EP 158: The Little-Known Shocking History of Gender Identity Ideology with Malcolm Clark

Audi hey Sasha how's it going good I always say hello like a kind of country western caricature howella that's cuz you're the American have you noticed I'm I'm I'm going dark and trying to be sexy like Sasha now yeah your hair looks really good actually yeah not not not quite pulling it off but yeah no I I decided I'm naturally dark brown and I I decided I was going back see we've talked a lot about your evolution of hair colors your gender journey of hair I guess yeah yeah yeah um so our conversation with Malcolm was just as exciting as I thought it would be I've been dying to get Malcolm on I love Malcolm's work he's just got this amazing forensic very very good attention to detail and the historical origin of gender identity gender medicine and he he he tracks it and I just think his substack is a joy I really think it's really really really interesting so it's D X profile too I mean Malcolm has a history as a a producer of science programming which kind of explains how he do does these deep Dives puts together this interesting history and kind of synthesizes it in also a way that almost like you feel like you're looking at a storyboard like you can really see the producer in him when you look at his work and he's brilliant and he's just super likable I'd love to grab a beer with him and just like talk about things and you've gotten to do that and Sasha Bailey who really opened our minds to a different way of understanding the Contemporary Trends around gender particularly around males which like there is this narrative that it's either you know social contagion or gender or autog gyop there there is some of that in everything that Sasha said but man there's a world like a technological world that we have not been tapped into so we highly recommend checking that out it's expanding the world of gender expanding so those neat little categories aren't really fitting because it's getting bigger and wider and people like Sasha Bailey and his culture are getting into it and we're we're trailing behind with these categories because we're a few years behind what what has been said now might have fitted in 2018 or something like that the truth is we are two women we're both psychotherapists we come at this from a certain angle and we're not immersed in the world of like crypto Bros and Tech Geniuses like that's not our world like I'm obviously a genius but not a tech genius you know what I mean no I'm certainly I'm certainly not a tech genius you might become one one day Stella if you hang out with Sasha Bailey so then like you know people like Kathleen stock Mia Hugh we had some amazing oh Colin wght yes it was so good to talk to him so uh we we we just are really happy to be over on substack and there's some really great conversations like there's kind of a post in there that we we'll share updates and news and there's some really interesting discussions so please do check out our substock you can just join for free or you can become a paid supporter we really appreciate it so um before we jump into Malcolm shall I read his bio yeah absolutely okay okay Malcolm Clark is an RTS and Emy nominated executive producer he worked as a producer for BBC's Flagship science series called Horizon before becoming the head of science at mentor television he's also a leader within the LGB Alliance which was started by Kate Harris and Bev Jackson who invited malol in the early days to join their leadership team he's a brilliant uh writer on substack and Twitter or X and he explores the irrational notion of gender identity and anything else that catches his eye and as Stella said he has a particular emphasis on the little known shocking history of Concepts within gender and gender Med medine itself so we will let you enjoy our conversation with Malcolm Clark hi I'm Stella omali a psychotherapist in Ireland and I'm Sasha aad an adolescent therapist in the United States and this is gender a wider lens a podcast dedicated to the Shi in Concepts around gender in our contemporary culture through in-depth interviews personal stories and psychological exploration we seek to open up the discourse around this hot button is issue join us as we look at gender from a wider lens hello Sasha and Malcolm hi my good pal drinking buy yeah yeah we had a good old night out um I'm going embarrass myself in Glasgow and you showed me uh the site it was really good whiskey bar a whiskey bar in Glasgow is a great place to bond it was very Irish Scottish we were cliches that night totally but I'm delighted you've come on I've been following your work so far so forensically really because you you just brought so much depth to my understanding of gender with your substack with your analysis of the historical roots of gender so I'm really looking forward to getting into all that I know you're a key founding member of the LGB Alliance as far as I know and as well as that you're you're kind of your origin story of how you got into gender is is more interesting than mosts I think um yeah I mean I got involved in LGB Alliance at a very early stage it was founded by two lesbians who called me up and said did I want to come to a secret meeting that would have Ted level security and I couldn't be told the location until like an hour before the meeting that's how things have changed I mean it was really difficult for an organized aenda critical organization even to meet in public five years ago um but yes as you say Stella my my sort of introduction to the whole area of trans transgenderism or or the whole transgender ideology really started around about 1999 2000 when I worked on the BBC science strand uh the longest running uh documentary Series in the world called Horizon which goes out in the states as as Nova we do we did a lot of work with Nova on PBS um and I was called in they needed a producer to to do a quick filming trip I didn't make the show but I I contributed to it and it wasn't when when my boss this amazing uh woman Betina larner called me and said look I need you to go to Germany there's a guy who wants to have his leg chopped off and and we've got a date and we're going to be filming the operation and I need to you to go go and and to to Germany and follow this guy as he gets his leg chopped off I like what are you talking about and so and it was the strangest strangest Gothic trip because the the the guy who had got the whole idea together was himself an amputee um he was a producer a TV producer called Malcolm called Malcolm as well that was weird Malcolm nail so I traveled to Germany with a a really nice guy Malcolm who was an amputee he had he lost his leg as a teenager he was a real amputee somebody which is why he got involved interested in this whole subject he discovered that there were a whole bunch of people who wanted to be amputees and he was like what the I mean I lost my leg from the he he was a true true PE yeah and um and so we traveled we traveled there um and met this guy whose name was h no jokes and um and H I know H the thing is that H was just seemed really normal he he he ran a yor Building Company he was a successful businessman he had kids he always wanted to have his legs removed and so I was fascinated but the the reason this all connects to the trans story is that the two psychiatrists who approved the the three people I think was to get their uh limbs amputated in a in a Scottish Hospital ironically um they were the leading figures in trans um research and trans they were the leading psychiatrists who who sort of were the experts in transsexualism so one of the key people we interviewed or they interviewed in the in the show was Russell Reed who was the number one expert on transexuality in in Britain he was a a disciple he he was taught by John money who you may or may not know John money was originally a kiwi and so was Russell Reed was a Ki so you know they so he came to to Britain he was the number one expert he's the guy who who um carried out the experiments using what's now called puberty blockers to to um castrate um sex offenders and the the sex offenders actually complained that the puberty blockers were too strong so you know these are adult sex offenders who found the side effects of puberty blockers um something they they would rather not go through so I mean teenagers now getting them it's just absurd anyway uh Russell Reed in the program said it's a great line he said well we we allow transsexuals to remove healthy parts of their bodies so what's the difference and and I and I thought no it's the other way around it's it's so mad to chop your legs off that it's therefore so mad to chop healthy parts of your body off but he was looking at it the other way and as it then turned out John money was John money was the person who came up with the term apile for somebody who's physically um turned on by the idea of of removing their lights and that was the big issue that was another revealing thing for me another parallel with this debate because the psychiatrist and the surgeons all assured everybody the Ethics Committee at the hospital assured us that um there was no hint of sexual fetish in this this was a deep burning requirement of these people to to live their authentic life no no no they weren't sexually feti fetishistic at all it it then transpired a couple of years later that the guy who organized this whole group was the Deep sexual fetishist and they all admitted eventually about five or 10 years later that was all to do with sexual fetishism indeed the guy who organized all the operations and organized the group then traveled to what was the Harry Benjamin gender dysphoria Association and presented presented papers and it was all taken very seriously and they talked about how there were similarities and then I think even even WP thought maybe this is this is a bit weird maybe we should Retreat and they and they were no longer invited um but and indeed the guy whose Name Escapes me at the moment but the he was interviewed in the in the show he wanted he was somebody who was complaining that his legs were not being removed that because the hospital had decided that they couldn't they couldn't um cut his legs off and he complained in the show he was then arrested three years later because he organized the amputation of a 72y old guys a friend of his you know he did what anyone would do for a friend in their 70s he organized ampute amputation of the guy's legs and the guy died on the operating because it was some Rogue surgeon God so he was then arrested and accused of of um complicity oh my god there so much there I'm like the there I almost want to stop on every sentence here could I did that's that was that was my yeah yeah B baptism by fire there's a couple things I want to to to explore um one is um where the the crew the nonamputee kind of group were they as horrified as you were people absolutely shocked and the second thing is I want to highlight something that I've seen in mental health and isn't often noted which is that hand seemed very very lucid and sane and you know that is a big thing if you know somebody who's deep in anorexia they can seem so perfectly Lucid perfectly mentally insightful awareness absolutely and then they might say but I haven't eaten in uh seven day yes and you just think other than that small section of your life you would never know that there was mental health going on it's it's a key point that people need to know and it's only when you've kind of really kind of got to know certain other issues that you think that that's a feature that you it's only when you around their e that's so important so important because of course this whole movement which is related to the gender ideology which is the the body body autonomy bodily autonomy uh movement now argue that there are papers published it's all come round again after the horror of 2000 and and the and the hospital chopping legs off the NHS made it clear it would never happen again and the and the surgeon was rebuked and the and the Health Board apologized and said oops we shouldn't have done this it was a real it was Front Page News it was a real Scandal and it was being done on NHS money apart from anything else chopping people's legs off Malcolm when was that what what year was that surgery happened it was either actually you know what I think I was wrong it was 2001 I think 2001 and you can if you Google it Hospital yeah yeah yeah it's still all there on Google be the program yeah yes yeah it'd be great if we could give it for our listeners maybe the program or the newspapers around it because it's s i' we will we will yeah yeah yeah but what I was going to say was so the they apologize keep going yeah they apologized and everyone thought great that will never happen again that was a real weird thing to happen but now 20 years later there are academic papers being published um by by various professors and people who specialize in medical ethics um which so often is an oxymoron and um and these people say that um they say things like um well everyone has the right to bodly autonomy and they argue now that people who have it's now a poem the file is not used because that's that's been tarnished it's um it's people who suffer from body Integrity dysmorphia no body Integrity disorder I think yes disorder and they so they're arguing now that people have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies and the guy whose Name Escapes me who's written the the biggest piece and most influential arguing for this does what you're um criticizing Stella which is he talks about these people are rational they're taking they been interviewed afterwards they said it's the best thing they ever did Hans um Hans without the legs um in Germany has has been interviewed subsequently by this this guy you could make it up could you and um he T said it was the best thing he ever did was get his leg his leg removed and can I add it's body it's body Integrity identity disorder which Malcolm you're following it all it feels no accident that there's an identity in in the middle of that absolutely you know yeah because it's what you were saying it's a mixture of saying that they look completely rational and they're behaving rationally they're talking in a really sensible intelligent way about something and then you add identity which means how dare you challenge this deep internal thing that nobody can see and nobody can analyze and nobody can measure I want to I want to ask about that because I'd like to play Devil's Advocate in a moment but I do want to point out that I think in both movements for this body Integrity identity disorder and trans identity you know I think the the fact that there is a sexual component underneath it oh yeah helps us understand what's going on and of course that's not always the case right so for example lots of LGB people transition because they think you know they're ostracized for being gender non-conforming or whatever so this is not always the case but I just want to point this out because you said at one point Malcolm that during this conversation one of these individuals admitted that there was a sexual fetish involved can you just talk a little bit more about what is the nature of that fetish and how does understanding that whether it's a paraphilia or a fetish or a sexual compulsion like whatever we want to call it how does that help us understand the drive to normalize these procedures I I just want to touch on that because it feels really important it's entral I think you're absolutely right yeah um well John money who who wrote the first paper um about ailia um it was Greg F who was the guy who was in the program and who wanted to get his legs chopped off who then admitted later that it was a sexual fetish it's actually Greg F who was the subject of John money's first paper but he was anonymized and I think the paper was maybe 1972 And so that you know trans movement and the body Integrity movements are sort of bubbling up at the same time and John money connects the two but John money for all his many flaws was a brilliant individual um a deeply troubling and dark individual but he was brilliant and he analyzed apotemnophilia and compared it to he didn't say it was identical to transexualism but he said that it shared many um qualities and and one of them was he said that people are being I mean it sounds to me it's just like a very extreme form of masochism he didn't say that but he said that people were were being sexually excited by imagining themselves as helpless and the thrill was in somehow the overcoming of that mutilation or that deep fundamental weakness that that the amputation so they were they were sort of being excited by imagining themselves as damaged and feeling sexually validated by the overcoming of that and when you think about it if you if you were just if you just look at what transexual gender reassignment surgery is all about it's very similar it's it's removing your breasts it's inverting your penis castration all the rest of it and and then afterwards you have you've Arisen again you have reborn as a more powerful version of yourself it's a very strange kind of concoction of of kind toxic concoction of of but but masochism all the way through and and the other thing you're absolutely right Sasha that the reason the sexual part of it is important is if this is a sexual fetish that is so overpowering that you're willing to chop your leg off or castrate yourself gives you a clue I mean we've all got strong sexual desires but Minds don't go anywhere close to being willing to chop my my leg off and so it suggests a sexual drive is so it's so powerful that you know if you encourage it I mean well that's why it's so much of queer Theory and so much of the trans movement is all about ignoring obstacles boundaries you know um G keeping I have the right to go in here I have the right to do this because in part not entirely but in part it is driven by a really powerful sexual drive I think and it's a it's a body autonomy bodily autonomy movement that's where we're going now follow me well did you see pullets of prize winning journalist Andrea longu um or Shu um who's a trans identified male who is into porn and all that stuff he has argued in New York Magazine that if we really want to liberate trans people we have to have the courage to back the idea that gender reassignment treatments and it he hinted that it was both hormones and surgery have to be made available no matter how young a child is and no matter what their psychiatric history is which is in a way sort of I mean of course of course it's absolutely mad but it sort of has that's really the logic yeah yeah yeah that that the trans Lobby is using but they just don't see it out loud yeah we hope you're enjoying this conversation as much as we are we just wanted to take a quick moment and say thank you to all of our listeners your support helps us to keep the lights on and the mic's hot we recently made the switch to substack so we could build a more robust listener community visit Wisp pod.com and check out the different subscription tiers for just $8 a month premium subscribers get access to weekly bonus content discussion posts and more and founding members get the inside track on who's coming up with the show with the ability to submit their own questions for our esteemed guests for those of you who are in need of parenting support and resources we each have parent coaching membership groups plus you can buy our book when kids say they're trans and if you're watching this on YouTube don't forget to like And subscribe and get involved in the Lively discourse in the comment section thank you so much now back to the show the there's also something about this which feels like almost a hyper rationality like if you can intellectually put your brain into this space then there's there's no room for a sort of moral judgment there's no room for a sort of plea to ethics or whatever like it's it it also feels like even though it's so mad it's also hyper rational in a weird way yeah well you know um Jonathan Swift um he in G's travels he he he lamped what was I think very young organization at the time the Royal Society which were full of bins and clever people and he he lampooned the fact that these were these really clever people who had these great really rational IDE ideas they were absolutely insane if you if you looked at them from outside you thought I can't remember any of the ideas but they were just absolutely but well one of them wasn't one of them that the Irish one that the wait well I think that may have that was a satirical paper I think he did later but the the solution the solution to to to famine problems in Ireland was to eat children and I mean it was a very babies it was called he's a sass like from the 17th century and he he from Ireland and he he had a h a paper called A Modest Proposal where he suggested like oh I know this paper yes and uh very fun yes you do Sasha yeah yeah I think yeah and he uh said you know a solution to Poverty was eat your own babies and it's so Dreadful but it's the crazy he was being satirical he's a very intelligent man but it's the crazy rational well if you're going all the way with this well let's go all the way with this this is where you're going like yeah and so you're absolutely right Sasha it can seem it's very well constructed like some you know Jenga puzzle but actually it's insane and and at some stage that you know it's like my my my argument is you know we've now we've gone along with this sort of rational argu argument that you know the person is all you know Disturbed and it would really help them if you do gender reassignment surgery and blah blah blah blah blah but actually at heart these are people that want to chop their nobes off and cut their breasts off so there's a problem and but Society has sort of drifted so far that we're not allowed to say what what 10 years ago 20 years ago would have been blatantly obvious that there somebody who wants to castrate themselves like an anorexic or wherever has a mental health issue okay I want to I want to kind of raise just a a devil's advocate thing here so have you heard of the the concept of presentism when you apply the kind of social norms of today onto moments of the past so for example you know like the tearing down of statues of historical figures because they also in go okay so obviously we don't want to do that retroactively but I I wonder about also the way our current discussed mechanisms are in a different place than they will be I mean you you are part of LGB Alliance you know there's a long history of visceral disgust and ostracization of homosexuality that was probably used as a reason to discourage it prevent it Etc so I'm just playing Devil's Advocate we obviously have a disgust reaction at the idea of a a person who seems totally lucid and rational wanting to chop off their legs why is that crazy and and is it possible that we just aren't as enlightened as we will be in 50 years when everyone can chop off whatever body parts they want like I just want to ask like why is it crazy I I think it's crazy but I want to know why is it crazy that is not just like oh cuz it makes my stomach turn is there a rational that this is crazy I mean I think actually all of us even if we thought it was crazy and I do if somebody has the money and they do it already but if somebody has the money and they're an adult and they're a successful business person if they want to go and chop their legs off I mean I I wouldn't hunt them down and I wouldn't spend a huge amount of police effort and everything hunt that person down don't let them chop their legs off um but I think it um I forgot the second name Maya who was involved in the W path files um she did a brilliant thread Mia sorry Mia um did a brilliant thread which it was really a sort of whatever we think about the rationality or the irrationality of this what would be the social impact of normalizing it and and and she was saying of course you would get to the point where adolescents who were troubled and mixed up would be getting told by activists oh if only that you chop your legs off you'll be fine and and I think that's the the argument that I I think makes it crazy or it's the normalization of it that would be crazy because it would spiral and and the proof of that is what's happened with gender ideology where most of us didn't really care too much if somebody wanted to I mean I wouldn't close gender reassignment surgery down for adults if there are people who are that mad who want to chop their knobs off I mean well you know can we stop it I don't know but it's where it it it became normalized and put into schools and then kids being encouraged and and fouryear olds being told that they were born in their own body where you just think no no no wait a minute this has to be corrected and I suppose that's my argument but but that's almost I mean it's very hard to work out whether your own values of just those of the present yeah I I I think you're right I agree with you and I think it's the fact it's in hospitals and it's being described as life saving as opposed to an extreme body modification clinics where it is personal autonomy that's it's the dishonest thing of the framing of the description yeah if if it is bodily autonomy these need to be bodily autonomy clinics which offer it with all the all the risks quite plain to see on the walls that you you you know what I mean this is personal autonomy and this is uh this is extreme body modification that should be in cosmetic clinics but when we brought in cosmetic surgery I'd love you to do a history around that you have to go back and tell us a little bit because we can't leave this podcast without some of the history because you've really cataloged the history of gender but I I I kind of think that the history of body modification is is meeting gender and creating a situation where you know Mis you know breast augmentation there's there's a lot of of body modification that is perfectly culturally accepted that was not accepted 30 years ago yeah and certainly in the case of of some of gender reassignment surgery like the phop plastic came out of plastic surgery work just after the first world war um and His Name Escapes me again but but the guy I mean there were these soldiers who who had been um damaged mutilated by gunfire or whatever who had lost their penis and so one of the top plastic surgeons who was working on grafts and and trying to rescue faces um and and he decided that he would take strips of Flesh and try to see if he could create a fake penis for these s for these ex soldiers and it kind of worked um and you know if a if a if a guy these these soldiers this great um um reports of the reasons that they did it they were happily married men and they they were really upset the idea they might not be able to satisfy their wives and so they they hoped that this fake penis could do that um but it was considered very extreme but it was allowed because the the problem was very extreme or was considered extreme but it was then in the 1940s that the same guy agreed to do a fellow plasty for a lesbian or a woman who who thought she was a man and that was the beginning of phalloplasty but it's never been very successful my understanding because I was actually reading up about this yesterday the there's an individual who transitioned to Michael Dylan and this was apparently the first trans man to have a phalloplasty and apparently this this person underwent 13 grueling surgeries yeah and one account that I saw online said that Dylan died at age of 40 7 due to Medical complications which they didn't really explain what those were and apparently became a Buddhist monk before she died so I would be really curious of what happened to that person but the most amazing thing about the story was that he couldn't get a um he got the Fel plasty but he fell in love she fell in love this is where it gets really confusing she fell in love with a trans woman I a GU a guy so this woman who thought he was a man she was a man fell in love with a guy who thought he was a woman and the guy who was thought he was a woman it was illegal to castrate anybody you know in most countries it was illegal to castrate somebody for obvious reasons um a logic that we have forgotten um and the only person that would agree to castrate Michael D 's lover was Michael Dylan so the first person the first man to get gender reassignment surgery in Britain in the late 40s was castrated by the first woman to get a phalloplasty they were in a relationship together and the woman chopped the guy's balls off yeah you don't really hear that very often but it's just it's dropping isn't it this oh my God yeah Michael Dylan chopped the guy's balls off because he was in love with them and that he thought the guy was in love with him but once the guy got his balls chopped off he off and that was good and that was actually one of the reasons that that Michael Dylan kind of got all a bit upset because he thought he'd found true love in a woman who was really a man and that sort of up his brain what year was that in around like 19 oh 40 46 47 it was just after the second World War I I I I I'm always very interested because I see as such the the Lily elbs and the kind of the the trans women they're in history and you can tell us a little bit about them Malcolm because you can trace it right back and I'd love you to to tell us that but um I there's often a woman for example Michael Dylan and for example Reed Erikson who was really at the core of a huge amount of the Harry Benjamin that huge kind of Heyday of trans was funded really by Reed Erikson who was born a female they are there it's it's not correct and people like people like the narrative that this was all men men started there were autophiles and off we go very simple n narrative it's not actually correct there's there's a few intense characters who happen to be quite pivotal Michael Dylan being one and and Reed Ericson I'm not saying they're huge but they are pivotal you it suits I mean I I I support feminism and I support feminists but there is a you know part of the feminist movement that sees everything through the threat of patriarchy and of course patriarchy is huge and permeates everything but but sometimes it means that the story of gender ideology is seen as only patriarchy um and whil it's very very important of course it is there is another part to it and and the women who play that role I think are important played an important role as as as you suggest are slightly erased now if I was a radical feminist I'd probably say like Sheila Jeff has I think that um these women were sort of were really sort of internalizing the hatred of woman of that that the patriarchy creates they've inter Reed Ericson internalized patriarchal misogyny and that's why she wanted to be a man I mean you could never prove either way what what was going on in in she had dread for life she funded the EF which was the Ericson Educational Foundation which was the precursor to the Harry Benjamin organization which was the precursor to W path it went on for about 20 years but she had like four failed marriages died of you know addiction it was a miserable terrible sad life that she had but there's there's something I've always wanted to ask you and I going to put you on the spot because I didn't say I was going to ask you this um I I've been studying kind of the evolution of the trans kid the concept of the trans Kaden you know there's always been gender non-conforming children in history as far as I can see and as far as I can see like you go back to ancient Ro Greece and you will see that I as far as I can I've read young boys young feminine boys were sexualized and um that is a a kind of a dark side of you know ancient Greece and ancient Rome that there was this kind of sexual element towards these young feminine boys that I would say nowadays would have grown up to be gay but they were sexualized and there was peder filia was rampant then but I don't see where the young gender forming girls they seem I can't find much information about them at all now you might have been more interested in the in the boys anyway but I just wondering have you seen much in the history about them because they don't seem as prominent Big Hay Day of tom boy from like maybe the 18th century onwards and you know what I mean they they came in but pre That You Don't See much of it in ancient Greece and Rome erased I mean just woman weren't recorded so we know so little about women's lives um and it would be really it' be really hard I mean they just they just zil um whereas um even I I I I would say in ancient Greece was more it was adolescent boys and they didn't have to be feminine um so but but there was definitely you know definitely you know pedophilia if if you counting 13 14 15 as I think we would as children um but for women I I mean there are there are myths in all the the myth IES of strong powerful women like the Amazon I mean the Amazon are huge in in um in ancient Greece but they were heterosexual and and they were very gender non-conforming they did everything the opposite of what women were supposed to be but they were revered and there were goddesses who who were pretty gender nonconforming you know emus was running around kicking out of everybody and um you know Diana the huntress and all the rest of it but I don't I haven't seen much about tomboys or B B girls anywhere that's a that's a that's quite a new thing a gap and it may well be that in our culture It's relatively new because Bourgeois Society in the 16 17th 18th century created this incredibly Mythic um sort of Feminine Mystique of of of what a real woman was like and it was con strained and covered in in strange clothes and made up and hair printed and actually it's a really uncomfortable uh limitation that's put on on women um and I would have thought that some of the Tomboy stuff is a reaction against that if you were a peasant woman you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you were a t boy or not because you lived a life that was rough and tumble but once you became a b an aristocratic woman you you you were sort of I mean you weren't allowed to do much you had you didn't even go into the sunshine in case your skin was no longer beautiful and white so it was a horrible sort of um restriction that was put on women yeah and um am I right in thinking Magnus herfeld was the first to kind of he kind of had like let's say Charles Darwin kind of had the theory of evolution and Magnus herfeld in his own way said no I've got a better Theory I've got the third sex and that was kind of uh homosexuality was the third sex as such which was the kind of the the AR arrival of transsexual Theory am am I right in thinking that I know you'd have a better grasp on this no I I I think there's he's the first one to try there was basically around about 1860s there was um a gay lawyer um see the the strange thing is in the 1860s neither the word homosexual or heterosexual existed yet so if you were gay there was no word for gay there wasn't I mean queer was probably around in some form there was moles was a derogatory term but there was no way to describe a homosexual um I mean there were prominent homosexuals they um always forget his name but um one of the top um people in Napoleon's Circle um was blatantly homosexual and and they used to call him LA because he was the ATI and but he was so well regarded that when Napoleon attacked Russia took all his soldiers to Russia he left France in the care of his right-hand man Lon who was this screaming Queen um so you you could be you could be openly homosexual in certain places interestingly it was Napoleon Who removed the laws against hom every country that Napoleon conquered he removed the laws against homosexuality I don't I mean I don't know why or how the the reasoning was but but it must have been something to do with the fact that he knew a successful rightand man who was himself homosexual but in the 1860s um the first person to try to to describe what we now call homosexuality Carl ulrick um German lawyer came up with the term earning u r n i n g and this was he said I see the problem is right at the beginning of the gay rights movement there is an early confusion which has haunted us ever since because urick argued that homosexuality was explained by the fact that there was a feminine spirit inside the man and he he he touched on lesbianism not very much because he wasn't that interested but he he suggested the the the opposite he gave another word which is very similar to earnings for for woman who had a little bit of the the male Spirit Insider and so that idea that gay men might have a little bit of the female was right from the beginning and it I think it was like four years later after he comes up with the word earnings that somebody comes up with the word homosexual and and then the two things are put together um and so all the way through the 19th century the earnings earning remained the term that was most popular for describing homosexual men and what what does it mean what does earning mean well yeah it goes it's a a word that goes back to Plato as I understand it um he took it from Classical Greece and it was a term to do with mythological figure I can't remember exactly but it was a mythological figure okay that that that that expressed this this quality and he took it deliberately because he said that it it was a a useful way to to to describe homosexuality and then in right through to the 19 the 19th century leading figures and what we now consider the gay rights movement used the the term earnings and I'm trying to remember there was a there was a book the third yeah the third gender the third sex and it was the 1890s third sex oh no actually it was 19 1911 1911 there was a book the third the third sex and and that was by GES Pioneer and so hereld what hershfeld is doing is hershfeld takes all these ideas of feminine spirits and men and all the rest of it and he then puts a veneer of science over it because he's a doctor and then he he creates the first gender Spectrum and he talks he minutely analyzes femininity and men and masculinity and wom and tries to it's almost like he's trying to put a measurement of how much of the female spirit is in the male body Etc and he develops this idea of transvestism and transexuality and and then decides that there's a way to for some people he thinks they really are fully the female spirit in the male body and that you should change the body to match the mind and that's the beginning of gender reassignment surgery um and which we all know and I just looked up this yes I've just looked up this earning so Uranian is a a historical term for homosexual men and Carl like you say Carl rrck a 19th century German lawyer and writer who may have been gay was the first to label his own Community as early as 1862 use the term earning to defer to refer to men who are attracted to men we earn ings constitute a special class of human gender he wrote huh yeah I wonder did he really write gender or did he write sex yeah don't know you wrote it in German so that might be more confusing still ah yes but yeah so held is where it all starts we want to take a moment to thank our sponsors Jens spect and therapy first Jens spect is an international organization committed to fostering a healthy approach to sex and gender the team and members of gen spect strive to promote highquality evidence-based care for gender non-conforming individuals gspect is pleased to offer a non-medicalized approach to gender with their recently published gender framework and they continue to hold conferences around the world visit gp.org to learn more therapy first is a nonprofit worldwide Professional Association of mental health providers who view Psychotherapy as the appropriate firstline treatment for gender dysphoria therapy first supports psychotherapists working with gender dysphoric Youth and Young adults and offers public education on mental health and Psychotherapy visit therapy first.org to learn more now back to the show one of the things trans activists sometimes say is that the Nazis and the Eugenics movement targeted transexuals and you wrote a very comprehensive X Thread about about this which JK Rowling recently retweeted so maybe we can talk a little bit about that because you know what I've learned from studying this the history is so complex and so deep and actually so hard to find because of the rewriting of history and the way some activist organizations have kind of twisted up the past so it's really hard to wrap your mind around the origins of some of these Concepts procedures interventions talk to us a little bit about your research on how where transsexuals that they were as they were called at the time factored in with Nazi Germany and and Eugenics tell us about this I mean I I've always I mean I think anyone should be interested in the Holocaust I mean it's the biggest crime of history I mean up there I mean I suppose slavery was you know another huge historical crime but the Holocaust is so important because it's in modern times and it's the only example of a sophisticated civilized State putting all of its resources into genocide you know all modern technology from you know trains to you know chemicals Etc and so it's it's it's a really important historical lesson and I and I developed uh shows where I researched it and I I went to vany which is where the final solution was planned and you know traveled around Germany you been to the camps and so I was already interested in it so when when this claim that trans people were a particular Target came up I sort of I just I mean I thought well strange I went to all these places I didn't see anything about this but but I was willing at first to give it some Credence but then the problem with so much of transactivism is they they take an idea which you think okay you know I don't feel strongly either way and then they twist it and they twist it and then eventually become the Holocaust is about trans people and it's that stage I thought now let me have a look and I sort of imagined that when I did look at it I thought look if I find that there's maybe a couple of hundred maybe even a thousand trans people who were you know murdered I wouldn't have been surprised because the Nazis were appalling and the Nazis hated anybody who disagreed I mean they they put Jazz musicians in the camps because they hated Jazz if you were if you were a jazz fan and you were found to be listening to Jazz records you were given a warning and if you can't if they G sto came back and you had get rid of your gapo records you were in real trouble so if that's how bad they were and crazy they were the idea I mean of course they would like trans people so I sort of assumed there'd be a lot of victims and so I was really amazed when I looked to find that the evidence was the very opposite and I was amazed that the the the the hyperbolic claims and so there was a somebody kept saying when I said I wasn't sure about this somebody said oh you should watch this video it's four queer experts on the Holocaust and they're talking about the targeting of the trans community so I sat down to watch this and I was amazed to discover that they they they gave four names there were only four people and they'd spent their entire or most of their recent academic career searching for names and they could come up with four and then I looked at the four and two of them were Jewish well if you know anything about the Holocaust you don't have to be if you're Jewish you you your numbers up you know you better flee the idea that they're GNA Oh we must go and get the trans Jewish person before the other Jewish people it's just rubbish it's not it's just not true and and you know it's the sort of insult to the sort of the crime of of the genocide of Jewish people to somehow think that there was a pecking order where trans Jewish people were were were gone for first and then you know for example I I did my thread I went through and I looked at all the evidence and it was I mean literally it's just nonsense that trans people were particularly targeted and then today actually I I did another thread because there's been so much much reaction to um JK Rowling's retweet that I've had all these trans activists saying I'm a holocaust and I they they claimed that JK Rowling is a holocaust and N which is absolutely outrageous and so I I just but part of the reaction was pink news nobody's idea of a serious serious news Outlet um R A ran a big piece about the trans victims of the Holocaust lost and there were a couple of new names and so I I went through all of the people five people this time that it listed they probably because Benjamin Cohen is Jewish himself they didn't use any of the Jewish trans people from that video discussion which you know fair play to them that they Benjamin will know that the idea that the trans is not the reason why Jewish people were put in a concentration camp but there were five people there I went through them and I I I it's just unbelievable one of them is a guy who was arrest he was warned for cross-dressing GT is his name and but he wasn't arrested for crossdressing he was he was arrested because the guy had a real mental problem he kept believe it or not I'm not making this up he was arrested because he kept hiding in the the neighborhood's communal garbage bins and then he would be found naked and filthy in the garbage bins he was arrested under public indecency laws nothing to do with crossdressing and he and when he went to concentration count his doctors managed to get him out because he said no no he's got mental issue but he's not homosexual he's heterosexual he had been happily married and so he was brought out and he was put in a mental institution where he committed suicide he would have been put in a mental institution in any country in the world in 1939 but if you were if you were hiding naked in in garbage bins you'd be put in a mental institution today probably um or you'd be given some drugs as far as I know 10 to 15,000 gay men were were killed during the Holocaust they were targeted um yes there was a specific law against homosexuality and most of the trans the people who counted as trans a substantial number if they're not Jewish a substantial number are hom exual who would have gone to the they would have been arrested anyway if they were homosexual you didn't have to crossdress some of them one of the people the other thing about these five people in the pink news rundown the astonishing thing is if you look at it carefully only one of them was ever actually killed of the other four G committed suicide um the the the the gay transvest died in the 70s another one died in the '90s they all survived D because and my point is you you would never you could never say that about the Jews the the the the Nazi State its number one priority was to hunt down Jews and kill them it was just nowhere near and and if you look at the other figures you know there were I look 80,000 Freemasons were murdered Freemasons I mean the the Nazis had very specific targets the Roma homosexual can I ask yeah one of one of many and you know the handicap the gypsies but um something I was going to ask you is I saw a f a picture um it was like from Nazi during during the the regime of all these crossdressing Nazis did you see what I'm talking about yeah do you know what I'm talking about yes no no absolutely there's there is another you know I've had quite a few people I get slightly irritated few people come on to the thread saying not only weren't the trans people a Target they really were the Nazis look at these pictures and my I mean I say look I just don't I don't don't buy it you can f there was I think was at five million soldiers that the Nazis had so there were a lot of soldiers and they were and and if you look at every other Army a lot of soldiers dressed up and cross-dressed because there was no women at the front and they they they they dressed up they were I mean I just don't I just don't buy the agree with you yeah I think there's a kind of a decadence of of there's a kind of a Madness that comes over soldiers who are at War and that they're they're kind of doing extraordinary things yeah you know what I mean when they're in in during war times that I I think is just it's not like their real life they go to war and they they bring out the the the extraordinary in them can I ask you something before we go to the um the exclusive content what is your answer to um when somebody says there's always been trans because you've you've followed the history what is your answer there's always been trans people because that's the big question that people say you know I just think you've got to keep an open mind I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if somebody found a gene that sort of uh didn't always express itself in trans nest whatever that is um I mean I wouldn't be surprised if somebody found a bit of the brain oh look that you know that tends to be more common in people who think they're the opposite sex it wouldn't surprise me it it it's amazing that you know after 50 years of looking they have found absolutely nothing in our biology that indicates or sort of you know makes people gravitate towards transness I I Pres presume I I presume there always were people who a tiny tiny minority who kind of identified with other sex to the extent that they really somehow thought they were I mean the chaler de own who was um a spy and an amazing swordsman um he he dressed up as a woman and and and this is in the 18 early 1800 late late 17 1990s early 1800s and came to came to um Britain maybe it was slightly earlier it was Louis the 15th so it was 1780s onwards 1760s onwards and um anyway he he was a the most notable example and nobody could work out was he a man or was he a woman he dressed as a woman and but he was a swordsman and everybody knew he had been a soldier at the front and had been a man and I think when they you know when they did the postmortem he had all the the bits that made him a man Mary wsen coft who you know is a founder of feminism was a big supporter of the chaler and um and in fact they're buried just feet away from each other in the same graveyard um and so the chaler is a perfect example of there's always going to be some people who identify so strongly with other sex they somehow delude themselves that they are the other sex and and if they do it doesn't matter it's only when they start making claims on the rest of society where we have to validate their delusion um for more than just politeness but we have to change the law or give them access to spes that they're not you know they shouldn't be in yeah the history is so important to understand because you know it reminds me a bit when we spoke Stella with Bob AER tag who wrote the book science s kind of about the history of hormones yeah and he was saying you know so many people I know and love are taking these substances but don't know anything about the history of where they came from how they were marketed how were they developed so I mean I I feel a similar kind of level of importance here to understand the history of the ideas and the concepts so it's been really great to talk with you and for the um yeah we'd love to kind of take this conversation into the listener exclusives but of course we'll share the links that you send us we'd love to share with our audience your programs that you worked on for and your substack I can't recomend suback more it's really really good good yeah anywhere else that you would like people to go um I've done some pieces in the critic magazine and in um uh and in spiked um that's where most of my my articles are um but the substack is is where I put the longer ones in yeah okay that's great well we'll make sure to include those and I guess we'll sign off for here and we'll see see you in the next segment great let's let's catch up again in five years time and see what madness has happened I'd love that hopefully sooner thank you malcol thanks thank you thanks for joining us this week on gender a wider lens if you enjoy the show please wrate and review us on Apple podcasts or Spotify and be sure to visit us on substack by going to wider lens pod.com there you can join our listener community access bonus content and resources plus learn about additional ways to support the show our discussions are for educational purposes and are not intended as a substitute for mental health services

Channel: Gender: A Wider Lens

Views: 13,273

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Id: Ma4M3AwEbIs

Length: 63min 14sec (3794 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024