Episode 76: Let's Do Hate Speech By Talking About How Biological Sex Is A Binary (With Carole Hooven) (early access)

This was a really touching episode. I previously heard her talk with Andrew Sullivan. Good book too. As a cis male who has experimented with exogenous T.. it really is a hell of a drug.

Cory

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/pregnant-people.html — Pregnant “people” 😑

Hoping you guys will talk about Katie's column on Bari's substack getting mentioned on Bill Maher. I’m hoping that drives more people to realize how this ideology is really taking hold. Also, Jesse please talk about the AAP banning SEGM from their conference. I can't believe how captured the medical field is right now. I'm a mom of an ROGD kid. Trust me, it's real. ALL of my mom friends either have a kid (or kids!) declaring a trans identity out of the blue, or know other kids doing it. EVERY SINGLE ONE. And my mom friends span multiple states. Pretty much all of my daughters friends are girls who go by boy names and male pronouns. One of my friends mentioned her daughter was gender questioning to their pediatrician and the doctor immediately suggested puberty blockers. No questions about what else the child is going through right now. This is insane. Society has turned its back on our girls and we need to find a way to flip the script.

Interesting… I didn’t think of that angle. I do think that - with Twitter - less savvy grads (and others in different professions) have a lot more power. People are terrified of social media and internal squabbles are now a huge deal. Totally thinking of Gurri’s Revolt of the Public.

LTO

These past two episodes have been great! I must say I prefer Blocked and Reported over The Fifth Column. Please tell me you're going to cover the "So You Want to Talk About" Instagram controversy that's led a popular IG account creator to change her page's name and pause the publication of her upcoming book, under intense pressure from other IG users.

More episodes! I'm knee deep in exams and I need some distraction dammit!

Rambo on the Moon

Long time lurker, first time poster, but I wanted to give some context to a pattern that's become really obvious to me at least. A lot of what we're seeing on Twitter is what used to be internal academic politics aired publicly. It's a trite/obvious thing to say, but the way this grad student acted reminded me vividly of how other less savvy students acted when they disagreed with a professor. They didn't post on twitter, but one of them was blackballed from the labs of all the faculty and had to drop out because no one wanted to sponsor them. Professors and deans have played the politics of academe longer than students and are very good at just making problems go away. Well, at least they used to be. What this grad student has failed to realize is that she's the lowest and most exploited of all of the academic workers; as a grad student, you're more expendable than IT and the custodial staff. The undergrads are at least paying to be there (they've been turned into consumers and not scholars), but grad students are serfs. Hoovan was completely within her right to act as she did on Twitter, but if you feel sorry for this grad student for any reason, it's that she's about to find out what departments and advisors do to students that make their institution look bad.

Heather Lynn

I was helping my Mum cleaning and had this podcast on and she loved it and made me immediately put another on. I am so proud lol!

This week's "On the Media" refers... obliquely... to Jesse. Would be interested in your take.

"Don't Accept The Premises Of Assholes" is one of my favorite all-time youtube videos.

Manzell Blakeley

I think it’s frustrating how she got called out— one thing about Harvard is that you can be incredibly accomplished and even be advanced to associate professor w/o tenure (knew ppl who taught there). It’s prestigious enough that she’d probably find another job w tenure really easily. However it’s horrible that she’d have to even think about it given her thoughtful stances and the student’s behavior.

JGraves

It's worth noting that this experience is hardly universal for ftm people. Also this person transitioned decades ago and at that time, the protocols weren't really very well determined so they used to give trans men effectively megadoses of T (far beyond what men produce). Anyway not to say that T doesn't impact behavior / thinking (especially in the sexual realm), I just think that using this example as "how T works" is sort of like only considering the case of a lethal overdose for how Oxytocin works (or whatever).

Integrity!

I wish they would have brought up the person they interviewed on Baris podcast, the trans man who describes what it was like going on T. The part where he said, “yeah, I used to see an attractive female and would think about how I’d have a conversation with her” to “if I see a woman has attractive ankles it’s nonstop pornographic thoughts” lol

Yes! I was just going to mention the Bill Maher shoutout! Can’t wait for Katie to be a guest on Maher’s show (as long as someone forces KH to get on the airplane)….

I think most of us can read the “female” behind the term “pregnant women” and are perfectly aware that it encompasses the situation you’re suggesting without erasing or condoning it. But your heartfelt concern is noted.

Joolz

Congrats to Katie (and Bari) on her shout out on Bill Maher tonight! (During the trans Olympic bit with Donna de Varona.)

Speaking as a chick who has the unfortunate but potentially fun ability to grow a whole-ass beard due to PCOS, absolutely all of this.

A big advantage of the term "pregnant people" is that it contains (perhaps accidentally, but none the less) the understanding within it that not everyone who gets pregnant is a women. 12 year old girls can get pregnant, and unfortunately do. They are children, not women and that is an important distinction to make if you don't want children to be sexualized, and if you don't want to minimize the harm child molesters do. When the media was reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, they often ended up referring to "underage women" which lessens by implication the seriousness of the crime committed against these children, because they were children, not women. The distinction is important. What ever you think about transmen, we shouldn't erase the wellbeing of children.

Lilith

Well it was only "harassment" because she quote-tweeted, if she had just retweeted, that would have been seen as an endorsement and the FOX viewers would have attacked her instead.

I assumed there would be a significant intersection too.

"Ratio" is basically just Twitter specific slang that doesn't always translate to the real world

Tom

Does the barpod stylebook say to avoid the term "ratio"? I notice jesse always says "the response was mostly negative" instead of saying they just got ratioed.

Jordan Bickett

I normally expect better research here, the intersection of A&M and Rennfaire is quite large. As a member of the intersection I feel my culture being erased.

Larry Holifield

Great episode. I will be buying her book. She is so clear and obviously willing to stand by her knowledge and beliefs but also empathetic. Really excellent. I worry she won't be able to shake the stench (as I think Katie said) of the "transphobe" label that might now be stuck to her. I hope her potential future students will dig in and see that is not the case. Reminds me of how so many articles or reference to JKR now call her a transphobe. Baseless, but once the label is out there seems nearly impossible to get rid of it. Ridiculous.

I think that would be a PR disaster for Harvard - not just for DEI claims but academic freedom/expression. That’ll no doubt bring in other voices. This is so messy. This madness should’ve been dealt with years ago - they let it slide for so long and now paying the consequences.

LTO

FWIW at my latest prenatal appointment my midwife corrected herself when she started saying "some pregnant people...pregnant women." But I live in the boonies.

Am I the only one who feels Harvard Medical school *should* expel the grad student who complained? There’s more than sufficient professional grounds. I know they are pushing what they consider is the polite language but they’re expressing policies that will actually, in practice, kill people. If you’re denying biological traces of disease as they relate to sex you are going to misdiagnose and mistreat numerous conditions. You’re going to jeopardize all your patients including trans patients. Medical practice is one of the few places where it *is* someone else’s business how your plumbing is hooked up. That should be enough to push someone out of the medical profession. Otherwise, aren’t we potentially allowing a doctor to kill their patients so that we don’t seem rude?

Katie, as a fellow Jew, I’m sorry you had to endure such trauma. That article was *literally* Kristallnacht against Jewish women's voices. On the bright side, now you get to throw a ‘Bark Mitzvah’ party for Moose! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_Mitzvah

Off topic but topical - small Sith Lord vs. a Man in a skirt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/oyjju8/store_owner_is_confronted_over_transphobic_sign/ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vCrbwVsbJBs Note that the anti-women fantasists got to the Sith Lord with great speed: https://m.yelp.ca/biz/sucher-and-sons-star-wars-shop-aberdeen

I've never heard so much chemistry between interviewer(s) and interviewee. This one was genuinely fun in a heartwarming way. 10/10 would barpod again.

It's the only definition that makes sense when you look across all species (all species that reproduce sexually? or at least all mammals? I'm not a biologist either). They all have these two (exactly two) types of gametes that can be produced, even though each has their own mechanism (often chromosomal, but for crocodiles it's temperature) for producing the two sexes.

I'm only halfway through, but I'm kind of fascinated by the definition she presents of male/female based on which kind of gametes you produce, and that with particular genetic makeups you can produce the gamete that isn't consistent with the presence/absence of a Y chromosome. I don't think I've heard anyone present this definition before! And I'm at least moderately online and pay slightly more than occasional attention to these sorts of questions.

Jeff Walden

“Close personal friend of the pod” means anything but (and is also my favorite running joke)

There’s something really likeable about Carole. She seems so bloody strong but also open about being scared. This isn’t really an astute observation but ppl like her (and Katie and Jessie actually) have grit and humour with an undercurrent of kindness that makes me happy to support them. Buying her book!

LTO

How do we know when "friend of the pod" is meant literally and when it's meant derisively?

Women with PCOS like myself have a huge interest in how testosterone impacts our bodies. Why the trans community feels they have a monopoly on this topic is beyond me. Just ordered Carole’s book so I can learn more about my body!

I like that choice better than Christina Hoff Sommers, she seems more like a tiger mom to me.

Eric Carlsen

She kind of started to take over the podcast to check in on how you both were doing emotionally with everything. Such a comforting voice too. Carole Hooven is now the official mom of Blocked and Reported.

This episode should have said "Let's Do A Hate Speech" instead of "Do Hate Speech", otherwise this was a great installment.

Thank you all, Katie, Jesse, and Carole for shedding light on this insanity! I can’t imagine what it will be like to find an OBGYN in 5-10 years that acknowledges you are a female giving birth. It scares me to think that medical progress for women will be perverted in the name of “inclusivity.” If we can’t acknowledge that the male female dichotomy of every other mammal is indeed the same sex dichotomy among humans, while respecting every individual’s unique characteristics (body type, conditions, gender expression, personality, etc..), how do we continue to progress in science and medicine? Would every single medical study have to be conducted on an unknown variety of sexes at all ages to ensure that a clinical trial population is representative and fully tested? Do we throw out all previously arrived at safety and efficacy trials because they were not sufficiently tests on all “sexes”? If not dichotomous, how do we define scientifically for the purpose of medical research and practice, the category of sexes if it’s simply how someone “feels” at a particular time?

Am reading Carole Hooven's "T" as we speak. Terrific!

Splitting hairs, I guess Hooven quote-tweeted rather than retweeted. Does that subtle distinction make a difference to hyper-online Twtterati types?

Alex Wright

Love that Jesse knew/laughed ahead of time about how Katie was going to update the Michael Jordan quotation.

Soooo, can you write a personal but only for Carole?

Klondike

Back-to-back episode releases are barpod canon

A.

Woohoo I commented first. Carole: “my son is twelve, I don’t know what’s going on in his balls right now, but he’s male.” Jesse: “that’s pretty unprofessional for you to arrive unprepared to talk about your son’s balls.”