Welcome to The Reality Taboo, where no topic
is off limits. It's February 27, 2026. I'm Jeff.
Joining me is my co -host, Ness. First topic
is transgenderism. I want to start by going through
a few recent mass shootings involving transgender
shooters. First, Ness spoke about this case recently,
so I won't go into too much detail, but there
was the Covenant School shooting in Nashville,
Tennessee in March 2023. The shooter was a woman
named Audrey Hale, age 28, opened fire at the
Covenant School, a private Christian elementary
school in Nashville, killing three nine -year
-old children and three adult staff members before
being shot and killed by police. Hale had been
in psychological counseling since age six and
remained in counseling until her death. She had
been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder
and described herself as neurodivergent. So among
the many things she wrote in these journals,
it included, quote, there is a better place than
being in these bodies, forced to live in them,
and quote, I'm in the wrong body. Want to kill
you? little crackers, bunch of little faggots
with your white privileges, and I hope I have
a high death count. So she had some anti -white
feelings and also some anti -Christian feelings.
She wrote, quote, if God won't give me a boy
body in heaven, then Jesus is a faggot. And so
it appears from the manifesto that Hale's gender
identity distress was not incidental to her psychology
but was deeply entangled with a broader constellation
of unresolved psychiatric conditions. So she
had at some various points she had been diagnosed
with autism, bipolar disorder, suicidal ideation,
and then was obsessed with death. Throughout
her life. And so that teases about what we're
going to get into later is this transgenderism
is sort of overriding and overtaking all of these
other mental health issues and obscuring what's
going on. just remove gender dysphoria or transgenderism
from being a mental illness to essentially being
normal and just as valid as any other sexual
identity, homosexuality, heterosexuality. And
so if you're trying to treat somebody like hail,
And you're essentially removing the fact that
she's transgender. You're essentially disentangling
that from all this other constellation of mental
health issues she has and saying the transgender
issue is perfectly fine. In fact, it should be
celebrated and encouraged. But we're still going
to treat these other presumably unrelated mental
health issues of bipolar disorder and suicidal
ideation. which at least as of now are still
considered mental disorders. But I mean, on the
logic of saying transgenderism is no longer a
mental disorder, I don't know what would stop
any of these other things from just being declared
not to be mental health disorders either. So
Ness, I'm going to turn it over to you. You've
looked quite in depth at the manifesto that Hale
left. What do you think is left out in coverage?
of the Covenant School shooting. It's a clear
indictment of the modern therapy, therapeutic
industry that this woman was in counseling for
two decades and the end of that journey through
perpetual therapy and counseling and psychotropic
drugs, presumably. And that whole battery of
psychological assessments was that she ended
up killing a bunch of children and effectively
electing to go out through death by cop. And
so I think that needs to be first and foremost,
the understanding that this is a total indictment.
It will go through a bunch of other similar situations
where people who are rather than psychologically
analyzed. In an honest way, instead are affirmed
in their delusions of which transgenderism is
the most delusional of all. It is an abomination.
It's a clear inversion of the most basic realities
about human biology. Other people are sucked
into the delusion, and that's where you get the
pronouns where the politically correct thing
to do is to call them by their preferred pronouns.
And you see that kind of leaking out into overall
society where you still see on LinkedIn or email
signature lines, you'll see pronouns, she, her,
or he, him. It reminds me of... During COVID,
when it was known pretty early on that masks
were useless, especially maybe you could make
an argument the surgical grade masks provided
some benefit, but the mask that the vast majority
of people were wearing, just pieces of cloth,
and many of them weren't even wearing them correctly.
So they weren't providing any real benefit. And
yet everybody was... There was tremendous social
pressure to accept the delusion that masks did
anything. And the common retort was, well, what's
the big deal? Why can't you just wear the mask?
Why are you making a big deal out of it? I think
it is a big deal in a similar sense of what's
the big deal? They want to be called he instead
of her. Why do you have to make such a big deal
about it? Ordinary people are forced to essentially
believe that the emperor has clothes when reality
shows clearly he doesn't have clothes. And I
think that's what's happening with transgenderism.
I think that's a pretty standard. playbook that
is run by GloboHomo to talk about what we discussed
last week. The pattern is remarkably familiar,
and we can see the same thing with transgenderism,
where first the push is to tolerate. That's what
Jeff was talking about, where, hey, what's the
big deal? Just go ahead and call them by the
pronouns that they want to be called by. I think
we're past that. It goes from toleration and
then into celebration, which is the parades.
and all of the other things where people are
put on a pedestal as though they are morally
superior because they have these gender fluid
identities. And then it goes to, after tolerate
and then celebrate, it goes to participate. And
if we get into the data on how people self -identify,
we'll see that there has been an order of magnitude
increase in the youngest cohort of Americans
who identify as transgender relative to generations
past. And fundamentally, the embrace of transgenderism
is an antithesis, an acrimony for nature, for
physical reality. And that was very present reading
through Hale's over 100 -page manifesto. The
coverage included that we put together an AI
summary to get an idea of how Hale's shooting
was covered at the time, and there was a lot
of emphasis on this putative desire by Hale to
gain notoriety from the action, but I think that
was intentionally obfuscating the real motivations,
which were not for notoriety, were not for fame,
but instead were deeply and viscerally anger
at being female instead of being male. at being
white and being raised in a Christian society.
So it was on all of those dimensions, on the
sexual one, the racial one, and the heritage
or spiritual one, and all of those angles and
all those dimensions, Hale was driven by a deep
self -loathing and self -hatred. And though all
of those dimensions were the things that Hale,
in her own words, based on the notebook that
was released by the FBI, made public eventually,
not in the first months after the shooting occurred,
but subsequently, all of those dimensions were
very much downplayed in media reports immediately
following the incident. So Hale, you mentioned,
had hatred for her race, for her religion, for
the society around her. And she was white, of
course. I think that's something that the elevation
of victimhood in our culture to essentially it
being there's the hierarchy, the oppression Olympics,
the oppression hierarchy, where you have black
women at the top and white men at the bottom.
I think that plays into that. inculcation of
self -hatred for white kids i think that creates
a very difficult psychological paradigm for young
white people to exist in and it's especially
it's even more difficult for white women they
have i believe the highest rate of mental health
of any demographic group are white women they
have the highest rates of mental illness and
so somebody like that a white female who is inculcated
with self -hatred, well, the only way she can
essentially rise up in the hierarchy of oppression
is to adopt a transgender identity. I guess she
could become a lesbian, but there's even a higher
step up nowadays with transgenderism. So that's
the best a white girl can do in terms of rising
up in the social hierarchy. And another pattern
that Hale falls into that you will see repeated
with these transgender shooters is they are terminally
online. And so they're just drenched in Reddit
culture, online forums that just amplify and
confirm all of their delusions, such as transgenderism.
Through repetition, they try to do that, but
as much as... biology can try to be suppressed
it still finds ways to rear its Ugly or beautiful
head, depending on the perspective that you're
taking. That was something that was evident to
and going through Hale's manifesto is that she
was love struck by some unnamed Hispanic woman.
And though she may have been lesbian or fancied
herself a male who was just heterosexual, whatever
the case was, it was clear that that affection
she had that lost was unrequited. And that is
not at all surprising because most. women aren't
lesbians to start. And even if this Hispanic
woman was a lesbian, the things that women who
try to look like a sad simulacrum of a man go
through makes it so that they are not attractive
to anyone, male, female, heterosexual, homosexual.
And so there was that toxic mix of self -hatred
about everything about Hale's identity. Paired
up with a total frustration in having an unrequited
love go completely unfulfilled. And so that confluence
of factors is what that on top of decades of
therapy sessions that probably did more to make.
hails problems worse to facilitate and perpetuate
them rather than offer some sort of solutions
to them. Those things together is what led to
a bunch of the three children and three staffers
at the school being killed in cold blood. And
we've talked about all of the social factors
that play into these things happening. But there's
also the physical environment, the toxic physical
environment that we're increasingly inundated
with, whether it's vaccines, which as much as
the scientific community, quote unquote, claims
that there's absolutely no connection between
vaccines and all of these mental health issues,
specifically autism. I'm not so sure, but that's
beyond the scope of this episode. Needless to
say, the vaccines, the constant pharmaceuticals,
the horrible diet, the processed foods. I mean,
obesity rates I heard are among children. It's
something like 20 to 30 percent now in the United
States. So all of those things combined, it's
hard to pick apart any one factor. But I think
that's leading to these this rise in transgenderism.
and other mental health issues. Moving ahead
to August 2025, there was the Annunciation Catholic
Church shooting in Minneapolis. The shooter was
Robert Westman, biological male, identified as
a transgender female. He was 23, so he opened
fire outside a Catholic church during mass and
killed two children and injured 18 others and
then died of a self -inflicted gunshot wound.
So Westman wrote in his manifesto that he was,
quote, tired of being trans and that he wished
he had, quote, never brainwashed, end quote,
himself. And Westman's mother went along with
affirming Roberts' delusion and helped him get
his name changed to reflect that identification.
And this gets at, again, another common pattern
you see. We'll see it next getting ahead of ourselves
with the Tumblr Ridge shooting up in British
Columbia. But a common pattern for these young
transgender shooters is their parents went along
with it and affirmed their child's delusion.
I'll just get into the next shooting, the Tumblr
Ridge shooting. Like I said, it happened just
recently in February of 2026 in British Columbia,
Canada. Jesse Van Rootseller was a biological
male identified as a transgender female. He was
18 years old. He first shot and killed his mother
and his half -brother at their home and then
went to the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School where
he killed six people, a teacher and five students,
and then he killed himself. And 27 other people
were injured, and it was the deadliest school
shooting in Canadian history. And again, another
pattern here. Van Rootseller had an extensively
documented mental health history. He had been
diagnosed with ADHD, major depressive disorder,
autism spectrum disorder, and OCD. He had been
hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. He had
a documented history of polysubstance abuse,
including psychedelics. And the police had made
numerous visits to the family home over prior
years and at least one time had seized firearms
for the residents. And his home life was as dysfunctional
as you might expect. Broken family. The father
was not involved hardly at all. And the mother
uprooted Van Rootseller and his siblings multiple
times, moved all the way across Canada to the
East Coast and then back to British Columbia.
So when this story was first being reported,
at least in the mainstream corporate, press,
the killer was repeatedly characterized as a
woman. And the vast majority of murderers are
male. So the fact that there was a mass shooter
that was female was notable in and of itself.
And it actually turned out to be not true. And
as woke as the United States can seem at times,
Canada is far more woke. And since So again,
another example of first it started with just
personal preference, just leave people alone,
let them live their lives how they want. And
you can see how it spreads out and out and becomes...
toleration to actively praising, and then it's
bad enough that the delusion would be confined
to one person who's directly experiencing the
delusion, but that delusion is expanded outwards
and other people are forced or at least pressured
into engaging and sustaining the delusion. So
if we look at this as like a mind virus, then
what needs to be done is it needs to be quarantined
and isolated and then it will die on the vine,
but instead what happens is all of society is
remade in a way that makes it culturally necessary
to, again, tolerate, celebrate, and then participate
because there not only is the delusion something
that has to be accepted, but there is a status
striving boost that goes along with having that
status. And one thing that is particularly pernicious
is that there are real world consequences to
people who adopt these gender bending identities,
like Audrey Hale, who thinks that she is a...
man and makes herself appear like a simulacrum
of a man and it makes her unattractive to everyone
and so she suffers in a real way she does get
a status boost from being transgender but then
she also has real world consequences that she
suffers because of it so there is a big incentive
for mothers in particular to try to push this
transgenderism on their children so that they
can benefit from the status boost that they get
by having transgender children without having
to suffer the consequences directly that accrue
naturally from being trying to represent oneself
as something other than what that person biologically
is and that consequence is especially pronounced
at younger ages when male and female hormones
are firing the most when people are the most
sexually active and romantically interested there's
a concept in transgender culture called passing
and i again i haven't done a deep dive into it
but my understanding is that that's something
that is strived for that you the kind of the
pinnacle of being a trans person is if you're
a a man and you're able to whatever, castrate
yourself and use makeup and surgery and whatever
drastic measures you want to use to the extent
where you can go out and attract the sexual attention.
of a biological heterosexual man. Ness was talking
about the hormones at a young age, firing and
puberty and all those kinds of things. Well,
if your goal is to pass, then you're going to
have best results the earlier in your life, the
better, ideally. before puberty kicks in. And
so you can use, if you're a girl and you say
you're a boy, then you could take estrogen blockers
and testosterone injections and just completely
mess with that natural hormonal balance. And
maybe in this bizarre Frankenstein creature experiments,
maybe you can end up, if you're a girl, looking
more like Yeah, that's possible, but this Hawaiian,
not to sound like a feminist, like a first or
second generation feminist, but the transgender
parameters are such. that things like passing
inherently are more beneficial to men trying
to pass as women than they are for women trying
to pass as men. Because of course, the puberty
process that men go through results in a massive
increase in bone density and upper body strength
and body hair and all of these things that simple
estrogen reductions and testosterone injections
into... actual girls into women with ovaries
and no testes. They may look like more tomboyish
girls, but it is virtually impossible to get
a woman to look like a man and pass as a man.
It's much easier, especially if the injections,
the hormonal treatments are done pre -pubescent
to boys to make boys pass as women. But more
simply, this Secondary sex characteristics that
men develop in puberty are more differentiated
from prepubescence than they are for women who
will develop breasts but otherwise essentially
stay as they were prepubescent. So it's a tall
order. It's a future of sufferance for both boys
who try to pass as women as they pass through
that. puberty threshold but it's an even taller
order for girls who try to pass as men so i think
all children are harmed to put it mildly by being
affirmed or having even worse having this transgenderism
ideology pushed on them but girls in particular
are especially harmed there is the Phenomenon
of things like ladyboys in Southeast Asia, where
there are boys and eunuchs, of course, throughout
history, gelding boys prior to puberty. meant
that they would develop into adulthood and something
that could pass with enough disguising as female,
at least at first blush, but that has really
never been the case for girls to pass as men.
The snoo -soo thing from Futurama aside, that
isn't something that ever actually happens. There
isn't Amazonian women who, if they cut their
hair shorter, will pass as Herculean men. You
obviously haven't seen Disney's Mulan. No, I
haven't, but there are a bunch of obvious reasons
as to why men pretending to be women has had
a catastrophic effect on women's sports, whereas
women pretending to be men has had absolutely
no impact on male sports whatsoever, because
when it comes to physical prowess and the like,
you can take a boy and... pass him as a girl
and he's still going to have that physical prowess
but take a girl and try to have her pass as a
boy and while there might be some marginal benefits
from testosterone injections in terms of developing
greater muscle mass or bone density it's not
going to come one one hundredth of the way to
bridging the natural athletic gap that exists
between the average post -pubescent man and post
-pubescent woman. Last transgender shooting is
the one that occurred just a few weeks ago, also
in February of 2026, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
The shooter was Robert Dorgan, also known as
Roberta Esposito, who was a biological male.
most of these shootings. He, Dorgan, opened fire
at a youth hockey game in Pawtucket on February
16th. He shot his ex -wife, Rhonda Dorgan, their
adult son, Aiden Dorgan, Rhonda's parents, Linda
and Gerald Dorgan, and a family friend. So you
may have noticed something strange. I certainly
did when I was researching this story. ex -wife
of the shooter is named Rhonda Dorgan. Okay,
that's a little weird that she would still have
the same name as her ex -husband. But in some
cases, if a man and woman have been married a
long time, there are instances where they get
divorced and the woman just keeps the married
name. But also, Rhonda's parents also have the
surname Dorgan. That is not a common last name.
I think it's Irish, but it's not a common last
name. So something flashed in my mind. Why would
Rhonda's parents have the same name as her ex
-husband? And apparently Rhonda and Robert, the
shooter, were first cousins once removed. So
I wasn't able to figure out exactly what their
blood relationship was. Presumably it was a little
too close for comfort. I mean, they had the same
last name. And the court records show that Robert
Dorgan's gender identity had been at the center
of significant family conflict for years. And
Rhonda filed for divorce in February 2020, and
she cited in her divorce paperwork, quote, gender
reassignment surgery, narcissistic and personality
disorder traits. And a day before the shooting,
there was... a post on Twitter referring to transgender
congressman from Delaware, I believe. So there's
one transgender congressperson, and there was
a post about that, a derogatory post about him.
And Dorgan wrote in response, quote, keep bashing
us, but do not wonder why we go berserk. So admittedly,
this doesn't really fit into, at least from what
I can tell, previous transgender shooting incidents.
This guy was much older, well into adulthood
before he apparently adopted this transgender
identity. He was presumably a relatively normal
heterosexual person. He had a wife and children.
So I don't really know what to make of this one.
And it's still pretty new, so new information
is still coming out. And so we zoomed in a little
bit and looked at individual cases. Now I want
to zoom out a little bit and say, does the data
indicate that the average transgender person
is more likely to commit violence than the general
population? And I think the answer is not really,
at least from what I could tell. There's one
source I found called the Violence Prevention
Project. noted one transgender shooter appearing
among 201 mass shooters recorded between 1966
and 2025. And then there are, in a broader definition,
there's five to seven confirmed transgender shooters
out of roughly 5 ,700 incidents between 2013
and 2025. And we're going to look in depth more
at the Gallup data, but as a teaser, it indicates
that about 1 .1 % of American adults identify
as transgender. So that would be about 2 .9 million
people out of an adult population of approximately
260 million. So using that denominator, basically
from the data that I was able to find, transgender
identifying individuals are underrepresented
in mass shootings. But isn't that because the
vast majority of mass shootings are gang -related
shootings in urban areas between various groups
of blacks shooting other blacks? I think the
relevant statistic that we're trying to get at
is what is the likelihood, what is the multiplier
or divisor? that distinguishes people who identify
as transgender versus those who do not in terms
of these public mass shootings that target people
that they do not know and that they do not directly
have beef with because if mass shootings as they
are characterized in crime statistics if the
qualification to label something as a mass shooting
is that at least four people are injured. Again,
the overwhelming number of those are gang -related
shootings where there are turf wars and the like
and there are shootouts and multiple people are
hit. But that is a different animal really than
what we're looking at here when we're looking
at psychological, deep psychological motivations
that cause people to go out and try to inflict
the most harm on the groups that they feel are
most deserving of their wrath because of the
anguish that these groups are perceived to cause
the transgender shooters. don't affirm their
pronouns, then you're denying their existence.
This is existential, over -the -top language
that creates, at least makes a certain amount
of sense, why people would lash out when those
kinds of actions are interpreted or equated with
violence. It's not shocking that those putative
victims would lash out violently as well. And
the common refrain is, That's basically put in
front of a parent who has a child who's claiming
to be transgender. The parent is asked, would
you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?
The damage that is inflicted on others by people
with transgender mental disorders is a tragedy,
of course. Primary problem that stems from embracing
the. mental illness that is transgenderism, definitionally,
the inability to recognize reality for what it
is, is the harm that it does to the transgender
person in particular. I think the self -harm,
the suicidal ideation, and the other attendant
mental health problems that have as a consequence
self -inflicted self -harm is the bigger issue
here. And the correspondence to a rise in rates
of depression along along with a rise in the
rates of self -identified transgenderism among
younger Americans, is the bigger societal problem
here. The numbers that we referred to earlier
with regards to alphabet soup, self -identification,
LGBTQ +, etc. from Gallup 2025, the most recent
Gallup. Survey data available shows that 9 %
of American adults, so that's 1 in 11, identify
as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or some
other non -heterosexual identity. And there is
a massive generational effect at play here. Among
those age 65 and older, just 2 .3 % identify
as a member of the alphabet soup. Among those
under the age of 30, 23 % do. And so that is
quite literally an order of magnitude higher.
People, Zoomers and Gen Alpha, people under the
age of 30 are 10 times more likely to identify
as non -heterosexual than people. 65 and older
are. And that suggests strongly that there's
not some underlying biological reality driving
this, but that instead it is a social phenomenon.
And that goes back to what we were talking about
with the therapy sessions. And as Jeff will get
into the shifting definitions of what constitutes
mental illness. the tldr on it is that what was
historically recognized as mental illness is
now rather than being deemed something pathological
is instead being inverted and being celebrated
as something that is not again not pathological
but instead should be aspirational and there
are a lot of other consequences that come along
with that because if the most basic truths Biological
realities about human existence are denied, inverted,
and then people are forced to affirm lies. Well,
there are going to be a lot of other downstream
consequences from that mental health related
consequences in particular. I'm going to flag
the environmental toxins that I think are contributing
at least partly to this increase in transgender
and LGBTQ more generally. identification. So
the increase in rates of autism is staggering,
and I don't have any evidence for this, but I
think the increase in autism and transgenderism
are, I think there are common causes. The Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or
DSM, is the primary diagnostic reference in American
psychiatry. Its treatment of gender identity
has evolved substantially. And I think tracking
some of those changes highlights the broader
societal patterns that we've been discussing.
And it shows how the evolution of something that's
ostensibly rigorous and evidence and based on
the scientific method is actually controlled
perhaps primarily by activist pressure more than
clinical evidence. You had mentioned COVID previously,
but of course, there are very obvious similarities
there with the way that the whole COVIDian nightmare
was handled. I wasn't going to go there, but
my mind did go there. And yes, there's so many
examples, but one that just comes to mind real
quick is Dr. Anthony Fauci in February 2020.
gave a very nonchalant answer regarding masks.
He says masks, he was asked whether COVID was
first popping up in the United States. A reporter
asked Fauci, should people be going around wearing
masks? And Fauci said, no, there's no reason
to wear masks. I mean, masks might make people
feel better, but it's not going to provide any
real protection. And then what, a month or two
later, it was... Now everybody's got to wear
a mask. You're a selfish person if you don't
wear a mask. So within the span of a month or
two, we just did a complete 180. And that was
just the first of many examples to come where
it's like Oceania has always been at war with
East Asia in 1984 where we've always worn masks
even though we were just told a couple weeks
ago that masks were pointless. Well, it's a –
especially salient with COVID because of how
compressed the timeline was. But... Gender dysmorphia,
or whatever the DSM calls it, is just one of
many examples. There are other pathologies or
things that historically were understood to be
pathologies that the DSM has since recharacterized
as not being pathological at all. It's not just
transgenderism, but it is the whole bevy of LGBTQ
type of things, homosexuality being another one
of those conditions that was recognized historically
in the history. of Western medicine and psychology
as being something pathological, but that is
no longer viewed as such. So going back, looking
back at some of these iterations of the DSM.
So in 1952, in the 1952 and 1968 editions, cross
-dressing and gender nonconformity were subsumed
under the category of general sexual deviations,
and these were classified as mental disorders.
And then the DSM -3 in 1980 introduced explicit
categories. Transsexualism and Gender Identity
Disorder of Childhood, and these were also both
formal mental disorders. And then the DSM -IV
in 1994 retained gender identity disorder as
a diagnosable mental condition. And then the
big change came in 2015 with the DSM -V, and
gender identity disorder was replaced with gender
dysphoria, and that's the term that is still
used today. And this was a deliberate... political
reframing so the distress associated with gender
identity became the diagnosable condition not
the gender identity itself and this is somewhat
analogous to the 1973 removal of homosexuality
from the dsm and this is the psychological or
psychiatric equivalent of looking at instead
of the underlying medical condition that a physician
might look at to instead treat the symptoms as
the problem rather than the underlying condition
as the problem. So someone has cancer, instead
of trying to eradicate the cancer, the focus
instead becomes treating the hair loss by adding
a hair thickener or trying to get society to
instead of looking at the physical manifestations
of cancer as it progresses is something that
is unfortunate that to instead to celebrate these
things. And so it is not surprising from this
vantage point that as these pathological conditions
have been recharacterized as things that are
simply more akin to variations in personality
and that the real underlying problem is the way
that society deals with those divergent personalities
instead of looking at the underlying sexual dysmorphia
as the problem well it's not surprising then
that the issues that manifest from those underlying
conditions that aren't being treated but instead
are being affirmed and even celebrated that those
problems continue to get worse and so again to
reclimate back to what i said previously it does
not seem coincidental or surprising to me that
as these mental health problems are recharacterized
as things that should be celebrated or at the
least treated neutrally, that corresponds to
a seeming ever -increasing rise in rates of suicidal
ideation and self -described depression and all
of these other psychological attendant problems.
One way to illustrate this change in the depiction
of transgenderism is to look at pop culture.
So a show like MASH, which ran from 1972 to 1983,
there was, throughout the entire run of the show,
there was a character named Maxwell Klinger,
and he wore women's clothing as a sustained scheme
to obtain a Section 8 psychiatric discharge from
the Army. And this entire comedic premise rested
on an assumption that the audience shared without
question, that Inherently, a man wishing to dress
and present as a woman was self -evidently a
sign of mental disorder. It was a joke. It was
more an affectionate joke rather than a cruel
one, but it was very obvious that the underlying
premise was unambiguous. Again, the show ran
until 1983, and there was never any network sponsor
or critic that raised an objection, at least.
no one of note that raised an objection regarding
this. Corporal Klinger. There's a thriller film
from 1980 called Dressed to Kill, and it features
a killer who is a biological male psychiatrist
with a split personality. There's one kind of
like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of situation.
There's one side that presents as a respectable
professional and the other as a violent female
persona who murders women that the male side
is attracted to. of transgenderism and cross
-dressing with dangerous mental illness. And
then you have the 1991 film, The Silence of the
Lambs, which was based off a novel published
in the 1980s. The main villain is Buffalo Bill.
He is a biological male who murders women in
order to construct a woman's suit from their
skin. driving uh desire is to become female and
again this film came out in 1991 it won best
picture at the academy awards it's just almost
inconceivable to imagine a movie like this coming
anywhere near that level of widespread critical
acclaim though it leans more in the uh mash direction
rather than the silence of the lambs direction
the 1992 movie ladybugs that was not critically
acclaimed but did make an impact on yours truly
it was a lowish middle brow comedy based on the
absurd notion that men being allowed to pretend
to be women and play in women's sports would
destroy women's sports the plot of the story
is that A character played by Rodney Dangerfield.
Later, Rodney Dangerfield is in a position where
he needs to take his boss's girl soccer team
to the championship, and he... In puffing himself
up, misrepresents himself to his boss as someone
who is knowledgeable about soccer. But in reality,
he is clueless about soccer. But he thinks, well,
it's a dynasty and he'll be able to take the
team to the championship anyway. But there's
only one person returning from the previous year's
championship team. And he gets a bunch of other
girls. He has no idea how to coach them. And
it looks like his plan is heading for disaster.
until he decides to bring his stepson in and
have his stepson pretend to be a girl. His stepson
does so and dominates on the field. Eventually,
through the leadership and the prowess of that
stepson, the rest of the girls learn how to play
soccer and ultimately win the championship with
the son being removed at halftime. But then the
closing vignette shows that... Rodney Dangerfield
is now in charge, is now a coach of a women's
softball team, and they're going to like the
state or national championship. And as they're
getting off the bus, Rodney Dangerfield character
tells them to put all their wigs on because to
dominate in softball, he instead of just having
a single boy play in girls soccer, he's decided
to make his entire team consist of boys pretending
to be girls and the. Obvious conclusion from
this is that they are going to utterly dominate.
And so while it was not critically acclaimed,
the premise of the movie worked as a punchline
because of how absurd it was seen to be, because
of how absurd it actually is, just like in Silence
of the Lambs, how it was not at all seen as some
sort of aberrant view to look at gender bending
as some sort of... It was also similarly understood
that the biological realities underlying sexual
differences made it such that men pretending
to be women was inherently ridiculous and there
would be a socially disruptive cost associated
with pretending otherwise. That's certainly generally
true, at least in our lifetimes. The situation
on trans though, I wonder if perhaps it could
provide a counter example to that general constant
unyielding leftward turn. There seems to be,
this is more of a vibe shift. And I think it
will be not just a vibe shift, but something
backed up by some amount of hard data. But there
seems to be a backlash in the last, I would say,
maybe around the time Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I don't know if that's directly related, but
maybe around 2023 up till now, it seems like
there's been, at least in the United States,
a cultural backlash against transgenderism. And
that manifests in various ways. I want to start
with maybe more highbrow. example of this which
is the cash review it was the most significant
it's probably arguably the most significant institutional
challenge to the whole gender affirming care
model paradigm Its formal title is The Independent
Review of Gender Identity Services for Children
and Young People. It was commissioned in 2020
by the National Health Service in England. It
was led by Dr. Hilary Cass, who is a retired
consultant pediatrician. And the final report
was published in April 2024. And so it's essentially
a meta -analysis. It looks at It doesn't do any
new research. It just looks at a bunch of previous,
it does eight independent systematic reviews
of the global evidence base. Basically, it found
that the evidence such as it is for both puberty
blockers and cross -sex hormones was of poor
quality. And so the original Dutch study that
had served as the foundation for the entire treatment
model showed small improvements in psychological
well -being, but no improvement in gender dysphoria
itself. And the study found, the cash review
found, that 98 % of young people started on puberty
blockers went on to cross -sex hormone. So these
puberty blockers were often presented to parents
as a reversible intervention that simply bought
time to think. And in reality, they were almost
exclusively functioning as a first step on a
one -way medical pathway. And another top -line
conclusion from this cash review is that the
evidence does not support the claim that gender
-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk. So
the CASH review also found a phenomenon it describes
as diagnostic overshadowing. It's a young person's
gender distress becomes a singular clinical focus,
crowding out proper assessment and treatment
of co -occurring conditions, including depression,
anxiety, autism, spectrum disorder, and trauma.
As we saw with those shooters earlier, almost
all of them have one or all of these mental disorders.
But with this gender paradigm that's been shoved,
that's been introduced in the last few decades,
the gender aspect, the supposed gender dysphoria
essentially overshadows all those other things.
And they are perhaps not emphasized as much as
they should be if to be treated instead. the
overriding focus is on the supposed gender dysphoria.
To keep the comparison with physiological problems
going, imagine that the physician's diagnosis
is cancer or would be cancer and other attendant
problems like... feebleness and problem with
digestion and hair loss but if we rewrite the
book on physical ailments to proscribe cancer
from that list and so we instead treat cancer
as something that is central to the identity
of the patient and then we try to address the
other problems like hair loss and weakness and
problems with digestion but we won't touch trying
to deal with the cancer because cancer isn't
a problem. It is actually something that should
be celebrated. It's something that's aspirational
and it's something that all the other health
considerations need to be modified around to
not get at changing that cancer diagnosis. We
see the same thing with gender dysphoria. That
is the pinnacle. That is the ultimate mental
disorder in terms of totally inverting biological
reality. And so if that is not treated as a mental
disorder, then trying to deal with the other
less severe mental problems without touching
that underlying central node in the mental illness
that is afflicting the person, well, the other
treatments are going to be ineffective at best.
So people's gut reaction against transgenderism
and just the absurdity of a boy saying he's a
girl or vice versa or the absurdity of a man
playing in women's sports, that is, I think,
primarily responsible for the vibe shift. For
whatever reason, people are feeling more free
to express what is very natural. which was taken
for granted only 20 years ago. There's also clear
empirical evidentiary basis for the whole idea.
I mean, the whole, just the word gender affirming
care is a political term. It's, you're just using
that term, you're playing into the, you're in
the frame of the pro -transgender ideology, even
using that term. And next, perhaps another, I
think this legally is extremely significant,
this next story we're going to cover. And it's
also indicative of what I think might be a vibe
shift. And it is the Varian Malpractice Verdict.
So in January of this year, a jury in the New
York Supreme Court in Westchester County. So
The nomenclature is a little weird. In New York,
the trial -level court is called the Supreme
Court, so it's actually completely inverted.
So this was a trial -level court in Westchester
County, which is just outside of New York City.
The jury in Westchester County awarded Fox Varian,
V -A -R -I -A -N. She is a 22 -year -old biological
female. She was awarded $2 million in damages
following a malpractice trial against Kenneth
Einhorn and surgeon Dr. Simon Chen. And Varian
had undergone a bilateral mastectomy. meaning
both of her breasts were cut off at age 16 after
identifying as transgender. And then she later
detransitioned and no longer identifies as transgender.
There was a three -week civil trial. And so the
legal basis for liability was the finding that
the psychologist and the surgeon had departed
from the standard of care. And so Einhorn, the
psychiatrist, had written a referral letter.
supporting the surgery in October 2019. And he
had only started discussing the idea with Marion
in March of that year, so six months previous.
And the letter contained numerous omissions and
inaccuracies that left the surgeon without a
clear picture of the patient's psychological
history. The psychiatrist and the surgeon never
communicated directly with each other. And there
was evidence showing that Varian had told staff
at the Albany Pride Center that she felt pressure
to decide on a gender identity and she was afraid
she might lose credibility if she raised doubts.
And I think that's a very valid concern because
the – again, just dipping my toe very lightly
as much as I can stand into the sort of transgender
world, but specifically like the Reddit forums.
The people who, the transgender people who detrans...
detransition, they are treated with tremendous
hatred and scorn. There is tremendous pressure
once you sort of get involved in that world.
There's tremendous pressure, even if you start
having second thoughts, there's a lot of pressure
to suppress those misgivings you might have about
going forward with the transition. And it's really
a heartbreaking story. Woman Varian testified
that upon seeing her post -surgical chest, she
immediately felt something was wrong. And she
felt searing, hot, ripping sensations across
her chest and stated, quote, I felt shame. It's
hard to face that you are disfigured for life.
Yes, religions always treat apostates more harshly
than they do heathens. But I'm less sanguine
about this shift than Jeff is. He kind of alluded
to it in talking about the details. The way that
I read it with my distinctly non -legal training
is that it was, to use another cultural reference,
It is like Dr. Hibbert trying to knock out Dr.
Nick. It's not that the underlying issues surrounding
gender dysphoria and the way that it is now treated
as something that should be affirmed rather than
as a pathology were in any way fundamentally
challenged. It was more, hey, this is a pretty
lucrative thing we've got going on, and there's
a lot of cultural cachet. in being associated
with it and so we need to make sure that we keep
this clean and that we don't just let whoever
come in here and sloppily make a mess of it by
not Crossing the T's and dotting the I's and
doing the due diligence and just trying to turn
this into sort of like a mill where people are
rubber stamped to have body parts chopped off.
It's more that this thing is growing a little
bit too cavalierly and without enough safeguards
and credentialism in place. And so we need to
pare that back a little bit. And that's what
this ruling represents. In fact, there were multiple
people who are very much involved in these transgender
surgeries who testified against the surgeon and
the psychiatrist who were involved in effectively
greenlighting something that shouldn't have been
greenlit so readily. But I think that it is premature
to think that this signals some sort of seismic
shift in the way that the medical establishment
looks at gender bending procedures in the future.
I think this is more a wake -up call to make
sure that these things are a little cleaner and
a little bit less grossly offensive to the public,
but I don't think that it signals that there's
any fundamental underlying change in the way
that these things will be handled in the future.
Yes, that is an astute observation because this
verdict in no way undermines or attacks the fundamental
intellectual basis for transgender ideology it
is just the specific application was incorrect
but at the very least one would hope that the
next psychiatrist who is considering recommending
that a surgeon remove the breasts or the penis
of a minor child will think twice about making
that recommendation. And I think that's a good
thing. Because I don't mean to overdose on black
pills. I think that anything that potentially
has a chilling effect on green lighting these
procedures is something that should be celebrated.
I just am a little bit more cautious about what
it pretends for the future. And a major reason
that I don't think that this is going to go away
has to do with the Gallup data that we talked
about previously it is generationally this is
something that is becoming normalized quickly
and so as these gen alpha and zoomers go from
adolescence and teenagehood into young adults
and then into professional positions, it is going
to be something, again, in order of magnitude,
more of them are going to identify as belonging
to these non -heteronormative groups. And so
it is just going to be part of the broader culture
that this is something that is. with us and something
that needs to be accepted and celebrated and
treated seriously. And so to think that all of
that cultural buildup is going to be able to
be overturned because there are some lawsuits
against some overly eager or sloppy surgeons
trying to make a quick buck by butchering people
is maybe a little bit too much wishful thinking.
JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, responded
to this verdict with the following. This will
go down in history as one of the worst medical
scandals of all time. Adults inside and outside
the medical profession sold troubled young people
like Varian the idea that all of their complex
trauma would be resolved by removing healthy
body parts. As more and more detransitioners
arrive in court, the public will learn the full
extent of the harm done to kids in the name of
an ideology. Clinicians performing these, quote,
treatments will go down in history as barbarous
activists who betrayed a sacred oath to do no
harm. But we should never forget how many people
outside the medical profession urged these young
people on, gleefully assuring them that anyone
advising caution was an evil bigot. There are
people in elitist professions like publishing
and academia, not to mention politicians and
celebrities with young fanbases, who did all
they could to champion the idea of gender identity
and kept pushing it even as the evidence of harm
mounted. They're just as culpable as the clinicians.
So obviously J .K. Rowling is interpreting and
presenting this as a sea change. And of course,
Ness maybe is more skeptical of that than she
is. I may be somewhere in the middle. So one
more story I want to talk about is the case of
Sage Blair. So she is a teenager from Appomattox
County, Virginia, and she's approximately 18
or 19. I couldn't quite tell. And so she entered
Appomattox County High School as a freshman in
August 2021. And she had a bunch of issues. when
she started school. Family dysfunctional family
life issues. And so she was diagnosed with gender
dysphoria around the time she began high school.
And then near the first day of school, she told
a school counselor, Dina Olson, that she identified
as a boy and wished to use male pronouns in the
boy's restroom. And so apparently the counselor
agreed to treat Sage as male at school while
actively concealing this from Michelle, who is
Sage's, I believe, biological. grandmother but
adoptive mother. So she is or was Sage's legal
guardian. And so the school counselor concealed
this from Michelle and used female pronouns when
speaking with Michelle and male pronouns when
speaking with Sage at school. And the school
failed to inform Michelle of ongoing bullying
and sexual harassment that Sage was experiencing
from male classmates as a result of being directed
to use the boys' restroom. Really horrifying
story. Once Michelle, the child's guardian, discovered
what was happening, Sage suffered a mental breakdown
and ran away from home. She ended up in Maryland
and she was trafficked. And eventually she was
subjected to sexual abuse and drugging. And then
Sage ended up in front of Judge Robert Kershaw.
in the city of Baltimore's juvenile division
in September 2021. And Sage was given a court
-appointed public defender who represented to
the court that Sage had reported emotional and
physical abuse by her parents, that her parents
were unsupportive of her gender identity, and
that she felt unsafe at home. So there's more
details we could go into, but bottom line is
Sage was placed in an all boys residential facility
and she was abused there again. She ran away.
She ended up in Texas and eventually was recovered
by law enforcement. She eventually returned to
Virginia and apparently now, thankfully, is doing
better. And she is going to Liberty University
on a full scholarship. So this case came to my
attention because President Trump. invited sage
to the state of the union address on february
24th and um so he invited sage and michelle blair
uh as special guests and he devoted a significant
portion of his remarks to their case and here
is one more opportunity to show common sense
in government in the gallery tonight are sage
blair and her mother michelle In 2021, Sage was
14 when school officials in Virginia sought to
socially transition her to a new gender, treating
her as a boy and hiding it from her parents.
Hard to believe, isn't it? Before long, a confused
Sage ran away from home after she was found in
a horrific situation in Maryland. A left wing
judge refused to return Sage to her parents because.
they did not immediately state that their daughter
was their son. Sage was thrown into an all -boys
state home and suffered terribly for a long time.
But today, all of that is behind them because
Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with
a full -ride scholarship to Liberty University.
Sage and Michelle, please stand up. Thank you
for your great bravery. And who can believe that
we're even speaking about things like this? 15
years ago, if somebody was up here and said that,
they'd say, what's wrong with him? But now we
have to say it because it's going on all over
numerous states without even telling the parents.
But surely we can all agree no state can be allowed
to rip children from their parents' arms and
transition them. to a new gender against the
parents' will. Who would believe that we've been
talking about this? We must ban it, and we must
ban it immediately. Look, nobody stands up. These
people are crazy, I'm telling you. They're crazy.
Boy, oh, boy. We're lucky we have a country.
With people like this, Democrats are destroying
our country, but we've stopped it just in the
nick of time, didn't we? There's just audio that
you're being subjected to, but what Trump is
referring to is all the Republicans standing
up and clapping for what he's saying, but the
Democrats sitting on their hands and refusing
to clap for what is ostensibly the success story
of this woman who was going down a dark path
and had been abused and now has gotten her life
back together. And to tie that into J .K. Rowling's
triumphalism about the court case ruling. If
the transgenderism nonsense is culturally overturned,
it will be in no small part on account of the
fact that this is something that is more harmful,
far more harmful for women than it is for men,
not just with regards to sports and how men entering
female sports destroys female sports, whereas
women pretending to be men entering men's sports
never comes up. Because if it did, it wouldn't
mean anything other than that woman pretending
to be a boy succeeding even less in the boy sport
than she did in the girls version of the sport.
And it's not just because adolescent boys can
transition to a simulation that more closely
resembles a woman than girls can transition into
something that... looks or passes as an adult
man, but also because when it comes to the gender
bending, in the case of this girl who was put
in an all boys group home and was, of course,
sexually abused, probably almost continuously,
that is not at all the case when the gender bending
is swapped if it is a male inmate for example
being thrown in with other women because he claims
that he is a woman well in that case too it's
the biological women who suffer so it's always
in every iteration of this it's always the biological
women who suffer not the biological men at least
not to nearly the same extent and so the overturning
of the ascendancy of transgenderism could be
a consequence still of the broader liberal framework
of the oppression olympics and the like where
some group namely women who used to be able to
enjoy predominance over men in that social hierarchy
have now been supplanted by transgender men pretending
to be women who have now found a way to hack
the system and put themselves at the top. And
so, while it is definitely worth celebrating
any dethroning of the transgender nonsense, I
think it might be premature to celebrate that.
I think it's also premature to think that this
signals some sort of broader social reconfiguration
to... biological realities at a more fundamental
level I think this is instead more of feminist
feeling that they were edged out by overly aggressive
men trying to pretend to be women and so they
are reasserting the feminist paradigm though
we're talking about these shifting cultural affinities
and predilections. One thing that is clear from
this clip that Jeff shared is that Trump has
not changed at all. It is a familiar description
to hear him described as a 1980s Democrat, and
that really is what he is. He is the living,
breathing embodiment of X movements. passing
me by not me changing and so that is a bit of
a black pill to think that someone who would
be characterized as on the moderate left hasn't
changed at all and now he is regularly characterized
as some sort of hard right authoritarian fascist
even though from the way he speaks to the way
he dresses to his cultural Sensibilities have
remained completely unchanged over the last 50,
60 years. I don't know who controls the camera
in these State of the Union addresses, so who
controls what somebody watching from home actually
sees, whether they zoom in to Trump or pan out
or zoom in on somebody in the audience. But I've
noticed it seems like it's one consistent set
of video and audio that... that is blasted out
on all platforms, whether it's C -SPAN or CNN
or Fox News. So during that speech, at one point,
it zooms in on Sarah McBride, a congressman from
Delaware. He is the first openly transgender
person elected to Congress. He is biologically
male, presents himself as a woman. And unlike
McBride and very much like Trump, we will strive
for that same consistency in thanking you for
listening and signing off, talking to you next
week.