Trans Rights vs. Women's Rights with Kathleen Stock

02/17/23 • 93 min

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My guest today is Kathleen Stock. Kathleen is a philosopher and a writer, and she was a philosophy professor at the University of Sussex for many years, until she was stampeded out of her job by a mob of angry students. As you'll hear in this episode, Kathleen's main offense was her views on trans issues, which are broadly aligned with people like JK Rowling and Helen Joyce. Due to these critiques of Trans activist ideology, she was more or less run out of her university. Kathleen's story didn't make as many headlines in America as it should have. However, it really is one of the most egregious examples of cancel culture since Brett Weinstein's debacle at Evergreen.

Though Kathleen and I don't agree on everything, as you'll see in the episode, I think the treatment she's received has been shameful. In any event, we discuss all of that in this episode. We talk about the conceptual distinction between sex and gender. We talk about whether one should respect people's preferred pronouns and I think there's some distance between Kathleen and me on those two topics. We also talk about the conflict between trans rights and female rights. We talk about what to do with female-only spaces such as locker rooms, bathrooms, women's sports, and prisons. We talk about what to do with children who self-identify as Trans. We talk about puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical transitions. We also discuss the phenomenon of social contagion, detransitioners, and desisters.

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Previous Episode

The History and Ethics of the Israel-Palestine Conflict with Dr. Benny Morris

The topic of today's episode is the Israel-Palestine conflict. I've avoided discussing Israel on this podcast for two reasons. First, because I didn't know enough to feel qualified to weigh in on it. Second, because it may literally be the most radioactive topic on planet Earth. A tiny mistake or misplace word can cause a level of backlash that I just don't want to deal with. However, two things have changed over the past few months. I discuss these two factors in detail in the first few minutes of the episode.

I want the first half of this podcast to serve as an introduction to basic historical facts behind the conflict. If you're well versed on this topic, then you may want to skip the beginning. However, on the other hand, there is still quite a bit of interesting material there. The rest of this podcast is about the ethics and the current politics of the conflict. Who is in the right, and who is in the wrong? Is Israel an apartheid state that's oppressing a minority out of pure bigotry? Is it a colonialist, expansionist state motivated by religious belief? Or is it an embattled and legitimate nation-state surrounded by enemies that want only to survive? These are the questions that people struggle with and I brought in Dr. Benny Morris to help me answer them. Dr.Benny Morris has a unique vantage point on this issue. On the one hand, he is an Israeli Jew, and in recent years, he has become a major defender of Israel against global condemnation. On the other hand, he's probably done more than almost anyone you could name, to discover and publicize Israel's historical war crimes. He refused to serve in the Occupy West Bank Operation and was arrested as a result. His academic work on Israel is cited favorably by people like Noam Chomsky, who is all the way on the other side of the issue. Dr. Benny was at one point shunned by the Israeli academic community for being in essence "a traitor" to his people. He's one of the few people who can really claim to have battle scars from both sides of this debate.

Therefore, I thought he'd be a good person to help me weave through the complexities of the topic. I have a lot of admiration for Benny Morris, and I hope you find him as illuminating as I did.

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Next Episode

Ron DeSantis' War on Wokeness with Kmele Foster, Chloé Valdary and David Bernstein

Today's conversation is a roundtable with several guests instead of my usual one on one. My guests today are Kmele Foster (Co-Founder of Free Think and Host of The Fifth Column Podcast), Chloé Valdary (Founder of Theory of Enchantment and Host of The Heart Speaks Podcast), and David Bernstein (Author of the recent book "Woke Antisemitism").

We discuss Ron DeSantis' and Chris Rufo's war on wokeness. We discuss Kmele's position on race abolition. We talk about the relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, and much more.

If you enjoy these larger conversations, let me know and I will do more of them.

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