SPEAKER 1: OK, our first speaker
this morning is Abigail Shrier. She's a graduate
of Columbia College and went on to earn a
Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford
and a JD from Yale Law School. She's a frequent contributor
to The Wall Street Journal. And she's the author
of Irreversible Damage, The Transgender Craze
Seducing Our Daughters. It was named a best
book by The Economist and The Times of London. And she'll be drawing on themes
from that book in her talk today. In a recent essay on Substack,
she wrote about Big Tech censorship of arguments that
question this transgender craze. In this particular
case, her subject was amazon.com's sudden
removal from its website of a book that is critical of
the contemporary transgender movement. She argued that this
kind of censorship has the effect of suppressing
free speech both now and in the future. As she wrote in her
essay, and I'm quoting, "This is the chilling effect
of censorship that John Milton called 'the greatest displeasure
and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be
put upon him.'" She continued, "When censorship is
imposed by the government or the world's third
largest multinational, it forbids new
life like a frost." Well, we at Hillsdale happen to
think the right to free speech is essential. And so to our speaker I
say, welcome to the spring thaw, Abigail Shrier. [APPLAUSE] ABIGAIL SHRIER: Thank you. I have to adjust this. Thank you so much for that
very kind introduction. And thank you so much to
Hillsdale for having me here today. So social conservatives
are increasingly asked to justify why they have
decided to target transgender youth as if they picked this
issue because it polls well or some other such nonsense. Let me make it clear why this
has suddenly become my concern. It is because in America in
2007 had exactly one gender clinic, one. Anyone care to guess
how many we have now? AUDIENCE: Thousands. ABIGAIL SHRIER: 300. So there are now hundreds
of pediatric gender clinics in the US. Planned Parenthood gives out
testosterone on a first visit. Depending on the
state, it absolutely gives testosterone to minors. Planned Parenthood
in Oregon gives it to 15-year-old girls on
their own recognizance. They don't even need
a parental note. Kaiser dispenses it. So for today's
teens, whether they have real or typical
gender dysphoria or not, testosterone is
easily available. Double mastectomy, known as top
surgery, is readily available. No, they do not necessarily
need parental approval depending on the state. And they definitely don't
need a therapist note. OK, so let's talk about
the transgender phenomenon. I'm going to start by walking
through the major issues and claims about youth and
adolescent gender transition. And we'll work our way
to the big question, which is, how did we get here? How did we get to a
place in which we're all supposed to pretend
that the only way you know that I'm a woman is
if I give you my pronouns? How did we get to an America in
which a 15-year-old in Oregon can begin a course
of testosterone without her parents' permission? A lot of the answer, of course,
comes from the hard left. But at least one
part of the answer is conservative squeamishness
about issues we'd rather not deal with at all. So let's begin by
dealing with it. What is gender dysphoria? Gender dysphoria,
the severe discomfort in one's biological
sex, is absolutely real. It's also exceedingly
rare, typically afflicting roughly
0.01% of the population, and overwhelmingly males. So roughly 1 in
10,000 males meaning, nobody you went to
high school with. And it typically began
in early childhood, ages two to four,
little boys insisting, no, mommy, I'm not a boy. I'm a girl-- boys who were
insistent, consistent, and persistent in
this feeling that they were in the wrong body. It is by all accounts
excruciating. I've talked to many transgender
adults, most of them biological males. And they describe
the relentless chafe of a body that feels all wrong. Now, there are at least
three separate issues I'm going to talk about today. There are the
young kids who have this, this classic presentation
of gender dysphoria, some of whom, the
majority of whom would have naturally
outgrown it on their own and historically did. Others became what we used
to call transsexual adults. There's number two. There is the social
contagion currently spreading among adolescent
girls, many of whom do not have typical
gender dysphoria at all. And third, there
are the activists and who have already
begun exploiting our confusion and our
sympathies in order to invade women's
protective spaces and destroy women's sports. They are all very different. OK, so the young kids. Now, traditionally as I said,
these were overwhelmingly little boys. And if left alone, meaning
with no intervention either to change their name
and pronouns, what we now call social transition, and no
medical intervention, over 70% of these kids typically outgrew
gender dysphoria on their own. Most would end up as gay
men, and some would not. Some would not
outgrow it and go on to be called what we use
to call transsexuals. And these were not-- transsexuals were
not people who used to pretend they were
somehow really women or were always truly female. They were just people who felt
most comfortable presenting as female. I've talked to a lot
of transgender adults, and they'll tell you, they
know that people can tell their biology is different. But their goal isn't so
much to fool other people as it is to achieve a level
of comfort with themselves. For many, that involves hormonal
intervention and surgeries. And I've talked to several who
say that hormones they took or the surgeries they
underwent brought them a measure of peace. I can also tell you
that they are generally holding down steady jobs and are
leading good, productive lives. But today, we don't just
leave kids alone who say this and let the chips fall where
they may, letting some kids outgrow their gender dysphoria
and others to transition when they reach adulthood. Today we decide the
moment a child seems not perfectly feminine or
not perfectly masculine, today we say, I
know what this is. This is a trans kid. We take them to a therapist
or doctor, nearly all of whom practice so-called
affirmative care, that is nearly all of whom have
accepted that it is their job to immediately affirm or
agree with the patient's self-diagnosis
and to immediately help them medically transition. Teachers affirm young
children in school, both by teaching the class
that only they, the children, know their true genders,
and encouraging kids to reintroduce themselves to
the class with their new name and pronouns. Therapists affirm and encourage
minors down this path, and even pediatricians do. And the typical next
step for these kids, after changing their
name and pronouns to their friends and
classmates, is puberty blockers. Puberty blockers
shut down the part of the pituitary that directs
the release of hormones catalyzing puberty. The most common
of these drugs is called Lupron, a drug
that was originally used in the chemical
castration of sex offenders. To this day, it has
never been FDA approved to halt healthy puberty. Now you might ask, why would
any parent or doctor do this? Why would anyone stop the
puberty in a child, even a child with genuine gender
dysphoria when that child would be highly likely to outgrow the
gender dysphoria if left alone? Some say because
it's traumatizing to let a child go through the
puberty of the sex to which they don't wish to belong. The problem of this, of
course, is that in many cases, puberty does seem to have helped
children overcome their gender dysphoria. But there really is no
satisfying answer to why someone would do this given
that scientists have no way of predicting which children
will outgrow the dysphoria on their own and which won't. But the argument that's made
is that these kids can't wait. The suicide rates for
the trans identified youth and trans adults are
very high, the argument goes. And so we need to get in there
and start fixing them as soon and dramatically as possible. But unfortunately, there
are no long-term studies that indicate that puberty
blockers cure suicidality or even that they produce
better mental health outcomes. There are not even
good studies that show they are safe for
this population long term, nor that they are reversible. There's a big debate right
now in the medical community about whether and to what
extent the effects of stopping healthy puberty in
adolescents is reversible if these kids later
stop taking them. What we do know is
that puberty blockers will block all the secondary
sex characteristics, sexual maturation, and
development of bone density from occurring. We do know that because of
the inhibition of bone density and other risks,
doctors don't like to keep a child on
puberty blockers for more than two years. And we know that once a child's
healthy puberty is arrested, placing her entirely out
of step with her peers, this seems to
guarantee that she will proceed to cross-sex
hormones like testosterone. In studies, nearly 100% of kids
who are put on puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones. And we know that if a child
goes from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones, that
child will be infertile. She may also have permanent
sexual dysfunction given that her sex organs never
reached adult maturity, but she will certainly
be infertile. So the claim that
puberty blockers are safe and reversible for this
population is not well founded. And the claim that it's a
neutral intervention, just a pause button, they say,
without serious downsides is simply false. We wouldn't accept this
level of glib salesmanship in any other area of medicine. OK, so those are the kids who
actually have gender dysphoria. For the nearly 100-year history
of diagnosing gender dysphoria, these little kids were what
we were talking about when we talked about gender dysphoria. But in the last decade
that, thanks in large part to social media, there's been
another population that claims to have gender dysphoria. This is a population
that never before had gender dysphoria in
any significant numbers. In fact, before 2007, there was
no extant scientific literature on their having gender
dysphoria at all-- teenage girls. This is the phenomenon Brown
University Public Health researcher Dr. Lisa Littman
called "rapid onset gender dysphoria." And it refers to a sudden spike
in transgender identification among teen girls with
no childhood history of gender dysphoria at all. Not only have the rates of
these girls claiming trans identification risen
dramatically in the US and all across the West-- over 4,400% rise in teen girls
presenting for gender treatment at the UK's national gender
clinic, for instance-- but teenage girls are now
the leading demographic of those claiming to
have gender dysphoria. What's going on? The answer is social
contagion, one more instance of teen girls sharing
and spreading their pain. There's a long history
of peer contagion with this demographic,
of course. We know that anorexia and
bulimia spread this way. And we know that this
demographic, teen girls, is in the midst of the worst
mental health crisis on record with the highest
rates of anxiety, self-harm, and clinical
depression we've ever seen. We know that the
population who tends to fall into social
contagions is the same high-anxiety,
depressive group of girls who struggle socially
in adolescence and tend to hate their bodies. Add to that a school
environment where you can achieve immediate
valorisation and popularity by declaring a trans
identity and, of course, the delicious temptation
to stick it to mom. Add further the great many
trans social media influencers who can't wait to convince
troubled teen girls that identifying as
trans and starting a course of testosterone will
cure all of their problems, and you have a very fast
spreading social phenomenon. I've spoken to families
at top girls' schools that will attest
that 15%, or 20%, or in one case 30% of the
girls in their daughter's seventh grade class
now identify as trans. When you see that,
you're witnessing a social contagion in action. There is no other
reasonable explanation. These teen girls are in a
great deal of very real pain. Almost all of them have
dealt at some point with an eating disorder,
or engaged in cutting, or have been diagnosed with
other serious mental health comorbidities. And now they're being allowed
to self-diagnose with gender dysphoria by a
medical establishment that's decided its job is
merely to affirm and agree with these girls, a
medical establishment that has, with regard to trans
identified adolescents, effectively turned its
doctors into life coaches. Since my book,
Irreversible Damage, was published in June
of 2020, more evidence than I ever could
have imagined has come out indicating that
this thesis is correct. You may not know
the name Keira Bell. This is a young woman in the UK,
very troubled in adolescence, who was rushed to
transition in her teen years and came to regret it. She underwent double
mastectomy and spent years on testosterone only to realize
that her problem had never been gender. She sued the national
gender clinic in England. And back in December,
the High Court of Justice examined her case and the
claim of similarly-situated plaintiffs, and she won. The Court examined the medical
protocols applied to her, protocols identical to the
ones we have in America. And the High Court of
Justice was horrified. It was absolutely appalled that
a young girl had been allowed to consent to eliminating
her future fertility and sexual function at
an age when she could not have possibly gauged that loss. She had begun
transitioning at 15. This case was called a
landmark case in England. It was covered by The Times of
London, The Economist, and even The Guardian. It was seen as a real
condemnation of the effort to fast track so many
young girls to transition. And one of the things
the Court noted was that the clinic
had been unable to show any psychological improvement
in the girls it had treated with transitioning hormones. If you didn't read about
the landmark Keira Bell case in the American
legacy media, well, that's
because they decided to pretend it didn't happen,
just as they continue to ignore or dismiss the
stories of the thousands of detransitioners. These are young women who
underwent medical transition and later regretted it and
attempt to reverse course. A lot of these
treatments are permanent, but they do what they can to try
to reverse some of the effects. So in America, the
teen trans phenomenon gets treated as a
conservative issue, that is a political issue
rather than a medical one. And so perhaps the greatest
medical scandal of this decade is dismissed as a
conservative preoccupation. Finally, there's a
third group of people we talk about when we talk about
the transgender phenomenon. And this is the group that
seems to want to eradicate girls' and women's sports
and protective spaces. Many or most of these proponents
are not transgender themselves, but they are activists
and they are energized. And they do seem to be winning. They promote dangerous
bills like the Equality Act, now before the US Senate, which
would make it impossible ever to distinguish between
biological men and women, ever to exclude a biological
male from a girls' sports team, or a scholarship, or a woman's
protective space like locker rooms and prisons. And they would do
this based entirely on a male's self-identification. All that a violent
male felon needs to do is announce his new
pronouns and identity, and he becomes eligible to
transfer into women's prison wherever such laws are found. We have these laws
now in California and the state of Washington. And as you might
imagine, hundreds of biological male
prisoners have already applied to transfer in. For this third group,
it is not enough that we create a separate
unisex bathroom while preserving a women's room for women. It is not enough to have an
open category for those trans identified athletes
who do not wish to be stigmatized while
preserving the girls' team for biological girls. And it is not enough to
keep a separate safe zone in a prison for those trans
identified biological men who might be at risk in male prison. No, they are working to abolish
all women's-only spaces. They want all men to be
able to self-identify their way into them, and
they want to do it right now. So these three groups
are very different. You have the young
children, some of whom do suffer with gender dysphoria. You have the adolescent
girls, most of whom are caught in a
social contagion. And you have the activists
who are using the other two groups to attack women and to
advance their goal of chaos and social upheaval. What these three
have in common has nothing to do with
real gender dysphoria. What they have in common
is that they are all shrouded in gender ideology. Put another way, what
they have in common is that they are
all soaked in lies. Lies are told about the risks
of the treatments we administer to young children, both to
play down the very real dangers and to wildly exaggerate
the degree to which we know medical transition
to be a cure. Lies are told about the
researchers and journalists who tried to report on the social
contagion among teen girls in order to discredit
that hypothesis or to stifle its revelation. Lies are told both about
the inherent dangers of eradicating women's
protective spaces and rights and to exaggerate the degree
to which this is the only way to save a community
from suicide. The way to think
about gender ideology is that it is a sibling
of critical race theory. Critical race theory
goes into schools to convince white kids that
they bear the original sin of their skin color. Gender ideology marches
into those same schools and tells kindergartners-- yes, they do this throughout
the public school system in California beginning
in kindergarten-- to tell preschool children that
there are a great many genders. And while someone may
have guessed at birth that you were a boy or a girl,
only you know your true gender. Critical race theory
postulates that race is the most important
feature of any person and that white people,
existing as they do in a state of
racial privilege, are not able to participate in
a wide variety of discussions about our democracy. Gender ideology tells women,
which it calls cis women, that they are not entitled
to their fear or their sense of unfairness as biological men
invade their protective spaces and claim their trophies, and
records, and scholarships. In fact, women and girls can't
even use the English language to describe their
problem since calling a trans woman biological male is
an act of transphobic bigotry. Both of these invidious,
mendacious dogmas have corrupted our schools,
our universities, almost all of our legacy newspapers
and magazines, the medical accrediting
organizations, American Academy of Pediatrics, American
Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, the
Pediatric Endocrine Society, and even our
scientific journals. Just to give you a sense of
how far things have gone, about eight months
ago, I was contacted by a member of the National
Association of Science Writers. The NASW is an
association of journalists with scientific
backgrounds tasked with explaining scientific
phenomena to the public. And the member of the
NASW who contacted me wanted me to know that a
member of the online forum had been expelled for
mentioning my book. I contacted the
member, the person who mentioned my book, who
had been expelled, Sean Scott. And he told me he hadn't
even read my book. It just sounded
interesting to him. He was immediately
banned from the forum and labeled transphobic. I've heard the same thing
from endocrinologists, and psychiatrists,
and pediatricians, and scientific researchers
who write around these issues. If they point out the risks
of gender interventions, they struggle to get their
research into journals. And very often,
there are letters to the editor pointing out
flaws in studies touting all these interventions. Those letters aren't published. The funding goes to research
that promotes gender transition and downplays the risks. There are phalanxes
of young doctors now, many of them in
pediatrics or child psychiatry, who believe their primary
job is social justice. And they don't hide this. They brag about it
online every day. And you're starting to
see this kind of thing put into practice. Perhaps America's most
prestigious hospital, Brigham and Women's
Hospital in Boston, recently announced that it
would offer preferential care to patients based on race. And on questions
of gender, we're seeing it with a mass
celebration of transitioning treatments provided
to young people by doctors who
show an inexcusable complacency about the
risks of these treatments. The Washington
Post just last week quoted some of
these young doctors and claimed that it
was a factual matter that puberty blockers
are fully reversible. That was the quote. Puberty blockers are
fully reversible, except that that's not something
anyone can claim to know yet. They're certainly not
psychologically reversible, and they may not be
physically reversible either. We simply don't
have the data yet. So you're seeing this
startlingly quick corruption of medicine and science. And it's a symptom
of a larger woke corruption of American society. Now, there's something I say
every time I am asked to speak. And I say this for the simple
reason that it is true. Transgender adults are some
of the nicest, soberest, and kindest people I have met
in my work as a journalist. They have good jobs, they
have stable associations, and they are leading admirable
and productive lives. They have absolutely
no desire to harm women or to push transition
en masse on children. The activists do
not represent them. I have met adult
transgender people who seem to have been
helped by transition. But also, a belief
in freedom absolutely requires allowing adults to make
really consequential decisions about their lives, whether it's
adulthood in a free society means that you can
change your religion, you can change your name,
you can take a dangerous job, such as Andy Ngo and I have. And, yes, you can choose
to undergo sex reassignment surgery. And whenever I am asked
and I am in conversation with a transgender adult, I
always use their chosen name and pronouns. And I believe it speaks
well of conservatives who extend this courtesy. But-- and this is a big but-- I never lie. So I never say and will never
say trans women are women. This is a dangerous lie. It's a lie which, when
promoted in public, leads to unjust
and even dangerous consequences for
women and girls. When we lie in public, we usher
in all kinds of consequences, the obliteration of
women's protective spaces and the destruction of
women's and girls' athletics. Rejecting lies--
sorry, parroting these lies is not mere courtesy,
whatever proponents say. It's the cowardly surrender
of women's welfare as a sacrifice to the
woke gods, and it's wrong. In the public sphere,
the lie is the harm. It does damage to our
ability to communicate, to comprehend each other. And it makes it
impossible to object in the face of
unfairness and cruelty. If, quote, "a trans girl
really is just a kind of girl after all," there is
no basis for objecting to a 17-year-old boy who handily
beat all the girls on the track team. Now, I'm often asked, why are
the trans activists doing this? Why would a teacher tell
her class of kindergartners that only they know
their true gender? What could possibly
be the justification for telling small boys that
they might really be girls and telling small girls that
they might really be boys? The biggest hint I
got to the answer came from talking
to detransitioners. Remember, these are young
women who underwent transition and then later regretted it. Again and again, they
told me that while they were transitioning, they
were angry, they were sullen, and they were
politically radical. They very often cut
off their families. They were coached in this by
transgender influencers online. And they rushed toward
their new glitter families. You'll often see
gender confused people among the ranks of Antifa or
at Black Lives Matter rallies. Having turned against
their families of origin, they are easy prey for those
who recruit revolutionaries. Put another way, the
chaos is the point. Just as the point of
critical race theory is to turn the American
people against one another, so the point of
gender ideology is to stop the formation
of stable families, the building blocks
of American life. Let me say this again. This is not the goal of
all transgender adults, but it is the goal
of gender ideology and the transgender
movement, namely the creation of a
new victim class eager to join the revolution. So what do we do about this? How do we push back on the
onslaught of gender ideology? First, we must oppose
the indoctrination of children in gender ideology. There is absolutely
no good reason for it. And it does very real harm. You can absolutely insist
that all children treat each other kindly
without indoctrinating an entire generation
in gender confusion. Second, in public
we must speak up, and we must speak the truth. Always, wherever
we find ourselves, at work, whatever we do, we
must refuse to recite the lies. If conservatives are to
confront these issues, we know we must know
something about them. We must overcome
our squeamishness. We must clearly
distinguish, for instance, between transgender Americans,
many of whom are wonderful, and an ideological
movement which seeks to warp our children
and wreck our families. This is a movement that
would turn our children against themselves
because its advocates know there is no greater
harm, there's no greater horror to a parent,
there is no quicker way to bring America to its
knees than by prompting our children to do irreversible
damage to themselves. The people who've been
pushing this ideology, they got a big head start
on us, perhaps by a decade. But they have awakened
a sleeping giant. The success of my book,
the fact that I was invited to speak to you today, and the
state legislators that are now debating these issues testify
that a cultural battle is at last being fought. We cannot afford to lose. These are our kids
and grandkids. Our future literally
depends on our winning this. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] This is the first audience
I've been to that didn't want to throw things at me. [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 3: Thank
you, Mrs. Shrier. We now have time
for a few questions. ABIGAIL SHRIER: OK. SPEAKER 3: If you would
like to ask a question, please come make your
way to a microphone. AUDIENCE: Yes, Abigail,
a couple of things. Number one, Caitlyn
Jenner, a couple questions. One, have you ever met her? Number two, would you
vote for her at this point if you were a
California resident? And number three, if she were to
become governor of California, how would this movement change? Thank you. ABIGAIL SHRIER: OK,
so I would have-- I don't know very much
about her politics, I really don't, except
that she's a Republican and supported Trump. I don't have any problem
with electing someone like Caitlyn Jenner. I will tell you that the-- she has certainly pushed back
on some of the activists. And she has said
that transitioning was easier than coming
out and supporting Trump. [LAUGHTER] That's-- I just don't
see that as a threat, her as far as I know her. And I don't have great
knowledge of her politically. I'm not sure anyone does. But I don't see someone
like her as a threat. Now, that doesn't
mean that someone who has a history of encouraging
puberty blockers on children isn't a problem. The biggest threat we're facing
in America right now is-- Elizabeth Warren
I think a week ago said that it's
transitioning care. They call it
gender-affirming care. This is another lie,
gender-affirming. It's only affirming your gender. That's all we're doing-- is a right, a human
right of children. Elizabeth Warren said that. The moment it becomes
a human right, every parent who
disagrees with it has to worry about their custody. This is coming here. It's already all over Canada. This is coming here. It will absolutely threaten
parents' custody rights if they don't go along with it. And when I tell
you the parents who call me are politically
progressive, the ones who have lost
their daughters to this supported gay marriage
long before it was legal. They do not have any
issue with gay people. They do not have any
issue with gay rights. They do not have any issue
with transgender rights. They simply didn't think it
was right for their daughter. They thought she had other
mental health problems, and that's an issue for
social workers and therapists. They were undermined
by their teachers. They were undermined by the
therapists they paid for. They were undermined
by their doctors. Everyone affirmed the kid
against the parents' wishes. SPEAKER 3: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: Thank you
so much for coming. I really appreciate
you being here. I'm a retired
neurosurgeon, and I have been combing through
all the medical literature. And it's been shocking
to me to see on just about every medical topic
that this social justice infiltration has taken place,
that the racial justice issues are also taking place
in that with our latest plague. The science is not science, OK? This is not valid scientific
method for any of this. And it mortifies me, OK? But also there has
to be more behind it. Granted you've got your
cultural, and social, and political issues. But are you following the money? Who's profiting from this? And that will answer a
lot of other questions. And frankly, you know, this is
more than just a cultural war. It's a spiritual one. And this is the
epitome of darkness. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] ABIGAIL SHRIER:
Should I respond? Oh, OK. Sorry. Like I said, I'm not used
to friendly audiences. Sorry. OK, so that's right. I mean, there is a political-- there is a question
of the funding. I don't personally-- there are
journalists who have done work to trace the funding. I actually look at the culture. I mean, that's what
I do as a journalist. I look at cultural phenomena. And the reason-- part
of the reason is-- well, I do it because
that is what interests me. I mean, that's the truth. But I will say this. Conservatives are really
good at understanding things in terms of politics. What we're not so great at
is fighting cultural battles. One might say we're
pretty bad at it, because we see an
issue like this, and we kind of say, ugh, that
has nothing to do with me. Yeah, actually it
has everything to do with everyone in this room. It's being pushed
so aggressively in the public school
systems that there are-- I was able to-- in my book,
I talk about my investigation into the California
public school system. And what I found
was that there was no distinction between the
activists and the public school teachers. The activists are literally
training the teachers. Is there-- AUDIENCE: Yes, Abigail. ABIGAIL SHRIER: Yeah. AUDIENCE: Yes. ABIGAIL SHRIER: Can't see. AUDIENCE: I'm here. ABIGAIL SHRIER:
Oh, there you are. AUDIENCE: Thank you so
much for being here. You've written such
an important book. I actually discovered
you on the interview that you did with Jordan
Peterson, which I would welcome everybody to check out online. I guess I just wanted to expand
on the previous question. I have a lot of
doctors in my family and haven't really gotten
any satisfaction when I've tried to talk with them. With regard to the Hippocratic
Oath and the doctors that you spoke with,
I mean, how did they reconcile performing these
surgeries and hormone treatments with that oath? ABIGAIL SHRIER: So I talk
about this a lot in my book because I interviewed
some of the surgeons who perform these surgeries. And so anyway, I
talked to them, and I go through that a little bit. But one of the things I will say
is this really is an ideology. And when it captures
people, there's a remarkable incuriosity
about basic science. So for instance,
they will say to me, but they are so happy when
they-- they seem very pleased. I'm saving lives. They believe that. Now, Dr. Lisa Littman,
who did the original study on this, one of the
things that alarmed her, and I talk about in
my book, is that when she attended a WPATH
conference-- that's a medical conference
for transgender health. It was the old transgender
health society. What she couldn't believe is
that when they would discover-- this was her first. She's an OB-GYN by-- that was her first
residency and whatnot. And this was her first
WPATH conference. In, I think, 2017 she attended. And what she discovered was
that it was the only medical conference she had
ever attended-- this woman is a
politically progressive-- where no one was
discussing the risks. It was a celebration-only zone. And in fact, they would then
go on to de-platform speakers. Now, these were experts
in gender dysphoria like Ken Zucker. These are not right wingers. But if they were willing
to talk about risks or any course of treatment
other than immediate transition, they were canceled. SPEAKER 3: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: Thank you kindly
for coming and addressing us. Phenomenal talk. And awesome that you
talked about the how. At the end you mentioned
the why, to create chaos. I guess I would submit it's
a little deeper than that. I would think that
it's just pure evil. And I guess my question
to you would be, do you think that this is
one of the roads to what a lot of progressives,
uber billionaires, talking about depopulization of
our planet, when you mentioned that, what, 30% go on to do
the testosterone and then are infertile? ABIGAIL SHRIER: You
know, it's hard for me to assign motivation
without evidence. I would never make
a claim like that unless I had proof that
this was part of an effort to depopulate the planet. If there was evidence, I
would certainly look at it. But I think the
way to understand it is really to look at
other radical left movements because they seem very similar. They seem to be creating
chaos in the population because that's how-- because
if you have total chaos and overhaul, then
what you want is redemption through this
new political order. So that seems to be what
they're priming everyone for. But again, not
everyone needs to-- who promotes this needs to
be totally aware of that. But they're participating in
an ideological movement that seems to be headed that way. SPEAKER 3: Question to
the speaker's right. AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you so much for your book. I have two children, a son who
is 15 and a daughter who's 17. They went to a very small middle
school in Northern California. We know five girls in that
school that are transitioning. One of them is my son's
closest girlfriend, and she's becoming Tyler. And her parents have went
through a really messy divorce, right? And she's politically
very radical. Another mom just I just spoke
with, her 10-year-old daughter came home saying,
I'm binary pansexual, and I'm identifying
as a boy now. I don't know what to say to her. I just need some
practical advice. Like what should I
say to this mother? ABIGAIL SHRIER: Well,
a couple of things. I mean, I think the book is
helpful because the book-- my book doesn't
exactly tell you-- I mean, it gives you
some suggestions. But it really isn't
about what to do. It's more about how
to understand this. But to all of you I would
say, the moment you hear that, get your kids out
of that school. [APPLAUSE] I have talked to parents who
have lost their kids to this. They push it very hard
at many universities. And I can tell you how much less
they care about that Ivy League sticker after their kid is
now on hormone treatments, because this happens
over and over. It's completely covered by
every Ivy League school. You can start school,
and in some cases, they ended without
their breasts. It absolutely happens. I guess that's an
advertisement for Hillsdale. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 3: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: I just wanted to
make a couple of comments. Years ago, I spent some time
in Sweden with the military. And one of the things
I learned about Sweden was through the people
I was working with, where they said the
state owns your children. And I said, what do
you mean by that? They said, we bring
them up, we feed them, we put clothes on them. But we do not own them. The state can come in
any time they care to and remove them from your
family for any reason. Well, that started
me thinking about it. And over the years, I discovered
that the Marxist lifestyle is to break down the
family any way they can. And once they take
over, they can change things to fit their situation. They want to create chaos, like
you are saying in your book. This is all a useful
distraction for something else that you're talking about. It's just one out of
many distractions. So the type of politics
that we're heading toward will be, as you said,
the way the left works. This is not their real agenda. Their real agenda is control
over every living thing. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 3: Question to
the speaker's right. AUDIENCE: Thank you. And thank you, Abigail,
for being here. That was a nice tee up
really just to a comment to say thank you for helping
this audience connect the dots between your
work and the broader theme of critical race theory. I think Mark Steyn touched
on this a little bit last night around
the language of CRT and understanding what it is
and us taking control back of our language. That's really, really important. And I think Andy will probably
touch on this around his work because it is all fabulously
and destructively connected. So thank you for your work in
helping us connect the dots. ABIGAIL SHRIER: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 3: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: I'm sure my
wife is asking herself, what are you doing, Bill? But first of all, I want
to salute you and thank you for your courage. [APPLAUSE] ABIGAIL SHRIER: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] AUDIENCE: Yes. You have done a wonderful
job of presenting things that for me personally
were always sort of lying under the surface. And I guess I'm to
the point that I'm just tired of sitting and saying
and doing nothing about it. And I keep asking-- you've given a lot of
reasons and justifications for what these people are
doing with and to our country. But I keep coming back to
the question of why and who. And I guess I'm left
with the conclusion of, where are the roots of this? And dare I say Satan? There just seems to be no real
justifiable reason for what's happening in America today. Thank you very much. ABIGAIL SHRIER: OK. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 3: Question to
the speaker's right. AUDIENCE: Hey, thank you. Oh, I can't hold it. OK. I was wondering if you could
clarify something I might have misunderstood earlier. And then also, I have a
question based off that. You were talking
about infertility, and I couldn't tell
if it was caused by the beta blockers themselves
or the fact that they-- ABIGAIL SHRIER: That's a good-- AUDIENCE: --move on to
testosterone after that. ABIGAIL SHRIER: OK, so that's
a really good question. Going from puberty
blockers, so blocked puberty straight to cross-sex
hormones virtually guarantees infertility. Starting with a course
of testosterone, most of the kids who-- many of the kids who are-- discover this in
their teen years, they've already been
through puberty. So they go straight
to testosterone. And that puts fertility
at very serious risk for various reasons. But it's not the guarantee that
going from puberty blockers to testosterone is. AUDIENCE: But puberty
blockers themselves, do those cause
infertility, or is it more what comes afterwards? ABIGAIL SHRIER: Well, you
can't have a baby if you haven't gone through puberty. So, of course, you don't--
you aren't fertile while you haven't even been
through puberty. And then if the
puberty blockers-- if you go off the
puberty blockers, there is a chance you may
just revert to normal. We don't really
have the data yet to know because we
haven't been experimenting on these kids for long enough. So, I mean, that's-- it
is experimental treatment. That's what we're doing. We're conducting
a mass experiment. So traditionally,
puberty blockers were used in very-- in
many different ways. But one of the ways was
there's a condition called precocious puberty. And that is when a four-year-old
starts developing breasts. So we shut off an overactive
pituitary essentially, or we pause it. That was the idea. It was a pause button. And then you could-- we could take the kid
off of it around the time it would normal and healthy
to go through puberty. And at that point,
puberty seemed to take its course
without problem. The problem is we're now
putting puberty blockers into a different population. These are kids who are going
through healthy normal puberty, and we're arresting that. And I've been told
by many doctors-- this is not my own
research, but many doctors-- when you arrest a healthy
system, when you shut down a healthy system that's
operating properly in the endocrine system,
there's just no guarantee that it's going to
pick up where it was supposed to if you go off them. Now, again, we don't
have the research yet to know one way or the other. AUDIENCE: Thank you. That makes a lot more sense. So I guess my question is, it
sounds like we're seeing that the current social trend is
creating a hyper-inflation of people who are or
children who are-- have gender dysphoria. Is it possible that before now,
there was-- it kind of skewed lower than it
actually was due to it being a lot harder to come
out as gender dysphoric? And have you ever seen a
child in the instance where if we found that puberty
blockers were potentially healthy, where they
could have the case to actually benefit from them? ABIGAIL SHRIER: Sure. So are there these
kids who are absolutely have gender dysphoria and might
be helped by puberty blockers? Yes, it's totally possible. And that is why I have
never supported the bans. I have never come out in favor
of banning a treatment that might potentially
work for one child or be appropriate for one child. I'm totally open
to the possibility that it might be
appropriate for one child. Now, the other question. How do we know we're not
reverting to a normal base rate? How do we know this isn't the
rate that we would all be at, this isn't the number
of transgender people we would always have seen
if not for all the stigma and harassment that
they experience? And my answer to
that is, where are the women in their 40s,
50s, and 60s discovering their transgender identity? Now is their time. Where are they? Why is it the same
population that falls for every other
social contagion, teen girls with other
mental health comorbidities? We should see this across
the whole population. We don't. AUDIENCE: Is it possible that
it's somewhere in the middle or even lower or at least
higher than it was, is I guess what I'm saying? Like we're probably higher
than we would be now. But we do see people
in their middle age now who are transitioning
and for the first time feel comfortable to do so. Do you still think
it's probably higher than it used to be at least? ABIGAIL SHRIER: So is
this the normal rate that we would-- the natural
rate that we would see? Is that what you're asking me? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] So I'm
asking if you think the 2007 rate was the normal rate
or if it falls somewhere in the middle or at least-- ABIGAIL SHRIER: Oh, I don't know
how I could possibly know that. How do I know that what
the effect of culture is? I mean, I have
someone I've become very friendly with who was a
lesbian for years and now-- and transitioned
because she was involved with a woman who was
uncomfortable being in a lesbian relationship. She transitioned
in her, I think, 40s to male and regretted that. And I'm not saying that
everyone would regret it. Obviously, we make all kinds
of decisions as adults. I'm completely fine with
adults making those decisions. But if you're asking me,
in the absence of culture, what would the number of
transgender people be, I don't know how I
could have any idea. AUDIENCE: Thank you. SPEAKER 3: We have
time for one more question to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: I better make it a
good one if I'm the last one. Abigail, I discovered you
through the Megyn Kelly Podcast, which was excellent. And one of the things
that drew me to you is your kindness
and your compassion that there are people who
really do suffer from this. And it's a small number,
but they deserve treatment. And for those who
are struggling, we need to be kind in our
conversation about them. So I appreciate that about you. ABIGAIL SHRIER: Thank you. AUDIENCE: My first
exposure to a trans child was through a youth
group at church. And the church
completely bent over and supported this
child and really wrestled their
parents to the floor when they tried to object. So I would echo your
sentiment that if you are in a church that
is advocating this, get out of that church. [APPLAUSE] My question is kids,
you know, teen years, hardest years of your life. You're changing. The hormones are going
crazy, but we know girls develop around the age of 18. Boys' frontal lobe not
fully developed until 24. So for those who are-- sorry, guys-- what do you
advocate for someone who really does need this treatment? If we're saying, delay,
delay, let them grow up, let them fully develop,
what is the age to have this conversation? ABIGAIL SHRIER: It's
a good question. I would say two things, one to
the point about your church. I mean, the part
of the problem is we have churches
diagnosing kids, right? We have pastors saying,
oh, it's a trans kid. They don't know, right? There are little boys
who are effeminate and girls who are a
little more masculine. And they would just grow
up and lead healthy lives. Many of them would become gay. Some of them wouldn't. But today, they turn around
and say, oh, it's a trans kid. They've already decided
what the diagnosis is, what the identity is,
and started them down a path. And it's very unusual
for a medical condition. But there's something
else you asked. The second question
was, oh, what age? Well, here's what I would say. I know a lot of
transgender adults. And the ones I've talked
to are a leading good lives and stable and good
people, and people you would absolutely want as
your friends and neighbors. They have told me
transitioning is really hard. And they were really
grateful for the time they spent in therapy
making sure this would be right for them. They had to spend a
certain period of time living as the opposite
gender, trying to see if they could do this
because it's very stressful. Today, there's no requirement. There's no requirement that
you get a therapist note. There's no requirement
for anything-- I mean, almost anything right? So depending, I mean, the
age of medical to consent varies by state. So whatever people ultimately
decide the age may be-- and I'm not a doctor. But whatever people decide
the appropriate age may be, it certainly has to come with
some sober medical oversight. And right now we
have virtually none. What they have is medical
encouragement and celebration. SPEAKER 3: Join me in
thanking Mrs. Shrier. [APPLAUSE]
