Theology in the Raw - Understanding Emerging Sexual Identities: Dr. Mark Yarhouse

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Check out the Theology in the Raw Patreon community to watch my extended conversation with Dr. Yarhouse Pick up a copy of Emerging Sexual Identities by Dr. Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky today! Learn more about the Exiles in Babylon Conference hereMy guest today is Dr. Mark Yarhouse! Dr. Yarhouse has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is author or co-author of several books, including Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture. His forthcoming book, Emerging Sexual Identities (with Dr. Julia Sadusky) will be published by Brazos Press at the end of October.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I can imagine some people my age and older, I'm 49, kind of rolling their eyes a little bit. Like, Demi, buy fluid. Like, what, what? Do we need 74 gender identities, you know, like, where does this end? When you're walking with people in that space, a rolling your eye, oh, my gosh, are we doing that? Like, obviously, it's not a posture for someone in ministry. Do we want people rolling their eyes or do we want people saying having some curiosity about this? Like, how does this function for this 14-year-old in front of me?

like, I'm walking with them. They're doing this in real time with their peers in social media. Like, this is happening. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. And my guest today is Dr. Mark Yardhouse. And this is our fourth and final installment of our series of live podcasts shot on site at just outside of Wheaton, Wheaton College at the Holy Post studio. Again, shout out to Holy Post for Landis User Studio.

Mark Yardhouse is an absolute delight to talk to. He is an expert in all things related to sexuality and gender. And he just released a new book, one of many that he's written, called Emerging Sexual Identities. I highly recommend that you check it out. There are few people in this field that are as knowledgeable, wise, and compassionate as Dr. Mark. Yarr House. So I was excited to have them back on the show. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Mark Yardhouse. Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology and Raw. I am here in person outside of Wheaton College at the Holy Post studio. Thank you to the

Holy Post for letting us use your setup here. And I'm here with my friend, Dr. Mark Yarrhouse. And I'm going to let Mark introduce himself. Mark, thanks so much for joining us here on Theology to Ra. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do. Well, thanks for having me, Preston. So I'm a professor of psychology at Wheaton College, so my primary appointment is in the doctoral programs in clinical psychology, but I also teach some other classes across counseling and family therapy and even undergrads from time to time. And I direct the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute, which is a formal center of the college. And we conduct original research particularly around people navigating like Christian faith and sexual or gender identity.

Okay. You've been at the sexuality, gender conversation for a couple decades at least? Yeah, about 26, 27 years. Okay. Yeah. And you're still doing it. Still doing it. And you're still a lot.

Still doing it. I love your Twitter profile. I don't know if it's still the same, but it was, you kind of mentioned that you've been doing this for that long. And let's just say it's been interesting. Yeah, right, something like that, yeah. Okay, so you've written a ton of books, your latest one, which will come out in October, so just at the time of recording next month, emerging sexual identities. You previously wrote, co-wrote with Julie Sudowski, emerging gender identities.

Can you explain what an emerging identity is? That language might not be super familiar to a lot of people. Yeah, really we were just trying to identify, like when the Trevor Project a couple years ago, made or had a report where young people were identifying like a hundred different sexual identities and over a hundred different gender identities like that that's kind of the the angle of entry into this conversation like what's what's the wide array of uh gender and sexual identities then i actually came across um there's a book by uh raymond williams that he describes um like taxonomies or categories and uh he describes like residual dominant and emergent and residuals

of like what used to be dominant, but now it's kind of fading in terms of societal, like, grip and, like, so in this conversation, it would be, like, the language of homosexuality or homosexual. Like, that's kind of a late Victorian, kind of a medical psychiatric conceptualization. Dominant is what is today. Like, what are we usually using for language and meaning today? So in this conversation, gay, lesbian, bisexual, emergent, then, in this area, would be probably more like the asexual, demisexual language like that. It doesn't have to be solely around asexuality. There's a number of other categories if people want to look up the Trevor Project on that. And I got that from an author, a psychologist in Australia, Rob Cover. he has a book on emerging, emergent sexual and gender identities. And so this was really, really helpful for me to understand that whereas the residual is more like, yes, it's fading away, but it's still used in some aspects of society.

I think a lot of conventional religious people still kind of draw in residual categories of morality and pathology and things like that. I think the dominant categories really rely on something like it's innate, it's immutable, but emergent and what we're calling emerging is more like co-created, co-cureated in digital and social media by younger people who don't find that they can, they can't like locate themselves in the dominant taxonomy. And so they use these other words. And not only that, another piece that comes out of that is more like micro-minoritized identity. where it's more granular, and they draw both on sexual and gender identity.

So when someone says, I'm an aromantic demigurl, like they're drawing on different ways to kind of present themselves. Like, I'm finding myself here, but I couldn't find myself in the dominant category. So that's kind of what this book's about. Are they more, would you say these identities then are more malleable, emergent identity, you know, that they kind of shift and change. They're not as maybe stable as, like, lesbian or gay. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that research has been done.

yet. I mean, just to ask it from a like that perspective, but I do think the premise of it is. Like we're like they're embodied, they're performed. It's kind of influenced in some ways by queer theory. Like there's elements of that that are in play, whereas the dominant category would not have, you know, resonated with that. I think, and I think just historically, to move from residual to dominant, you had to make the case for a stable identity that's not pathological. Like you had to, you had to kind of argue this is an innate orientation. This is an immutable characteristic, like eye color. Like there, and I'm not, you know, this is not to answer whether all that's true or not. This is just to say, like, they rely on different sets of

assumptions. Okay. And so the emerging, yeah, definitely seems to be enacted, performed, curated. So what does that mean for like volition and, you know, how does that layer into agency? Like, how do we think about that is complicated, right? Well, what? Well, What would you, I mean, I'm sure people listening and even, you know, we were joking around offline about, you know, me being a boomer even though I'm not, but my kids say I am, but I'm not. And anyway, I could, I can imagine some people my age and older, I'm 49, kind of rolling their eyes a little bit or just being like, demi, like, demi, buy fluid. What? Like, what? Like, these are just kids being kids and like, why? They're just like trying to, do we need 75? for gender identities, you know, like, where does this end, you know? What kind of alphabet soup are we stewing these days, you know?

Like, how do you, yeah, help help us navigate that. What I would say is I, part of it's like I could understand where that cynicism comes from. You know, what I hear, that's kind of my knee jerk, like, you know, Facebook is you with like 130 options or whatever. It's like, oh, come on, you know, but it's like, okay, is that the best response? I want to understand where this is coming from. So help us, I don't know, help us navigate that kind of welling up cynicism that can happen with people hear this.

Yeah, that last piece you said, like, is that the best response? Is really what this book's about? So this is the emerging sexual identities that I wrote with, again, with Julius Siddiske. What we're trying to do is say, like, this is for people in ministry to youth. Like when you are in that, and it can be for parents, it can be for youth ministers. But like when you're walking with people in that space, a rolling your eye, oh, Oh, my gosh, are we doing that? Like, is not, obviously, it's not the posture for someone in ministry.

It's not so obvious of some people. Maybe it was a little bit more of an element of like, we want you to be prepared for this conversation. Like, there's a gap right now between residual and dominant in terms of just the church and, you know, language around these, like a lot of people don't know how to respond to dominant categories of someone saying that they're gay or they're queer. But when you move into emergent, it's, yeah, do we want people? people rolling their eyes or do we want people saying having some curiosity about this?

Like, how does this function for this 14-year-old in front of me? Like, I'm walking with them. They're doing this in real time with their peers in social media. Like, this is happening. So I think being a little more curious, a little less cynical, a little more, you know, how might this function for this teen in my youth group or the friend that some of my kids brought to youth group? I think that's like a ministry, more of a ministry angle.

Okay. All right. So let's do some role play then. I've never done this before. This would be fun. Or it could totally flop. We'll see how it goes. You're a youth pastor. I'm a 16-year-old. Hey, Pastor Mark, I just want you to know that I'm a demi-pansexual, non-binary, something. I was trying to find another, but you could fill it into play. And I just want you to know that I just want to make. sure that I'm going to be safe in this youth group. Do you think I'll be safe here? And what do you think about my identity? That's probably not how they would come out to you, but something like that. Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. But I do think, so I think a youth minister would want to be curious, but I think when you move into scrutiny mode, you're going to miss opportunities for ministry. I think you're just laying a foundation.

So someone says that to me or would come out to me in some way. First of all, I would say thank you for just like sharing, you know, this part of your experience. If there's more about that that you'd like me to really understand, you know, please let me know. I'd like to like have a better sense of what that. So don't dive in with a bunch of questions, even if they're really genuine and curious, trying to understand what they're saying. Could that be a little bit oppressive? Well, I think it depends on, like, tone and relationship, and the first time I'm meeting the person. Like, I might, I don't know if I'm in the youth, am I in the youth group or I'm a re-out one-on-one someplace? Like, there's all kind of scenario. So timing is a big part of it. Posture is a big part of it, curiosity, like genuine curiosity, not this is going to be a great story to tell, you know, the next, you know, pastors forum or something like that. No, I think this is more about thanking people for sharing something that might feel kind of vulnerable

or something that maybe they don't really share with people my age. And then, yeah, I would like to know more about that. I've heard terms like that, and I'm wondering what they mean to you. Like, that might be a good question to follow up with. Like, just, especially when someone says, like, they're queer. Queer has meant different things to different people. And so I might just say, like, oh, okay, I hear what you're saying. I think I've heard others I've known have used similar language, and it's meant different things to different people.

And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that means for you, whether it's now or down the road. Like something like that could be super helpful to just not be so reactive, some curiosity. But you also don't want to make their whole identity about what they just disclosed. Like they're also in school. They have other interests. They have family. Like there's a lot about them. So part of ministry is recognizing all the different facets of kind of who they are and having curiosity about all those things and kind of their relationships and, yeah, the things that they're really drawn to, their goals, where they're heading.

Like there's a lot of pieces to ministry. So when we center emerging sexual identities, it won't be surprising if they center emerging sexual identity. Like if that's what we're, all they're known for and all we think about when we relate to them. Yeah, we're sort of narrowing in on that with them and highlighting that. And so, well, what about their chess club or what about their volleyball team or what about the other things that they're going on? I think the assumption is that they, you know, the person with an identity is the one centering it. But sometimes, and maybe sometimes they are, but you're saying sometimes. Sometimes we contribute to that too.

Yeah. Because it's so novel. It's so interesting. It's like, oh, okay. well, this is, and then we sort of lean into that and it just becomes, they become kind of a caricature of all there. So I kind of like to thicken the plot of who they are. Like, and they have these other facets, you know. So we're just kind of pulling those things forward, but not at the expense of what they've just shared. What they shared is important to them in ways that I don't

understand. I didn't grow up with those categories. They don't have the same meaning for me. And like you said, some adults are going to hear that and roll their eyes and say, okay, here we go and that it's going to be very dismissive and you know it's just not a helpful posture um so there's kind of the front facing response how do we respond to someone with you know a different set of identities and then there's a kind of like how should we just behind closed doors kind of think how should we you know process through it um let's let's go there for a little bit so not necessarily saying this is how we would like talk out loud about you know to someone's face but like help us think through of these identities, like, um, are some of these identities, um, kind of just describing certain

personality traits or something that we would have, you know, like, like the same kind of person existed 40 years ago, we just didn't have the term to, you know, describe the person, you know, kind of like how, you know, somebody today might be non-binary, gender fluid or, or say they're trans. And, you know, 40 years ago might have just been called like a tomboy or something because they're not fitting into the narrow box of like feminine stereotypes, you know. So it's kind of like the same. It's not like a new kind of person emerging. It's just a different English term used to describe what somebody could call personality preferences. Is that, is there, is there, is there, is, am I accurate even using the term personality,

or is that like not, am I completely off there? Is there some overlap? I don't know if you're completely off on that. I, it's, it's hard to know exactly what, what emergent or emerging identities are. Like, like when we wrote emerging gender identities, I think we were pretty clear that We're not saying that all of these are ontological realities that exist as discrete categories. I think that's actually coming out of that dominant taxonomy where it's like, okay, to be gay is a discrete category versus being straight. Like, that's a discrete category.

But then when you move into 100 plus sexual identities, are we really saying these are all discrete categories like ontological realities? Right. So I think that work has to still be kind of explored and done and thought through, like, what are we saying about that? I don't tend to gravitate towards that answer, that these are 100 different discrete categories. So what are they accounting for? Discrete categories, sorry. So, like, you have male, female, male straight, female, female straight, male bisexual, female bisexual.

So those would be kind of categories of like that are pretty, pretty. strong, I guess. Yeah, pretty well researched, pretty like clear. But then when you get to like some of these other ones, you're parsing it out so particularly you're not, it's not, it's not, well, so ontologically discrete category. I'm trying to unpack that because that's a really helpful phrase. Well, like, there was a while where bisexuality was viewed with a lot of scrutiny. Like, is that a real thing?

And so for the bisexual people in that community, they were like, well, hey, no, I know this is what I'm experiencing and I think it took a while for like research to catch up with their like named experience so when you have like over a hundred sexual identity over a hundred generatives I mean there's just going to be time needed to figure out it will these at one point become dominant categories is it going to move into that or they always what will emerge and be if these aren't emergent anymore like I think you need some time to kind of lay this out and see what this is for people I mean there's Plenty of Christians who are going to hear that and say, well, I'm not giving up on the residual.

I got that. I'm still on that. So I don't know where that's going to go. We're just kind of laying out where I think we're heading, where we are heading, because we're seeing 14, 15, 16-year-olds doing this. How is it different? How would it shape your ministry? How do we think about that? But, yeah, behind the scenes, if we think about this as Christians or researchers in this space, you mean, you've got to do the work to kind of figure out what this is, how it functions for people. Is it exploratory? Is that why the line? language makes sense to them, but it's not where they're going to land? Will they land dominant in 10 years? Is it just right now for exploring aspects of personality or other elements of their experience? Why didn't dominant categories satisfy them? Did they get satisfied with dominant as they age, or is it a function of something new that will really take hold? Those are just open questions. And we have to ask the question how much of this is a social trend that's typical of any youth culture of any age, right?

To reject existing categories and say, let me find myself here. I mean, that's got to be on the table. Is that politically incorrect to even ask that question? I mean, or? Well, I think when, when, as I read like Rob Cover talking about this and some others talking about this, you know, for some people, it's kind of trying it on and see if it fits. Well, people didn't approach gay, lesbian, bisexual in that way. Like that was not the way it was conceptualized, the way it was presented, the way people formulated it.

That was more like, no, this is who I am. And I was aware of that when I went through puberty and I discovered my sexual orientation as a, as this, this, this ontological reality, this category of existence. So do you treat these as categories in the same way? You know, this is like I'm literally in real time working that out. So it's weird to put a book forward and say, hey, I'm working this out right now. But here's what I'm thinking about it. I'm all for that. Write a book when you're 80% sure so you get feedback, stir things up, and then write a second edition.

Actually, one of my mentors in grad school, he really freed me up on this. He said, you know, I write things, and then I'm working it out, and my readership gives me feedback. They like it. They don't like it. They have questions. And if I disagree with myself in five years, I write something else. And I was like, wow, I feel like I had to get it all nailed down. Or you wouldn't risk putting it out there.

I don't, I can't fine tune my thoughts until I write the book. Like I'll do tons of research and I feel like, yes, I've read everything on this topic. I have it all down. But until I start writing, I haven't really synthesized. I haven't really put it together. And even as you know, the process of writing, there's, it forces you to fine tune things, new discoveries, run into an issue. We're like, oh, I thought this was the right thing, but it's actually not. But I wouldn't have known that until I write.

So I don't. I think until you write the book, you haven't even, like, that's part of the necessary journey. Well, and part of what we try to do in the book is, so in emerging gender identities, we introduced a concept called the looping effect, which traces back to a philosopher named Ian Hacking, and then we applied it to emerging sexual identities. And he just has this kind of theory of how we make up people, how people come into existence. And there's kind of two extremes. One is that they always existed and we didn't have language for them and now we have

language for them or they genuinely are created and they did not exist before and they're more created in language and in experience and it's kind of a constructionist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, so he positions himself drawing on the strengths of both of those without committing to either one and kind of says that new categories of. exist as people interact with the existing categories that are available to them. Interesting. And so he uses it a lot with mental health categories, diagnoses, because that's a major way

in which in our society we categorize people. So he traces back to when we used to categorize people as homosexual. And then you have people who interact with the language and categories that were given to them that were more psychiatric and medical. And then you have the institutions that, like, interact with those people and interview them and do research on them and things like that. And then you have kind of the conjectural knowledge and the taken for granted realities of how people talk about this on talk shows and late night and things like that. It gets into the education school system. And then you get experts who get to determine what counts as real knowledge about people who now we think of as gay.

So that looping effect creates a new category of gay. which is formulated very differently. You have the removal of homosexuality from the diagnostic manual in the 70s. So all of these things going on historically create a new category of people. And so what we engage that around people with gender identity disorder

and how that became gender dysphoria and transgender experiences. And in this book we sort of do that with emergent sexual identities to say, if anything, it's a very similar path. but they bypass the experts. These are young people who are not waiting on experts

to remove homosexuality from the DSM. They're not advocating. They're standing on the shoulders of dominant categories saying we're indebted to that, but they're not enough for us. And they're just moving forward saying, this is how we experience ourselves. So in some ways, they follow this looping effect,

but they sort of bypass the experts and say, you know, this is our embodied experience. So it's just a different phenomenon. And we're trying to understand it. That's fascinating. I remember you talking about that. I think it was in the looping effect. I think he talked about it in several of your books, or at least the emerging gender energies.

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So without giving like a precise definition for each one, can you just help us understand, you know, some of these maybe less familiar sexual identities that you've come across, I don't know, demisexual, demi-romantic, even asexual, does that mean zero sexual desire or is it more complex than that when people have an asexual type identity? So I think it can be more complex than that. So we call it the A-Spectrum, but like asexuality on a spectrum of different experiences. Some people will kind of describe maybe more of a muted sexuality. If other people reporting sexuality at like 10 or 11, you know, on a scale,

these folks are saying maybe it's more like a four or maybe it's there if I have an existing like connection and a relationship with someone and then my sexuality or my experience of romance is still muted. but it's accessible at that point. For others, not really, not really much at all. And this has, I think, for clinicians, you know, psychologists, mental health professionals, we've often struggled with is that the same as like a low desire disorder? Like, that's actually a condition.

So do we diagnose that or is this is people saying, no, it's not a condition. It's my experience. And so my experience is different than that. So, and I did see a study recently where someone was trying to tease that all out empirically. And their findings were that, no, it is different than like a hyposexual desire disorder, which is like a low desire disorder because that's like distressing to people. Like I want to have desire for my partner and I don't have desire for that.

And it's sort of impairing in relational functioning and it's distressing to me and it meets certain criteria. You know, these folks are not talking about it like that at all. So it wouldn't meet that criteria of like a mental health control. or it's just a seems like a muted or not existing, you know, sexuality in terms of attraction patterns. I don't know when I listen. So I just let as always, I'm just going to speak freely and raw and I'm probably going

to be like 75% maybe correct and 25% wrong or offensive or something. But I just want to like think out loud through this. Like I can imagine somebody listening and even, you know, this is part of me. I'm hearing all these like categories and it's just like, isn't just part of the normal human experience, you know, like, or, you know, demisexual, or some of the category, I think demisexual, where it's like, I, my sec, I prefer to have a sexual relationship when there's a prior, um, relationship established. We called that woman.

I mean, I don't like, is that too? Again, I'm, yeah, part, partly joking, but partly kind of like, do we need all this dissecting terminology for something that's just part of the natural, like, rhythm. That's a pre-normal question. I mean, it's, I think a lot of people listening to this are probably asking the same question right now.

So that, that whole question of is that, is that just a woman's experience, some women's experiences? Like, there's a whole line of, not every woman, but most women would say.

Well, there's a whole line of research on that. There's nothing to do with emerging sexual identities, but it's, it's conceptualizing desire in romantic relationships. And a lot of the early conceptualizations of desire were more based on studying males. And so male desire, more testosterone-based, kind of a driven desire. And then you would put that as a category and say –

And that's the standard kind of? Yeah, there was a time. And so women were, like, being pathologized for not having this desire. Like, where's my innate desire? Where's my spontaneous desire? So today we think more of like, yes, there is spontaneous desire. A higher percentage of men would report that, but some wouldn't. Some women would report that, but most wouldn't.

There's something called a responsive desire. So if my emotional needs are being met, desire can grow from that. A percentage of men report that, that that's important to them. Higher percentage of women. So we kind of deal with more extremes. Like it's all men are this way. All women are that way. Men are from Mars.

Women are from Venus. Yeah, exactly. So I think there's an element of like, it makes sense to say, okay, we've discovered that in really listening to women, understand their sexuality. There is more of a responsive sexuality than just a spontaneous sexuality. So is a responsive sexuality what a sexuality is. And I would say there's elements of that that appear to be true. Like these are not the same areas of research. They're overlapping in the way now we're talking about them.

There are some people who would say, I can have that romantic experience with someone over time if I know them well, or that sexual desire over time, but it feels more muted. And there's other people who would say, I don't have that. But I'm not distressed by it. And I'm not, it's not impairing a relationship. And so that moves them into more of this maybe identity category. Do we need it?

You asked, do we need it? Well, I don't know that I don't know that I'm the one to answer whether we need it. I'm saying young people are saying to us, I can't locate myself in the existing taxonomy of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight. I locate myself here. And so I don't know. They appear to be needing it. So again, from a minute. Do you play kind of a neutral?

You're just trying to understand what's going on, not make a judgment call on whether it is helpful for this person to find a certain word to name their specific experience. You're just, right? I mean, you're trying to just. I'm trying to understand it because I walk with people and I'm trying to help equip people in ministry to walk with people. And I get that if you just describe it, you're not landing on it. Are you for it? Are you for people? And people are telling us, this is what we're doing.

And this is what we experience. So that doesn't mean everything's up for grabs and that anything's fine. I think there'd be some questions down the road about, like, discipleship and how does this work for a Christian? But, I mean, I don't know that some of these categories are things that Christians need to be, like, really exercised about. Like, it seems to me that that doesn't actually help you in ministry. No, that's helpful.

Two quick stories on both. Well, one's a story. one's maybe a theoretical question. I've got a friend who experienced gender dysphoria for many years, you know. She's in her 30s. So this is before, I mean, she was before there was a, you know, open conversation. So she was wrestling with this feeling like she was the only one wrestling, right? Also, same-sex attracted, biological female.

And for the longest time, she just didn't feel like the word lessee. being fit. Yeah. Because it just had this kind of more feminine sent to it, you know? And she said, it just doesn't fit. And then she describes how freeing and liberating in a good, like in a very healthy way it was when she came across the word trans. Because she said, it made me feel like I'm not an outcast to humanity because there

is a word that describes my experience. Yeah. And I was like, that, that's really helpful. And even now, she's a conservative Christian, you know, goes by pronouns that match her biological sex, you know, checks off all the boxes. But she still would describe herself as transgender. And people can get kind of like I did a little bit, like, gosh, do we need all these terms and stuff? And do you need this label? But hearing her story and how helpful it was for her specific journey to find a word that existed outside of her, which means other people are probably also.

using that word, it just felt, it just absolutely humanized her journey. And agree or disagree, you know, you can, but at least understand like, oh, terminology can be really meaningful to people in ways that, you know, that another person might not understand. Yeah. And I, I just similarly, I had a person I worked with several years ago who was also a Christian and, you know, older in just about 60. But when he was dealing with this gender discordance, like, he thought he might be psychotic. He was wondering if he was schizophrenic. Like, there was some kind of a break he was having. So he was scouring. He was going to libraries and looking for medical textbooks and trying to figure out what this was. And he came across whatever the term at the time might have been,

maybe it was gender identity disorder or another term at the time. And it was more like a light bulb went off and said, okay, there's a real, like this is a real category. Like this is not psychosis. So it can be like I find myself, I discover something about myself. It can also be like relieving, like I'm not having a mental breakdown. Like there's some way in which this has been formulated by other people way before me. And it kind of creates a different meaning-making structure. I could imagine another scenario where kind of searching for a certain term or identity to describe your current life experience might be unhelpful too. And this is, I don't, I'm thinking of a theoretical situation where, say, I had a child that was like 15 years old, female. And, you know, maybe she likes to climb trees and, you know, like sports and isn't into kind of like super feminine things. Maybe the thought of having sex of the boy is kind of a little bit like creepy. Maybe after going through puberty and she, you know, develops breasts and becomes, you know,

more of a woman and maybe as a mid-teen of a girl and now she's getting older men not looking her in the eyes but looking at her body and that's starting to creep her out like I would say all what I've described that this is all very just normal unfortunately like normal experiences especially for a female going through puberty and and and maybe not fitting into a super tight feminine box but I can imagine a scenario where she could be in a social environment or she would be made to feel like a different kind of person. You're not a cis straight female because you don't check off all these narrow boxes. So you need to go search.

This might not be told directly to her, but she might be made to feel like I need to find out who I am rather than just saying you are going through a very typical normal. Maybe normal is not the best term. typical experience that many females go through and maybe searching for a word might not be helpful. Yeah, right. It might be more stressful than you even need to be.

But rather than just say, yeah, I'm a female and this is life. Yeah, and I think by and large, some of these, you know, the use of some of these descriptors or categories are pretty benign. But when you move into some of them that might be like a mental health diagnosis and And then there's like ways to resolve that and you start going down a certain path. There are, obviously, there's more at stake, right? So if someone like, so historically, there's been more latitude for biological females to have those experiences and not be told, oh, well, you're this. But for males, there was a narrow way of being a male.

And so there wasn't good word in English that was positive for a male who was like gender. atypical. And so sometimes those folks would be referred to gender clinics at higher rates. Not today. We're seeing more adolescent females being referred to gender clinics who are asking those questions, and we don't really understand why that is. But that's been a, that's definitely been more of a concern. Whereas if you just were to say, you know, I'm an aromantic demi-boy or, you know, demi-girl, like, okay, but that doesn't necessarily take you down a path of like diagnosis and intervention and things like that. It just may be functioning differently for you as exploratory

or maybe it lands in some ways, but let's see where you are in three years, five years. You know, we'll see. The exiles in Babylon conference is happening again, April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis, and this one is going to be spicy. We're talking about mental health and the gospel. How should the church respond to immigration?

We're also having a dialogical debate about Christians and war with, Jane Claiborne and Paul Copan, and we're also having another dialogical debate between Peter Enz and Sandy Richter over the historical reliability of the Bible. We also added a pre-conference addressing how Christians should think about artificial intelligence. We have several experts coming to lead us in that conversation. Other speakers include Dan Allender, Matthew Sorens, Liliana, Reza, Joshua Smith, Chinway Williams, and several others. And of course, worth the price of admission, Street Hems is coming back as well, folks. Most of all, the

The in-person experience at exiles is just super unique. I mean, it's, I don't know. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to describe. You just got to go and experience it for yourself. Right now, we're running an early bird discount of 30 bucks off registration. So I encourage you to sign up soon to take advantage of this discount. Just head over to TheologyNorrah.com to register.

We also have a heavily discounted Gen Z price. Don't lie about your age. You've got to be Gen Z. And also discounts on groups of five or more. Again, that's April 30th to May 2nd in Minneapolis. Register at Theologyinthorah.com. You mentioned it. Why are a much higher percentage of biological females exploring different gender identities?

What are the, well, I know how you're going to respond to this. So I'll let Mark be Mark. Can you give us the spectrum of responses? of how people are trying to analyze the really high disproportionate percentage of females, younger females exploring different gender. Yeah. So just to just empirically, like, do we see this at gender clinics all over? The UK has reported this.

Other countries have reported this. It's in the U.S. So we're seeing what I'd call a gender ratio flip from like a higher percentage of boys, maybe 30 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe a four to five to one ratio. of boys to girls coming to a gender clinic, being referred to a gender clinic. And now we're seeing that like reversed. So it might be like four to one. Girls over boys, biological females over males, being referred to gender clinics who are now like adolescents.

So these are like late onset cases versus early onset. So late meaning like puberty or on early being prior to puberty. Like they didn't experience any kind of dysphoria. Yeah, prior to puberty. Prior to puberty. Yeah. So, okay, so the two main responses to that. One is, then this is probably most in our field, honestly, is more like, well, just, they're just aware of it. Like, it's just a thing that they didn't have language for it. As society is more accepting of people being trans and non-binary, they're just able to name this and they're coming in in higher rates. But that doesn't really get at the gender ratio. Like, it doesn't explain why more females than males. It's just like more curious. The other main response to this has been, well, maybe it's social contagion. Maybe this is like a phenomenon that is caught and passed around by peers in ways that females are more susceptible to.

And so those folks tend to cite research in the eating disorder literature because that's where the language of social contagion has been really well documented. There's lines of research, systematic reviews of research of the impact of peer group and societal standards of beauty and ideal body weight and shape and how that's communicated among peers and reinforced that that can contribute and maintain eating disorders. And that females are more susceptible to that than males. And that's well established. That's well established. That's what I thought.

It's called social contagion. So you have some people kind of copying and pasting the concept. concept and applying it over here. And I get it. Like, I get, like, that's, I, like, that's, I, like, that's, that's, it's, it's, it's challenging for us to think about. So is it social contagion? And a lot of people would say, of course it is. It's just that the research hasn't been done in, in the same degree that we have in eating disorder literature. So there's a little bit of me like saying, okay, let's do that work. Let's, let's, let's establish this, if that's the case. I definitely think the awareness piece is a part. of it, but I don't, it's naive to say that's all that's going on. Right. That just doesn't really add up. So Julie and I, in emerging gender identities, argued for the looping effect that we think something like that is a, is a better account right now until we do the research on social contagion. Because we're still saying there can be peer group influence, but we're not ready to use that term. But I'm not against it being studied.

I think it very well could be what's going on. But there's definitely peer group influence. I would just put it in one of those pieces of the looping effect. It has to do with conjectural knowledge and what's passed around by your peers and how it's reinforced. Obviously, that's in play. This is so good to hear it because the way I've been explaining it is almost like word for word, just how you did it. But you're the expert in this. I'm not. So I'm glad this is confirming.

Maybe I just got it from you originally and forgot to credit you. Anyway, that's really helpful. I, why are people resistant to saying there's any kind of peer group influence, any kind of social influence? Like what's, because it seems, I don't know, like, it just seems like you have to have your head in the sand if, if you say that that does not play in any role. Clearly there's social influence happening, at least in some cases. Well, then let me tell you this. So I direct a, I have a clinic where we do evaluations for gender dysphoria. And most of the people who come to me are Christians whose kids are navigating these issues.

And they're trying to, you know, they're just afraid that their Christian faith won't be taken seriously at a, another type of gender clinic. And so they'll come for an evaluation. But like I've had, I've had very liberal parents come to me as well because, and they'll say, I voted for so-and-so, I'm liberal in all these different categories. I check all the boxes, but now it's my child. And I really want to know that. If it's gender dysphoria, I want to know that. And we'll respond as I think we can and should. But since it's our child, we want to make sure it's done, you know, right.

And so it definitely cuts across all those things. But you were asked earlier, like, why do people, why are they so reticent to acknowledge the peer group piece of it? And I think what I would say to that, I've been around those. circles as well. And I think ultimately they feel like any concession means you're discrediting the authentic experience of the person who is either transgender in their identity or has the actual gender dysphoria diagnosis meets the criteria. And they're so protective of not discrediting that reality. So if I concede that point, if I'm that person saying, I won't give an inch on this. I don't want to concede that point. If I concede that point to you

publicly, then everything will be social contagion. You'll reduce all of it. You'll oversimplify it. You'll take it out of context. And you'll take what I say and you'll weaponize it against people. I think that's a bit of the impulse. The weaponization. That's a real thing. I mean, I've talked about this in a way that I've changed the way I approach it in public because especially when you have parents that maybe have a lot of fear, anxiety over their kid coming out and everything. And they're wanting to hear a certain kind of answer. And we start talking about social contagion, peer group influence. They're like, oh, good. So my kid's not really trans. I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa, hold on here. First of all, that is not what I said. Second of all, maybe they do have serious gender dysphoria. If you just

like are flipping about that, then that's not going to be helpful for your kid. And also, even if the identity arose from some kind of peer influence, that doesn't discount the very, real experience that that identity has for them. All we're doing is maybe exploring different causes, but that doesn't discount the byproduct, the identity or the experience that they're having. So anyway, I've had to really kind of pull back on how I address this so that I don't kind of give red meat to somebody wanting a certain answer. And then they kind of hear what I'm saying and filter it through a certain lens that I'm not intending. And I think that's a good adjustment, but I would say to these other folks, there's got to be a way for you to acknowledge

that there's multiple things going on here, including the potential for peer group influence. Because when you just hold your ground, you're also not helping. I get that you're protecting people, but it's actually not helping advance a conversation that needs to be more nuanced. It also kind of discredits you, right? I mean, if somebody says, there's no peer group influence, I think the majority of the population can kind of see, and they're like, oh, so I don't know if I I trust what you're saying if you think that there's no peer influence. Plus, you have the lived experience of a growing number of D-transitioners that will flat out say, like, I don't know if you've heard my interview of Helena Kirchner.

It was, it's on YouTube. And she said, I asked you that question at a conference while back. And she was like, 100%. She was like, I was a troubled, lonely kid. And I got on, you know, Tumblr and everything, everything. all the time was about gender and all of a sudden the next few months that's all I talked about and then all my friends were coming out as trans and I came out as trans and then we all desisted after two years and none of us identifying you know she was like 100% it was I wouldn't

even thought about this if it wasn't for my friends and my social media accounts now that's one story whatever but I've heard that anecdotally yeah quite a bit you know on that note what do you think can you talk to us about the if I can call it a detransitioning or movement. I don't know if I'll call it movement, but it seems anecdotally there is a growing number of especially females who might fit within that kind of like socially peer influence group that now in the early 20s they are no longer identifying the way they did when they were 14.

Is there data on that? Is it seen like it's increasing? seen? Is it not? Is that just kind of my anecdotal kind of observation? Yeah. So there aren't a lot of published reports on this yet. So I'm curious to see if that will happen because it requires like gender clinics to like track that over time. And a lot of them don't track for very long after the care, maybe a year or two or maybe longer. But you just don't see a lot of published reports right now. I think in the in the Netherlands, I think the Dutch, the clinic there published like a 30-year review of all their cases, and it was a very low rate of regret anyway.

So regret's not the same as detransitioning, but they would be related to each other. So it's still, you know, for the clinics that do report it, it does appear to be a low. But they do a more comprehensive evaluation. They have like a three, when I was there, they had like a three-year waiting list. I mean, it was probably the get people who go through are the, if there's any sort of ideal candidate or if that's the way to think about it, it would be folks who are in that situation. But in the U.S., I don't know that we're tracking that as clearly, and we have those numbers. I do, you know, I do come across those anecdotal reports as well, and I think that does bring to your mind.

This must be, like, increasing. But you really have to discipline yourself to do the work to see how much, how common are these anecdotal accounts if you did a well-designed study. Are we really seeing higher rates of regret, higher rates of detransitioning? And, like, there's a, there's a researcher who's been doing the trans youth process. project. And she's been, Christina Olson's her name, and she's been studying like 300 youth over a longitudinal study over time. And she kind of moves away from the language of detransitioning, but she wants to refer to like retransitioning. Like there's people who, I don't know that's a better word or not, but she's trying to normalize like people identify as like

transgender, but then may identify later as non-binary or maybe cisgender. Like it's not one thing and now it's detransitioning and we should be up in arms. Maybe it's like a normal normalizing the exploration that happens. So some people may do what you call detransitioning, but others are just, they're just retransitioning to different places and they're on that journey. That's kind of her framing of it, kind of normalizing that. So I don't know if that's a better way to think about it or if maybe the detransitioning as a movement is helpful if it's better documented. You know, I am concerned we're going to have higher rates of regret with late onset cases.

I am concerned that in the U.S., a number of clinics seem to pass people along versus do comprehensive evaluations. And, you know, I think sometimes they've benefited from the, what's called the Dutch model of that comprehensive evaluation, but they aren't actually doing. the Dutch model. They're not really doing the comprehensive evaluation. And so I think when you don't do that, you're probably setting yourself up for higher rates of regret. Yeah. Speaking of the Dutch model in European countries, they've kind of revisited some of their medical interventions. Several have. Yeah. Yeah. Because, well, you can't explain why that is.

And then do you think the U.S. will follow in suit? Yeah, a number of countries. I'm not sure if I'd get them all here, but like Sweden, I think, Finland, others have kind of hit pause on like this is the first approach to clinical services. Meaning like hormone treatment, medically affirmative care. Yeah. So I think what I recall is that they're allowing it like in essentially IRB oversight research studies, but not for like the general population to, you know, we're going to hit pause on this and study this more for our people. And so obviously with the cast. report in the U.K. You have a, like, let's, let's slow down or stop or revisit this. So will that happen in the U.S.? So the U.S. does not have a central gender clinic the way the U.K.

used to have a stock was the clinic. These other countries have, like in the Dutch model has one clinic. So it's like there's small countries that have a singular clinic. The U.S. has, you know, dozens of clinics. And so I don't know that usually they're not necessarily working together. I don't think they're going to be looking at the cast report saying that that's the best way to go. I think they're seeing the benefits within their own population. So I don't know that I've heard people in my circles look at that and say that that changes everything. Now, I think the cast report didn't surprise me. Can you explain the cast report? Yeah. So this was this was in the UK, it was in response to complaints that parents and others had made

that their kids were being fast-tracked and there was a independent review done by a doctor who does research, names Cass, and she's not in the gender area. So that's been one criticism, like, how can you do this if you don't work in this area? I think the upside of that is, you know, you're not in this area and maybe it's good to have an independent review. So, yeah, so she put out a, like, it's like a 300, 400, 400 page report looking at all these things, kind of like, hey, the standards in medicine are, you know, these high standards, and you're not making these high standards for these reasons, and the quality of the research

is, is not where it needs to be to make the assertions that you're making. And it was, some of it was on medical, some of it was on social transitioning. It was all kinds of things. And, you know, there's been mixed evidence from research on whether, like, the use of pronouns is helpful as helpful to people as we think it. There's mixed evidence on that? Yeah. It's always here like you'll, if you don't use pronouns, you're pushing someone down the path of suicidality.

Yeah, there was a study done not too long ago and it didn't show great differences in, or differences in whether people did that or not did that. And there may be more to the circumstances that you're facing in front of this person in front of you. So I don't take those studies and say, well, that means it's one solution now moving forward. But it thickened the plot of whether it's always like absolutely essential that you do those things.

And it didn't seem to show that in that study. So Cass has like this collection of reviewed studies where she's saying, look, I don't think we have the, I think you've hyperclaimed what is needed and what's based on what you have and you don't have as much as you think you have. And so it really, at least in the U.K., it said, let's hit pause on this and let's do this under more like clinical oversight versus open-ended work that had been done before. So U.S. and Canada are not quite there, yeah, they're not hitting pause or slowing down or revisiting as much. I mean, that's a... Yeah. I am not seeing it in the conversations I'm having it. I don't think you see that in like the world professionalists.

for transgender health. I think there's plenty of people who are kind of digging in saying, you know, you're not the expert in this. We're the expert in this. We know. And the U.S., you know, our history is we kind of do things our way. And I don't know that we feel like we're subject to what other people are doing. How much of it's related to money? I mean, this is, I don't want to get down like some conspiracy theory, but I mean, our medical system, I mean, there is, one could argue that there's a doctor. is financially incentivized to encourage medical transitioning, or is that not? You know, I don't know that I know enough about where the money, like if you follow the

trail of funding and money, like how much does that reinforce certain practices in this area? I mean, certainly if you build your career in an area of medically affirmative care and then that's under threat, like, you know, or maybe there's an incentive to continue to do that. most of the people I know who are in like the mental health area, psychologists, things like that. Yes, this may be an area of expertise for them, but I think they're genuinely trying to figure out what's the best thing to do for someone in front of them.

And I've been criticized for saying that, but I don't think demonizing people in the other side is always the best response. I think I've met people who genuinely mean well. I think they could be wrong. Right. And I could be wrong. But I think people are trying as best they can to figure out what's going

on. Well, of course, I mean, people, you can even disagree with one's approach or even their ideology, but that doesn't mean every single individual who is within that quote-unquote group is motivated by evil purposes, you know, like the evil motivation. Some might be, yes, I want to harm kids, you know, like I'm not saying that person doesn't exist, but to assume that there's some sinister plot going on. Well, ironically, I think what motivates a lot of people in this space on both sides is a desire to protect kids. Yeah. And so what you really need are good dialogue partners, and there's very few good dialogue partners in this space to sort of build out a path that would kind of be reasonable. Yeah. There are some I come

across where I'm like, you kind of give me the creeps a little bit. Like, by the way you just seem so ideologically driven. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can think some names, but I don't, yeah. Mark, thank you so much for being on The Eldon Raw. This is fun being here in your backyard. We're right. Are we on Wheaton's campus? We are not on Wheaton's campus, but we are so close. You can almost taste the bastion of evangelicalism. Again, your book is Emerging Sexual Identities Subtitle. You forgot this.

His book is Emerging Sexual Identities. Google that and you'll find it. I would highly recommend. I've not read it, but everything Mark writes is gold and needs to be processed if you are wanting to get your mind and heart around the gender, faith, and sexuality conversation. So Mark, thanks again for me on the show. Glad to be here. Thanks.