Popping the liberal bubble on youth gender "care" (07-03-2025--Hour3)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. A bit of the breaking news here. According to SCOTUSblog Supreme Court blog, the Supreme Court is going to be hearing two cases next term on whether states may exclude transgender athletes from girls and women's teams. And then they had based on the sex they were assigned at birth scotis blog, really the sex they were assigned at birth. Molly Hemingway at The Federalist points out that that is a term that is a propaganda term. It is used by transactivists to perpetuate the lie that men can become women and vice versa. Honest people should avoid the term completely. Right, sex assigned at birth is a propaganda term. But they're going to hear two cases about whether states can say only girls can play on girls teams, and only women can play on women's teams. I guess that's the Yeah. Now I am curious like Keatanji Brown Jackson will obviously have to recuse herself because she does not know what a woman is and she's not a biologist, so she's out like it's only going to be an eight vote decision. Credit where it is due to The Atlantic Publication not exactly a right wing conservative rag, but they have a piece up today called the Liberal Misinformation Bubble about youth gender Medicine. It's written by Helen Lewis. Very lengthy piece, but this is important for people of the left, people that listen to NPR, people that apparently write the Scotis blog tweets, people that read The Atlantic, in the New York Times, in the Washington Post, and the Charlotte Observer. By the way, have you noticed the Observer isn't using the they them she like the pronoun stuff has gone from their their bios. I noticed that a couple of weeks ago. That's progressed. That's good. I applaud them for, you know, stepping back from the edge of the abyss. And so this is a good thing. To tell the liberal readers of the Atlantic, because we've all heard this argument. I've been and I've been arguing the transgender issue since HB two came along. I'd like, what is this about? And I was up in Asheville at the time. Got a lot of flak Ford, got called a whole bunch of names, But I don't care at this point. I like like people who resort to the name calling stuff don't want to address the merits of the argument. That's why they call people names. Because if you're actually trying to address the merits of the argument, I win. I generally don't hold opinions that I believe to be false. Most people don't. So if you are actually interested in debating and discussing an issue, if you are sticking to just the merits of the issue or the argument, then I'm pretty confident in the positions I hold. And that frustrates people. I get it. It frustrates people who they just you know, have a slogan that makes them feel like they're part of a group that they belong and so they just pop off with the slogan, whether it's you know, from the River to the Sea, or it's you know, would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter or trans daughter? Right Like, that's these are the things that people tell themselves because they are told by others that this is a cogent argument. And if you say these things, then you're part of the group. And that really is I think one of the unifying characteristics of a lot of our friends on the left that are you know, swapping out their cafeas today for some you know, uterus costume tomorrow and whatever. They just like just change the wardrobe, change the issue. They they I think in a lot of cases they are wrestling with a lack of purpose in their lives, a lack of meaning because they're political philosophy doesn't offer them anything, and so they take to the streets as these activists because it's the only thing that they feel like they belong to. They they're not getting meaning in their life from other things, from service, right they're not engaged in a civic enterprise of some kind or church right there. Maybe they've got broken bonds in the family unit, and so I think that they are drawn to these these rallies and the you know, these performances because they want to belong to something. And I offer in the spirit of Independence day, I would offer this, and I'm not being facetious or sarcastic. I am fluent in sarcasm, but I'm not being sarcastic. I would offer this, we could all all of us, we could all be together in one collective as Americans. Like, if you have to, if you have to feel like you belong to an organization right that you want meaning and that sort of thing, then view yourselves as Americans. That's like a very large organization to belong to. And it has been a force for good. That's not to say it's been perfect. It's a man made construct and as such, it's going to be fallible. It's going to make mistakes, it's going to do bad things because it's made up of people and that's what people do. But we're an idea. This nation is founded on ideas, and if you agree with these ideas, then be proud to be an American and be part of this collective. That doesn't mean you can't work for changes and improvements and that sort of thing. Again, as any human construct, it's going to need maintenance and repair and renovation. It's going to deteriorate in certain ways. But as far as you know, being a part of something bigger than yourselves. Be Americans, love the country, be a patriot. But that also means that you have to look at things sort of as they are now. If you don't agree with the ideas and the principles that we were founded on, then I don't want you to be part of my collective. Okay, like you can go someplace else, go to some other country that more aligns with your beliefs. That's totally fine, no harm, no foul. You go ahead and just head over to North Korea or someplace, or or Gaza, wherever you want to go. It's fine. But it also means that you know, seeing things as they are, as Russia would always say, is the mayor of Realville, that's where you live, and things as they are. And this is one of those things this transgender are that there are things that you cannot change, and you have to accept that a guy cannot become a woman and vice versa. And that's not to minimize the very real, you know, dysphoric feelings that people have or like these, this affliction that you are somehow in the wrong body, that's that's awful. I can i cannot imagine what that must feel like. But that doesn't mean that I have to go along with that which I know is not true. And so the way that they have manipulated the society is to manipulate the language, and that's why you get these terms like sex assigned at birth. That's a manipulation of the language in order to force the conversation into a place where they have an advantage. Much. It's like the you know, you have to allow the kid to transition or they'll go kill themselves, right, And that to me has always been a monstrous thing to say to parents because you then give them zero options. That's what you're doing. You're forcing the outcome. And now it turns out that's not true. It's not even true. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Here's an email from Monico says her friend still believes no one is doing gender reassignment surgeries on children. It's just not happening. And there are no young people who are coerced into sex changes that now regret it. It's all made up, That's what I mean. And I said this at the beginning of well not at the beginning, but when sort of this transanity stuff started like really going crazy, and people started pushing back harder and harder. This would have been probably about five years ago. I want to say, there's a writer. She's Irish, I believe she's in the UK though, and her name is Helen Joyce, and she's just been an absolute warrior on this issue. And she said something that has always stuck with me. She said, there are people who will never give this up. And they're not transgender themselves. They will never give this up because they have somebody in their life that they affirmed, like their kids, and they will be like that, you know, the Japanese soldier on the island that doesn't know the war is over. They will fight forever because to admit they are wrong on this would be an admission of their participation in some horrible acts we'll call them. They can't they can't do it. It would break them psychologically, right emotionally. So like this, this view will persist because people cannot give it up. I'm not saying that's Monica's friend here, I don't know, but there's this is the the there's a thought process that like though this isn't this isn't real. These are all just like right wing attacks and this is all just you know, fever dreams of the conservatives, but little by little, more and more. Right. This is the preference cascade. Once again. It is slowly at first, and then very quickly, all at once. That's how these things shift, That's how they happen. Slowly at first and then very quickly. Let me go over here and chat with Bill real quick. Hey, Bill, welcome to the sho Hey, thank you, Pete. I just wanted to see if there's any way to get a copy of your previous like five minutes ago dialogue with so many nuggets of wisdom and good linguistic proficiency. I loved that there were so many things, and if I were able to be in a situation where I could share or had the opportunity to stand up and talk, I would certainly use those. But on my stenographic skills are not such that I can take quick notes. No, I hear you. I don't either, So do you do you have a smartphone? I do? Okay, So you could go to a what you can go to? I'll just send you over to the petepod dot com. Go to that website. That's my website. You can go to that website. You can go to any podcast, listen to podcasts at all. I don't. Yeah, that's something super easy. Yeah, it's it's super easy. So whatever podcast platform that you want to use, whether it's you know, YouTube or uh Spotify or whatever whatever that's out there, there are a bunch of them. But if you go to the peetpod dot com, there'll be a big button that says subscribe, and then you just click on that and then the shows will come right Each hour is its own episode will go right to your smartphone and then you can listen to it, and you may and you could even probably take the audio file and slap it into like an AI like chat GPT and it probably would do a transcript for you. But yeah, but I don't. We don't have transcript service for the for the shows. But the easiest way to get a copy of it is on the podcast where where after the show's over, well, actually the second or yeah, so this hour will post after three o'clock. Okay, great. Also, I would like to highly recommend anybody that is up or wants to stay up to listen to it on WBT. The Our American Stories program is wonderful. I just got onto it a few months ago, and last night they had a wonderful segment by a historian about Teddy Roosevelt and how he worked to help protect the Jewish community. And they had a German anti Semite come over to give a speech and Teddy was asked to provide police security for him. So he handpicked a thirty policemen as he was police Commissioner of New York. He hand picked thirty. They were all Jewish, and he said that they had to show oh, very characteristic Jewish jewishness to be to qualify. So I thought that would that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. It's a great program and you could probably also listen once you get once you uh, once you get a podcast, you start listening to a podcast, you will be able to find so much content on the on the podcasting side, Like you'll be able to get that show and listen to all of the episodes because they'll all be on there on the podcast as well. Yeah, if you go to WBT dot com, you can find all of the programs that you hear on BT and you can subscribe to all of the podcasts for all of the shows there. Wonderful. Make sure the help I'll get my either my daughter or my grandson to to help me get on to that. If I can't do it myself, yeah, you. Should be able to. I got confidence in you. It's super simple, Bill. I appreciate the call. Have a great holiday weekend YouTube fee all right, take care, yes, sir, let me get to Ralph here. Hello, Ralph, Welcome to the show. Hey, appreciate you taking a call. First time call her into the show. Welcome. You were talking about the ladies saying that she couldn't believe that transgender surgeries and all that were happening on children. And I'm here to tell you as a former paramid well technically still certified in North Carolina, but as a paramedic they used to work with Atrium Health for over eight years. I can tell you with one confidence that Atrium themselves right there in Charlotte Downtown were performing genderous sons surgeries on children under the age of eighteen, and they had pediatric specialists that were working on the children before puberty. Yeah, so that's been going on for years. I remember when they first started that policy. When it comes through the hospital system, it was like setting the fire to the place. They had nurses, physicians, npspas, they had people quitting over that stuff. You know, it's just craziness. So that's all I had to say. I appreciate it. I appreciate the show, and y'all have a good afternoon, all. Right, buddy, you two. Thanks Ralph. I appreciate the insight. Yeah, Happy Independence state to you. Yeah. And the only thing you can do is tell people that it does happen. And then you get these reports that come out that verify. And again, just like with the you know the previous topic, like this is proof, you get the CIA now saying yes, these things that you were saying were happening, they were in fact happening. So Helen Lewis at The Atlantic says, for more than a decade, the strongest argument in favor of youth gender medicine is this, you have to allow the child to transition or they'll kill themselves, a scenario so awful that it's stifled any doubts or questions about puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. The same idea that the choice is transition or death appears in the arguments that were made by Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration solicitor general, who argued before the US Supreme Court last year Tennessee's law prohibiting the use of pubity blockers and cross sex hormones to treat miners with gender dysphoria, would, she said, increase the risk of suicide. But there's a huge problem with this emotive formulation. It's not true. When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the ACLU lawyer named Chase Strangio, that's a made up name. Chase is a transgender that changed their name to that. When sam Alito challenged Strangio on these claims during the oral arguments, Strangio made a startling admission. He conceded well, she conceded that there is no evidence to support the idea that medical this transition reduces adolescent suicide rates. But even then his admission did not register with the liberal justices when the Court voted six to three to uphold the Tennessee law. Sonya Sotomayora claimed in her descent that quote access to care can be a question of life or death. Even when they are told this, the liberal justices don't hear it. This is the bubble that the left is in on this issue. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. 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This piece by Helen Lewis at The Atlantic, She mentions a thing called zombie facts, popular soundbites that persist in public debate even when they have been repeatedly discredited zombie facts. Many liberals are unaware of these zombie facts regarding transgender procedures on kids because they're stuck in media bubbles in which well meaning commentators make confident assertions for youth gender medicine, claims from which its elite advocates have long since retreated. Perhaps the existence of this bubble should not be surprising. Many of the most fervent advocates of youth transition are also on record disparaging the idea that it should be debated at all. I've said this before. This goes back twenty years when I first started doubting the global warming. Now morphed into just you know, climate change, which is basically weather like, and I say, it's weather. I understand the climate changes. I understand man probably has a role in some of it. Can we actually change the entire climate of the planet. I don't think so. I think the I think the planet is pretty big, you know. That's my that's my understanding. It's a very very large entity. But when I started hearted hearing people on the global warming side say the science is settled and we shouldn't be platforming anybody any scientists that disagree. That was sort of the red pill moment for me, before we even use the term red pill, I was like, well, wait a minute, this guy is a credentialed scientist and he's disagreeing, and you're saying we should even listen to him. Why same thing happens in this debate. Chase Strangio, that ACLU lawyer who works for the country's best known free speech organization, once tweeted that she would like to scuttle Abigail Schreier's book called Irreversible Damage, A Skeptical Treatment of Youth gender Medicine. Strangeo declared, quote, stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is one hundred percent day hill I will die on. This is a lawyer for the ACLU, Marcy Bowers, the form of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH. You've heard that acronym, Marcy Bowers, who used to be the head of it. That's the most prominent organization for gender medicine providers. Bowers likened skepticism of child gender medicine to Holocaust denial, saying, quote, there are not two sides to this issue. Boasting about your unwillingness to listen to your opponent probably plays well in some crowds. But it left Chase Strangio badly exposed in front of the US Supreme Court, where it became clear that the conservative justices had read the most convincing critiques of hormones and blockers and they had some questions as a result. This is something else I always say people on the left because they are rarely challenged by media to defend their positions, and outside of a slogan here or there, they become intellectually flabby. They cannot defend themselves, they can't defend their arguments, they can't make logical, non emotive appeals because they don't have to. They just get to go, I'm for women's health, and the media is like, wink, we know that means abortion. The movement has spent the past decade telling gender non conforming children that anybody who tries to restrict access to puberty blockers and hormones is effectively trying to kill them, and this was false. This always was false, as the lawyer Strangio tacitly conceded in the questioning from sam Alito. But this, more importantly, this was also an irresponsible argument to be making or an accusation to be making after in restricted the use of puberty blockers. In twenty twenty, the government asked an expert psychologist, Lewis Applebee, not of the restaurant chain, to investigate whether the suicide rate for patients at the country's youth gender clinic rose dramatically as a result of the restricted use of puberty blockers. So it's been five years. Did the suicide rates go up? They did not? What does that tell you? And by the way, like this was obvious if you just applied some critical thinking to the matter. Because if the problem was that society wasn't affirming transgender people and that was what was driving them to suicide, then wouldn't we see suicide rates decline as transgenderism became more and more discussed and open and people were like, oh, we affirm you, we affirm you. Wouldn't we have seen a decline in the suicide rates? But we did not. When red states start talking about bands and doing bands on these types of procedures and hormone treatments and stuff, you usually hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical transition pathway are overwrought because all children get extensive personalized assessments before being prescribed blockers or hormones, and this is also false. Although the official standards of care recommend thorough assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe blockers on a first visit. And perhaps the greatest piece of misinformation believed by liberals is that the American standards of care are strongly evidence based. In fact, at this point, the fairest thing to say about the evidence surrounding medical transition for adolescence the so called Dutch protocol as opposed to talk therapy and other support. The best you can say. The fairest thing you could say about whether this is evidence base is that any evidence is weak and inconclusive. That's the fairest thing you can say about it. Consensus is not the same as evidence, and the consensus is politically influenced. Let me get Bud on real quick here. Hey, Bud, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on. I was listening and I've decided that suicide rates have increased. They've increased among the children who have had this surgery. What they didn't have a gender problem, they had an identity problem. Well, yeah, and they're told that in order to feel better about their body and the way they're feeling going through puberty, the way to feel better is to act like the other gender in a stereotypical fashion, which, like, that's not I don't see that as a pathway to mental health success, but I appreciate the call. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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Helen Lewis with a very important piece at The Atlantic talking about this media misinformation bubble that the Left is in regarding youth gender medicine. And she's talked, she goes through a number of these pieces of misinformation. She talks about another court case over banning hormone or puberty blockers and hormones. This one was out of Alabama. In this case revealed that WPATH members themselves had doubts about their own guidelines, but the specter of red state bands made them reluctant to break ranks. Again. There's a very lengthy piece. I'm giving you the highlights here well worth the read over the Atlantic. Yahoo has it published also outside of a paywall. The reliance on elite consensus over evidence helps make sense of Wpath's flatly hostile response to the CAST Report that was done in England, which commissioned systematic reviews and recommended extreme caution over the use of blockers and hormones. Right. The CAST report laid this all out, and this is what prompted the UK to retreat from the edge of the ABYSS. Because of Wpath's hostility, on the American left now believe that the CAST review has been discredited. That it hasn't, but that's what people on the left think. Advocates of youth gender medicine have reacted furiously to articles in the New York Times and elsewhere that take the CAST Report's conclusions seriously. Indeed, some people inside the information bubble appear to believe that if respectable publications would just stop writing about the story, then all doubts and questions would simply disappear. Just stop talking about it. Don't highlight that CAST report. It's been debunked. It hasn't. It hasn't. In the New York Times doing a story on it so now the problem is that you're platforming the Cast Report because they think the Cast Report is wrong. Can this misinformation bubble ever be burst? She asks. On the left, support for youth transition has been rolled together with other issue use such as police reform and climate activism, as a kind of super savior combo deal of correct opinions. The thirty three year old Democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani has made funding gender transition, including for minors, part of his pitch to be New York's mayor. But complicated issues deserve to be treated individually. You can criticize Israel, you can object to the militarization of America's police forces, and you can believe that climate change is real and yet still not support irreversible, experimental, unproven medical treatments on children. You don't have to take every one of the positions that the far left tells you to take. The Polarization of this issue in America has been deeply unhelpful for getting liberals to accept the sketchiness of the evidence she talks about. In twenty twenty three, she argued that the only way out of the culture War was for the American medical associations to commission reviews and carefully consider the evidence you think that's going to happen. These institutions have also been captured. Leor Suppier of the Conservative Manhattan Institute, who supports the bands on these treatments. He says that American medicine, though cannot be trusted to police itself at this point. Despite the concerted efforts to suppress the evidence, the picture on youth gender medicine has become clearer over the past decade. It's no humiliation to update our beliefs as a result. I regularly used to write that medical transition was quote life saving before I saw how limited the evidence on suicide actually was. And it took another court case brought by the British detransitioner Kira Bell for the writer here, Helen Lewis, for her to realize fully that puberty blockers were not what they were sold as they were sold as safe and reversible, that these treatments just gave patience some time to think, but in fact it was a one way ticket to full transition with physical changes that cannot be undone. Some advocates for the Dutch protocol as it's applied in the United States have staked their entire career and reputation on its safety and defectiveness. They have strong incentives not to concede the weakness of the evidence. And she concludes by saying, those of us who have been urging caution now know that many of our ostensible opponents had the same concerns. They just smothered them for political reasons. And that's at the core of this. These were political determinations, and we saw it in North Carolina. We saw it here in the city of Charlotte with the HB two state legislation, which was a response to what political considerations in Charlotte based on why do I say that? Remember the mayor, Jennifer Roberts, she knocked off Dan Claudefeld right, and he was appointed after Pat Cannon went to jail as mayor, and she needed to win the Democrat primary, and so she got this and she made these promises about transgender access to the public bathrooms, and that was the payoff. These were political considerations. Also, when gay marriage was legalized with the Bergefeld ruling, you had an entire industry that was organized around LGBT issues. And now the biggest issue was the gay marriage, and now that's settled, that's gone. So how do you keep your jobs? How do you keep the fundraising going right? Political considerations, that's what's been driving this the whole time, and it's been completely corrupted inside of the medical associations. It's a sad state of affairs, to say the least. All Right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.