While I understand Katie’s libertarianism, doctors also have ethical obligations to the patient. Cutting off a patient’s healthy arm because they want to is not “doing no harm,” it’s doing harm and it’s acquiescing to a delusion. Doctors will lose their license if they decide to just maintain addicts on oxycodone. Doctors are not supposed to do things that are inherently unethical because the patient insists on it.
There's a fairly compelling argument which goes like this: if one says that having a mental illness should preclude a person from making the decision to alter their healthy body because they cannot meaningfully consent, the very fact that a person would want to slice parts off their healthy body proves they are too mentally unwell to make such a decision in the first place. One hears all the time that there are people who are completely mentally healthy apart from this one thing, and therefore it makes therapeutic sense to treat this one thing, but I wonder how much truth there really is to this. Denial and avoidance are very potent and frequent sources of neurosis and mental suffering. It cannot really make therapeutic sense to surgically validate denial rather than encouraging acceptance.
That's an interesting point, but I think the difference is twofold. Firstly, it would be really hard to enforce the banning of such practices without severely impingeing on the civil liberties of basically the whole population. And just because it's not possible to stop people harming themselves by making poor lifestyle choices, that doesn't mean we should allow entirely preventable and radical forms of self harm. Secondly, the types of self harm you are describing tend to be incremental and only harmful after long-term excessive use, and are therefore to a certain extent reversible; whilst conversely, a major surgery that removes a whole limb is a permanent, instant and extremely radical physical change. So I think essentially this is comparing apples to oranges.
Mental illness is weird. You can be hearing voices but still get a nobel (John Forbes Nash, though he was largely under control for that work). But if someone claims they are an amputee in a non-amputee, that is a delusion, and you should not humor an illusion. If someone wants their healthy arm cut off, they are clearly mentally unwell. They are not “trapped in the wrong body.” If you are a religious person, you might say God doesn’t make mistakes. If you are purely materialist in your understanding of the universe, the universe doesn’t work like that. I do not think we can accept that a person has an amputee soul in a normal body. Most amputees don’t want to be amputees.
Can you 100% stop people from doing what they are determined to do? You can’t 100% prevent suicide, but I don’t think we should encourage it, and the goings on in Canada have proven many of the opponents of assisted suicide correct. Short of long term commitment, no. And even long term commitment can’t last forever. But you can make it clear that any doctor who gives into this delusion agrees to amputate, and any medical professional involved in this, loses his or her license and potential faces assault charges. It sounds paternalistic, because it is. But is someone is an existential danger to themselves, you have to be a bit paternalistic.
Is there anything you can recommend I read about what you say about assisted dying in Canada? I’m in UK so this of particular interest to me right now.)
The Canadian healthcare system is under a lot of strain. Unlike the UK, which has both the NHS but allows a private insurance and health care system, Canada does not allow the latter. Canadians of means coming to the US for faster medical care is not uncommon. Last couple of years, there have been some pretty egregious stories, such as euthanasia as an answer for treatable, non terminal conditions and poverty. It was going to be expanded to include minors, but that was put on hold (by Trudeau, I believe). One example - a disabled veteran reached out for information about getting a wheelchair ramp, and was offered information for “Medical assistance in dying.” Something like 4.7% of Canadian deaths are assisted suicide. I generally oppose assisted suicide, but it’s fair to point out that the Canadian situation seems to be an outlier compared to continental Europe. There have been some egregious cases in the Netherlands, but Canada seems a difference in kind.
You might be interested in March 2021 book, "The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die", by Katie Engelhart. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53138041-the-inevitable (also, I've been collecting articles and links related to hospice care and right-to-die for a few years - mostly U.S. focus. DM me if you'd like a list)
Yeah, this was the exact counterpoint that was running through my head. Wanting that surgery precludes you from being mentally sound enough to get that surgery.
Do no harm is something that appears to have been completely thrown out the window with trans. Especially with trans kids. I don't know when this happened
I wouldn't say completely thrown out the window. Rank and file doctors were following guidance from those who they should have been able to look to for guidance, such as the AAP. Once there is an approved treatment, not providing it is harmful. The issue is that this treatment never should have been approved to the level it was with the information available.
I realize it wasn't the focus of their conversation (Katie said "let's not get bogged down in this", ten minutes in 😆) but there is also a really significant distinction between discussing what the state should permit people to do to their own bodies versus talking about whether people *ought* to make certain kinds of decisions about their bodies. The latter is a much tougher row to hoe, but is much more interesting from an ethics perspective. Even so, I agree with you here: the state licenses doctors under the principle of "do no harm", so they should...not harm healthy tissue and treat the psychological malady instead.
Why do you, or really anyone including medical professionals, havr the authority to tell a person that cutting off a limb is harmful to them? Without recourse to common sense platitudes or reference to a norm, or for that matter a naturalistic fallacy, how can you assert any given medical procedure is harmful or helpful?
At a certain point you are so deep in postmodern nonsense that it’s impossible to discuss things. Who am I to say that having an in tact, fully functioning body is better than having a mutilated and dysfunctional one? A person with a brain, that’s who. Like, come on.
YES. You hear this about all sorts of disabilities, partcularly autism. If you dare to suggest that a human being would be better off without autism than with it, you are promptly accused of wanting to murder all autistic people. Ai yai yai.
The “social model of disability” is probably second only to gender identity in the goofiest fucking idea contest of the last few decades. No, it’s not a problem to be blind only because “the world isn’t set up for blind people.” It’s a problem because Homo sapiens is a visual species. Yes, we can and should make some accommodations for blind people, but it is literally impossible to fashion a society in which being blind is not a substantial deficit. You would need to go live among moles or deep-sea fish. Yes, as a human being, it is unequivocally better to be able to see than to not be able to see, and we should be making every effort to prevent and cure the malfunctions of the body that cause these deficits. It is LUDICROUS to suggest otherwise.
Removing a healthy limb is a harmful, antisocial act because:
1. It uses medical resources that are not unlimited. Nurses are stretched to the limit without making them take care of people who have mutilated themselves. Operating room staff are also busy: every medically unnecessary treatment is delaying life saving care for others.
2. People who remove healthy body parts become a burden on society. Their usefulness is curtailed, and instead of being productive members of society they instead suck up resources.
3. A medical procedure is deemed helpful if it helps to improve that persons physical functioning and/or extend their life.
People with mental illness are also a burden to society. There have resources used on them. They need their mental health improved. Just because their illness and suffering doesn't seem tangible, doesn't mean it isn't there
No one is arguing people suffering from sex dysphoria shouldn't receive help, we're saying that what passes for help is actually harm. People with sex dysphoria deserve the expensive psychological resources it takes to get to the root of the dysphoria, not quick "fixes" that get them to shut up and be success stories as quickly as possible.
I was talking about body dysmorphia, not gender dysphoria, although i am sure sometimes they overlap.
I don't know if psychological treatment is always effective for these cases. If i am mentally ill, I'd like my doctor to try anything that could help, not just treatments they prefer for political or whatever reasons
Then we have a fundamental disagreement. I don't think it's appropriate to enable delusional thoughts that one's body is the "wrong" sex or has the "wrong" number of limbs with surgery.
I've only skimmed it, but it seems that only Hans actually had surgery. And as Robert Smith says "If he wasn't satisfied with it would he admit it..." Also, that was a long time ago. Has there been any follow up with Hans?
imagine an incredibly wealthy individual who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars pays a surgeon $5 million to cut off his leg for whatever reason. this person has sufficient financial means to pay for servants to care for them after losing their limb. your argument would not hold for them, would it?
Well, cutting off a healthy limb creates a disability where none existed before. In the case of lower extremity amputation, it usually means becoming reliant on a wheelchair or prosthetic limb (which, in some cases, people are not able to use without substantial issues). In the case of upper extremity amputation, it means losing your ability to bilaterally manipulate objects (unless you can afford an extremely expensive and fancy prosthetic, and assuming it functions well with your body).
I think that people look at Paralympic athletes and assume that people with amputations are perfectly fine once they are fitted with their running blade, but that’s just not the case for a lot of normal people. We have made great strides in what is possible for people and what prosthetics can achieve, but there is still a lot of prosthetic failures too.
And we are not even getting into chronic phantom pain or pressure wounds here. There are substantial potential medical issues that come from amputation, which is why it should be only done when it is necessary.
Similarly, we have made incredible strides in diabetes treatment and dialysis for kidney failure. Organ transplants require lifelong immunosuppression, except in the rare hypothetical case you have an identical twin, and there is a shortage of demand relative to supply. Even in a legalized organ market, which I think could be an option, on the margins, that would really only work for livers and kidneys, and we would still have insufficient organs. There are lot of people who can’t get in transplant lists because they have other issues, so the transplant would be a waste. Bio-identical artificial organs are no longer pure science fiction, but still many years in the future. In all of these cases, avoiding these conditions is still 1000x more preferable.
For sure. There’s a difference between supporting someone who’s lost a limb through illness or accident vs. enabling someone to create a disability by choice. The first is about accommodation, the second imposes new burdens on systems/people who never consented to them.
When someone elects to disable themselves, they’re not just dealing with personal consequences. They’re potentially creating financial strain (insurance, public health resources, long-term disability care...) and pulling others, including family and medical staff, into a role of caregiver for a problem that they CHOSE to make. Which is just offloading the cost of a personal decision onto everyone else.
Are you suggesting we do away with all medicine because of some post-modernist idea that everything is subjective? Medical norms are based on medical research that shows that certain treatments are affective against certain disorders - that's how we can assert that a medical treatment is helpful or harmful.
Ethics come into play in many situations, particularly when a psychological issue is manifesting, but it doesn't mean we can't determine when a medical procedure - especially to address a psychological issue - is helpful or harmful. I can't believe anyone would have to say that out loud, it's so obvious.
Do you want to do away with cancer treatment? Doctors? Hospitals? Let's just go back to the paleolithic era, why don't we.
You're misunderstanding me. I have no argument nor even interest in this particular issue. I'm more fascinated epistemically at the peanut gallery and commentariat; why is it that certain people have beliefs about something being beneficial or not and how does that hinge upon contingencies and/or moral presuppositions.
To be clear, my answer to the question "what SHOULD be done with someone who wants to cut their leg off?" is simple: laugh at them.
That's my question too. I bet it's mostly naturalistic fallacy. People don't take incurable mental illness seriously. As if any if us lives naturally anyway
Medical professionals have the authority to do it because we are granted it by medical licensing laws. When you use the legal framework of medicine, it means that certain individuals are licensed to render opinions on what is and is not a medical condition, who does and does not have that condition, and how to treat that condition. Practicing medicine without a license is a crime for which you can be arrested, and people occasionally are.
You could make a separate argument about whether someone should be able to do a DIY amputation at home without professionalized medicine, but this is obviously unsafe. To do it safely in the OR necessarily involves a variety of licensed professionals and healthcare facilities and products.
As a citizen without a medical license, you do not have the legal right to decide that you have an infection and put yourself on penicillin. You do not have the right to decide that you are having a stroke and give yourself tPA. And so on and so on.
That is an internally consistent view, but it is a very unusual one. Most doctors would feel perfectly comfortable refusing to provide or strongly urging against highly toxic treatment (invasive surgery, chemotherapy, others) if they felt the risks clearly outweighed the benefits. Indeed, this is usually considered a core responsibility of a physician. People who want clearly harmful treatment are often mistaken about the facts and come to regret their choice in time.
Likewise, assisted suicide is illegal in most places, and even where it is legal (e.g. Canada), many doctors refuse to provide that service because they believe it is morally wrong.
IIndividualism has its limits. While everyone has to come to their own conclusions about what is right, if you come to a conclusion that the entire human race disagrees with, it's highly likely you're just wrong, and you'd need a very compelling reason to think otherwise.
It seems to me the reason, at least the reason we see throughout the comments here, is a confusion of is and ought, an extension of the modal case to the fringes, and a refusal to contemplate extreme thought experiments (e.g. "if a person absolutely and necessarily will kill himself if a doctor doesn't remove a perfectly functioning limb, should the doctor remove it?" is conflated with "should a doctor remove a perfectly functioning limb in most cases?").
What interests me is why these fallacies are common. I think it's because of normative thinking--there is an urge to tell others in all cases what they should do regardless of context. This is a moralizing imposition you see on the left, on the right, and indeed even among the heterodox.
I happen to agree with you on the legal question, but this kind of personal libertarianism has always been a fringe view. I don't think it's fair to call the alternative -- paternalism -- a fallacy. There is no logical problem with believing that individuals cannot be trusted with autonomy when they veer well outside social norms.
if their eyes were causing them incredible pain, possibly yes. there are contingencies that are not being considered in this conversation, and thus my position is being confused for a relativistic worldview. it's honestly quite fascinating to see the slides in logic in these comments.
I think if Katie and Julie had children they would feel more upset about the ways that TRAs do outreach to children.
For more than a week now, the TV screens in the hallway of my daughter’s middle school have been displaying pictures of “LGBTQ+ Cartoon Characters.” The youngest kids in that building are 11.
The T is completely responsible for shit like this; LGBs would have never.
I think that's a really interesting point. 11 may be fair depending on development but younger than that there are no LGB children. A lesbian 7 year old is a stupid concept as is a straight 7 year old.
I'm no expert but I feel like prior to the T taking over everything the focus was on children accepting the concept of a gay/lesbian adult couple which makes sense as you can draw some direct benefit from that.
100%. I’m old enough to remember when being anti-gay was socially acceptable. Then there was a beautiful period in the 90s and early 2000s when we as a society had broad tolerance for Gay. But the material aimed at kids was about teaching them to accept *adult* gay people — Heather Has Two Mommies, etc. There was barely any material that aimed to show representations of gay *kids*. Which is understandable because sexual orientation may not make itself known until sexual desire appears. But T dogma insists that even toddlers can be trans. So it makes sense they’d create T propaganda aimed at children.
I was a gay 5 year old before I had the words to articulate it. I just knew I felt differently about boys than I felt about girls, and that I needed to keep that part of me buried deep inside. You certainly are no expert, but I guess that doesn’t stop you from commenting on things you know nothing about.
Yeah I’m gay and realised I was different that way from a young age. Where I feel different on this issue overall is that I’ve never felt the need to see myself represented in media, at school, etc and sometimes find it a little embarrassing even. I’m not saying gay people should not be represented BTW.
I have a distinct memory of sitting next to a boy on my bus in kindergarten and feeling a tremendous desire to be close to him and a distinct liking of him. Not “sexual” but certainly a crush and wholly different than the feelings of closeness and liking I had for my first kindergarten friend, a girl.
I was strangely attracted to closeted and gay coded men way before puberty. I knew before I even knew what it was I liked about them. It’s not an irrelevant topic to their lives, as many of us were being called fxxxxxt daily, before 11.
Thanks for revisiting the grooming gang story with Julie. The episode with Jesse on that issue was so weird to me— not because of the “rep!” jokes, but more because his argument was so incoherent to me— he seemed to be saying it didn’t matter and Elon shouldn’t be talking about it because it was so long ago, while also acknowledging that very little had been done in the way of accountability. Elon has gone off his rocker in many ways, but this was one he got right.
Other than whipping up the far right & their odious motivations, what has he actually done.
If you actually listens to the victims & those who’ve done proper investigations, they’ve been livid at the way it’s been politicised.
There’s a lot of people who’ve dedicated years to this & it’s grossly offensive to pretend anything is only happening because Elon saw an opportunity to push his agenda.
Listening to Julie, it sounds like she’s more livid that so little has been done, and that most of the rapists and abusers are still free, and that it’s great that the UK is now investigating this in a more serious way.
This is identical to Trump executive-ordering the trans issues. He could give a flying eff about this population, but it would be odd to go out of your way to criticize him for doing it if you are grateful that anything was done at all because it was such an extreme crisis. (And there are so many other reasons to criticize him, criticize the handling of this issue by others, etc.)
Would you rather it be politicized, as it has been, or swept under the rug, as it was for decades?
I would have preferred the police do their jobs and not give a lick about being called racist but here we are.
It was an immense failure to protect innocent children. That is, unfortunately for some, quite the story and an injustice that needs to be corrected in full. I would also love to see some of the underlying issues that lead to such a problem be dealt with harshly, but I doubt that will happen.
I understand that some people don’t like Musk. I think in this case the results are all that matters.
I’ve been listening to Ghosts of the Ostfront by Dan Carlin. He brought up a quote attributed to Churchill in regards to Hitler declaring war on the Soviets.
It went something like, “If the Nazis invaded Hell itself, I’d at least give an honorable mention to the Devil in the commons.” Something like that.
Point is, you seem to dislike Musk a lot. I wouldn’t let that color your view of how one of the most powerful men in the world can put pressure and light on this for a favorable outcome.
I confess that I don’t know what changes have been made in the last few years.
But I know it was ignored for decades and I highly doubt all the work that could be done still is being done.
If it is true that amnesty was given and these men are still walking around without a care in the world and no consequences for their horrific actions, that is a problem.
Just cuz somebody pulled the corner of the rug up and cleaned out a bit of what was under there doesn’t mean the problem has been solved or justice has been achieved.
But do you really want to say he only cares about race in this situation? Could he not be a dickhead and also care about rape of children in general?
And Jess Phillips is an unprincipled coward. She's part of the problem, and the only fucking time she's ever closed her gob in her whole life was when she had the chance to condemn the rape gangs and decided that she'd rather keep her seat because her constituency is filled with immigrants she couldn't trust.
Good to know you wouldn’t deliberately lie and wouldn’t slander people 🤷🏼♂️.
Musk’s a piece of shit. If you want to pretend otherwise that’s your business.
Also, to say Phillips hasn’t‘ ‘condemned the rape gangs’ is simply false.
She may not have called for a national inquiry, but then as David Aaronovitch pointed out neither was Casey until her recent review.
As for her being a ‘coward’ you might want to get a handle on the level of abuse she received from parts of her own constituency.
Again, it’s pretty obvious that many of the loudest voices are unserious people who if the perpetrators were Asian & the victims weren’t white couldn’t give two shits.
A lot of people could do with listening to the actual victims who have repeatedly asked that it not be politicised.
People are not always going to say things is precisely the way you want them to.
You cannot possibly believe that Jesse Singal doesn’t care about girls being raped. You are just irritated that he didn’t denounce it in exactly the way you wanted to hear.
Which, fine, but taking offense where none is meant is not a good way to go through life.
Jessie basically said that there is no issue anymore and no further investigation had to be done. So yes, I disagree with that I don’t consider that taking offense.
I don’t think Jesse is evil. Not at all. But it was clear he was prepared to downplay the significance of the ongoing story because he hated the person(people?) pushing it. And, to be fair to him, I think his particular aversions are so strongly felt that he honestly believed in this stance and probably still does.
“In January, Elon Musk targeted our country’s failings when he posted on X that: “[Keir] Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years (2008-2013)”, demanding that he “face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain”. It was in response to Jess Phillips’ remarkable decision, as minister for the safeguarding of women, to reject a national public inquiry into the grooming of children in Oldham.
Whatever his motivation, Musk was right in his analysis. This is a scandal that has been swept under the carpet for years. I’ve been following grooming cases for almost my whole career. Over the decades, a succession of inquiries and reports has indicated the nature and scale of the catastrophe, yet nothing has been done to address the underlying problem, let alone fix it.”
I stick to my original statement that the original episode was a strange one, and that I’m glad to see the issue revisited here. I respect Jesse a lot, and Elon very little these days. But the take in the episode was off, and I’m glad BarPod circled back.
But "very little has been done" is not true. There were massive changes in child protection and there were hundreds of convictions. Julie Bindel may be correct to argue that the scale of the problem is so enormous that system-wide reform is too little, but that does not justify Americans who know nothing about what has happened trying to turn this into a British pizzagate. At the very least, I would like the Americans raising the issue to compare safeguarding in the UK with safeguarding in the US. Listening to the Loudon county story on Barpod just made me think "this is how things used to be here".
TBF to JB the sense I got, knowing her politics, is that she’s unlikely to have any time for Musk, but that she wanted to keep the focus on how the girls had been failed. If the story just becomes ‘Musk is just exploiting this for racist ends’ even if that is true, that it takes the focus away from the victims & obvious state failure.
I think this is what's so frustrating about this from a European perspective.
The story has never not been in the news and current affairs media generally. Not least because it became such a far right talking point among the likes of Yaxley Lennon, the collapse of trials and ongoing public dissatisfaction with how the UK police investigate themselves.
There is a race element in this. But each time enquiries have looked closely at what happened, the massive thing that stand out is that coercion of this kind is really hard to investigate and prove.
For a start, very few victims report. (They're being coerced). In fact those victims will often protect their abusers. (They're being coerced).
When the crime is widespread and the police are deeply distrusted by the community, getting timely prosecutions is very very hard.
Add to that, a police culture of not caring about marginalised victims as many victims from very dysfunctional families and you have a recipe for disaster.
Yes, a concern about appearing racist was found, but it's one thing on a long list.
I work in safeguarding in the UK and while it’s true some victims are reluctant to report, I know of plenty who are crying out for help and are still being let down now. It’s an easy out for professionals to say that the girls won’t speak up, that’s not the issue.
Musk wasn't "talking about it", he was posting incoherent conspiratorial nonsense. Katie read some of that nonsense on this episode, then Bindel failed to condemn it and went off on her own tangent.
(Edit: re "her own tangent". Look, Bindel has done infinitely more tangible good on this issue than probably anyone commenting here, but she's not a good or sober advocate in this kind of outlet)
I'm all for bodily autonomy, but I think elective body modification should be self-funded, whether it's an unwanted limb or an inconvenient breast. In the U.S. many "gender affirming" treatments are paid for by government insurance programs, and others are paid for by all of us who have health insurance. The trend is toward "embodiment goals" rather than medical necessity, and achieving those goals should be funded by those who have them.
There's no reason that the public should pay for cosmetic surgery. Would we give a woman a boob job because her small breasts make her feel bad? Should the taxpayers foot the bill?
Exactly, if they have that violent of body dysmorphia then one boob job will not cure her. My aunt had two or three boob jobs and removals, she could afford it but it never made her happy with her body.
If someone wants to kill herself over a boob job, she clearly has underlying issues and is not a suitable candidate for the procedure in the first place.
Totally, insurance won't cover weight loss drugs for people who are morbidly obese. I know a woman on medicaid and is 500 pounds and insurance won't help with that. I have HMO with a 5k co-pay so the idea people have private insurance pay for anything cosmetic makes me mad.
It was really nice to hear from Julie in her capacity as someone who worked as a reporter for years on the so called “grooming gangs” story. She really provided a lot of background and context on this issue. I understand Jesse’s hatred of Elon Musk, but it seems like that clouded his ability to report on this story clearly and empathetically, which was, in my opinion, necessary for a story of this nature. Kudos to the podcast for featuring a guest who articulated her disagreement with Jesse’s coverage, as not every show would be willing to do that.
Also, I enjoyed the conversation between Katie and Julie in the beginning of the episode, including the discussion of the way their views are not aligned with each other on various issues. I don’t necessarily want this to become a “debate me bro” podcast, but it’s interesting to hear people engage in a civil discussion of complex issues rather than people just nodding their heads in agreement with one another.
What I like about Julie B is that even if I disagree with her on certain issues, I have to acknowledge that she has a point and her arguments are solid. She’s done her homework - she had to, in order to get this far.
I agree with Bendel, not Katie. The body should not be a work place. Katie thinks people should be able to sell their organs. I just can’t. If this were allowed eventually some poor people would sell their life - all their organs - to pay for their family. Organ Harvesting is not a regulated industry I would want to encourage for harm reduction.
Honestly I feel like Katie has a huge blind spot about things that don’t directly affect her. Katie is never going to need a surrogate or be one herself, so she doesn’t care about regulating surrogacy. Katie is never going to prostitute herself or patronize a prostitute, so she doesn’t care about if it’s legalized/criminalized. She’s never going to be in the position of being so poor she needs to sell an organ, so who cares if we financially incentivize people to do so? Frankly if trans activists hadn’t tried to blow up her life she might not care as much as she does about trans issues.
My cousin's wife delivered 5 babies as a surrogate (2 sets of twins and one single birth). They also have 4 children of their own. Supposedly she just "loves being pregnant." I personally think no woman would put her body through that for others if there wasn't a financial need.
We're not close, but I can't imagine that didn't put a strain on their marriage. However if it's, as I suspect, due to financial need, he would be hard pressed to legitimately object.
I find the idea of poor people resorting to degrading themselves or giving up parts of their body in order to get by bleak and dystopian. I want to live in a society where the way out of poverty is to get a decent job or start a business, with resources to give people the skills to do either, and social support for those who are unable to work. Bodily integrity should be just as important for the poor as it is for the middle and upper classes.
Case-by-case is a perfectly legit way to decide whether to use wrong-sex pronouns. Using them is participating in a polite fiction, and most of us are willing to participate in polite fictions sometimes when we like or respect someone. We make *those* decisions in the moment, not according to some hard-and-fast inner principle.
The first example that comes to my mind is a good friend who has a quite startling facial disfigurement. Anyone who meets her for the first time stares and stares. 👀 But she and I never discuss it unless she brings it up, even when it would be relevant to the convo (say, if we’re talking about makeup.) When we hang out, I just look at her good eye and kind of block out the rest; it became easy pretty quickly. And if she comes up in conversation with mutual friends, none of us talks about her face behind her back. It’s a taboo topic; we all basically pretend we don’t notice it. Whereas if she were an absolute asshole, I would probably gossip a little about her disfigurement behind her back. (I’m just being honest! 🤷🏻♀️)
This isn’t a perfect analogy for me because I would feel more guilty gossiping about a deformed prick than I would “misgendering” a trans-identified man. For me personally, pretending someone is the opposite sex is such an enormous fiction that there’s almost no one for whom I’d participate in that game. But I’m just saying I think it’s perfectly fair that people treat wrong-sex pronouns as they’d treat any other polite fiction. Most of us are not polite to everyone.
I also do case by case for pronouns in private (I comply in public, mostly due to fear of reprisal), and am fine with others doing this too so long as it is not obscuring important information (e.g. “Women rapes 10” headlines, where a trans woman is the perpetrator) or making a narrative impossible to follow (see people switching between she and they pronouns regarding a single person).
I take your point about the analogy you provided (and your acknowledgment that it’s not a perfect one), but I think the major sticking point for me is 1) trans people chose to do this, while your friend did not choose to become disfigured (I assume!) and 2) your friend is not demanding that you call her non-disfigured every time you are speaking about her, even when she is not there, or else she’ll ruin your social standing.
I think not bringing something up out of politeness isn’t the same as forcing people to use your pronouns for fear of punishment.
Though, regarding my point 1, I have to admit that given the many people who started these treatments before they were able to meaningfully consent, perhaps this is something I should regard as out of their control too. It’s definitely a complicated issue.
I don't think these are very similar situations. Unless she thinks she's a ravishing beauty, you aren't playing along with a delusion or a lie in order to be respectful.
With rare exceptions, I don't feel qualified to judge whether someone is a good or bad person, but I generally know who is male and who is female, and that's how I decide how to refer to a person. If it makes me uncomfortable, because the person is either well-loved or well-disguised, I'll just try to avoid using any pronouns at all.
There aren't many podcasts I like, and there are only two I pay for. So I look forward to barpod which is almost always fun.
But Julie Bindel ... fuck. It's not even that I disagree with every point she makes, but she literally hates men and in the end that is what it's all about for her. That's what drives all her thinking.
And the particular thinking it drives has a sort of revolutionary character. It's not stupid, but it is nuance free in the end, and very like I imagine the way Castro or Mao might have thought in terms of cognitive style. There's a lot of *certainty* and it all goes really very badly when such people actually get any power.
I don't like listening to her. She'd do something terrible to me if she could, and call it the revolution. So she can Fuck off, I'm 5 mins in but I'll just go without this week, thanks all the same.
You know, not watching the episode and moving on instead of whining in the comments IS an option. I'm personally not fond of Brad Polombo, but I recognize the value of being exposed to viewpoints different from my own. And it's not like this is a whole episode of Katie blowing smoke up Bindel's ass, she challenges her on a lot of things, but in a respectful, even-handed way.
You know, ignoring that comment was an option for you as well. We all have a right to express our opinions of episodes here, not just people you agree with.
Lmao it's not his "opinion" of the episode, because he admitted he didn't watch it. It's his opinion of the guest, the title, and the first three minutes.
What, does Brad Palombo write about his contempt for women? I missed that about him. Julie on the other hand is very hard to miss here in the UK. She publishes at scale.
I never said he did. I disagree with him on some things, and his personality type isn't my favorite. I can see how Bindel's rhetoric isn't easy listening if you're male, and that's understandable. But Bindel is one person on a podcast, whereas there are men out there with way nastier opinions of women in actual positions of political power throughout the world. So forgive me for breaking out the world's smallest violin every time a man's feelings are hurt by a radical feminist online.
So, Donald Trump is OK because ... Stalin existed? That doesn't make a lot of sense you know, but OK, there it is. I suppose this isn't a peer review process.
I mean the thing is that there are men who do absolutely terrible things, not only to women but to other men. They don't just talk about it, they really do put people in camps. Feminism is a moral argument. It's not, for example, an army. So the success of feminism depends on us all agreeing at the outset that we'll accept the best moral argument for how to do things. That's quite a new idea for how to run a society. If you want to just abandon that basic idea ... we probably won't end up with Julie Bindel in charge.
Show me where I said something was "okay" just because it's not as bad as something else. My purpose in saying "there are men out there with way nastier opinions of women in actual positions of political power," was to point out that your reaction is not proportionate to the transgression. Donald Trump is not "okay," because Stalin is worse, but Donald Trump also isn't Stalin, or even comparable to Stalin. I could just as easily use your own comparison against you: if misogyny is to misandry what Stalin is to Trump, then you're basically arguing that Trump and Stalin are equally bad.
It's idiotic to try and categorized things into a binary of "okay" and "not okay." Misogyny is the world's oldest form of bigotry. Misandry is a reaction to that. Are both bad on some level? Yes. But one is a systemic problem directly responsible for physiological harm on a massive scale, and the other is callous and rude. This isn't even a Stalin vs. Trump situation, it's more like Stalin vs. Lauren Boebert.
The discussion of the Ukrainian hair tradition and trade was telling: she has contempt for both. This isn't a principled thinker, this is someone who looks down on lifestyles and cultural practices that are not congruent with her own misanthropic lesbianism. Which is fine, it makes her very entertaining, but it also makes her very unserious.
Second wave feminists are often conflationary when it comes to 'agency' and 'power' within patriarchy. Men and women are both socialized from an early age into strict gender roles, one of which confers far more power than the other. Intuitively, one wants to think that power translates 1:1 with agency, but most men under patriarchy possess very little agency, particularly in moving outside of whichever expectations are assigned to them.
She has a lot in common with the old 1970s sexist/racist types that she reacted against. I saw or read a thing about her early life. But she strikes me as having kind of a low opinion of women too actually. She sees them very much as victims. On the other hand, she does spend her life surrounded by prostitution and domestic violence. That's not going to exult your opinion of people. I agree she's not a thinker with consistent views; she's anti-trans, because she can see there are obvious sex differences. Yet elsewhere she also insisted that testosterone isn't an important driver of violent behaviour in men, which for some reason she felt qualified to write about in public. Those ideas seem contradictory.
What I think is that she has a virulent bigotry towards men, and she is able to get away with that in the present cultural moment. But it's not any different to any other form of bigotedness against any other group at any other time. It's the same mentality regardless of who it's directed against or why.
She strikes me very much as a paternalistic middle class Brit, which I sadly had much exposure to when living in England. Her inconsistencies and bad logic go unchecked because of her socioeconomic and gender privilege. It's kind of amusing, the irony.
To be fair she has a working class origin, meaning blue collar. And I'm sure she was badly treated by men. That's what it was like, at least that's what it's like on TV. I wouldn't want to have grown up poor in a northern English town in the 60s or 70's, and I probably would have made less of myself than she has. But the point remains. And her peers tend to be like you describe.
She’s been poorly treated by men, and is surrounded by women who have been poorly treated by men. And she does not have positive experiences of men to round out her view.
Yes I agree. But very many or most of us have bad experiences of the opposite sex, or a parent of the opposite sex, or grew up with sexism or whatever. She really does have contempt for us men, and not just when she's cut up in traffic or something, it's an ideology. Whatever never mind I'm just pissed off I didn't to hear about something funny on my walk.
I'm only up to the abortion section, and I'm not familiar with her work, but what has she said that leads you to believe she hates men to such a degree she'd pose a danger?
When someone talks like that about blacks, everyone assumes they are just racist, including other racists. Those other racists might be inclined to run cover for their fellow traveler, but none of them would have any delusions that the guy they're defending just has a very specific hatred of black criminals while being perfectly fine with the average black.
I suspect you're going to tell me this is somehow different, but I also suspect you have no delusions that Bindel is perfectly fine with the average man.
If your take away from all this is that the really important issue is Julie Bindel’s supposed hatred of da menz m, then so be it.
Her life long work against male violence stands on its own merits. If you want to think of her as simply the equivalent of a racist, well we’re all entitled to our opinions.
Cait, unfamiliar with her work, asked what she'd said that lead one to believe she hated men, and I answered the question. I understand that you might find it politically convenient for the question to go unanswered, but it's not like I have dragged us off topic, and you can hardly tell me that an article titled Why I Hate Men is an unreasonable answer to that question.
This is a situation where group A treated group B like property for thousands of years. Are all individuals in group A responsible for those injustices? No. But I also wouldn't fault group B for feeling a little resentful about that, especially when in some parts of the world, group A STILL treats group B like property. Also, I think Bindel often says she "hates men" in headlines and such to grab people's attention, not because she genuinely thinks every man on Earth is personally responsible for every injustice committed by men as a class. And the problem with the "not all men" trope is that NO man thinks he's one of the bad ones. Obviously it's not healthy to walk around with collective guilt, but maybe instead of throwing a tantrum every time a woman complains about men, guys should take a few seconds to reflect and think, "Hmm, what can I personally do to make the world a slightly better place, so women don't feel this way?" No human being is perfect, that includes women. There are things women can do to improve the world for other women and even for men, too.
Basically, context matters. Judging people based on their race is racism regardless of the direction it's going in, but context does matter when it comes to understanding the motivations of racism in different instances. The same applies for sexism.
Her material is very widely available. She's said many things that indicate this over many years. I don't hugely want to litigate Julie Bindel or discuss feminism. I'm just simply not interested in listening to her for fun, nor frankly am I thrilled about contributing to her income.
wikipedia says "Radical feminists assert that global society functions as a patriarchy in which the class of men are the oppressors of the class of women" that's an analysis that clearly relates directly to radical socialist or marxist thought. Marxist feminism and radical feminism aren't the same but they do share a conceptual framework and intellectual history.
But actually I was drawing a psychological parallel. Bindel specifically has a hard-core revolutionary ideology that she never deviates from over many decades, despite changing circumstances, and which demonises some other group she'd like to overthrow (even though it's not clear they are even in power actually). It's based on sex rather than an economic class, but so what.
The comparison works rather well. In practical terms, I think yes Bindel might well mistreat people if she got into power like Castro or Mao. The chance is high. But she never will of course.
If this kind of thinking is unfamiliar to you, perhaps that's about you not me.
Well, I'm not talking about anyone or anything else but Julie Bindel. That's a sharp line for me. Sometimes feminist thinking is a bit misandrist, and sometimes it isn't. Bindel definitely is, she says so all the time.
On the abortion issue: people don't get late term abortions just because they want to. I live in a state where third trimester abortions are legal, and there's a "notorious" OBGYN here who specializes in them, Dr. Warren Hern. He's said in interviews that patients basically only opt for this procedure in the most extreme circumstances, because typically when someone carries a pregnancy for that long, it's either because they wanted the baby, or they were living in uniquely horrible conditions (a drug addict without access to medical care up until that point, for instance). He recently had to close his clinic due to his age (87!) and financial issues, but given Colorado's lenient laws in this area and the influx of OBGYNs from red states, I imagine another will eventually pop up to replace it. Hern didn't do it for the money; he often operated on narrow margins. He did it because the service was needed.
It's crazy to me that the patients are being penalized in the UK, and not the doctors prescribing the treatments (though neither should be in my opinion). I don't fault people like Bindel and Stock for having the stances they do, and I don't think it makes them "bad" feminists. But I'm personally of the opinion that this is an issue for doctors and medical boards to oversee, not the criminal justice system.
as soon as someone starts the pearl clutching about "late term abortion" you know how absolutely little they know about it, either "regular" abortion, or late term. The whole thing is either a dog whistle or just an excuse people use to denigrate women as eeeeeevil baby killers.
Fuck off. I'm a father of two children and have a third on the way, and have lost others to miscarriage and abortion. My wife is a midwife who has had to perform abortions and has been traumatised by them, but is still very much pro-choice.
I'm absolutely opposed to late term abortions, and have a very dim view of abortion in general but understand that sometimes it is the lesser of two great evils. But it is absolutely the convenient murder of a fellow human being.
Don't pretend that there's no other side to this. It's how you lose what you have.
I think in cases where the mother's life is at risk, it's more of a trolley car problem than a "convenient murder." And when your choice is between an adult with dependent children, a spouse, a job, etc. and an unborn baby, the choice, though unsavory, is obvious.
This is a situation my paternal grandparents once found themselves in, back in the 40s. My grandmother had gone into labor prematurely and had been laboring for a very long time. The situation was dire. The obstetrician came into the waiting room, offered my grandfather a cigarette, and told him that he could save my grandmother, or save the baby. The idea of a doctor and a patient's husband smoking in a waiting room while they decide whether she should live sounds like a pisstake of the 1940s, but this genuinely happened. He chose my grandmother, and if he hadn't, my aunt and oldest uncle would have grown up without their mother, and my father would never have been born.
Abortion laws place unnecessary burdens on obstetrics. Some of these women would not have had to travel to Colorado for 2nd and 3rd term abortions in the first place if earlier-term abortions, birth control, and better sex education were more readily available in their own states. Other late-term abortions are unavoidable but necessary to save the life of the mother, or to minimize the suffering of a non-viable neonate. Some of Hern's patients planned funerals for the babies they lost. These people are not monsters, they are ordinary victims of circumstance who shouldn't have to travel halfway across the country to have their medical needs met.
It's possible, but so far of the many many people I've discussed it with, literally not one person who supports state mandated forced birth in such cases has known even the barest facts of statistics or reasons for so called late term abortion. I won't be holding my breath.
You're claiming those people are looking for "an excuse to denigrate women as eeeeeevil baby killers". Why?
I'd argue most people *are* ignorant of the facts of the issue, but default oppose it because it just sounds bad to terminate a pregnancy just prior to birth. Regardless of informed arguments in favor of it.
Because making an assumption that women choose to have late term abortions out of callousness instead of necessity while not even knowing anything about the issue whatsoever shows a lack of good faith engagement with the issue and a willingness to jump to negative conclusions about the women's medical decisions. They could choose to admit ignorance and not have an opinion on something they don't understand, likewise assuming ill intent is also a choice they actively make.
Bindel makes a good point about AGPs. I would think most Brits would be horrified to know their tax dollars are being used to let AGPs live their fetish.
It's kind of weird even to *do* surgery on someone for the sake of their fetish
Julie's throwing Jesse under the bus on the grooming gang scandal just about made my Sunday morning. Jesse's TDS and especially EDS is so bad that he can't help bringing his toxic Twitter presence into the otherwise fine BARpod platform. I have no problems with critical coverage of Trump but not by maniacal emotionally-incontinent resistance ppl.
At least this episode was about topics. I can't stand the interviews Jesse does where he just asks questions about the life and career of someone I've never heard of and don't give a fuck about.
At least this episode was about topics. I can't stand the interviews Jesse does where he just asks questions about the life and career of someone I've never heard of and don't give a fuck about.
Loved this episode. Really enjoy hearing Bindel's take, always.
RE: pronouns. I think sometimes the pushback on pronouns is misunderstood in that because we are in the year 2025 and it all has come this far, many of us really believe there is a need for a principled stance on this issue, as it has become 100% Orwellian. Preferred pronouns have now become pure doublespeak. It is a way to force people to buy into something they would not normally believe, alter their natural way of thinking, and drop their guard.
I think almost everyone tries to be polite to good people, friends, and acquaintances. But there is a very good argument for being consistent about this in general, in that when using preferred pronouns you are complying with an unfair demand and complying with an ideology. I am happy to hang with Scientologists, but on principle I'm not going to let them audit me or pretend I believe in thetans, even if it hurts their feelings. (And it really should not hurt their feelings.) Or if I on principle don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm not going to comply with being forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I also agree with the argument (e.g., from Amy Sousa) that if we raise kids to be polite about pronouns, we are putting them in a position of losing their instincts about dangerous people. They are being primed to disconnect from their internal sense of logic about or emotional reactions to another human and therefore they are being primed to miss cues that may indicate danger. For example, an adult male lurking in a women's bathroom had formerly been considered a sign of danger for good reason. Most men are safe, but there is a large enough population that provide a threat that it is a survival instinct to assess situations in which men might be threatening. Further, using preferred pronouns transmits to children that you think it is normal and healthy to change genders beyond a small percent of exceptional circumstances.
Anyway, it's complicated, but I think the "principle" stance is not a "mean girl" stance. One may not agree with it, but it is unfair to consider it shrew-ish or mean (unless they are acting like jerks when they bring it up). Orwell would have been on board, I think.
While I understand Katie’s libertarianism, doctors also have ethical obligations to the patient. Cutting off a patient’s healthy arm because they want to is not “doing no harm,” it’s doing harm and it’s acquiescing to a delusion. Doctors will lose their license if they decide to just maintain addicts on oxycodone. Doctors are not supposed to do things that are inherently unethical because the patient insists on it.
There's a fairly compelling argument which goes like this: if one says that having a mental illness should preclude a person from making the decision to alter their healthy body because they cannot meaningfully consent, the very fact that a person would want to slice parts off their healthy body proves they are too mentally unwell to make such a decision in the first place. One hears all the time that there are people who are completely mentally healthy apart from this one thing, and therefore it makes therapeutic sense to treat this one thing, but I wonder how much truth there really is to this. Denial and avoidance are very potent and frequent sources of neurosis and mental suffering. It cannot really make therapeutic sense to surgically validate denial rather than encouraging acceptance.
Okay but what about-
Bars serving alcoholics.
Supermarkets selling chocolate to the morbidly obese.
Shops selling cigarettes to... well.. anybody.
Or more out there things like reiki practitioners 'treating' cancer patients who refuse Western medicine.
Not being an arsehole (or not trying to) this is an area of particular interest for me and I love hearing peoples thoughts.
Also on the flip side who's to say the mental harm of keeping your leg won't be worse than the physical harm of losing it?
That's an interesting point, but I think the difference is twofold. Firstly, it would be really hard to enforce the banning of such practices without severely impingeing on the civil liberties of basically the whole population. And just because it's not possible to stop people harming themselves by making poor lifestyle choices, that doesn't mean we should allow entirely preventable and radical forms of self harm. Secondly, the types of self harm you are describing tend to be incremental and only harmful after long-term excessive use, and are therefore to a certain extent reversible; whilst conversely, a major surgery that removes a whole limb is a permanent, instant and extremely radical physical change. So I think essentially this is comparing apples to oranges.
Bars, shops, and reiki practitioners aren't doctors
Very few vows are involved when being hired to work as a cashier at a grocery store.
Mental illness is weird. You can be hearing voices but still get a nobel (John Forbes Nash, though he was largely under control for that work). But if someone claims they are an amputee in a non-amputee, that is a delusion, and you should not humor an illusion. If someone wants their healthy arm cut off, they are clearly mentally unwell. They are not “trapped in the wrong body.” If you are a religious person, you might say God doesn’t make mistakes. If you are purely materialist in your understanding of the universe, the universe doesn’t work like that. I do not think we can accept that a person has an amputee soul in a normal body. Most amputees don’t want to be amputees.
Can you 100% stop people from doing what they are determined to do? You can’t 100% prevent suicide, but I don’t think we should encourage it, and the goings on in Canada have proven many of the opponents of assisted suicide correct. Short of long term commitment, no. And even long term commitment can’t last forever. But you can make it clear that any doctor who gives into this delusion agrees to amputate, and any medical professional involved in this, loses his or her license and potential faces assault charges. It sounds paternalistic, because it is. But is someone is an existential danger to themselves, you have to be a bit paternalistic.
Is there anything you can recommend I read about what you say about assisted dying in Canada? I’m in UK so this of particular interest to me right now.)
The Canadian healthcare system is under a lot of strain. Unlike the UK, which has both the NHS but allows a private insurance and health care system, Canada does not allow the latter. Canadians of means coming to the US for faster medical care is not uncommon. Last couple of years, there have been some pretty egregious stories, such as euthanasia as an answer for treatable, non terminal conditions and poverty. It was going to be expanded to include minors, but that was put on hold (by Trudeau, I believe). One example - a disabled veteran reached out for information about getting a wheelchair ramp, and was offered information for “Medical assistance in dying.” Something like 4.7% of Canadian deaths are assisted suicide. I generally oppose assisted suicide, but it’s fair to point out that the Canadian situation seems to be an outlier compared to continental Europe. There have been some egregious cases in the Netherlands, but Canada seems a difference in kind.
https://nationalpost.com/news/group-that-led-campaign-for-maid-now-calling-for-safeguards
https://apnews.com/article/euthanasia-ethics-canada-doctors-nonterminal-nonfatal-cases-dfe59b1786592e31d9eb3b826c5175d1
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/10/26/assisted-dying-abused-canada-admits-group-legalised/
Hi! I found this article on the NYTimes on Canada's right to die law foe non-terminal patients excellent
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-assistance-dying-canada.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Sk8.WydK._TyuoNWW0XJB&smid=url-share
You might be interested in March 2021 book, "The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die", by Katie Engelhart. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53138041-the-inevitable (also, I've been collecting articles and links related to hospice care and right-to-die for a few years - mostly U.S. focus. DM me if you'd like a list)
Yeah, this was the exact counterpoint that was running through my head. Wanting that surgery precludes you from being mentally sound enough to get that surgery.
Do no harm is something that appears to have been completely thrown out the window with trans. Especially with trans kids. I don't know when this happened
I wouldn't say completely thrown out the window. Rank and file doctors were following guidance from those who they should have been able to look to for guidance, such as the AAP. Once there is an approved treatment, not providing it is harmful. The issue is that this treatment never should have been approved to the level it was with the information available.
I realize it wasn't the focus of their conversation (Katie said "let's not get bogged down in this", ten minutes in 😆) but there is also a really significant distinction between discussing what the state should permit people to do to their own bodies versus talking about whether people *ought* to make certain kinds of decisions about their bodies. The latter is a much tougher row to hoe, but is much more interesting from an ethics perspective. Even so, I agree with you here: the state licenses doctors under the principle of "do no harm", so they should...not harm healthy tissue and treat the psychological malady instead.
They also shouldn't lie to the patient. And if they tell them they can become a woman or a man when they aren't, they are lying.
Why do you, or really anyone including medical professionals, havr the authority to tell a person that cutting off a limb is harmful to them? Without recourse to common sense platitudes or reference to a norm, or for that matter a naturalistic fallacy, how can you assert any given medical procedure is harmful or helpful?
At a certain point you are so deep in postmodern nonsense that it’s impossible to discuss things. Who am I to say that having an in tact, fully functioning body is better than having a mutilated and dysfunctional one? A person with a brain, that’s who. Like, come on.
YES. You hear this about all sorts of disabilities, partcularly autism. If you dare to suggest that a human being would be better off without autism than with it, you are promptly accused of wanting to murder all autistic people. Ai yai yai.
Do you remember this story, from WAY back?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/08/davidteather
The “social model of disability” is probably second only to gender identity in the goofiest fucking idea contest of the last few decades. No, it’s not a problem to be blind only because “the world isn’t set up for blind people.” It’s a problem because Homo sapiens is a visual species. Yes, we can and should make some accommodations for blind people, but it is literally impossible to fashion a society in which being blind is not a substantial deficit. You would need to go live among moles or deep-sea fish. Yes, as a human being, it is unequivocally better to be able to see than to not be able to see, and we should be making every effort to prevent and cure the malfunctions of the body that cause these deficits. It is LUDICROUS to suggest otherwise.
Yes. So much of this debate in infused with postmodernist nonsense.
Kill it with fire
👏🏼
Removing a healthy limb is a harmful, antisocial act because:
1. It uses medical resources that are not unlimited. Nurses are stretched to the limit without making them take care of people who have mutilated themselves. Operating room staff are also busy: every medically unnecessary treatment is delaying life saving care for others.
2. People who remove healthy body parts become a burden on society. Their usefulness is curtailed, and instead of being productive members of society they instead suck up resources.
3. A medical procedure is deemed helpful if it helps to improve that persons physical functioning and/or extend their life.
People with mental illness are also a burden to society. There have resources used on them. They need their mental health improved. Just because their illness and suffering doesn't seem tangible, doesn't mean it isn't there
Yes, AND taking a mentally ill person and removing body parts makes them MORE of a burden.
Not unless it relieved their condition. Would you just watch the documentary https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/obsession_script.shtml
No one is arguing people suffering from sex dysphoria shouldn't receive help, we're saying that what passes for help is actually harm. People with sex dysphoria deserve the expensive psychological resources it takes to get to the root of the dysphoria, not quick "fixes" that get them to shut up and be success stories as quickly as possible.
I was talking about body dysmorphia, not gender dysphoria, although i am sure sometimes they overlap.
I don't know if psychological treatment is always effective for these cases. If i am mentally ill, I'd like my doctor to try anything that could help, not just treatments they prefer for political or whatever reasons
Then we have a fundamental disagreement. I don't think it's appropriate to enable delusional thoughts that one's body is the "wrong" sex or has the "wrong" number of limbs with surgery.
Is there any evidence that amputation improves their mental health?
yes, in the documentary https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/obsession_script.shtml
I've only skimmed it, but it seems that only Hans actually had surgery. And as Robert Smith says "If he wasn't satisfied with it would he admit it..." Also, that was a long time ago. Has there been any follow up with Hans?
I'm less worried about the people that want to have a healthy limb removed, than the doctors that are willing to do it.
So your moral position hinges upon the person being poor (cf 1-2).
On 3, what if we assume the patient would commit suicide otherwise ?
This has nothing to do with being poor. Fully insured people can be burdens on the health system.
If a person is suicidal, that is by definition a mental problem that needs to be addressed.
But by your logic of total autonomy, being suicidal isn’t a problem. If you want to do it, it’s your body, go right ahead.
imagine an incredibly wealthy individual who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars pays a surgeon $5 million to cut off his leg for whatever reason. this person has sufficient financial means to pay for servants to care for them after losing their limb. your argument would not hold for them, would it?
You’re just arguing fringe cases at that point though.
Let’s just agree that in like 99+% of cases cutting off your own body parts is just like not a good idea. 🤷♂️
Well, cutting off a healthy limb creates a disability where none existed before. In the case of lower extremity amputation, it usually means becoming reliant on a wheelchair or prosthetic limb (which, in some cases, people are not able to use without substantial issues). In the case of upper extremity amputation, it means losing your ability to bilaterally manipulate objects (unless you can afford an extremely expensive and fancy prosthetic, and assuming it functions well with your body).
I think that people look at Paralympic athletes and assume that people with amputations are perfectly fine once they are fitted with their running blade, but that’s just not the case for a lot of normal people. We have made great strides in what is possible for people and what prosthetics can achieve, but there is still a lot of prosthetic failures too.
And we are not even getting into chronic phantom pain or pressure wounds here. There are substantial potential medical issues that come from amputation, which is why it should be only done when it is necessary.
Similarly, we have made incredible strides in diabetes treatment and dialysis for kidney failure. Organ transplants require lifelong immunosuppression, except in the rare hypothetical case you have an identical twin, and there is a shortage of demand relative to supply. Even in a legalized organ market, which I think could be an option, on the margins, that would really only work for livers and kidneys, and we would still have insufficient organs. There are lot of people who can’t get in transplant lists because they have other issues, so the transplant would be a waste. Bio-identical artificial organs are no longer pure science fiction, but still many years in the future. In all of these cases, avoiding these conditions is still 1000x more preferable.
For sure. There’s a difference between supporting someone who’s lost a limb through illness or accident vs. enabling someone to create a disability by choice. The first is about accommodation, the second imposes new burdens on systems/people who never consented to them.
When someone elects to disable themselves, they’re not just dealing with personal consequences. They’re potentially creating financial strain (insurance, public health resources, long-term disability care...) and pulling others, including family and medical staff, into a role of caregiver for a problem that they CHOSE to make. Which is just offloading the cost of a personal decision onto everyone else.
What do you mean none existed before, mental disability existed
The post I’m replying to didn’t reference mental disability.
Oh sorry
Um, through science and research?
Are you suggesting we do away with all medicine because of some post-modernist idea that everything is subjective? Medical norms are based on medical research that shows that certain treatments are affective against certain disorders - that's how we can assert that a medical treatment is helpful or harmful.
Ethics come into play in many situations, particularly when a psychological issue is manifesting, but it doesn't mean we can't determine when a medical procedure - especially to address a psychological issue - is helpful or harmful. I can't believe anyone would have to say that out loud, it's so obvious.
Do you want to do away with cancer treatment? Doctors? Hospitals? Let's just go back to the paleolithic era, why don't we.
Your comment is nuts and silly.
Are we talking about a functioning arm / leg?
There is no rational argument that a person’s livelihood and functionality is increased by losing a properly functioning arm or leg.
Distilling your argument down to the basics: Michael wants to queer the medical space. Like, now.
You're misunderstanding me. I have no argument nor even interest in this particular issue. I'm more fascinated epistemically at the peanut gallery and commentariat; why is it that certain people have beliefs about something being beneficial or not and how does that hinge upon contingencies and/or moral presuppositions.
To be clear, my answer to the question "what SHOULD be done with someone who wants to cut their leg off?" is simple: laugh at them.
That's my question too. I bet it's mostly naturalistic fallacy. People don't take incurable mental illness seriously. As if any if us lives naturally anyway
Medical professionals have the authority to do it because we are granted it by medical licensing laws. When you use the legal framework of medicine, it means that certain individuals are licensed to render opinions on what is and is not a medical condition, who does and does not have that condition, and how to treat that condition. Practicing medicine without a license is a crime for which you can be arrested, and people occasionally are.
You could make a separate argument about whether someone should be able to do a DIY amputation at home without professionalized medicine, but this is obviously unsafe. To do it safely in the OR necessarily involves a variety of licensed professionals and healthcare facilities and products.
As a citizen without a medical license, you do not have the legal right to decide that you have an infection and put yourself on penicillin. You do not have the right to decide that you are having a stroke and give yourself tPA. And so on and so on.
That is an internally consistent view, but it is a very unusual one. Most doctors would feel perfectly comfortable refusing to provide or strongly urging against highly toxic treatment (invasive surgery, chemotherapy, others) if they felt the risks clearly outweighed the benefits. Indeed, this is usually considered a core responsibility of a physician. People who want clearly harmful treatment are often mistaken about the facts and come to regret their choice in time.
Likewise, assisted suicide is illegal in most places, and even where it is legal (e.g. Canada), many doctors refuse to provide that service because they believe it is morally wrong.
IIndividualism has its limits. While everyone has to come to their own conclusions about what is right, if you come to a conclusion that the entire human race disagrees with, it's highly likely you're just wrong, and you'd need a very compelling reason to think otherwise.
Internally consistent views tend to be unusual.
It seems to me the reason, at least the reason we see throughout the comments here, is a confusion of is and ought, an extension of the modal case to the fringes, and a refusal to contemplate extreme thought experiments (e.g. "if a person absolutely and necessarily will kill himself if a doctor doesn't remove a perfectly functioning limb, should the doctor remove it?" is conflated with "should a doctor remove a perfectly functioning limb in most cases?").
What interests me is why these fallacies are common. I think it's because of normative thinking--there is an urge to tell others in all cases what they should do regardless of context. This is a moralizing imposition you see on the left, on the right, and indeed even among the heterodox.
I happen to agree with you on the legal question, but this kind of personal libertarianism has always been a fringe view. I don't think it's fair to call the alternative -- paternalism -- a fallacy. There is no logical problem with believing that individuals cannot be trusted with autonomy when they veer well outside social norms.
If someone took a fireplace poker to their eyes, would you quibble about whether they were harmed?
if their eyes were causing them incredible pain, possibly yes. there are contingencies that are not being considered in this conversation, and thus my position is being confused for a relativistic worldview. it's honestly quite fascinating to see the slides in logic in these comments.
Huh.
Yeah, you're right, F 'em.
I think if Katie and Julie had children they would feel more upset about the ways that TRAs do outreach to children.
For more than a week now, the TV screens in the hallway of my daughter’s middle school have been displaying pictures of “LGBTQ+ Cartoon Characters.” The youngest kids in that building are 11.
The T is completely responsible for shit like this; LGBs would have never.
I think that's a really interesting point. 11 may be fair depending on development but younger than that there are no LGB children. A lesbian 7 year old is a stupid concept as is a straight 7 year old.
I'm no expert but I feel like prior to the T taking over everything the focus was on children accepting the concept of a gay/lesbian adult couple which makes sense as you can draw some direct benefit from that.
100%. I’m old enough to remember when being anti-gay was socially acceptable. Then there was a beautiful period in the 90s and early 2000s when we as a society had broad tolerance for Gay. But the material aimed at kids was about teaching them to accept *adult* gay people — Heather Has Two Mommies, etc. There was barely any material that aimed to show representations of gay *kids*. Which is understandable because sexual orientation may not make itself known until sexual desire appears. But T dogma insists that even toddlers can be trans. So it makes sense they’d create T propaganda aimed at children.
I was a gay 5 year old before I had the words to articulate it. I just knew I felt differently about boys than I felt about girls, and that I needed to keep that part of me buried deep inside. You certainly are no expert, but I guess that doesn’t stop you from commenting on things you know nothing about.
This. I have gay friends who report similar. I'm straight and - even when quite young - found myself drawn to girls.
Yeah I’m gay and realised I was different that way from a young age. Where I feel different on this issue overall is that I’ve never felt the need to see myself represented in media, at school, etc and sometimes find it a little embarrassing even. I’m not saying gay people should not be represented BTW.
This. I have gay friends who report similar. I'm straight and - even when quite young - found myself drawn to girls.
I was 100% a straight 7 year old. I agree with your broader point, but sexual preferences can and do exist before puberty.
Nah, you are just mimicking what you see. Think about it, preference for what? Without sexual desire what does that even mean?
I have a distinct memory of sitting next to a boy on my bus in kindergarten and feeling a tremendous desire to be close to him and a distinct liking of him. Not “sexual” but certainly a crush and wholly different than the feelings of closeness and liking I had for my first kindergarten friend, a girl.
I had crushes on girls from a young age but never any sexual feelings. I only had those for men.
I was strangely attracted to closeted and gay coded men way before puberty. I knew before I even knew what it was I liked about them. It’s not an irrelevant topic to their lives, as many of us were being called fxxxxxt daily, before 11.
Oh dear
Thanks for revisiting the grooming gang story with Julie. The episode with Jesse on that issue was so weird to me— not because of the “rep!” jokes, but more because his argument was so incoherent to me— he seemed to be saying it didn’t matter and Elon shouldn’t be talking about it because it was so long ago, while also acknowledging that very little had been done in the way of accountability. Elon has gone off his rocker in many ways, but this was one he got right.
No he didn’t, because Elon couldn’t give two fucks about those girls. He was simply trying to weaponise it.
Whilst it’s clear councils were far too scared of being accused of being racist, had it been Asian girls you wouldn’t have heard a peep from Elon.
I'm not mad at him for re-raising awareness of the terrible thing. His motives matter less than the outcome for me.
Other than whipping up the far right & their odious motivations, what has he actually done.
If you actually listens to the victims & those who’ve done proper investigations, they’ve been livid at the way it’s been politicised.
There’s a lot of people who’ve dedicated years to this & it’s grossly offensive to pretend anything is only happening because Elon saw an opportunity to push his agenda.
Listening to Julie, it sounds like she’s more livid that so little has been done, and that most of the rapists and abusers are still free, and that it’s great that the UK is now investigating this in a more serious way.
Yes, but I bet any money she doesn’t credit that piece of shit Musk with any of it.
This is identical to Trump executive-ordering the trans issues. He could give a flying eff about this population, but it would be odd to go out of your way to criticize him for doing it if you are grateful that anything was done at all because it was such an extreme crisis. (And there are so many other reasons to criticize him, criticize the handling of this issue by others, etc.)
Would you rather it be politicized, as it has been, or swept under the rug, as it was for decades?
I would have preferred the police do their jobs and not give a lick about being called racist but here we are.
It was an immense failure to protect innocent children. That is, unfortunately for some, quite the story and an injustice that needs to be corrected in full. I would also love to see some of the underlying issues that lead to such a problem be dealt with harshly, but I doubt that will happen.
I repeat, Musk and his far right buddies don’t care about those girls.
The grotesque politicisation won’t help the girls. Those actually speaking for the victims and who’ve done the hard work have made this plain.
There’s a lot of irony with those crediting Musk with anything positive in that they have to actually ignore the victims voices to do so 🤷🏼♂️.
I understand that some people don’t like Musk. I think in this case the results are all that matters.
I’ve been listening to Ghosts of the Ostfront by Dan Carlin. He brought up a quote attributed to Churchill in regards to Hitler declaring war on the Soviets.
It went something like, “If the Nazis invaded Hell itself, I’d at least give an honorable mention to the Devil in the commons.” Something like that.
Point is, you seem to dislike Musk a lot. I wouldn’t let that color your view of how one of the most powerful men in the world can put pressure and light on this for a favorable outcome.
What does "swept under the rug" mean in this context? Do you know what changes have been made?
I confess that I don’t know what changes have been made in the last few years.
But I know it was ignored for decades and I highly doubt all the work that could be done still is being done.
If it is true that amnesty was given and these men are still walking around without a care in the world and no consequences for their horrific actions, that is a problem.
Just cuz somebody pulled the corner of the rug up and cleaned out a bit of what was under there doesn’t mean the problem has been solved or justice has been achieved.
Same.
You know, just because you don't like the guy, it doesn't mean that every one of his motivations is evil.
FFS, He made demonstrably false statements about Keir Starmer & Jess Phillips, he called for them to be jailed.
JB discussed Starmer’s role as DPP.
He called Jess Phillips whose career pre parliament was work in the area of domestic violence, a rape apologist.
He’s been openly supportive of the AFD who have links to actual Nazis.
He’s been openly supportive of multi timed jailed thug Stephen Yaxley Lennon.
If you want to pretend his obvious motivations weren’t his obvious motivations that’s your business but I’m not got to lie to myself.
I agree it's not how I would have approached it.
But do you really want to say he only cares about race in this situation? Could he not be a dickhead and also care about rape of children in general?
And Jess Phillips is an unprincipled coward. She's part of the problem, and the only fucking time she's ever closed her gob in her whole life was when she had the chance to condemn the rape gangs and decided that she'd rather keep her seat because her constituency is filled with immigrants she couldn't trust.
‘Not how I would have approached it’
Good to know you wouldn’t deliberately lie and wouldn’t slander people 🤷🏼♂️.
Musk’s a piece of shit. If you want to pretend otherwise that’s your business.
Also, to say Phillips hasn’t‘ ‘condemned the rape gangs’ is simply false.
She may not have called for a national inquiry, but then as David Aaronovitch pointed out neither was Casey until her recent review.
As for her being a ‘coward’ you might want to get a handle on the level of abuse she received from parts of her own constituency.
Again, it’s pretty obvious that many of the loudest voices are unserious people who if the perpetrators were Asian & the victims weren’t white couldn’t give two shits.
A lot of people could do with listening to the actual victims who have repeatedly asked that it not be politicised.
I agree! I like BARpod a lot, but I almost unsubscribed over that episode. I hope Jesse is having a second thought about all that.
Jesse is a good man. He is an honest man.
People are not always going to say things is precisely the way you want them to.
You cannot possibly believe that Jesse Singal doesn’t care about girls being raped. You are just irritated that he didn’t denounce it in exactly the way you wanted to hear.
Which, fine, but taking offense where none is meant is not a good way to go through life.
Jessie basically said that there is no issue anymore and no further investigation had to be done. So yes, I disagree with that I don’t consider that taking offense.
He absolutely did not say that.
So what did he say then?
I don’t think Jesse is evil. Not at all. But it was clear he was prepared to downplay the significance of the ongoing story because he hated the person(people?) pushing it. And, to be fair to him, I think his particular aversions are so strongly felt that he honestly believed in this stance and probably still does.
It's the only episode I haven't finished.
Julie’s own words, from the Unherd article above:
“In January, Elon Musk targeted our country’s failings when he posted on X that: “[Keir] Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years (2008-2013)”, demanding that he “face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain”. It was in response to Jess Phillips’ remarkable decision, as minister for the safeguarding of women, to reject a national public inquiry into the grooming of children in Oldham.
Whatever his motivation, Musk was right in his analysis. This is a scandal that has been swept under the carpet for years. I’ve been following grooming cases for almost my whole career. Over the decades, a succession of inquiries and reports has indicated the nature and scale of the catastrophe, yet nothing has been done to address the underlying problem, let alone fix it.”
I stick to my original statement that the original episode was a strange one, and that I’m glad to see the issue revisited here. I respect Jesse a lot, and Elon very little these days. But the take in the episode was off, and I’m glad BarPod circled back.
But "very little has been done" is not true. There were massive changes in child protection and there were hundreds of convictions. Julie Bindel may be correct to argue that the scale of the problem is so enormous that system-wide reform is too little, but that does not justify Americans who know nothing about what has happened trying to turn this into a British pizzagate. At the very least, I would like the Americans raising the issue to compare safeguarding in the UK with safeguarding in the US. Listening to the Loudon county story on Barpod just made me think "this is how things used to be here".
TBF to JB the sense I got, knowing her politics, is that she’s unlikely to have any time for Musk, but that she wanted to keep the focus on how the girls had been failed. If the story just becomes ‘Musk is just exploiting this for racist ends’ even if that is true, that it takes the focus away from the victims & obvious state failure.
I think this is what's so frustrating about this from a European perspective.
The story has never not been in the news and current affairs media generally. Not least because it became such a far right talking point among the likes of Yaxley Lennon, the collapse of trials and ongoing public dissatisfaction with how the UK police investigate themselves.
There is a race element in this. But each time enquiries have looked closely at what happened, the massive thing that stand out is that coercion of this kind is really hard to investigate and prove.
For a start, very few victims report. (They're being coerced). In fact those victims will often protect their abusers. (They're being coerced).
When the crime is widespread and the police are deeply distrusted by the community, getting timely prosecutions is very very hard.
Add to that, a police culture of not caring about marginalised victims as many victims from very dysfunctional families and you have a recipe for disaster.
Yes, a concern about appearing racist was found, but it's one thing on a long list.
Musk of course, just sees race.
I work in safeguarding in the UK and while it’s true some victims are reluctant to report, I know of plenty who are crying out for help and are still being let down now. It’s an easy out for professionals to say that the girls won’t speak up, that’s not the issue.
It's nothing to do with race. It's to do with culture. And we've fucked up our culture with our immigration policies and cultural relativism.
Musk wasn't "talking about it", he was posting incoherent conspiratorial nonsense. Katie read some of that nonsense on this episode, then Bindel failed to condemn it and went off on her own tangent.
(Edit: re "her own tangent". Look, Bindel has done infinitely more tangible good on this issue than probably anyone commenting here, but she's not a good or sober advocate in this kind of outlet)
"Failed to condemn it"?
I don't listen to Barpod to hear throat clearing
I too have no patience for people who need to hear denouncements.
I'm all for bodily autonomy, but I think elective body modification should be self-funded, whether it's an unwanted limb or an inconvenient breast. In the U.S. many "gender affirming" treatments are paid for by government insurance programs, and others are paid for by all of us who have health insurance. The trend is toward "embodiment goals" rather than medical necessity, and achieving those goals should be funded by those who have them.
There's no reason that the public should pay for cosmetic surgery. Would we give a woman a boob job because her small breasts make her feel bad? Should the taxpayers foot the bill?
No
unless in case of disfigurement.
It depends on the woman. If someone wants to kill themselves over it and if you can control costs then it might be a good idea to just pay.
No- it’s a better idea to treat that persons mental illness.
Exactly, if they have that violent of body dysmorphia then one boob job will not cure her. My aunt had two or three boob jobs and removals, she could afford it but it never made her happy with her body.
as a melodramatic b cup I support this plan. free boob jobs for the people!
If someone wants to kill herself over a boob job, she clearly has underlying issues and is not a suitable candidate for the procedure in the first place.
It might be a good idea to let them kill themselves.
What about, say, breast reconstruction following a cancer driven mastectomy?
Totally, insurance won't cover weight loss drugs for people who are morbidly obese. I know a woman on medicaid and is 500 pounds and insurance won't help with that. I have HMO with a 5k co-pay so the idea people have private insurance pay for anything cosmetic makes me mad.
Not actually adding to the discussion, but Inconvenient breasts is going to be the title of my autobiography.
Inconvenient Breasts and Where To Find Them
I hope it will be the title of Al Gore's next book.
I entirely agree with you Ava. I think the "medically necessary" claim is going to have to crumble with time.
It was really nice to hear from Julie in her capacity as someone who worked as a reporter for years on the so called “grooming gangs” story. She really provided a lot of background and context on this issue. I understand Jesse’s hatred of Elon Musk, but it seems like that clouded his ability to report on this story clearly and empathetically, which was, in my opinion, necessary for a story of this nature. Kudos to the podcast for featuring a guest who articulated her disagreement with Jesse’s coverage, as not every show would be willing to do that.
Also, I enjoyed the conversation between Katie and Julie in the beginning of the episode, including the discussion of the way their views are not aligned with each other on various issues. I don’t necessarily want this to become a “debate me bro” podcast, but it’s interesting to hear people engage in a civil discussion of complex issues rather than people just nodding their heads in agreement with one another.
What I like about Julie B is that even if I disagree with her on certain issues, I have to acknowledge that she has a point and her arguments are solid. She’s done her homework - she had to, in order to get this far.
I agree with Bendel, not Katie. The body should not be a work place. Katie thinks people should be able to sell their organs. I just can’t. If this were allowed eventually some poor people would sell their life - all their organs - to pay for their family. Organ Harvesting is not a regulated industry I would want to encourage for harm reduction.
And honestly I believe in the happy surrogate narrative just as much as i believe in the happy hooker narrative. Both are myths.
Honestly I feel like Katie has a huge blind spot about things that don’t directly affect her. Katie is never going to need a surrogate or be one herself, so she doesn’t care about regulating surrogacy. Katie is never going to prostitute herself or patronize a prostitute, so she doesn’t care about if it’s legalized/criminalized. She’s never going to be in the position of being so poor she needs to sell an organ, so who cares if we financially incentivize people to do so? Frankly if trans activists hadn’t tried to blow up her life she might not care as much as she does about trans issues.
My cousin's wife delivered 5 babies as a surrogate (2 sets of twins and one single birth). They also have 4 children of their own. Supposedly she just "loves being pregnant." I personally think no woman would put her body through that for others if there wasn't a financial need.
I wonder how that affects the marriage of the surrogate. I imagine it’s a strain for both partners, but I could be wrong.
We're not close, but I can't imagine that didn't put a strain on their marriage. However if it's, as I suspect, due to financial need, he would be hard pressed to legitimately object.
You're infantalizing poor people by being against a legal organ market /s
Agreed. This is the argument I bring up when men suggest criminalizing prostitution infantalizes women.
I find the idea of poor people resorting to degrading themselves or giving up parts of their body in order to get by bleak and dystopian. I want to live in a society where the way out of poverty is to get a decent job or start a business, with resources to give people the skills to do either, and social support for those who are unable to work. Bodily integrity should be just as important for the poor as it is for the middle and upper classes.
Worse, people could murder other people to sell their organs.
I don't think those organs would be viable....
You just haven’t thought hard enough about the murder method! I’m sure we could make it work!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1018646
Yeah, from detainees. You'd have to murder them in a hospital. The market for organs from people murdered on the street isn't great.
Sure, but if they could sell them legally don't you think business would step up dramatically?
Don't they already?
What if compensation was in the form of a tax credit?
Julie Bindel as a guest *and* seething in the comments about Julie Bindel as a guest? I have been doubly blessed. <3
Case-by-case is a perfectly legit way to decide whether to use wrong-sex pronouns. Using them is participating in a polite fiction, and most of us are willing to participate in polite fictions sometimes when we like or respect someone. We make *those* decisions in the moment, not according to some hard-and-fast inner principle.
The first example that comes to my mind is a good friend who has a quite startling facial disfigurement. Anyone who meets her for the first time stares and stares. 👀 But she and I never discuss it unless she brings it up, even when it would be relevant to the convo (say, if we’re talking about makeup.) When we hang out, I just look at her good eye and kind of block out the rest; it became easy pretty quickly. And if she comes up in conversation with mutual friends, none of us talks about her face behind her back. It’s a taboo topic; we all basically pretend we don’t notice it. Whereas if she were an absolute asshole, I would probably gossip a little about her disfigurement behind her back. (I’m just being honest! 🤷🏻♀️)
This isn’t a perfect analogy for me because I would feel more guilty gossiping about a deformed prick than I would “misgendering” a trans-identified man. For me personally, pretending someone is the opposite sex is such an enormous fiction that there’s almost no one for whom I’d participate in that game. But I’m just saying I think it’s perfectly fair that people treat wrong-sex pronouns as they’d treat any other polite fiction. Most of us are not polite to everyone.
I believe there are even efforts to legally force the public to use preferred pronouns. Which seems Orwellian.
That’s how Jordan Peterson got famous…
I also do case by case for pronouns in private (I comply in public, mostly due to fear of reprisal), and am fine with others doing this too so long as it is not obscuring important information (e.g. “Women rapes 10” headlines, where a trans woman is the perpetrator) or making a narrative impossible to follow (see people switching between she and they pronouns regarding a single person).
I take your point about the analogy you provided (and your acknowledgment that it’s not a perfect one), but I think the major sticking point for me is 1) trans people chose to do this, while your friend did not choose to become disfigured (I assume!) and 2) your friend is not demanding that you call her non-disfigured every time you are speaking about her, even when she is not there, or else she’ll ruin your social standing.
I think not bringing something up out of politeness isn’t the same as forcing people to use your pronouns for fear of punishment.
Though, regarding my point 1, I have to admit that given the many people who started these treatments before they were able to meaningfully consent, perhaps this is something I should regard as out of their control too. It’s definitely a complicated issue.
I don't think these are very similar situations. Unless she thinks she's a ravishing beauty, you aren't playing along with a delusion or a lie in order to be respectful.
With rare exceptions, I don't feel qualified to judge whether someone is a good or bad person, but I generally know who is male and who is female, and that's how I decide how to refer to a person. If it makes me uncomfortable, because the person is either well-loved or well-disguised, I'll just try to avoid using any pronouns at all.
Thank you for revisiting this topic with the awesome Julie Bindel. I could not love this podcast more.
Same here!
:(
There aren't many podcasts I like, and there are only two I pay for. So I look forward to barpod which is almost always fun.
But Julie Bindel ... fuck. It's not even that I disagree with every point she makes, but she literally hates men and in the end that is what it's all about for her. That's what drives all her thinking.
And the particular thinking it drives has a sort of revolutionary character. It's not stupid, but it is nuance free in the end, and very like I imagine the way Castro or Mao might have thought in terms of cognitive style. There's a lot of *certainty* and it all goes really very badly when such people actually get any power.
I don't like listening to her. She'd do something terrible to me if she could, and call it the revolution. So she can Fuck off, I'm 5 mins in but I'll just go without this week, thanks all the same.
You know, not watching the episode and moving on instead of whining in the comments IS an option. I'm personally not fond of Brad Polombo, but I recognize the value of being exposed to viewpoints different from my own. And it's not like this is a whole episode of Katie blowing smoke up Bindel's ass, she challenges her on a lot of things, but in a respectful, even-handed way.
You know, ignoring that comment was an option for you as well. We all have a right to express our opinions of episodes here, not just people you agree with.
Lmao it's not his "opinion" of the episode, because he admitted he didn't watch it. It's his opinion of the guest, the title, and the first three minutes.
What, does Brad Palombo write about his contempt for women? I missed that about him. Julie on the other hand is very hard to miss here in the UK. She publishes at scale.
I never said he did. I disagree with him on some things, and his personality type isn't my favorite. I can see how Bindel's rhetoric isn't easy listening if you're male, and that's understandable. But Bindel is one person on a podcast, whereas there are men out there with way nastier opinions of women in actual positions of political power throughout the world. So forgive me for breaking out the world's smallest violin every time a man's feelings are hurt by a radical feminist online.
So, Donald Trump is OK because ... Stalin existed? That doesn't make a lot of sense you know, but OK, there it is. I suppose this isn't a peer review process.
I mean the thing is that there are men who do absolutely terrible things, not only to women but to other men. They don't just talk about it, they really do put people in camps. Feminism is a moral argument. It's not, for example, an army. So the success of feminism depends on us all agreeing at the outset that we'll accept the best moral argument for how to do things. That's quite a new idea for how to run a society. If you want to just abandon that basic idea ... we probably won't end up with Julie Bindel in charge.
Show me where I said something was "okay" just because it's not as bad as something else. My purpose in saying "there are men out there with way nastier opinions of women in actual positions of political power," was to point out that your reaction is not proportionate to the transgression. Donald Trump is not "okay," because Stalin is worse, but Donald Trump also isn't Stalin, or even comparable to Stalin. I could just as easily use your own comparison against you: if misogyny is to misandry what Stalin is to Trump, then you're basically arguing that Trump and Stalin are equally bad.
It's idiotic to try and categorized things into a binary of "okay" and "not okay." Misogyny is the world's oldest form of bigotry. Misandry is a reaction to that. Are both bad on some level? Yes. But one is a systemic problem directly responsible for physiological harm on a massive scale, and the other is callous and rude. This isn't even a Stalin vs. Trump situation, it's more like Stalin vs. Lauren Boebert.
I agree with you on this. There is certain kind of person who thinks almost all men are garbage, and I have no time for these people.
Like I’m sorry you don’t have a wonderful dad and brother and husband and son, but I do, and I’m not hoping onboard the “men suck” train.
The discussion of the Ukrainian hair tradition and trade was telling: she has contempt for both. This isn't a principled thinker, this is someone who looks down on lifestyles and cultural practices that are not congruent with her own misanthropic lesbianism. Which is fine, it makes her very entertaining, but it also makes her very unserious.
I think she is talking like women in very patriarchial societies don't have agency, is because a lot of them don't
Second wave feminists are often conflationary when it comes to 'agency' and 'power' within patriarchy. Men and women are both socialized from an early age into strict gender roles, one of which confers far more power than the other. Intuitively, one wants to think that power translates 1:1 with agency, but most men under patriarchy possess very little agency, particularly in moving outside of whichever expectations are assigned to them.
I guess I normally think of men's power over women, not some abstract power
Isn't that true by definition?
Yeah. You think she should pretend they do have agency? Is that what you mean her looking down on lifestyle and cultural practices?
I mean, you're stating a tautology. So, yes, a patriarchy is where women don't have agency, it's a defining characteristic of patriarchy.
So, is it wrong to look down on these cultural traditions?
She has a lot in common with the old 1970s sexist/racist types that she reacted against. I saw or read a thing about her early life. But she strikes me as having kind of a low opinion of women too actually. She sees them very much as victims. On the other hand, she does spend her life surrounded by prostitution and domestic violence. That's not going to exult your opinion of people. I agree she's not a thinker with consistent views; she's anti-trans, because she can see there are obvious sex differences. Yet elsewhere she also insisted that testosterone isn't an important driver of violent behaviour in men, which for some reason she felt qualified to write about in public. Those ideas seem contradictory.
What I think is that she has a virulent bigotry towards men, and she is able to get away with that in the present cultural moment. But it's not any different to any other form of bigotedness against any other group at any other time. It's the same mentality regardless of who it's directed against or why.
Great comment.
She strikes me very much as a paternalistic middle class Brit, which I sadly had much exposure to when living in England. Her inconsistencies and bad logic go unchecked because of her socioeconomic and gender privilege. It's kind of amusing, the irony.
To be fair she has a working class origin, meaning blue collar. And I'm sure she was badly treated by men. That's what it was like, at least that's what it's like on TV. I wouldn't want to have grown up poor in a northern English town in the 60s or 70's, and I probably would have made less of myself than she has. But the point remains. And her peers tend to be like you describe.
She’s been poorly treated by men, and is surrounded by women who have been poorly treated by men. And she does not have positive experiences of men to round out her view.
Yes I agree. But very many or most of us have bad experiences of the opposite sex, or a parent of the opposite sex, or grew up with sexism or whatever. She really does have contempt for us men, and not just when she's cut up in traffic or something, it's an ideology. Whatever never mind I'm just pissed off I didn't to hear about something funny on my walk.
I really don't think the girls - children - going through the head shaving would enjoy it much, so I'm fine with being contemptuous of that trade.
I'm only up to the abortion section, and I'm not familiar with her work, but what has she said that leads you to believe she hates men to such a degree she'd pose a danger?
If you Google *Julie Bindel hating men* in a fresh session, the first result is https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/02/whyihatemen "Why I hate men" by Julie Bindel. The second result is https://thecritic.co.uk/feminist-fallacies-women-shouldnt-hate-men/ "Feminist fallacies: Women shouldn't hate men" by Julie Bindel.
This is just her schtick.
“At least those who perpetrate crimes against women and those who do nothing to stop it”
“Women would be fools not to hate those who abuse us”
We’ll just ignore that bit shall we.
When someone talks like that about blacks, everyone assumes they are just racist, including other racists. Those other racists might be inclined to run cover for their fellow traveler, but none of them would have any delusions that the guy they're defending just has a very specific hatred of black criminals while being perfectly fine with the average black.
I suspect you're going to tell me this is somehow different, but I also suspect you have no delusions that Bindel is perfectly fine with the average man.
If your take away from all this is that the really important issue is Julie Bindel’s supposed hatred of da menz m, then so be it.
Her life long work against male violence stands on its own merits. If you want to think of her as simply the equivalent of a racist, well we’re all entitled to our opinions.
Cait, unfamiliar with her work, asked what she'd said that lead one to believe she hated men, and I answered the question. I understand that you might find it politically convenient for the question to go unanswered, but it's not like I have dragged us off topic, and you can hardly tell me that an article titled Why I Hate Men is an unreasonable answer to that question.
This is a situation where group A treated group B like property for thousands of years. Are all individuals in group A responsible for those injustices? No. But I also wouldn't fault group B for feeling a little resentful about that, especially when in some parts of the world, group A STILL treats group B like property. Also, I think Bindel often says she "hates men" in headlines and such to grab people's attention, not because she genuinely thinks every man on Earth is personally responsible for every injustice committed by men as a class. And the problem with the "not all men" trope is that NO man thinks he's one of the bad ones. Obviously it's not healthy to walk around with collective guilt, but maybe instead of throwing a tantrum every time a woman complains about men, guys should take a few seconds to reflect and think, "Hmm, what can I personally do to make the world a slightly better place, so women don't feel this way?" No human being is perfect, that includes women. There are things women can do to improve the world for other women and even for men, too.
Basically, context matters. Judging people based on their race is racism regardless of the direction it's going in, but context does matter when it comes to understanding the motivations of racism in different instances. The same applies for sexism.
If context matters, maybe don't make the headline of your article "Why I Hate Men"?
Because it might make people take what you say in the context of you hating men. Which most people think is a pretty abhorrent and stupid thing to do.
Her material is very widely available. She's said many things that indicate this over many years. I don't hugely want to litigate Julie Bindel or discuss feminism. I'm just simply not interested in listening to her for fun, nor frankly am I thrilled about contributing to her income.
Julie is one of the best examples of enemy of my enemy is a temporary friend
I’ve heard it all now. Julie and castro
wikipedia says "Radical feminists assert that global society functions as a patriarchy in which the class of men are the oppressors of the class of women" that's an analysis that clearly relates directly to radical socialist or marxist thought. Marxist feminism and radical feminism aren't the same but they do share a conceptual framework and intellectual history.
But actually I was drawing a psychological parallel. Bindel specifically has a hard-core revolutionary ideology that she never deviates from over many decades, despite changing circumstances, and which demonises some other group she'd like to overthrow (even though it's not clear they are even in power actually). It's based on sex rather than an economic class, but so what.
The comparison works rather well. In practical terms, I think yes Bindel might well mistreat people if she got into power like Castro or Mao. The chance is high. But she never will of course.
If this kind of thinking is unfamiliar to you, perhaps that's about you not me.
Lol I got the same vibe very quick. It makes it hard to just listen to the points being made and not go, “Alright lady hang on a second!”
Not just her but a lot of rad fems. The line between feminism and misandry is very blurry it seems.
Well, I'm not talking about anyone or anything else but Julie Bindel. That's a sharp line for me. Sometimes feminist thinking is a bit misandrist, and sometimes it isn't. Bindel definitely is, she says so all the time.
The original TERFs were very much just misogynistic feminists who applied their view of men as universally predatory monsters to transwomen.
On the abortion issue: people don't get late term abortions just because they want to. I live in a state where third trimester abortions are legal, and there's a "notorious" OBGYN here who specializes in them, Dr. Warren Hern. He's said in interviews that patients basically only opt for this procedure in the most extreme circumstances, because typically when someone carries a pregnancy for that long, it's either because they wanted the baby, or they were living in uniquely horrible conditions (a drug addict without access to medical care up until that point, for instance). He recently had to close his clinic due to his age (87!) and financial issues, but given Colorado's lenient laws in this area and the influx of OBGYNs from red states, I imagine another will eventually pop up to replace it. Hern didn't do it for the money; he often operated on narrow margins. He did it because the service was needed.
https://apnews.com/article/abortion-late-trimester-boulder-clinic-dobbs-56ff9a6998465e4f99b12a80e60b675c
It's crazy to me that the patients are being penalized in the UK, and not the doctors prescribing the treatments (though neither should be in my opinion). I don't fault people like Bindel and Stock for having the stances they do, and I don't think it makes them "bad" feminists. But I'm personally of the opinion that this is an issue for doctors and medical boards to oversee, not the criminal justice system.
as soon as someone starts the pearl clutching about "late term abortion" you know how absolutely little they know about it, either "regular" abortion, or late term. The whole thing is either a dog whistle or just an excuse people use to denigrate women as eeeeeevil baby killers.
Fuck off. I'm a father of two children and have a third on the way, and have lost others to miscarriage and abortion. My wife is a midwife who has had to perform abortions and has been traumatised by them, but is still very much pro-choice.
I'm absolutely opposed to late term abortions, and have a very dim view of abortion in general but understand that sometimes it is the lesser of two great evils. But it is absolutely the convenient murder of a fellow human being.
Don't pretend that there's no other side to this. It's how you lose what you have.
You fuck off. I don't give a flying fuck what you think about women and our bodies
I think in cases where the mother's life is at risk, it's more of a trolley car problem than a "convenient murder." And when your choice is between an adult with dependent children, a spouse, a job, etc. and an unborn baby, the choice, though unsavory, is obvious.
This is a situation my paternal grandparents once found themselves in, back in the 40s. My grandmother had gone into labor prematurely and had been laboring for a very long time. The situation was dire. The obstetrician came into the waiting room, offered my grandfather a cigarette, and told him that he could save my grandmother, or save the baby. The idea of a doctor and a patient's husband smoking in a waiting room while they decide whether she should live sounds like a pisstake of the 1940s, but this genuinely happened. He chose my grandmother, and if he hadn't, my aunt and oldest uncle would have grown up without their mother, and my father would never have been born.
Abortion laws place unnecessary burdens on obstetrics. Some of these women would not have had to travel to Colorado for 2nd and 3rd term abortions in the first place if earlier-term abortions, birth control, and better sex education were more readily available in their own states. Other late-term abortions are unavoidable but necessary to save the life of the mother, or to minimize the suffering of a non-viable neonate. Some of Hern's patients planned funerals for the babies they lost. These people are not monsters, they are ordinary victims of circumstance who shouldn't have to travel halfway across the country to have their medical needs met.
Or, and hear me out, some people disagree with you
It's possible, but so far of the many many people I've discussed it with, literally not one person who supports state mandated forced birth in such cases has known even the barest facts of statistics or reasons for so called late term abortion. I won't be holding my breath.
You're claiming those people are looking for "an excuse to denigrate women as eeeeeevil baby killers". Why?
I'd argue most people *are* ignorant of the facts of the issue, but default oppose it because it just sounds bad to terminate a pregnancy just prior to birth. Regardless of informed arguments in favor of it.
Because making an assumption that women choose to have late term abortions out of callousness instead of necessity while not even knowing anything about the issue whatsoever shows a lack of good faith engagement with the issue and a willingness to jump to negative conclusions about the women's medical decisions. They could choose to admit ignorance and not have an opinion on something they don't understand, likewise assuming ill intent is also a choice they actively make.
I don't find it believable that on an issue where >75% nationwide oppose -- men and women alike -- the explanation is woman-hate.
I completely agree.
Tbf to JB she did say to Katie she was genuinely conflicted & seemed to give the impression she could see where Tonia Antoniazzi was coming from.
Could be wrong but I didn’t get the sense she was necessarily in complete agreement with KS.
Bindel makes a good point about AGPs. I would think most Brits would be horrified to know their tax dollars are being used to let AGPs live their fetish.
It's kind of weird even to *do* surgery on someone for the sake of their fetish
Julie's throwing Jesse under the bus on the grooming gang scandal just about made my Sunday morning. Jesse's TDS and especially EDS is so bad that he can't help bringing his toxic Twitter presence into the otherwise fine BARpod platform. I have no problems with critical coverage of Trump but not by maniacal emotionally-incontinent resistance ppl.
Every time Jesse does a bad take they should bring a special guest on to slam him 😂
Big Jesse fan. Disagreed with his take on the grooming gangs. Julie was hilariously forthright on how she felt about it.
The show was better when it was really Jesse and Katie. Too many guests have just made this feel like just another interview show.
At least this episode was about topics. I can't stand the interviews Jesse does where he just asks questions about the life and career of someone I've never heard of and don't give a fuck about.
At least this episode was about topics. I can't stand the interviews Jesse does where he just asks questions about the life and career of someone I've never heard of and don't give a fuck about.
Loved this episode. Really enjoy hearing Bindel's take, always.
RE: pronouns. I think sometimes the pushback on pronouns is misunderstood in that because we are in the year 2025 and it all has come this far, many of us really believe there is a need for a principled stance on this issue, as it has become 100% Orwellian. Preferred pronouns have now become pure doublespeak. It is a way to force people to buy into something they would not normally believe, alter their natural way of thinking, and drop their guard.
I think almost everyone tries to be polite to good people, friends, and acquaintances. But there is a very good argument for being consistent about this in general, in that when using preferred pronouns you are complying with an unfair demand and complying with an ideology. I am happy to hang with Scientologists, but on principle I'm not going to let them audit me or pretend I believe in thetans, even if it hurts their feelings. (And it really should not hurt their feelings.) Or if I on principle don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, I'm not going to comply with being forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I also agree with the argument (e.g., from Amy Sousa) that if we raise kids to be polite about pronouns, we are putting them in a position of losing their instincts about dangerous people. They are being primed to disconnect from their internal sense of logic about or emotional reactions to another human and therefore they are being primed to miss cues that may indicate danger. For example, an adult male lurking in a women's bathroom had formerly been considered a sign of danger for good reason. Most men are safe, but there is a large enough population that provide a threat that it is a survival instinct to assess situations in which men might be threatening. Further, using preferred pronouns transmits to children that you think it is normal and healthy to change genders beyond a small percent of exceptional circumstances.
Anyway, it's complicated, but I think the "principle" stance is not a "mean girl" stance. One may not agree with it, but it is unfair to consider it shrew-ish or mean (unless they are acting like jerks when they bring it up). Orwell would have been on board, I think.