You may know Sasha Ayad as half of the formative podcast Gender: A Wider Lens. Now, she’s got a new project, The Metaphor of Gender, which is geared at young people, but also at those of us who prefer complexity over certainty, discussion over dogma. Hand raised right here! So many people are getting more and more radicalized, speaking only to their own constituencies, acting more like politicians than problem-solvers. If you’re hungry for another way, Sasha is your man. And by that, I mean woman.

Links:

YouTube: The Metaphor of Gender

The Metaphor of Gender (Parent Guide)

Anchored: 2025 Parent Retreat - Austin TX

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I cannot speak highly enough about Carol Tavris—her work, her grace, her rhetoric. I found her seminal book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) so instructive—not just because it helped me understand the difference between self-justification and lying, but because she shared examples, however rare, of those who did the wrong thing in the name of the doing the right thing, and finally, eventually, admitted their mistakes and attempted to make amends.

As clinics have been shutting down, and in the aftermath of the Skrmetti Supreme Court ruling, I wanted to talk to Carol about possible exit ramps for clinicians—and why some will never take them, no matter how solidly built said ramps may be.

Carol’s bio: Carol Tavris earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan and went on to a career as a science writer, lecturer, and educator, with a focus on gender, scientific literacy, and critical thinking (this has been an uphill battle). She is coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), on the psychology of self-justification—why people stay on a path or hold onto a belief long past its expiration date; and, with Avrum Bluming, Estrogen Matters: Why taking hormones in menopause can improve and lengthen women’s lives—without raising the risk of breast cancer. Her earlier books include Anger: The misunderstood emotion and The Mismeasure of Woman. Carol has written hundreds of articles, op-eds, and book reviews on topics of psychological science and given distinguished lectureships, workshops, and keynote addresses to professional and general audiences around the world. A Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, she has received numerous awards for her efforts to promote science, skepticism, and gender equality.

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The second installment in what I hope will be a long series—Whose Fault Is it?—features psychologists J. Michael Bailey, author of The Man Who Would Be Queen, and Marco Del Giudice, organizer of The Big Conversation, a conference on “the origins, mechanisms, and meanings of sex/gender differences.”

Yesterday, we heard from Holly Lawford-Smith, associate professor in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and author of Gender-Critical Feminism and Feminism Beyond Left and Right. That was a bit of a preemptive argument about feminism’s role in the gender culture war: a deep dive into what feminists have gotten right, and wrong. Today, we hear another view—or views.

I hope people will find time to listen to them both and respond, ask questions. Let’s put these separate conversations into a dialogue. Comments are open.

Dr. Mike Bailey obtained his B.A. in mathematics from Washington University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas, Austin in 1989. He joined the faculty of Northwestern University in 1989 and remains there as Professor. His research has primarily focused on the causes, development, and expression of sexual orientation. More recently, he has extended his research to gender dysphoria and paraphilias. His research has frequently provoked controversy.

Marco Del Giudice is Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Trieste. His work explores a broad range of topics at the intersection of human behavior, evolution, and development. His research areas include evolutionary models of mental disorders, the mechanisms of motivation and emotion, the evolution of developmental plasticity and the role of stress neurobiology, and the evolution of individual and sex differences in psychological traits. He has published over 110 papers and chapters; in 2016 he won the Early Career Award of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

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Though George Orwell would down a fifth of vodka were he alive to see it, we’re in an era where we’re having to fight some of the best-educated people in the world to establish that, in humans, sex is binary and dimorphic: There are two sexes, male and female, and they are different.

But for many feminists like me, the idea that having different bodies means having different brains—brains are, of course, part of the body—has been difficult to process. That argument has historically been used to “prove” that women are fundamentally ill-equipped for education, work outside the home, command of their own lives. It has also been used to “prove” gender identity; having a girl brain in a boy body, as Jazz Jennings explained to preschool children for the last decade, means being transgender.

But we can’t let the possible uses and misuses of knowledge get in the way of seeking it.

This conversation with philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith grew from a series of exchanges on a listserv of [mostly] psychologists and sexologists, talking about biological and psychological differences between men and women, and how much feminism is responsible for the current gender culture war.

Tomorrow I’ll post part two. Comments are open to all.

Holly’s talk: Is Feminism Finished?Her book: Gender-Critical Feminism.

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Therapist Joe Berger joins me to talk about what's motivating parents, how he is able to question gender identity theory in his professional capacity, and the effects of T, among many other subjects.

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It was my honor to speak with Lee Beckstead, a gender-affirming therapist in Utah who has worked with a heterodox group of therapists—who formerly considered themselves in opposition to each other—to produce a document: Clinical Common Ground for Gender, Sexual, and Faith Diversity.

Lee and I talked about his own experience of reparative therapy, why people are so afraid to change their minds, and what nobody knows about minority stress. We mention Leelah Alcorn, and Obama’s call for conversion therapy bans.

Bio: Lee Beckstead, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is white-Peruvian, gay, cisgender, and currently nondisabled. He conducted a qualitative study from 1998 to 2001 with 50 individuals who tried to change their sexual orientation through psychotherapy. Half reported benefits, half reported harms, and many reported mixed results. Since 2005, he has co-facilitated weekend retreats for male survivors of sexual abuse (https://menhealing.org). He served on the 2009 American Psychological Association task force, making recommendations for those seeking therapy to change their sexual orientation (https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf). In 2012, he initiated the LGBTQ-affirmative Psychotherapist Guild of Utah to file ethical complaints against Utah clinicians providing sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE). In 2013, he shifted focus and organized a workshop to foster dialogue and understanding with these individuals. Since then, he’s been meeting twice per month with therapists and educators holding differing views on sexual orientation, gender, and religion to reduce harm and find common ground on clinical standards (https://reconciliationandgrowth.org). He testified as an expert witness in a 2015 New Jersey legal case against a Jewish organization accused of consumer fraud due to offering SOCE. Since 2016, he’s been part of a diverse ideological research team studying the health and satisfaction of individuals who are single and celibate or noncelibate or in a same-gender/queer or mixed-orientation relationship (https://www.4optionssurvey.com). These experiences led him to organize the LGBTQIA+ Peacebuilding Book Project in September 2017 (https://lgbtqiapeacebuilding.com).

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I interviewed Simon, under a pseudonym, four years ago. Since then, he’s gone on to organize events, speak up, commune with others, and work toward a better understand of youth gender issues. His bio is below.

Simon Amaya Price is a desister, writer, and speaker, dedicated to winning the fight against gender ideology in a way that aligns with classical liberal values. At 14, Simon came out as transgender, but about 3 years later, desisted. In October 2024, as part of a class he was taking, Simon planned to host an event titled Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness at Berklee College of Music, where he graduated cum laude last December at age 20. However, after facing threats, harassment, and bullying from classmates and administrators alike, his event was cancelled by Berklee's Vice President.

Undeterred, he went on to host the event at MIT last November, to an audience of over 100. Since then, Simon has written articles for The Boston Globe and local advocacy groups, testified in favor of a bills in states across the country, appeared on podcasts, given talks in communities across New England, and been featured in news articles by the Daily Mail, the Boston Herald, and The Daily Signal, among others. Simon looks forward to a career in politics.

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I decided to talk into my computer instead of gathering my thoughts by writing. Enjoy the Authentic Background Noises of laundry, traffic and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. That’s right, I’m still listening NPR. In the words of Brokeback Mountain, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Five residents of the gender rabbit hole dish on what Trump’s win means for the movement…after we figure out what the movement is. We want reconciliation, but first we need the truth. We find agreement on the north star—protecting gender nonconforming and gay kids—and offer some hope for, eventually, reaching common ground.

We discuss:Trump’s video vowing to end gender-affirming care for minorsThe US v Skrmetti case at the Supreme CourtBraver Angels’s common ground workshop on youth gender medicineThe history of the word kowtow.Nancy Mace’s bathroom bill.

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Did you hear about the crazy broad on the Manhattan school board, who proposed that we reconsider the policies allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports—by consulting girls, parents, and coaches? The nerve! It was such a heinous crime that surely she deserved the humming, back-turning protests by hordes of activists at school board meetings. And surely the schools chancellor had every right to boot her off the council, even though we parents had elected her. Democracy means nothing when there’s moral high ground to reach!

Or not.

I talked to the unsinkable Maud Maron about gender and politics in New York City Schools.

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