'The queer community KICKED me OUT!' (ft. Katie Herzog)

people were putting up Flyers around my  neighborhood calling me a bigot things like that people were burning sacks of the paper  and sending me video of it surprising to me was that my old friends the people I've been friends  with for 10 in some cases 15 almost 20 years those people also a lot of them um kind of kicked me  out hey everybody I'm Brad Palumbo and welcome back to the damage control podcast where we're  reclaiming the debate over LGBT issues from the crazy people who've taken it o

ver my guest today  is journalist Katie hero a liberal-minded lesbian and co-host of the podcast blocked and reported in  recent years Katie has found herself vilified and ostracized by the LGBT community for her nuanced  and dissident takes on transgender issues free speech and more we're going to walk through her  origin story what she makes of all the different issues in the modern LGBT community and so much  more but first if you're new here please do consider subscribing to the show and sti

cking  around and don't forget to like and comment if you're watching us on YouTube now let's get to  our conversation with Katie Katie Herzog thanks so much for coming on the podcast thanks so much for  having me Brad I guess this is payback yeah yeah so I co-hosted uh your show blocked and reported  recently and that was a lot of fun I got a lot of positive feedback from people discovering my show  apparently from that so hopefully that'll work out but um I will have I do have to tell you I wa

s  looking you up doing research looking for dirt about your background and I searched your name  on Wikipedia and you'll be delighted to know that the only mention of you that came up was a  tangential mention on the page for Jesse single yes I'm absolutely delighted to be a footnote in  my uh my Sidekicks page I did at one point have a Wikipedia page and then if you I went and I read  the like the com there was a a site among editors about whether or not I was notable enough to have  a Wikiped

ia page and apparently uh the answer is now that's funny I didn't realize that uh that  that it was that intense but but since there's no Wikipedia to consult can you give listeners  maybe just a short version of the ktie Herzog origin story or villain Arc depending how you  view it well for your listeners I don't know it could be it could be either one uh yeah so  I'm a journalist podcaster before I started this show I was a reporter at the stranger which  is Seattle's all weekly and uh that wa

s that's probably the beginning of my my orig story as  a villain um before that I worked at an outlet called WR which is like climate change news and  before that I was in public radio um so I have maybe taken a bit of an arch from from basically  regular old libtard um to whatever I am now yeah and and what's really interesting uh is at this  stranger I've never read it I'm not from the area so I've read it online obviously but it it gives  the vibe of like this edgy dissident place but then w

hen you started to be even slightly edgy or  slightly dissident it didn't didn't go great for you did it I mean did it change during your time  there not really so the stranger was founded by a guy named Tim Keck who is actually the founder of  the onion so he himself is very iconic classic he he's I wouldn't call him edgy he's now like a man  in his 60s but very funny guy um he also he sold the onion he's probably the worst businessman  in history because he sold the onion to his own employees

for $10,000 um and then he moved out to  yeah oh no yeah then he moved out to Seattle with people like Dan Savage to start this people  where they were all living in the midwest at the time and so the Stranger by the time I got  there it had really seen better days like most all weeklys not but not just in terms of the uh  the size of the paper you know it went from being this like gargant wiin weekly thing to when when I  was there it was bi-weekly much thinner than than it had been you know 10

years before whatever  uh 20 years before but it wasn't just the the the sort of economic situation that had changed  what also changed was the cultural situation so like here's here's an example The Stranger after  it was either George I think it was after George Bush won a uh one maybe against John krey or maybe  I think yeah against John krey The Stranger had the cover of the paper was I might be getting the  details wrong but the basics are correct the cover of the paper was an image of a m

an a bunch of  people at a bar looking like very depressed and a man's legs hanging from like he had clearly in  this like hung himself and there was a pea stain at his crotch right so that was the sort of like  or that you could see accompanying a an article about about an election I at the stranger so by  the time I got there in 2017 if you put like a reference to like if you put like you know a gun  to head emoji and slap there would be complaints about staff members being triggered because t

hey  had felt suicidal ideation in the past so that was the kind of that was the kind of cultural shift  um over the past you know 30 years of the paper's existence and I didn't really fit into the to the  new uh to the new ethos of the of the paper um so yeah it was not a not a particularly fun place  for me to be so we're going to talk about your Infamous D transitioner article but but prior to  that were there any other stories like that's the one that blew up and went viral but were there  a

ny that things you reported on that didn't go over well with your colleagues or any any tensions  before that so that was maybe my second or third piece for the stranger at all I was a freelancer  when I filed that piece so I have no I I written a piece a piece on like I micro doed mushrooms for  a month that sort of thing you could do easily at the paper and there would be no complaints I  did a thing about like the dangers of virtual reality you know that sort of stuff was very  much within um

within the papers ethos it was really the D transitioner piece that I think put  me on this um separate path and the thing is I it's not as though I didn't know it was going  to be controversial but I didn't know it was going to be so controversial within the pages of  the paper um so just for people who are familiar with the piece this was in 2017 and it was an  article it was a profile of about six different D transitioners so people who transition from one  sex to another or gender and essen

tially changed their mind and this was at a time when most people  probably didn't know the word d transitioner and the piece was it was very careful I thought it was  very sensitive I took the utmost care to sort of show that the you know the real bad guys are like  the right-wingers trying to make to make transal use the wrong bathroom and stuff like that there  are a lot of things about the piece that I would have that I would have done differently if I wrote  it today obviously but there was

this real outcry online and in Seattle people were putting up  Flyers around my neighborhood calling me a bigot things like that people were burning sacks in the  paper and sending me a video of it and because I was a freelancer the stranger I also wasn't  really aware and I didn't have friends there I wasn't really aware of what was going on inside  the paper and it turned out that this caused this massive sort of [ __ ] storm within the paper um  like for instance the there was a a staff raer

there who had read the read a draft of the story  and offered some notes and they were very uh you know move this paragraph up don't forget to like  very just non-important notes nothing was like this is this is the work of a Harden bigot nothing  like don't publish this nothing like that so she had some she had nice things to say about it just  sort of stylistic changes that she would that she would make and then I found out later that after  the piece came up and there was this huge blow up o

nline she apparently threatened to quit so  that was the sort of social pressure that was going on and I was totally naive to this I had no  idea nobody was like sitting me down and telling me what was going on I heard things and drips  and jobs later uh so I really walked in sort of already being the sort of odd man out without  even being aware of it it took me it took me a while to figure out like oh these people don't  [ __ ] like me yeah so I actually went back and read it in anticipation o

f you coming on the  show and I don't think I'd ever read it before I've I've heard it discussed at Great Lengths uh  but 2017 I don't think I was following you yet or whatever so I'd never actually read it and I'm  struck by how anod it is in terms of its coverage of D transitioners and also how generous and and  positive it is towards the dominant view from the transgender community and so it's really it's not  surprising to me because in my life I've operated in s similarly sked Echo Chambers

and Bubbles but  it still like nonetheless strikes me as deeply absurd the way they freaked out over this in a way  that suggested to me many of them hadn't read it or were reading it in really bad faith a lot of  them hadn't read it I think that's what it came down to and you know I thought I was naive at  that point I thought the fact that I'm gay and that I had lots of trans friends I this this was  true I lived in in in communities where there were lots of trans people around particularly t

rans men  and this was just not I I thought that that sort of would protect me but it obviously did not  it did not and if anything made things worse so so do I have the the the chronology correct  here that you wrote this controversial article as a freelancer and then join the stranger as a  staffer yeah so I got really lucky in that even though my like my immediate colleagues thought  that I was a Harden bigot because of this very anod piece um the people who ran the paper I think  were impres

sed by not just the quality of the work but also that I was um willing to take this on and  that probably mostly that I refuse to apologize uh I think they probably expect expected me to sort  of like roll over and show my belly and be like Oh I'm sorry I should you know like like take it  off the internet or whatever and I didn't I was basically like I didn't do anything wrong I'm not  going to apologize for I didn't do anything wrong I'm not doing this um and they offered me a  job um so I got

very lucky so it was really the outcry over the article I think as much as the  article itself that really changed my career and changed my life in many ways so I should um thank  everyone I should thank everyone who freaked out about it because um they are they are the reason  I am here today yeah it's kind of funny and your Google results a New York Times article comes  up that the headline is something like all the people we tried to cancel they're all hanging out  yeah yeah that was a littl

e bit uh I'm not hanging out with Dave Rubin let's just put it that way  oh okay yeah maybe especially not these days um but so how did I know you eventually parted ways  with the stranger during like pandemic Furlow did you run into any more tensions there with other  stories you reported or did you just naturally part ways no there was a lot of tension um during  me too so I got there in 2017 so I was there at the beginning of me too and my impulse was not  to like write up every allegation as

though it was automatically true and to like go hunting  for stories about non-f famous people who done something wrong at their office my impulse  was to like pause and say like wait a second believe women wait do you know any women like  you obviously don't date them if you think we should just believe women um and so I you know  I wrote about I wrote some me too stories that I think upset people um during the blasy Ford uh  the Brett kavana story when uh during the Senate confirmation hearin

gs uh I wrote a piece about  memory and a piece about how like it's possible to believe both of them which is in fact what  I do believe I believe that they both believe I believe that she believes that was assaulted  and I believe that he believes that he did not assault her um hard to know what's actually true  in that case so I just I I tried to inject some Nuance into these culture War Stories and it  made me um extremely unpopular among sort of like queer Seattle and my colleagues and you 

know what it kind of came down to I think was age a lot like basically everybody over the  age of 35 thought that I was fine and everybody under the age of 35 thought that I was literal  Hitler um so things like I wrote things all the time that pce people off there was a guy someone  was wearing a Maga hat in Capitol Hill which was the neighborhood in Seattle where the office was  and he got assaulted and I wrote a piece about why that's bad like don't assault teenagers with  mega hats you know

just things like that which to me just seem like this is obvious like not even  just from like a moral perspective but also it's not good politics to assault people for wearing a  hat that you don't like I was there during the um during the um Covington Catholic thing I'm sure  I wrote something about that oh Jesse Smet after Smet was not attacked this was uh extremely  obvious to me that this was fake from about 30 seconds after hearing the story and I wrote it  always sounded way too much like

um a fantasy like a kink like a fetish exactly and except for the  subway also like what celebr e Subway um and so after after that I wrote a piece not even saying  I don't believe that this happened just saying like wait a let's just wait let's just wait and  like see what the reports say and my editor at the time refused to publish it that was one of  maybe two times that something I wrote was just like we're not going to publish this I was right  obviously they of course they did publish oth

er people saying like oh my God America is so racist  and this proves it um but they did not publish my very very sensible take to just like pause when  something seems unbelievable it might yeah that's really interesting and so then you kind of took  covid as an off-ramp or do do you anticipate that if you hadn't had that kind of off-ramp what was  it a def a deferment or uh I I was furloughed so what happened is that Seattle was you know sort of  on the first wave of cities to shut down becaus

e the first covid case in the US documented case  was in Seattle and also just I think politically Seattle in particular Washington State but  Seattle in particular is the sort of place where like we're gonna like follow the science  no matter what the science actually is but we're going to sort of on like do service like be very  very very Co in fouchy We Trust absolutely there's actually I'm not kidding there is a house on uh  on the interstate when you're leaving Seattle and it had like this

house has like this giant  sign outside that said something like science is God something something absolutely absolutely  ridiculous but that's sort of the attitude that people have there it's very much belief science is  a religion except for the science is inconvenient anyway so Seattle shut down really early and the  paper obviously like ran on ads for events and restaurants and things like that and so the paper  very quickly um it was clear that was going to be in like real Financial dis st

ress I went to  my boss and I thought a vacation sounds like a great idea especially while the world is ending  so I offered to take a Furlow not really thinking that he would take me up on it and he was like yes  thank you um so I took a Furlow from the paper and then really quickly after that everybody almost  everybody I think they kept it a small handful of staffers um Everybody ended up getting laid off  um including me so it was a meant to be sort of a temporary thing that turned into a um

a full  layoff which I was was thrilled about frankly it doesn't sound like your long-term future there  would have worked out yeah I mean I would have stayed probably forever because of just the the  media environment and like where else am I going to get a job you know and I'd always I'd always  wanted to work there and so it was this sort of like dream come true job except for the reality  is of course very much very different than uh the dream the Daydream and I also just you know  I'm I'm

fairly cautious especially when it comes to professional stuff like I had had a meeting  with the substack guys like a year before covid and they were trying to convince me to leave the  paper and started a newsletter and I thought you are insane I'm not going to give up my $50,000 a  year job I have insurance I get one week one week a year off you are crazy um of course I I should  have done it then um and then maybe I'd have a successful newsletter but now as well um but it  just seemed you kn

ow it seemed like where else am I going to get a job there's no other media job so  I probably would have stayed there for a long time and just been increasingly miserable um so being  forced out because of covid was fantastic for me I'm will always be for grateful to those um lab  Techs in Wuhan yeah so I do want to ask you about the uh queer Community or the LGBT community in  Seattle um because unlike me you're somebody who was for a long time actually plugged into a lot  of that scene what w

as that like and did they kind of start to turn on you did you lose friends in  that community did you start to feel unwelcome in those spaces when you were speaking out because  I have I have a feeling that's the case and it strikes me as funny because none of the like  edgy opinions you've you've actually described strike me as particularly non-liberal right they  just strike me as like slightly against the grain of like The Cutting Edge of woke or whatever  but the these aren't like right-win

g takes but did you nonetheless start to be isolated in the  community yeah and I so I I moved to Seattle in 2015 so I'd only been there for a couple of years  so I I hadn't built up really good I hadn't built up like a great big community in Seattle by the  time I got sort of cancelled um but that didn't really matter so yes I was totally isolated and  ostracized from Seattle quer the Seattle quer Community from people that I knew um weird things  would happen like I would meet people and they

would find out who I was and they would go from  having a very nice conversation all of a sudden being very hostile so stuff like that would happen  but that because I hadn't you know I didn't grow up in Seattle I was sort of new to the community  that to me wasn't as and I also like by that point I was in my uh let's see I guess my mid late  30s for most of my adult life i' lived in North Carolina and so it was there that I had really a  lot closer ties and a lot bigger community and so what wa

s surprising to me was that my old friends  the people I'd been friends with for 10 in some cases 15 almost 20 years those people also a lot  of them um kind of kicked me out kind of were like well nobody ever like very few people actually  like contact like had the balls to contact me and be like you did something problematic you're no  longer welcome at brunch most people just blocked me on social media and like never returned turn  my text or calls again so that was a lot more um wait so you

had friends that you've been friends  with for years that one day you checked and you were blocked if this happen this still happens to  this day this happens like once a month like like look at somebody dude and these are not even a  lot of these are not even queer people these are people who just heard something heard something  that probably isn't true assumed it was true and decided to like preemptively block me on Facebook  or whatever like I like so I don't know who this was but people wer

e going around people who I  probably have never met were going around to mutual friends to like my friends in San Francisco  or my friends in Portland and telling them that they could no longer be friends with me and a lot  of my friends listen to them that's psychotic but also I don't know that they were ever real  friends but that's the thing a lot of these people were you know these are people I lived with  these were people I was very close to they just I think fully are fully like full Bel

ievers or the  social pressure to conform to this one narrative they they think I'm a trump voter they think  I'm a trump supporter and in some they think I'm racist because I didn't like put up a black  Square on my Instagram page during BLM and there is so much pressure to conform within the queer  Community like like queer people like to think that they are somehow alternative no they are  not alternative they're just like every other click there's just there's a lot of pressure  so I I get i

t but it was very disappointing to learn that like a lot of people that I invested  years of my life and are just like kind of [ __ ] that's probably the best way of putting it yeah  that's really sad maybe part of the reason I've avoided this problem is is I basically never had  any gay friends I think so I think like gay men I think are a little bit different I think gay men  have a tendency to be more problematic and also probably don't give as much I mean I'm I'm like  generalizing here prob

ably depends on where you live lots of socioeconomic factors lots of various  factors I have found that it's like queer people and I do think there's a difference between people  who identify as queer and people who identif like I would not use that word to describe myself yeah  and I was in like radical queer communities where like the idea like defunding the police that's  a give in letting everybody out of the prisons like everybody believes that those were the sorts  of communities that I wa

s in um so it's not super surprising uh that they also like think that I'm  literal Hitler well I want I do want to get into your actual views that are are so controversial  because one of the things you often hear said is like Katie Herzog is a Turf which for folks  that don't know is stands for Trans exclusionary radical feminist a couple questions about that  one one I know some people consider Turf like an insult or a slur what are your thoughts on  that and two are you a Turf uh I think it

can be people use it as a slur people use it in a  denigrating way all the time I've been called that many times but some people also you know have  decided to reclaim it and they use it they sort of proudly identify as Turf and I don't think they're  calling themselves a slur so I think it it depends on the context and in terms of my own beliefs I'm  not a Turf because at this point I don't identify as a radical feminist much less I don't identify  as a feminist much less a radical feminist so

I've gone through this sort of evolution where and part  of that is realizing that I don't trust activists and I don't really care what the cause is I don't  trust activists because working in the media over the past 10 years I have seen over and over again  activist groups mislead reporters in particular and the general public and not doing it out of  a place of malice doing it because they're True Believers and I think when you're ident it gets  so wrapped up in a cause it becomes really hard

to evaluate that cause on its merits so I no longer  consider myself a feminist that doesn't mean I don't hold many feminist values it doesn't mean I  don't defy gender stereotypes I do all of that and obviously I think that women should be entitled  to every right that men have in the world but I don't call myself a feminist anymore so the idea  that I'm a radical feminist it's ridiculous also I'm not a radical feminist because I think radical  feminists tend to be a little bit more blank slate

than I am like in some ways I am a little bit  of a biological essentialist which is sort of a dirty term but I do think that that one's physical  like the hormones in your body I I I think that has a really significant determinative effect  on behavior um I think that males and females are fundamentally different in many ways and I  think that lots of radical feminists would argue that that's not true that the only differences  between outcomes in men and women is due to sexism and patriarchy

and I don't even really believe the  patriarchy at least in the United States I believe in it in Saudi Arabia it's real there um so no  I would not consider myself that but in terms of my beliefs I mean some of my beliefs do align  with turfs or gender critical feminist um yeah but not all of them do you have specific questions  about yeah because you I I see you as occupying somewhat of a middle Lane on the trans stuff  because you do support trans adults being able to do whatever want you do u

se preferred pronouns  in some context though like me you're not on the non-binary train which we can get to later um and  so I wonder because I do see some people in the the self-identifying turf camp or really take a  hard line of absolute they have they seem to at this point have no tolerance whatsoever for for  Trans adults you know especially trans women I think especially trans women they will not use  pronouns they will not even use new names that have been legally changed they think that

should  be forced to use the women's room which doesn't make any sense to me and so I'm I'm I'm wondering  like on the scale of the that approach to you know obviously the opposite extreme which is there's  97,000 genders and a cat can be non-binary or whatever where do you place yourself on that scale  I'm like a five I'm in I'm in between those two camps um I don't think that uh I don't think you  can physically change your biological sex I don't think that trans women are women um I'm I'm I'

m  willing to engage in the fiction that they are women in some circumstances um I'm also I try  to be polite to people I think that misgendering people is a um a political loser and I understand  why people do it and I respect people's rights to misgender I would never argue that somebody should  be kicked out of a off any sort of platform for misgendering anybody I think it it really is a  free speech issue but I also think that um for lots of reasons I think that it's a it's a dumb  Hill to d

ie on and one of those reasons is it it's alienating to the trans people to gender  critical trans people not all of them some of them are fine being uh appropriately sexed or  misgendered but for some of them people like Erica Anderson who's a clinician in San Francisco  who's been very outspoken about her concerns about what's happening in youth gender medicine Eric if  if if you were concerned about this issue Erica Anderson is a fantastic Ally to have and a really  good way to alienate her a

nd to get her to shut up is to call her a man all of the time I think  there's a lot of Cruelty in the uh in the uh Turf space or whatever you want to call it um there  are lots of people who are genuine trans phobes both conservatives and and liberal women um and  I'm not I really not I do have trans people who are friends in my life I do respect them I do like  them I do think that gender dysphoria is a is a a legitimate psychological condition and if if it is  best treated by changing one's s

ex and you're an adult I'm fine with that I really don't care that  doesn't mean that I think that trans women should be competing in women's sports I don't I think  that is ridiculous I think the fact that this was has ever anybody even entertains that idea  is silly and I think for activists it is a losing position to take um yeah this it would have seemed  like trans women in in sports would have seemed like such a fringe Fringe leftist position to  take blank slatest position to take five si

x seven years ago and now it's something that is probably  going to come up during the presidential campaign I think I think it still is lowkey a fringe in  the actual public but like in political discourse and media spaces it is obviously normalized as a  mainstream idea but I I think you'd still I don't know the numbers off the top of my head I still  think you'd get even a majority of Democrats plls oh yeah would say no to trans women in women's  sports I think you're right about that yeah th

is there might be some particular uh you know some  some cohort like 18 to 24 or something like that might think that trans wom and women sports  is fine but I think for most of us it is just a loser of an issue um when it comes to I don't  think I don't think children should that be able to change sex I think it's crazy that this is  like something that activists are are willing to to uh to fight for it just seems like such a a  Comm sense loser position um so I think I probably am like mainstr

eam Democrat when it comes to  this I don't think that parents should lose their children for socially or even medically  transitioning them um so I think that you know I think that right Wingers and left Wingers are  that really uh taken wildly extreme positions on this issue and the what's best for everybody is  somewhere in the middle yeah I want to get into your views on youth gender medicine in particular  because that's one of the more controversial subjects that you've discussed and spoke

n about  uh and you're deeply skeptical uh like Jesse is of of this science that's cited to support youth  gender transition in the medical sense um but you guys seem to walk this line at least I that's my  perception of you between thinking it's generally you know probably not a good idea and not safe and  effective and all the things that they say about it but also seeming to oppose the laws Banning or  restricting medical transition heavily for minors wh how do you thread that needle and why

do you  land where you land yeah so where I come down to the come down on this is the more I have learned  about this and I didn't I didn't realize how weak the evidence was in 2017 when I wrote my piece  about D transitioners it is becoming abundantly clear that the evidence that puberty blockers lead  to better outcomes for youth or puberty blockers or medical transition lead to better outcomes for  youth the evidence is really weak um and so as I've learned more I've sort of shifted my thinki

ng  on this like now I don't think that kids should get puberty blockers especially from a young the  younger ages because it impedes not just fertility but it also impedes one's sexual development so  if a if a kid starts taking puberty blockers at 11 12 years old that kid will probably and then  goes on to take cross- sex Filas that kid will probably never have an orgasm in his or her life  and I don't think kids can consent to something that they cannot physically conceptualize much  less the

fertility issue which I also think just asking kids to make that decision at a young  age is just it's it's it's immoral um but I think the way that Republicans have handled this  issue has been really hamfisted and one of those reasons is and I'm not just talking about things  like Banning Pub blockers uh which in some cases is going to send you know if you have if you  have a kid whose parents are supportive whose Community is supportive what's that's going to do  is that's going to cause a a

huge a huge gism with his family if their kid tries to if their kid is  is basically forced to NE transition so it just I think it causes a lot of Heartache even though  I don't think parents should be doing it I think the state imposing that on parents is uh it's bad  politics for one so what happens is that there'll be this sort of equal and opposite reaction where  a state like Texas or Tennessee or something will pass a law Panic uh Banning prity blockers and  then blue States will pass a l

aw in response to that so you'll see things like an organ the  age of consent will just get lower and lower and lower and then you have 13-year-olds able to  get puberty blockers without parental consent and this to me is bad in both ways like we don't  want politics to be just swinging from one extreme to the other we want it be we want it to be based  in actual in in data and evidence and I think the data is becoming more and more clear that things  like prere blockers are not beneficial uh ar

e not beneficial to children but I also think that this  guidance needs to come from medical associations which yes in the United States have been captured  and not the state I don't think the state has any place imposing these values uh on on people  who who I not not hold them I mean what's your thinking about about these laws well I think I  I am supportive of the concept of laws that that uh what I've always said is I think the age of  consent for sex in a state if it's 16 or 17 or 18 should

also be the age of consent to consent  to these kinds of permanent medical transitions uh in theory I'm okay with the laws I view them  as an issue of consent um and inform consent as well in practice a lot of these laws are terribly  written very poorly drafted uh and are kind of hyperarid vote if I was a state legislator but  I've never viewed the the political project as illegitimate in and of itself because maybe  part be because I would love to see the path that you're talking about happen

with the medical  institutions kind of changing their standards and practices of care and you know moving on as  we've seen them do on other medical issues over the years right changing um you know the  extreme example but like labotomy going out of fashion in the medical community right not to say  those are directly comparable but I'm just saying the the iCal Community can evolve over time how  it but on this issue they seem so ideologically captured when you have every Major Medical  Institu

tion uh or organization in the country making statements that are manifestly untrue I  mean I I talked about this with my boyfriend uh we get the journal Pediatrics sent to us because  he's a pediatrician which is um it's done by you know the pediatrician's body or whatever and  Jesse talked about this maybe on the podcast maybe in his newsletter I don't remember but  they published an article in this prestigious it's like the journal for Pediatrics that they  didn't even bother to check the sou

rces because if they had they would have noticed that the  hyperlinks linked to the wrong source and so it made all these claims about youth gender  medicine that aren't true and that if you click through the sources don't even say what  the people say they were saying and you know Jesse did a full debunk of it on his substack  and they they clearly hadn't even edited the article in terms of factchecking at all because  the hyperlinks went to the wrong website in multiple locations or to the wro

ng source and  so that kind of thing to me I'm like this is the Premier pediatric Journal peer reviewed and  yeah you're telling me that these institutions are going to see the light and change It just  strikes me as not a viable path for something that I do think needs to needs to be stopped  somehow yeah I think one of the problems though is that they're also responding to politics  right they're not just responding to the to the evidence these organizations have absolutely  been captured that

is abundantly clear um the new the the W path files shows that as shows that  as well this recently released project from Michael shellenberger uh newsletter but I think  that these a lot of these people feel as though they are fighting extermination they are fighting  bigotry in some cases they genuinely are and so they are responding in part to these laws so  are they going to change their guidelines as long as Greg Abbott or Ronda santis are trying  to dictate what bathrooms people can use o

r what uh or what parents can and can't choose for  their children I don't think so so I think these two things are happening in in concert with each  other and they're just feeding off of each other with both sides becoming more in intractable in  their own beliefs um but yes I mean My Hope Is that what's coming out of Europe will influence  some of these medical organizations probably won't I don't know want to happen they will follow  the science so I want to I want to ask you about something

else that I hear a lot from kind of the  liberal gender critical crowd are lesbians going extinct and what do they mean when they say that  so I I mean it's obviously that is a hyperbolic thing to say lesbians will there will always be  softball teams we will always exist um but but what has changed is that it is deeply uncool to  be considered to call yourself a lesbian and I think this is just a fad but what is cool is to  be non-binary or a trans guy and so the circles that I used to be a pa

rt of the number of of  people who would have called themselves queer women who were feminists or feminist proud dkes  uh the number of individuals in those circles that have transitioned to male or done the non-binary  thing maybe they take hormones and get a double masectomy oftentimes they don't they just change  their pronouns a lot of people have gotten Top surgery double mctom it's very end they should  do some buy one get ones at the local plastic surgeron uh but so what's happened is tha

t that  it is hip and cool to be a trans guy it is not hip and cool to be a boring old lesbian so that  is what has changed I don't think I don't think people are engaging in less like same seex sex if  anything I think they're doing it more as uh as taboos have shifted um but it's just uh I think  it is at this point it is a little bit it's seen as a little bit sort of stodgy and oldfashioned  to consider oneself a lesbian if not actually problematic because it is problematic to be same  seex a

ttracted and not look at gender and not gend genitals or whatever yeah I mean I see this a  lot on Tik Tok and I have a hard time telling how much of an actual belief it is out there  in the world outside of these internet bubbles but like I see a lot of content essentially  suggesting that um trans men can be lesbians and also non-binary people can be lesbians to me  that seems to be essentially deleting the concept of lesbian as a word I can't really square that  Circle I mean how do you inter

pret that well a trans men have been in lesbian circles for a long  time and there was always they were always welcome in the circles that I that I was in and but the  difference is that there was an acknowledgement a tcid acknowledgement that trans men there's  a difference between trans men and males and so trans men were welcome in places where males would  not have been particularly CIS males you know uh lesbian bars lesbian nights at clubs lesbians  bed because we all knew nobody ever said

it but we all knew that there was something different  yes that they're female that they are female and so what has happened in Raca years is that we're  supposed to pretend that they're not female and that trans men are literal men and that there's  no difference and that if you were a person who is attracted to like gay men should be interested  in trans men because trans men are men um which is just does not align with my experience of sexual  attraction and I do think sexual attract I mean i

t is complicated because like there are some trans  women I'm a lesbian there are some trans women that I would be more attracted to than a Butch  trans men because I'm not attracted to men and so someone like Buck Angel is a female I would  not be attracted Buck is a handsome man Buck is a female Buck to me is still a man right does  that make sense I I do think a little bit more comp it is more complicated though because because  sometimes I'll even and I personally you know I'm in a long-term

committed relationship like you  so it's a non-issue for me but it I wouldn't I don't think I would be open to dating a trans man  because there's some biological sex based things about it that are determinative for me however  you it is more complicated than just like what's your DNA say that will determine if I'm attracted  to you or not because I've seen people come up in my feed and I'm like oh that that he's cute or  whatever and then I find out it's to trans man later I mean like transman

can pass really well  I mean yeah you take a take some testosterone and maybe some HGH and go to the gym every day yeah  so maybe just to round things out uh tell people a little bit about the blocked and reported podcast  I've been a a huge fan of it for a while now my boyfriend will he like he tells me that my podcast  is his favorite podcast but I can see it in his eyes that he's lying and that barod is actually  his favorite podcast but what we've agreed now is that his favorite podcast epi

sode ever is me  on barp pod so yes that's finally did why did you guys decide to do a podcast about internet [ __ ]  and did you ever expect it to be as popular and there to be so much interest in it as it's ended  up being um we started to so Jesse and I started talking about doing the show when I'm was S at the  stranger and our idea was to do it so stranger had already like had the infrastructure to do podcast  I was on a podcast there called blabber mouth Dan Savage's show was hosted out of

there um and so  the idea was like we'll do a show together and we'll have the stranger produce it and that  way and I was just thinking like that way I won't have to work on the weekends thank God that  didn't happen that would have been a disaster um but yeah I'm you know the the origin of the show  I think was uh just us like spending a lot of time talking talking or like in the DMS talking about  what was going on in the culture around 2017 2018 2019 um and being interested in the same like

  weird subcultures and the trans stuff obviously we had a lot of overlap in our interest there um  and so it was sort of a natural partnership and then you know I I I sort of thought I I I'm not  totally surprised that it's become um enough of a like hit to be my full full time job I I kind  of thought that it would like after Co I got a a part-time job doing Communications for essentially  for like a very wealthy man who just needed some help and uh I quit that show I think the week that  we s

tarted the podcast I was like emailed him and I was like I'm not gonna need this anymore I'm  gonna have a I'm gonna have a hit podcast some confidence because Katie there's a lot of podcasts  out there and very few make enough money to have two full-time people supported yes yes well  we don't work full-time that's the best part is that we work we both work parttime um so it  is really the dream that way um I I don't know why I mean it was also the timing was really good  like I think if we sta

rted this show today I don't think it would be a hit I think we really got  the timing exactly right and there are better shows out there that are people spend put more  effort on uh into that are more highly produced that cost more money to produce that have actual  producers that aren't doing as well as our show and I think so much of it has to do with time  um you know 2020 was to be in this sort of I I don't like the term but into this like heterodox  environment heterodox bace when the it's

it felt like the entire mainstream media was hammering  this one or a couple of narratives about Co in BLM and racism and sex and gender and Transit and  all these social justice issues and at that time to be one of the not that many outlets to be like  wait a second let's like look at the dat to hear are black men killed at disproportionately high  rates by police you know is that true is there a trans genocide is that true to be some of the  few people at that time who were doing that um put

us just put us in this position where people  were really hungry for the content but now four years later there's a lot of people doing that  um and so I think yeah I think we got incredibly lucky all right well I will put some links to  BL dur orted in the show notes for anybody who hasn't checked it out yet they definitely should  but thanks so much for joining me today and uh we'll keep in touch and keep up the good stuff  thanks Brad good talk tun hey guys Brad here and if you want more Brad

if you're somehow not  sick of me yet make sure you check out the based politics podcast that I co-host with Hannah Cox  we just wrapped filming on a great episode out now that's right this week we're talking about  Ronda santz taking a major l in the Courts Plus a new bomic website and AOC gets a spoonful of her  own medicine you can watch us on the bass politics podcast YouTube channel or listen to the podcast  on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you listen to all right everybody that's it f

or this episode  if you're still here you must have found something interesting or insightful about this conversation  so please do hit that like button or comment with your thoughts below if you're watching us  on YouTube and if you're listening to us on podcast make sure you take a second and make sure  you're subscribed and that you rate or review us on whatever platform you use and with that I'll  talk to you all next week but if you want more damage control you can go here or here to check 

out other episodes that you might just like