out there who are actually being killed. And the way that these deaths have been co-opted primarily to benefit white middle-class males

is actually properly repugnant wow so you're saying that there's there's something much more ethnic that needs to be considered when we're considering the the murder rate of typically trans women um biological men transition to female um but there's something much more ethnic at work here than simply a conversation about trans persecution per se. These countries, well, first of all, just to be clear, I don't think anyone can transition to female. You're either female or you're male.

That's it. Right, okay. That's it and forever it shall be um but um if you look at the murders that exist within these countries they the the culture in for example mexico is you know mexico beautiful country amazing culture really macho culture though yeah and uh very you know homosexuality is not universally celebrated and there is a massive problem there with gangs and drugs and prostitution you look in America in North America there are indications that a lot of these trans women who were murdered in North America are murdered by people that they know, possibly boyfriends or partners.

There are indications sometimes that, you know, that killed in a hotel room, it would suggest some form of survival prostitution. That, you know, a lot of these deaths are occurring with people who are poor, that there are, you know, if we're going to look at it as try and work out what sort of axes these are lying on, it's going to be poverty, it's prostitution, it's drugs, it's organized crime. And the difficult lives these people are leading, they're difficult lives, and they're often horrific and premature deaths are being used by a group of people who have absolutely nothing in common with them to further their own political goals. Wow. Okay, so that's one area where you would differ from trans activist ideology. And again, that's kind of a broad brush statement, but we're dealing on a broad level

here. What are some other areas that you would say as a transsexual person, how you would differ from kind of the dominant narrative that we see on social media, news outlets and so on? Oh, where else would I differ? I don't think you can change sex. where else would i differ i don't think you can change sex okay i think um i think that the idea that you could change sex is a is is a fantasy um i think that it is indulged by a number of people and quite some quite honestly i think it's indulged by some people who can actually think for themselves but they're're thinking, well, you know, your sex is simply down to your genitalia. In fact, but it's it's not your you know, your life as a man or woman is very much set from the moment you come into the world and that you begin to navigate the world as being a man or a woman. As is a quote from Simone de Beauvoir, which is very often misinterpreted, often willfully misinterpreted, that one is made, one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman.

comes a woman is the the foundation of that statement is that a woman because being a woman a woman becomes a woman through living in a world dominated by men and it's through being a woman in a world dominated by men that this is that which makes the woman she's not born like that she is a product of living in a world that is dominated by men. Yeah, I'm familiar with the quote. I have not read the original work, unfortunately. So that's interesting that that's the original context of that. I am curious, just for my audience too, because you use the term transsexual, not transgender. I know a lot of people would be very offended if they identify as transgender and are called a transsexual for some people that's more of an offensive term but you kind

of go out of your way to say transsexual not transgender can you and i i've read enough of your style i i kind of know where you're going to go but can you and this deals with sex and gender and just gender as a ontological concept as a whole. Why do you prefer transsexual, not transgender, as your own self-identity? I think even the word transsexual I have issues with. with in that um i i can see that people would imply that it means that one can actually transcend the the boundaries of sex and that you you move from one sex to another um i think in some ways you can the term can be read as if to say that you know one doesn't do that one recognizes the reality of the sex but one attempts to cross that boundary.

But it is as hard a boundary as you can possibly get and you can't, you know, you can't transverse it. I don't think that being trans is a, I don't think it is a state that we see necessarily in other creatures. You know, I have a friend of mine that i talk to quite a lot and when we look at patterns of behavior and we're thinking about um you know when we're analyzing patterns of behavior and thinking about how these things play out in the real world we think well how would this be replicated within the animal kingdom how how for example would we know whether or not a cow was transgender um you know it's a kind of that you see you see where i'm going that's a slight little troll there um because i have this i have someone in mind when i'm saying that he'll be very flattered um

the the um you know where is this type of behavior uh replicated within the animal kingdom and the answer is it's not really is it right yeah no it's not it's i think i think that this is a peculiarly human type of behavior um one of the things that's put out there is it's like oh look we've got people you know that other societies have the genders. If you look at what these third genders were in societies that that had these had these societal constructs, which are always hierarchical, by the way. You know, it's not like they were that they were something that, you know, that suddenly these these were very enlightened. They were way of dealing in that society with homosexuality. That they were something that, you know, that suddenly these were very enlightened. They were a way of dealing way of dealing with homosexuality

in particular dealing with the uh dealing with the um the need in a society to be able to accommodate uh people who were homosexual and to you know to give them a way in which they could they could live their life without challenging the equilibrium of that particular society if you see what i'm getting at so really it's it's not a it's not a particularly great idea to have you know what what underlay these ideas of these third gents and whatever wasn't some sort of um amazing um uh amazingly open-minded um liberal attitude it was that they just needed a box to put people in that were gay well yeah it's for example i mean if for those who aren't maybe tracking you know in samoan culture and um in polynesia you know you have a'afafini, which is a term given to basically feminine gay men.

It's not a sexual, like biological sex kind of category. There's very little difference. And my best friend, one of my best friends is Samoan. He grew up in Samoa. And the way he describes the Fa'afafini, it's not like this is a kind of a male-female fa'afafini. It's not like it's an ontologically on par category with male and female. It would be very similar to just a feminine gay man who kind of lives that out, you know, in many ways that a more stereotypically feminine gay man would in our society it's not it doesn't that that category at least in samoa doesn't have the kind of categorical weight that some westerners want to invest into it and then bring it back into kind of speaking into our culture as as i under i'm not a sociologist but that's kind of i think it has limited value quite honestly but it sounds sounds to me like um you know what

you're describing is essentially it's just doing what societies do with effeminate homosexual men, and that is to try and kick them out of the man box. Yeah. And I think therein lies a lot of the problems that, you know, we see with we see with transgender people that a lot of the issues there arise from the, you know from these these men being kicked out of the man box and it's down to women to deal with the fallout from it you know it's women's spaces they want it's women's women's places on short lists they want it's women's sports that they want to infiltrate it's uh you know the the whole thing it's like a um it it's like a an infiltration into into uh into women's culture that is is being done without any any form of respect for individual or group boundaries. Interesting. You can say that these men identify as women,

and here they go infiltrating women's culture so that they're identifying as women. But I think that these cultural structures that women may have that exist because this is what the life of a woman entails. These men are not – they are infiltrating those as imposters. And they may be identifying as women, but they sure as hell aren't identifying with women. They are not paying any heed to the privacy or comfort or even showing the respect that women, you know, I think that males should show women, we should respect each other. And I just don't see

any of that coming from what is being called the trans community or their allies. Um, you you've talked a bit about, and this is kind of underlying the point you're making here. There's a, a subtype of trans experience, autogynephilia, um, that is as far as the research shows, you know, strictly from an experience with biological males. Um, and there's been, oh, there's a whole spectrum of views on autogynephilia all the way from it doesn't exist in your transphobia, if you even say the word, all the way to most biological males who identify as trans would have an autogynephilia experience. Can you unpack, one, for my audience what autogynephilia even is? And then two, I think you would be, as I've read your, I don't have a stat,

but I think when I've heard you talk, you seem to be more on the side of a lot of people who identify as trans women seem to match this kind of subtype of trans experience. Would that be an accurate way to, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but would that, um, can you unpack Autogynephilia for us and give us your perspectives on that? Sure. I'd be very happy to. Autogynephilia, I find it absolutely fascinating. it's become a area of i don't know what to call it sociology what whatever they call it sociology sexology uh human behavior it's human behavior isn't it anthropology i don't know um i've become absolutely fascinated by it and if you could find the money i'd love to do i've got i've got in mind a couple of ideas for some uh that likes to do some research work some graduate research work

i'd love to do a phd in something i've got some great ideas on that have sprung to me from the work that i've done um the whole idea of autogynephilia is it's something that arises from attempts to categorize and explain the behavior of men who um men who live as women and i used to live as women as you know with some mental italics or scare quotes or something on there the i don't think it's possible for a man to live as a woman without resorting to some form of cultural stereotype um now if we go back to about 1918, the German researcher Magnus Hirschfeld, he wrote a book called, whose title I think loosely translates as Transvestites. And he wrote about the observed behavior of men who enjoyed cross-dressing. And I can't remember if it was him. I think it was him.

And he categorized cross-dressing behavior into around, what, maybe six categories. And what's quite interesting about this is that Hirschfeld was probably the first person to systematically examine, categorize, and attempt to come up with some sort of taxonomy around the human behavior of of cross-dressing or um i don't want to call it cross-sex behavior because it's it's it's kind of not if it was cross-sex behavior then you know i'm sure more trans people would be um queuing up to um do the washing and wipe up all the shit off the floor that always seems to get left to the women am i allowed to swear on your podcast you are yeah you be you you be you it wasn't gratuitous it was her emphasis

and so hirschfeld came up with this idea and he found that a lot of men who participated in some form of cross-dressing did it with – there was some sort of sexual arousal involved. And Hirschfeld's work is seminal. It's the work that really starts this idea off. Although there is evidence that other cultures, I think it's referred to in the Hadith, for example, the second book of Muhammad, there is a reference there to there being two types of cross-sex behavior in males, one from feminine homosexuals and one from heterosexuals who were you know were rather less feminine um and the another interesting thing about Hirschfeld is you'll often see a lot of transgender activists complaining about how awful it was that Hirschfeld's library of sexology was destroyed by the Nazis the Hirschfeld Institute was destroyed and all of this original work one of of the first person, the first person to ever research transgender women, his work was destroyed by the Nazis. transvestites and recognized that behind the behavior a lot of men there was a sexual element involved with this with this cross-dressing and this this um and what we now see is this persona that um that the the trans person adopts or the trap the trans male adopts

and this this type of behavior seems to be um you know, we can categorize it for males. And if we fast forward to the 60s and the 70s, a Canadian researcher by the name of Ray Blanchard was looking at the behavior of crossdressers and transsexuals. And what he was attempting to do was to come across, what he needed was a word. He needed a word to differentiate between younger feminine gay men who were exclusively attracted to members of the opposite sex, who seemed to form one cohort of transsexuals, and a second group of men who were not feminine,

who were unremarkably masculine, and were heterosexual. And what he found was that he could delineate the population of males who transitioned to women according to two types that was down an axis of their sexual orientation so essentially you had a bunch of gay men becoming gay men's idea of what a woman is and then you had a bunch of straight men becoming a straight man's idea about what a woman was and what what he'd found is that the delineation was on sexual orientation that you had a straight cross-dresser or transvestite who became a transsexual and then you had a homosexual uh transvestite or um who became a transsexual and that the the two groups of people had generally, there was some overlap,

the two groups of people had different sexual histories. One was homosexual, almost exclusively homosexual, and one was heterosexual with a history of erotic cross-dressing. And what got Blanchard and his colleagues, J. Michael Bailey and anyone else who has touched this, this fascinating academic subject, which has become the internet debating guy you know dumps the fire quite literally the what what may it's made a lot of trans people unhappy is

that what it does is it it recognizes that behind the that the straight cross-dresser has a is more likely to have a is more likely to have a history of self-arousing eroticization. When you know, when presenting oneself as a woman in the only way that a man can ever present as a woman to themselves which is a man being a man's idea of what it is to be a woman if you get me yeah so the whole idea behind this is that there is in summary we have a delineation between two types of male transsexual by male transsexual i mean men who claim to be women you have the first type who are homosexual and they are feminine and they become a very feminine type of transsexual. And then you have the heterosexual transsexual or the non-homosexual transsexual should i say because it that itself covers a whole um whole whole bunch of different sexual orientations which appear to have at some point

um demonstrated a a form you know this this this um self-arousal this eroticization um at some point within their history now the just as this idea is not very well understood, the way that this early interest, because it usually is based upon an early interest in cross-dressing, the way that this turns into an adult transsexual is not very well understood. It's not like this person has a fetish and is walking around continually, you know, in a state of a hyper-excited state of arousal all the time. way that the the way that the autogynephile um almost comes to terms to terms with this um the site of their personality is being compared by anne lawrence who wrote an amazing essay called

becoming what we love which which contextualized this idea of the autogynephilic transsexual becoming this um you know becoming this person becoming essentially becoming what they love and contextualize it as being a um a romance that the man has with themselves that they become the woman that they love yeah i'm glad you mentioned ann lawrence her book um uh men trapped in men's bodies which is very i mean unknown largely except the people who are really deep into this conversation but ann lawrence is a medical researcher md phd and identifies as a transsexual who experiences autogynephilia so there's there's no there's there's no real argument you can make.

But I mean, that book, she surveyed tons of people who very much match Blanchard's description of this. I think I appreciate Anne Lawrence's work because she gives a lot of nuance to it. Because I think some of the criticism, at least of Blanchard's earlier presentation of this, as I understand this

is it was too compartmentalized too clean too neat you know this category that category I don't know if that's even a fair representation of what he actually says but what Ann Lawrence does is she shows a lot of nuance the complexity and and I it and and I'm gonna ask a question here in a second I gotta get all this background story. But, you know, there's some people, you know, I'll mention it in a blog or writing. I'll always get people to say that's offensive. Like, I can't believe you even mentioned that. Like, that's controversial.

How could you even? I'm like, first of all, the research is pretty sound. Like, I'm not saying all. I'm not saying most. I don't know the, I'm not, I don't know the percentage of trans identifying males who have this experience. I really don't know, but there's a decent amount. And whenever I do talk about it, I I've got several friends that have come out to me and said, who aren't even in the LGBT category at all, but they say, oh my gosh, there's a name for that because I've wrestled with that, you know, lots of people. So I think this experience, first of all, it does exist. Second of all, I think it's unhelpful to

pretend like it doesn't. So I guess my question to you is why, why is there such an allergic reaction to autogynephilia and such a resistance to it as a concept is it because it kind of can there's a lot of shame may be involved that overly fetishized fetishizes the experience i mean or what what's the why why do some people want to deny that it exists uh i think there are several reasons i think first of all, if we can recognize that the truth sets people free, we also have to recognize that first of all, it makes them very, very angry. who have, so we have to remember that the trans community, to the trans community, having an open and honest discussion about autogynephilia is anathema. It is not something that you do unless you can run very, very quickly from the rocks that they're going to throw at you because it is it is something that is um it's it's something that they have mandated out of their out of the discussion within their groups and it's something that they

attempt to discredit very unsuccessfully bearing in mind that the internet and Twitter in particular is awash with extremely good examples of every single behavior that Blanchard's theory predicts for transsexuals. You know, you look at what Blanchard's predictions that the theory makes, and like all great theories, it's testable. You can see the predictions that it makes about the behavior of the people that you see out there. I mean, you know, there was one I remember a few years ago. Someone, one of the quite well-known trans activists was waxing lyrical on Twitter about how he'd always been a lesbian, but now was fantasizing about men, but was talking about men as being these faceless, personality-less things. They were fantasizing about being with a man, but it wasn't a complete man. They were faceless. There was nothing to them. They were fantasizing of the idea of being with a man, but not of being with a man.

You see where I'm going with that? Now, if you've read Men's Traps in Men's Bodies, that is exactly what Anne Lawrence talks about. Absolutely, word for word. One of the fantasies is that some of these men who are having these types of fantasies, these these types of homosexual fantasies, they're having these fantasies and the men that they're fantasizing about, they're faceless. They're not they're not men. They are. Oh, what's the word I would use for it? They are almost like they're like dummies. Yeah. They are almost like, they're like dummies. You look at, you know, I wrote a piece a few years ago on pornography and autogynephilia. I just looked, this was before I discovered the writing of Andrea Chu, how I never saw Andrea Chu's writing before researching this article is beyond me.

Where I looked at the influence of pornography on trans people who transitioned. And you could see there that there was a fixation that they were developing through watching pornography, and they were literally becoming exactly what it was that they love. It was, you know, there is so much evidence out there. Now, on the most basic level, it's said that the autogynephile is someone who has a paraphilia. The paraphilia gets a bit out of hand and takes a life over. And I think that there is merit in that description as the autogynynephiles behavior causes an enormous amount of destruction to their relationships, the people around them. Again, this is something that has utterly failed

to go acknowledged. And when I, when I came onto the internet and started talking about this about six or seven years ago saying, you know, you're out there, you're celebrating this and no one you know you're not you're not acknowledging that that you have a you know that there are a vast number of of children and female partners and also male partners of these men who are doing this who are who have essentially become the collateral damage for these men to go off and live their lives but like you say that the the the whole thing is a lot more nuance than it's simply being a fetish and it is you know it it is the evolution within these these men of this idea of themselves as a woman in this long-term deep deeply emotional relationship you've read becoming what they love i mean the way that

and lawrence discusses it it's like this you know as uh the the um the teenage boy uh has these fantasies and it becomes a very intense erotic behavior that over time you know just like a heterosexual relationship it will peter out and it out. And it will come back years later. And then it will enter some sort of comfortable middle age with little or no sexual involvement. It's almost like a pattern of a heterosexual relationship. See, the whole subject is absolutely fascinating. It is.

And the way you see it there, you can see exactly how it is, the predictions that Blanchard makes, the contextualization that Anne Lawrence gives there is amazing. It's so precise. Considering this is some sort of analysis of behavior, some sort of analysis of behavior, some sort of anthropology. It's very scientific in the way that it allows you to examine the behaviors. And it's quite amazing that the predictions that, you know, the predictions that it makes that turn out, you know, that turn out.

And you can say, well, you know, that's exactly, exactly what I would have expected. And I think, you know, one of the issues behind it is, of course, that what the trans community have done is they've gone out of their way to make, you know, they're going out of their way at the moment to make reality of biological sex unutterable, but they've gone out of their way to prevent people from talking about the reality of what it is for most transsexuals to be transsexual. And by extension, I'd say what we're seeing as transgender is essentially the public effectable face that we are dealing with a a a destigmatization but it's not even a destigmatization it is a cultural uh growing cultural acceptance of transvestitism that we're seeing but the way that it's being accommodated in society is that we are we are not looking at the reality of the situation and saying that these are men who cross dress because at some point they would have had some sort of erotic interest in it.

And these, you know, what we're seeing now with a lot of these these younger people that we see who emerge on the Internet, who are obsessed with anime and obsessed with anime porn. And, you know, they've got that they've got that implausibly short skirts and that they're you know they're very revealing outfits on and whatnot and it's a very sexually aggressive movement and what we're being told it's not that these this is you know we're not being we're not taking the context of the permissive society to its logical collude conclusion is like saying this is a fetish you know if people are going to indulge in this then let them indulge in it in the you know in their own homes as long as it causes no harm or whatever like that what's actually happening here is that we're being told that

this this behavior is is actually making these these men women and that And the corollary of that is that being a woman is someone who is that prop that exists in society for sexual excitement and sexual gratification. It's dehumanizing. And what we're actually getting out there is a a group of men who are confusing what it is to feel sexy with feeling like a woman because to them being a woman is all about feeling sexy does that answer your question? some of the ideas and it does kind of come up in this conversation when it seems like these misogynistic stereotypes of what it means to be female are being resurrected or dust being resurrected dusted off and propped up by some of the underlying ideological

commitments in again amongst some for lack of better terms trans activists or or even people who would be maybe maybe even fit the um who would act on an autogynephiliac um type of desire and i and again i'm thinking of friends who they would say you know they struggle with this this is something that they see they they they're you know they they wrestle with it and i i very much empathize with their struggle and long conversations and you know the ones i'm and i i very much empathize with their struggle and long conversations and you know the ones i'm a few that i'm thinking of are married you know they're trying to be faithful to their wife and there's just there's just struggle and they have a faith commitment too so that adds a whole nother morality and a faith context where there's

heightened shame and so on and so forth so i'm very i have a lot of empathy when i talk about autogynephilia but then when i see people try to ignore it i that's what i'm like well that's not that doesn't to pretend like it doesn't exist doesn't actually help people work through this and even in reading lawrence's work it's like so many people that testimony saying thank you for giving me space to talk about now i can understand myself better you know whether they're in a faith context or not you know so i think it's just unfortunate when a piece of the human experience is ignored for the sake of trying to sanitize maybe a a greater movement um i do want to talk about

trans children um and i'm concerned about your time how are you doing on no it's it's all it's all it's all good i'll just respond to what you're saying yeah i think that the i think that the um the trans movement i don't think it's making very many friends and i think that there will be we're seeing quite a lot of pushback in this country i think the pushback is going to negatively affect trans people i think that some of the pushback is going to negatively affect trans people. I think that some of the pushback is definitely impacting upon particularly gay men. I think by extension, it's likely to affect lesbianism and lesbians groups as well. But to me, at the moment the main um pushback seems to be affecting uh you know gay men's culture um the i think the the the main problem with the uh you know with with what trans people

are telling people that they have to accept is that it's it's not based upon reality and i don't think that that is something that the public is going to buy and i don't think it's sustainable um and i think that i think that fundamentally the way that the trans rights movement if that's what we want to call it i think fundamentally the way that these ideas are being pushed it's it's coercive it has to be coercive because it is not something that is based upon reality. For example, if we, you know, a comparison that is made, you see many people will say, well, you know, trans women are just like any other type of women, like, oh, black women or disabled women. Well, black women are still women, you know, they are the, you know, they are black human beings who have reproductive systems, female reproductive systems, and are responsible for birthing 100% of the, you know, the population.

And if we look at the language that's being used around it, they've tried very hard to co-opt the language and the tactics of the black civil rights movement. But if you look at the black civil rights movement, even the gay liberation movement, the black civil rights movement, the idea was that black people should have the same rights the same um the same um equality of opportunity as as white people should not that black people should be called white or that gay people said well you know we want the same opportunities that heterosexuals have. But the gay community did not say, but we want to be called heterosexual. Yeah, no, that's yeah, that's super helpful. And I. So like there's certain there's certain differences in reality in some of these different civil rights movements for instance yeah the the

civil rights movements in the 50s and 60s and then even the um the the movement towards marriage equality um you know to be attracted to the same sex to be gay is to be gay like that that's there's there's nothing in reality that's being that's unt untrue there. But once it, I'm kind of like asking for feedback here. Once a male says I want to be recognized as a female on one hand, socially, just from a political perspective, it's kind of like, that's free country. You could say whatever you want, but to, to, to demand that people sign off on the same reality claim, that is a question.

I'm trying to be neutral here. That is a questionable reality claim, whereas if a gay man says I'm attracted to men, that's not a questionable. That's just a true statement. But those are very different in kind. This brings a whole load of problems to the yard um that the the kickback against uh the the against trans activism in the gay community and the lesbian community is quite well documented uh i've written about this idea of the cotton ceiling and probably read my um my my piece which um was like probably the best title i've ever come up with in my entire life. Yes. The ceiling of the cultural war on lesbians and women.

And it was like I was asked to do this piece by After Ellen two years ago and two or three years ago. I got the call and I had a 20 minute journey home. And between having the call to do it and getting home, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Sat down at my desk for 20 minutes, and that was it, 3,000 words, bang. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it, and I've been involved in this damn thing for so long that it was so super easy for me to remember.

I knew who all the culprits were. If I needed to think of, right, need a man pretending to be a woman going into a LGBT group and telling women that they telling lesbians that they should suck dick because it's on a woman. Aha, that's Morgan Page. Or I need to know a porn star who is shaming a female lesbian, lesbian, female, a lesbian porn star for not wanting to be not wanting to cast him opposite her I can go to Chelsea Poe and the the

very robust and very compassionate fight back that the porn lesbian porn actor Lily Cade did against Poe's rather rapey attempts to get himself cast in a lesbian porn movie. And it was just such an easy thing to write.

But I think the problem is that if you look at the trans rights movement, what they are doing, they're not asking people of anything. They are telling people of anything they are telling people and they are telling people the threat of cancellation of economic loss of contacting their friends of ostracizing them even physical violence we've seen physical violence in this country um we've we've seen threats there we've seen rape threats and death threats. You know, I've done talks in places

where the organisers have had people shut down the venues. The people have turned up to protest outside. They've threatened people. In one event, they started a fight and a woman was beaten. It's beaten by a man. That was when Maria McLach It's beaten by a man. That was when Maria McLachlan was beaten by a man. You know, it's like given this situation, which you'd ordinarily think that it's reached such a terrible state of affairs

where a woman gets beaten up in Hyde Park. To me, the natural response to that would be, let's get everyone together around the table and say, right, it's gone too far. We must work together on this. Let this never, ever, ever happen again. But what happened? LGBT organizations doubled down.

The response by Stonewall was absolutely pathetic. It was too little too sorry it's cat it was too little too little too late uh and you know it talked about you know people should people should do this and people should do that it's like showed absolutely no community leadership and i thought it was i thought it was ruth hunt's the nadir of Ruth Hunt's utterly dire stewardship of Stonewall. What Ruth Hunt has done to Stonewall is just beyond the pale. But she's got her 13 pieces of silver in the House of Lords. There you go, biblical reference, you see.

You do go to church, I see it. All right. And you got the number, 30 pieces of silver good job um yeah gosh i mean i um can i and just if you're like no i don't want to go that's fine i'm still curious about how your own personal experience fits into this my my assumption because i i know a few other people who would be identified as trans trans sexual and when the way they would describe it is look i am always my sex i have this thing that psychologists call gender dysphoria and the best way to relieve this and to be happy was to transition but i i still i don't deny my biological sex it It's just, you know, um, or even Blair White. I don't know if you know, Blair White, you know, she's like, look, I'm biologically male. I'm not going

to deny that. I just got in her words, you know, screwed by nature. And she used a different phrase, but I mean, and it is what it is. I'm happy now, but to make a whole, to create a whole new kind of maybe ideology out of this, I think is what she would say is wrong-headed. Does that resonate with you? How would you describe your personal experience vis-a-vis some of the transgender claims, the larger trans ideological claims? I don't really understand the question.

I don't really know what you're asking there. What I would say is that I think the best way to live a life, the best way to get as much as you can out of life is to live authentically. I like being someone who enjoys some of the delicious, darker music out there. I like to, you know, wear the black cardiac shirt and, you know, walk around with, you know, walk around looking like something from the 1980s. You know, as I often say, you know, dressed as a cake. But, you know, it's just fun. It doesn't change who I am. And I think living life authentically, you know, is very important. I've seen, you know, I've peeked into conversations on Twitter before where I've seen trans people who've not been able to go to the door to pick up a pizza because they've not had mascara and high heels on. I don't think that's living an authentic life. That's, that's just fucking ridiculous. Let me, let me reword my

question in a simple way. Like why did you transition? Why do you identify as transsexual? Oh gosh. Um, transition why do you identify as transsexual oh gosh um the uh i i have i've unpacked so many of these things now i think that most of the words that i would use to to explain why i transitioned and why i went through what I went through each would come with so many caveats yeah that's um I say I wouldn't say that I bought into transgender ideology as it exists now I certainly became obsessed with the idea that I was transsexual and I went through everything that I could possibly do to achieve what transsexual meant to me, which is what transsexual used to mean.

It would be someone that you would, you know, you would have a fair amount of counseling and you would unpack your behavior and your attitudes to life and you get your mental health in order and then you would transition and then you would you know attempt to live this life and assimilate and just you know just get on with things without being a dick really um and the um i mean the i and and you know very much that's that much that's what I did. And it was a way of eliminating a number of conflicts and certainly a huge amount of alienation I felt with myself

and between myself and the outside world. But, you know, I'm not the same person as i was then i think we all evolve and we grow as human beings and i think with a lot of hindsight it's you know my my life has been informed by this journey that i've been on and you know I like to be honest with myself and I do quite a lot of thinking and I like to you know like I say be authentic um and I you know I would question so many of the reasons why I did what I did and I think that a lot of trans people would um and I think that um associated with with with trans I think that what a lot of people who are transitioning are doing at the moment is they are going through some quite large changes in their life,

even this whole idea of adopting this social role of being someone who is the opposite sex, which of course doesn't really work, they become a parody. That in itself is an absolutely huge deal and it's very damaging. And a lot of people are going through these processes and making these decisions and causing a huge amount of difficulty for themselves and their loved ones, in particular their wives and their children. And they're doing this without ever, ever achieving

any understanding of why they feel about themselves the way that they do. I'm sorry. And I think that's tragic. I'm fiddling around here. My computer, I just noticed, is about to die. So I need to... That's okay.

And whatever I'm doing here is not working so let me uh give me maybe you better maybe you better start praying yeah can you well you're the church goer you're the church goer maybe uh um well there we are i i did um in my first year at university, I studied philosophy as well as the main modules that I was doing. I did a philosophy course that was on politics and ethics, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and something else which escapes me I'll remember and it was amazing I found the whole thing absolutely fascinating I discovered the writing of Soren Kierkegaard whose work I absolutely adore

Interesting I'm going to look over here now because I changed screens I don't know if this worked or not so if it deletes I can see you. Well, I mean, we've gone over an hour, so maybe we can wrap it up. We didn't get to trans kids.

There's no such thing as a trans kid. A trans kid is the equivalent of the vegan cat. It's not something that kids or cats do voluntarily there is because okay so i'm gonna get some emails i'll direct them to you on that um what you're getting you would acknowledge that there are children who are male or female who experience what psychologists now call gender dysphoria i would say call gender dysphoria. I would say define gender dysphoria. Can you define?

Yeah. And also, I would suggest that what the boys and these girls are feeling is very different to what we have historically, what may have historically been categorized as gender dysphoria. I mean, gender dysphoria is, to my mind, my own experience, it's a combination of depression and obsessive behavior, and a bunch of other anxieties as well. And it's, you know, it's something that you need to, it's something that the person needs to work through it's not symptomatic that you've magically been born the wrong sex right it's just that your

sex becomes a matter of fixation so i mean so gender dysphoria i'm going off the cuff here i mean some high level of distress somebody feels, experiences with regard to their biological sex. Now the ideology of it, the cause of it, the roots of it, that's a different debate. But obviously some people do experience that distress. Now you're saying that could be, often is, maybe intertwined with several other mental health issues? I don't think. I've said a number of times that my belief is that what we call gender dysphoria is not itself a discrete condition,

that gender dysphoria is a constellation of a number of different symptoms. And I think that what happens is that the individual becomes fixated upon this idea of changing their sex as being a way that they will be able to alleviate and come out the other side from the issues that they face. from the issues that they face. If that's true, then you would be very much for the idea of gender dysphoria being addressed through psychotherapy. I mean, psychological means, because that's precisely what the issue is, not rushing kids to physically transition.

Deal with the mental health issues first and that i i agree i totally agree the mental health issues are um seem to always be the cinderella of any health service that you look at and i think mental health care provision is inadequate in this country i think it is in pretty much every single country. And I think that the, I think that mental health care is absolutely necessary. I think that any therapy that people are having, who are, any people who are claiming to be trans, the therapy that they're having should not be about facilitating transition. It should be helping them to come to terms with who and what they are. And would you still still say say somebody experiences early onset gender dysphoria

i've got friends from the time they were three years old just so severe and let's just let's just say they do go through all the mental health you know means of addressing it and they they do take care of other issues or whatever and say they turn into adults, you know, and they're still very severely gender dysphoric, would you say in that case transitioning might be the best way to finally relieve, as a last resort maybe, their dysphoria? I think you're begging the question there because I think that we are you're presupposing that

if there is a even if there is a adequate and well-researched protocol as to how we resolve these internal conflicts that people may have, then there will always be people that will still want to do it. And I'm not sure that that's the case. You know, I mentioned to you, excuse me, I mentioned to you before a piece that I've done on pornography and autogynephilia. If you have any wealthy listeners who would like to fund me doing a PhD, I would love to look at the influence of pornography on the outbreak of transgenderism that we see. And, you know, you look at the works of, you know, some fairly prominent writers like Julia Serrano or Sam Rydell or Andrea Chu, or Sam Rydell or Andrea Chu.

And within their writing, it's there. Sissy porn, Japanese cartoon porn. It's all about the pornography. And I'm no prude, but I think pornography is dehumanizing. I think, you know, I think sexual relationships between consenting, loving human beings is all one and good. And, you know, I think that, you know, I think consenting meaningless sex is, you know, is pretty much OK as well. as well um you know with it you know it's not that's not not abusive but um i i think that i think pornography is a uh you know i think pornography is is is abusive it's it's very very you know although it's become acceptable after the you know after this 70s sexual liberation and whatever. And, you know, it's not actually that countercultural. In fact, it's incredibly conservative.

Pornography sells itself as being transgressive, but actually it's not transgressive. It's incredibly conservative. What it does, it's all about men dominating women, and it's all about exploiting men dominating women and and making money from men dominating women and dehumanizing women and keeping women down and you know even even in gay pornography you can see you can see a power vector um the with um with with men's you know within within the gay, you know, within the gay scene, you see that there is a lot of, there's no real place for feminine gay men.

a shame that that's the the feminine gay man is not given the support within the gay scene that i think that perhaps that that gay man could be and i think that you know that that might have some some bearing on what we what we see within the trans thing but what concerns me a lot is the influence on pornography and you only have to see the way that pornography affects the mannerisms the clothes and the you know even even the names that a lot the mannerisms the clothes and the you know even even the names that a lot of these people are you know when you've got a 50 year old 54 year old 20 stone man who's transitioning and call himself things like angel crystal it's like you know do me a favor mate Oh, okay. Well, so yeah, that's a good place to, I think, cut it off. Our audience has a lot to think about and we've only scratched the surface. Yeah. My mind was just kind of

spinning when you're connecting the dots between pornography and I mean, lots of things going on in our culture today. I've talked to mental health counselors that say, you know, we deal with so many different unwanted sexual desires in the last 10 years where in the past that was always linked to sexual trauma, some abusive situation. But now we're seeing people with no past of sexual trauma coming in with the same kinds of unwanted sexual behavior or desires and they're linking it to pornography and i think only time will tell the the societal

ramifications of widespread um internet porn which as you said or i'll say it resonates with what you're saying almost always leads to violence towards women and children which is profoundly regressive miranda thank you i can't thank you enough for coming on this show i mean i don't know how many christian podcasts you've been a guest on i did some videos with um someone i know from america called raya jones who is um is a pastor now, I believe. Oh, right. And we had a lot of fun talking about stuff. I'm going to leave you with some last words. Yes, yes, yes. Go for it. The 1860s, John Stuart Mill, whose work I mentioned before, he wrote an essay called

The Subjection of Women, which he finished with the assistance of Helen Taylor, who was the daughter of Harriet Taylor, who was his wife. Harriet had died in France, I think about 20 years previously. And The Subjection of Women was written based upon an essay by, of women was written based upon an essay by some of the cats are being antsy um an essay by harriet taylor called the enfranchisement of women um and mill delayed the publication of the subjection of women until he knew that he was dying because the attitudes that he was expressing in there about the idea that um the only thing that prevents women from being doctors and teachers and Mac readers is because society says that women can't be teachers and doctors

and Mac readers. And this idea runs so strongly against the ethos of the European court at that time, by the court, I mean, you know, society at that time, that he was concerned about the kickback. And he essentially released the essay only when he realized that he was dying so he didn't really care what people thought and it just you know there you go a true political radical who even then recognized that the most transgressive thing that you can actually do is to stick up for women and now those of us who are who are who are standing

for women in this ground those of the women and the men and the trans people who stand this ground for women and say that this movement is is toxic and it's damaging and what it's doing is wrong that we are the ones who are truly transgressive and it is it's it is. And it is the socially conservative people, the socially conservative groups, the trans groups, who are so rigidly defined in what their own identity allows them to be that are fighting against those of us who, yet again, say that the most radical thing that you can do as a man is to respect women. Wow. We should close in prayer, Miranda. say that the most radical thing that you can do as a man is to respect women.

Wow. We should close in prayer, Miranda. Thank you so much. You've given us a lot to think about. And yeah, this is going to be, I didn't tell you this, but I'm actually having a whole spectrum of different trans voices on the show for kind of a series of conversations. And yeah, thank you so much for playing, if I can say, a very unique role in this broader conversation. Thank you. I hope I brought some light to the conversation. That's the most important thing to me. That's great. That's great. That's great.

Light and darkness. Another spiritual metaphor. Very well. All right. More light, less heat. Thank you.