 For this one, I'm actually going to start with something different. I'm going to feed the panel certain prompts or questions. So the first question is, if you guys have repeated for me, just so the audience can hear this, is are leftist political school teachers pushing their sexual ethics on children? Are leftists pushing their social, what is it? Social ethics on children? Are leftist teachers pushing their sexual ethics on children? The accusation is that leftist public school teachers are doing this, yay or nay? Yay. Yay. I mean, this is kind of a strange question, because I mean, almost any teacher is going to push some sexual morse on kids, right? I know when I was in school and I was receiving sex education, I was told about the value of consent and the value of abstinence and safe sex and all of these things. So I guess the question is going to be, are particularly leftist public school teachers pushing their specifically, like, controversially left wing sexual morse on children? And then with respect to that question, I mean, it's like, yeah, probably some of them are. Probably others aren't if we want to investigate how widespread it is a phenomena for this to happen. I would probably just have to see some actual evidence. I'm probably not going to be convinced by anecdotes or videos you saw from Libs of TikTok. So yeah, that's probably how I would approach this question. So I tend to agree with Matthew on this. I don't think that necessarily leftist school teachers are intentionally pushing their sexual morals or ethics on children. I do think that there is, to some extent, always going to be some morals that will be carried on to students, especially if majority of the teachers lean a certain way and children look up to their teachers. There is going to be, without a doubt, children who look up and start forming their values based on what their teacher's value. But I mean, I think we can say the same thing about right wing teachers, right wing policies in schools we've seen in the past and we see currently that also enforce a specific type of ethics on children. I would say I agree more with, what's his name, Maldi? Maldi. Okay, I agree more with him. I think it's nice that you kind of specified the question. But at the same time, I disagree with the fact that this isn't happening consistently around the States. Like I've seen it in personal experiences with my Goddaughter, with my other best friend's daughter. Most of their friends are like pansexual, bisexual, or they think of, you know, when I was in school, we didn't even know what pansexual wasn't even a thing, right? It was just bisexual or gay or lesbian or straight. And I feel like it's just become increasingly popular. I would say it's interesting to say that you even see it among specific groups of kids, right? If you have one kid that's trans or identifying as queer or non-binary, the rest of them around them will are more likely identified the same way. And I think that also goes hand in hand with the teachers and how they're presenting it to their classes as well. Can I jump in really quick on that? Please, please. Yeah, so one thing is like, the reason I said I'm probably not gonna be convinced by anecdotes is just, I mean, the main problem is gonna be like, one, there are certain psychological biases, right? Like if you have like a certain political bias, the types of personal experiences that you're gonna take note of are gonna be skewed in the direction of your political bias. So that's one problem with like the anecdote thing. Another problem is just like a sample-sized problem, right? Like the amount of kids in schools that you have experience with is so small relative to the amount of schools and kids that there are. That there's very little guarantee that your experiences are at all gonna be representative of the broader picture. You also mentioned how one of your data points is like there's a lot of kids who used to be the case that almost nobody knew what pansexual was and so on, but now everyone does. But it just seems like an open question to me whether that's a factor of teachers teaching this to kids or whether it's just kids talking amongst themselves, having more access to social media. I think it's definitely both, personally. Sure, it could be. Yeah, I think it's both. I'm not gonna blame the teachers completely, of course. In fact, I would say it's probably more social media. I think the proportion is probably just an open empirical question. I don't see any reason to take a super strong stance one way or the other. I mean, we could take it beyond what the individual teachers are doing here and there and you could look at the curriculums across the country. Like, there has been a push and it's largely being pushed by the left-wing political party in this country to introduce more quote-unquote LGBT-friendly materials into our public schools. Now, like, you can look at an individual video of a cringy teacher from Libs of TikTok saying she wants her students to pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag or you could look at different books that are being introduced at the kindergarten level that discuss transgender. There's one about a crayon. I don't know the specifics of it because I can't read books, but they are out there, they do exist. So this is being introduced on a curriculum-wide level. And the funny thing is, is as we progress through this conversation on this topic, they'll go from saying, well, it's not really happening. There's not really those data points. And then at a certain point, they'll explain why they're in favor of it and why it's a good thing. So yeah, it is happening. It's obvious. It's not just the teachers. It's at the curriculum level. And there is reason to be concerned. Well, what I said was that I'm not sure how representative this is of the broader picture. Do you have any, sure you can say that there are curriculums that have introduced LGBT-friendly education. Do you have any specific evidence on what proportion of districts or what proportion of schools have done this? So the state of California recently had- Well, but that's giving us an example of a specific place doesn't really answer my question, right? You're talking about nationwide? Do I know how many- Do you have any evidence regarding the proportions of districts or schools that have done this? So the state of California introduced a statewide curriculum. So that would be all of the districts within the state of California. Sure, that's a state, yeah. So, and in that proposal, which was very controversial due to a bunch of different reasons, most of it involving racial politics in the schools, they want to introduce different LGBT figures and specific political bias points about it, about how Gavin Newsom stood up, and he's the sitting governor of California at the time that this was introduced. He was running for governor of Gaviner, governor of California, and they would talk about how he fought for people's rights to marry. Now, like you could say Gavin Newsom was in favor of gay marriage when he was the mayor of San Francisco. That's fine, but it is a little weird to see essentially the same exact verbatim word for word campaign points for Gavin Newsom, specifically around LGBT issues in the state of California's history textbooks, specifically in the portions that are about LGBT history. So yeah, you have all of this stuff being introduced at a statewide level. It's not just in California, we've seen it in other states, and there's isolated school districts across the country that also have this being introduced or already implemented. Well, wouldn't it make sense though, from like if we're going over the history of specific political movements or specific political campaigns, it makes sense to cover those things if that was part of his campaign. It makes no sense why, like why would we exclude that, right? And we can make the same argument about more conservative ideologies being pushed. Like for example, like among the 10 states that have the highest rates of teen pregnancy, five of those states are states without mandated sex education. Also, there are, I believe it's, there are states that do abstinence only sex education and a lot of those states end up having higher rates of teen pregnancy and teenagers giving live birth to children. So I don't think- Do you think that could also possibly be an issue? I mean, first of all, the question I believe was about LGBT stuff, right? Basically, it was indoctrination, sexuality, not about sexual education in general. It could be either. Okay, to me, they're two different issues. I think if you're going to talk about sexual identity and sexuality, so sexual identity and sexual orientation or sexuality's a different thing, I would say that's a very different issue and a very different education that has to go into play. That comes into play when you're talking about like abstinence and STIs and stuff like that and how to get pregnant. Part of that is though, in sex education, part of this huge pushback is because we've introduced LGBT-friendly sex education, right? So a lot of people have a problem with that. I feel like I'd rather have comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education than no sex education, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I think you and I agree on most issues, believe it or not. Yeah, I agree with that. I think another issue, this is gonna sound like it's gonna come from left field, pun intended maybe, but I think a big issue with not necessarily teen pregnancy in this case, but with the increase of STIs, with the increase, it's a lot of different issues across the board right now. I think that's because we're, not that you have the sex shame, but it's almost like we opened it up too much and there's like no fair critiques at all anymore. So yeah, I could maybe understand that maybe we've gone in the other direction of like be responsible with who you have sex with, be responsible in the ways that you have sex and now we've kind of entered this kind of weird round where it's like, don't judge anybody for anything that they're doing, right? Right, you can't even like, like the whole- Even if it's risky behavior, it's- Exactly, exactly. Like the whole clean, like you're not supposed to say unclean, which I get, but sometimes it's a good thing to be judgmental in that way. Yeah, sometimes you need to be able to objectively say like, this is risky behavior, you shouldn't engage in risky behavior. Yeah, and I feel like the left has, and we'll be talking about teachers in general, I feel like they've gone too far left in that case. Well, I don't know that I would blame that on teachers more so that I would blame that more on- Society. Yeah, society with the culture. Yeah, yeah, of course. Absolutely. I feel like it's all tied together. I feel like teachers wouldn't be doing this unless they felt society was going to empower them in doing so. Yeah. I actually agree with the point that you made that this is two different issues because the idea was LGBT indoctrination in public schools, and then we converted to, oh, well, sometimes abstinence only leads to- That's also a terrible idea. Higher rates of teen pregnancy. Those are two different issues with two different consequences. Right, but we're talking about left-wing, like sexual ethics being pushed in schools. I think it's fair to bring up right-wing sexual ethics being pushed in schools. But that's not a refugiation of the point. That's a, hey, look over here. Well, no, I mean, it's saying- Like, you know, a partial car crash and you pointed to a train accident. That didn't mean the car crash didn't happen. Right, the reason why I'm bringing it up is because while there may be the pushing of left-wing sexual ethics in schools, I think it's fair to say that we can see the same thing happening in the right. Maybe we should be approaching this from a much more unbiased view, right? I could agree with you guys on that. I agree with that. I think, let's just call y'all, sorry. I think, I feel like sex education in general should be less about sexual orientation and sexual identity and more about health. And I feel like if we bring it to that, if we push it in that sense, it becomes just a human rights issue and not a left versus right thing. Well, but the problem is, of course, if you're trying to push, if you're trying to encourage sexual health, then the question arises, okay, well, do we want to encourage sexual health for, say, LGBT students as well and teach about their specific advice that they need in terms of having safe sex? And then it turns into a political question. Of course, yeah, the responsible thing is to teach those students. There's a very big difference though between teaching kids about 85 genders versus what's gonna happen when you have penis in butthole sex. I think I can agree with you. Like teaching about 85 genders is kind of overboard to me as well. Which is not just made up number, by the way. I think there's like 83 legal genders in New York City. That is a lot of genders and I can barely remember people's names. So if you have sex with a drag queen, is it gonna be different? Any different? No, penis in a butthole is gonna amount to different risks. Yeah, they're different risks. Yeah, and I think it's important to again have age appropriate sex education too because a lot of children who grow up without sex education are not aware of the ways that they can or are being abused until they're much older. I think that's more of a consensual education thing than sexual identity again. But I would say that that's an example of like a right wing sexual ethics actually being a hindrance to the well-being of some children. So that's an interesting point. Which should be a right wing issue. That should just be again, a human rights issue usually. Usually in this case, in this day and age usually women's issues. I wanted to get in on that as well because Sean had mentioned the California LGBT friendly curriculum. I'm kind of curious if you think that the states which explicitly ban discussion of same sex relationships and sex education, are those right wing pushing their sexual mores on children? What states would those be? And also like again, you keep bringing up sex education. I'm fine with sex education. When your kid turns 13 and they go to a health class or they throw a bunch of condos at them, they tell them to go have fun, be safe and all that. Totally on board with that. What I was talking about specifically and what I thought the prompt was about specifically was the fact that we're using other forms of the school besides sex education to try to push left wing indoctrination on LGBT issues. Which is not even just LGBT issues anymore. Like every single classroom, correct me if I'm wrong, almost every single classroom that I've seen at least on these and it doesn't have to be libs of TikTok. You can just go on TikTok and these individual teachers' pages. If they have an LGBT flag, the ugly one, they'll also have Black Lives Matter and they'll also have communist stuff and they'll also have, it's... Also just to answer your question, Arizona for a while had a law that banned discussion of AIDS that, quote unquote, promoted a homosexual lifestyle. Do you think that's like an example of... AIDS you said? They put it on AIDS. Yeah, a discussion of AIDS. AIDS. Okay. A discussion of AIDS, like the disease? Yes. Yeah, you should, if you're in a health class, you just should discuss AIDS. You shouldn't discuss it. You should, yeah. Of course. Well, they banned discussion of AIDS that, quote unquote, promoted a homosexual lifestyle. I'm just asking if you think that that's like an example of... I think that's just incorrect in general. When did that law come? Not that that's wrong or right. I mean, it's just not... I wouldn't be in favor of that. It's not factual. It's not factual. No, no, I'm saying when was that repealed? Because I'm not in favor of that to answer your question, but... Well, I didn't ask the question. Is that from like the AIDS, like the AIDS panic? No, this was... This was recent. Repressed pretty... This was addressed pretty recently. Yeah, and still currently, you can still see that there are states without mandated sex education. Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas. And these are states with high teen pregnancy rates. So... I agree with you there. I think, again, sex education to me is a very different... It's a very different idea than teaching somebody about the 87 genders and confusing them. Well, yeah, I don't think... And them going on puberty blockers at 12 years old. I don't think BDSM should be anywhere in school. BDSM is, to me, that's kink and fetish more than it is sex education. Sex education should be what I was taught, when I was 11, not 13. I don't know, New York City, we got into it earlier, I guess, but... Just don't... I was 11, I don't know. There were different levels for me. I remember at 10 and 11, it was like we learned about puberty. We learned about the typical ways that people may have sex. That was probably the most traumatizing part for me. As far as I'm concerned, yeah. This might be a good point. We have so many problems. Oh yeah, questions, yeah, yeah, yeah. This one's a little bit more specific, too, because that one was pretty broad. So this one is, is it acceptable for kids to be at drag shows? Depends what the drag show is. I mean, the videos that we've seen online, 99% of the time, are of drag queens with their either real tits or fake tits, because there are some trans women that identify as drag queens, or drag queens that identify as trans women, with their tits hanging out. Do I think that's appropriate? There's a very fine line with that, too, because in New York City alone, and I think San Francisco is well, actually, you're allowed to walk around topless. Are breasts inherently sexual? No, but when you are dancing sexually, they become sexual, and I don't think a child should be in that environment. And I also think everybody knows that at least in the LGBT community is a few people here. Most people that attend drag shows, at least in the back, are usually doing some kind of Coke, drugs, other stuff. This is not an unknown thing in the gay community. We know that this is what happens in the background. And funnily enough, I have the same lawyer that... What was his name? Not Dylan Mulvaney, obviously, that's a new guy. One of the young child drag queens. Oh, Desmond is the name. Desmond, yes. I was like, Dylan? No, Desmond, yeah, we have the same lawyer, so that's interesting. But dancing sexually is very different than a child going to a show where a queen is simply lip-singing a song, lip-singing to Whitney. Like, to me, that would be fine, as long as they're with their parents, there's no alcohol and drugs close to them. Fine, go see a queen, go hear a queen, read drag queen story out. I don't think that's what the majority of non-leftist people are arguing. Yeah, I would say in general, no, but I'm sure you can concoct a drag show that's totally family-friendly that would be fine. It depends what it is. But in general, it would be no, based on what I've seen. Right, because the majority of them are sexually. Yeah, I would say that I'm going to have the same standards as I would for cis women in their performance shows, right? I have no problem with children going to Disney World and seeing Disney princesses perform for them, but I would have problems with them going to a strip club and seeing a woman strip. So I think that as long as we hold that same standard for drag queens, and the drag queens are... Which is actual equality, by the way. Yeah, yeah, and I think that drag queens, treating a story dressed as a princess, no problem with that in my opinion. Yeah, so I'm going to agree with pretty much everyone here, except I'm going to slightly diverge from Sean and Ariel, in the sense that I'm just going to say that a drag show is not one univocal thing. There are many different types of drag shows and the contents of different drag shows, I imagine, very pretty wildly. I think that some drag shows are obviously going to showcase some sort of sexual content, or there might be drugs or alcohol present, in which case children obviously shouldn't be allowed into them. And other drag shows are likely completely inoffensive and should be fine for children to offend. If the implicit question is, are most drag shows fine for children to attend, or are drag shows in general fine for children to attend, which Ariel and Sean both said no to, that I'm not sure. That just, again, seems like an open empirical question. If we want to know what proportion of drag shows actually contain explicit content and are, therefore, inappropriate to children, I would just need to see some data on that, some literature on that. I'm not familiar with any, and again, in this case, I'm also not going to be persuaded by anecdotes or libs of TikTok videos. I mean, I kind of agree with him. I think it comes down to specifics in this case. I mean, it seems like pointless. Like, let's do a study and figure out what percentage are sexual. I'm just saying, in general, these are events that happen at bars. Typically, they're age inappropriate for children, but there could be some that would be fine. I could tell you from the one gay person on this panel, most of them are sexual. Yeah, and no, I've been to a few... Well, I mean, again, but there's gonna be the... I've been to a few shows myself. Most of them are. Yeah, and if they're happening at a nightclub, definitely you'll see them take their top off and stuff like that, but if it's happening at a school library or in some, it's just a guy dressed in a princess outfit, no problem. The thing is right, I imagine I totally don't disbelieve you that most of the drag shows you've been to have been sexual, but you probably also, for good reason, because you're not a kid, the drag shows that you go to probably aren't the ones targeted for kids. No, I've also traveled, literally, throughout the entire United States, and I've been to a ton of pride parades, and I've seen drag shows, and I don't say that in quotes, but drag shows that are drag shows that are not sexual, where I was fine with them. There were a lot of drag queen story hours at pride parades and such, and I was fine, I just walked by, and I was like, okay. It kind of goes back to that whole even the kink of pride discussion, right? I think obviously a daytime event, you want an LGBTQ event to be family-friendly, so you would want children to be able to attend that, and then when night falls, then- There's a very easy answer to that. Yeah, I went to World Pride in Madrid in 2017, and I think they did it best. They had a family-friendly pride event in the day, and then at nighttime, everyone got slutty, and I thought it was great. I really do. I thought it was really well done. You want to ask a question, Kat? Yeah. Why is it so important that children attend drag shows when they shouldn't see a movie like The Hangover? Like the what? The what movie? The Hangover. The Hangover? Any rated R movie. Why is it so important that children attend drag shows? I don't think it's important that children attend drag shows. I think it's important that children are culturally diverse and see different ways of being. I don't think, I think that's a very different thing than to say children should be sexualized. And also the question kind of, you're kind of begging the question, right? Because you're saying, why should children be allowed to go to drag shows but not R rated movies? When of course that assumes that drag shows involve content that's like R rated in the whole question that's in contention is, that's why it's rated. Do all drag shows involve these kinds of R rated content? And I'm saying I don't know, right? Yeah, and I also think that the Hangover, you can't really, it's really gonna come up to be an individual parent in that kind of case, right? Whether they allow them to see R rated movies. Obviously some kids are just going to see them. But yeah, it's just going to come up to the individual parent at that point. And I would argue also that like drag shows that are of an adult nature are inherently going to be more personal because you're in person. You're in person, you're up close with somebody. So, absolutely. Just like the point to move to the next pop. Should minors be allowed to use HRT, the normal replacement therapy, or to transition at all? I don't see what their job has to do with it. I mean, just because they work in a coal mine doesn't mean we should make decisions about their medical treatment. I don't know, what do you guys think? So, I mean, this gets kind of tricky because this is like sort of an empirical topic and I don't want to like be that guy who like cites a million studies and then declares a victory when you don't have like on the spot rebuttals to them. Please, if you have studies, mention them. So, I'll just say what my read of the empirical evidence is if we want to get into it, we can. Basically, there seems to be some evidence showing that transitioning through puberty blockers in HRT can make the mental health better for some set of trans youth. There are also, of course, uncertainties and potential adverse effects associated with these treatments like there is with almost any drug. Correcting correct. With respect to puberty blockers, I know the main worry is like bone density with respect to hormone therapy. There are concerns regarding like infertility increases in some metabolic parameters, although the effects for that haven't been shown to be clinically significant and so on. Of course, there are ways of mitigating these so like you can do vitamin D and calcium supplements and plyometrics for bone density. You can provide more fertility counseling and preservation services for the fertility thing and so on. But I mean, look, these are medical treatments with benefits and drawbacks like almost any medication. And I'm more comfortable letting medical professionals weigh the costs and benefits of these treatments on an individual basis as opposed to letting politicians who are looking for culture war points make blanket decisions for the entire medical community. I think that's a great point. I agree. I think that at the end of the day, there should be a decision that's made between parents, a patient and the doctor. And I think the more we get involved in a doctor or a healthcare professional's decisions, the worse it is generally for outcomes. There are examples of high risk medications that we do prescribe to people under 18. For example, Accutane is a great example of a medication that we prescribe to girls under 18, which has a very high risk of birth defects. But we highly regulate the prescribing of that medication and I think we should do the same thing that we do for puberty blockers, right? So Accutane, what a lot of gynecologists will do, or not gynecologists, what a lot of dermatologists who are prescribing it will do is they will have the person they're prescribing it to go see a gynecologist get on at least one, get on a birth control method. And then they have to sign a waiver that anytime that they have intercourse that they will be on at least two methods of birth control. And so that's like a, I think that's a pretty comprehensive way of mitigating risks. You explain that this can affect your fertility, this can affect your, if you get pregnant, you will have children with birth defects. So if we can do that for something like Accutane, which I would say is a much more superficial thing, I think we can do that for people who are having gender dysphoria. Yeah, I'm gonna say no as my serious answer, since I didn't know that was the way the whole panel was gonna go. Yeah, for puberty blockers for kids, from what I can see from some of the research I don't have it in front of me, most kids just like either grow out or they get locked into being like a transgender person once they hit puberty. So if you stop them from going into puberty and they'll never hit that actual point. Also like not to get too like gross or anything like that, but from what I learned, it going through the male puberty actually gives you more material. If you want to transition later on. So like I don't even see how from the pro-trans side the puberty blockers make sense. And like the bone density thing, yeah that is a side effect that you could have and people have tried using puberty blockers for off-label uses. The original purpose of this and what people often cite as the research that says it's safe is if your kid goes into puberty when they're eight years old and you delay it until they churn the age that they're supposed to go into puberty. I don't know anything about kids, so maybe it's 25, I don't know. So that has minor side effects compared to the side effects of going into puberty when you're like eight years old. But like parents have used these off-label to make their kids grow taller and it's resulted in like cracks and like weakening of their bones. So like I don't know if we should necessarily do this for cosmetic purposes outside of the original parameters of what this medication was designed for. So I don't think it's a great idea. It's not my favorite thing. I wouldn't be on board with it. And I would just ask yourself if you think that children should be able to make these decisions at this young age, then why do you think it's not legal to tattoo your child or serve your child alcohol or all these other things that we put limits on children from doing that are far less damaging overall than altering their body chemistry? Well, for sure, I'm not going to dispute you on that there are going to be some side effects of these medications. But what I would say is that again, we do prescribe things that have side effects all the time to people who are under 18 and we do it for people who are not suicidal, right? We do it for Accutane, which is for acne, right? And we do it for plenty of other things as well. So I think it's important that we have a high standard for prescribing that I think that's going to be key. I think we should have a high standard. We should have a whole bunch of regulations. Doctors should have a standard of care that they go through just like they do with Accutane where they get women on birth control pills and make them sign a waiver that they're going to always use two methods of birth control. And they do similar things for things like IUDs. A lot of gynecologists will not insert an IUD in a woman unless she is either one over the age of 30 or two has had children before because of the risk to her fertility. And it can cause infertility if things go wrong. So I'm not saying prescribed puberty blockers willy-nilly. I'm not saying prescribed HRT willy-nilly. I think it needs to be responsibly done. Do you genuinely believe we should have gender affirming care as the standard? So I think basically what puberty blockers are for is to give people that space. And a lot of the times if a child changes their mind after being on puberty blockers that sometimes will age out of it and they'll kind of change their mind and it gives them that space too. I'm not saying that willy-nilly prescribe it. No, I'm not saying you are, but I'm saying do you think the model should be gender affirming care? It would depend on the patient. There are actually certain indications that clinicians can look at. So for example, you can ask a child. You can have a child answer certain questions. If the child says they wish they were the other gender, they're less likely to persist as being trans. If they say they are the other gender, they're more likely to persist as being trans. The amount of same-sex friends that the kid has. That's also tricky because there are literal chat rooms where these kids go into on Discord. And they're told by other trans people like Eli Ehrlich what they have to say in order to make sure that they get treated as a trans person. The reason I bring up the gender affirming care is the standards because there's a push that physicians should be gender affirming. I think Canada has a law. Maybe their law is with sexual orientation, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, where you have to affirm and it's actually criminally punishable if you don't. So if you want to talk about the standard of care and not prescribing willy-nilly, that's one thing when you're talking about acne. Either the kid has acne on their face or they don't and it's untreatable through other methods or it isn't. But if we're talking about whether or not this person's feelings are legitimate or it's a situation where, yeah, where like a kid thinks he's a Ninja Turtle, then your model of care is going to determine the standards to which you prescribe that. So if you're saying affirm, affirm, affirm, then you're not going to get the checks and balances that you would need and again it's not as objective. The truth is they have been affirming for quite a long time now, at least three, four, five years. Which is why I bring it up. Right, which is long enough, in my opinion, to make not an assumption, a correct judgment on how this is going. And right now I believe the D-Trans Reddit group is over like 45,000 people, the subreddit, and literally more and more people are coming out every single day as D-Trans. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think all of us on the panel wish that there was a way, I mean we wish that nobody was trans, right? That's a terrible thing to have to go through. Since that's not the case, could there be a brain scan potentially in the future that targets people that we can know for sure if this person's going to be trans forever? And if that's the case, put them on puberty blockers right away. Do everything right away. They're also basically like sussing people out who are likely to desist through just like making it a more gradual and involved process. Like I'm not sure if you're familiar, but famously like the Dutch have this like long drawn out system where like if you're nine and you say you're trans you can start socially transitioning. If you're 12 and you've persisted since you were nine then you can start puberty blockers. Then if you're 16 and you've still desisted you can start taking HRT. And what's interesting about that case is that there's been a lot of studies on the Dutch model and there's a very low rates of regret among people who went through this model of treatment. I think that's a fair model. Even as numbers of people who have been transitioning have skyrocketed, the numbers of regret have stayed the same which is really interesting. In that specific model you're talking about? Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's actually kind of a good way to go about it because that's not what we're seeing with detrans people in general. What we're seeing is people that had rapid onset genders for you. Yeah. They had a whole bunch of their classmates that were claiming to be trans and they just didn't want to be women or they were lesbians. They were butch lesbians and they didn't want to be women so they transitioned and all of a sudden oh shit I have no tits. It's a real thing. I'm not trying to be like graphic. This is really happening. I think that your interpretation of the sort of arguments that you and Sean have been leviating is the more reasonable interpretation because sure you can levy these arguments like there's potential risks, there's potential for desisting, there's potential impacts on bone mineral density and so on. When I think of these arguments, I think of these as threshold raising arguments. Sure, if successful, these should show that our threshold should be higher in terms of determining when we're going to actually give a trans kid treatment. But the idea that because there are potential risks or uncertainties or drawbacks, that we shouldn't give them to any trans kid ever no matter how many indicators they have that they would benefit from this treatment, that I don't get. No, I don't think that's how I feel. I just think that at the moment, if you told me this 10 years ago I would agree with you fully. But at the moment it seems like trans is becoming more and more of a trend and kids are becoming more and more sneaky and knowing exactly what they need to say to get what they want and I just, I don't trust them very much at the moment. Well, if you have like a sort of, if you have like a sort of Dutch model that like, I mean if a kid decides like, okay it's a trend that I want to jump in on so I'm going to say that I'm trans, they have to go through a lot of years of persistence. That's the thing, they don't think it's a trend. They genuinely believe that they are trans. Well, if they genuinely believe that they are trans it persists through like years and years and years of escalating treatment. Which is possible. They probably are trans. It's also a scientific fact that your brain doesn't fully develop into a 25. I have a friend that literally thought that they were trans and they did not physically transition. They still call themselves gender queer. To me, I can't stand that term but as far as she's concerned to me it makes sense because she doesn't dress like a woman which is technically sexist but like she wants to use that term for herself that's not a problem for me. She did not transition and if she did she would have regretted it and there are a lot of people like that right literally at the age of 25 which was kind of bizarre. That year the dysphoria went away. Yeah, so I'm not going to disagree with you guys. I think that there should be I think we need to take into consideration obviously there are going to be kids who are trans, who hate their wives throughout that stage where they can't transition yet and I think obviously the best way to do this is again heavy regulation. Heavy regulation, obviously what you're saying is very true there are a lot of girls who grow up hating their bodies hating being a woman, hating operating through the world as a woman and that itself I would say that as one of those women that was that. Yeah, same and so I think that there's that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be seeing somebody for that, right? If they're going through their lives hating interacting the world, being as a woman hating themselves as a woman and they think that they're trans but maybe they're not they should still be seeing a doctor for something. Of course, of course, yeah. With that we'll jump to the last one and then we're going to jump to the crime topics in just a moment but first should parents be informed that the child is gay? I think that the person who submitted this question I think they're meaning from like a public school context but not sure. I've done a video on this. I think, again, if you asked me 10 years ago I would have a very different feeling about it than I do now. At the moment now, if a parent is being withheld that information, it seems more like a grooming tactic by whoever's withholding that information from the parent because... Are you giving me the finger? Yes. Okay. Classy. I think that... I don't know. I think that 10 years ago it was a very different scenario. I really do. I think that right now if you're being with... If somebody is telling your child... If your child is telling somebody in the school system or a therapist that they're trans or gay and they don't tell the parent that seems a little bit off to me because I would say 95% of the time the parent isn't actually going to care. That's because we're in the year 2022. Just 10 years ago, 2012, I feel like it was a little bit different. Do you even have gay marriage in this country legally? I would disagree with you. I'm going to disagree maybe in specific areas, liberal pockets. That may be the case, but a lot of the times, depending on the student, if they're from a minority community, that's definitely going to be a case where telling the parents that the repercussions are going to be much higher. They're in a rural area, much more right-wing area. Even if the parents are accepting of other people being gay, other people being LGBTQ, there's still the risk of them not being accepting of that child. The percentage of homeless youth that are LGBTQ is astronomically high. It's just a huge percentage of them. Depending on religious background, all sorts of different compounding factors, I think that at the end of the day, I don't think it's right to out a child to their parent if they're not ready for that. Especially given the risk, even in the best communities, if you come from a specific background, specific religious background or minority background, your risks of being kicked out of the house are going to be that much higher. Statistically, the risk of being kicked out of the house is actually the most common in urban areas, not suburban areas, not wealthy suburban areas like everyone else thinks. It's more common in black and Hispanic communities. So that's a whole other issue. I know a lot of people want to say, oh, it's very common with white people in Mississippi or something. It's actually not that common. I would overwhelmingly say that actually the reason why we shouldn't be telling an outing children before they're ready is for specifically those communities, for those minority communities, because you don't know what they're going to do. You never know another person's culture. You don't know if they're going to. I've known people who went to Pakistan and got married and came back. I've known people whose parents just kicked them out of the house. So I think it's super important to think about the most marginalized communities in these cases before we make the decision to out a child as gay or trans or anything LGBTQ to their parents. And on top of that, actually I don't remember where I was going with that. No, I think it's a great point. Again, I wouldn't say that it's a good idea to just out all these kids. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it comes across because these teachers are proud of hiding information from their parents. It comes across as a little icky to me. I don't know if I would call it proud. I think teachers have, you know, students spend more time with teachers a lot of the time than their own parents, and they look up to those teachers and to feel like a student is confiding in you in something so integral in their life probably is a source of something that really means a lot to them. Of course. I would say it's one of the... This one is more complicated because you just said something about them coming out as gay to a teacher because the idea is... I'm heavily invested in parents being in charge of their children at their institutions of education and all that. But the idea is that if you're a teacher and you get told this information presumably in confidence, you tell the parent and then the parent throws the kid out, then it's a disaster. You've helped no child or anything like that. But on the flip side, if you told your teacher something that increased your risk of, say, committing suicide in the future and they withheld that from the parent and the issue was anorexia or some kind of disorder in that realm not saying that being gay is a disorder and then they attempted suicide and you continue to withhold that information or you told them then the parent's going to be pissed and obviously they're going to sue the school. So it's really a balancing act. I don't know exactly where... We're trying to figure that out. I think it's going to be context-dependent, right? Because like you said, you brought up the analogy like, sure, so if there's a parent and their kid has something that's going to increase their risk of suicide and the parent wants to help the child, then for sure the parent should know. But I think where that analogy is going to break down is in cases where a kid goes to their teacher they're like, hey, I'm gay, but I don't want to tell my parents because they're violently homophobic. And in that case, telling the parents would actually increase the kid's risk of committing suicide rather than aiding the parents and helping the kid. And I think those are the cases where... Even in the case with trans children, right? If a parent isn't accepting of that or if the parent starts, you know, micromanaging the child after finding out information like that, even though sure there is a higher risk of like suicide rate within that population, I guarantee a negative home life will increase that like a whole lot. You're counting an awful lot on the person who can barely teach your kid math to make that determination. This is where I draw the distinction between just like this kid is a gay person, which by the way, LGBT youth do have, that are just in the gay category, do have increased suicide risk. It's really fuzzy there versus the trans distinction because again, the chances of somebody with gender dysmorphia committing suicide are so much higher than if somebody has a regular form of body dysmorphia and we would expect immediately for a teacher or anybody in the school to inform the parents if that were the case. So like it really, like I heavily instinctually lean towards the parents in most of these circumstances, but like in the instance of like your kid's a lesbian and they're like 16 years old and like they told you that they're a lesbian at school and they seem fine, I might be like, ah, whatever, like it's not, I don't care that much if you tell them. Yeah, the good thing is everyone on this panel knows a shit about the kids. It's just we have different ways of looking at it. That's really what it comes down to. Again, I do want to give at least a good amount of time to these crime topics and we haven't gotten to them yet, so we're a little bit behind in particular Yay or nay on defunding the police. Nay. Nay, probably. Yeah, I'm also going to say nay. I think that the, again, I don't want to dump a bunch of studies, but I think the empirical literature is pretty clear that when you have more cops, there's less crime. Although that's not to say, right, that we can't like alter ways in which the cops do their jobs. Of course. Because one of the big factors that actually limits the extent to which more cops are able to decrease crime is when you have less trust between the cops and their communities and also like cops spending a lot of their time doing a lot of jobs that are unnecessary and don't really work to reduce crime. And there are all kinds of ways in which we can try to increase trust and limit the extent to which cops are doing jobs that don't really effectively decrease crime. So we could do this through like decriminalizing drugs. Some people propose like recruiting larger numbers of black and female police officers, de-escalation training, procedural justice training, federal oversight of police agencies, use of non-lethal, non-lethal weapons and things like that. So I think that trying to improve the way that cops are doing their jobs and making them more trusted by their communities and so on is the better way to go in terms of reducing crime as opposed to like defunding the police and making there be less cops. A great point. Also how many crimes escalate because somebody is fearful of cops and they start running, right? It's a very good point. Increasing the type of relationship that they have with their surrounding communities is very, very important. I would say almost no crimes escalate because people are randomly afraid of cops. Typically they're doing something wrong. And they know it and they run. People say you could divert resources away from cops that are doing stuff that is not productive and to productive stuff. I'm in favor of good things and against bad things as well, just so you guys know. But that doesn't really mean anything. There are obviously better ways to go in general. We should not be decreasing the funding to police. We should not be limiting them beyond scopes of reason as we've been doing in the last couple of years. And we have the results for an anti-cop climate in this country that speak for themselves. We saw a 30% increase in homicide after the George Floyd riots. That is the greatest year over year increase in murder, the most serious crime in the history of this country. And I know a lot of people, think that he could just defend himself because he just collects guns in his little mansion in Houston, but like in reality that's not a solution for everyone. Yeah, I think if anything, either keeping it the same or even increasing funding to police might be good because you're providing more training, more resources, things like that. It would be nice if you could see it. If we would start seeing it more as a community service than a community policing. Yes. Because people should trust police officers that are policing their community and when they can't, when they feel like they can't do that or if there's an incorrect perception that they can't do that then it's going to affect things. It's going to affect things like if people in the community don't trust their police officers it's going to affect things like the extent to which they're reporting crimes as well which is like a pretty important part of the equation. Yeah, like domestic violence cases things like that. What about ending cash bail when two of you are voting against ending cash? I think we saw that we talked about it from New Yorkers perspective. Yeah, I mean... We literally just had this happen in New York over the last two years with our old mayor, the new mayor and they reversed their decision to end cashless bail. Didn't he end it? No, it's a state level law. I would say... Maybe you just talked about ending it and then didn't do it. I would say that depending on how you do a program like this it could make sense in limited circumstances but the way we see this implemented like in the state of New York is they list a bunch of crimes that you can never be held in jail for pre-trial, which is absurd. So like a lot of people talk about the cash aspect of it and criminalizing poverty and all that but in reality what reform looks like is releasing people automatically even if they're repeat offenders for crimes that are considered petty and of course we see increases in crime. Especially in San Francisco what was it like break into with cars? Or shoplifting. We see these videos, yeah. So if you want a system where you give judges more power to issue judgments on people who are arrested then that's different from saying oh, we're going to get rid of cash bail and just release all of these people. So I think again I'm going to agree with you that it's going to matter on the way that it's implemented. I am very pro in sending cash bail partly because DC's been doing it since 1992 and they've done it really well and they have they basically they basically have a set of assessments basically that they make of somebody and their likelihood to re-offend. And also I think this is great because it's actually tougher on crime if you do it right because there's no case where somebody who's committed a heinous crime can just get out because they can afford to post bail. A great example of this is you guys remember the Waukesha Christmas Parade Massacre, that guy was it 12 people? 6 people died and then 60 plus people were injured and that isn't a great example of somebody who should never have been let out on bail. He had the reason why he was able to do that was he was able to make his bail and then he went on to commit this horrible massacre that is the trial is still going on right now. So that's just like one example of how ending cash bail can actually be tougher on crime and more effective towards crime than the bail system. I'm just going to be agnostic on this question. I had to allocate my time across the various topics you gave me. This is when I'm less confident on. I would say Darrell Brooks was released repeatedly by a soft justice system and the reason he was able to make bail is because they set bail for him attacking his girlfriend or yeah baby mama girlfriend whatever and trying to hit her with a car and they set his bail at like a thousand dollars and if you go to a bail bondsman you're only allowed to put something like 12% down which is one of these violent repeat offenders that had he been held pre-trial because that was only weeks before then he wouldn't have driven his car through 70 something people in a parade. In DC if that happened in DC he would not have been released because of the assessment that they do. So it's just a different way of handling the crimes. It's been really successful in DC. They haven't changed it and they would assess based on his risk to commit crimes and based on his history of crimes. He should have never had the ability to even have a bail set for him. There should be no reason for him to be out in the streets. There should be no reason for him. I don't care if you can say oh well we can make the bail really high. I don't really care no. I don't think he should be released on bail. I don't think he should have that ability. I don't think he should have that option. DC is not exactly the safest city in the United States of America. But DC they have like based on after they did this in 1992 they actually achieved better results from their system because they base it on like a scientific risk assessment and they continually will modify that in ongoing years. Obviously there are going to be a couple of people there are going to be a few cases here and there where somebody is released and they do commit a crime. But for the most part if you prevent people from having a bail when they really should not they should not be out in the streets then this is a top-er on crime approach. And then there are tons of people who are sitting in jails for really small things who probably don't need to be there. I think this is a much better approach because then we can look at people, look at their history, look at the type of crimes that they're doing and say for sure this person should not have the ability to bail themselves out. I think that's a good point. I really do. This last one before we go to the Q&A is should the drinking age or any age laws be changed for that matter? That's not how the question read in the DMU sent me James. Yeah, I just realized that. We'll find it. Should the drinking age be changed or should the drinking age restrictions? The drinking age laws in particular. So maybe the age for consent or whatever it might be. For a long time I actually thought that maybe we should raise the age of consent to protect more people but then somebody made a really good point to me a few months ago that would really just raise the age of majority and I don't know if that would be necessarily good I guess. Yeah. I was going to say we should probably raise the age for voting to like 21 maybe even 25 because Gen Z really blew at this last go around. But also I would like to point out that murder suspects do get released in the District of Columbia pretty often because those databases often times reference convictions so you have people that are accused of violent crimes even if they have substantial evidence that get released. I think when it comes to setting age limits for anything whether that be like ability to give consent for sex or drinking you're just going to have to set some sort of arbitrary lines for practical purposes like when people think about the age of consent like how much of a difference does it make in somebody's ability to consent whether they're like an 18 year old in 11 months or something like that there's probably not that much of a difference but we have to set these sort of arbitrary lines because that's the only way we can enforce them consistently and having a society with those kinds of arbitrarily drawn lines is better than one without them. So I don't have a super strong opinion on like the absolute level with respect to these things I guess my concern would be more about where the different age limits are for different activities for me it's like a consistency thing like it is kind of I know this has been pointed out a lot but like it is kind of ridiculous that you can't drink until you're like 21 but you can serve in the military from the time you're 18 that seems like a weird indiscrepancy so for me in reforming these laws it would be about clearing up those inconsistencies and indiscrepancies rather than like raising or lowering the absolute age limit for these things which I don't care much about. Just to respond to Sean's point here whether they were murder suspects does that mean that they're going to go out and re-offend and actually I would respond to that and say when DC released based on their percentages of the people that they released less than 2% were re-arrested for a crime of violence so I don't care if they're like a suspect in a case what is the risk of them actually going out and committing a crime again if it's less than 2% that's pretty good 94% of the people they released I believe not 90% 88% made every single court appearance and 86% were never arrested for any criminal offense of any kind so I think those are pretty good results I think that the DC just does it better than you guys sorry to say you could find similar statistics in any part of the country because most of the people who are arrested for things are arrested for minor things in the first place and those people likely would have been released under normal circumstances what you have to identify is the people who would not have been released under DC's old system who are being released and their propensity to re-offend so according to me like a 2% when maybe they had like a 4% or a 3% before it doesn't really tell me anything it was higher before you know and by the way 12% missing their court date is like not great you have to chase down one out of every 10 criminals at least they're not going out and recommitting if it's less than 2% going out and committing a violent crime I think that's a pretty good rate and again DC continues to refine the way that they do these assessments and there's always going to be an element of risk when it comes to a decision before a trial but that's a price of the system that we have the only way to get a complete assurance of safety is to incarcerate everyone and that's completely not American so but now you're like posing zero risk of re-offending versus the alternative which is not what I said but I'm going to say the bail system to me I think is not hard enough on crime in my opinion I don't think it is there are some people who should not get bail I mean bail is a progressive reform the reason you have a right to a speedy trial is the presumption was under English common law that you would be held in a dungeon awaiting trial so the idea that you put down collateral in your place is quite progressive in terms of a policy well I don't think so it's quite literally not strict enough but like I said if most people who are arrested are released on their own recognizance and then they show up to court and they plead down because it's for a misdemeanor or whatever then overall the the amount of people in terms of the percentages that re-offend are going to be low so if you tell me that it's still low because you're releasing a few more violent offenders that doesn't really tell me what I need to know potentially violent no in DC they have the risk assessment and it's again less than 2% and go out and commit a violent crime I think that's I think first off I think if somebody has a history of violent crimes in their past probably the likelihood of them getting released is probably not going to be that high they probably won't be assigned a bail and I think that's a pretty good way to do it I mean violent crime isn't the only crime like thefts are nonviolent crimes most of the time but they have victims I don't care about violent crimes I mean I do but I also care about crimes with victims if you were saying that they commit victimless crimes then I don't care because there's no victim but yeah if you release somebody and they continue to steal then yeah that's still a problem it's not violent but it's still a problem it's still a problem but again I would prefer a system that is harder on violent crimes rather than a so a system that is harder on violent crimes makes it harder for people who would commit these violent crimes to get out than a system that is less hard on violent crimes and allows people the ability to get out I just am going to prefer one and I think that eliminating the bail system and reforming it and doing the risk assessment I think is a very good way to be harder on violent crimes specifically they might also be city dependent like we don't know there's different cultures in different cities maybe DC is going to be very different the way they live their handle it in California which is why states have different laws and I think you have some questions so let's start with Justin I have a question for Mariel Scarcello what do you think is more like that there's a reason that a gay child has not told their parents and instead chose to provide their teachers do you think that's more like or do you think it's more like that the teacher wants to sexually exploit that child which is what really means it's more possible you said that you had suspicion that the teacher was grooming the kid no I didn't say the teacher was grooming I said it could be seen as grooming and I said it's very I think I said fishy I don't remember what I said I said it's icky I think I said I said it is icky I think anytime you want to any time you get a kick out of withholding information from somebody's parents or somebody's caretaker it seems you didn't say icky you said grooming no I did say icky as well I believe I think I said both I think grooming is the right word if it's actually what they're doing I don't know if it's indoctrination the grooming word probably because it's a hot topic right now it's a buzzword as far as people understanding what we're talking about I don't think it's necessarily the right word unless it's actually what's happening but Justin's point is that you're not helping clarify what we're talking about by using a buzzword that inaccurately describes the phenomenon question no I don't think that's true I think some cases it does describe accurately what's happening I think the truth is we don't know of course we don't know that's the point that's why we're debating this we don't know what's exactly what's happening how can we know anyone's true intentions I will agree with you with the point you're probably trying to make and say that it probably is less likely that teachers are trying to groom kids I still don't think that makes it okay you've probably watched more than I have so I saw a picture on social media being posted of they were saying that it was a drag queen but it was actually a cis woman who was like in a bikini who was like taking money from a child and I think it's hard to verify these things on social media there are very significant things that are problematic that we shouldn't have children at but that's just an example even with that I would be uncomfortable with a cis woman at a strip show stripping in front of a child so I think at the point when does it become when is criminal investigation on the table I guess it would have to be if they were being explicitly sexual towards a child you probably seem more than I have honestly I have not but I'm sure that they're out there I'm sure that they're out there there's a video online circulating right now I believe even though pride season's over there was a video I think it was a biological woman I don't think it was a trans woman that was on a stripper pole at a gay pride parade with a kid while she was wearing pretty much nothing so it's like okay slap a gay flag on it it makes it okay I disagree I think you disagree with that as well so there are some videos not many I'm sure they exist but yeah that's a specific example that the cis woman who she's stripping with a child next to her take that out of the gay pride event yeah in any other scenario it would not be okay probably shouldn't be there either and it's actually defeating the purpose of having gay rights and you know the gay pride parades should be a family friendly event you know LGBTQ people have families too I think we need to make these events accessible for families why should it be family friendly it wasn't family friendly for years and years okay the DC one has always been family friendly all of a sudden people are trying to make them into something that they're not you can have your fun and have it be for adults it depends on the one that you go to again the DC one is family friendly during the daytime there are a couple of dudes who walk around with weird outfits but for the most part it's family friendly and then anything that's not family friendly happens at a nightclub later so yeah different cities do it different ways I agreed with Ariel earlier when she said that the better way to do it is probably have a family friendly version and then later on you could have a more explicit version and I think the reason to Sean's question the reason why we would want a family friendly version is just because there are probably a lot of lonely and isolated LGBT kids and we want to wait for those kids to be able to connect to a broader LGBT community and find support and community also kids that are straight that have gay parents what I'm saying is if you're going to have non family friendly things like then that's fine just don't bring your kids to it don't bring them do you mean like legally or morally like under current law does it warrant arrest yeah those are legal things but you said should warrant arrest should is a prescription okay yeah legally I don't know the law morally I I mean there's an interesting question of who should be prosecuted right because if it's an event that's like explicitly 18 and up because it's sexual and the parents bring their kids to that event that's probably not okay that's probably illegal that should fall on the parents that should fall on the parents if it's a case where it's a family friendly event and someone shows up and starts doing sexual stuff that falls on the performer then that falls on the performer I think we should treat it like we see the random guy in the trench coat who flashes people if you're a nightclub it's still really not okay but I know the point you're trying to make so it was actually just a word that we should take into account previous arrests but not convictions no I said a lot of these models like they have a similar model to what she described in New Jersey and they only take in convictions but they don't take in like a pattern of arrests so if you have a bunch of cases pending then that wouldn't count because they're not convictions yet so that would sort of be going against the presumption of innocence and very similar to red flag laws in relation to the first or second amendment crime of guns would you agree with red flag laws? no I don't agree with red I don't agree with red flag laws but more importantly it's just inaccurate to say that this goes against the presumption of innocence the reason you have a right to a speedy trial and not a right to pre-trial released in the United States Constitution is because it was presumed that you were going to be held awaiting trial so they wanted that period to be as minimal as possible you being held pre-trial if you go back into English common law does not make you guilty you're just awaiting trial the reason we had bail in the first place is because you're putting collateral in place of yourself to ensure that you return to face justice to face your trial so it's not a violation of your presumption of innocence to hold you pre-trial now does that mean they should hold you for long periods of time no does that mean that we shouldn't do reforms to ensure that you have a speedy trial no we definitely should do reforms but they should be on that side not the bail side the speedy trial side one last question Mark what is each personal definition of progressive and do y'all feel very progressive our definition of what progressive means well I think so one way to answer is just like it's often hard there are often these concepts which we have like a decent intuitive understanding of and we can sort of sort people into one box or the other in a fairly intuitive way but then like precisely demarcating these definitions can be kind of difficult but I mean I would say that a progressive is probably just somebody who is willing to abandon social traditions and traditional values in virtue of other moral considerations without much hesitancy I agree with that I think that's a really good yeah I think that's a really good way of putting it I think the word progressive if we're not talking about politics probably should mean open to other possibilities than what you know and also being open to the idea of being wrong and being okay with that and I wish that actually tied into the way politics are more but I don't think modern day progressives are very okay with being wrong yeah I mean I would say the difference between like a progressive and a liberal like a liberal is open minded, open to free speech but generally they're going to be in favor like the more marginalized and all that or like open to new ideas a progressive is like more rigid like they're very economically authoritarian like that's what socialism is and they want a silence opposition because they believe that opposing ideas are considered like violence which is the opposite of word progressive which is why I said it's not really fitting I don't know if I would associate with progressives with necessarily with like socialists though like yeah there's a trend there but like well most progressives think that Bernie Sanders is a progressive and Hillary Clinton is not and like the distinction factor is not necessarily social issues it's the fact that Bernie Sanders identifies as a socialist and Hillary Clinton they would call a neoliberal well they also will call like Elizabeth Warren a progressive and she's not a socialist right probably there's like a progressive caucus and probably the vast majority of politicians don't self-identify as socialists in fact I think Bernie Sanders is the only one I know of who does one final question I saw the pain in your eyes what's your question so I kind of want to blind things back a little bit to the earlier issue where we were talking about gender and I think this ties more largely to a broader discussion but in particular I'm a future practitioner and something that matters to me a lot is one it's great to see people kind of defer to value the opinions of these expert communities and communities with experts but personally something that concerns me is the extent to which you know these are not models that exist in agreement and very often there's going to be disagreement and even mistakes that are made for example the reason why we come back to the NHS is to take on gender-affirming care and so I'm wondering if you all would like to add any comments about not just bias women medical communities but other institutions as well sure I think we've seen a trend in NHS we know currently I think it has some funding problems and I think that is part of the reason why they see so many issues there but obviously I think that the best way to practice medicine is through regulation making sure that you've taken all the steps to be as safe as possible that's just how medicine is practiced and I think a lot of the time we argue about these subjects that really should be up to medical professionals and should be debated within medical professionals and then we make policies that impact those professionals and I don't think it's necessarily good for patient care I think we need to start really taking more physician opinion physician conversation into play when we talk about making policy decisions on these things I think one of the worst phrases that has become popular in the American lexicon is trust the science because it's so anti-scientific you should be able to question ideas test hypothesis hypothesis thank you and then be able to come up with better solutions so what we see is that a lot of these countries that have let forward on certain forms of care even setting aside the gender thing for now have pulled back because that's what always happens I mean just go watch any news report where they say wine is good for your heart and then like two weeks later they're like oh actually wine is going to make your heart explode and then two weeks later you find out that is good again like this is what happens so you got to do the research over and over again but not become wedded and not try to invest your ideology into practice that's why I mentioned specifically gender for being care because it sounds more like ideology than actually something that's scientifically rooted and scientifically based and maybe something that we could agree on is like if we want to produce a climate where the decisions about puberty blockers has come to through debates between doctors and their different reeds of the literature and so on then we should probably try and create a climate where medical care is a lot more depoliticized and I will admit that there are some on the left who do politicize this issue in an unreasonable way like you know people who will you know call you transphobic and say you want to genocide trans people if you even have any concerns or questions or reservations about like puberty blockers but that's mostly just people on twitter I think in terms of people who are actually politicizing this issue in a deeply unhealthy and unproductive way is going to be like the republican politicians who are trying to like ban medical practitioners from you know coming to the judgments about care that they would come to in various states just be sure that we wrap up in time I want to hear from and then we should probably wrap up what was the question again sorry oh just to comment generally on the professional provides and institutions to kind of exist as a it's a very big topic I would say I think I agree with Sean and I agree with both of them actually I agree with everybody we're still learning and I think there's there's a lot of there's a lot of different cases out there still because being trans can mean so many different things and it's also gender dysphoria in general can vary it can it can change it can shift it can morph it can change your sexual orientation if you go on if you go on hormones it's there's a lot of issues that come with it I think from what I've seen I think the only bias I will agree with him I think he said that there are Republicans or conservatives whatever you recall them people on the right people on the far right trying to take away actual health care from these kids that are actually experiencing gender dysphoria that are actually transsexual transgender people but I think that comes I think it's a cause and effect because just based on how far the left has swung to the left over the last few years we went from trans people need need access to health care to everybody's trans in a matter of like three years and I think that's that's why we're seeing more issues than not I want to do a couple quick let's give our guests a round of applause are we still alive Kane are we still alive are we still alive you are still alive are we still vitality