Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion analyzing the rapid rise in transgender individuals. They review and debate various theories like endocrine disruptors, social contagion, female puberty discomfort, autogynephilia fetishism, and more. The hosts discuss why certain explanations are seen as offensive, while concluding that personal transitions should be respected. They also posit their own idea that it serves as an identity "reset" that improves mental health.

Simone: [00:00:00]

Malcolm, hello.

Malcolm: Hello. So, Today, we well, we're going to talk about what like, just sort of a discussion between us, because this is a topic we've been diving into more recently due to our engagement with the trans vexing community and other trans communities online, is what is really causing transness. And the reason we titled this study trans people are magical is there is an approved answer to this question.

It is that they were born with the wrong soul. And that they were actually born with the soul of someone of a different gender. The problem is we don't really believe in souls. And even if I did, I'd be almost certain that gender just isn't that important to like our core identity, like our soul.

And I, And this is why we went with the title, Trans People Are Magical, because any sort of scientific explanation you try to give, or any evidence based explanation you try to give for what is going on socially for recent trends within the trans [00:01:00] community and people who identify as trans, is considered transphobic.

In part, I don't know, because you're quantifying it. We can talk about why all the explanations are considered offensive. Individually, they have reasons they're considered offensive, but collectively, it's almost like a topic we're not allowed to talk about or investigate, when it seems to me Like, it should be really important that the number of trans people has increased something like 400 percent in the last decade, but the that the trends in who is transitioning has changed really dramatically, where it used to be predominantly male to female, and now it's predominantly female to male of this young age range.

And these, I think, could point to something.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: So first, before we get any further in this, Our larger stake on gender transition is that there are likely people transitioning for every one of the reasons we're going to mention. The question is what is causing these statistical trends?

Are some of these reasons more important than other [00:02:00] reasons? Are they all just contributory reasons? Is there like one core reason? That's a really interesting question to me. We could say we just don't have the data to know right now because people are afraid to collect the data because you have your, Oh,

Simone: people collect data, but only for a very specific set of answers.

It's already

Malcolm: pre approved. And the thing that really upsets me about the trans data when I go over it is you can see by the date of publication, it will begin to trend towards showing the pre approved answer.

So a great example of this would be brain structures. If you look at the earlier studies on trans people that were using like fMRI data and stuff like that they would usually say or the ones that I'm familiar with would say, The trans people's brains actually are more similar to the gender they were assigned at birth than the gender they were identifying with, whereas in later studies, the opposite is being said, like studies that were done more recently.

And [00:03:00] unfortunately, knowing the pressures that happened within academia, that makes me now doubt both of those studies. I'm like, Oh, I just wish I could know what the real answer is.

It looks like I misspoke here going through the recent research, even on Wikipedia, which is where there's a studies came from, that I had put on the screen. , even the more recent research shows that, trans individuals brains are more similar to the gender, they were assigned at birth to the gender. They identify ways. And this makes perfect sense. If you think about it. You don't when you're walking around, see people, randomly at least at the rates that we see trans people in the population. Get organs of a different gender. You know, you don't see men walking around with the skin of a woman , or, or the arms of a woman. In fact, the only place where I'm really familiar with this happening is either in intersex individuals or in individuals. , Women specifically who were born with male facial hair. And this happens at much [00:04:00] lower rates than transness happens within the population, but could explain a proportion of individuals who are born trans So if 5% of us young adults are identifying as trans and about 1.5% of the population is born intersex. That means that this wrong brain hypothesis would only explain about 30% of the community. Assuming that this phenomenon appears at about the same rate that genitals get switched up. But. I again that seems unlikely to me because genitals seemed like really unique why they would get switched up but we don't see other organs getting switched up at this rate so i would say that's probably an overestimation of the amount of the community that can be explained by the wrong brain

hypothesis.

Oh, and I suppose this was obvious to us when we were recording this didn't point it out. You can't just say, well, they're transitioning because they have gender dysphoria. That's like saying, well, he's depressed. Because he has depression. It's like, yeah, but like, are you not at all curious as to where this depression is coming from, what could be motivating it? What neurological phenomenon could be related to [00:05:00] it? Why there's this huge increase in depression ? These are questions that we would be asking if we were talking about. Any other mental condition that wasn't tied to identity, but in the world of identity politics, anything that can be tied to an individual's identity becomes unquestionable. And that's under. Studyable. And that is sort of. That's what makes it exciting to us?

Malcolm: So we can go through. We're just going to index all of the potential things. Okay. So first one, this is the one that we talk about most on this channel because I think it's really interesting.

And it's also interesting to me that it was ever flagged as an offensive potential answer, but I know exactly why it was flagged as a potential offensive potential answer. Okay. Let me

Simone: guess first then, but tell me.

Malcolm: It's turning the frogs gay. Endocrine disruptors. Oh. We know endocrine disruptors are much more common now than they used to be.

We know that fetuses exposed to endocrine disruptors have lower when they're born as males, have lower endogenital distance. Which basically means that they're [00:06:00] not fully gender differentiated. We know that if you look at them seven years after they're born, they show play behavior much more similar to women.

This to me if it's an actual biological change that's happening in the population due to a pollutant it's weird to me that this is seen as a transphobic explanation, but I think the core reason it's seeing is because it would be like, these people aren't faking it. This is not a social

Simone: contagion.

It's real. It's physical. It's biological.

Malcolm: Yes. And the increased rates of this stuff in our water. We correlate with the explosion of the trans population, and we see males changing generally.

Simone: Again, it's not just in our water. A lot of it has to do with the containers we're eating out of, our shampoos, like every, like receipts

Malcolm: everything.

Yeah. And we're seeing, it would also explain a lot of other things. We're seeing, a lot of changes in terms of how gender works biologically. We're seeing women go through puberty much earlier. We're seeing male sperm rates decrease by something like 30 percent. No, it's over 50 percent in the last 50 years.

So [00:07:00] 51 percent in the last 50 years. We're seeing testosterone rates go down by something like 30 percent in the last 20 years. Like, all of this would easily be explained by endocrine disruptors in the water. Yeah. I think the core reason it seemed as offensive It's actually just that Alex Jones

Simone: There's Oh, because Alex Jones said it first.

He said that the water is turning to frogs, gay. That we can't accept

Malcolm: this as a And there's a great YouTube deep dive, I'm gonna see if I can find it, cause I remember it was a little obscure on

Can you link to it? Actually, the research that Alex Jones was talking about when he said that. Yeah.

Because, he'll say things that are actually true. Frogs were actually turning gay due to stuff in the water. And he was pointing this out. But then it became like a famous quote of his, and as such, it became associated with craziness. So it couldn't be an explanation that you could give and not be afraid of being cancerous.

He

Simone: ruined it. He ruined it. Cause it it does sound, if you hear it out of context, you hear Alex Jones and his conspiracy voice going there, the water is [00:08:00] turning the frogs gay. It sounds. You have to admit that. It sounds

Malcolm: crazy. I don't know. As a scientist, frogs and amphibians are usually much more sensitive to pollutants than other species.

And they can absorb it through their skin really easily. Still sounds crazy.

Simone: Because most people don't study biology. Most people aren't aware

Malcolm: that amphibians Yeah, it reminds me of like when the conservatives were complaining about money going to medical research and they go, They spent X many million dollars studying fruit flies.

And it's like, yes, that's the standard species used for studying genetic models. Of course they were studying fruit flies. What? When somebody's this pollutant is affecting amphibians before it affects other populations. It's obviously. Yeah, but

Simone: again, like you just assume that everyone understands this.

You studied biology at university, like most people like biology stops at college and they are being taught standardized test [00:09:00] norms, not real world useful stuff, but,

Malcolm: okay. So this is the first potential explanation.

Simone: Okay. So endocrine disruptors in general, but basically if I'm to sum it up Pollutants and chemicals that humans are being exposed to in developed nations and all over the world now are causing them to be hormonally different.

And in the case of at least in the case of males, less male, this wouldn't explain, however, the growth in female to male transition because the endocrine disruptors. As we understand it, like from the Tide studies that we keep quoting, only really affect the extent to which men become fully male in development, not females.

Let's talk about why this is.

Malcolm: It's because the template of a fetus is female. Yeah. So if you are disrupting gender differentiation, you're going to disrupt it on the male side, not on the female side. Yeah. Now, it would likely have some disruption. We do know that women... are changing, like when they go through puberty and stuff like that.

Simone: Oh, yeah. And that's more likely, I think, isn't that more [00:10:00] due to growth hormones? I

Malcolm: think it's more likely due to growth hormones used to get cows to produce more milk or even biological changes in cows as we have genetically selected them to produce.

Simone: And less endocrine disruptors, because broadly speaking, the way that endocrine disruptors are understood to work it's more disruption of life.

And if

Malcolm: anything, this should be making women more female. Yeah

Simone: or if anything, I would say, if anything endocrine disruptors would delay puberty, I would expect. It would make things not work, rather than work earlier.

Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. Now we're gonna go to another potentially offensive solution, other than they were born with the wrong soul.

Which is also a bad explanation. What, did God just spill the soul bag recently? Suddenly he started f*****g up which souls people's bodies are going into a whole lot? Yeah. You could say it's that they're accepted more. And that's why they're coming out more, but the rate of increase within the trans community is much higher than the rate of increase within the gay community when they achieved acceptance.

And also you didn't see this big gender flip in the gay community when they achieved acceptance. [00:11:00] I do not buy that's what's going on.

Simone: No, the soul thing doesn't check out endocrine disruptors. I find to be moderate. Actually quite compelling. So let's talk about the

Malcolm: next one. So before going to the transmedicine community, I was told to look up this autogynephilia stuff.

And I knew this is an offensive explanation, but like in our communities, among the fans of our show, like I know we have other fans of our show that really love autogynephilia as an explanation. So I was like, okay, let's look into autogynephilia. Yeah. So let's explain what autogynephilia is and why it's potentially considered offensive.

So this is to say that What is really motivating a portion of male to female trans conversions, and Autogynephilia really focuses on male to female trans conversions, is the fact that they have this fetish for seeing themselves as the gender that they find attractive. I would say there is no wrong reason to transition like I am actually for like you just want to transition because you want to be a girl. Awesome. Yeah, whenever you feel you were born in the wrong body. I'm [00:12:00] not saying awesome in I think everyone should do it.

I think there's a huge number of costs associated with transition. I just really am against the concept. That so it's not like I wouldn't recommend it to my kids just because they felt they were in the wrong body or something. I'm like, you need a better reason than that for my kids, for my cultural group.

But I do think that I would not pass a negative judgment on somebody who's coming from a different cultural background for transitioning for any reason. And I actually am really against, one of the reasons I like the trans vaccine community. Is because they break with the traditional norms of what makes it okay to transition.

Yeah. Yeah.

Simone: Yeah. They use a justification that we think is very genuine, but also wouldn't be societally accepted in the mainstream. They're expanding

Malcolm: this as a cultural explanation. Yeah. They're expanding the reasons why an individual can say I'm transitioning for X reasons, normalizing new reasons, and I'm totally okay with that.

And I really don't like the gatekeeping.

 We like supporting this community is because they are removing some of the barriers that had earlier been put in place by transmedicalists, those are people who think that it's only trans if it's like medically proven [00:13:00] transness, but then there's this new thing, which is it's only trans if you believe you have the wrong soul, but this is for you to judge and now they're saying, no, you don't need to believe that anyone can decide to use this technology if they feel it will improve their quality of life and was in their cultural norms.

And we're like, okay, whatever, not for my kids. Yeah. I wouldn't want to preach to my kids as an option, but if you are, an adult, and you're making these choices, I appreciate that they've expanded the options.

If people are confused as to how we can. Both support a community, but also not think it's a good idea for our kids. Think of it like face tattoos. I don't think people with face tattoos should be discriminated for jobs. I think it would be really wrong. If one community of people with face tattoos went around and said, everyone who gets face tattoos, who don't have X condition that I have is wrong and evil. I would think that is wrong and that community should be. Opposed. But I also not think face tattoos are a good idea for my children and I would be concerned. If people with face tattoos were constantly trying to get my kids [00:14:00] to get face tattoos, because I think that they make a person's life harder on average.

 and I. I think it's really bad that we live in a society where people with face tattoos. R. Oppressed. Then because they genuinely are.

It is under any way in Congress for a person to both ardently fight for the rights of people with face tattoos, to fight for people with face tattoos, to not be discriminated against. But also still think that it is a bad idea for their own children to get face tattoos. And be upset at anyone who is telling their

children to get face tattoos But I need to be clear. This is just my cultural perspective. And I consider the perspectives of different cultural groups, for example, their progressive cultural group, valid for members of that cultural group. In the same way that I consider, , tribes that think that face tattoos. Ward off evil spirits, valid, and i would not at all discriminate them and i think that we should be accepting of people who have different world frameworks And people can be like, well, medical practitioners agree in science degrees and well, [00:15:00] yeah, but. At one point medical practitioners and scientists agreed that we're a good idea to solve many potential issues in a person's life.

I want to be clear that I am not at all saying that gender transition is like a lobotomy or comparing it to a laparotomy. I am just pointing out that historically science and medical practitioners have agreed on things that the majority of the population would no longer agree are a good idea. And given how both new and politically charged this phenomenon is And we haven't seen how this plays out in large populations when they. Attempt this solution to these issues. Over the longterm yet. I am okay with waiting this out when it comes to my own kids, but I am also totally okay with communities and individuals who feel that this is solving major issues in their lives. And I think that they are accurately assessing that for themselves and for people of their cultural group. I just hope that these communities can [00:16:00] accept and respect. Y, I might have a different choice for my own kids until they become of age.

Malcolm: Within this community, this is a popular explanation. And I was told by the community to dig into the research on it.

And while I say that you can transition for any reason, this is the one reason I'd suggest not transitioning. Because it's like logically a bad reason to transition and I'll explain why it's logically a bad reason to transition when people transition their number of paraphernalia is basically fetishes usually decrease pretty dramatically, especially if they're transitioning from males to females.

Second, when people transition their gender primary. Attraction generally, not generally, changes in about 25 percent of people. So not always, but like a lot of the time. So if you are transitioning because of things that arouse you, you should expect those things that arouse you to change during the transition process.

Simone: Because the hormones that you undergo are going to significantly change your experience of arousal and your areas of focus. Plus, [00:17:00] actually, if I recall correctly from your surveys, when you did the Pregnantist Guides to Sexuality and you, tested all these people's sources of arousal.

Autopenophilia actually wasn't that unusual. Like plenty of people are like turned on by the idea of banging a gender bent version of themselves, but just fantasize about it. Just fantasize about it. Like you don't have to be that version, like you're never going to have two of you.

Until we get to some cool AI age where you can get in the haptic suit and go for

Malcolm: it. Even more important than that, there were also studies that looked at women. Who were born women, what percentage of them had autogynephilia, something like 95%? Yeah.

Simone: Like women find it really like hot.

The idea of banging themselves. Totally.

Malcolm: The idea of,

Simone: you look a lot like me. I think this is

Malcolm: like a but the idea of themselves being women. They find their own gender's sexuality and them being that sexuality really attractive. So that wouldn't really be a good argument for, you're not trans because you're just a man attracted to women, so you would find you being a woman attractive.

If you are a woman, you would presumably find you being a [00:18:00] woman being attractive as well, because most women feel that way. So autogonophilia, I do think there are probably some people transitioning for this reason. But I think it's a dumb reason to transition because this arousal pattern may cease during the transition. Yeah. Which is Red Queen chasing something that's always running away from you.

Simone: Yeah. a game that you're going to be able to win. It's also one of those things where once you have it, you won't want it.

Malcolm: Yeah. So another one I saw. So the trans maxing community, this could be another explanation is that it turns out that either men and women in our society, they just don't feel comfortable with their gender because their gender, they are being told that women are being told that women are being objectified in our society and it's worse to be a woman in our society.

So you should want to be a man who they're transitioning for that reason. And men are being told, all this red pill, MGTOW stuff, you're better off actually being a woman and that this is what's causing the transition. Just genuinely believing you'd have it better off of the other gender.

So

Simone: it's a grass is always greener kind

Malcolm: of thing. Sort of the core of what the trans maxing [00:19:00] movement is about. The idea that you would have it easier being a woman than a... Low quality guy was in our low sexual quality. Like not a lot of women like you, obviously pointed out on Tinder. And I can really see where this argument comes from.

Less than 1 percent of women swipe right on the average guy. This is, you look at the mean guy, right? So imagine if you're below that, how difficult things are on the sexual marketplace and. How much harder you're just going to be treated in society, right? Some people in some of the writings, they describe it as being in tutorial mode, being a woman, right?

Living life in tutorial mode. They're like, yeah, you can't get the higher tier accomplishments in the video game. Like you're going to be discriminated against for like high tier positions and work and everything like that. But people are generally nicer to you and kinder to you. And we'll do little favors for you all the time that you just don't have.

And people will be your friend and people will emotionally open up to you. This is what I hear about when I look at people who have transitioned, like the positives and negatives. Yeah. So yeah, you can't get the high tier accomplishments as easily, but all the low tier accomplishments are just much easier, but

Simone: honestly, like if you don't [00:20:00] seem to be like a person who's going to be hitting out of the park in life, like at least being able to walk down the street and have people be nice to you and smile at you.

Sounds nice.

Malcolm: So I, but the problem is we see a lot of women converting to men. We've done a video on this also could be that Hollywood has just removed women. So yes, Hollywood has made a lot of women in leading roles, but it didn't want to make them sexy to men because it wants to punish male sexuality for whatever reason.

That's the enemy of progressives. So it removed their boobs and it removed their femininity to the extent where they look like underage women or men. And so a lot of women, when they think about their feminine selves, like their feminine potential ideal, they can begin to see that as negative. And they grow up with this understanding that, that, big breasts, curvy walking, everything like that is not what a powerful woman looks like.

And so they begin to adopt this male mindset and this could make it seem better. Like this could be an

Simone: explanation. But I think the other explanation that's, that seems to be. Out there is like that transitioning as a, an adolescent [00:21:00] female is the new cutting. It's the new anorexia. Basically women hit this stage at which they get super uncomfortable with their bodies and they want to deal with it.

And there are lots of evoked sets that exist in different periods of time to deal with it. And you can deal with it by getting super religious or by starving yourself or by cutting yourself or in this case by transitioning. And part of me wonders if A lot of young women who are transitioning, they're not necessarily Oh, I really want to be a guy.

They're more like, Oh, I really don't want to go through puberty. And so puberty blockers are like a great answer to that. Your body's changing. You hate it.

Malcolm: I don't think they're thinking that consciously. I couldn't. No. I

Simone: think it's subconscious, totally subconscious, but it's more there's a deep discomfort.

Malcolm: I could see that being a motivating factor. One thing we talked about was female puberty is the concept that it's very different from male puberty, where male puberty are cursed with this attraction. To other people that you didn't choose and it's like almost an addiction to something right female puberty.

It's defined by wanting to be Treasured and cared for and accepted and that no matter how [00:22:00] liked you are by people, it can, because it's your own judgment of whether you're treasured enough, of whether you're accepted enough, of whether you're cared for enough. And so it's almost never enough.

And so when women go through puberty, they often feel it. It would be very normal to feel very uncomfortable and unsatisfied with your body and the offer that, Hey, you going through puberty, if you do this now, you can feel comfortable with your body. Like I could see how that would be. Potentially a factor in this change that we're seeing in society, but then why all of a sudden now, like what's new now, I could think it's the removal of feminine looking women from high power roles in media.

Now that feminine looking women have been demonized as being idiots, as being deserving of low status of, and these. These very small breasts, very boyish

Simone: acting character. I disagree that does not resonate at all. I don't think that has any bearing.

Malcolm: Okay, might not, but here's what I would say, and I think this is actually a really important quote that I had heard, and I think it [00:23:00] shows something really powerful about the way the trans community, when it looks at why are people transitioning that are saying that they're transitioning for reasons other than why I transitioned, other than being gender dysphoric, right?

They were looking at people from the trans vaccine community who were saying that they were transitioning just because they'd have an easier time as a woman. And they started looking at quotes Oh, I was with my friend, and we cuddled, and it really made me feel special, and I really liked him, and I never would have felt this way about a guy before.

But I'm not trans, and and they were like, Hey, maybe you just are trans. Maybe you were always trans, and you've been using... This argument is a shield, but I actually read something different. What I read is changes in things that make a person satisfied in regards to sexual actions with other partners and stuff like that.

The changing nature of this. in men who are on hormone therapy to become women or women who are [00:24:00] on hormone therapy to become women, however you want to frame it that it leads to behavior patterns, which the trans community saw as proof that they were actually really trans all along, but that actually begin to happen and occur in any man who takes these chemicals.

And that is concerning to me. If it turns out that if you gave any man these chemicals, they would begin to have experience and emotions that the trans community had previously believed were proof that they were actually really the current trans all.

Simone: Basically, you're saying like, once you take the magical meds that make you feel like a woman, you think you're a woman.

And so you're concerned because anyone who takes the magical meds to make you think you're a woman, they're all going to have the same be like, yeah, this was right. I feel like a woman,

Malcolm: right? Yeah. And here we want to talk about the most offensive potential explanation, because this is where this comes from is the...

What is it? Like [00:25:00] rapid

Simone: onset? Yes. Rapid onset gender dysphoria. So the social contagion theory. Yeah. And

Malcolm: we talked about the study that had been withdrawn about this and it, people were like, look, it was withdrawn for good reason. It had problems, but it was not withdrawn for the reasons that would have gotten like a normal study was drawn.

It was withdrawn specifically because it promoted a theory that the trans community didn't like.

 while the group trying to get it withdrawn, used methodological complaints as their tool to get it withdrawn, the were motivated and had organized themselves around. Getting it withdrawn specifically because they didn't like the theory that it was promoting. Not because of the methodological

concerns

Malcolm: It did not make the type of mistakes that would normally get a study like this was drawn. Now, to be clear, . It did do something that was pretty shady, right? It, Drew its sample set from women who were mothers of kids who identified as trans who already agreed with the idea of [00:26:00] transness being a social contagion because they were on forums for that.

But this was all disclosed in the study. So that was not a reason for it to be withdrawn. What the data in the study, however. was actually super interesting. And when I see trans people dismiss it, they're like 50 percent of these women thought their kids were gifted. So clearly it shows that they're not good.

50 percent of all women think their kids are gifted. Obviously, like these are helicopter parents. These are the types who are like paying attention to this stuff and participating in studies. That doesn't seem weird to me. 75 percent think their kids weren't right in their gender transition.

So that proves that they're wrong. I'm like, I would argue that's probably true across parents of trans kids. I think if you just did a good study of this, you would find that's likely true. I'm not going to say it's accurate. I'm just going to say that doesn't sound like a biased sample. They looked at the number who thought negative things about trans people.

And they were about the same as the general population. , but there were a few statistics in that, that I think that we can learn a lot from because they mirror things that I have heard from my friend group, 25 percent [00:27:00] of the parents said that in their kids first. visit to the gender affirming clinician person, whatever this is called they were offered hormone therapy first visit.

And I think when trans people hear this, they can be like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But when you think about it from the perspective of. of a parent. So I'll tell a story that happened to one of my friends. Anonymized. Thank you very much. Anonymized. Yes, very anonymized, Simone.

Nope. When telling the story, I am telling it from his perspective. So i will use the gender of his kid as he would have seen the gender and then a switch to talking about his kid in his preferred gender when i'm at the end of the story

Malcolm: He had a son, who transitioned to a daughter,

who... Was beginning to feel like they might be trans, right? But he knew his son had gone through a lot of pretty extreme phases in the past, like an extreme goth phase, an extreme punk phase, stuff like that. And so he was like, okay he'll get over it. But I want to be as caring and I want to be as [00:28:00] supportive of him as possible.

Now, obviously, this is a very dismissive way to treat. This person. So he took him to the gender affirming clinic and the doctor took the data side and he sent him to the best clinics there were in the US and it was supposed to be this thing of three clinics. It was supposed to be this big battery of tests and he paid for all of this, all of these expensive tests and all of this stuff.

And the doctor was like, obviously we'll consult you before we make a final decision. We're going to do that at a followup appointment in six months. Okay. And so the dad was like, okay yeah. These phases never really last that long I'll just let him go through with this, and we'll see where this goes.

And he, then, the kid didn't go back for the six months appointment. He never went to any of the other, that weren't prepaid for, any of these other things. And the dad later , found hormone therapy stuff that the kid had.

It turned out that at the very first meeting, secretly, he had been prescribed all of the hormones he needed, and the doctor was like, you never need to come back. They never did any big tests on him or anything like that. They just immediately... Now, from the perspective of this dad, he [00:29:00] felt pretty tricked and pretty undermined by this whole scenario.

Was he right? Was the kid really trans? I like to take people at face value. , she decided to do this on her own. And I think that she deserves to be treated accurately based on her choice, but I think that this is very different

 than I think what an uneducated person was, what it actually looks like to go through these transition things when they think what's going on at these clinician visits and stuff like that. It is not you go into the first clinician visit and you're immediately prescribed transition hormone.

And

Simone: there's, of course we should say, caveat, there's a. Big variation, clinics, like not every clinic just rubber stamps things.

Malcolm: But we know from this, again, it was only 25%. That means 75 percent of people, this isn't happening to. Yeah. But this is often not something you would have for other types of Prescriptions, like whether it's depression prescription or something like that, you're like unlikely to get this on your very first visit.

I can understand why people would be like, oh, this is an [00:30:00] issue if this is happening and if it's recorded in this data set. However, I don't think that it proves in any way that this is a social contagion. I can see how it would spread as a social contagion. If I was just saying hypothetically, as you were saying earlier, if you could tell young girls, and this message would appeal to young girls more than young boys.

Yeah. The discomfort you feel with your body that you're going through during puberty, here's a solution to it. Yeah. That would be a very appealing message to read. Incredibly appealing. But I think the mere fact that's an appealing message doesn't mean that it's true. So now we have to go through all the, are there any other reasons you can think people might be transitioning?

Simone: Let's see, social contagion, harm, hormones and pollutants the most compelling ones I would say. Yeah, wrong brain, wrong soul. Don't agree with those personally, but okay that's out there. Oh, and then of course, practicality, which we totally understand.

Malcolm: Oh, I'm going to present a final one, which I actually think is what's really going on.

What? Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:00] Okay. So in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we broke down the way that gender works in a lot of ways, because I think when we talk about gender, we talk about gender as being like a innate to self identity, and I do not believe it is innate to self identity. I believe that individuals have a gender display system which is entirely different from their sexual systems.

By that what I mean is when we talk about sexual systems, we actually think that these systems are the same, are heavily intertwined with your disgust systems. So the things that make you aroused, the things that make you disgusted, these are all working on basically the same brain pathways and there's some negative modifiers implied.

But these are basically the same systems. The systems that deal with gender displays I actually think are an entirely different set of systems that have nothing to do with sexuality. And they give you a sense of happiness or pleasure. When you make specific gender displays. Now, this is why historically, if you look at the cross dressing community the [00:32:00] majority of the cross dressing community was cis males.

This is true historically. If you look at cross dressers in the eighties they were. Cis heterosexual males, not gay. They just like to sometimes dress up as a woman. And they got a lot of pleasure from this. And I asked myself, how could this be right? It could be that there's some system where if you really act out a gender display, it will create some form of happiness for you.

And it probably differs. In how much happiness it's giving an individual, maybe even it could create negative happiness, like active discomfort if you're not constantly displaying your gender. So it could work as a happiness system and like a negative discomfort system, right? Okay. That could explain what's going on here.

This slider is in the wrong place. And, what's really interesting about this system is I believe it can be accessed by anyone. I think any man can do a [00:33:00] really feminine gender display and feel like, oh, if I do it just right, there's something that is a little satisfying about it. Like nailing it. Like nailing it. Yeah. Oh, I just nailed that pretending to be a woman thing. And, but you're not nailing pretending to be a woman, you're nailing acting out a gender display. I think many women can just nail it in terms of acting like a man or acting like a male gender display and maybe feel some small, so what would be interesting if it turned out that anyone can access the system, but how much this system controls you might be something that's

Simone: modifiable.

I don't, yeah. I just don't like, I don't think there's anything. I think about history. In history, we've seen people express different genders. Totally. That, that is a thing that has happened throughout history. A lot of it has been based on pragmatism. In medieval England regulation of brothel neighborhoods, there are just men who are acting as...

Female[00:34:00] sex workers. And they're just regulated like the other ones. Okay, they do that. I think that, that sort of falls into the trans maxing category. If hey, hard to make money out there. Here's one way we do it. So like we join, we dress up like a woman, do what you got to do.

It's I know that there is a historical precedent. for the pragmatic approach. Social contagion. I feel like there's a lot of precedent for other behaviors. I'm going to push back on

Malcolm: similar before we get into the precedent for other behaviors, like PTSD on Tik TOK and stuff like that, but how would your explanation explain in the eighties, the majority of cross dressers being heterosexual, cisgender men, the majority of men who liked going to clubs or walking out on the streets while cross dressing. Why were they doing this? If not for sexual gratification and they, it appears that it wasn't, it was widely agreed in the cross dressing community.

This is not for sexual gratification. What was motivating that? It wasn't helping them in any way,

Simone: but keep in mind, this is the thing only men did.

Malcolm: Women didn't really do this. I'm like no.

Simone: Women are the ones who are really, I think that like the women transitioning thing, [00:35:00] I feel like that is mostly explained by social contagion.

Men transitioning, I would say that's mostly explained by hormonal shifts and pragmatism. I, I do not, I don't get the signal. I think, I don't, I have, I think that cross dressing is like super fun and awesome. Everything's better in drag. Like

Malcolm: women didn't, there's no so this is really interesting.

You touched on a really interesting point here. And I want to highlight this. Historically there are many examples of men who liked dressing up like women, but were not interested in men sexually. I can think of, hold on. I can think of no explanations of women who like dressing up as men, but weren't interested in women sexually.

Usually when women liked dressing up as men, like the trend in American cultural history, these are, so if we now say that they're trans, they were... They were men who were born women and

Simone: I guess you could say they were more butch lesbians,

Malcolm: but they didn't identify that way often sometimes and sometimes they did whatever what I'm saying is I'm not aware of any of them still preferring [00:36:00] men as sexual partners where I can historically think of a lot of men who today we would call trans or whatever who still liked.

So that, that little thing shows that maybe in men, there is this gender display impulse. that is more malleable or stronger or harder to silence?

Simone: Yeah, I don't know. I cannot explain that. I cannot. But I, yeah I don't.

Malcolm: Okay but, okay, so you've said what you think the main explanation is.

I think the main explanation might be the biological one. Okay,

Simone: so you agree with me on that. Due to pollutants, but not for women. I don't think for women explains anything. And there's a lot more young women transitioning now than that. Yeah that, that young women, adolescents are so susceptible to social trends, literally

Malcolm: the most offensive

Simone: explanation.

I know. Sorry, but not sorry.

Malcolm: Could you still man yourself at least for people who are like, this is really offensive.

Simone: Yeah, the steel mining part would be that, that when you [00:37:00] hit female adolescence, you become on average, extremely uncomfortable in your body. And you're going to look for solutions for that at a very common solution.

In mainstream

Malcolm: society now. Steel man your opponents. Steel man

Simone: the perspectives so dumb. It's so dumb. I know, you know me. I love steel man. What would you

Malcolm: have transitioned? If you were a young kid today, would you have transitioned? You were uncomfortable with your body. So why, what protected you that's not protecting women today?

No,

Simone: because I was starving myself instead. I had a better solution. You did. You did. Anorexia is way better than transitioning. Oh, where's the discipline and transitioning?

Malcolm: I think here's what I'd say even if it is a social contagion, once somebody becomes an adult, I think it's a decision that we need to respect because it's not one, it would cause them a great amount of emotional pain to not acknowledge it to you.

They typically would have an enormous time. Trans difficult time transitioning back, even if they feel like, they made a mistake or something, right? And I think [00:38:00] that the regardless of the reason someone transitions. Now, I do not think that they should, that people should ever be forced to acknowledge someone's transition.

So by that, what I mean is if someone's from a culture or religion or tradition where it would be seen as untoward or in, in, in some other way, it really goes against their tradition to correctly gendered someone or something like that. Yeah. fine. Like we definitely as a society shouldn't make it illegal to misgender people.

However, I think it's the polite thing to do and to remember. How much these people have gone through and how much, how uncomfortable it can be to engage with a world where you're not sure, who is negatively judging you for something that at this point you can't really change about yourself.

Yeah,

Simone: no, totally. And, I was, I would say my choice to starve myself as a female adolescent was. Super dumb. I'm still paying the price for that, right? I can't have kids naturally. I have osteoporosis. I'm not saying I made great [00:39:00] decisions as an adolescent. I'm just saying, the motivation to do stuff to yourself is there.

And also I don't know I personally have never really had a negative reaction to meeting anyone who's transitioning and it's you do what's best for you. Like everyone. And I think we both agree when it comes to things like governing yeah. Most decisions are best made at the local level, no one like the local community, like the individual knows best what they need, or knows better what they need, like you can't have optimal decisions made by people who are on the outside.

Malcolm: Yeah, this is something I find really interesting is you have these people who are like against children transitioning, right? Make it illegal, right? Under a certain age. And yet for, the vast majority of kids who are transitioning in this age range, it's like 16, 18, yet I could get gauges at that age.

That's a permanent thing.

Simone: You need parental consent for that. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you for any sort of piercing, if you are below 18, unless they're like fly by night and there's a lot of fly by night piercings. What

Malcolm: age do you need to be?

Simone: Every piercing and tattoos you gotta be 18 if you go without a parent.

[00:40:00] But, I think that most of the people

Malcolm: who are doing... Oh wow, 18, you're right. Yeah, sorry. Okay, bad argument. No

Simone: but, it's really easy to get that stuff. The people that are paid minimum wage and poorly trained. At Claire's, which is famous for piercing people. They don't care.

They're not checking. Yeah. But, yeah, these there's a long precedent for people who are, of minority, whatever that's determined to be. It's obviously different across states and countries and stuff. Are are blocked from doing things that could be irreversible. And sometimes that's even things like drinking.

This is not unreasonable. There's a long cultural precedent for it. I'm not saying it is how it always should be. But if I, for example, if I We're able to like immediately follow through in a costless fashion with impulses that I had as an adolescent, I would not have a uterus now.

Malcolm: Oh yeah, because you wanted to sterilize yourself.

Simone: Yeah, I wanted to sterilize myself. So I,

Malcolm: could you imagine like thinking today, like who you'd become could you have made a worse decision? I know, right? It's, no, but it's really interesting to me that we all make bad decisions when we're young.

Yeah.[00:41:00]

Simone: But the thing is it didn't hurt me at all to be blocked from that, and here's the thing, though is I do really feel for once you reach a point in your life where you think transitioning is the only answer for you, and you and I were talking about this earlier on a walk once you feel like transitioning is the only answer for you, it's the only answer for you And I've had points in my life where I thought that I had to do this thing or I would go crazy.

I would die.

Malcolm: Oh, we forgot about the most important answer from this entire thing which is why are people actually happier after they transition? Because you see this so often in the community. Imagine it is just a social contagion, yet I see it fixing problems for so many people.

So what's really going on here, and we think we have an answer, it's just not the one that's normal in the trans community. So one, you get this obsession where you start to think, oh God, if I don't transition. And then you read into your earlier life, Oh, there were all these times where I was uncomfortable with this, or I didn't fully fit my gender in this way.

And you begin to have all of these sort of prove for you that you need to [00:42:00] transition, but then transitioning ends up actually helping you, but not for the reason that a person might think. Basically, we've argued here that anyone who goes on these hormone therapies actually ends up successfully transitioning to a large extent, whether or not they identified as CIS beforehand.

But what it does do is, and we've talked about this before, when you are feeling really systemically unhappy with your life, and really systemically like you don't belong one of the best things you can do is leave your current situation, leave where you're living, leave your friend groups change your job, change the way you're contextualizing yourself.

And you can reset your personality and a lot of how your brain works. Yeah. And it solves the problem. Something like 86 percent of people addicted to heroin in Vietnam, when they came back, the addictions went away. And this was like a deep seated neurological addiction, but they were in such a radically different environment that it allowed them to reset their brains.

That could be what's happening here. Is it individuals? Now that they're contextualizing themselves as a new person with a new [00:43:00] name, that's a new gender, often with new friend groups, with new ways of interacting with people, with a completely new, like, when we say, go to a new place, do something new.

The only way this resets who you are is if in this new place, you're also pretending to be a new iteration of yourself. Yeah.

Simone: And what's better for that than transitioning? It's really hard to beat that.

Malcolm: And the hormones might even reset specific pathways

Simone: in the brain. Oh yeah no.

Totally. It's a similar, I think personally, like when I look at a lot of research around psychedelics for treating depression, PTSD, like that's one way that now Therapists and psychologists are looking to shake up the brain enough to get you out of a mental rut that is very toxic.

I think shifting your hormonal patterns is a great way to do that as well, and this would

Malcolm: explain why it's happening to young women more often than young men. Young women have more psychological issues that would require this sort of reset than young men have. Yeah,

Simone: just because adolescent female hormones are so horrible.

Malcolm: But this could be an even more offensive explanation than yours because what it says Is [00:44:00] no, these people aren't really born in the wrong body. They're not actually, it really is improving their lives

Simone: pretty dramatically. Yeah. That's the thing is like after a certain point, if you're severely depressed, you're super unhappy and you think, and you've also decided transitioning is the only

Malcolm: thing you can do.

You said you don't really consider someone a woman unless they pass and they're dramatically less likely to pass if they do this later. Yeah.

Simone: Except I, like a lot of the stuff that we've discussed here. May not, like the person seeing, being seen as passing doesn't matter in many of those cases.

It matters for trans maxxers it may not matter for women transitioning to get control over their bodies again, essentially. Oh, I would

Malcolm: argue that almost, I'd say the number of trans people where passing doesn't matter is probably less than 1%.

Simone: Yeah, you think passing really

Malcolm: matters? I think you can say it doesn't matter.

I think they can say internally it doesn't matter, but I think it's... Personally they just say that because. They want it so they

Simone: can't pull it off, so they are gonna try to

Malcolm: not care about it. I don't know, that might be an [00:45:00] offensive thing to say.

Simone: I think we've said a lot of it. We've rung that bell already.

I

Malcolm: don't think we've that are offensive to say about or in the trans community anymore. But we are genuinely trying to think through what's going on here and I would love it if there were better research into just, they got the wrong soul. And the research didn't always trend along with social answers where the social answers seem to come before the research that backs it.

Which is,

Simone: I'll say this, like no disrespect for people transitioning. Like I, one, I love that. It's like this. This championing of the human body, it's taking biology and being like we're doing it my way. I'm going to take control. I love that. And that's why I starved myself. I loved the satisfaction of having control over my body.

And my weight and how I felt, even if it was like miserable and it drove me crazy. I love that control. I love IVF for the same reason. Oh my God, we can own the process of reproduction. We can choose all these things. We can, control the time it can do. And I think, like it's [00:46:00] anything along those lines.

It's like a little bit more transhumanist or a little bit more about mastering the human body. Oh, let's control our hormones. Let's control like our arousal pathways. Let's change how we look and feel. That's like super cool. Yeah, master your body, do what you need to do to feel good.

Or be effective in life or, succeed or thrive by whatever measure you care about. Like just because we have theories as to why this happens. It's funny that it would be so controversial or be seen as hateful. To have a theory as to why something happens when, whatever it's happening, it's real.

These are real feelings. It's, similar to our offensive theories around Spoonies, right? That we may think that a lot of it has to do with hypochondria, but we don't discount the fact that people are genuinely suffering, genuinely feeling real symptoms of pain. Yeah. So I, it's interesting that one would be

Malcolm: well, some of this can cause people to dismiss them.

For example, like autogynephilia, like you hear that and you're like, if you accept that as the reason why most people are transitioning, then you see them as just like pervy men pretending to be women.

Simone: It's like how many people in the world, especially young men. Live their lives [00:47:00] in a certain way just to get sexual partners or just to get sexual gratification ultimately like on a macro

Malcolm: scale, right?

I'm just saying I can see how that could lead to the dehumanization of trans individuals in a way that would hurt the movement Even if it were true unless they wouldn't want to discuss. I don't think it's true, but I'm just saying I see why They would have a political reason to silence any data that could support that hypothesis.

Yeah, I agree. Which is a shame. It's a shame because I really would like to understand all of this and I really think that we should reach a position of acceptance beyond that which the trans community is willing to roll out right now. Which is that if you want to transition, it doesn't matter your reasons, as long as culturally that's what your group's okay with, you go ahead with that, right?

I support that. I don't support... Trying to inject these ideas into cultural groups where this is not traditional, I think it's just one culture's solution to a set of problems. But I do support individuals who[00:48:00] approach this, or, over 18 and, This makes them feel better.

And I do think it does make a lot of people feel better. And I do think it fixes a lot of problems that almost nothing else can fix in an individual's life. Agreed. All right. Love you, Simone. Love you too. We're so screwed.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe