This podcast is brought to you by the Albany Public Library main branch in the generosity of listeners like you God Daddy these people talk as much as you do Rezeep cons unsupervised learning. Thanks for listening to the ungated version of the unsupervised learning podcast If you want to read some essays on some of these topics, please check out rezeed.substack.com Again, that's rezeed.substack.com. Thank you. Even if you and your partner are healthy There's still a chance your child can develop a serious genetic disease This is because every embryo has new changes not present in either parent most of the time These are benign but sometimes they can be catastrophic Orkans hold genome embryo reports directly screen the embryo and analyze these de novo genetic mutations Discuss embryo screening an IVF with a genetics expert Hey everybody, it's Rezeep with the unsupervised learning podcast and today I am I'm gonna be recording a podcast with something where someone of a who is something of a savant About gender ideology And all the controversial trans stuff that's in the news my friend Christina buttons Who also has a sub-stack buttons lives in the freelance germ list and has worked at various outfits and So I'm not exaggerating Christina's head is packed full with a lot of information some of it which I've told her I would rather not know So she does not like look away from painful facts Or painful surgeries. It's really what I'm talking about if you follow her on social media Just expect that she's gonna give you the unvarnished truth of what's happening. They're not gonna censor too much You know, you don't want to look at that timeline sometimes, but uh, you know, it's important topic support question and obviously it's not something and You know, I've talked about this with our mutual friend Colin Wright who Christina does very well so But Christina it has a somewhat different Angle on it. I feel although you know, she went disagree with me I feel like she's really focused on details of of specific issues, you know, call it as an evolutionary biologist You know, it has to deal with some of the philosophical Issues about what gender ideology is and the sex binary and all that I'm sure there enlightenment on that But you know, she knows a lot of specific things that are happening in policy in government in bureaucracies And so I kind of I want to start there. I want to know what the cash review is. I see you know the news I read a paragraph here a paragraph there You know, there's something called W path acronyms It's all like a big alphabet soup to me. So Christina I kind of unpack it for us Hi, thanks for having me receive So in April we saw the release of a four-year investigation into the UK's National Health Service is gender identity clinic for youth that's there like publicly funded clinic The Cast review and the associated systematic evidence reviews. They basically represent like the most thorough appraisal of pediatric gender medicine to date and Across every intervention they found remarkably weak evidence For for gender transitions and minors And so I cast review is that so this is a in Britain Europe is a little ahead in certain things and in terms of gender transitions. I think what you're getting at here is You know, there was there was the quote or the the saying. Do you want a? You know, like for example, do you want a living a living daughter or a dead son these suicides? And so gender transition Is basically a way to alleviate dysmorphia, right? And obviously that is supposed to help with mental health And so you have these youth often who are You know undergoing legitimate mental distress and gender transition the way to alleviate that, right? That's a theory right, so in Britain because the gender identity Development service kids was a sort of publicly funded institution. We did have access to some data there It was you know in 2008 or something like that. There are about like 70 patients, these are adolescents seeking gender clinic services and you know by the end of the cast review it was something like eight or nine thousand so that's it represents a You know a significant increase in an adolescent seeking those services Which has caused you know alarm for a lot of people which is one of the reasons why? this Evidence review was conducted in the first place and they found that you know for many of these youth they're Experiencing a transient phase is what they referred to it as and that they indicated that you know psychotherapy is the best intervention for them not medical interventions so we're seeing a lot of countries in the UK who are rolling back and We're heavily restricting access to medical interventions. They're prioritizing therapy instead But that's not happening in the United States the US medical organizations They've all sort of doubled down on their position that you know gender-affirming cares evidence-based and necessary and life-saving but none of these things are true They're not abiding by the principles of evidence-based person Systematic evidence reviews which represent you know the pinnacle of evidence-based medicine. They've all found that There is no good evidence to support medically transitioning minors. So yeah Yeah, so so you know obviously therapy we know what that is, you know, you talked to someone You know, there's discussions back and forth medical transition tell us Yeah, this is stuff. I'm not gonna lie listener. Like this is stuff. I avoid Digging deep into or thinking about but you know for this podcast. I will uh, you know I'll go there Because sometimes you need to know what the terms actually mean So medical transition is very clinical and you know, it detaches you from what's going on So what is medical transition? I'm assuming hormones maybe surgeries Yeah for for small children the beginning of Transition is a social transition and includes, you know changing your name and pronouns and your outer appearance and then this sort of prepsum for The first stages of puberty tenor stage two, which can be different for different kids. It could be eight nine ten eleven This is when they administer puberty blockers Which have long been said to be reversible, but there's new evidence finding that that's not true at all They say that's just a pause button on puberty, but like almost 98% of the time they go on to cross sex hormones and if you go from you know puberty blockers to cross sex hormones And if you had if you started puberty blockers at tenor stage two, it will like guarantee Sterility and cross work hormones have a lot of other medical You know consequences associated with them All right really quickly really quickly so cross sex hormone. So that would mean born male biological male puberty blocker obviously stops the Maskalization of the face facial hair whatever okay I get that as a cross sex hormone is then you put them on estrogen to feminize them Is that what you're talking about? Yes, and then for an illicit girls they're put on testosterone Yeah I'm sorry. I have a question here. I don't dig deep into this stuff Like let's set aside like we could talk about the surgeries, okay, we can talk about that, but when it comes to the hormones, you know as you know I have a background as a biologist about a very mechanistic oriented person with physiology and all this stuff development, but It never really honestly struck me as intuitively plausible That you could stop a important developmental function like puberty do cross sex hormones which are massively transformative and Then somehow reverse it like I can you explain to me? How that was plausible as something you would claim because it seems like you would assume that it's not reversible Well puberty blockers have been used in children who Have started like puberty extremely early way too early like six or seven or eight That's a condition. There are conditions that happen to that And so puberty blockers have been you know found to be? Generally safe to use in this population because they're only sort of delaying puberty for a few years They're not stopping it at this like critical time during growth and development so Studies that have found that it's safe to use puberty blockers for precocious puberty Sure, but there have been no studies that have found that have been completely safe to use in youth who are experiencing gender dysphoria um and No long-term data exists to support their use in that context So that is where the belief that reversibility the reversible came from but really it's it's out of context Yeah, so just like Reiterate like coming explicit what's going on here. So, you know precocious puberty the thing often These kids This isn't just like a little early or a little late like we're talking, you know, as you said early elementary Often they grow really fast like I've read some articles about males who've undergone this they get really tall They get a little facial hair, but their actual final height is actually quite short Uh, you really should not be going into puberty when you're six years old and so there's a legit medical reason uh to delay it uh until you're more biologically I don't know equipped. I don't know what term would you use to actually start going through all the bodily changes of puberty around You know 10 to 14. Let's put it that a you know just to give a a big a big range here Okay, um, so they so obviously That's in this like very specific medical context relating to a I'm gonna call it dysfunction or disorder of puberty and then with the puberty blocking uh in this context of uh, you know gender transition what you're talking about is taking a Child who's undergoing normal physiological and developmental path but it's you know at least they're reporting uh psychological distress uh actually Disrupting the normal path of development and To me again, that seems a little ridiculous that you would think oh well. It's just like with precocious You know I say precocious puberty. It's just like this isn't like a lego block system where you just like put it together And you can disassemble and reassemble, you know, but uh, that's just my impression Yeah, I mean it's that's correct. I reported on a study earlier this year that found um a myoclinic study that found Severe atrophy and the testes of boys on puberty blockers and this wasn't really known before um, but it also causes, you know decreases in bone mass and Sometimes cognitive delays sometimes psychiatric issues. There's just a lot We don't know because we don't have any like robust data on this And so in a way, there's almost an ethical conundrum where uh, you know People don't want to do a randomized field test where you know you just assign some boys to the blockers or some boys Not to attract them because let's say you have like a huge data set of boys that uh Boys or girls that under what puberty blockers and it turns out that it's a massive problem the rest of their life Well, what have you just done? Right? So we're we're kind of stuck in uh I don't want to say no man's land or just like, you know, but it's a doers You know damned if you do you didn't if you don't but It does feel like that with some of this stuff because uh It's kind of like your experiment to got humans, right? Yeah, and um Speaking of ethics like that is sort of been the justification all along from activists and from the scientific and medical organizations sympathetic to the activist narratives is that you know if we deprive these children of these medical interventions, they're going to kill themselves because This group of kids has you know, high rates of suicidal thoughts um but when you You know, these are just these are these are kids who have psychiatric issues anyway There's no good evidence to support that You know not giving them medical interventions is going to cause them to kill themselves It's it's just been this myth that has been very pervasive um There is like it's become a me like I've heard people say like use like direct quote, you know About the suicide issue, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's where the uh Would you rather have a live transgender child or a dead child has come from and I found in my own survey of D-transitioners that about 50 percent said that they heard that exact line or their family did um So it is it is very common But but this is a very recent phenomenon, correct? Like I mean, I don't think there was a thing like 10 or 15 years ago Like where did all this come from and uh, you know, yeah You're just a little curious about that well, um You know after gay marriage was sort of legally recognized nationwide in 2015 A lot of these activist organizations like glad and the human rights campaign I mean they kind of needed to shift focus in order to keep their doors open and retain funding So they kind of pivoted to trans rights. I think even I think Biden when he was a vice president at one point said that you know trans rights were the new civil rights cause and that's Kind of where a lot of this has all been coming from is there's these these organizations like You can't understate their influence human rights campaign generates like 50 million dollars a year and all of this a lot of this has gone into basically propaganda like activist propaganda like that's where all these might mentors come from like trans women are women and trans rights or human rights where all of these Information is coming from is these activist organizations um And that's been what's been leading Pediatric gender medicine is activism not science and we know that I mean we have w path now new internal communications from w path have just been Can you tell us what w path is christina? Yeah Uh, so w path is the world professional association for transgender health they are a non-profit organization of self-identified experts in transgender health care and they are endorsed by numerous medical organizations and they're influential like standards of care guidelines have been adopted by pediatric gender clinics in the us and internationally like I I did a review once of all of the pediatric gender clinic websites in 2022 and the vast majority cited w path standards of care as you know the gold standard like they that they rely on on these standards so like they're they're incredibly influential and um for a lot of us who have been reporting on this issue have known for a long time that they are You know, essentially just an activist organization who are kind of looked to as a scientific authority and these new internal communications that were subpoenaed from w path and an alabama court case uh on You know placing age restrictions on gender affirming care for minors They were recently released in the past week um And they're incredibly damning they show that w path tried to cover up evidence that there was no um, there was no good evidence to support medically transitioning minors and You know, they've implicated rachel of vene You know who that is adverb was it with doctor rachel? It's doctor rachel of eve Dr rachel of vene the assistant secretary of health For the us department of health and human surfaces who was pointed by the bad administration who successfully pressured w paths to remove age limitations for minors to receive hormonal and surgical sex straight modifications in their latest edition of the standards of care eight. These are their guidelines that include chapters on medically transitioning minors um was released in 2022 so we have emails from around that period now you know showing levene's actions were explicitly politically motivated uh during by concerns that age limitations on these interventions would lead to devastating legislation for trans care so And following the news of levene's involvement um, the biden administration justice past week announced that they oppose gender affirming surgery for minors, which is very significant because you know all of their previous statements they have supported medical full interventions for minors um, but You know one of the most damning statements I think was from a summary judgment from the alabama attorney general who revealed that um w path authors of the standards of care had said that their priorities lie in affecting policy and winning lawsuits um And I think this is just Incredibly damning. It shows that they're prioritizing activism over children's best interests Well, so I have a so I question you said surgeries, uh So tell us what tell us what you mean by that because oh right the the surgeries, um For girls this includes, uh, a double mastectomy to remove the breasts for boys a brass augmentation Um, you can also be facial surgeries general surgeries and hysterectomies Um for for boys this include like a penile inversion vagina plastic Uh, do you want further explanation on that? Sorry, sorry guys. I just I made a face Uh, but no, I do want explanation because like I always avoid I think a lot of us we avoid Knowing what this means, but we should probably at least know it at least once But yeah, a lot um, well I mean not to get too graphic, but they you know Invert the penis and create a cavity that is supposed to resemble female genitalia and um, they're it's Associated with the high risk of complications same thing for kind of, um, the opposite the failplasty for girls involves taking, uh, a portion of skin from either their arm or their thigh or someplace like that and basically Rolling it up until like something that resembles a phallus and rerouting their urethra um, it's Associated with extremely high rates of complications they frequently need revision surgeries Um, and you're left with just you know this mass of skin removed from your body. I mean the the pictures are horrific and I've found that they can be effective in Sort of changing people's mind about all of this. I mean though these surgeries aren't offered to minors But like you often see, you know, like 19-year-old girls getting them paid for through their medical insurance and Just suffering horrific complications after that like it's Okay, so Let me get clear then Are there ever surgeries for minors and let's define minors as 18 and under or no under 18 For some of two of them frequently it's girls getting double mastectomies. There is uh, uh, a jama surgery studied that found between like 2016 and 2019 There were over 1,000 of these double mastectomy surgeries performed on minors uh and But this is likely a significant under count because they were relying on hospital data rather than private surgery centers So that's just to give you an idea. So there are you know thousands of adolescent girls accessing these surgeries. That's the most frequent surgery uh sometimes males get breast augmentations and for Some boys they are able to get you know a vagina plastic surgery at 17 Um But this isn't as common Sure as the others was the chest surgeries but I see is never offered to anyone under 18 though Okay. Okay. So, okay. That's good to know. Uh, so Uh, is it now? So I know the data in the US is a little so you know, I should say britain has a national health service So it's like literal socialized medicine Uh doctors are employees of the government. It's kind of uh, integrated system Uh, it's not like just subsidies or something to insurance or providers or single payer Uh, so they have pretty good data Uh, I think compared to us in the US where we have decentralized health care system We don't have a centralized health care system unless you want to talk about medicare or something like that And so uh, you know, I I know data is a little can be a little harder, but uh, is it most emails or females right now? That are making recourse to medical transition Uh, it's mostly females the vast majority are young girls. Um in the past And i'm talking about like in the past like since I don't I guess since like the 70s. It was rare, but um, it was mostly young boys Who were seeking gender clinic services and these were mostly You know Male children who would later grow up to be gay as so They didn't typically They didn't they didn't used to offer medical interventions to them in the past and they there was without these without those interventions there was a high rate of Desistance in these children who are predominantly male um, but the dutch had decided to Take a select group of young kids and introduced puberty blockers and cross-exformments and surgeries to them they Carefully selected this group. Um but we um and and introduced these Interventions to them it became known as the dutch protocol and then around 2008 the dutch protocol was sort of adopted in the united states and Became the gender affirming model of care that is used here um, it's a lot less cautious and careful than the dutch protocol So gender affirming, uh, tell us what that means again a lot of the listeners Uh, like I will just tell you I know you Are you know very well aware of this, but I'll tell you a lot of older people have no idea what you're talking about half the time They kind of know the trans stuff, but they don't know so that's why i'm you know, what is gender affirming? Oh, um well, gender affirming refers to the gender affirming model of care and um, it's kind of a euphemism for pediatric sex trait modification or pediatric sex changes and uh, the affirming part comes from this idea that you know This belief that transgender children are born that way and that they need support and medical interventions in order to affirm their gender identity uh gender identity is this said to be said to be this, you know internal sense of maleness and femaleness and transgender youth are said to possess a gender identity that is mismatched from their body the purpose of gender affirming care is to align the body with the Gender identity, which is also sometimes referred to as brain sex or neurological sex, which we can get into this is Completely based on this myth that transgender people possess an opposite sex brain um, this was very common among the v transitioners I surveyed who's about 50 percent had said That their doctor had told them they possessed a male brain and a female body or a female brain and a male body it comes from These studies on the transgender brain that didn't control for confounding variables such as sexual orientation um and cross-sex hormone use there is There were a number of studies in the 90s that sort of found this area of the brain In gay people that sort of structurally resembled the opposite sex and then later when they did these studies on the transgender brain They didn't control for sexual orientation. So they basically kind of Because a lot of transgender people are gay a lot of them are homosexual um Their brains showed up with the the region that sort of structurally resembled the opposite sex and then a lot of researchers published the results saying look Transgender people are who they say they are and then the media got a hold of these studies and said looks Science proves trans people aren't making them up them making it up um, and then these studies got baked into legislation and into medical guidelines Um, and it's even it's so common that the brain sex myth is so common It's even in the I am jazz children's book about jazz Jennings the child who transitioned It's a very very popular children's book based on her life and her reality tv series uh It's it's so pervasive and not really enough has been done to dispel the Smith except for a study that did control for confounding variables and found that trans people have brains of The same sex not the opposite sex, but of course nobody has really Done enough to you know, the media of course like just completely ignores studies like that They if they don't align with the their narrative, you know Well, uh, I want to say here, uh The brains of males or females Uh, when it comes to a single characteristic Uh, there's a lot of overlap Uh, but, uh, when you look at all of the different characteristics Uh, they're quite distinct, uh, and you can uh, like you can do a brain scan get the morphology Classified male or female pretty easily because the cumulative correlation of characteristics Uh, allows people to do make that distinction And I'm going to use a quick analogy to under to make clear what i'm talking about with people Uh, if you have a If you have a single trait, uh, of of somebody, uh, it's hard to classify them racially Uh, based on what they saw, I have, uh, brown skin Uh, well, I mean, there's a lot of people in the world that have a lot of different populations that have brown skins, right? But i've told you had brown skin Very straight black hair Uh, no apocantic fold I think you would start to figure out, uh Probably south asian, you know what i'm saying? So if you if you give enough characteristics, uh, You can like narrow down, uh, population identity and so with male and female brains The brains are obviously quite similar in so far as we're obviously both homo sapiens and you know, we have weight matter, gray matter The same org, you know, uh, you know, everyone's got a brain stem Everyone's got a cerebellum, but males and females are suddenly different On across a host of metrics in such a fashion that you can create a very very, uh, you know Good composite index measure of male versus female And so this is a context that I want to bring up or I want to, you know Say it's in the background of this idea if you are a transgender person You have a male or female brain, which is in the body of the opposite sex Obviously, we know what an opposite sex body is it has to do with external genitalia and other things like that Well, what the inference from this idea would be would be like Look at the brain morphology. That's the brain morphology of female in the male or vice versa What you're saying you see this. That's not that's not really true, right? right Um, so, uh, yeah, go on christina. No, I mean there's there are there are brain studies on Transgender people that are more plausible that have to do with like the the own body perception region of the brain, um, but we don't really They don't really show it doesn't show like a causal link It's only an association and there's you know There are a lot of conditions that are associated with abnormalities and body perception networks in the brain um, including like body dysmorphic dysphoria and anorexia the body integrity identity disorder I think possibly even autism There are a lot of autistic people who identify as trans so that would be interesting to look into further I'm yeah, so I think I think we can talk about like a couple of different categories here. There are people who, uh, You know, I'm just gonna say general category because I'm trying to pejorative mental health issues, uh, you know cluster But so autism, uh, like, you know, that's a mental health issue, you know Now I understand that you know, there's all Neurodevelopment Yeah, it's a neurodevelopment disorder, but I mean, it's just like Health issues often associated with it. Yeah. Yeah, like it's a friend of all of these other issues um I I also do know uh so, uh You know, I'm just gonna say this because uh, you know, a lot of people might not know this but uh, uh, MTF, uh, there are a fair number of extremely high level uh, software engineers that are MTF Uh, and uh, like really really hardcore Uh, engineers like people that work in rust or something, uh, a lot of them that are MTF Uh, and uh, you know, a lot of them are autistic Uh, they're very left-brained Uh, is the way I'm gonna explain it hyperological, so I don't know all the details when people have noticed like some patterns Uh, and in terms of like adults like, you know, whether they want to transition or not That's up to them. I think that's that's how I feel but are Uh, there there are a lot of patterns out there And uh, I think some people are a little scared to maybe Write about it or talk about it extensively because like who knows why someone is going to get mad at you about this, right? I don't know Well, I have transgender friends. Um, I don't I mean if I basically I write about this stuff because I want people to make informed decisions that they're going I want people to make decisions that they're going to be happy with in the long term I don't think children can give consent Um, but even you know, there there's a subsection of like vulnerable young adults with autism psychiatric conditions typically like 18 to 25. I would say like that's Kind of a vulnerable group. I want People to have all of the best Most reliable information in order to make informed decisions that they can be happy with in the long term. I don't necessarily want to Stop people from transitioning when they're an adult Um, it's that's not ever been my intention Um, yeah, so I go out to watch this either No, I what i've been saying what i'm saying though is to like it's research into gender dysphoria is is difficult because the transgender population is so heterogeneous Like there's so many different pathways now to trans identification Um Homos, yeah, yeah Pathways that we talked about and then there's sort of the the autoginophilia pathway that is You know a lot of heterosexual men Um To find what that is a lot of people will not know Yeah, it's the attraction to oneself as a woman Um It's it's a sexual fetish. It's a sexual fetish. Okay. Yeah paraphelia. I guess maybe would be the best word for it um But this is you know represents a significant number of the adult males who were Transitioning into women. Um, and it's you know very taboo Not a lot of people like to talk about it or pretend that it does isn't real Um, but I I believe it's it's very real if you even just take a look at You know the transgender reddit forums about Gender euphoria boners. I mean it sounds funny, but it's There are a lot of young men out there who are confused and like they're not getting enough information to understand like what it is What's going on with them? you know, they think they're they're transgender women they may be dealing with autoginophilia and Maybe transitioning why not be Right for them You know, but if they don't have access to good information about what their condition is and kind of life they want to lead it's You know, I think Well, okay. So, you know, we've been talking about like kind of the weeds which I wanted to actually start out with Because that's your forte. I feel about this sort of stuff But you know, I want to take a step back. Uh, we want to go to all the details but like you Or we both you would call it actually, but like let's talk about you mostly here You're you're positioned in a very interesting Like location like not necessarily ideologically, but in terms of I don't know. Uh, just the various groups. So, you know, a lot of people aren't going to know like terfs, trans, exclusionary radical feminists That's what group online. Obviously, there's a trans activist. Uh, there's social conservatives Uh, you know, there's liberals that like just kind of go along with it etc, etc. Uh, you and you and Colin are both not religious um, and uh like, you know, you obviously have gotten into it with uh You know, just called woke quote activists, uh, you yourself or woke and you've talked about that other podcast We need to go to details, but um For about like eight months. I was eight months is a long time. You're not that old. I mean, that's that's a fair amount of your adult life I'm 35 Yeah. Well, that's that's a fair amount of your adult life, you know I mean, you can't reverse it. It's irreversible like the effect on your brain, but uh No, it was a learning learning experience. I learned my lesson, but uh But you know, then you weren't for the daily wire that you left the daily wire Uh, sometimes I see you and Colin involved in uh, social media Uh, issues that I have no idea who these people are and I have no idea why they're angry And they could be right wing left wing religious atheist turf trans Uh You guys are just involved in the mix Can you talk just a little bit about that like how that feels and why you get yourselves in this situation? I try not to I tried has been most of my time writing and doing research and not um Getting involved on twitter spats, but I feel like every year and a half I forget That I this lesson and I need to relearn it again um because that was about the length of time that sort of transpired between the most Recent one and the last one, um where I kind of got into it with some gender critical women or or trans exclusionary radical feminists Sometimes people think i'm uh one of them, but i'm not i'm i'm not a feminist Uh, and I don't really I don't really call myself gender critical like i'm just i'm just a journalist uh, but no, I I dislike the way that some people behave online towards transgender people Um, I think that we should treat people as individuals and not based on their entire group identity um A lot of the comments I see towards transgender people has been very like degrading and demeaning and If I ever stand up for them, I usually get backlash from this community of people online the the gender critical community Um, and so that's been you know Nothing ever good comes of it And then it just you know causes a lot of mental health My mental health to deteriorate and so I have to remind myself and just don't engage with them Um, and just carry on with what i'm doing, but it seems like every year and a half. I forget and You need to relearn that listen And also you left you you left a position at the daily caller. So Or daily wire. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I had um when I first started writing about this a couple of years ago, like there weren't Really any options like the liberal media Had not Touched this issue in a in a critical way at all um, this was before the New York Times kind of bravely Set themselves apart from the mainstream media and began Doing some really good reporting on it Um, but I was working in conservative media to begin with even though i've you know I've voted democrat my whole life even for biden. Um, I think this is the first year. I'm not going to be voting I'm a registered independent now, but no, I I decided to give conservative media chance Um, and then I was kind of bothered by some comments that some of the commentators had made Uh, I decided that I needed to sort of professionally Distance myself from them and so I sort of wrote a public statement And then how i've been kind of independent ever since I mean that seems that seems that seems in keeping with just like what I know about you Uh, you know, you're not a you're not a team player. Let's put it that way I'm not a team player Uh, yeah It sounds right I've been I'm just I'm mostly most my life been I work better kind of alone Well, I mean, uh, were you a were you a cartoonist or artist before? Um For a time. Yeah. I while I was uh For for a couple years. Yeah, I was I was doing children's books illustrating them I'm an artist So so you have this profile now, uh, you know, I'm not gonna say it's an esoteric topic. Although You get pretty deep into it. Uh, it is something that's in the public uh public. I just out of curiosity. Um You know Like did you lose a lot of friends over this? I mean, what's your social circle like and I don't a little bit Like I have visited you and call it actually a natural. I just tell the people that like we're friends, but um Yeah Well, you know, you're you're my part of my social circle. What's the vibe? Yeah most of the friends I have are online and I see them at conferences don't have uh very robust social life In real life. Well, I mean you guys you guys just moved to the actual last couple of years So you guys you guys time, you know, it's been a few years of I think we should have made more friends in that time. I have I have a couple friends here that I see occasionally, but it's been you know, I mostly keep to myself and work constantly and Have just been sort of focused on career right now. Um, my cats are my best friends. I guess All right. You're fulfilling some stereotypes You know But uh, so So let me ask you uh, you have like given like certainly years of your life now uh to uh You know these gender related questions, uh that have fixated our country Uh, in a way, I think like last five years. I would say last five years not 10 That's a little too much. But uh last five years. It's been a big deal Uh, and uh trans rights trans identity has actually been as you said, you know, biden has uh president biden has um foregrounded uh this sort of stuff and uh, you know, it's You know, like it doesn't matter how many trans people you think exist in this country They're just a big deal in our culture. Uh, but uh, you know, all these sorts of things tend to fade Um If I had to bet You know when I was growing up, uh, you know, a little older than you there were trans people Uh, they're pretty taboo thing, but there were people who were like really into Transitioning and those are people where it's like, okay, uh Yeah, maybe you should let them do it, you know, whatever like that was something they really wanted to do Now today, you know, there's a lot of non binary You know kids I you know some of my my daughter's friends. She's 12 Some of them are not binary. You know, they changed her name. They do but they don't do anything medical Center, etc. They're a huge proportion of some some schools Uh, that's probably going to fade culturally, you know, uh, I don't think that it's gonna last you definitely so What do you have an idea of like what you want to do? Like what your beat is like as a freelance journalist as a journalist as an investigator Uh once that this topic is not so red hot um Well, um Been working on something for the last three or four weeks. Um, did I first see is Well, it's an issue that's important to me, but We'll see how how much people actually care about it when I published some articles about it um, and that has to do with uh, like the youth mental health crisis and this sort of you know What I see as like an essential resource that is just drastically declined in the last uh, I mean since since around 2010, I think like these uh youth residential treatment centers have uh declined since About like 60 percent since since 2010. Um, and it's created this sort of bed shortage crisis For use with severe emotional and behavioral needs um, who are often placed now in like overcrowded inpatient hospitals and boarded in emergency rooms. Um, and then this affects foster youth too who have sort of severe needs behavioral issues Uh, at least like 18 states foster use are being sort of boarded in inappropriate settings like office spaces conference rooms and hotels and things like that. So uh what we're seeing is the decrease in resident residential treatment settings for youth. Um, it's not it's not due to like a lack of effectiveness or a lack of need, but this like growing ideological opposition to them that have resulted in policies that have like significantly restricted their access. Um, and it comes from this I belief that youth residential treatment or you know the troubled teen industry as many like to call it. Um, it comes from this idea that there's, you know, widespread abuse going on in them. Uh, but there isn't really any data to support that there've been a there's I mean this industry has been around I think like a hundred years or something there, you know their their treatment settings that are sort of in between like an inpatient hospitalization and an outpatient treatment They sort of represent this intermediate step in this like continuum of care and they're like settings that house youth that offer, you know 24-hour staff and therapeutic services and it allows children who have like severe needs to kind of stabilize and learn coping skills um, so that they can eventually return home and into the community. Uh, but you know there's been there's obviously like wide variability between all these different treatment centers like with most treatment options. There's like significant diversity in the quality and the type of services offered what Christina treatment for what like what sort of mental health issues do you have? I'm wondering. I know about like juvie for like kids that are disruptive obviously or whatever, but obviously these are not that uh, is it depression? Is it bipolar is it all sorts of things? I don't know. It's more it has to do with their behaviors. So like, you know a bipolar person, you know, they can live at home as long as they're being safe and not engaging and self-harm and suicide attempts and things like that. That's that's more what i'm referring to. So the severe emotional and behavioral issues, it's you know someone who presents a threat to themselves or others who are can't live at home safely. Uh There these treatments centers are usually a last resort for when all other options have been exhausted, you know, and this is just important to me because this was you know my teenage experience, uh, I had depression and I was self-harming. I was anorexic. I was doing drugs. I had all kinds of risky behaviors and then, you know, I attempted suicide and over like over a nine month period. Okay, let's go. This just got dark. I didn't know that about you. Yeah. Well, people are going to learn a lot more about me when I started publishing about this, but it's this was my teen experience. I was in a dozen different placements over a nine month period and then my final placement was like a locked down residential treatment facility in Utah. Uh, it's the same one, Paris Holton's trying to shut down Provo Canyon School. Yeah. Yeah. She's been in the media. She's on the other side. She's on the other side from you. She's trying to shut them down and restrict access to them. Um, that's her goal and she's she's been, you know, she testified in front of Congress last week about the alleged abuse that she experienced there in the 90s. Uh, and, um, this is, you know, been her crusade in the last few years. Like she's returned to the spotlight to reform the troubled teen industry. Uh, So, so are these, uh, so I don't know anything about this. Uh, are these private, private facilities that are paid for by parents or are these government or are they mixed? I don't know. There are a mix of private and non private entities. Um, and like I said, there's wide variability between them and some of these under resource facilities with lax staff, like sometimes bad things occur in them and it's horrible. And, you know, abuse should always be addressed and, you know, dealt with appropriately, but like these treatment centers, like, they were, it was extremely beneficial to me. And I didn't enjoy being there at all. I mean, I think that's what I'm seeing now from a lot of the activists who want to shut these places down, this like activist movement that's kind of been spearheaded by Peril Sultan. Um, they're just sort of reframing things as abuse that should never be characterized as abuse. They believe that seclusion and restraint, these are interventions used on violent youth or for youth who are self harming in order to keep them safe and keep everybody else safe. They're heavily regulated by state and federal authorities. Um, but I'm constantly seeing them now being reframed, reframed by activists as abuse. Um, I just don't think that's accurate or helpful at all. Um, I never had seclusion or restraint news on me because I never acted out. And I only ever saw them being used judiciously on youth who were becoming violent. Um, I saw no abuse of any kind at this treatment center that I went to. I think that with everything going on with the youth mental health crisis, I think that we should be utilizing high quality treatment centers more and not less. And this is, I think, especially true for, if there's a lot of recent studies out that show that there are youth being readmitted to psychiatric and patient hospitals and repeated visits to the emergency room for attempted suicide and self harm, repeated usage of mobile crisis centers, crisis services. Um, and these, I think, are youth who would probably benefit from the, the structured and therapeutic environment, uh, that a youth residential treatments center can provide so they can develop self control and healthier coping skills so that they can be safely reintegrated into the community because it's just not sustainable to have youth who are just constantly getting sent back to their emergency room over and over for, you know, crisis, their air experiencing. And my experience is usually, it's just not very common to hear someone talk about this stuff, but like in my experience, like I liked the inpatient psychiatric setting. Like I would do things to get sent there. I would run away from other settings so that I would be placed back in that one. And I had to learn that like my, I, how to control myself and, and stop these behaviors. Is it, is it, is the title of your piece going to be commit me? Now I'm just joking. That's cute. Um, yeah, that's why they pay me the big bucks. So wait, how, how many people, how many, how many kids? I don't know anything about this. How many kids go through this sort of system? Like, you know, is it like hundreds of thousands and ten thousand? Um, I'll give you a good estimate. It was something I spent, I mean, I spent weeks researching this. So there's not a lot of good data out there. And one of the purposes of Paris Hilton's federal bill that she's been advocating for, um, one of the purposes of it is to establish like a national database of old programs so they can keep track of how much abuse there is going on. So until we have a database like this, we don't really have the data necessary to provide insights on the prevalence of abuse or make definitive claims about it being widespread or not. So what I've sort of been looking into trying to figure out is, you know, how, how many use are going through these programs. And they're basically three different kinds of groups of kids that they serve. And that is the foster use in the child welfare system who usually have severe emotional and behavioral needs who have exhausted all of the other settings. So they need like a higher level of care. And then there's the cohort that I kind of belong to. These are, um, where I came from a supportive family, but I wasn't safe living at home and I needed a higher level of care for my behaviors. And then there's the juvenile justice system, the use offenders. So this is sort of simultaneously been happening where, uh, especially in like California and liberal states, they're trying to reduce the use of juvenile hall and place juvenile offenders into residential treatment settings. So, um, the government accountability office determines, like looking at data around 2004, 2005, they determined there were about like 200,000 youth in residential treatment settings. And relying on similar sources, I was able to determine that in 2020, there are about 83,000. So let's say like, I mean, over the past 30 years or so, millions of kids have gone through programs. And these are, there's so much variability between them. So there's, there's all different kinds. Um, and that's one of the other issues is, you know, residential treatment. It's sort of defined differently by a lot of different people and different states to find it differently. Um, there has been a problem with collecting enough data on this issue from states. Uh, but the health and human services data has shown that for like the past 20 years, staff at residential treatment facilities and group homes have on average accounted for about 0.2% of perpetrators of abuse and fatalities nationwide. So then that's been consistent. I looked at every report for over 20 years. It's why it hasn't been like this growing or increasing huge problem. It's just, this is how many people like in any healthcare setting, you're going to have abuse occasionally occur and it's terrible and we should always try and do things to prevent it. But it's just like kind of a fact of life. Anytime there's going to be children, any setting, basically. Um, but federal data also shows that psychiatric residential treatment facilities are statistically as safe as general hospitals. So given all of this, I just don't think that we have enough data to support the claims, their widespread abuse occurring with them. And that's why I think until that data proves otherwise, we shouldn't really be, um, divesting from this resource. I think that could be incredibly helpful. I mean, we have youth completed suicides too that have seen like a significant rise over the past decade. Like, they're up like 50% or something like that. And I think residential treatment could help sort of with that as well. Wow, this is a whole, whole topic that actually, I mean, I know what you're talking about, you know, but I haven't thought about it deeply. And you're right. You know, it does affect a lot of kids, a lot of teens. It's interesting. I don't know if you listen to the podcast, but I had Rob Henderson on, you know, there's this whole foster world that, you know, a lot of these kids are involved in. It's just really weird, like listen to his experiences because it's so detached from anything that I understand, you know. Oh, yeah. The foster stuff is crazy because it's, there's this, a lot of these policies affect them. And what's interesting too, is there's this whole like abolished foster care movement from, you know, the anti-racist side who says that foster care systemically racist because it disproportionately affects, you know, minorities. So they think that because it's racist, it needs to be abolished and we need to keep children at home. But of course, it would be nice to keep children home, but not if they're like in an unsafe home. So there's been this push since in recent years, like the Family First Prevention Services Act that is sort of this, this ideological view that we need children to stay at home in your communities, rather than be placed in group or residential or congregate care settings. And there's been, there's there are some policy experts who are doing really great work on this issue, like Naomi, Shafer Riley, and she just had a great piece in the New York Times about this. But you know, there's been an uptick in fatalities from children who have been abused or neglected in the home ever since they started cutting back on foster care. And I think that's something we're gonna probably be talking about more in the future, I think. So, you know, these policies were put in place a few years ago and like I think we're starting to see more data that shows that they weren't really a good idea. Well, you know, that's bad news, but good news for you, you know, I don't want to say it that way, but you know what I'm saying, you know, a utopian world would leave, you know, buttons, buttons lives with, you know, less, less fodder, right? What is like, less fodder, it's like, you know, I think the matrix, uh, the matrix, uh, the, um, the computer or whatever, like artificial intelligence was basically like, you know, we made this like awesome paradise for humans, but they went crazy and they didn't like it. So we have to make a world that has some, uh, you know, some dramatic tensions, some bad negative stuff. And, you know, uh, if it bleeds, uh, it leads, like that's the news, uh, news summary, right? So it's just like, you need, uh, you need, you need, you need content to feed the machine. And, uh, seems like, unfortunately, this is, uh, something that will require some investigation, uh, exploration. It was a new policy that's, you know, you know, we see it with schools, you know, they got rid of discipline because of disparate impact and, and, uh, I don't want to get into it, but, uh, that's the whole thing. Yeah. Para, this is sort of parallel to it. There's, there's all progressives are putting forth all of these policies that don't make any sense. And it just reinforces this idea that I have about progressives that I just don't think they understand children at all. These are, you know, architects of very bad policies. No, no, Christina, you have to listen to the children when they tell you something because they know their main care. We're a two or three year old can tell you, you know, what gender they are. We should always listen and affirm them. It's, yeah. So I, you know, I got to tell you a story. Uh, maybe I need to like think about this, but you know, my seven year old, you know, he told me, uh, what time he was like, daddy. I think he was like six at the time. So it was a little younger, but you know, daddy, uh, you know, can I go on a cake diet? You know, this is what he told me. And, uh, you know, I just ignored it. I ignored, I ignored like his truth because, uh, you know, you don't know nothing about nutrition. You don't say like, I don't care. You're six years old. I'm not going to like have you on a cake diet, you know? Uh, because that, but that's what he wants. He told me what, when he grows up, he's going to eat just all cake. And I was like, Hey, you do you, you know, when you're 18, I got no control over that. Uh, you can eat all cake. But, uh, yeah, if you have kids, if you have little kids, you know that you don't want to listen to them all the time because they don't know nothing. No offense. All over the kids. Listen out there. Are these policy makers, do they not have kids? Like, do they not understand kids at all? It doesn't make any sense to me. Like, you know how the, the Senate finance committee, they just can release this two year investigation into youth residential treatment centers. Um, and they described the kids who are typically served in these city, these facilities as children for whom we have made no place for in the real world. And we need to create and reimagine a real world for these children. And then later on in the report, they say that when these kids escape from the facilities, they are dangerous and present a risk to the community. So it's like, which is it? You know, do we integrate them into the community or they are risk or danger to the community? Uh, I mean, yeah, well, okay. So I think, uh, you know, as we're closing up, I will say, this is what I believe because they're not, I believe it's like obvious, you know, there are some social reformers and let's not even say progressive social reformers. They have ideas about specific things, but they don't have a coherent, broader vision of what the society should be like. And so for example, uh, to give a concrete example, like Freddie DeBore, uh, the communist, uh, hereditary and on sub stack, you know, he often points out that very, very far left wing progressive activists, uh, believe in, um, you know, criminal justice reform. And so people should obviously, uh, you know, they serve their time, but they get reintegrated to society. At the same time, they also want any man who has committed a sexual offense or sexual harassment to be branded with a scarlet as the rest of their life. These two are these two are contradictory, right? Uh, but, uh, you know, in the, in the singular moment, that is what they want. Uh, they just don't have a bigger vision. Like how does it all integrate together? And so the two hands don't talk to each other. That's kind of what you're alluding to, uh, in, uh, in the context of, of, uh, you know, children, uh, where I don't think that there's like actually a vision of what how children are supposed to have bodily autonomy or autonomy. I mean, they don't actually have autonomy. They just don't legally, you know? So how does this work? Yeah. Exactly. I think we need a harsher punishments, not less harsh. That's just me. I mean, watch true crime. I don't know what's going on, but like, I, I feel like the last few documentaries I've watched, the sentences were so short for these horrible crimes. I'm like, what are they going to learn from like 10 months in jail? Like put them in there longer. All right. It sounds like it sounds like, you know, maybe you have a potential fellowship, uh, in criminal justice at the Manhattan Institute in your future. I don't know. Uh, I've always been interested in true crime. Yeah, well, a lot of people are. All right. So, uh, I guess, uh, you know, we've been talking for a while. Uh, it's great catching up with you. I will see you in Colin sometime soon. And you guys got to come down to Austin. I got, uh, a guest room here for you guys and Austin, or Colin's come before. So you need to come this time. And, uh, I'd hear any time too. Yeah. National's great. Uh, I went out there just for the listeners. No, I went out there in, uh, March. And, uh, if you're following me on social media, uh, that cowboy hat, uh, that I got that Nashville, uh, downtown Nashville, uh, probably overpriced, but whatever. Uh, so, yeah, it's very Nashville and Austin are interesting contrast. Uh, you know, there, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of bachelorettes, but, uh, the bachelorettes in, uh, Nashville, uh, they more went to Mississippi state. Uh, the bachelorettes in Austin, you know, are more flying in from, say, California or Florida. You know, I say definitely like it's so much different scene. Uh, and you know, I was surprised how close Nashville is to like, is it like Alabama and Georgia? It's kind of like south towards there in the central part of the state. So it's, it's very interesting. Uh, you know, how these sub-belt cities are growing and, uh, but anyway, I would look to see you guys soon. Uh, it was great catching up with you. Uh, learning, uh, this is like, it's a one time I'm gonna ask questions like this. Like, I figure I should just do it once, but, uh, I think people do need to know, especially if we're older, uh, just because this is something that's affecting the youth. And, uh, you know, I do think we are past the, past the, uh, peak of it, but, uh, it's still good to be a live issue probably for the coming decade or so, uh, as it fades out, right? Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of detransition or lawsuits too. I mean, I think 17 of them have been filed to date and where we haven't really even seen the outcome. You know, trials take a long time. So that'll be interesting. That's a word for it. Interesting. Anyway, I was great catching up with you, Christina. Uh, I will see you online. Uh, buttons lives, uh, not buttons lives, buttons lives, you know. I'm here. All right, take. Okay. Thanks for having your receive. Even if you and your partner are healthy, there's still a chance your child can develop a serious genetic disease. This is because every embryo has new changes, not present in either parent. Most of the time, these are benign, but sometimes they can be catastrophic or can hold genome embryo reports directly screen the embryo and analyze these de novo genetic mutations. Discuss embryo screening and IVF with a genetic expert. This podcast for kids. This is my favorite podcast. [Music]
