Savage Minds

In this episode, Dr Lisa Littman, a physician-scientist, discusses her research on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (also called ROGD), a phenomenon that has been observed from 2012 onwards, where females exhibiting late-onset gender dysphoria first started to become visible. Here, Littman notes how this new type of presentation, previously absent from the research literature, necessitated further study, and she elaborates on how her research has been received as well as the reasons behind and the results of her follow-up study, a side-by-side comparison of her research methods and the methods of articles supporting the gender identity affirming approach. In this discussion, Littman explains the impact of her research on the current debates regarding the medical and psychological establishments that advance the cure of “gender identity” while discussing gender dysphoria, the experiences of people who desist after identifying as transgender, and people who detransition after gender transition.

In this episode, co-founders of LGB Fight Back, Carrie Hathorn and Belissa Cohen, speak with Julian Vigo about the long-time corporatisation of lesbian, gay and bisexual lives along with the annexing of sexuality by the transgender lobby which has cannibalised most every gay rights group in the USA over the past two decades. As a result of the trans lobby’s institutional capture, it has been quite successful in convincing many within the gay community to affirm the conversion therapy of its own members to include fast-tracking children into becoming lifetime medical patients, the promotion of gay eugenics and the wider elision of what can only be regarded as gay conversion therapy by professional organisations like the APA (American Psychological Association), which refuse to address the psychological malpractice afoot. Underscoring that “transgender identity” is not “gay adjacent”, Hathorn and Cohen elaborate how our society has been caught up in confirming others’ delusions in the pseudo-political gesture of “kindness” that has paradoxically had a negative effect on the political reality and bodies of gay and bisexual men and women.

Kara Dansky, attorney, author of The Abolition of Sex, and president of the US chapter of Women’s Declaration International, examines the legal and political history of abortion rights in the United States through the figure of Sarah Weddington and the strategy behind Roe v. Wade. She explains why the case was argued under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment rather than equal protection, tracing the influence of Griswold v. Connecticut and the practical constraints facing a young female lawyer in Texas. Dansky argues that fitting women’s reproductive liberty into a privacy framework from the outset limited its scope and left it vulnerable, contending that an equal-protection analysis recognising women as a sex class would have provided a sturdier foundation. She links the current vulnerability of abortion access to the broader erosion of sex-based rights, noting how gender-identity policies have already compromised women’s sports, prisons and shelters. Emphasising the disproportionate harm that abortion restrictions inflict on poor women and women of colour, she calls for renewed class consciousness among women across the political spectrum and practical measures of mutual aid while advocating future litigation grounded in the equal protection of the laws.

In this episode, Inaya Folarin Iman, Founder and Director of The Equiano Project, examines the rise of identitarian politics and the narrowing of public discourse. She argues that dissent from prevailing orthodoxies on race, gender and lockdown is routinely caricatured as right-wing, reflecting a shallow culture in which people are reduced to fragments rather than engaged as multi-dimensional beings. Folarin Iman contends that contemporary left identitarianism has become conservative in its insistence on reifying and institutionalising race, while a more radical position would seek the transcendence of racial categories altogether. She draws parallels between current rituals of apology, guilt and “doing the work” and religious practices stripped of the possibility of genuine salvation, and criticises the rehabilitation of essentialist ideas about race and sex under the banner of progress. Highlighting the mismatch between American racial frameworks and British historical experience, she calls for a renewed universalism grounded in human dignity, agency and free speech. Through the Equiano Project, named after the eighteenth-century abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, she promotes an alternative to sectarian and intersectional narratives that degrade individual capacity and fragment society into competing racialised groups.

Harry Miller, former police officer and founder of the campaigning group Fair Cop, examines the College of Policing’s Hate Crime Guidance and the recording of “non-crime hate incidents” in England and Wales. He explains how, since 2014, any perceived hostility can be logged against a person with no evidence required, creating secret records that may surface in background checks and damage employment prospects. Miller traces the policy’s origins to the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, intended as a means of gathering community intelligence, and argues that it has been distorted into a tool for policing speech, thoughts and online expression rather than actual crime. Drawing on his own High Court victory, in which a judge likened police conduct to that of the Stasi, Cheka and Gestapo, and his subsequent Court of Appeal challenge, he contends that the guidance inverts justice by offering greater protections to those accused of crimes than to those accused of mere “incidents.” Miller further criticises the adoption of gender-identity ideology by police bodies, including threats issued by official LGBT accounts against women who object to male-bodied athletes in female sport, and describes Fair Cop’s strategy of public accountability and reciprocal naming until forces return to impartial law enforcement.

Graham Linehan, a comedy writer and director behind such shows as Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Books, examines the capture of women’s rights discourse and public space by gender-identity ideology. He discusses the policing and media coverage of women’s safety vigils, the infiltration of groups such as Sisters Uncut by males, and the routine removal of women’s comments in ostensibly feminist online spaces for the simple statement that men are not women. Linehan argues that the strategic redefinition of language has rendered it nearly impossible to defend sex-based rights without being accused of bigotry, turning basic biological reality into a prohibited opinion. He links this to a wider collapse of free speech, illustrated by cases such as Sharon Osbourne’s dismissal for defending the right to criticise, and observes that disagreement has been replaced by attempts to silence, deplatform or destroy livelihoods. Drawing on his own experience of sustained targeting, he portrays the current climate as one in which comedy, journalism and ordinary conversation are increasingly policed by an ideology that treats dissent as violence and demands compulsory affirmation.

Linda Blade, sports performance coach, President of Athletics Alberta, former Canadian heptathlon champion and PhD in kinesiology specialising in sexual dimorphism, examines the rapid capture of Canadian schools and sport by gender-identity ideology. She describes how SOGI curricula in British Columbia and Alberta teach children from kindergarten that sex is a spectrum and gender is chosen, often leading to social and medical transition without parental knowledge or consent, as illustrated by the case of Robert Hoogland, jailed for refusing to affirm his daughter as male. Blade traces how the same ideology reached sport policy, requiring the inclusion of male-bodied athletes in female categories and thereby undermining fairness, safety and the very purpose of sex-segregated competition. Drawing on her experience as athlete, coach and administrator, she contrasts the decades-long struggle for women’s Olympic inclusion with the speed at which governing bodies, shielded by LGBTQ secretariats and influenced by figures such as Joanna Harper, have rewritten the rules. She argues that the current framework treats women’s categories as optional while presenting any defence of biological reality as harmful and suggests that parallel, female-only competitions with stronger incentives may eventually become necessary if mainstream sport continues to prioritise self-identification over material sex differences.

Chris Elston, a Canadian father of two young daughters and former insurance broker turned full-time activist, describes how growing alarm at the rapid spread of gender ideology in schools and the medicalisation of children drove him into public action. After a billboard reading “I heart JK Rowling” was censored in Vancouver, he began wearing sandwich-board signs in city centres, most prominently “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers,” and travelling across Canada to speak with passers-by. Elston recounts the hostility he routinely encounters, especially from young women; the physical assaults and arrests he has faced; and the near-total silence of mainstream media. He argues that school curricula introducing gender identity from kindergarten, combined with the affirmation model and puberty blockers, are producing a wave of rapid-onset gender dysphoria that blindsides parents and risks sterility and lifelong medical dependence. Ordinary people, he finds, largely agree once informed, yet politicians and institutions remain captured by a vocal activist minority. Elston maintains that only persistent street-level conversation and parental awareness can reverse the trend, framing the issue as a medical scandal whose scale and consequences demand urgent public reckoning.

Beth Stelzer is a wife, mother, amateur powerlifter, accidental activist, and the founder of the grassroots, nonpartisan coalition Save Women’s Sports. In this episode, Stelzer speaks with Julian Vigo about her entry into grassroots activism and her drive to save women’s sports in the USA, elaborating how sports bodies have almost entirely sidelined the voices of female athletes while centring the feelings of males who, she maintains, have no business competing against women and girls.

Selina Todd, a writer and Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, discusses her latest book, Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth which analyses the myth and reality of social mobility in Britain from the 19th century to the present. In this episode, Todd discusses previous measurements for understanding social mobility and how women’s consideration in this field had typically been elided because of the types of labour women perform, their interrupted career trajectories due to childbirth, and the fact that women’s and girls’ stories were never considered despite their having been integral to men’s and boys’ social mobility. Elaborating how migrants and women fulfilled certain social roles within national institutions like the NHS which furthered the social mobility of white Britons, Todd discusses how women and migrants invariably end up at the bottom of the social ladder in jobs that are not properly remunerated while these two groups paradoxically devise creative strategies for challenging these hierarchies.