February 21, 2024 • 32 mins
Mia and Gare are once again joined by Dr, Julia Serano to discuss how the concept of contagious stigma drives moral panics against cis and trans people alike
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to ike it Happen here.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm your host, Mia Wong. I am happy to be
here once again with Garrison Davis and doctor Julius Serrano,
the author of, among many other works, a new edition
of Whipping Girl coming out in March, so.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Kind of pivoting a bit.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
One of the really bleak aspects of being trans in
a hostile world is that we've we've effectively been forced
to become experts in the architects of her own extermination.
And I think that's a lot of what kind of
the new afterward to the upcoming twenty twenty four to
thirty edition of Whipping Girl is about. So, I guess
I wanted to ask, what do you see as the
(00:44):
biggest shifts in sort of the struggle for transliberation between
the end of the sort of Mitchfest like fighting over
Mitchfest era that you wrote like Dream, which you sort
of wrote the second uh, the forward, the preface of
the second edition, and then the stuff that's happening now
is the sort of three edition is coming out.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Sure, I think a huge aspect of transactivism from my
perspective of like first coming to trans communities in the nineties,
a lot of nineties and Zero's era transactivism was overcoming
basically people's ignorance, their lack of awareness about trans people
(01:25):
and so, and this is one of the things that
you know, Whipping Girl, for example, there are a lot
of bad ideas about trans people that had been circling,
lating for a long time, especially with the culmination of
Janis Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire the late nineteen seventies
nineteen seventy nine, I think, and that influenced a lot
(01:46):
of people, what say, places like Mishfest that had trans
women exclusion policies. And I felt like during the nineties
through the Zeros, we were constantly making gains that was
largely due to people learning more about it and then
recognizing basically shared goals, shared things in common. I think
that trans people are marginalized because of you know, mainstream
(02:10):
assumptions about sex, gender sexuality, and those assumptions also hurt
LGBTQIA plus people more broadly, they hurt you know, in
a sexist world, they hurt you know, CIS women, you know,
all women, all people who move through the world perceived
as female feminine. So we all have this kind of
shared thing that we're working towards, and I feel like
(02:33):
that was where a lot of the progress was happening.
And I think what really changed in the mid two
thousand tens, especially two year twenty fifteen, which is literally
the year after the so called tipping point Time magazine
declaring the transgender dipping point, was when it was the
beginning of what I would describe as organized anti transactivism,
(02:59):
where it wasn't just that people didn't like us or
they detested us, but it was where there was actual
coordination between different groups. In the afterward, I describe there's
the social conservatives and far right who have always been
anti LGBTQ plus who took an even more intense focus
(03:23):
on trans people. There were groups that at the time
that I wrote Whipping Girl, the term turf wasn't around,
of the term gender critical wasn't around. Now we would
call them gender critical or trans exclusionary feminists. They've become
kind of a part of that, and both those groups
working together in a lot of ways on policies. I
(03:45):
think one of the things that the average person might
not know if you're not really in kind of highly
aware of trans communities and issues is that probably behind
the scenes, the anti transparent movement as probably aid more
of an impact than any other group, and they are
very much like the anti vax parent movement, where it's
(04:10):
a lot of people who are from their standpoint, they're
just concerned about their children, they want what's best for
their children, but they actively seek out and often get
involved in you know, websites, social media forums and sometimes
actual activist campaigns that buy into a lot of ideas
(04:31):
that of children being indoctrinated into gender ideology or being
infected by social contagion, and there's all this pseudoscience that
grows out of that. So I would say that that
was the main difference, that there's this organized campaign, and
this campaign has just grown and grown and grown to
the point now where it's just this astoundingly large moral
(04:56):
panic that the types of things that like thirty percent
of people in our country believe about trans people is abhorrent.
But that's kind of how it played out.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, I mean, there's there's been a lot of a
lot of very common, weird pseudoscience myths that sort of
came out of that. I wanted to talk a little
bit about quote unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria, because that's
been all.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Over the place.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Me.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
There was like a New York Times article talking about
it like two weeks ago, and it's, I don't know,
really been a fiasco, especially given how unbelievably tenuous the
stuff they sort of faked or not as say fake,
like unbelievably tenuous to like quote unquote study they did
that got retracted.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Was Yeah, and this is something that I actually saw
developing firsthand and then did research on in twenty nineteen.
So let me frame this. I'll tell like my personal
a short version of my oral history of this. So
it was around twenty seventeen that I first heard the
(06:06):
idea of children, you know, becoming trans because of social contagion.
And it just seemed to come out of the blue.
And it's like, what, you know, it's gender identity is
not contagious. If it was, like, you know, trans people
would have infected way more than like the less than
one percent of us that actually exists.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Not a very effective contagious go yees rising like no, like.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yes, yeah, exactly. It's like, once you start looking at it,
it seems kind of ridiculous. A lot of it was
because well, you know, you know, my kid was hanging
around a trans personer started watching trans videos on YouTube,
and now they're trans. It's like, yeah, well, maybe they
were hanging out with that trans friend and watching the
(06:55):
YouTube videos because they are trans and they just hadn't
come out. Yeah, or they're just they're still figuring it
out anyway. So in twenty eighteen is when the Lisa
Littmann paper on rapid on set gender dysphoria came out,
and I wrote this essay at the time talking about
all the things wrong with it, and then in twenty nineteen,
I'm like, where did these ideas come from? And I
should say that rapid onset gender dysphoria is basically transgender
(07:19):
social contagion wrapped up in a medical sounding diagnosis. Okay,
so if you read the initial descriptions of transgender social
contagion and the description of rapid onset gender dysphoria, they're
basically the same. It's that kids are infecting one another.
But the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria
(07:41):
was meant to describe this quick infection of transness that
supposedly was happening. And so in twenty nineteen, I basically
did a deep dive. I'm not an investigative reporter, but
that's kind of what I did into like where the
origin of this was. And basically all of this kind
of came down to the website Fourth Wave Now, which
(08:03):
often worked in coordination with two other anti transparent websites.
So Fourth Wave Now is an anti transparent website, arguably
the very first one that came out, and a parent
posted the idea that her child was like being infected
by transgender social contagion, and it's almost definitely clear. Now
(08:24):
I will leave a little caveat even though I think
the evidence is pretty strong that that was Lisa Marchiano,
who's anti trans therapist who's very very involved in anti
transactivism right now, Okay, so and like all everything points
to that being her, and she also seems to have
(08:45):
in some capacity worked with Lisa Littman. So basically the
first paper about rapatan sat gender distory that came out
was not Lisa Littman's, it was actually Lisa Marchiano's, which
came out in twenty seventeen. So basically kind of grew
from these anti HRIS transparent websites. It really quickly within
six months. Not only was Lisa Littman doing her survey,
(09:06):
Lisa Littman, being someone who has no experience in trans
health ever before then just decides to go in and
only survey parents from an from three anti transparent websites,
and it gets taken very seriously just because the media
fan the flames. A lot of these groups were very
excited to have something that seemed to be a case
(09:30):
study on their side. The paper was heavily critiqued when
it came out. There are now and I described this
in an all nine SI have. It's free if you
google my name, and all the evidence against social contagion
it's in there. There are now ten papers that have
tested the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria
and or social contagion and found evidence that contradicts the hypothesis.
(09:56):
So it's still being talked about that Pamela Paul, it
was an alped that looked like an article in the
New York Times. It's not the first time Pamela Paul
and or the New York Times has done this. They
seem to have a particular acts to grind against trans
people and putting out specious articles suggesting that gender firming care,
(10:20):
especially for trans use, is bad, when actually all the
evidence points to the opposite. So so yeah, that's a
brief discussion of rapid on set genders, for which I
think is the most popular of these kind of pseudoscientific ideas.
But there are definitely others that are like about like
(10:41):
four or five others that I could get into, and
I do get into in the Afterword and in some
of my other writings, but uh yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
And.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You know, I don't use the word pseudo scientific lightly. Basically,
there's like science, which is where different research groups try
to answer a particular question and if they all get
similar answers, then that becomes okay, well that seems to
be established. Now let's work from there and ask more
questions and do more studies. Junk science is when you
(11:15):
do kind of a crappy study that doesn't really interrogate
all the possibilities, that either doesn't use controls or you know,
only looks at you know, a bias sampling size or
a bias sample or small sample sizes and comes to
a conclusion that it wants to come to. That's junk science.
(11:35):
And then pseudoscience is when multiple independent groups all find
something different to what you're saying, but you keep touting
the thing you're saying is science. And that's definitely where
our GD is right now. Same thing with one of
these ideas that I talked about way back early and
Whipping Girl, and I've written other, you know, both academic
papers and online essays about this concept of autoginophilia, which
(11:59):
is this really old theory that just like it's kind
of like this zombie. It doesn't matter how many groups
find evidence to the contrary. It jibes with what basically
certain you know, gender disaffirming practitioners, practitioners and researchers and
anti transactivists. It jobs with what they want to say,
(12:21):
so it just kind of continues to be out there.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Mean something that Garrison we were talking about before, this
is the extent to which the extent to which the
rapid onset gender is for you study is almost exactly
the same study as the first anti VAC study. Like
it has almost exactly the same It's the same thing
where you find a group of people who think their
kid has autism because they got vaccinated, or you find
a group of people who think their kids are trans
because social contation or something, and then you ask them
(12:52):
about it, and then you report the results of the study,
and it's like, well, now and you report the results
of you asking the people the thing that they believe,
and now it's a study, and it's I don't know,
it drives me insane, they extent to which he is
literally exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, I mean that was something. So I didn't know
this until h bomber Guy, who's a YouTuber who does
really good investigations and video essays, and I saw his
autism and so this is something that you know. I remember,
I'm old enough to remember the Wakefield paper being in
the news and then you've heard lots of people debunking it,
and then it's officially retracted and basically all you know,
(13:31):
the scientific field has settled that it's like vaccines do
not cause autism. A lot of that is just like
a coincidence of the time that you first start noticing
that children maybe autistic is like right around the time
after they've had vaccinations. But but yeah, it wasn't until
the h bomber Guy video that he talks about that
(13:51):
the Wakefield study is a study of parents, not the children.
A study of the parents, and the parents already had
were already suspicious of the vaccines, and so they said, oh, well,
it happened right after they had these vaccines, just like
rap it dont set genders for it happens. Oh, it
happened right after. You know, one of my child's peer,
(14:13):
their cheer peers came out as trans. It's like, yeah,
maybe they're connected. Maybe that's why they're good friends. You know,
most of my friends, you know, like when I go
out and stuff like that. You know, a huge chunk
of my friends, way higher than the average person, are
trans people. And it's not because any of us infected
each other. It's just that you have that thing in common.
You also, really importantly, when you're part of a stigmatized group,
(14:37):
being around other people who won't stigmatize you often because
they're part of that same group, that can be really
freeing and really supportive.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So yeah, yeah, Sally, we need to take another AD break,
but when we come back, there will be more. I
don't know, I'm really kind of blowing the ad pivots
on this one. I'm very sorry, and we are back,
(15:12):
so I guess speaking of moral panics, speaking of social contagions.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yes, moral panics are always very socially contagious.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Yeah, it's really truly, really truly. They have described their
own ideology and they projected it out to everyone else.
Uh So, one of the things that you talk about,
both in the Afterward and in sext up is about
the relationship between stigma and contagion and how it's this powerful,
incredibly powerful force for moobilizing moral panics. Can you explain
(15:47):
sort of how that works?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Yeah, so, and this was something that when I was
first working on sex Up, it wasn't kind of my idea.
I didn't think I was going to write about the
concept of stigma much, but it really ended up being
very central the more kind of research I did into it.
And so I think most of us are familiar with
the idea of stigma in terms of like feeling embarrassment
(16:11):
or being made to feel lesser than other people because
of some aspect of your person, right, And there is
that aspect of it that's often called like felt stigma.
But then there's the way that other people view stigma, right,
And so you know, people weren't necessarily stigmatized in that
way themselves. They might view people who are stigmatized in
(16:35):
particular ways. And one aspect of stigma that I learned
a lot of this from psychologists, I think it's Paul Rosen,
I know the last name is Rosin, and also Carol
Nemarov and they both worked together and they had other
colleagues who worked on this. But a lot of this
(16:56):
comes from this really unconscious idea of contain agent that
seems to be it's like pan cultural. It's just kind
of a way that people tend to view the world
kind of like a lot of people and a lot
of cultures have essentialist views. Contagion is sort of along
those lines. It's often described as a type of magical thinking.
And the idea is if something in your mind has
(17:20):
this contagion, if you get too close to it or
you interact with it, it can like permanently corrupt or
taint you. And so it has this kind of contagious
like property in people's minds, and so people often view
groups who are stigmatized, especially groups that are highly stigmatized,
(17:41):
as essentially contagious, where that stigma that they have could
rub off on you if you get too close to them.
And so this happens like when I was really young,
the idea of like if you were friends with the
trans person, a lot of times people or even someone
who is gay back then people be like, oh, so
(18:01):
what are you? You must be gay too, right, It's
almost as if that stigma would then like kind of
migrate to you. And that's a lot of why stigmatized
groups face a lot of ostracization in society, and so
so this idea of contagion has been around. I think
groups who are lesser stigmatized, one of the ways that
(18:22):
that plays out is they're viewed is less contagious. So
you know, when I was really young, the idea of
if you had a trans person in your life, people
would really question you. Whereas by the time I came out,
you could have a trans friend and that would be fine.
It wouldn't necessarily be contagious, unless, of course, you were
interested in them, and then that stigma would If you
were like attracted to them, then there's that stigma. And
(18:44):
I think that stigma plays a lot into kind of
dynamics of and I write about this and sex stuff
that the whole idea of like fetishes and chasers and
all that. That's basically all this stigma that contagent stuff
playing out in different ways anyway, So I also think that,
and I write about and sext up, I think people
(19:05):
view sex and stigma as really closely intertwined, such that
I think people view the average person views heterosexual sex
as a stigma contamination act where the male is the
corrupting force and it's the woman who is corrupted by sex,
which is why you know virgins are pure. But then
(19:27):
once a woman has sex, she's like, you know, she's
become contaminated or tainted, and she has a lot of sex,
then people view her as like ruined, right, So that
idea is bell in there, And I think this combination
of viewing sex and stigma is kind of intertwined leads
to the sexual predator, the sexual predator stereotype that we're
(19:52):
seeing play out in really strong ways with trans people
right now. But actually, if you look throughout history, like
a lot of marginalized groups like deal in different ways
with the sexual predator trope.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
And so.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
I think this really clearly plays out with the kind
of what I call the Groomer explosion that started in
twenty twenty two, where you know, people were accusing trans
people being groomers before then, but it really exploded in
twenty twenty two. And if you listen to what people
are saying, that they're using the word groomer, which sounds
like a sexual predator thing, like there's a real thing
(20:29):
of grooming children that sexual abusers do, but they're using
it against trans people in a way that has nothing
to do with that. But what they're talking about is corrupting,
you know, so their children who are presumed to be
sisgender and who often I think this is why a
lot of these anti trans discourses continue to paint like
(20:52):
trans children as being girls, right like, because then it
kind of plays into these feelings of like, you know,
transgender people are the adult men corrupting young girls. It
plays into a lot of people's view like messed up,
messed up heteronormative views of sex and fears of you know,
(21:14):
sexual abuse, child abuse being a very real thing, but
people greatly misinterpret it so that the people who are
the usual perpetrators, which are usually you know, by and large,
straight men who are like adults who are close or
sometimes even family members of the child in question. But
(21:38):
like when they say grooming, they just mean corrupting or contaminating,
And I think that both grooming and social contagion. I
think both of these basically play off of this stigma
contamination idea. Right, the kids are pure, but then transgenders
like a type of coodies that if one kid becomes
trans then they spread it to the other kids. And
(21:58):
so yeah, so I feel like it plays a really
big role not only moral panics, which amost all moral
panics are. There's some kind of corrupting force that is
often attacking otherwise pure and innocent children. Sometimes it's technology, right,
and so people will be like, oh, we have to
ban you know, social media apps, you know, because it's
(22:21):
hurting the children. Or it could be transgender people who
are the things we need to ban because they're corrupting
the children. But I definitely think that both these ideas
of stigma and contagion play a big role in the
way in which moral panics, why they resonate with a
lot of people, even though they don't make any rational
(22:41):
sense if you just think about them kind of from
a very realistic, practical point of view.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
And we have to go to ads, but really back
in a second, and we're back.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
This is something that you mentioned briefly in the afterward.
And that's something that we've reported on is how a
lot of this groomer thing that started in twenty twenty
two and a whole bunch of this kind of modern
wave of transphobia is mirroring a lot of the anti
gay stuff from like the eighties that was pushed forward
by a lot of like evangelicals into just like mainstream
(23:27):
conservatism and specifically how it functions as this. Yeah, this
is sort of like moral panic and even social contagion.
The way homosexuality was treated as this thing and this
this sort of social contingent aspect is so common now.
I mean, even even the way we've already alluded to Musk,
even the way he mentions like the woke mind virus
(23:48):
ist is exactly this thing, and as it really like
moral panics and stuff. Right, this was kind of predated
by the critical race theory debacle, which then got you know,
turned into the groomer thing, and now exactly and now
it's even changed again. And these moral panics can have
like devastating results in terms of pushing forward legislation that
(24:11):
outlasts the actual moral panic, But the actual things themselves
are very short lived. They don't seem to have very
much like staying power as as like cultural moments. They
move on so quickly, Like no one talks about critical
race theory anymore. You don't even hear this sort of
groomer rhetoric as often as you did two years ago,
and it's being replaced by new versions. And yeah, like
(24:33):
Mia said, the DEEI thing is that is the current
current thing that is wrecking American society if you ask
about maybe one third of population. But yeah, how do
you feel about like the life cycle of these moral
panics and how they relate to like the social contagion aspect.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Yeah, yeah, no, And I agree with what you're also
all the things you're citing that like, I think these
are all different variations of kind of the same idea.
And I do really appreciate the idea of the woke
mind virus as being kind of like the perfect like
the exemplar of this, and that you know, people were,
(25:12):
you know, people were complaining about you know, stuff being
woke for a while, and you know it is usually
it's often coded as something that's woke, is like anti racist,
or you know, is something like it's very much associated
you know, infused with like when people complain about wocism,
a lot of times they're like they're racist or or
(25:33):
there or at the very least they have fears about
kind of the corruption of pure whiteness being corrupted by
increasing you know, people of color and and you know,
like making gains in society. Right, But the woke mind virus,
because no one could really explain what woke is because
then it keeps shifting and it refers to trans people
(25:56):
or or critical race theory and et cetera. Yeah, and
the woke mind is like perfect because that's how they
think it all works. Like it's just this thing that
infects people, especially children. And the way in which there
is a recent thing just today, I think it was Ackerman,
(26:16):
the billionaire has been involved in a lot of this
DII stuff, complaining about his child being infected in college
with Marxism, and Elon Musk had similar issues with his
trans daughter, like becoming pro marx or anti capitalists, and
so they just assume that, like, no, my child was pure,
(26:37):
but now they're infected. It's like, well, maybe there are
other ideas out there that are better than your idea.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, and maybe that's.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
All it is. But yeah, so I think in all
of these cases, yes, I think that there's this idea
of a contagion or corruption, often involving children, and it is. Yeah,
a lot of the moral panic, a lot of the literature,
like the social sciences literature, all moral panics. They often
(27:07):
describe them as fleeting. You know, this one, the anti
trans one, isn't fleeting enough right now from my perspective.
But people will tend to kind of move on, like
the Satanic panic of the eighties, you know, like that
was a really big deal and then all of a
sudden it was just gone and no one ever talked
about it again. I think the difference here is that
(27:29):
a lot of these moral panics are really tied together
with what's happening in the country more generally, with anti
democratic and authoritative, you know, views coming from you know,
particularly the right wing of the country. You know, like
one of the two major political parties is really pushing
(27:52):
a lot of just generally across the board. You know,
they're against feminism, they're you know, against people of color,
against LGBTQ plus people, and I think it's all wrapped
up into the same thing. I think that while individual
parts of the moral panic may go away. They may
(28:12):
talk about critical race theory for a bit and then
shift to trans people being groomers, then shift to DEI
but I think a lot of this is they're all intertwined.
And actually, I think that's like the last couple of
paragraphs of the afterward, I talk about that as a
potentially good thing, because even though it's been a horring
time to be a trans person, with all the anti
(28:34):
trans legislation and all the anti trans news stories, all
the pushes back on gender firm and care, despite all that,
I think the good thing is that I think there
are clear sides here, and I think, well, this wasn't
true early on in the anti trans backlash in the
(28:55):
late twenty tens. I think most people realize now that
all these things are tied together from like kind of
you know, the right wing perspective in this country is
just against all these things. You know, they want a white, Christian,
straight minority of people running everything about this country, and
(29:18):
so I think the rest of us really need to
recognize that and work together to defeat that.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's a pretty
good place to end on. Let's you have anything else
that you wanted to make sure you get in.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
No, I mean I feel like we touched, We covered
a bunch of the book past, present, and hopefully future
being better than the present right now.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Hopefully hopefully hopefully.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So okay, where can people find a the new additional
Whipping Girl and be you and your work on the
internet and or other places?
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Sure? Yeah, so the book should be available. So it's
available for pre order right now, so you can do
that through like, you know, online places. I often suggest
people go to the Seal Press, my publisher, because they
give lots of options there. But you can also go
to your local independent bookstore and say hey, I'd like
the pre order this book and they will do that
(30:18):
for you. So the book will be available everywhere and
should be in stores starting in March. As for me,
my website Juliusarana dot com, particularly if you go to
the writings page there, I have like literally links to
everything I've written online over the years, so it's kind
of a clearinghouse of free writings of mine. There are
(30:39):
also links to my books there, and then if you're
looking for me on social media, I'm at Julius Serrano
on most platforms that I'm at.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I don't know how much stronger I can possibly recommend
reading Whipping Girl. It had I don't know, it had
an enormous impact on me when I first read it,
and yeah, yeah it will, it will. It will do
good things for you if you read it too.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Yeah, and it's all still incredibly relevant. Like I was
breezing through like fifty pages just to refresh my memory
this morning, and I'm like, oh wow, so many of
the like intercommunity trans discourses that are constantly happening have
already been addressed, like twenty years ago, so many of
like I all the time I spend trying to write
(31:24):
about like trans misogyny of like, oh I I forgot,
this is already like all like written down, Like I
spent so long writing about the Daily Wire movie, and like,
oh this is hardly all this work has already been done.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I can just like stop.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Oh man, Yeah, cannot cannot recommend enough.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Yeah, thank you all for the kind words. Yeah, thank
you for having me And it was great and thanks
for all you do too.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to ike it Happen here.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm your host, Mia Wong. I am happy to be
here once again with Garrison Davis and doctor Julius Serrano,
the author of, among many other works, a new edition
of Whipping Girl coming out in March, so.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Kind of pivoting a bit.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
One of the really bleak aspects of being trans in
a hostile world is that we've we've effectively been forced
to become experts in the architects of her own extermination.
And I think that's a lot of what kind of
the new afterward to the upcoming twenty twenty four to
thirty edition of Whipping Girl is about. So, I guess
I wanted to ask, what do you see as the
(00:44):
biggest shifts in sort of the struggle for transliberation between
the end of the sort of Mitchfest like fighting over
Mitchfest era that you wrote like Dream, which you sort
of wrote the second uh, the forward, the preface of
the second edition, and then the stuff that's happening now
is the sort of three edition is coming out.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Sure, I think a huge aspect of transactivism from my
perspective of like first coming to trans communities in the nineties,
a lot of nineties and Zero's era transactivism was overcoming
basically people's ignorance, their lack of awareness about trans people
(01:25):
and so, and this is one of the things that
you know, Whipping Girl, for example, there are a lot
of bad ideas about trans people that had been circling,
lating for a long time, especially with the culmination of
Janis Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire the late nineteen seventies
nineteen seventy nine, I think, and that influenced a lot
(01:46):
of people, what say, places like Mishfest that had trans
women exclusion policies. And I felt like during the nineties
through the Zeros, we were constantly making gains that was
largely due to people learning more about it and then
recognizing basically shared goals, shared things in common. I think
that trans people are marginalized because of you know, mainstream
(02:10):
assumptions about sex, gender sexuality, and those assumptions also hurt
LGBTQIA plus people more broadly, they hurt you know, in
a sexist world, they hurt you know, CIS women, you know,
all women, all people who move through the world perceived
as female feminine. So we all have this kind of
shared thing that we're working towards, and I feel like
(02:33):
that was where a lot of the progress was happening.
And I think what really changed in the mid two
thousand tens, especially two year twenty fifteen, which is literally
the year after the so called tipping point Time magazine
declaring the transgender dipping point, was when it was the
beginning of what I would describe as organized anti transactivism,
(02:59):
where it wasn't just that people didn't like us or
they detested us, but it was where there was actual
coordination between different groups. In the afterward, I describe there's
the social conservatives and far right who have always been
anti LGBTQ plus who took an even more intense focus
(03:23):
on trans people. There were groups that at the time
that I wrote Whipping Girl, the term turf wasn't around,
of the term gender critical wasn't around. Now we would
call them gender critical or trans exclusionary feminists. They've become
kind of a part of that, and both those groups
working together in a lot of ways on policies. I
(03:45):
think one of the things that the average person might
not know if you're not really in kind of highly
aware of trans communities and issues is that probably behind
the scenes, the anti transparent movement as probably aid more
of an impact than any other group, and they are
very much like the anti vax parent movement, where it's
(04:10):
a lot of people who are from their standpoint, they're
just concerned about their children, they want what's best for
their children, but they actively seek out and often get
involved in you know, websites, social media forums and sometimes
actual activist campaigns that buy into a lot of ideas
(04:31):
that of children being indoctrinated into gender ideology or being
infected by social contagion, and there's all this pseudoscience that
grows out of that. So I would say that that
was the main difference, that there's this organized campaign, and
this campaign has just grown and grown and grown to
the point now where it's just this astoundingly large moral
(04:56):
panic that the types of things that like thirty percent
of people in our country believe about trans people is abhorrent.
But that's kind of how it played out.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, I mean, there's there's been a lot of a
lot of very common, weird pseudoscience myths that sort of
came out of that. I wanted to talk a little
bit about quote unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria, because that's
been all.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Over the place.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Me.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
There was like a New York Times article talking about
it like two weeks ago, and it's, I don't know,
really been a fiasco, especially given how unbelievably tenuous the
stuff they sort of faked or not as say fake,
like unbelievably tenuous to like quote unquote study they did
that got retracted.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Was Yeah, and this is something that I actually saw
developing firsthand and then did research on in twenty nineteen.
So let me frame this. I'll tell like my personal
a short version of my oral history of this. So
it was around twenty seventeen that I first heard the
(06:06):
idea of children, you know, becoming trans because of social contagion.
And it just seemed to come out of the blue.
And it's like, what, you know, it's gender identity is
not contagious. If it was, like, you know, trans people
would have infected way more than like the less than
one percent of us that actually exists.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Not a very effective contagious go yees rising like no, like.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yes, yeah, exactly. It's like, once you start looking at it,
it seems kind of ridiculous. A lot of it was
because well, you know, you know, my kid was hanging
around a trans personer started watching trans videos on YouTube,
and now they're trans. It's like, yeah, well, maybe they
were hanging out with that trans friend and watching the
(06:55):
YouTube videos because they are trans and they just hadn't
come out. Yeah, or they're just they're still figuring it
out anyway. So in twenty eighteen is when the Lisa
Littmann paper on rapid on set gender dysphoria came out,
and I wrote this essay at the time talking about
all the things wrong with it, and then in twenty nineteen,
I'm like, where did these ideas come from? And I
should say that rapid onset gender dysphoria is basically transgender
(07:19):
social contagion wrapped up in a medical sounding diagnosis. Okay,
so if you read the initial descriptions of transgender social
contagion and the description of rapid onset gender dysphoria, they're
basically the same. It's that kids are infecting one another.
But the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria
(07:41):
was meant to describe this quick infection of transness that
supposedly was happening. And so in twenty nineteen, I basically
did a deep dive. I'm not an investigative reporter, but
that's kind of what I did into like where the
origin of this was. And basically all of this kind
of came down to the website Fourth Wave Now, which
(08:03):
often worked in coordination with two other anti transparent websites.
So Fourth Wave Now is an anti transparent website, arguably
the very first one that came out, and a parent
posted the idea that her child was like being infected
by transgender social contagion, and it's almost definitely clear. Now
(08:24):
I will leave a little caveat even though I think
the evidence is pretty strong that that was Lisa Marchiano,
who's anti trans therapist who's very very involved in anti
transactivism right now, Okay, so and like all everything points
to that being her, and she also seems to have
(08:45):
in some capacity worked with Lisa Littman. So basically the
first paper about rapatan sat gender distory that came out
was not Lisa Littman's, it was actually Lisa Marchiano's, which
came out in twenty seventeen. So basically kind of grew
from these anti HRIS transparent websites. It really quickly within
six months. Not only was Lisa Littman doing her survey,
(09:06):
Lisa Littman, being someone who has no experience in trans
health ever before then just decides to go in and
only survey parents from an from three anti transparent websites,
and it gets taken very seriously just because the media
fan the flames. A lot of these groups were very
excited to have something that seemed to be a case
(09:30):
study on their side. The paper was heavily critiqued when
it came out. There are now and I described this
in an all nine SI have. It's free if you
google my name, and all the evidence against social contagion
it's in there. There are now ten papers that have
tested the idea of rap it on set gender dysphoria
and or social contagion and found evidence that contradicts the hypothesis.
(09:56):
So it's still being talked about that Pamela Paul, it
was an alped that looked like an article in the
New York Times. It's not the first time Pamela Paul
and or the New York Times has done this. They
seem to have a particular acts to grind against trans
people and putting out specious articles suggesting that gender firming care,
(10:20):
especially for trans use, is bad, when actually all the
evidence points to the opposite. So so yeah, that's a
brief discussion of rapid on set genders, for which I
think is the most popular of these kind of pseudoscientific ideas.
But there are definitely others that are like about like
(10:41):
four or five others that I could get into, and
I do get into in the Afterword and in some
of my other writings, but uh yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
And.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You know, I don't use the word pseudo scientific lightly. Basically,
there's like science, which is where different research groups try
to answer a particular question and if they all get
similar answers, then that becomes okay, well that seems to
be established. Now let's work from there and ask more
questions and do more studies. Junk science is when you
(11:15):
do kind of a crappy study that doesn't really interrogate
all the possibilities, that either doesn't use controls or you know,
only looks at you know, a bias sampling size or
a bias sample or small sample sizes and comes to
a conclusion that it wants to come to. That's junk science.
(11:35):
And then pseudoscience is when multiple independent groups all find
something different to what you're saying, but you keep touting
the thing you're saying is science. And that's definitely where
our GD is right now. Same thing with one of
these ideas that I talked about way back early and
Whipping Girl, and I've written other, you know, both academic
papers and online essays about this concept of autoginophilia, which
(11:59):
is this really old theory that just like it's kind
of like this zombie. It doesn't matter how many groups
find evidence to the contrary. It jibes with what basically
certain you know, gender disaffirming practitioners, practitioners and researchers and
anti transactivists. It jobs with what they want to say,
(12:21):
so it just kind of continues to be out there.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Mean something that Garrison we were talking about before, this
is the extent to which the extent to which the
rapid onset gender is for you study is almost exactly
the same study as the first anti VAC study. Like
it has almost exactly the same It's the same thing
where you find a group of people who think their
kid has autism because they got vaccinated, or you find
a group of people who think their kids are trans
because social contation or something, and then you ask them
(12:52):
about it, and then you report the results of the study,
and it's like, well, now and you report the results
of you asking the people the thing that they believe,
and now it's a study, and it's I don't know,
it drives me insane, they extent to which he is
literally exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, I mean that was something. So I didn't know
this until h bomber Guy, who's a YouTuber who does
really good investigations and video essays, and I saw his
autism and so this is something that you know. I remember,
I'm old enough to remember the Wakefield paper being in
the news and then you've heard lots of people debunking it,
and then it's officially retracted and basically all you know,
(13:31):
the scientific field has settled that it's like vaccines do
not cause autism. A lot of that is just like
a coincidence of the time that you first start noticing
that children maybe autistic is like right around the time
after they've had vaccinations. But but yeah, it wasn't until
the h bomber Guy video that he talks about that
(13:51):
the Wakefield study is a study of parents, not the children.
A study of the parents, and the parents already had
were already suspicious of the vaccines, and so they said, oh, well,
it happened right after they had these vaccines, just like
rap it dont set genders for it happens. Oh, it
happened right after. You know, one of my child's peer,
(14:13):
their cheer peers came out as trans. It's like, yeah,
maybe they're connected. Maybe that's why they're good friends. You know,
most of my friends, you know, like when I go
out and stuff like that. You know, a huge chunk
of my friends, way higher than the average person, are
trans people. And it's not because any of us infected
each other. It's just that you have that thing in common.
You also, really importantly, when you're part of a stigmatized group,
(14:37):
being around other people who won't stigmatize you often because
they're part of that same group, that can be really
freeing and really supportive.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So yeah, yeah, Sally, we need to take another AD break,
but when we come back, there will be more. I
don't know, I'm really kind of blowing the ad pivots
on this one. I'm very sorry, and we are back,
(15:12):
so I guess speaking of moral panics, speaking of social contagions.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yes, moral panics are always very socially contagious.
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Yeah, it's really truly, really truly. They have described their
own ideology and they projected it out to everyone else.
Uh So, one of the things that you talk about,
both in the Afterward and in sext up is about
the relationship between stigma and contagion and how it's this powerful,
incredibly powerful force for moobilizing moral panics. Can you explain
(15:47):
sort of how that works?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Yeah, so, and this was something that when I was
first working on sex Up, it wasn't kind of my idea.
I didn't think I was going to write about the
concept of stigma much, but it really ended up being
very central the more kind of research I did into it.
And so I think most of us are familiar with
the idea of stigma in terms of like feeling embarrassment
(16:11):
or being made to feel lesser than other people because
of some aspect of your person, right, And there is
that aspect of it that's often called like felt stigma.
But then there's the way that other people view stigma, right,
And so you know, people weren't necessarily stigmatized in that
way themselves. They might view people who are stigmatized in
(16:35):
particular ways. And one aspect of stigma that I learned
a lot of this from psychologists, I think it's Paul Rosen,
I know the last name is Rosin, and also Carol
Nemarov and they both worked together and they had other
colleagues who worked on this. But a lot of this
(16:56):
comes from this really unconscious idea of contain agent that
seems to be it's like pan cultural. It's just kind
of a way that people tend to view the world
kind of like a lot of people and a lot
of cultures have essentialist views. Contagion is sort of along
those lines. It's often described as a type of magical thinking.
And the idea is if something in your mind has
(17:20):
this contagion, if you get too close to it or
you interact with it, it can like permanently corrupt or
taint you. And so it has this kind of contagious
like property in people's minds, and so people often view
groups who are stigmatized, especially groups that are highly stigmatized,
(17:41):
as essentially contagious, where that stigma that they have could
rub off on you if you get too close to them.
And so this happens like when I was really young,
the idea of like if you were friends with the
trans person, a lot of times people or even someone
who is gay back then people be like, oh, so
(18:01):
what are you? You must be gay too, right, It's
almost as if that stigma would then like kind of
migrate to you. And that's a lot of why stigmatized
groups face a lot of ostracization in society, and so
so this idea of contagion has been around. I think
groups who are lesser stigmatized, one of the ways that
(18:22):
that plays out is they're viewed is less contagious. So
you know, when I was really young, the idea of
if you had a trans person in your life, people
would really question you. Whereas by the time I came out,
you could have a trans friend and that would be fine.
It wouldn't necessarily be contagious, unless, of course, you were
interested in them, and then that stigma would If you
were like attracted to them, then there's that stigma. And
(18:44):
I think that stigma plays a lot into kind of
dynamics of and I write about this and sex stuff
that the whole idea of like fetishes and chasers and
all that. That's basically all this stigma that contagent stuff
playing out in different ways anyway, So I also think that,
and I write about and sext up, I think people
(19:05):
view sex and stigma as really closely intertwined, such that
I think people view the average person views heterosexual sex
as a stigma contamination act where the male is the
corrupting force and it's the woman who is corrupted by sex,
which is why you know virgins are pure. But then
(19:27):
once a woman has sex, she's like, you know, she's
become contaminated or tainted, and she has a lot of sex,
then people view her as like ruined, right, So that
idea is bell in there, And I think this combination
of viewing sex and stigma is kind of intertwined leads
to the sexual predator, the sexual predator stereotype that we're
(19:52):
seeing play out in really strong ways with trans people
right now. But actually, if you look throughout history, like
a lot of marginalized groups like deal in different ways
with the sexual predator trope.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
And so.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
I think this really clearly plays out with the kind
of what I call the Groomer explosion that started in
twenty twenty two, where you know, people were accusing trans
people being groomers before then, but it really exploded in
twenty twenty two. And if you listen to what people
are saying, that they're using the word groomer, which sounds
like a sexual predator thing, like there's a real thing
(20:29):
of grooming children that sexual abusers do, but they're using
it against trans people in a way that has nothing
to do with that. But what they're talking about is corrupting,
you know, so their children who are presumed to be
sisgender and who often I think this is why a
lot of these anti trans discourses continue to paint like
(20:52):
trans children as being girls, right like, because then it
kind of plays into these feelings of like, you know,
transgender people are the adult men corrupting young girls. It
plays into a lot of people's view like messed up,
messed up heteronormative views of sex and fears of you know,
(21:14):
sexual abuse, child abuse being a very real thing, but
people greatly misinterpret it so that the people who are
the usual perpetrators, which are usually you know, by and large,
straight men who are like adults who are close or
sometimes even family members of the child in question. But
(21:38):
like when they say grooming, they just mean corrupting or contaminating,
And I think that both grooming and social contagion. I
think both of these basically play off of this stigma
contamination idea. Right, the kids are pure, but then transgenders
like a type of coodies that if one kid becomes
trans then they spread it to the other kids. And
(21:58):
so yeah, so I feel like it plays a really
big role not only moral panics, which amost all moral
panics are. There's some kind of corrupting force that is
often attacking otherwise pure and innocent children. Sometimes it's technology, right,
and so people will be like, oh, we have to
ban you know, social media apps, you know, because it's
(22:21):
hurting the children. Or it could be transgender people who
are the things we need to ban because they're corrupting
the children. But I definitely think that both these ideas
of stigma and contagion play a big role in the
way in which moral panics, why they resonate with a
lot of people, even though they don't make any rational
(22:41):
sense if you just think about them kind of from
a very realistic, practical point of view.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
And we have to go to ads, but really back
in a second, and we're back.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
This is something that you mentioned briefly in the afterward.
And that's something that we've reported on is how a
lot of this groomer thing that started in twenty twenty
two and a whole bunch of this kind of modern
wave of transphobia is mirroring a lot of the anti
gay stuff from like the eighties that was pushed forward
by a lot of like evangelicals into just like mainstream
(23:27):
conservatism and specifically how it functions as this. Yeah, this
is sort of like moral panic and even social contagion.
The way homosexuality was treated as this thing and this
this sort of social contingent aspect is so common now.
I mean, even even the way we've already alluded to Musk,
even the way he mentions like the woke mind virus
(23:48):
ist is exactly this thing, and as it really like
moral panics and stuff. Right, this was kind of predated
by the critical race theory debacle, which then got you know,
turned into the groomer thing, and now exactly and now
it's even changed again. And these moral panics can have
like devastating results in terms of pushing forward legislation that
(24:11):
outlasts the actual moral panic, But the actual things themselves
are very short lived. They don't seem to have very
much like staying power as as like cultural moments. They
move on so quickly, Like no one talks about critical
race theory anymore. You don't even hear this sort of
groomer rhetoric as often as you did two years ago,
and it's being replaced by new versions. And yeah, like
(24:33):
Mia said, the DEEI thing is that is the current
current thing that is wrecking American society if you ask
about maybe one third of population. But yeah, how do
you feel about like the life cycle of these moral
panics and how they relate to like the social contagion aspect.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Yeah, yeah, no, And I agree with what you're also
all the things you're citing that like, I think these
are all different variations of kind of the same idea.
And I do really appreciate the idea of the woke
mind virus as being kind of like the perfect like
the exemplar of this, and that you know, people were,
(25:12):
you know, people were complaining about you know, stuff being
woke for a while, and you know it is usually
it's often coded as something that's woke, is like anti racist,
or you know, is something like it's very much associated
you know, infused with like when people complain about wocism,
a lot of times they're like they're racist or or
(25:33):
there or at the very least they have fears about
kind of the corruption of pure whiteness being corrupted by
increasing you know, people of color and and you know,
like making gains in society. Right, But the woke mind virus,
because no one could really explain what woke is because
then it keeps shifting and it refers to trans people
(25:56):
or or critical race theory and et cetera. Yeah, and
the woke mind is like perfect because that's how they
think it all works. Like it's just this thing that
infects people, especially children. And the way in which there
is a recent thing just today, I think it was Ackerman,
(26:16):
the billionaire has been involved in a lot of this
DII stuff, complaining about his child being infected in college
with Marxism, and Elon Musk had similar issues with his
trans daughter, like becoming pro marx or anti capitalists, and
so they just assume that, like, no, my child was pure,
(26:37):
but now they're infected. It's like, well, maybe there are
other ideas out there that are better than your idea.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, and maybe that's.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
All it is. But yeah, so I think in all
of these cases, yes, I think that there's this idea
of a contagion or corruption, often involving children, and it is. Yeah,
a lot of the moral panic, a lot of the literature,
like the social sciences literature, all moral panics. They often
(27:07):
describe them as fleeting. You know, this one, the anti
trans one, isn't fleeting enough right now from my perspective.
But people will tend to kind of move on, like
the Satanic panic of the eighties, you know, like that
was a really big deal and then all of a
sudden it was just gone and no one ever talked
about it again. I think the difference here is that
(27:29):
a lot of these moral panics are really tied together
with what's happening in the country more generally, with anti
democratic and authoritative, you know, views coming from you know,
particularly the right wing of the country. You know, like
one of the two major political parties is really pushing
(27:52):
a lot of just generally across the board. You know,
they're against feminism, they're you know, against people of color,
against LGBTQ plus people, and I think it's all wrapped
up into the same thing. I think that while individual
parts of the moral panic may go away. They may
(28:12):
talk about critical race theory for a bit and then
shift to trans people being groomers, then shift to DEI
but I think a lot of this is they're all intertwined.
And actually, I think that's like the last couple of
paragraphs of the afterward, I talk about that as a
potentially good thing, because even though it's been a horring
time to be a trans person, with all the anti
(28:34):
trans legislation and all the anti trans news stories, all
the pushes back on gender firm and care, despite all that,
I think the good thing is that I think there
are clear sides here, and I think, well, this wasn't
true early on in the anti trans backlash in the
(28:55):
late twenty tens. I think most people realize now that
all these things are tied together from like kind of
you know, the right wing perspective in this country is
just against all these things. You know, they want a white, Christian,
straight minority of people running everything about this country, and
(29:18):
so I think the rest of us really need to
recognize that and work together to defeat that.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's a pretty
good place to end on. Let's you have anything else
that you wanted to make sure you get in.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
No, I mean I feel like we touched, We covered
a bunch of the book past, present, and hopefully future
being better than the present right now.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Hopefully hopefully hopefully.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So okay, where can people find a the new additional
Whipping Girl and be you and your work on the
internet and or other places?
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Sure? Yeah, so the book should be available. So it's
available for pre order right now, so you can do
that through like, you know, online places. I often suggest
people go to the Seal Press, my publisher, because they
give lots of options there. But you can also go
to your local independent bookstore and say hey, I'd like
the pre order this book and they will do that
(30:18):
for you. So the book will be available everywhere and
should be in stores starting in March. As for me,
my website Juliusarana dot com, particularly if you go to
the writings page there, I have like literally links to
everything I've written online over the years, so it's kind
of a clearinghouse of free writings of mine. There are
(30:39):
also links to my books there, and then if you're
looking for me on social media, I'm at Julius Serrano
on most platforms that I'm at.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I don't know how much stronger I can possibly recommend
reading Whipping Girl. It had I don't know, it had
an enormous impact on me when I first read it,
and yeah, yeah it will, it will. It will do
good things for you if you read it too.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
Yeah, and it's all still incredibly relevant. Like I was
breezing through like fifty pages just to refresh my memory
this morning, and I'm like, oh wow, so many of
the like intercommunity trans discourses that are constantly happening have
already been addressed, like twenty years ago, so many of
like I all the time I spend trying to write
(31:24):
about like trans misogyny of like, oh I I forgot,
this is already like all like written down, Like I
spent so long writing about the Daily Wire movie, and like,
oh this is hardly all this work has already been done.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I can just like stop.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Oh man, Yeah, cannot cannot recommend enough.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Yeah, thank you all for the kind words. Yeah, thank
you for having me And it was great and thanks
for all you do too.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media for more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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