Very good analysis. I also generally like Freddie, and was very disappointed in his essay. I happen to be the parent of a daughter who actually did declare she was trans and self-diagnose with dissociative identity disorder at the same time, shortly after falling into a Tumblr internet hole. She had never shown any previous gender distress (or even nonconformity - she was a dress-wearing, doll-loving little girl) or sign of mental illness, and it all happened so fast I never saw it coming.
I think people like Freddie, and honestly like I used to be, simply don’t understand what’s going on. They hear from well-spoken adults pushing some very convincing propaganda and have never seen any evidence to the contrary so they have no reason to disbelieve what the trans activists say. If he had ever watched a young person he cared about, who was previously a normal, happy kid on a path for a successful life, go off the rails and suffer a complete breakdown, rejecting everything they ever were or cared about, becoming depressed, self-harming, refusing to take basic actions like doing schoolwork, getting a job, doing chores, getting a driver’s license, claiming to be too disabled to do anything, hating their families, and spouting extremist political rhetoric, and then heard story after story from other parents who had experienced identical things, down to their kids using the same language and wearing the same clothes and same grooming products (deodorant! Did you know there’s actually a standard men’s deodorant that all the trans “boys” use?!), I can almost guarantee that the light bulb would go on and he’d realize that there is nothing about these kids that makes them trans, (can anyone even define “trans”?), these kids have been manipulated by an online cult-like community into adopting an alternate persona and taking actions that are not in their own self-interests. And it’s absolutely no different than the DID phenomenon except that DID is far less dangerous to believe you have because when you grow out of that belief you simply go on with your life, while trans encourages you to make irreversible changes to your body and makes it extremely difficult socially to every go back to being yourself. I hope for his sake he never has to go through seeing that but I am certain if he did the light bulb would go on.
That was my reaction. I don't have a teen of my own, but I've seen it happen to those of friends. Trans is the new goth. The system is not reacting the right way.
Somewhat better mentally than she was 4 years ago when this first happened, but she still calls herself a boy. She rarely mentions the DID anymore. I am grateful that at least she hasn’t attempted any medicalization, and as long as she doesn’t do that I have to believe she will eventually leave this behind. She’s 18 now so it’s somewhat out of my hands. We just continue to try to keep as close of a relationship with her as possible, although she knows we don’t think what she’s doing is healthy.
A couple years ago, I heard a news story of a middle school where the toxic chemical detectors kept setting off alarms. Investigation determined the boys' overly enthusiastic use of Axe Body Spray was what caused it.
Jan 9·edited Jan 9Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
This is excellent. Well written and well researched.
I gave up my subscription to FdB about a year ago. His intellectual myopia on this and other issues ultimately convinced me that his analytic abilities were severely limited. That, combined with his consistently dismissive and snotty tone towards his readers, finally persuaded me to pull the plug.
As an aside: anyone who's 40 years old who still views being 'cool' as a meaningful life goal should never be taken seriously.
> That, combined with his consistently dismissive and snotty tone towards his readers
I'm still a Freddie fan but this sent me: "People attacked me for turning off comments, under the false pretense that I am afraid to debate. On the contrary, I’m more confident in my ability to out-argue anyone than I am in the orbits of the Moon and Sun, I was raised by wolves and trained in the halls of Shaolin, I have done this longer than you have, I am better at it than you are, I fear neither God nor man when it comes to arguing."
But Freddie is of course a poor debater, if his performance in his own comments section is any indication. He's too reactive to properly understand what's being said to him half the time, and he hits below the belt unprovoked. And the moment the power balance teeters and someone gets a good point on him that he can't respond to, he flees. If he can't compose himself enough to seem reasonable and achieve basic comprehension in a written exchange with his own audience, some of whom I've seen solicitously bend over backwards to be understood and avoid stoking his wrath, I can't imagine he'd fare well in a live debate.
And, you know, it looks pretty bad from the outside. He does not come off like a Shaolin master in command of his art. It's embarrassing, especially coming on the heels of his often brilliant writing. (I should say he's shown more restraint lately.)
It reminded me to be suspicious of grandiose rhapsodizing I do on my own behalf, as it's probably related to self-deception around a disparity between image and reality.
Ha! I never saw that bit about the halls of Shaolin. That would be funny if it weren't so sad.
I don't think I ever saw Freddie out-argue anybody. Given the slightest pushback, he inevitably turns to tantrums and ad hominem attacks. His gift is for polemic: debate is utterly beyond him.
I found this post via Ovarit. I’m a former FDB reader - loved his writing, but lost interest in what he had to say, for several reasons, the trans topic being one of them. Anyway, excellent analysis. I would encourage you to read the comments on this Ovarit post, for the perspective that they provide on why the bathroom issue is a critical issue for women. It is much deeper and more foundational than physical assault. It is about women’s needs for safety, privacy, and dignity as we go about our pubic lives in bodies that bleed, in a world where men seek to view and exploit our vulnerabilities.
Thank you for your input. I admit to being somewhat on the fence on the bathroom issue and can see the merits in both directions. I absolutely appreciate that it's not just about males assaulting or raping women, and that males spying on women or deliberately flashing them (particularly with plausible deniability) is also deeply upsetting and a violation of privacy. If someone were to show me strong evidence that making public bathrooms gender-neutral resulted in a major increase in the kind of behaviour described, that would probably be enough to tip me firmly into the anti-gender-neutral bathrooms camp.
I think most people are uncomfortable in gender neutral shared bathrooms. Men and women like privacy from each other - this is probably an almost universal cultural norm. Why should most people have to sacrifice their comfort for the sake of a small minority? I'm fine with providing more single-occupancy gender neutral bathrooms as a third space to help accommodate that minority.
My only problem with the single occupancy gender neutral bathrooms is that they are usually gross. Having raised three sons and lived with a man for nearly 40 years I can tell you with confidence that their aim is not true and they rarely clean up after themselves (apologies to my daughters in law). Nothing worse than having a seat and then getting up with a wet bottom and I’m getting too old to comfortably squat. I try very hard not to have a potty break at Starbucks or Smoothie Kings. Those two seem to be the worst!
Exactly. Like you’re telling me a man with prostate problems wants women walking in behind him and fixing their hair at the mirror while he struggles to start his stream at the urinal? Of course not. And they’re not even at risk of physical danger from us. It’s just that men’s dignity matters and ours doesn’t. Its just male supremacy.
If it ain't broke (sex segregated bathrooms) why "fix" it?
The number of gender dysphoric people made more comfortable can't outnumber the number of people made uncomfortable by gender neutral bathrooms, could it? I worked in a school with a large Somali Muslim immigrant population, this would not fly.
It may sound silly in the context of this debate, but another argument in favour of gender-neutral bathrooms is pragmatism. Imagine a building with a men's room and a ladies' room. The men's room has three stalls and ten urinals. The ladies' room has four, maybe five stalls.
Even in an event with a perfect gender balance, you will expect to see a queue a mile long outside the ladies' room and hardly any queue outside the men's room. The stalls in the men's room are largely sitting unused for the duration of the event.
Replace both rooms with a single gender-neutral bathroom with like ten or fifteen stalls and you will expect to find the space and facilities being used far more efficiently - every stall is in constant rotation, as opposed to the stalls in the ladies' being in constant rotation while the men's stalls get used once an hour at most. Additionally, the queuing duration is evenly distributed between the sexes (rather than every woman having to wait 15 minutes to pee and no man having to wait at all, everyone has to wait 7.5 minutes or whatever).
I want to make it very clear that I'm not for a moment suggesting that efficiency and pragmatism in any way override feminists' concerns about privacy, sexual harassment and sexual assault. To reiterate: if it were demonstrated that gender-neutral bathrooms have vastly higher incidences of sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, flashing etc. than sex-segregated bathrooms, I'd throw my lot in with sex-segregated bathrooms in a heartbeat.
But there IS an argument to be made that gender-neutral bathrooms are a more efficient use of limited space and facilities than sex-segregated bathrooms (in addition to the ancillary benefits afforded to gender non-conforming people).
I'd rather wait in line for a women's only bathroom than use a gender neutral one. Men are more quick to use bathrooms because their plumbing doesn't require as much shifting of clothing. There should probably just be more women's toilets.
I can see the case for a fairly open bathroom, where stalls have doors to the floor and sinks in the common area. But the room itself should not be totally enclosed then.
Perhaps the urinals are behind a short wall or something? I don't know if many men would be comfortable with urinals in viewing space of where women/girls might walk by? Anyway - I'm sure there are designs that work, but in existing buildings this doesn't seem feasible.
Jan 9·edited Jan 9Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
Otherwise (and I am somewhat neutral on the bathroom issue myself, just not supportive of fully endorsed "gender neutral"), excellent article! The contrast to his statements on other issues (DID in particular) is stunning!
Jan 14·edited Jan 14Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
There was reporting from the UK that showed that these spaces are not safe for women.
"The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas."
This was about changing areas, but they likely had shared bathroom areas, and I don't see why we should expect anything different with gender neutral bathrooms (that aren't changing areas).
It SOUNDS all well and good, "oh, we ALL have to pee and all," but opportunistic predatory males exist, and it's naive, dangerous, and willfully negligent to pretend otherwise.
Additionally, there are some people whose religious practices forbid them from sharing space so closely with those of the opposite sex (men AND women).
I hope you don’t mean that you wouldn’t might if there were a minor increase in women being victimized. What increase would be acceptable to you? 1% increase in sex crimes? 5%? 10%?
Well, I wouldn't feel comfortable in saying that if a district with sex-segregated bathrooms had 100 incidents of sexual assault/flashing/voyeurism per capita in a calendar year, and another district with gender-neutral bathrooms had 101, that proves that sex-segregated bathrooms are better - that could easily be a measurement error. I'd want to see strong evidence that gender-neutral bathrooms result in a significantly higher incidence of bad behaviour (maybe 5-10%) even after controlling for confounding factors.
As I already mentioned elsewhere in these comments, the evidence presented from the UK looks fairly damning at first brush.
“I'd want to see strong evidence that gender-neutral bathrooms result in a significantly higher incidence of bad behaviour (maybe 5-10%) even after controlling for confounding factors.”
Oh so now we have to go back and prove with numbers why we’ve been creating, and fighting for the creation of, single sex facilities for women over the past hundred+ years? How come men are so willing to ignore the entire history of women’s rights movements across the globe (of which the fight for single-sex public spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms and prisons and shelters has been such an instrumental part) and then blame us for your ignorance? The ball is in YOUR court, not ours. YOU give women numbers that prove that creating social norms that make it ok for men to take their dicks out in front of women and girls don’t make us less safe, THEN we’ll talk.
You think if women gave up all these achievements, all these civil rights, we’d be safer than we were before? Do you think we would have bothered to put so much effort into achieving women’s bathrooms and etc if it wasn’t really, really important? Why is it our job to prove to men we need the things we’ve already fought tooth and nail for for centuries, all over again?
This article says that unisex changing facilities account for less than half of changing facilities in the UK, yet 90% of all complaints of sex abuses and 60% of all proven sexual assaults at “leisure centers” happen in them. Any women who has lived for more than 5 years while female could have told you that.
Ok. But I still don’t understand why 1 onetime study involving limited data points is more convincing to you than the entirety of human history and the results it has caused (global constant sexual abuse from males, the resulting women’s equality movement, etc). It’s like looking at the sky, seeing with your eyeballs that it is blue and then asking for “had proof” in the form of numbers. It just strikes me as disrespectful to women to treat this issue this way. Like, no, we’re actually 100% certain we won’t be safer if a tiny subset of really unusual men successfully collapse the “men can’t come into the spaces we specifically cordoned off to avoid predation from males” social norm. Once again, the burden should be on male people to prove that male sexual behavior has fundamentally changed for the first time in human history.
Comments like @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE 's deserve the response: 'Bro, your privilege is showing.' Anybody who has had any experience of life in a slum or an inner city ghetto would know--almost without thinking--why gender-neutral bathrooms are a fucking stupid idea. @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE seems to naively imagine that the kind of civilized behaviour among strangers you see in a lawyer's office or a university faculty obtain throughout the world. Honestly, the stupidity and sheltered lives of the laptop class beggars belief. @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE, spend a year volunteering in a prison and then come back and tell us whether you think you still need to crunch the numbers on gender-neutral bathrooms. Weird how people like you never stop to think why it is that only the university-educated, the middle-classes, the intellectuals and the academics ever advocate for this. Where are the cleaning ladies and female factory workers who think this is a good idea? Perhaps they just need to be educated by the likes of you?
I really don't appreciate you showing up in my blog just to insult me and call me stupid. You're welcome to disagree with me or other commenters if you please, but calling people stupid is out of line. I don't like banning commenters if I can help it, but I absolutely will if necessary.
I am at a loss as to why women should have to prove to men’s satisfaction that single-sex bathrooms are necessary. By your thinking, apparently the only legitimate reason is if we are getting raped or assaulted, and then, only if the numbers are high enough. There are many, many reasons why women’s dignity, privacy, and safety require segregated bathrooms. THAT’S WHY WOMEN FOUGHT FOR THEM. Safety is just one piece of the picture. Here’s a thought to get you off the fence - you should support single-sex bathrooms cause women say so. Just believe women when they say, as they almost universally do, that single-sex bathrooms are necessary for women to fully and comfortably participate in civil society. That really should be enough for you.
Someone "recognizing or deciding that they belong to a particular category" when they clearly don't is prima facie evidence of perpetrating a fraud or of rank insanity. Rather depressing that many governmental institutions are endorsing and promoting both.
What are we calling "Gender neutral"? The single-occupancy bathrooms don't need to be male or female. But multiple occupancy, with thin partitions, may be a different story. The only "gender neutral" bathroom I've used was the family locker room at the Y, and we don't have problems there, for obvious reasons.
I have a close female friend who had an unpleasant encounter with a man — dressed in drag — hiding in a stall in a women’s bathroom on the 90s. He had punched a hole between two adjoining stalls and was spying on her on the toilet — he wore women’s shoes and clothes to make it appear as though the next stall over was occupied by a woman. He was, of course, masturbating.
Anyway, my friend was and is a real ball-buster: she flipped out on the guy, screamed at him, then fled the room and barricaded him inside while shouting for security to come and arrest the pervert.
Needless to say, when all the bathroom bills came under attack a few years back with the Freddies of the world declaring that no man has ever dressed in drag to gain access to women’s bathrooms for sexual gratification, and anyone who believes otherwise is a bigot, she was not happy. Nor was I.
It used to be that autogynephilic female-attracted men who dressed in women’s clothes and adopted female personae for sexual gratification were a known psychological type: transvestites. This was understood to be a wholly distinct phenomenon from male-attracted men who wished to live as women in order to have sex with men without such sex being considered homosexual. Now we are ordered to pretend that these quite different phenomena are somehow the same thing (“trans women”) despite manifesting in entirely different ways in entirely different sorts of people. This era will be viewed by future historians as one in which progress in psychological understanding was deliberately reversed to cater to a bizarre religious mania.
'This era will be viewed by future historians as one in which progress in psychological understanding was deliberately reversed to cater to a bizarre religious mania.' Beautifully said @SubstackCommenter2048. If we ever wanted proof of how stupid the intellectual classes really are, they have given us their responses to gender ideology.
No kidding. I find myself agreeing more and more with Taleb's classification of Intellectual-Yet-Idiot the longer this stupidity goes on. (Not that he's the first to note this phenomenon--but seriously, it's everywhere now.)
"she flipped out on the guy, screamed at him, then fled the room and barricaded him inside while shouting for security to come and arrest the pervert."
Yes totally agree. I just want privacy from men. My husband doesn’t want to use a toilet cubicle with a woman in the one next door. I don’t think it’s weird to want same sex places. It’s something most people want and understand the need for.
Thank you for adding this. I was making my own notes as I read this because the bathroom issue is easily dismissed by some (though the writer here was kind in how she worded her own hesitation).
My own feeling: there is no harmless male who uses a women's bathroom. Any male who goes into a women's space like that where women are used to having separate space from males, is violating established societal boundaries and knows very well that many women do not want them there. Any male who chooses to violate women's boundaries is not harmless. Further, even if SOME women are not bothered by the idea of gender neutral bathrooms (which are a documented disaster, as they lead to a rise in peeping and cameras being used; and in school settings where they'd been tried girls just stop using the bathroom because boys are immature and make them uncomfortable).... those women ARE NOT able to consent for those of us who do not.
I very much appreciate the work that was put into this piece, overall, though I'm at a further point in my thinking on this issue as I do no recognize any "true trans." "Gender identity" as it's discussed is an unobservable, unverifiable, subjective state of being that can only be taken on faith. I can think of no other instance where some people's metaphysical beliefs are used to justify trampling on a historically protected group's rights. (And I started off supportive of all of this when it first came up in my peer group <10 years ago... once I started thinking for myself I realized it's a house of cards. As a mother of daughters I just can't go along with people denying the reality of sex differences.)
Jan 14·edited Jan 14Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
I'm where you are on this. At first (all those years ago), it was "of course everyone should be accepted and affirmed and welcomed" b/c I was a good progressive. Thankfully I was also logical and rational and fairly early on realized the whole ideology doesn't add up (and is, in fact, an ideology) AND has the (not coincidental) effect of harming - in all kinds of ways, including physical assauls in bathrooms - women and girls.
Now I know *no one* is born in the wrong body. Adults can do whatever cosmetic surgery they want to pay for and take whatever off-label hormones they can manage to get (and also pay for themselves), but not children (or young adults). And no one has the right to force via legislation, regulation, or HR policy anyone to "affirm" his or her (see what I did there...) delusion. 🎉
(It's not accidental that this Trojan horse got in via women and our - socialized yes, and probably at least partly evolutionary/biological - tendency to worry about others' feelings.)
Nice to hear your thoughts on this. I agree with everything you said, and the last part is on point. I've heard it said that women tend to use weaponized empathy against each other, and it's undeniable that a lot of women are pushing this (despite the objections of many radical feminists I know & respect on X).
Your strong statement helped something click for me. I support complete freedom and flexibility of gender presentation, including radical body modification, but I would say we are nothing apart from our bodies. The idea of a "wrong body" for some essential self is simply animism.
I once used a public bathroom which had ~8 to 10 private toilet closets - fully enclosed and locked, not stalls - and then a shared bank of sinks with a large open entryway back into the hall. Honestly might be the perfect public restroom design.
Women with heavy periods sometimes wash out blood stains in bathroom sinks. Observant Muslims who can't remove their hijabs with men present use bathroom mirrors to adjust them. Many women use public female only spaces to flee male stalkers and harassed, sometimes in groups for safety. Public women's toilets serve many needs for us that men aren't aware of.
Precisely. It's not about rape, it's about voyeurism. Just standing in a women's bathroom leering is enough to get some guys off, and that's not okay, even if he isn't touching anyone.
Thanks for doing this. I’m another one who canceled my paid FdB sub after he started throwing around the term “transphobic” like some intersectional 19-yr old college girl. For someone with such prodigious writing talent and well-thought-out political ideas (which I mostly disagree with, but have the maturity and respect to hear his arguments out), his self-destruction following October 7th was unexpected and disappointing. It was just column after column of extremely online discourse and increasingly fantastical straw men.
First it was Israel/Palestine, then Substack/Nazis, now back to the well-worn transgender path that he KNOWS gets a negative reaction from his readers. I almost think the heel turn was intentional; maybe he’s uncomfortable with success?
This is very likely the best response to FDB I’ve come across--very nuanced, and not so quick to implement personal bias. I really do hope he at least reads this.
Jan 9·edited Jan 9Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
First of all, good post; reading his DID article without him making the connection was strange.
One additional weirdness here is how he spends half the second article making fun of people who think they'll see a penis in the bathroom, after himself telling women who don't want to see a penis in their locker room to just deal with it:
> Honey I don’t want to see anyone’s genitals in the locker room. I support a blanket “let’s all cover our genitals in the locker room to every extent possible” policy. The trouble is that as soon as you make this a “trans issue” you’re engaged in bigotry. Every man who’s regularly changed in a locker room has been forced to see some old guy’s dangling balls and that’s no fun either.
How easily he tells women they're bigots when they'd rather not see some person's dick is pretty far away from his usual reasonable style of argument.
Jan 10·edited Jan 10Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
Right. Because a man seeing a naked man in a men's locker room is JUST like a woman or girl being confronted with a naked man in a women's locker room and it's bigotry to think otherwise.
I find it strange FdB thinks we can solve this with a little kindness. There’s a real inability to acknowledge tradeoffs that is not usually his style. If we give men the right to identify as any sex, that obviously conflicts with the rights of women to have single-sex spaces. It really is the case that if you give someone more rights, you are taking away rights from another person. You’re going to have to think about the issues, and you can’t simply wave away concerns.
This is an outstanding post, and thank you for putting the work into it. Regarding your comment, "I am not aware of any hard evidence that making bathrooms gender-neutral in a particular area resulted in an increase in the rate of rape or sexual assault," this Times UK article might be relevant ("Unisex changing rooms put women in danger"): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk (unpaywalled URL: https://archive.ph/q7pDp)
Thank you for your comment. I agree that the evidence presented in that article is rather damning, and now think I was perhaps more equivocal in the article than I ought to have been.
Jan 9·edited Jan 9Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
You're welcome. Also would love to bring your attention to a substack I wrote documenting the prevalence of people actively trying to erase the distinction of male and females, contrary to Freddie's claims that "no one is doing that":
I respect Freddie but I do think what most of Freddie's article amounts to is desperately twisting himself into a pretzel to avoid reaching a conclusion he does not want to reach for both personal and professional reasons.
The legal situation in California is already much worse that you say here. SB107, which is now law, essentially defines denial of "gender affirming care" (including blockers, hormones, surgeries) by parents as the legal equivalent of child abuse by parents.
The transgenderists all scream that this isn't true, but the plain words of the law say exactly that.
If anyone here is in California, please help us get this plebiscite on the ballot: https://protectkidsca.com
The story of my own tangles with Freddie on transgenderism are told on my 'stack. I was an original founding subscriber of his at $200/yr.
The best explanation for Freddie's intransigence on this issue is that he has a close family member who is "trans". So no one is going to change his mind.
Thank you for writing this. I was livid after reading Freddie's two articles. I wanted a forum in which to call out his many fallacies, but you did it better.
Excellent analysis! Here’s hoping this will pop up on FDB’s feed - I do believe he’s a good faith interlocutor and might be amenable to such well-reasoned and intelligent criticism. Not that I think one article would completely turn him around but I don’t see how he could read this and not walk away with some doubt.
The most annoying thing about Freddie's trans-talk ban is that he himself yammers on about his perspective on it constantly and has been doing so for some time.
I found out about Freddie this year and enjoy his work and writing but he really gives off the vibe of someone that went overboard into an ideology very young and is coming to his senses with more world experience and information into his middle age. Socialists have to ignore so much reality and evidence to the contrary of their deepest held beliefs, and somehow the left now has to adopt this trans thing which literally involves ignoring basic laws of nature. He's trying to play both sides but he just needs to admit there are many aspects of the trans movement that are indefensible.
Very good analysis. I also generally like Freddie, and was very disappointed in his essay. I happen to be the parent of a daughter who actually did declare she was trans and self-diagnose with dissociative identity disorder at the same time, shortly after falling into a Tumblr internet hole. She had never shown any previous gender distress (or even nonconformity - she was a dress-wearing, doll-loving little girl) or sign of mental illness, and it all happened so fast I never saw it coming.
I think people like Freddie, and honestly like I used to be, simply don’t understand what’s going on. They hear from well-spoken adults pushing some very convincing propaganda and have never seen any evidence to the contrary so they have no reason to disbelieve what the trans activists say. If he had ever watched a young person he cared about, who was previously a normal, happy kid on a path for a successful life, go off the rails and suffer a complete breakdown, rejecting everything they ever were or cared about, becoming depressed, self-harming, refusing to take basic actions like doing schoolwork, getting a job, doing chores, getting a driver’s license, claiming to be too disabled to do anything, hating their families, and spouting extremist political rhetoric, and then heard story after story from other parents who had experienced identical things, down to their kids using the same language and wearing the same clothes and same grooming products (deodorant! Did you know there’s actually a standard men’s deodorant that all the trans “boys” use?!), I can almost guarantee that the light bulb would go on and he’d realize that there is nothing about these kids that makes them trans, (can anyone even define “trans”?), these kids have been manipulated by an online cult-like community into adopting an alternate persona and taking actions that are not in their own self-interests. And it’s absolutely no different than the DID phenomenon except that DID is far less dangerous to believe you have because when you grow out of that belief you simply go on with your life, while trans encourages you to make irreversible changes to your body and makes it extremely difficult socially to every go back to being yourself. I hope for his sake he never has to go through seeing that but I am certain if he did the light bulb would go on.
Well said, Dee. I’m right there with you.
That was my reaction. I don't have a teen of my own, but I've seen it happen to those of friends. Trans is the new goth. The system is not reacting the right way.
Great comment Dee. How is your daughter now?
Somewhat better mentally than she was 4 years ago when this first happened, but she still calls herself a boy. She rarely mentions the DID anymore. I am grateful that at least she hasn’t attempted any medicalization, and as long as she doesn’t do that I have to believe she will eventually leave this behind. She’s 18 now so it’s somewhat out of my hands. We just continue to try to keep as close of a relationship with her as possible, although she knows we don’t think what she’s doing is healthy.
"Did you know there’s actually a standard men’s deodorant that all the trans “boys” use?!"
I did not know that. Tell me it's not Axe Body Spray.
A couple years ago, I heard a news story of a middle school where the toxic chemical detectors kept setting off alarms. Investigation determined the boys' overly enthusiastic use of Axe Body Spray was what caused it.
Amazing 😂
Old Spice Swagger. Several other parents have mentioned this particular one. Tell me this is not social contagion!
This is excellent. Well written and well researched.
I gave up my subscription to FdB about a year ago. His intellectual myopia on this and other issues ultimately convinced me that his analytic abilities were severely limited. That, combined with his consistently dismissive and snotty tone towards his readers, finally persuaded me to pull the plug.
As an aside: anyone who's 40 years old who still views being 'cool' as a meaningful life goal should never be taken seriously.
> That, combined with his consistently dismissive and snotty tone towards his readers
I'm still a Freddie fan but this sent me: "People attacked me for turning off comments, under the false pretense that I am afraid to debate. On the contrary, I’m more confident in my ability to out-argue anyone than I am in the orbits of the Moon and Sun, I was raised by wolves and trained in the halls of Shaolin, I have done this longer than you have, I am better at it than you are, I fear neither God nor man when it comes to arguing."
But Freddie is of course a poor debater, if his performance in his own comments section is any indication. He's too reactive to properly understand what's being said to him half the time, and he hits below the belt unprovoked. And the moment the power balance teeters and someone gets a good point on him that he can't respond to, he flees. If he can't compose himself enough to seem reasonable and achieve basic comprehension in a written exchange with his own audience, some of whom I've seen solicitously bend over backwards to be understood and avoid stoking his wrath, I can't imagine he'd fare well in a live debate.
And, you know, it looks pretty bad from the outside. He does not come off like a Shaolin master in command of his art. It's embarrassing, especially coming on the heels of his often brilliant writing. (I should say he's shown more restraint lately.)
It reminded me to be suspicious of grandiose rhapsodizing I do on my own behalf, as it's probably related to self-deception around a disparity between image and reality.
Ha! I never saw that bit about the halls of Shaolin. That would be funny if it weren't so sad.
I don't think I ever saw Freddie out-argue anybody. Given the slightest pushback, he inevitably turns to tantrums and ad hominem attacks. His gift is for polemic: debate is utterly beyond him.
Thank you!
I found this post via Ovarit. I’m a former FDB reader - loved his writing, but lost interest in what he had to say, for several reasons, the trans topic being one of them. Anyway, excellent analysis. I would encourage you to read the comments on this Ovarit post, for the perspective that they provide on why the bathroom issue is a critical issue for women. It is much deeper and more foundational than physical assault. It is about women’s needs for safety, privacy, and dignity as we go about our pubic lives in bodies that bleed, in a world where men seek to view and exploit our vulnerabilities.
https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/526206/rebuttal-to-deboer-on-transgender-issues-first-toil-then-the-grave.
Thank you for your input. I admit to being somewhat on the fence on the bathroom issue and can see the merits in both directions. I absolutely appreciate that it's not just about males assaulting or raping women, and that males spying on women or deliberately flashing them (particularly with plausible deniability) is also deeply upsetting and a violation of privacy. If someone were to show me strong evidence that making public bathrooms gender-neutral resulted in a major increase in the kind of behaviour described, that would probably be enough to tip me firmly into the anti-gender-neutral bathrooms camp.
I think most people are uncomfortable in gender neutral shared bathrooms. Men and women like privacy from each other - this is probably an almost universal cultural norm. Why should most people have to sacrifice their comfort for the sake of a small minority? I'm fine with providing more single-occupancy gender neutral bathrooms as a third space to help accommodate that minority.
My only problem with the single occupancy gender neutral bathrooms is that they are usually gross. Having raised three sons and lived with a man for nearly 40 years I can tell you with confidence that their aim is not true and they rarely clean up after themselves (apologies to my daughters in law). Nothing worse than having a seat and then getting up with a wet bottom and I’m getting too old to comfortably squat. I try very hard not to have a potty break at Starbucks or Smoothie Kings. Those two seem to be the worst!
Exactly. Like you’re telling me a man with prostate problems wants women walking in behind him and fixing their hair at the mirror while he struggles to start his stream at the urinal? Of course not. And they’re not even at risk of physical danger from us. It’s just that men’s dignity matters and ours doesn’t. Its just male supremacy.
If it ain't broke (sex segregated bathrooms) why "fix" it?
The number of gender dysphoric people made more comfortable can't outnumber the number of people made uncomfortable by gender neutral bathrooms, could it? I worked in a school with a large Somali Muslim immigrant population, this would not fly.
It may sound silly in the context of this debate, but another argument in favour of gender-neutral bathrooms is pragmatism. Imagine a building with a men's room and a ladies' room. The men's room has three stalls and ten urinals. The ladies' room has four, maybe five stalls.
Even in an event with a perfect gender balance, you will expect to see a queue a mile long outside the ladies' room and hardly any queue outside the men's room. The stalls in the men's room are largely sitting unused for the duration of the event.
Replace both rooms with a single gender-neutral bathroom with like ten or fifteen stalls and you will expect to find the space and facilities being used far more efficiently - every stall is in constant rotation, as opposed to the stalls in the ladies' being in constant rotation while the men's stalls get used once an hour at most. Additionally, the queuing duration is evenly distributed between the sexes (rather than every woman having to wait 15 minutes to pee and no man having to wait at all, everyone has to wait 7.5 minutes or whatever).
I want to make it very clear that I'm not for a moment suggesting that efficiency and pragmatism in any way override feminists' concerns about privacy, sexual harassment and sexual assault. To reiterate: if it were demonstrated that gender-neutral bathrooms have vastly higher incidences of sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, flashing etc. than sex-segregated bathrooms, I'd throw my lot in with sex-segregated bathrooms in a heartbeat.
But there IS an argument to be made that gender-neutral bathrooms are a more efficient use of limited space and facilities than sex-segregated bathrooms (in addition to the ancillary benefits afforded to gender non-conforming people).
I'd rather wait in line for a women's only bathroom than use a gender neutral one. Men are more quick to use bathrooms because their plumbing doesn't require as much shifting of clothing. There should probably just be more women's toilets.
I can see the case for a fairly open bathroom, where stalls have doors to the floor and sinks in the common area. But the room itself should not be totally enclosed then.
Perhaps the urinals are behind a short wall or something? I don't know if many men would be comfortable with urinals in viewing space of where women/girls might walk by? Anyway - I'm sure there are designs that work, but in existing buildings this doesn't seem feasible.
Otherwise (and I am somewhat neutral on the bathroom issue myself, just not supportive of fully endorsed "gender neutral"), excellent article! The contrast to his statements on other issues (DID in particular) is stunning!
Thanks very much!
From 2018, a study in the UK indicated that unisex changing rooms in public swimming pools were where the vast majority of sexual assaults took place. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html ETA whoops, I see this was already posted.
There was reporting from the UK that showed that these spaces are not safe for women.
"The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas."
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html
This was about changing areas, but they likely had shared bathroom areas, and I don't see why we should expect anything different with gender neutral bathrooms (that aren't changing areas).
It SOUNDS all well and good, "oh, we ALL have to pee and all," but opportunistic predatory males exist, and it's naive, dangerous, and willfully negligent to pretend otherwise.
Additionally, there are some people whose religious practices forbid them from sharing space so closely with those of the opposite sex (men AND women).
I hope you don’t mean that you wouldn’t might if there were a minor increase in women being victimized. What increase would be acceptable to you? 1% increase in sex crimes? 5%? 10%?
Well, I wouldn't feel comfortable in saying that if a district with sex-segregated bathrooms had 100 incidents of sexual assault/flashing/voyeurism per capita in a calendar year, and another district with gender-neutral bathrooms had 101, that proves that sex-segregated bathrooms are better - that could easily be a measurement error. I'd want to see strong evidence that gender-neutral bathrooms result in a significantly higher incidence of bad behaviour (maybe 5-10%) even after controlling for confounding factors.
As I already mentioned elsewhere in these comments, the evidence presented from the UK looks fairly damning at first brush.
“I'd want to see strong evidence that gender-neutral bathrooms result in a significantly higher incidence of bad behaviour (maybe 5-10%) even after controlling for confounding factors.”
Oh so now we have to go back and prove with numbers why we’ve been creating, and fighting for the creation of, single sex facilities for women over the past hundred+ years? How come men are so willing to ignore the entire history of women’s rights movements across the globe (of which the fight for single-sex public spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms and prisons and shelters has been such an instrumental part) and then blame us for your ignorance? The ball is in YOUR court, not ours. YOU give women numbers that prove that creating social norms that make it ok for men to take their dicks out in front of women and girls don’t make us less safe, THEN we’ll talk.
You think if women gave up all these achievements, all these civil rights, we’d be safer than we were before? Do you think we would have bothered to put so much effort into achieving women’s bathrooms and etc if it wasn’t really, really important? Why is it our job to prove to men we need the things we’ve already fought tooth and nail for for centuries, all over again?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html
This article says that unisex changing facilities account for less than half of changing facilities in the UK, yet 90% of all complaints of sex abuses and 60% of all proven sexual assaults at “leisure centers” happen in them. Any women who has lived for more than 5 years while female could have told you that.
As I stated in the comment you're replying to, the evidence presented from the UK (including the article you linked) looks fairly damning to me.
Ok. But I still don’t understand why 1 onetime study involving limited data points is more convincing to you than the entirety of human history and the results it has caused (global constant sexual abuse from males, the resulting women’s equality movement, etc). It’s like looking at the sky, seeing with your eyeballs that it is blue and then asking for “had proof” in the form of numbers. It just strikes me as disrespectful to women to treat this issue this way. Like, no, we’re actually 100% certain we won’t be safer if a tiny subset of really unusual men successfully collapse the “men can’t come into the spaces we specifically cordoned off to avoid predation from males” social norm. Once again, the burden should be on male people to prove that male sexual behavior has fundamentally changed for the first time in human history.
Comments like @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE 's deserve the response: 'Bro, your privilege is showing.' Anybody who has had any experience of life in a slum or an inner city ghetto would know--almost without thinking--why gender-neutral bathrooms are a fucking stupid idea. @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE seems to naively imagine that the kind of civilized behaviour among strangers you see in a lawyer's office or a university faculty obtain throughout the world. Honestly, the stupidity and sheltered lives of the laptop class beggars belief. @FIRSTTOILTHENTHEGRAVE, spend a year volunteering in a prison and then come back and tell us whether you think you still need to crunch the numbers on gender-neutral bathrooms. Weird how people like you never stop to think why it is that only the university-educated, the middle-classes, the intellectuals and the academics ever advocate for this. Where are the cleaning ladies and female factory workers who think this is a good idea? Perhaps they just need to be educated by the likes of you?
I really don't appreciate you showing up in my blog just to insult me and call me stupid. You're welcome to disagree with me or other commenters if you please, but calling people stupid is out of line. I don't like banning commenters if I can help it, but I absolutely will if necessary.
I am at a loss as to why women should have to prove to men’s satisfaction that single-sex bathrooms are necessary. By your thinking, apparently the only legitimate reason is if we are getting raped or assaulted, and then, only if the numbers are high enough. There are many, many reasons why women’s dignity, privacy, and safety require segregated bathrooms. THAT’S WHY WOMEN FOUGHT FOR THEM. Safety is just one piece of the picture. Here’s a thought to get you off the fence - you should support single-sex bathrooms cause women say so. Just believe women when they say, as they almost universally do, that single-sex bathrooms are necessary for women to fully and comfortably participate in civil society. That really should be enough for you.
https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/university-of-toronto-alters-bathroom-policy-after-two-reports-of-voyeurism/article_dba2745f-ac9f-5f86-b812-d8ba433ec5bb.html
"reported that they saw a cellphone reach over the shower-stall dividers in an attempt to record them."
These cellphones are getting smarter and smarter all the time ... 😉🙂
Though this seriously chaps my hide and is, arguably, the crux of the problem and of the issue:
"... some bathrooms in Whitney Hall have now been designated specifically for residents who identify as men or women."
So some bearded, dick-swinging dude who "self-identifies" as a woman can now use the ladies loos? What a pretentious and quite antiscientific phrase:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/identify-as
Someone "recognizing or deciding that they belong to a particular category" when they clearly don't is prima facie evidence of perpetrating a fraud or of rank insanity. Rather depressing that many governmental institutions are endorsing and promoting both.
What are we calling "Gender neutral"? The single-occupancy bathrooms don't need to be male or female. But multiple occupancy, with thin partitions, may be a different story. The only "gender neutral" bathroom I've used was the family locker room at the Y, and we don't have problems there, for obvious reasons.
I have a close female friend who had an unpleasant encounter with a man — dressed in drag — hiding in a stall in a women’s bathroom on the 90s. He had punched a hole between two adjoining stalls and was spying on her on the toilet — he wore women’s shoes and clothes to make it appear as though the next stall over was occupied by a woman. He was, of course, masturbating.
Anyway, my friend was and is a real ball-buster: she flipped out on the guy, screamed at him, then fled the room and barricaded him inside while shouting for security to come and arrest the pervert.
Needless to say, when all the bathroom bills came under attack a few years back with the Freddies of the world declaring that no man has ever dressed in drag to gain access to women’s bathrooms for sexual gratification, and anyone who believes otherwise is a bigot, she was not happy. Nor was I.
It used to be that autogynephilic female-attracted men who dressed in women’s clothes and adopted female personae for sexual gratification were a known psychological type: transvestites. This was understood to be a wholly distinct phenomenon from male-attracted men who wished to live as women in order to have sex with men without such sex being considered homosexual. Now we are ordered to pretend that these quite different phenomena are somehow the same thing (“trans women”) despite manifesting in entirely different ways in entirely different sorts of people. This era will be viewed by future historians as one in which progress in psychological understanding was deliberately reversed to cater to a bizarre religious mania.
'This era will be viewed by future historians as one in which progress in psychological understanding was deliberately reversed to cater to a bizarre religious mania.' Beautifully said @SubstackCommenter2048. If we ever wanted proof of how stupid the intellectual classes really are, they have given us their responses to gender ideology.
No kidding. I find myself agreeing more and more with Taleb's classification of Intellectual-Yet-Idiot the longer this stupidity goes on. (Not that he's the first to note this phenomenon--but seriously, it's everywhere now.)
"she flipped out on the guy, screamed at him, then fled the room and barricaded him inside while shouting for security to come and arrest the pervert."
If she did that, she would be the one arrested.
If she did that today, in this jurisdiction, she would certainly be threatened with legal consequences. “Progress”!
Yes totally agree. I just want privacy from men. My husband doesn’t want to use a toilet cubicle with a woman in the one next door. I don’t think it’s weird to want same sex places. It’s something most people want and understand the need for.
Thank you for adding this. I was making my own notes as I read this because the bathroom issue is easily dismissed by some (though the writer here was kind in how she worded her own hesitation).
My own feeling: there is no harmless male who uses a women's bathroom. Any male who goes into a women's space like that where women are used to having separate space from males, is violating established societal boundaries and knows very well that many women do not want them there. Any male who chooses to violate women's boundaries is not harmless. Further, even if SOME women are not bothered by the idea of gender neutral bathrooms (which are a documented disaster, as they lead to a rise in peeping and cameras being used; and in school settings where they'd been tried girls just stop using the bathroom because boys are immature and make them uncomfortable).... those women ARE NOT able to consent for those of us who do not.
I very much appreciate the work that was put into this piece, overall, though I'm at a further point in my thinking on this issue as I do no recognize any "true trans." "Gender identity" as it's discussed is an unobservable, unverifiable, subjective state of being that can only be taken on faith. I can think of no other instance where some people's metaphysical beliefs are used to justify trampling on a historically protected group's rights. (And I started off supportive of all of this when it first came up in my peer group <10 years ago... once I started thinking for myself I realized it's a house of cards. As a mother of daughters I just can't go along with people denying the reality of sex differences.)
I'm where you are on this. At first (all those years ago), it was "of course everyone should be accepted and affirmed and welcomed" b/c I was a good progressive. Thankfully I was also logical and rational and fairly early on realized the whole ideology doesn't add up (and is, in fact, an ideology) AND has the (not coincidental) effect of harming - in all kinds of ways, including physical assauls in bathrooms - women and girls.
Now I know *no one* is born in the wrong body. Adults can do whatever cosmetic surgery they want to pay for and take whatever off-label hormones they can manage to get (and also pay for themselves), but not children (or young adults). And no one has the right to force via legislation, regulation, or HR policy anyone to "affirm" his or her (see what I did there...) delusion. 🎉
(It's not accidental that this Trojan horse got in via women and our - socialized yes, and probably at least partly evolutionary/biological - tendency to worry about others' feelings.)
Nice to hear your thoughts on this. I agree with everything you said, and the last part is on point. I've heard it said that women tend to use weaponized empathy against each other, and it's undeniable that a lot of women are pushing this (despite the objections of many radical feminists I know & respect on X).
"Now I know *no one* is born in the wrong body."
Your strong statement helped something click for me. I support complete freedom and flexibility of gender presentation, including radical body modification, but I would say we are nothing apart from our bodies. The idea of a "wrong body" for some essential self is simply animism.
I once used a public bathroom which had ~8 to 10 private toilet closets - fully enclosed and locked, not stalls - and then a shared bank of sinks with a large open entryway back into the hall. Honestly might be the perfect public restroom design.
Women with heavy periods sometimes wash out blood stains in bathroom sinks. Observant Muslims who can't remove their hijabs with men present use bathroom mirrors to adjust them. Many women use public female only spaces to flee male stalkers and harassed, sometimes in groups for safety. Public women's toilets serve many needs for us that men aren't aware of.
That’s why I think the design I described is best when combined with at least one or two single-occupancy restrooms also available
Precisely. It's not about rape, it's about voyeurism. Just standing in a women's bathroom leering is enough to get some guys off, and that's not okay, even if he isn't touching anyone.
Thanks for doing this. I’m another one who canceled my paid FdB sub after he started throwing around the term “transphobic” like some intersectional 19-yr old college girl. For someone with such prodigious writing talent and well-thought-out political ideas (which I mostly disagree with, but have the maturity and respect to hear his arguments out), his self-destruction following October 7th was unexpected and disappointing. It was just column after column of extremely online discourse and increasingly fantastical straw men.
First it was Israel/Palestine, then Substack/Nazis, now back to the well-worn transgender path that he KNOWS gets a negative reaction from his readers. I almost think the heel turn was intentional; maybe he’s uncomfortable with success?
Success is antithetical to Marxism.
This is very likely the best response to FDB I’ve come across--very nuanced, and not so quick to implement personal bias. I really do hope he at least reads this.
Thanks for your work. Definitely saving this one.
Appreciate it!
First of all, good post; reading his DID article without him making the connection was strange.
One additional weirdness here is how he spends half the second article making fun of people who think they'll see a penis in the bathroom, after himself telling women who don't want to see a penis in their locker room to just deal with it:
> Honey I don’t want to see anyone’s genitals in the locker room. I support a blanket “let’s all cover our genitals in the locker room to every extent possible” policy. The trouble is that as soon as you make this a “trans issue” you’re engaged in bigotry. Every man who’s regularly changed in a locker room has been forced to see some old guy’s dangling balls and that’s no fun either.
How easily he tells women they're bigots when they'd rather not see some person's dick is pretty far away from his usual reasonable style of argument.
Right. Because a man seeing a naked man in a men's locker room is JUST like a woman or girl being confronted with a naked man in a women's locker room and it's bigotry to think otherwise.
Plus, that "Honey". Uuuurgh
I find it strange FdB thinks we can solve this with a little kindness. There’s a real inability to acknowledge tradeoffs that is not usually his style. If we give men the right to identify as any sex, that obviously conflicts with the rights of women to have single-sex spaces. It really is the case that if you give someone more rights, you are taking away rights from another person. You’re going to have to think about the issues, and you can’t simply wave away concerns.
This is an outstanding post, and thank you for putting the work into it. Regarding your comment, "I am not aware of any hard evidence that making bathrooms gender-neutral in a particular area resulted in an increase in the rate of rape or sexual assault," this Times UK article might be relevant ("Unisex changing rooms put women in danger"): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk (unpaywalled URL: https://archive.ph/q7pDp)
Thank you for your comment. I agree that the evidence presented in that article is rather damning, and now think I was perhaps more equivocal in the article than I ought to have been.
You're welcome. Also would love to bring your attention to a substack I wrote documenting the prevalence of people actively trying to erase the distinction of male and females, contrary to Freddie's claims that "no one is doing that":
https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying
I read it yesterday! Gutted I hadn't read it before I started writing this article, it would've been a great resource.
You should be careful, freddie was 'raised by wolves and trained in the halls of Shaolin'
I respect Freddie but I do think what most of Freddie's article amounts to is desperately twisting himself into a pretzel to avoid reaching a conclusion he does not want to reach for both personal and professional reasons.
The legal situation in California is already much worse that you say here. SB107, which is now law, essentially defines denial of "gender affirming care" (including blockers, hormones, surgeries) by parents as the legal equivalent of child abuse by parents.
The transgenderists all scream that this isn't true, but the plain words of the law say exactly that.
If anyone here is in California, please help us get this plebiscite on the ballot: https://protectkidsca.com
And here's another great response to Freddie: https://artymorty.substack.com/p/youre-facing-the-wrong-way-freddie
The story of my own tangles with Freddie on transgenderism are told on my 'stack. I was an original founding subscriber of his at $200/yr.
The best explanation for Freddie's intransigence on this issue is that he has a close family member who is "trans". So no one is going to change his mind.
Thank you for writing this. I was livid after reading Freddie's two articles. I wanted a forum in which to call out his many fallacies, but you did it better.
Thank you very much!
Excellent analysis! Here’s hoping this will pop up on FDB’s feed - I do believe he’s a good faith interlocutor and might be amenable to such well-reasoned and intelligent criticism. Not that I think one article would completely turn him around but I don’t see how he could read this and not walk away with some doubt.
The most annoying thing about Freddie's trans-talk ban is that he himself yammers on about his perspective on it constantly and has been doing so for some time.
I found out about Freddie this year and enjoy his work and writing but he really gives off the vibe of someone that went overboard into an ideology very young and is coming to his senses with more world experience and information into his middle age. Socialists have to ignore so much reality and evidence to the contrary of their deepest held beliefs, and somehow the left now has to adopt this trans thing which literally involves ignoring basic laws of nature. He's trying to play both sides but he just needs to admit there are many aspects of the trans movement that are indefensible.
Freddie is arrogant and wrong. As he is about Israel and Hamas. And if you critique him, he flips shit.