The Mark Steyn Show: Douglas Murray on identity and politics

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome along to our show we are live in Montreal which is in Canada just about and we have one of our favorite guests with us tonight and that is the international best-selling author Douglas Murray the last time Douglas was with me it was for his fabulous bestseller the strange death of Europe and his new book is called the madness of crowds gender race and identity and it's also bestseller because I talked to him at length last time I thought we did a bit differently this time so we have an invited audience of Mark Steyn club members from both sides of the border I'm not actually sure how many people from south of the border made it because the ice storm cancelled various flights from the District of Columbia down to South Carolina so if we're short on Americans we also have courtesy of dr. Roy a few young montreal a--'s here from the Prince Arthur Herald and if you're wondering who for any Americans say if you're wondering who Prince Arthur is Douglass will answer that question a little later Prince Arthur is not to be confused with Prince Andrew Prince Arthur would certainly not have agreed to do that interview and I think Douglass I might as well start with this but really Prince Andrew should have gone to the Douglas Murray Academy of BBC interview preparation because that lady on that show has interviewed you many times and you always start with the proposition that whatever ostensibly she's invited you ought to talk about she's really there to screw you over and it helps to give 15 minutes thought as to the particular way in which she will screw you over yeah the main point of BBC interviews is you're interviewed by somebody who hasn't read your book who then tries to catch you out on it but I'm the author yeah yes and you haven't bothered to read it how are you gonna win yeah no that's why it's unfair to His Royal Highness but you can see why after going toe-to-toe with you although she fancies someone she can just knock off in in 40 minutes straight like she did with Prince Andrew but the book the madness of crowds gender race and identity and it is about the subjects that royal us today and which seem to be doing so especially swiftly because of social media we and it's all snuck out on us pretty quickly you have Democrat presidential candidates who come out on stage at the start of a debate and announce their pronouns yeah you have chick-fil-a which a lot of us used to like because it's the most tastiest homophobic chicken and and then they suddenly decide that the Salvation Army is a hate group they're not going to give them anymore I mean things are changing very fast yes I mean my view is after doing the strange death of Europe and doing immigration and Islam you know how tricky they are that I should move on to easier subjects so I decided to do sex race gender right LGBT and just give myself some time off no but I mean it is as you say what's happened is that all of these subjects have been coming to the forefront of absolutely everything so they're underneath all political discussion they're underneath all cultural events and and here's the thing that strikes me that there are some people who said to me you sure you're not exaggerating this I mean you know sure it's a problem on University campuses and a bit of the west coast of America but and I've come to realize the only people who really think that are people who are self-employed yeah some people who are self-employed don't realize this is coming for everybody so that increasingly in the workplace whether you're working for some governmental organization or private company corporation you'll find this stuff is coming for you not about competency not about who's best for a role but have they got the right character traits we need now and that's just one of the examples of how this is flooded in everywhere and I think if I can sum it up in a nutshell is that the problem is that our society to say driven by the social media thing this truck is basically doing two things simultaneously we're pretending that we know a lot about things we just don't know about into which hope put trans right which you know the Democrats in America LGBT town hall the other week which was just an asylum outbreak was was I mean there were people who were mad who were holding the mic and then we're sort of it was taken away by somebody matter yeah and you know somebody says someone was saying there with her a child who's introduces themselves as a nine year old trans child and Elizabeth Warren whoops and cheers you think what are you cheering yeah is it better what is it and and so yeah all of this stuff is flooded into the mainstream there of things we just don't know enough about and so I wanted to say okay let's look at this let's contest what is actually going on here let's look at it and the second thing is we're pretending we don't know things that everyone knew till yesterday know into which output relations between the sexes yeah which clearly are complex but aren't that complex I mean we're all here well it worked for an awfully long time well they're complicated though aren't they because we no longer agree on what the sexes are the the eve ensler who wrote The Vagina Monologues in the 90s and it was a huge hit because it was about celebrating the essence of womanhood which is the vagina of the title role of the Vagina Monologues and they used to do this every Valentine's Day on American campuses and then suddenly they decide it's totally transphobic to suggest that a vagina is anything to do with being a woman yes half the women here too two penises and after men have vaginas and there's nothing wrong with that who are you to say every bigger yeah exactly exactly and you and you say biggest it's actually taken out this issue is taken out as you say in your book all the big name feminists not just even the Germaine Greer and Suzanne Julie bindle yeah all the major feminists when I was growing up I've all been canceled because they failed to do the the trans tripwire but but one of the things I found most interesting when I was doing this was I noticed the pattern at work and I sort of do each chapters you know I do gay women race trans and in each chapter I do what I think is the tell that this has actually become about politics so when Peter Thiel comes out the Republican nominee for president in 2016 the main game Agra zine in America advocate runs a piece immediately afterwards saying Peter Thiel may be gay so no you say they say no Peter Thiel may sleep with men but in no way is he gay you go well I don't come as a blow it and you know you had that in Britain with the brexit when who was it Ian McKellen was he the way in McKellen said if you if to be gay is obviously to vote to remain yeah have some people been doing it wrong all these yeah and and then but then you see it with every single one of these so the race issue Kanye West's comes out for Trump in 2017 the Atlantic magazine runs a piece by Donaghy Zico saying Kanye West isn't isn't black and I started to think well if Kanye West isn't black you know Peter Thiel isn't gay and Germaine Greer isn't a feminist what's actually going on here and my view is that there's there's two things broadly one is a lot of particular young people who've been misled misled into thinking that the world operates in this to use the hot most horrible word of the year or the intersection list manner where everything interlocks and if you just if you deal with one oppression you've got to deal with them all and unlock like racial issues and you'll unlock feminist issues and your lung lock transitions that's just not true as I demonstrate it they all run against each other and they're all much messier than we pretend individually but but a lot of young people who have been persuaded fight like anything for this wage wars on social media and defriend people in shame people and much more and that is to lead a good life but underneath that driving it our people for whom this is just brute politics who want to win and by the way I mean since we're in Canada well not to mention that you know this this country's already had a couple of great international exports recently including bikini testicle waxing which is obviously gone internationally and we're all very interested in seeing how how you get around that one well actually that is one of the most fascinating because I get sued a lot today I've learned to read judicial decisions very carefully and that one on Jessica Jana of the transgender alleged transgender lady I checked on this I cannot find any other Canadian judicial decision referencing the scrotum until Jessica Yaniv came along so this is landmark jurisprudence on the conditions on the human right to have the well yeah Nev made may be the only person is willing to give the legal community more work than you do and because she just wants to collect hate crimes right stage no there was one live on air the other week you saw where she said yeah I was just at the mall and I went to ask for beats and I said no we don't serve trans people pizza and you just looked anything that's a lie yeah I didn't happen there's no way that happen don't believe it don't believe it anyhow but I mentioned this the this diversion just because obviously one the other great exports of Canada recently has been the Trudeau blackface phenomenon I just mentioned this because that also reveals something very interesting we all that if Donald Trump you know once let alone so often he lost count done blackface and sometimes not just in public but maybe just in private for quiet an idea yeah but his feet black up the feet and then the rest do I might as well do the tongue night as well and I reckoned that that would have been it for Trump so why do some people survive it and some not because some people are willing to dishonestly weaponize these things surely to win yeah and and this is gonna have to be called out and it hasn't been so far we've got to find mechanisms to bounce this stuff back but but you know the the Justin thing I think as you say it gets to the heart of the good faith in these so-called things and it was a particularly ludicrous one because on the night it was revealed and basically all the all the journalism on this was done by Time magazine in the United States and the Daily Telegraph in London the Canadian media basically just sat it out hands off but they but they were very nevertheless very clear in the first night that Justin Trudeau is not he may have blacked up it may have spent the first half of his adult life mostly black tub you couldn't reliably say but but he's not a racist he's not a racist no but on the other hand just this last Halloween if you decided for your Halloween costume to dress up as Justin Trudeau in blackface there's nothing but politics in that that's right as I say this this has been recognized and and there's there's an obvious play about this is do you do it back as in sincerely as it's being done I have a sometime colleague at the spectator in London Melanie McDonough who was at a while ago invited to him a British University campus to talk about abortion on a panel and you know she has the Catholic Church his views on abortion and the students this university within a nanosecond ruff on the stage trying to you know and she ended up going over to them and saying excuse me but could you please leave because you're making me feel unsafe and she said so there we were in a standoff between two equally insincere groups of people and that's that's the thing isn't it because because you could everybody could do this yeah but some people don't why do some people not because we think that we should hold on to truthfulness even at the expense of political game and for some people as I say this this set of things you can do homophobe sexist misogynist racist trans folk it's just a short cut to winning and I think people have become aware of that let me ask you about one of the themes that sort of percolates through the book and you because again it gets to the idea of what is just opportunism and what is sincere because you talk a lot about what's hardware and what software what what do you mean by that in the sense you use it in the border well I was trying to work out there's my view I might explained a bit more this you know and in the strange death of Europe my view is that we we live in this very strange in-between times where in countries like Canada and America and Britain most of Europe we we're moving from something that was recognizable to something else and what that else is gonna be is obviously up for grabs but it's not very close to what we were and new method physical systems are being built up this one the intersectional social justice system I think the most audacious since the end of the Cold War it says this is how you'll find meaning and virtue in life by doing these things by waging these wars by fighting for these causes and a problem is of course it's not as if they're not onto something you know of course they are I mean you know there of course there was a time to fight for each of these rights things the question is should you be fighting like this after the battle appears to have been mainly won but but but in each of these things this this this fight has been going on and I've been trying to work out what what then are the ethics we still agree on and one that I think is very interesting is this thing I described as hardware software broadly speaking recognized and agreed upon should we say in our society whatever people's political or other views that you don't you don't criticize for people for things they can't help so you wouldn't one of the reasons you wouldn't be mean to somebody who's disabled among much else is it's not like the person chose to be disabled so who would do that and we do have you know enough residual dislike for that sort of thing ugly bullying sort of medicine we're sort of agreed in that but but there's an interesting thing that follows on from that which is that all rights campaigns seek to present everything as hardware and what I say here is it's a hardware software thing that hardware is something you cannot change software potentially malleable now in each of these chapters I I sort of deliberately seek to open up questions which are very uncomfortable and I do it in heart to say don't lean this hard on this stuff because not only is it all messy between itself you know the trans thing runs against a lot of women's rights the trans thing runs actually against a lot of gay rights so don't do it because of that but also because each of them is a bit messier than we're willing to pretend and so I explained with the gay rights thing we'd still don't know very much about being gay how it comes about we pretend to be absolute certain the society as a whole has decided hardware it probably is more hardware than soft with it but there's a software component it seems Lady Gaga or born this way exactly so and it's an obvious play back a to lifestyle choice lifestyle choice was I think a lot of people recognize and think we have something off about it because if it was a choice why would you choose to make life a little bit harder but there is the thing in I guess really until the 1980 watch the average American televangelist in the 1920s when he'd be denouncing it he'd been denouncing it as a lifestyle choice exactly and and then during the 90s I showed the opinion polls show that tolerance acceptance of homosexuality goes exactly in line with a recognition that it's basically not a lifestyle choice now what's interesting about this whatever you think about that is that every other rights campaign realizes this is a very clever thing to do so 20 years ago trans was absolutely caught up with sexual thrill it was central to it by 2018 2019 sex is completely out of the picture so much so the New York Times runs an op-ed last December with the headline I'm gonna get my vagina this week it's not going to make me happy and I don't need it to why exactly you're getting it again what's if it's just gonna be hard to take back to the stores but but the point is is that this is obvious this is this is an appeal to people to say don't you dare say this is about sexual kink or anything this is about something I can't fake this total hardware so you've got to come with me and whatever I say but you but you know the fascinating thing about that everyone always thought for example when Kinsey did his report and the 10 percent number and over the ensuing decades people say that 10 percent total exaggeration it's much more like 7 percent 5 percent 3 percent whatever you have this side almost in the book which sort of stunned me where you said that two-thirds of young people had had some kind of gay experience I think that's I think it might be that the figure from the UK recently of not willing to say that they're heterosexual and go for like gender curious to spirit Indian fairies right and and will just do anything as long as they don't come across as straight but what is that July I mean I'd miss doing that in the 80s I got a thing from the I was living in the London borough of Camden and I got some government filing was for rubbish collection but they wanted to know whether I was heterosexual homosexual lesbian bisexual and I obviously see the trick you don't want to be so I take the bisexual apparently just because I thought I'd get better rubbish I favor none of the above terrifies if they offer a hundred genders is go yeah yeah yeah just keep them worried and then they're worried they're not up to speak but but in that two-thirds number suggests and and we all have known this the that that ever sit in a way in a way ever since it was decided that it was hardware in other words ever since they said you're born this way huge number of people's kind of want to get in on it and say I'd like to give it a bit I'd like to give it ago now and then and and and in a sense since it became determined to be genetic a lot of people take it on as a kind of lifestyle accessory son I mean I say the only for that one the only figures artists or reliable say that about 3 to 4% of the population might happen to be gay by the way I should mention that because you know obviously when you publish a book is read by a certain number of people in the publishing industry the number of people in the publishing industry who said to me I had no idea it was so low I said what did you think it was like about 50% yeah might be the might be the no but anyhow but I do find it interesting because if you look at this this hardware software thing of the ethics were trying to create it also shows up one of the reasons why we're driving ourselves mad and it's that we keep trying to make ourselves things that are mutually contradictory and here's the big one in that the big one in that that our society is very unwilling to identify is we are currently being told that or being advised to believe that being gay is Hardware being trans is Hardware being a woman is software hmm now that is pretty much impossible to believe and retain your sanity or your dignity and and I worry about this one in particular because we are seeing something very disturbing coming about what we saw in Canada the other day at the public library and what we've seen in Britain again in recent weeks with female feminists being beric and abused and having a public meeting where the windows were being banged banged on everywhere in a very threatening manner while the police watched on by male to female transsexuals is a demonstration that that we have to speak up about this because apart for anything else the women who have spoken up for this have carried too much of a burden and have done so on their own and I think that has to change so so as I say we can't believe as a society that the only people actually born in the correct body are trans people who happen to have been born in the wrong one no right that's not just no no but when you look at what's happening as you say almost all the big-name feminists from the 60s and 70s have been taken out over this issue and even someone like Eve Ensler with the Vagina Monologues eventually she to get to get back in the good books she introduced the penis she put a penis in the vagina monologues and I don't I don't believe that sincere my um my youngest kid they this shows her I would say how fast it's changed because he's he's still pretty young but when he was in grade school they did biology class and there was no penis in bio oh gee class they just said they had one thing where they all had to dress up as somebody had to be an ovary and somebody had to be a fallopian tube and somebody had to be some other female body part I would get a bit hazy on some of them it's been a long time and eventually the boys of the class rubella they say well why do we just have to do female genitalia why can't we do and they wanted they said we could all dress have a Chinese dragon outfit and be a penis and so he races yes yeah yes he was culturally appropriate search of a Western penis he was falsely culturally appropriate behind after school but actually actually now it would be transphobic not to teach if you were teaching female biology not to teach about it and and you know I mean particularly since the madness of crowds came out I've had even more parents coming to speak to me saying you know my kid came back from school the other day just crying because he's been told he might be a girl and his penis might not be there one day and all sort of stuff and you just thank you I just think look in all of our countries maybe the one we're sitting in in particular but in all of our countries at the moment we've got a serious adult deficit serious adult deficit serious lack of adults willing to say things that 95% of adults know to be true and to hold those things up in public defend them in public in a reasonable manner you know it's not about hating anyone it's not about being prejudiced against them it's not about trying to make everyone kill themselves it's not about that it's adults being willing to sustain truths in public in spite of what is let's face it most of the time incredibly minimal opposition and I've got no time for the adults who say well I mean you know I did used to say that there were different sexes a hundred genders but you know I got such a lot of hassle on Twitter that's not that's amending your forebears say I was gonna storm the beaches of Normandy yeah but when I realized what they were saying about me Jesus and the money changes in the temple he tweeted it and then he got such a backlash haters gonna hear yeah yeah let me tie this to your last book which as you say was about Islam and Europe and one of the interesting things to me is that essentially in in an Islam izing Europe and in the wider West the left and Islam seemed to be intersecting in strange ways so that you'll barely notice when when when when Islam takes over they fought for example the left has adopted an Islamic like antipathy to free speech is essentially operates apostasy laws on these subjects the left has no great enthusiasm for Jews the left as we've discussed seems to be moving women into a subordinate role as part of all this women's sports women's championships are now being won by big burly six foot two testosterone fueled creatures who tower over the biological girls in the race and in us I wondered whether that is also perhaps true of homosexuality as you know President Ahmadinejad famously announced when he was at New York University where was Columbia in New York but he famously announced that there were no gays in Iran and Islam's attitude to homosexuality has in a sense always been to present it as a trans issue so that you have the dancing boys of Kandahar for example if you're seven or eight and you're particularly fetching young lad they dress you up as a woman and you dance around for their mu that's Islam's attitude or are we is is the trans thing actually moving us into somewhere are this the seven-year-old boys here the eight-year-old boys here are all a bit confused maybe if they were 15 or 16 or 17 they'd just be gay well that's certainly the case of in the stats that we have show that the of the children diagnosed with so-called gender dysphoria in countries like America at least 80 to 85 percent are going to grow up to be perfectly normal heterosexual homosexual men and women 10 to 15 percent may continue to believe they are of the opposite gender I've spoken as the research this book I spoke to people who had had believed that when they were young and came to realize it was a mistake as a hell of a mistake for society to encourage and you know I think there are some very interesting and odd crossovers in this area one that began to interest me recently was why can you tell with 100% certainty now you can predict with 100% certainty who's on which side in the women's weightlifting thing so without wanting to get too specific Elano ma1 the new condom not that new anymore Congress women in America who's fairly familiar figure in British politics these days in an omar writes in her first weeks in office to the local sporting authorities criticizing them for not upholding a male to female trans weightlifters victory in the women's weightlifting competition and something and I've in her first weeks in Congress AOC did a fundraiser for charity is very controversial in my country called mermaids which raises money to transition children and I was thinking when I saw she was raising large mitem why is why would why would a OC congresswoman from the u.s. be raising money to transition children in the UK and why would a basically sort of broadly speaking Sharia compliant Alon Omar be wanting the big man to win the women's weightlifting and it's clear at this point that I think the trans one in particular is a battering ram it's a battering ram to do something else and that's why you know as you know I do these interlude chapters and one of them's on the Marxist substructure of some of this which is it's just so clear at this stage that there are a set of issues which some people have recognized really deranged and upset us and they're willing to push those buttons even if they would appear to go against everything else in their political and otherwise worldview because they know that it upsets as it were people like us a lot yeah and they're very keen to keep upsetting us you know and to push that advantage there's an odd Nexus yes and and and that actually is the the fourth element of gender race and identity in in the book the social media which has accelerated all this let's let's take some questions for Douglas from from our audience if you if you want to say broadly way or from you don't have to be too specific they'll be interested to know whether any of our us invitees got through so who'd like to ask Douglas a question yes in the front row right here my name is Roy I'm from Canada what I think very interesting is the D transitioners and especially in the UK there are quite a number of them and they're denounced as if they're traitors to the to the entire movement and I have for some experience was with trans people and most of them just want to be left alone to live their lives there's a very small number of them who or who are trying to use this battering ram and just wondering how do we and I think ultimately what's going to happen is there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits against a lot of doctors for Joe Joe for doing this to small children in America in particular some of the things I turned up in America on this one we're just unbelievable including the crossover of basically drug companies with the people advising people to get onto the drugs that is a WoW there's a cinema lawsuits waiting to come in the US but but you're right on this thing that and it's worth I should have said is there's an interesting proportion thing on this which is I say in the gay chapter there's something that's very interesting that's come up in recent decades is being gay a thing that some people in myself are or is it just the first step to doing something else and I say that's a very interesting difference now most gay rights groups tend to take the second view being gay is the first step to bringing down capitalist you know undermining religion or so it's not obvious to me why that would follow but but it's the same with the trans think some a lot of trans people and Sony some that I've met just wanted lead a quiet life and so passes the other sex and you know they don't really want much attention for it and then there are these ones who want to take it as a step to do other things well this is familiar in each of the cases though it's it's the same it's been an argument throughout feminist history is being a woman something which means you're your equal to a man or is it the first step to doing other stuff as well and by the way the other stuff always falls into the same bucket list' bringing down capitalism a patriarchy sis heteronormativity and so on and and III urge in each of these case and same thing with race I urge in each of these things be really careful with this be really careful with it because it's like it's like and some people can't cope with what I would describe as equal and they go to better and better is a really dangerous move and we're in the middle of some of it at the moment in each of our countries is it is being a woman exactly equal to being a man I'd say yes I hope we can sort of stay with yes but some people want the same and magically better on occasion a christine lagarde for instance had the IMF kept on Skepta on saying in recent years you know if Lehman Brothers had have been lame and sisters the crash may not have happened anything but why why are you saying women have the same competencies as men or you saying they have the same and magically more on occasion and or there are no negative bits to being a woman but there are masses of positives which will wheel out when we want to and it's the same with race is is being black does it mean somebody is it's it's no value judgment or anything or somebody's black has the same worth or somebody is white or is it better is white worse and is being a heterosexual male worse than everything and if that is I think that's an unsustainable thing for people to be claiming because as it happens there might turn out to be if we did the study quite a lot of heterosexual men in the country who also haven't have a stigma of being white you know it's it's just it's not sustainable in the long term don't don't you think there's actually fewer of them than their heterosexual white men than there used to be in the sense that if you look at if you go to any Elementary School on this continent boys are boys are a problem they've been a problem now for 30 years and boyhood is suppressed yeah and boyishness is suppressed and the manly virtues is a phrase only used erotically yes so there's certain so at the certain point wouldn't you rather at some point the idea well why not be a girl they're much more the society is telling you that all your instincts all you urges Gillette telling you like toxic max masculine D be the man you can V or whatever the stupid slogan is and then there's suddenly you're supposed you use you open your book with a quote from a Nicki Minaj song the goes look at that look at that look at my look at that but yeah look at it's about how great your really is a very shallow level mark it's a bit more to it than that if you take her at her word and you say oh I'm looking at your butt thanks for the tip that's great what fabulous I can't complain about your butt then you get me - yes yes well that's everybody who's got children trying to grow up through this nose knows this story particularly anyone who has sons I mean I have some friends oh one friend I said recently I said how's the boy doing he said you know good it's just getting ready to leave school I said what do you think about girls wants nothing to do with them I said he's not gay is he said no no no he just thinks they are more trouble than they're worth the whole thing yeah the whole thing's a nightmare because everything and I think that's very common by the way I hear versions of this a lot because because and by the way it we're also Rick first of all we're creating men that the women don't want yes and we're creating women who can't find men no no that's it's actually the disintegration of the fundamental building blocks of society let's have a let's have another question yes in the second a mark hey Douglas good to have you earlier today I my name is Matthew I'm one of the founders of the post-millennial we actually broke the Jessica Yaniv story yeah over the summer that was ours there's actually another story I'd like to ask you guys about your reaction to so we can't report on it a judge has filed an injunction against that we have that in Canada where you can talk about certain Court cases that are proceeding where he came from yeah but I'm getting on a plane in a few hours so I can say what I like here I'm feel you know your board welcomes I mean maybe not in Quebec it might be a little bit difficult to find unless you could speak French fluidly his French is delightful good so there I want to hear your reactions to this for all of this you know it's so hard to be a boy so there is a young girl I think she's 9 or 10 years old in British Columbia and her parents are divorced and she is currently undergoing a transition alright from female to male alright the debate is not over whether or not you should be put on hormone blockers the debate is whether or not her father should have to pay for it hmm all right so we view these things with ironic detachment and everything is so funny what's your opinion on that we've clearly moved past the point of whether or not because the father doesn't want well no no never might not believe you get it he doesn't want to pay for it because it's a crazy thing to pay for right but that that's often the only way certain topics can be raised if you look at in Bradford for example in Yorkshire with all the genetic defects of cousin marriage so that you have the children of cousins who marry cousins so you have the grandchildren of cousins and they have all these weird genetic defects and the only way members of parliament can even discuss the subject is by talking about the financial strain it puts on the National Health Service so who pays for something is actually often a sideways way of getting into these these kinds of I'm just interested by the fact that we the trans one is such a minority of a minority issue that we have to keep asking the question why does it pain us so much one reason is because it's when it's about children you that's just such a central thing in a society don't do things you will just look back on with or how we slipped into that another is an affiliations on affection some of us still have the concept of truth but another one is that this is a very bad sign about our inability as societies to look at any issue and have it out in the public square I mean this one should be in my trans chapter I do as carefully and humanely salami slice what the reasonable bits are early on and where you get to completely crazy bits I think this should have been done years ago publicly by an awful lot of people and the problem I have with it is what we started on the way with how come all the politicians suddenly jump on it right and within 24 hours you have to say something that we just didn't contest in the public space nearly well enough and if we if we can't do that with such a minority of a minority issue how are we gonna do it when it's issues that affect masses of people but your book is particularly well for Sartre to go back to the hardware/software distinction you make the point which is true that there are actually people who are born biologically ambiguous as it were and they're a very small number but they're kind of irrelevant in this debate because it's about choosing you know some it's about people who are in one body but who feel nevertheless they belong in a different one when it's a nine-year-old Douglass's book is harrowing on the irreversible consequences when you do think oh I came back from school and Little Jimmy was playing in his sister's dress with her Barbie dolls so we better get him transitioning now the the puberty blockers that you put people on even if the guy or the girl changes his or her mind five years down the damage to that in terms of fertility and everything is is is irreversible and it's and the idea the idea that we are operating effectively operating on children to deny them the essentials of adulthood and we're doing it as you say without any kind of public consensus or even much discussion on it let's have a let's of another question I think in the second in the second row there Andrea hi I'm Beth from Los Angeles California did you come Canada I came United through some very strange life thank you very much I this is really fascinating I was wondering what you think is going to be the next frontier for example you said that they're constantly pushing everything further to the left you know with the different intersectional coalition's and and now they're up to trans and changing chant trans children once society has gotten used to that what do you think they're going to move on to next I mean that there are some awful things out there that are now completely taboo like you know God forbid sex with children and the like is that going to be the next friends here and do you think there will come a point when this intersectional coalition that's taking in so many disparate groups including Islamists well at some point just split apart because they can't make it all work together just quickly by around the pedophilia thing we're not that far off on some of this I don't if you thought that we had a case in the UK recently with a there's a there's a kid in America who was just recently on British television called Desmond is amazing it's like a nine year old dress they said that drag kid I said like watch out for phrases like that entering the language drag kid it's like I mentioned the case of jazz Jennings his child who transitioned in front of American and television watchers eyes Jones Jennings when she was like 12 was being interviewed on American primetime being asked who she fancied there's this something deeply wrong about a society that asks children about their sexual preferences like on air from the adults or there's something very sick in this and I think we have to be very very observant of what's going on in some of this and and by the way that at the center of that is this very strange modern American idea which is the essence of the child exists and must be brought out to find the authentic self rather than the self is a thing that is created by the environment you are in and the people around you this Desmond is amazing he's a knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff they say oh his natural self is this about it no he seems some drag queens who've done some drag queens who seen who seen some old you know Liza Minnelli or or or I know her mother and that's what it is steady it's it's an impression of an illusion of an impression no good and and they say this is authentic no the whole thing is a copy through popular culture that's what it is it's not it's not the essence of the kid but but you know again that's change very fast twenty years ago a little girl in Colorado Jean bene Ramsay has abducted and disappeared and the newspapers were full of all these pictures of her made up for these talent shows supposedly she did where she was in a feather boa and big hair and makeup and all the way some people people were saying well this is one sick family to be parading a little whatever she was five six year old girl around this in 20 years we've gone from that to it's okay as long as the person in the big feather boa and the lips gloss and it's not a five year old girl but if I boy by the way just one other thing on this is where it goes next I think probably when Mark and I first met many years ago is when Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London and he was he was very keen on sort of bringing down statues of people in London who - who turned out hadn't been as perfect as he had and were in history and were guilty of being dead no he said he'd never heard of general Napier that's rebelde square and for whom Napier Vale in Quebec just 15 miles down the road is named after we should send Livingstone a postcard yeah but this is because when when that happened and subsequently other thing roads must fall which has Murdoch's it sort of campaign you've of you had them here had them in America to bring down statues and I've always said to people why don't we push them along that road you like like make them take down Nelson's column I tell them to get onto Nelson's column next because you know he definitely lived in history and is dead and was white and it was very Marshall in a way a warlike finger and and and you know I think we agree the only way you could keep him up there was if you said he was disabled had only one arm and 50% of the normal ie quota and his last words yes kiss me Hardy yeah an inspiration to you that's why he can stay there on behalf of the LGBT and disabled communities and but the reason is because whenever I think well why don't we invite people to push it a bit further they always do get there I mean with roads must fall they got onto Nelson's column again quite fast afterwards and but but here's one of his the ones that I think might stop it if people are interested because it was we haven't really done very much on this but one of the other things that fascinates me is the privilege hierarchy which is becoming the dominant thing about where are you allowed to speak what are you allowed to speak about you know where do you have to stay in your lane and everybody at college these days knows this this is the thing in what order are we allowed to speak and think and one of the things that's fascinating about this is that if you work it out it's all by characteristics that people can't help you know it's that's the point about care isn't you didn't have a say in it so why don't we encourage people to get to two of the ones which are very very dominant at which we never focus on height that's a biggie because there's a set of jobs you can't do if you're too small yeah and if you're too tall but we never get on to the heights and go you shouldn't talk about that you're over six foot we could and it would highlight the absurdity of what we're doing at the moment excuse me nobody under six foots allowed to speak the next down and so on and here's an actually really tall people do make me feel unsafe that's who you do right yeah a safe space and here's here's one that that I'm looking forward to this one coming to Hollywood's soon is attractiveness all the studies show that across race sex everything else very attractive people do very well in their lives they marry very well they do very well in their careers people like to promote people who are attractive they like to have attractive people around them now in that case we've got to start wielding an attractiveness penalty we've got to start punishing the attractive people and tell them to shut up Hollywood here we come yeah Hollywood here we got active privilege yeah why are you why are you here yeah you attractive Hollywood person you should be you shouldn't be speaking yeah let the very unattractive person who never made it near Hollywood yeah get the mic and all the roles in it biggest absolutely absolutely ugly quotient in on the board yeah on the board in romantic comedies I'd like to see romantic I don't want to see Hugh Grant just you know with Julia Roberts and a handy McDowell and all these people why doesn't he like get it on with some really ugly person that's you've actually hit but it is it's no more ridiculous yeah let's have one I think someone down here wanted to ask a question let's have yeah this is a gentleman down there hi my name is Dylan from gaspé Quebec they're the most attractive women in North America by the way gasp AZN you're that's now my question kind of comes on two points like often we see with the trans issue there seems to be like a deliberate obfuscation between the meaning of gender and sex and like we're all and we all have a gender which is supposedly something that stands outside of the physicality of strict physicality of what sex is except when it comes to situations like sexual orientation and then we're seeing people told specifically heterosexual men and lesbians are being told to get over their sexual orientation it would seem and at the same time we're having young women completely indoctrinated against the almost completely indoctrinated against the idea of motherhood where we're seeing it denigrated all the time and with your perspective with the LGBT community in the history that in the history of conversion therapy that's gone on what are the implications of this indoctrination prohibition of people acting upon what could be considered well largely as a biological imperative yeah you have a you you you start with a chapter on conversion therapy because you went along to see some big-time film about conversion no wait till the director's cut it's like if it was very straight I went because yes I went to that because it was there was a group who gay groups in the UK were campaigning against them having the right to show a film this Christian group that was about voluntary conversion therapy now my view is that in a genuinely liberal society you have to allow a whole load of stuff that you don't like and you have no right if you've been complaining when the boot is on one foot to use it when it's on your foot and this this tendency you know like Christians is it Christians can gather in private in nightclubs if they've got darkened windows you know and they don't bother the rest of us have stuff it's and I just went I said look there's nothing wrong about it I mean I didn't didn't agree with a lot of it some of it made some sense but the idea that these people be hounded out of cinemas as they were just for a private gathering of a slogan for something of their stress was voluntary it was about voluntary now the gender sex thing is fascinating I think we should be very careful I don't go for the gender thing whatever things there are sexes but the idea that there are these genders that we choose is I'm afraid a spillover from liberal arts colleges in America in recent years the Judith Butler ization of life where gender is about performativity and by the way we have to be really careful about this because we embed very ugly old notions about sex there was a this actually personally wrote the vagina piece that I referred to in the New York Times last week wrote a piece in The New Republic or what's left of the New Republic the other day saying it was in an interview this male/female trans person interviewed and said it was asked what being a woman meant to her here's what she says being a woman is to be the receptacle of another person's desire mmm whoa whoa no that's basically 60 years of feminine writing being undone that's that's out the window and so I'm I'm very concerned about the slippage of it like the the what sex what gender but here's another thing you mentioned motherhood one of the things I'm fascinated about in all of this is the reason I did this and the reason I've delved into all this is because I want other people not to you know I want us not to spend our adult lives in the most fortunate countries of the most fortunate point in history discussing gender there's something there is very suction opportunity cost as a society for doing this and and sometimes people say well what would you like us to be discussing I say well almost anything no but but but how about solving some problems or if you don't like that how about going back and looking at some of the things we didn't sort out as we were going past them and here's one and I can put the blame on this one on to Camille Paglia but she was person who said this I think first to my knowledge in recent years she said recently feminism never dealt with motherhood she said when I think of the feminists in the 20th century who are my heroes Amelia Earhart Germaine Greer and I come every third was said all of them were childless now she said this must mean something it must tell us something and it's a and I write a bit about this in the book which is that's a big one to skip mmm that's a big one to skip to not work out as a society what your attitude is towards motherhood and to get into this position we're now in and I give these examples like the The Economist last year said you know every couple has a child you know and over of course their life they pay the following child tax right okay yeah you could look at it as a tax or you could see people being blessed with having children and having one the greatest sources of meaning you could have in your life so why does everything in the society look at it in this weird oh you know what a loser you you there were there was a hundred fifty thousand dollars you could have had in your bank account you died and instead you were stupid enough to have a kid silly you loser that's and that's that's one of the tones of the time so so as I say there's an opportunity cost of the things we didn't and don't address and I'm just because it's not just cuz I so like difficult issues but I'd like us to return to the things that matter that we skip because we didn't have the guts to deal with them well let me just ask you a final question on that Douglas because we've you've talked about how your understanding that feminism gay rights civil rights trans rights that the thing is not about being equal but about going beyond to something else and what they all have in common to one degree or another when they say that Peter teal isn't really gay or Kanye is no longer black or Germaine Greer is no longer feminists all this the whole thing seems to be what's important the former Australian Prime Minister said this to me the thing about when when the same-sex marriage came out he said the thing all these things have in common is they're working to that there's a lot of people for whom the priority is to destroy institutions and when we just have rubble everywhere that's when they'll give some thought as to what they're putting in its place yes I mean well as I say it goes back to my thing of why you can predict with a hundred percent certainty who's on which side and the women's weightlifting thing I do think some people think this sounds incredibly conspiratorial but I give chapter and verse on some of the people who did this in the past there are people who want to pull everything apart in order that the only people left with an explanation are themselves and they have the old explanation for what we meant to be doing but they've tried a lot of times in a lot of places over the last century and I I have this thing I say to say to people and I'm particularly keen that young people get out of this sound particularly keen that they don't pay the opportunity cost that we're gonna make them pay one thing I say is to keep saying compared to what I'm compared to where and the really interesting thing is you can almost always predict what they're going to say when you say okay you think we live in a patriarchal society normative homophobic racist society where's it going really well it's always the same like people who complain about your you know your education system if you've got a good education system they say well you should see the education system in Cuba yeah well the health system in Cuba they they used to do the economy in Venezuela until quite recently and maybe they've gone quiet on that for the time being but but my point you can always tell it's always along that line it's it's it's always a lot of very specific socialist Marxist line but but they always it's like this that they mock when when people say well you go to Christian Baker's and demand they bake your gay wedding cake but you never go to the Howell Baker and demand they bake your gay back lava because you know you'll get it and and the left's answer to that is there's this coalition of the fringes and they're and the white man at the center of it yes the problem yes that's certainly the case and I mean it goes back somebody asked earlier we should push the contradictions harder mm-hmm I mean why do so many fourth wave feminists stop at the borders of Islam we know why they're cowards we're cowards and and this sort of thing should be should be should be stressed but but just go back to this thing I I think it's crucial in a society like ours that we don't fall for this stuff that we don't fall for this idea that you know that we live in a patriarchal you know in which women have no power and one of the questions I ask my women chapters are their forms of power women can wield that men can't yes yes there are and everybody knows it so why do we allow the description of us living in this society where women are entirely powerless anyway why do we allow this description of the most tolerant and multicultural societies on earth as the least tolerant most racist etc and I just think we come back to this thing the deficit of adults who turn around and say no it's not the case and if you think that Canada in 2019 is a fascist Junta petro normative sis Petri Arkell racist society is top it it's not heteronormative sis at all just walk around Montreal it'll disabuse you of that oh this is terrible this is what about the spot yeah this is like when David Letterman asked David Cameron what Magna Carta meant yeah didn't know it's not quite as embarrass yeah it must be Queen Victoria air Queen Victoria's son the Duke of Connaught do you know former Governor General of Canada Isis do you know his daughter was Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden I slept in her bed a couple of years ago she wasn't there Thank You Douglas former Governor General of Canada you should be government I'm ready to be cold that's it he knows everything he knows everything except to Prince Arthur Duke economies will be paying another exciting round of know your viceroys the next time on the Mark Steyn show see you then [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Mark Steyn

Views: 187,939

Rating: 4.9318419 out of 5

Keywords: The Mark Steyn Show, Mark Steyn, Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds, Sex, Race, Identity, Transgender, Homosexuality

Id: m67kmWZriFI

Length: 67min 30sec (4050 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/INXSDXB]

Excellent talk. A must watch

[u/canlchangethislater]

Thanks for the heads-up. :-)