Jesse joins us to discuss his New York Times op-ed on the turning tide on youth gender medicine, and why people go insane about him on the internet. Plus, Ben's hopes for Iran.
I’m mid-listen, but I’m struck mostly by how much this discussion leans in to the extremes of the discourse about trans issues, rather than finding a rational center.
One extreme is the performative leftist position almost resistant to parody: Surgery for all. Ben neatly summarized this position when he said he didn’t know many trans people and sorta trusted the lefty narrative that treatment for minors was necessary because that was (I’m paraphrasing) the vibe.
The other is the right-wing obsession with 1) prog parents forcibly turning their kids into trans tokens for free kombucha and extra mail-in ballots and 2) trans men ogling co-eds at swim meets before winning gold and going to a cushy life of predation in a women’s prison.
What I don’t get is why y’all feel the need to stand on the extreme right to criticize the extreme left.
It’s easy (if unpopular) to dismantle the leftist position, in large part because it is mostly based on vibes and ignorant virtue signaling. There are kids who are getting surgery, so you lose the argument when you deny that. The science isn’t settled, so you’re going to eventually if you look foolish if you assert that it is because you want to fit in on Bluesky. But the people seeking a medical intervention are a tiny fraction of the much larger number who are daily victimized, stigmatized, and marginalized.
The right does a really good job of highlighting some very narrow absurdity created by the left’s tendency to virtue signal and accede to the loudest and most extreme minority and activist voices, then using that absurdity to justify a very broad response that is actually much more harmful. Bottom surgery for kids isn’t supported in the literature? Let’s refuse to allow trans people drivers licenses that reflect their identity, toss trans-women who’ve undergone surgery and lived that way for decades in a men’s jail, cut funding for any medical research even remotely related to trans issues. The focus on tiny niches of the trans is then used to justify a really broad and hateful campaign that makes life much worse for many more people.
Megan’s reference to men seeking to be admitted to women’s prisons is a great example. Sexual assault in US jails and prisons is an enormous and tragic problem. Men and women are regularly raped in prison by guards and other inmates, and queer men especially so. A real solution to that problem involves recognizing the rate at which queer people are victimized, recognizing that queer people might need special accommodations, and (a pipe-dream, I know) re-assessing our society’s hetero-normative insistence that sex segregation is the cure to sexual violence. Instead, Megan focuses on the very rare instances of men “opting in” to women’s prisons in a way that that ignores the much more substantial and pervasive danger of sexual violence against queer people in prison.
It seems like you’re nodding credulously along with the Willie Horton ad, rather than interrogating the failures of the criminal justice system and our country’s racist history.
I do know a number of trans and queer people, including young people, and I worry much less about them receiving an unsupported medical treatment (although I worry about that) than I worry about them not having access to ANY medical care that supports their bodily and mental autonomy while they also live in a society seemingly becoming rapidly more hateful and resistant to their right to exist.
I quite agree that we need to make some provision for trans women, who are often victimized in prison, but allowing males to self-ID into women's prisons was a crazy solution to that problem.
But I'm hoping you also agree that most people amplifying the issue of men self-identifying into women's prisons have:
1) Absolutely no concern about what happens to trans women in men's jails and prisons, and
2) No concern about sexual assault in jails and prisons at all.
(At the risk of being super reductive) You can focus on that insanity for two main reasons:
The first is if you really care about sexual violence in prisons. You try to work out what causes it. There are different causes which might require different solutions, so you focus on the facts of each case. The effective solutions to rampant sexual violence in prisons are honestly pretty simple, but they're also political kryptonite. The problem you identified is easy to fix and the entirely predictable result of a bunch of well-meaning but basically ignorant people virtue-signaling without considering the consequences, while also overlooking how their policies created the much larger problem they are refusing to fix. Just . . . you know, liberals being liberals.
The second is if the limited insanity is useful to malign the reasonable cause that produced it. The US political right has spent DECADES either ignoring or celebrating how the war on drugs, restrictive Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, prison privatization, veneration of everyone in a uniform, and vilification of everyone convicted of a crime produced an epidemic of sexual assault in prisons. But as soon as some wacky Democrat state exacerbates the problem in a minor but absurd way that makes the trans issue look bad, suddenly it's a Serious Problem.
I guess that's why I flagged your passing reference to this issue, and why I took umbrage generally to the show's tone. It seemed to be credulously picking up this right-wing football and running with it, when there's PLENTY of open space between the extremism of left-wing virtue signaling and the extremism of right-wing bigotry.
I mentioned this in my own comment, but I think this broadly applies to the "transwomen in sports" issue. Not that it isn't a thorny issue to deal with, but that
a) politicians talking about "protecting the sanctity of women's sports" have been curiously silent on, say, increased funding for women's sports
b) people talking about how unfair it is that transwomen get to compete, often ignore the plethora of ways that sport is *inherently* unfair. Just ask any aspiring basketball player who happens to be a little short
None of which is to say that the issue shouldn't matter, or shouldn't be talked about or anything. But I do think a lot of people (especially politicians) aren't concerned with actually addressing them; it's more about "here's some red meat to throw to the base, we're BANNING trans athletes!" posturing. And that doesn't help anyone!
Really, it reminds me a bit of the Bear Patrol episode of The Simpsons: take a real issue, inflate it all out of proportion, then gain political capital by "fixing" it. And in this case, politicians can "fix" it without too much blowback, because trans people --let alone the tiny, tiny proportion of trans people who want to be athletes in their transitioned gender -- aren't a big enough political coalition to fight for themselves.
Nobody loses! Except the poor handful of trans kids who are stuck in the middle of everything, of course.
Completely. The crowd who spent a decade or so complaining about participation trophies suddenly are very invested in who comes 8th in a women's sport they never cared to watch.
Maybe it's because I was never terribly good at sports, but I've long believed that the point of athletics is to produce well-rounded individuals. Striving to be the best you can is essential, but actually being "the best" is not.
The issue impacts the many many girls who are competing to be the best that they can be. Asking them to compete against a biological male is considered very unfair by majority of Americans. And the advantage is clear even pre-puberty.
When a majority of US Americans have a shared belief, that is very important to politics, but not to whether the is morally correct. Many things that are objectively bad were once popular. Some of them even got elected.
Even on the purely political aspect, considering what's popular surely must be built on top of a set of moral principles which guide it. An ideal political solution might be at odds with some moral principle, but still advance others or move towards greater justice.
Some people make that argument about trans rights and liberal politics. Essentially, "we need to stop talking about it because otherwise the right wins and they'll be worse on that issue and others." I don't completely buy that claim. I think the left needs to stop talking about trans rights **the way they have been talking about trans rights** because they tend to do it--and most things--pretty badly.
My version of the morally correct policy outcome on the trans issue (and most issues, really) is far too radical to be an immediate solution, but I also think there's a plausible and available (centrist!) political discussion to be had on the underlying moral questions about bodily autonomy, identity, whether our government should formalize and reinforce certain identities or even ways of measuring and reporting identity; as well as the questions you raise about "fairness" and so on. In the long term, I think that would lead to my preferred outcome. Even in the short term, I think it might lead to some incremental changes in the right direction and would definitely lead to a much more compassionate environment that doesn't increase the vilification of queer kids.
Unfortunately, the discussion we HAVE is between one side that is more-or-less well-meaning but entirely inept and another that is mean-spirited but very effective. What irked me about this episode was that it seemed to accept that was the only paradigm on which the discussion could proceed.
Honestly this is just bullshit -- telling people their reasonable concerns are edge cases, so shut up. That you find this argument compelling is why liberals are losing on this issue.
This is a weirdly aggressive response to a comment in which I mostly agreed with the factual premise of the episode.
I'm quite confident I didn't tell anyone to shut up. I pointed out that focusing exclusively on edge cases is buying into the right-wing playbook of making edge cases the entire issue, and then using that issue to justify unreasonable and harmful responses to a much broader set.
I thought your argument was liberals were losing on this issue because they were ignorantly pushing the wrong side of a small subset of trans issues. But now you're saying they're losing because they're trying to draw attention to the broader array of discrimination against trans people? Is the losing issue just caring about trans people?
<<I’m mid-listen, but I’m struck mostly by how much this discussion leans in to the extremes of the discourse about trans issues, rather than finding a rational center.>>
What is the rational center on, say, men in women's sports?
I'm not a centrist and I don't claim to have all the answers, but I suspect it starts with not being the kind of asshole who says things like "men in women's sports."
I am trying really hard to be polite, but Ben's position on the Iran attack is just...I don't have words.
Ben seems to take a very a la carte view of these sorts of military actions. If you like the short-term outcome, you don't worry much about the motivations or the wisdom of the decision-makers. You also take that action completely decontextualized, so in this case you ignore the bungled invasion of Iraq that happened less than twenty-five years ago. You also don't stress too much over the many unintended consequences of this kind of military action. And, sure, if you blithely dismiss all of these relevant considerations, you can pretty much approve of any policy that isn't immediately catastrophic.
I was in my thirties when this nation was hornswoggled into invading Iraq, so perhaps memory is making me overly skeptical. However, hearing Ben's words made me incredibly sad, because it demonstrated that, as a nation, we probably haven't learned a thing.
I thought Ben refuted his own position without realizing it.
First he says Iran arguably deserved it and it seems to be going well so far. Which, fair enough.
Then he contrasts it with Iraq by pointing out that a few poor decisions about how to handle the situation after we attacked was the real problem. Which, also, fair enouh.
But, as to point 2, has the Trump Admin done literally anything at all to convince us that they know what they are doing and will make better decisions than the Bush Admin? Not a chance.
Ha ha, right? GWB went to great lengths to convince Americans that attacking Iraq was not only right but necessary. Trump skipped that part and just attacked. While I am grateful the president didn't insult my intelligence with lies, it might have been nice for him to at least to *try* to make the case for an invasion.
But maybe that's where we are now, politically. Our leaders can flaunt their reckless corruption because Americans are so jaded they just think it's just how things are. Again, sad.
I mean I agree with all criticisms of Trump. But I do think people can see ghosts of Iraq in too many things. Or ghosts of Libya etc...
But the best argument against this, I think, is that Trump is an idiot and will kill you for a quarter. That's why i didn't vote for him and it's why I wouldn't have said beforehand "Mr President, please go bomb iran." But now that he has done it, I don't want to catastrophize it and assume it's doomed.
The conversation about Iran didn't mention Israel. I would love to hear a civilized yet provocative debate about whether this war is in the best interest of the American people. This is an issue unsettled both on the left and the right, perfect territory for centrists to weigh in.
Thanks for this episode! I think the trans issue is fraught, particularly when it comes to minors. And, aside from the maximalists on the left, it has become an unfortunate victim of (mostly conservative) politicians hammering the "culture war" button for votes, at the expense of trans people.
I feel that way over, say, trans athletes, which I can see a genuine issue with! But the way politicians go on about it you'd think that they're storming Olympic podiums by the thousands, while in reality they are a tiny, tiny fraction.
I know you don't necessarily focus on the same issues from week to week, but I'd like to see you talk with a guest that could argue the other side -- perhaps even from a trans perspective. Someone like Natalie Wynn (also known as Contrapoints), or Erin Reed. Freddie deBoer has written a lot about this too, though he isn't trans, and might not be centrist enough for your tastes (he's a Marxist).
Anyway, thanks again for the episode. Love you guys!
What is the other side of "the evidence is remarkably weak and we should exercise caution and do more research to understand the issue better before giving kids life-altering treatments"? That's Jesse Singal's position. The problem is that "experts" in favor of gender affirming care are so dishonest and don't engage in a good faith discussions on the topic. I'm not familiar with Natalie Wynn, but Journalist Ben Ryan--someone who does a very good job coving this issue--is regularly fact-checking Erin Reed's writing for inaccuracies.
<<But the way politicians go on about it you'd think that they're storming Olympic podiums by the thousands, while in reality they are a tiny, tiny fraction.>>
Imagine I am teaching a course to 300 students, and in an exam I allow two of those students to use the textbook. I could say, "Well, it's just two out of hundreds--not even 1%!" The problem, of course, is that I have just treated the other 298 students unfairly--even those students who manage to score better on the exam. Similarly, if there are only four trans women in a league of 500 athletes, the other 496 are being treated unfairly, no matter how those trans women perform.
So this "tiny fraction" has a disproportionate impact that matters to people. They're not kidding; they really don't like it.
Right. We need to remember that whatever strategy the White House has come up with--assuming there even is a strategy--it's being executed by the gang of crooks, cranks and self-seekers with whom Trump has surrounded himself.
I enjoy the thoughtful, nuanced discussion everyone brings to the show, even if I don't agree. That said, if trans issues are going to be a recurring topic that you bring guests on to discuss, I would love to hear the voice of a trans person. Hearing that first hand perspective in some of these more contested areas would be valuable.
Again on the trans issue. I agree that the research is mixed. I would also be very skeptical if I were a parent presented with this situation. However, we allow parents to *unilaterally* make health decisions for their children that the research unequivocally says are bad (i.e. refusing vaccines, homeopathy in lieu of real medicine, etc). Any gender intervention has to be done with the consent of the child, parent, and doctor. The evidence for trans medicine, while mixed, is still better than the evidence in favor of homeopathy. Yes, European countries regulate the hell out of things we do not. In many ways, I would prefer that. But we give parents VERY wide discretion in the US, and I remain unconvinced that this issue is THE hill to die on from a public health perspective. Tighten up the guidance, sure. But we increasingly have a system where freedom only applies to a set of right-leaning concerns.
I hate to be the old white guy in the room lecturing the comments section about not-ancient American history, but in 2004 there was a movie called Team America: World Police. It has puppets. I can't believe neither Josh nor Megyn responded to Ben with, "America, fuck yeah!"
I appreciated Josh’s question about the uncertainty in medical recommendations for kids with gender dysphoria, which is similar to other conditions that are not fully understood and that people struggle with.
Megan noted that depression is usually temporary, but this isn't true for many; mood disorders are complex, and treatment varies by provider and region. The understanding of what mood disorders actually are is not as comprehensive as it is for other medical conditions, such as diabetes.
Home blood pressure monitoring is often necessary to confirm diagnosis, yet the monitors people use at home aren’t always accurate, and patient cooperation for collecting more data varies. Then, treatment choices depend on the provider, and it’s not unusual for people to try more than one BP medication before finding one that works.
Gender dysphoria treatment involves significant body changes that can be very welcome to someone but also emotionally upsetting, especially for those who see a young person morph into someone different from whom they knew before. I am not sure that this medical practice protocol, which lacks full understanding and standardization based on data, is much different from other mental health treatments. In the past, procedures like lobotomies were options, and ECT was offered more readily than it is now, when patients are advised to fail other treatments first. Many providers now prefer TMS or ketamine for mood disorders more quickly than they did in the past.
A NYT article years ago highlighted the difficulty of stopping SSRIs, which can sometimes take years and require microdosing down to zero to avoid unpleasant withdrawal effects.
There is limited long-term data on many drugs.
For example, Dupixent, an injectable used for eczema when other treatments fail for kids six months and older, is effective but lacks extensive long-term data on its effects and developmental impacts.
The same can be said for the long-term data on injectable GLPs and the newer ones being developed as drug companies compete. I think medical providers try to do what they can to help reduce patients' suffering and work with the options available. So, like Megan's Vienna example, when people are struggling, they can be impulsive out of desperation and then open to taking risks.
Yeah, I agree. The trans issue is a canary in the coal mine for more serious issues in the US that we seem not serious enough to solve.
Personally, I think we should completely stop discussing trans issues because in every aspect of the discussion, there is a broader issue at play. We should be discussing the bigger issues.
This is what gun rights advocates say at times. It’s a mental health problem not a gun problem. Until we address the mental health issues there’s no way we can support any type of gun regulation.
yeah in all fairness, i'm the only one of us who is remotely pro about the iran mission. Both of them are solidly anti. And i'm an idiot so maybe that tells you everything you need to know!
I’m mid-listen, but I’m struck mostly by how much this discussion leans in to the extremes of the discourse about trans issues, rather than finding a rational center.
One extreme is the performative leftist position almost resistant to parody: Surgery for all. Ben neatly summarized this position when he said he didn’t know many trans people and sorta trusted the lefty narrative that treatment for minors was necessary because that was (I’m paraphrasing) the vibe.
The other is the right-wing obsession with 1) prog parents forcibly turning their kids into trans tokens for free kombucha and extra mail-in ballots and 2) trans men ogling co-eds at swim meets before winning gold and going to a cushy life of predation in a women’s prison.
What I don’t get is why y’all feel the need to stand on the extreme right to criticize the extreme left.
It’s easy (if unpopular) to dismantle the leftist position, in large part because it is mostly based on vibes and ignorant virtue signaling. There are kids who are getting surgery, so you lose the argument when you deny that. The science isn’t settled, so you’re going to eventually if you look foolish if you assert that it is because you want to fit in on Bluesky. But the people seeking a medical intervention are a tiny fraction of the much larger number who are daily victimized, stigmatized, and marginalized.
The right does a really good job of highlighting some very narrow absurdity created by the left’s tendency to virtue signal and accede to the loudest and most extreme minority and activist voices, then using that absurdity to justify a very broad response that is actually much more harmful. Bottom surgery for kids isn’t supported in the literature? Let’s refuse to allow trans people drivers licenses that reflect their identity, toss trans-women who’ve undergone surgery and lived that way for decades in a men’s jail, cut funding for any medical research even remotely related to trans issues. The focus on tiny niches of the trans is then used to justify a really broad and hateful campaign that makes life much worse for many more people.
Megan’s reference to men seeking to be admitted to women’s prisons is a great example. Sexual assault in US jails and prisons is an enormous and tragic problem. Men and women are regularly raped in prison by guards and other inmates, and queer men especially so. A real solution to that problem involves recognizing the rate at which queer people are victimized, recognizing that queer people might need special accommodations, and (a pipe-dream, I know) re-assessing our society’s hetero-normative insistence that sex segregation is the cure to sexual violence. Instead, Megan focuses on the very rare instances of men “opting in” to women’s prisons in a way that that ignores the much more substantial and pervasive danger of sexual violence against queer people in prison.
It seems like you’re nodding credulously along with the Willie Horton ad, rather than interrogating the failures of the criminal justice system and our country’s racist history.
I do know a number of trans and queer people, including young people, and I worry much less about them receiving an unsupported medical treatment (although I worry about that) than I worry about them not having access to ANY medical care that supports their bodily and mental autonomy while they also live in a society seemingly becoming rapidly more hateful and resistant to their right to exist.
I quite agree that we need to make some provision for trans women, who are often victimized in prison, but allowing males to self-ID into women's prisons was a crazy solution to that problem.
100%
But I'm hoping you also agree that most people amplifying the issue of men self-identifying into women's prisons have:
1) Absolutely no concern about what happens to trans women in men's jails and prisons, and
2) No concern about sexual assault in jails and prisons at all.
(At the risk of being super reductive) You can focus on that insanity for two main reasons:
The first is if you really care about sexual violence in prisons. You try to work out what causes it. There are different causes which might require different solutions, so you focus on the facts of each case. The effective solutions to rampant sexual violence in prisons are honestly pretty simple, but they're also political kryptonite. The problem you identified is easy to fix and the entirely predictable result of a bunch of well-meaning but basically ignorant people virtue-signaling without considering the consequences, while also overlooking how their policies created the much larger problem they are refusing to fix. Just . . . you know, liberals being liberals.
The second is if the limited insanity is useful to malign the reasonable cause that produced it. The US political right has spent DECADES either ignoring or celebrating how the war on drugs, restrictive Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, prison privatization, veneration of everyone in a uniform, and vilification of everyone convicted of a crime produced an epidemic of sexual assault in prisons. But as soon as some wacky Democrat state exacerbates the problem in a minor but absurd way that makes the trans issue look bad, suddenly it's a Serious Problem.
I guess that's why I flagged your passing reference to this issue, and why I took umbrage generally to the show's tone. It seemed to be credulously picking up this right-wing football and running with it, when there's PLENTY of open space between the extremism of left-wing virtue signaling and the extremism of right-wing bigotry.
I mentioned this in my own comment, but I think this broadly applies to the "transwomen in sports" issue. Not that it isn't a thorny issue to deal with, but that
a) politicians talking about "protecting the sanctity of women's sports" have been curiously silent on, say, increased funding for women's sports
b) people talking about how unfair it is that transwomen get to compete, often ignore the plethora of ways that sport is *inherently* unfair. Just ask any aspiring basketball player who happens to be a little short
None of which is to say that the issue shouldn't matter, or shouldn't be talked about or anything. But I do think a lot of people (especially politicians) aren't concerned with actually addressing them; it's more about "here's some red meat to throw to the base, we're BANNING trans athletes!" posturing. And that doesn't help anyone!
Really, it reminds me a bit of the Bear Patrol episode of The Simpsons: take a real issue, inflate it all out of proportion, then gain political capital by "fixing" it. And in this case, politicians can "fix" it without too much blowback, because trans people --let alone the tiny, tiny proportion of trans people who want to be athletes in their transitioned gender -- aren't a big enough political coalition to fight for themselves.
Nobody loses! Except the poor handful of trans kids who are stuck in the middle of everything, of course.
Completely. The crowd who spent a decade or so complaining about participation trophies suddenly are very invested in who comes 8th in a women's sport they never cared to watch.
Maybe it's because I was never terribly good at sports, but I've long believed that the point of athletics is to produce well-rounded individuals. Striving to be the best you can is essential, but actually being "the best" is not.
The issue impacts the many many girls who are competing to be the best that they can be. Asking them to compete against a biological male is considered very unfair by majority of Americans. And the advantage is clear even pre-puberty.
When a majority of US Americans have a shared belief, that is very important to politics, but not to whether the is morally correct. Many things that are objectively bad were once popular. Some of them even got elected.
Even on the purely political aspect, considering what's popular surely must be built on top of a set of moral principles which guide it. An ideal political solution might be at odds with some moral principle, but still advance others or move towards greater justice.
Some people make that argument about trans rights and liberal politics. Essentially, "we need to stop talking about it because otherwise the right wins and they'll be worse on that issue and others." I don't completely buy that claim. I think the left needs to stop talking about trans rights **the way they have been talking about trans rights** because they tend to do it--and most things--pretty badly.
My version of the morally correct policy outcome on the trans issue (and most issues, really) is far too radical to be an immediate solution, but I also think there's a plausible and available (centrist!) political discussion to be had on the underlying moral questions about bodily autonomy, identity, whether our government should formalize and reinforce certain identities or even ways of measuring and reporting identity; as well as the questions you raise about "fairness" and so on. In the long term, I think that would lead to my preferred outcome. Even in the short term, I think it might lead to some incremental changes in the right direction and would definitely lead to a much more compassionate environment that doesn't increase the vilification of queer kids.
Unfortunately, the discussion we HAVE is between one side that is more-or-less well-meaning but entirely inept and another that is mean-spirited but very effective. What irked me about this episode was that it seemed to accept that was the only paradigm on which the discussion could proceed.
Honestly this is just bullshit -- telling people their reasonable concerns are edge cases, so shut up. That you find this argument compelling is why liberals are losing on this issue.
This is a weirdly aggressive response to a comment in which I mostly agreed with the factual premise of the episode.
I'm quite confident I didn't tell anyone to shut up. I pointed out that focusing exclusively on edge cases is buying into the right-wing playbook of making edge cases the entire issue, and then using that issue to justify unreasonable and harmful responses to a much broader set.
I thought your argument was liberals were losing on this issue because they were ignorantly pushing the wrong side of a small subset of trans issues. But now you're saying they're losing because they're trying to draw attention to the broader array of discrimination against trans people? Is the losing issue just caring about trans people?
Sports is not an edge case. Unless you only focus on the trans athlete and not the girls who are impacted by unfair competition.
Or is my perception that is fair competition correct and your perception that it is unfair is incorrect?
Or does it highlight that gender identity is a belief system unsupported by biological reality?
That is partially my point. One cannot objectively prove a concern is reasonable or unreasonable.
<<I’m mid-listen, but I’m struck mostly by how much this discussion leans in to the extremes of the discourse about trans issues, rather than finding a rational center.>>
What is the rational center on, say, men in women's sports?
I'm not a centrist and I don't claim to have all the answers, but I suspect it starts with not being the kind of asshole who says things like "men in women's sports."
Sweetie, if you want to flirt with me, you're going to have to do better than that. Calling me an asshole is only kind of working.
I am trying really hard to be polite, but Ben's position on the Iran attack is just...I don't have words.
Ben seems to take a very a la carte view of these sorts of military actions. If you like the short-term outcome, you don't worry much about the motivations or the wisdom of the decision-makers. You also take that action completely decontextualized, so in this case you ignore the bungled invasion of Iraq that happened less than twenty-five years ago. You also don't stress too much over the many unintended consequences of this kind of military action. And, sure, if you blithely dismiss all of these relevant considerations, you can pretty much approve of any policy that isn't immediately catastrophic.
I was in my thirties when this nation was hornswoggled into invading Iraq, so perhaps memory is making me overly skeptical. However, hearing Ben's words made me incredibly sad, because it demonstrated that, as a nation, we probably haven't learned a thing.
I thought Ben refuted his own position without realizing it.
First he says Iran arguably deserved it and it seems to be going well so far. Which, fair enough.
Then he contrasts it with Iraq by pointing out that a few poor decisions about how to handle the situation after we attacked was the real problem. Which, also, fair enouh.
But, as to point 2, has the Trump Admin done literally anything at all to convince us that they know what they are doing and will make better decisions than the Bush Admin? Not a chance.
Ha ha, right? GWB went to great lengths to convince Americans that attacking Iraq was not only right but necessary. Trump skipped that part and just attacked. While I am grateful the president didn't insult my intelligence with lies, it might have been nice for him to at least to *try* to make the case for an invasion.
But maybe that's where we are now, politically. Our leaders can flaunt their reckless corruption because Americans are so jaded they just think it's just how things are. Again, sad.
Well, I agree with that criticism of Trump!.
I mean I agree with all criticisms of Trump. But I do think people can see ghosts of Iraq in too many things. Or ghosts of Libya etc...
But the best argument against this, I think, is that Trump is an idiot and will kill you for a quarter. That's why i didn't vote for him and it's why I wouldn't have said beforehand "Mr President, please go bomb iran." But now that he has done it, I don't want to catastrophize it and assume it's doomed.
The conversation about Iran didn't mention Israel. I would love to hear a civilized yet provocative debate about whether this war is in the best interest of the American people. This is an issue unsettled both on the left and the right, perfect territory for centrists to weigh in.
Thanks for this episode! I think the trans issue is fraught, particularly when it comes to minors. And, aside from the maximalists on the left, it has become an unfortunate victim of (mostly conservative) politicians hammering the "culture war" button for votes, at the expense of trans people.
I feel that way over, say, trans athletes, which I can see a genuine issue with! But the way politicians go on about it you'd think that they're storming Olympic podiums by the thousands, while in reality they are a tiny, tiny fraction.
I know you don't necessarily focus on the same issues from week to week, but I'd like to see you talk with a guest that could argue the other side -- perhaps even from a trans perspective. Someone like Natalie Wynn (also known as Contrapoints), or Erin Reed. Freddie deBoer has written a lot about this too, though he isn't trans, and might not be centrist enough for your tastes (he's a Marxist).
Anyway, thanks again for the episode. Love you guys!
What is the other side of "the evidence is remarkably weak and we should exercise caution and do more research to understand the issue better before giving kids life-altering treatments"? That's Jesse Singal's position. The problem is that "experts" in favor of gender affirming care are so dishonest and don't engage in a good faith discussions on the topic. I'm not familiar with Natalie Wynn, but Journalist Ben Ryan--someone who does a very good job coving this issue--is regularly fact-checking Erin Reed's writing for inaccuracies.
<<But the way politicians go on about it you'd think that they're storming Olympic podiums by the thousands, while in reality they are a tiny, tiny fraction.>>
Imagine I am teaching a course to 300 students, and in an exam I allow two of those students to use the textbook. I could say, "Well, it's just two out of hundreds--not even 1%!" The problem, of course, is that I have just treated the other 298 students unfairly--even those students who manage to score better on the exam. Similarly, if there are only four trans women in a league of 500 athletes, the other 496 are being treated unfairly, no matter how those trans women perform.
So this "tiny fraction" has a disproportionate impact that matters to people. They're not kidding; they really don't like it.
Raise your hand if you'd let Pete Hegseth babysit your kids. "Poor quality" undersells it
Right. We need to remember that whatever strategy the White House has come up with--assuming there even is a strategy--it's being executed by the gang of crooks, cranks and self-seekers with whom Trump has surrounded himself.
I enjoy the thoughtful, nuanced discussion everyone brings to the show, even if I don't agree. That said, if trans issues are going to be a recurring topic that you bring guests on to discuss, I would love to hear the voice of a trans person. Hearing that first hand perspective in some of these more contested areas would be valuable.
Ben - you talked about what success would like for Iran - what would have to happen for you to say war has been a failure?
Again on the trans issue. I agree that the research is mixed. I would also be very skeptical if I were a parent presented with this situation. However, we allow parents to *unilaterally* make health decisions for their children that the research unequivocally says are bad (i.e. refusing vaccines, homeopathy in lieu of real medicine, etc). Any gender intervention has to be done with the consent of the child, parent, and doctor. The evidence for trans medicine, while mixed, is still better than the evidence in favor of homeopathy. Yes, European countries regulate the hell out of things we do not. In many ways, I would prefer that. But we give parents VERY wide discretion in the US, and I remain unconvinced that this issue is THE hill to die on from a public health perspective. Tighten up the guidance, sure. But we increasingly have a system where freedom only applies to a set of right-leaning concerns.
I hate to be the old white guy in the room lecturing the comments section about not-ancient American history, but in 2004 there was a movie called Team America: World Police. It has puppets. I can't believe neither Josh nor Megyn responded to Ben with, "America, fuck yeah!"
I appreciated Josh’s question about the uncertainty in medical recommendations for kids with gender dysphoria, which is similar to other conditions that are not fully understood and that people struggle with.
Megan noted that depression is usually temporary, but this isn't true for many; mood disorders are complex, and treatment varies by provider and region. The understanding of what mood disorders actually are is not as comprehensive as it is for other medical conditions, such as diabetes.
Home blood pressure monitoring is often necessary to confirm diagnosis, yet the monitors people use at home aren’t always accurate, and patient cooperation for collecting more data varies. Then, treatment choices depend on the provider, and it’s not unusual for people to try more than one BP medication before finding one that works.
Gender dysphoria treatment involves significant body changes that can be very welcome to someone but also emotionally upsetting, especially for those who see a young person morph into someone different from whom they knew before. I am not sure that this medical practice protocol, which lacks full understanding and standardization based on data, is much different from other mental health treatments. In the past, procedures like lobotomies were options, and ECT was offered more readily than it is now, when patients are advised to fail other treatments first. Many providers now prefer TMS or ketamine for mood disorders more quickly than they did in the past.
A NYT article years ago highlighted the difficulty of stopping SSRIs, which can sometimes take years and require microdosing down to zero to avoid unpleasant withdrawal effects.
There is limited long-term data on many drugs.
For example, Dupixent, an injectable used for eczema when other treatments fail for kids six months and older, is effective but lacks extensive long-term data on its effects and developmental impacts.
The same can be said for the long-term data on injectable GLPs and the newer ones being developed as drug companies compete. I think medical providers try to do what they can to help reduce patients' suffering and work with the options available. So, like Megan's Vienna example, when people are struggling, they can be impulsive out of desperation and then open to taking risks.
I don't think it is simple to solve.
Yeah, I agree. The trans issue is a canary in the coal mine for more serious issues in the US that we seem not serious enough to solve.
Personally, I think we should completely stop discussing trans issues because in every aspect of the discussion, there is a broader issue at play. We should be discussing the bigger issues.
This is what gun rights advocates say at times. It’s a mental health problem not a gun problem. Until we address the mental health issues there’s no way we can support any type of gun regulation.
What is the broader issue, in your mind?
I didn't get that from Megyn at all. I think she seems very skeptical, and at least as much as Josh. Neither of them gave Ben any support.
yeah in all fairness, i'm the only one of us who is remotely pro about the iran mission. Both of them are solidly anti. And i'm an idiot so maybe that tells you everything you need to know!