Best of the Program | Guest: Colin Wright | 10/14/19

Hey, Monday's podcast.

We've got a great one for you today.

Do you, as a parent, have any rights, or are you just a babysitter now?

We get into that.

Also, we get into the National Gun Registry and a story from the New York Times that shows just how much the Democrats have changed their position on guns.

Even the New York Times says it's pretty stunning.

And it is.

We talk about the rights of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment all on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

So the New York Times surveyed the 2020 Democrats on gun control, and they found that there are...

There are some dividing lines here.

Not a lot of dividing lines, I think, between

the Democrats.

I mean, there are a few, but between anyone who believes in gun rights and the Democratic field, there's some really,

really

bright lines being drawn.

It seems remarkable.

I'm going to quote the New York Times.

If it seems unremarkable that every Democratic presidential candidate wants to ban assault weapons, it's worth looking back just a few years.

In 2013, the last time a ban received a floor vote in the Senate, nearly 30% of the Democratic caucus voted against it.

The Times survey adds to a pile of evidence that a segment of the Democratic Party is headed towards extinction.

And that extinction, that part of the party is the one that believes in the Second Amendment.

It is no longer politically tenable to be a Democratic presidential candidate and support the sale of an AR, which has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.

No,

no, it hasn't.

Handguns also are used.

Several other policies had unanimous support among the candidates who completed the survey.

So-called red flag laws, which allow confiscation of guns from people judged to pose an imminent risk to themselves or others.

This is one of the more dangerous ones, in my opinion.

The so-called red flag laws.

We already have those.

If you think think someone is a danger to themselves or to others, you already can call police and they will already take the gun away from them.

They'll have to go to a mental hospital and be checked out.

But that's the system we have.

There has to be due process involved.

And what they want to do is get rid of that due process.

It's too slow.

And the Democrats.

Too slow for due process.

And the left continually gives commercials to the warning signs of what's going on.

You mentioned the Ben Shapiro thing earlier today,

where he talked about defending the lives of his children against someone coming and trying to take them from the government.

And it was a big, big issue over the weekend.

Well, what was the response from Eric Swalwell, the former presidential candidate, congressman?

He said, perfect use of red flag laws.

The second someone disagrees with their opinion, well, all of a sudden, they're too crazy to have their guns.

If you're wondering how these things will be utilized, Eric Swalwell just gave you a commercial for it.

He didn't like Ben Shapiro's rant on the internet.

Now, take his guns.

And this is the demonstration of why I believe in the Second Amendment.

It's not because I like to shoot.

It's not because my family and I, we do it all the time and we enjoy it.

It's not that I'm going out and hunting for my food.

I have my guns for one specific reason, and that is a check on the balance of power.

If you think the United States government is not afraid of people with guns, why did Swalwell say that?

Why would Swalwell say, well, if you disagree with us, we have to come take your guns?

And he didn't say that, but he said what Ben Shapiro said was

a good reason for the Reds' flag laws.

Well, what Ben said was, my children belong to me.

And if you want to come and take my children away because I won't teach them that there are no genders,

I'm sorry.

You meet me at the front door with a gun

because I will defend my right to teach that to my children and to keep my children.

That to me is perfectly reasonable.

Perfectly reasonable.

I would never think of the state going in and taking somebody away, their children away, because

they believe that there are 97 genders.

I would say, well, you know what?

Let the free market work that out.

Let the public work that out.

You know, that kid is going to grow up and he's going to believe all kinds of crazy things.

Well, that's okay.

He'll believe lots of crazy things, but it's mom and dad's right to teach it to him.

And we know over 80%

of people who

question their gender early in life and don't have the surgery wind up coming out on the other side and saying they are pleased that they didn't have the surgery.

You know, that's just eventually people kind of figure that stuff out.

Now, if you want to change the sex of your four-year-old, six-year-old, even 10-year-old, well, then maybe we should, maybe we should talk about that as a society because that's a new idea.

I think that is abusive because you're making a change they cannot change back.

And they might like princess dresses today, but as Stu said, studies show later they don't.

So if you are fundamentally altering their body

and their chemistry,

well,

that's something we should all discuss.

But right now, it's totally fine.

You can do that.

That's totally fine.

When did we decide that?

When did we ever voice that?

The elites are voicing that.

And they want to jam that down my throat?

No.

Well, that's funny, too, because it's really the reason why we didn't all decide that is because a lot of times it's kind of none of our business.

Yeah.

They are taking advantage of the thing that they want to end.

The advantage of parental choice and you can raise your parents however you want.

Now, you're talking about physical changes and cutting somebody open for a surgery they don't need.

That's covered under other laws.

But as far as arguing for those things, teaching your kids that there's 97 genders,

that is completely your right as a parent.

It might be something that you think is nuts.

Yep.

I don't like it, but that's your right.

I teach my faith.

You know what's so crazy?

Is my faith came out with the proclamation of a family in the 90s.

And I remember everybody going,

What?

Why would they issue this?

And it was a very big deal.

It's a cornerstone of our church.

And it talks about how sacred the family is, and that gender

is something that is assigned eternally in heaven.

That you are born male and female, and they are not to be changed or trifled with.

This is in the 90s.

It's specific about that.

So now you're going to come and tell me that I have to teach my children something that my faith says absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

No, you know what?

I have a right to my faith, to my practice of religion, of raising my children.

And if that means I meet you at the front door with a gun, damn right, I'll meet you at the front door with a gun.

Now,

I don't believe my faith will say that,

but that's the way I feel.

so okay so red flag laws there's there's the first wow this is only one we just got through one one of the policies proposed a ban on high capacity magazines that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard do you know that you have something called a 3d printer and you can print magazines the bad guys will just print them

I mean, people who have a 3D printer who obey the law, they're not going to print them, but you could print those at your house.

It's so ridiculous.

It's so stupid.

I mean, and to think that you could stop them from being mailed around, ordered on the internet is insane.

An unnamed relative of mine recently told me that they got in the mail a gift from a friend of theirs, which happened to be edibles, right?

You know, marijuana-laced food.

Okay.

How are you stopping that?

I'd like to know, like, right?

Texas doesn't have it legal.

Utah doesn't have it legal but you're telling me you're gonna stop there are they gonna in individually inspect every package of gummy bears that gets mailed to see if there's marijuana in it it's just effectively legal in every state because of the things like this try to ban it anyone who wants it can get it right and the same thing that's happened with these tiny pieces of plastic or metal that could easily we're talking about a container What it what it's a container and a spring a high capacity magazine

anybody can get these things You can get the parts for them easily.

You can 3D print them.

You can get them mailed

from them.

You could make them.

You could make them.

You could make them.

It's ridiculous to think that banning them would do anything.

No, it will keep them out of the hands of people who want to respect the law.

It will not do it for anyone who doesn't give a flying crap.

I mean,

this isn't, I'm making a gun.

This is, I'm making a magazine.

And you can't have this conversation with people who have never held a gun because they have no idea what a magazine is.

They've absolutely no idea what a magazine is.

And it takes you a while to really understand.

Magazine and clip, it's different.

And you know what?

Once you learn that,

you're like, yeah, I understand.

It's like, we're not a republic.

We're not a democracy.

We're a republic.

It's one of those things that people don't get, and it drives people nuts because you cannot have an argument with somebody who doesn't even understand the difference between a clip and a magazine because it shows you haven't been around it enough to understand it.

How am I going to have a

conversation with you about a gun when you can't tell me about the little plastic thing that you put bullets in that goes into the gun or a little metal thing that holds all the bullets together before you put them in a gun?

Yeah, right.

And there's no way to have that conversation because the person you're talking to has no knowledge on the topic.

No.

And this goes to also what

stupid Betto's campaign said about all of this when they talked about, you know, people, when you try to ban their AR-15 or take it from them, what's to prevent them from keeping these guns?

They're just going to keep them.

And Betto's representative said, Look, no, we believe the American people are law-abiding.

And when it comes down when these laws are passed, they're going to follow the law and handle them in.

Well, then, why are you passing the law?

If you believe that they're following the law, why are you taking their guns?

They're going to cross the line on keeping their gun, but not this evil murder?

The people you are talking about, you're admitting that your law has no effect.

Because you're only taking them from the people who care about the law.

Care about the law to not, let's say, shoot up a movie theater.

Right?

Like, these are not the people you need to worry about killing others.

The people that are going to willingly turn in their guns.

You're only taking them away from the most compliant people.

Because this, honestly, is not about guns.

As I wrote in the book called Control, it's not about guns.

This is about control.

And our founders understood that.

They knew.

That's why you have the Second Amendment.

You know,

England,

England, everybody had guns in England.

Everybody had guns until the king decided, you know, they're getting a little unruly here and they don't like the things that I'm doing.

Take away all their guns.

That's what, that was the lesson our

founders understood.

Wait a minute, how did the king get out of control?

Oh, he got out of control when he took everybody's guns.

That's how.

You know, why do the Scottish throw...

Have you ever seen the Scottish when they take the poles and they throw the pole, you know, like the logs?

Yeah.

Have you ever seen that?

Yeah.

You know why they do that?

No.

Because they weren't allowed to have any guns or any swords or any weapons of any type.

Because

the king knew these guys were fighters and they were never going to give up.

So it was illegal for any of them.

So they trained by throwing big rocks.

They kept their military people strong by how far can you throw that tree?

Because you didn't have any other weapon.

So you needed to be able to kill them with rocks and with big, huge branches.

I was going to guess utter boredom.

No, no, surprisingly, that was mine, too.

It was kind of like the Canadian with the sweeping on the ice.

No, this one actually had a military purpose for it.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

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First, let me start here.

So you know exactly where I'm coming from.

My church has made a proclamation called Proclamation of a Family.

Now, they didn't do this because they were freaking out about what is happening right now and rushing just to say something so they could keep their bigoted view.

No, they made a proclamation to the world on the family, and they did this in the 1990s.

And quite honestly, anybody in the faith went, duh, when it came out.

Now it looks a little prophetic.

Second paragraph: all human beings, male and female, are created in the image of God.

Each is a beloved spirit, son, or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such, each has divine nature and destiny.

Gender is an essential characteristic of individual, premortal, mortal, and

eternal identity and purpose.

So my faith has been teaching forever

that gender is not fluid.

Gender is not a mistake.

You are not a mistake.

But now, Betto and the others in the Democratic Party would like to remove that responsibility.

And if you think that it's not happening, think again.

Now, I tweeted 100% support behind Betto.

What is the Second Amendment for, if not to protect the First Amendment?

And I said, if you want to be a parent that's more of a babysitter, just go to Canada.

Are you a babysitter babysitter or are you a parent?

As a parent, you get to direct the affairs and decisions of your kids.

While still respecting their basic human rights as human beings, you help them determine their course in life.

What they wear, what they don't at the beginning, what they eat, when they sleep, the books they read, what games they play, when they get a bike, when they get their first BB gun.

It's an awesome and terrifying experience and responsibility every single minute.

And if you're a good parent, you worry all the time about that one kid that's going to come in and influence them and steer them in another direction after all of the hard work you've done.

And then we pay a university to do it.

The responsibility of

Not screwing something up.

And I got news for you.

We all screw our kids up.

We all do.

We all make mistakes.

What if you let them eat too much candy?

What if they sit too close to the TV and get eye cancer?

What if letting them play with your Apple Watch results in accidentally sending dozens of pictures of your nose hairs to your PTA president?

As far as your kid is concerned, you are a bit of a benevolent dictator.

At least until they get into their teens and figure out that you're mostly full of crap, you really don't know what you're doing.

Those are fun days.

As a parent, you and your spouse run the show.

When you have a babysitter, they only have a select set of discretionary powers that you delegate to them.

They run the set of plays that you select.

Feed them this.

Put them in bed at nine.

Video games only after homework is done.

Babysitters, the good ones at least, simply simply do the list of things that you tell them to do.

They don't have any authority to engage in life-altering actions for your kids.

They are then there to tend for a very short period of time,

tend to your children, but not decide who your kids will be or how they will be raised.

School is not a babysitter.

School is not a parent.

Are we parents anymore?

Do we get to decide how and when our child develops?

Should they take the Flintstone vitamins or not?

Should they get all their vaccinations or not?

Are they ready to learn about the birds and the bees or not?

Are they mature enough to have a sleepover, to carry a cell phone, to ride bikes across Main Street, to buy a soda at the Dairy Queen?

These choices aren't yours anymore.

You can't send your kids walking down the street just to go to Dairy Queen.

God forbid somebody sees that child and says you're an irresponsible parent.

What?

They were going to the park to play.

I got so much hate mail from people.

Oh, really?

What rights have I lost by living in Canada?

A lot.

What rights have I lost living in Great Britain?

A ton.

Ask Charlie Guard's parents.

The child whom British socialized medicine decided it was too expensive to treat for a severe disorder, and they left him on feeding tubes to die, despite the parents' pleas to remove him from the hospital and take him to another country for attempts at treatment.

Despite the court battles and the global press coverage, the death panel, yes, the death panel decided it would set a bad precedent.

And then all the parents that didn't have the chance and the choice to treat their children, well, they might, they might, there might be an uprising.

Even though the children could be taken outside of the country at zero cost to

the government, you can't allow the parents to do that.

What about in Canada, where it's considered legal child abuse

not to address your child with their preferred gendered pronoun at any age?

Child abuse, that's what it is in Canada now, child abuse that could result in your child being removed from your home and placed in government-ordered foster care with you in jail as if you had beaten your child with a tire iron.

The same goes for teaching your children that

homosexuality might be a sin in the eyes of God.

Also, federal offense, punishable by potential jail time, even if your religious beliefs indicate that it's a sin.

That's why my people came here to America and not to Canada.

We came here because we knew we had certain rights that no one else guaranteed.

But our Constitution guarantees our right of freedom of religion.

How about in the EU, where parents can be fined if it's determined that they are not giving Islam fair and equal coverage to Christianity or Judaism in their homeschooling program?

No matter your religious traditions, your scriptures, if you teach your kids that Moses was a prophet, but Muhammad was not,

in Europe, they can take your child because you're engaging in hate speech.

The hate speech of teaching Christian theology is being superior to Muslim theology.

Not in your own home, not in all of Europe.

What rights have I lost?

How about this?

Are your kids ready to learn about sex?

And at what age?

Are they, when do they learn where babies come from?

And believe me, they start asking way before they're ready to know much detail.

Whoever invented the stork story

was genius, because you do, you can delay for a little while.

Seriously.

Parents.

Parents decide that.

And even in their own home, each child is different.

How and when and how you have that discussion and what you say.

Or maybe not, not anymore.

That ship has sailed.

After all, as parents, we're not really parents anymore.

At least in most of the world, here in America, it's holding on by a thread, and I mean that thread is not good.

Maybe we're just all babysitters.

Maybe the government will leave us a note on when the children should be in bed, what we should teach, when we should teach, what they can watch, what they can't watch.

In 2015, advanced sex education became a required curriculum in Canadian public schools, including primary and secondary school, for kindergarten through 12th grade.

Announcing the controversial program, the Education Minister named Prue

indicated the program would include what he termed age-appropriate instruction on LGBTQ and gender expression issues, sexual orientation, sexual assault, as well as traditional sex education topics such as preventing STDs.

Although Mr.

Prue acknowledged some parents and teachers may be

opposed to this content, the instruction is necessary, saying,

I know it's not an easy subject.

I know the questions are sensitive, but we have to respond to a society and a societal issue.

The new program was developed in collaboration with sexologists as well as public and private organizations, including Planned Parenthood.

When asked if parents who objected to the content would be allowed to opt out of the new sex education program, Mr.

Prue indicated such waivers would be allowed only in exceptional cases, such as if a student had been the prior victim of sexual abuse.

Other than that, no exemptions would be allowed for moral or religious belief.

Canada and all those who tweeted me, what have I lost?

You lost it long ago, and you probably don't care.

Americans, at least some of us, still do,

because we are guaranteed that right.

You never had that right.

We were guaranteed that right.

And Ben Shapiro is right.

That is the only reason the Constitution exists or the government exists.

This is the only reason

governments are instituted among men to protect those rights.

But that's not all.

It gets worse.

Not only in Europe, but we'll take a look at what's happening here as well.

And continue to ask yourself: are you a parent or are you a babysitter?

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Thanks.

Betto

has said in the last few days that

if you, if your church, if your school is not teaching

gender fluidity and everything else,

that you'll be forced to

because the laws are changing.

Well, no, you're not going to force me because this is a religious,

for me,

this is a religious doctrine.

My doctrine of my church is that, and this wasn't just made up, this is 30 years ago, that gender is

part of your identity, of your soul.

There are no mistakes, and that male and female are specific,

and they are assigned.

You don't have to believe this, but this is what I believe.

They are assigned when your spirit is created.

There is no mix-up on that.

Now, again,

you don't have to believe that, but I have a right to say it, I have a right to believe it, and I have a right to live it in public.

Now, I don't have a right to hate people that are different.

Well, actually, I do.

You do have a right to be an idiot.

You can hate whoever you want.

But

that would be idiotic.

It doesn't mean that I hate anybody.

And I certainly am not teaching my children that there should be, you know, violence or they're half-people or anything like that I don't even know who would do that well

except for people who believe we came from monkeys because there's got to be some half people around here half monkey half people

after all it was the survival of the fit species I'm not sure which ones are fit or not

if you think that this isn't an issue.

Ben Shapiro was used this weekend as a guy who said, I'll defend my right and my synagogue's right to teach whatever it is they teach.

And if you come to my house to take my children away because I believe in these things, well, you'll meet me at the door with a gun because I have a right.

And the left immediately freaked out.

See, y'all are gun crazy.

This would be a red flag law if they have their way.

Ben Shapiro would have his rights taken from him.

But that is exactly what the First Amendment is for, to defend the First Amendment.

When the government makes the sexual activization and grooming of a 12-year-old child as state policy, using the threat of fines or jail time for parents who may not choose to have their children instructed how to develop sexual relationships, your right as a parent are gone.

When a state is teaching five and six-year-olds how to identify and spell vagina, vulva, anus, penis, instead of cat, dog, mom, and dad, your rights as a parent are gone.

When the state is requiring first-grade teachers to read my princess boy, that reads, Dyson loves pink, sparkly things.

Sometimes he wears dresses, sometimes he wears jeans.

He likes to wear his dress, his princess tiara, even when climbing trees.

He's a princess boy.

Then that is rick, when that is required for seven and eight-year-olds to be read, but Huck Finn, Finn, Catcher in the Rye, and the Jungle Book are all banned, your rights as a parent are gone.

Schools in Canada and the UK, and increasingly so here in America, have become nothing more than sexual training centers, grooming children as young as five and six years old for sexually active lives, gender fluidity, and bisexuality.

In the name of remaking the world into a politically correct, safe space space for every possible gender identity, every sexual behavior and proclivity.

They have made it the government's business to hyper-sexualize our children, normalizing ultra-rare behaviors such as gender dysphoria.

And they are teaching our young children how to develop a plan around sexual activity and figuring out what could possibly be different and sexually pleasurable.

These lessons happen when the kids are pre-teens.

Well, children aren't going to become sexually active anyway.

It's a societal problem we have to deal with.

You damn right.

It is 100% a societal problem.

That's why I don't want society fixing it.

We have a problem in our society when we believe that by law, 10 and 12-year-old kids need to learn about anal intercourse as a way to not get pregnant, but not abstinence.

It is a societal problem.

The problem is that our kids are more likely to be exposed to pornography than the last generation.

They're more likely to be bullied if they're gay.

We have solutions for those kinds of problems.

And parents have to do their job in the solution.

The same as it's always been.

The problem is we have somehow come to believe that the only way to solve any perceived ill in the world is for government to act.

That is against the Constitution.

I have rights as a parent.

Now, could churches and religions help provide a framework for understanding relationships, self-worth, sexuality, and love?

No!

That ghost in the sky, he's not real.

Could parents determine the right way and the wrong way to discuss sexual feelings and urges with their kids?

No!

Parents might make their kids feel uncomfortable.

Only in the scientifically based classroom setting can children freely discover and express their sexuality.

If in your state, your province, your country, your local school district, you don't have a choice about sending your kids into a classroom where teachers are required to teach this kind of content, don't even pretend you have any rights left as a parent.

Are you delusional?

Have you fallen that far that we all somehow believe that somehow our duty as a citizen is to let our children be psychologically and philosophically molded by some government stooge into sexually active, gender, and sex-orientation fluid agents of change?

They're our children.

These are the people we've been working so hard to keep them away from their whole life.

And now they're in a position of authority?

I don't know about you, but as for Mr.

Shapiro,

I'm with you, Ben.

I'm with you.

Betto, don't show up at my door demanding my kids learn about developing a sexual plan at the age of 12.

Because if you do, we're going to have a serious disagreement.

And you also have a serious disagreement

with me and many of my neighbors about the Second Amendment as well.

The Second Amendment is not there for hunting.

It's not there for for sport.

It is there to keep tyranny at bay.

It is there for the citizens so they have a way to rise up against

an out-of-control government that wants nothing more than tyranny.

They want the guns because they that way can control the populace.

I think it was said best by Charlton Heston: out of my cold, dead hands.

It is never outrageous or radical to defend

the Bill of Rights.

Don't be a babysitter.

You are a parent.

Do your job and do not surrender this ground.

Better stay stay out of my house.

Stay out of my home school.

Stay out of my kids' lives.

You're not welcome there.

I'm a parent.

That's my job.

That's my wife's job.

And we may hire the occasional babysitter,

but believe me, I would never hire some creep out of Washington to watch my kids.

We're parents.

No others need apply.

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Colin Wright has just written an article for Quillette.

No one is born in the Wrong Body.

He's an evolutionary biologist.

And I'm not not sure I understand

all of his

charts and everything else here, but I think I do, and I thought you should hear it too.

Colin Wright, welcome to the program.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, you bet.

So

tell me your point, which is heresy today.

Yeah, so I think before we get into sort of what the article is about, It's important to really briefly talk about what it's really not about because many have kind of have and continue to paint this as sort of like this anti-trans or transphobic article where we suggest that trans people don't really exist.

So, this isn't what we're saying at all.

We acknowledge gender dysphoria is very real, often debilitating psychological condition.

In serious cases, maybe transitioning one's body to appear as the opposite sex, you know, could probably reduce these symptoms.

We don't deny any of that.

What we are concerned with, however, though, is that vulnerable children who may be displaying sort of sex atypical mannerisms or personalities, so maybe tomboyish females, effeminate males.

They're being told that

they maybe have been born the wrong body or are trans, whereas in reality, these cross-sex stereotypical behaviors is completely normal and is far and away more predictive of later homosexuality than being trans.

So I guess what we're saying is that we worry that our society is sort of pathologizing gender atypical behavior, which is contributing to this dramatic rise in adolescent gender dysphoria that we're seeing.

So there's a couple of things that come to mind on this,

and this is the point of when I was introducing you.

Are we, you know, we're just accepting these things and just throwing them in, and are we doing more harm?

The way gender dysphoria is being taught and so widely embraced,

I agree with you.

I mean, there's all kinds of things that happen with our children, but studies show that, what is it, 80 or 85%

of those who

are probably now being told have gender dysphoria, they grow out of it and either become straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, but not transgender.

So aren't we actually targeting the LG and Bs and

leading them into saying, no, you are definitely a T?

Isn't that wrong?

Yeah, I think it's been sort of described as a sort of of sort of new conversion therapy.

Whereas in the past, you know, we've been against conversion therapy, trying to tell, you know, homosexual youths or even adults that try to convince them out of their same-sex attraction.

And now what we appear to be doing is we're conflating gender atypical behavior with being born potentially in the wrong body.

And so instead of just allowing these youths to grow up into what is most likely going to be a homosexual adult, we're essentially now doing a new form of conversion therapy where we're saying, no, actually, you have these sex atypical

stereotyped behaviors.

You're maybe more likely to be born in the wrong body.

So we're converting them, homosexuals, to trans identities

instead of out of their homosexual behavior

as we've done in the past.

So what's driving this, Colin?

Yeah, that's hard to say.

There's been an uptick in sort of gender identity replacing our discussions about biological sex almost across the board.

So, I've just been noticing this just in the last maybe five years, but just in the last two, maybe even

more prevalent, where I see individuals, these are academics, these are people who have PhDs or in grad school, and they're sort of,

I guess, having this narrative that biological sex sex is sort of a spectrum or it's a social construct and that we just need to listen to people what they say about what their biological sex actually is you know we see this ideology of

people not not being you know having their sex described at birth but they're having their sex assigned at birth and sort of this conflation just with with sex atypical behaviors with biological sex itself whereas in reality over 99.98 percent of all individuals are going to fall unambiguously into one or the other sexes.

But this gender sort of ideology, which has many different definitions, sometimes many conflicting, and many times the definitions are quite circular, seems to be taking precedence.

And we're not really, our society is not really prepared for

what this actually means if we were to replace, say, biological sex with this

subjective identity in law.

We're seeing this in sports, we're seeing this in the prison system, we're seeing this in who's admitted to certain rape shelters, for instance.

So the consequences are quite dramatic, and we don't seem to be really appreciating that, or at least half of society does not seem to be appreciating it.

I was going to say, there's lots of us that appreciate that and are saying, wait, wait, wait.

I mean, you're, and what I fear, honestly, Colin, is

a backlash because it's starting to affect average people who don't have any hatred or anything else.

But, you know, I've got a daughter and she's in volleyball and a guy, you know, comes in volleyball.

He's just, he's built differently.

And, you know, or if she's a, you know, a runner in long distance running or whatever.

And some guy says, I identify as a female.

Well, now he can run on the team and you're just, you're hurting women.

You're hurting women.

Yeah, we're seeing this conflation.

I've usually called it the univariate fallacy.

And it's basically people will point at any single trait that exists between males and females, and they'll show that, like, oh, look, there's so much overlap in these traits that, you know, we can't say that any one trait is specifically male or female.

So we have, you know, males are on average taller than females.

But then people will say, you know, well, I know some woman who's a lot taller than most males that I know, and so this is evidence that there's no real sex differences.

But the thing is that these small differences, these small average differences in many different traits, these often stack up as well.

So if you look at sort of a multivariate approach to males and females, we see that males are by and large quite different than females, especially in the realm of athletics.

So

you commonly hear people say that, you know, males and females come in all shapes and sizes or something like that, and that we shouldn't prohibit any male from competing against females because, you know, well, here's an example of a really tall female.

And that's just, frankly, quite absurd because, you know, even though females come in, quote-unquote, all shapes and sizes, it's no random chance that no female has come in the size and shape that's been able to compete in sort of the NBA or the NFL.

And these are leagues that don't actually bar female athletes from competing.

It's just that no individual has ever, no female has ever been able to compete in these leagues.

One quick thing to point out, too, is that these small differences in just the average traits, say a height or strength, even though there might be substantial overlap among the general population, when we're talking about things like sports, we're talking about the extreme, the elite of the elite.

And when you look at the tail ends of these distributions

of the elite of the elite, we see that these are way more dominated by males, like proportion-wise.

So we can't look at our everyday experience, kind of use this as a metric for how the extremes are going to behave.

Turn to Colin Wright, he's an evolutionary biologist at Penn State.

His piece in Quillette is: no one is born in the wrong body.

Colin, I'm curious to your thoughts on being in this community, because we hear a lot of the experts who would disagree with you, who would say the exact opposite of everything that you've said so far is when it comes to summarizing these things.

Would you say that it is more of a political

opposition to what you're saying, or is it a scientific one?

Is there a large scientific community that actually

does not see these things that I think the average person sees as basic human facts of existence?

Yeah, so I do see it as being driven largely by politics.

At least that's influencing their conclusions.

I wouldn't say that this is done intentionally.

I don't think these people are being dishonest, but I think they may be more difficult for them to really spot the fallacies in their own arguments that they're making, such as when I referenced before.

You know, sometimes people will look at a univariate metric of differences between the sexes, and that fails to take into account the multiple ways that males and females differ.

I've tried to point this out on, you know, threads on Twitter and articles that I'm writing, but I haven't seen this actually refuted in any coherent way.

And

the fallacies pretty much just stand for themselves, and even if we criticize them, they tend not to go away.

And the main method they seem to be using to sort of silence voices like mine and others doesn't seem to be actually engaging with our ideas and the content of what we're saying.

But it usually is sort of just the, you know, you're a bigot, you're a transphobe.

Oh, look, you're publishing in Colette.

This is a

magazine that's known to publish, you know, race science or, you know, whatever they want to accuse.

Just sort of a guild by association.

They'll point to some

problematic figure that might agree with you, and they'll say, like, oh, you also agree with this one person who's

a bad individual, so therefore you're bad too.

So

it's l largely the silencing tactics that are being used, which is really quite aggravating.

So does this make, Colin, your world, I assume you grew up always wanting to be a scientist.

Does this make

is science in a golden era or a

or a

you know, not dark ages, but headed towards a seeming dark age where

if you don't agree, you're a heretic?

Yes,

I'd hate to sort of lump all of science into this.

So there's certain fields that are more plagued by this sort of ideology than others.

So I wouldn't I don't think particle physics is particularly influenced by gender.

As a biologist, as an evolutionary biologist.

Yeah, so I definitely see it among grad students and even faculty.

And before, because I published another Coolette piece before called The New Evolution Deniers, where I mentioned similar types of things, and I sent this to to mentors of mine, people that I knew sort of agreed with me in my professional circle and the consensus from basically everyone I sent this to was that you're absolutely correct but you cannot say this this could be

just career suicide.

You know I'm a postdoc right now if I don't actually have a faculty job.

I'm applying to faculty jobs but they were told that this could be just suicide for my career and I've spent over a decade of going to school and five years in grad school to get my PhD and you know this could just be made you know, nullified overnight if the mob would decide to just

write one big hit article, where if someone Googles Colin Wright,

they just see transphob bigot, you know, what have you.

So it is definitely an issue within my field.

It gets worse, I think, when you go to the psychological sciences,

worse when you go to sociology, worse when you go down to women's studies, et cetera, et cetera.

But these other fields are definitely influencing my field too.

And there seems to be a sort of a sort of almost an Orwellian thing going on where if we criticize social justice, you know, social justice in their minds, a lot of people sort of equival uh

equate that with just civil rights.

So if you say, I'm against this social justice ideology, they are here like, oh, you're against civil rights.

And so you really can't win.

It's almost, you know, you think, I disagree with the you know, the Department of Truth.

It's like, well, you disagree with truth.

So there's sort of this language game going on where it's hard to actually engage with ideas without immediately being just painted as a as a bigot in any way they want to so they can dismiss you.

Quickly, because I've only got a few seconds, but what made you decide just to do it anyway?

Um mainly because I've always been interested in sort of the larger um sort of meta-narrative around science and defending science.

I used to defend evolution from the young earth creationists back in the mid to late two thousands, and I just realized how much I kept sort of self-censoring as I went through graduate school and uh and and after.

And I got to a point where I realized that I just, I'd much rather live a life where I can speak my mind freely than sort of lived sort of this zipper-lift life as an academic and just go this one route where I can just study my ants and wasps and my narrow field, but have to remain silent on everything else.

So

that wasn't something I was willing to sacrifice, I suppose.

Good for you.

Good for you.

Colin Wright, evolutionary biologist.

The

Quillette piece is called No One is Born in the Wrong Body.

You can follow him on Twitter at Swipe Right, spelled with a W.

Thank you so much, Colin.

Appreciate it.

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