YouTube will almost certainly take down this video of Bill Maher’s entire show from yesterday, so I’m putting it up early today. Listen while you can! I’ve given the schedule below.
Intro (Maher monologue): 0-7:17
Douglas Murray: 7:17-18:15 (He talks about the topic of his new book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.
Panel: Author and libertarian Matt Welch and Democratic Senator (Minnesota) Tina Smith: 18:17-47:03
Second comedy bit (Maher monologue; “New Rules”): 47:06-57:51
Douglas Murray is always good value, especially when he talks about Israel and Palestine (as he does here), and the “New Rules” bit is pretty good. They should have given him more time.
WELL, THEY TOOK IT DOWN. But you can at least hear Maher’s “New Rule” segment, which is about “The Not-Working Class”
and here’s the short intro:
and here is the non-broadcasted “overtime”. The first topic of discussion is the UK Supreme Court’s new ruling that there are two sexes and no more.
When I think of Bill Maher now, I think of Alex Pope:
“”A little learning is a dang’rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
I think he really doesn’t get the depths of Trump’s depravity.
Maher predicted before the 2020 presidential election that Trump would not accept defeat in that election.
I think some people misunderstand Maher’s report from his visit in the White House. Maher did not claim that this visit changed his view of Trump significantly.
The Overtime segment of the show, @1:20:
My response to Maher: Ugh.
I’m with Douglas Murray on this one: There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. Yes, some people have a distorted relationship to their own body (gender dysphoria, anorexia). They need help from a psychotherapist and, in very rare cases, maybe should undergo surgery or hormone therapy.
Yup, the whole trans-identifying thing is – and can only be – based on presumptions based on outdated sex stereotypes about how men or women are supposed to dress, be interested in, behave, etc. Take those stereotypes away and how does someone feel like or identify as the opposite sex?
Maher claims that people can be born in the wrong body, which is the primary ontological claim of trans-identified individuals and gender activists. To me, the claim makes about as much sense as theological ideas on “ensoulment.” When does the soul enter the body? At conception? Or perhaps implantation? Maybe it happens much earlier during oogenesis or spermatogenesis? To say someone was born in the wrong body is an incoherent claim, given everything we already know about where babies come from and how they develop.
Human psychology is such that many people come to believe ideas about themselves that are incongruent with biological reality, and I think this is the better lens in which to understand some aspects of the trans phenomenon. Other trans-identified individuals may have paraphilias or sexual fantasies (i.e. autogynephilia), and we know that many have same-sex romantic desires but have been influenced into the ideology that says something is wrong with them.
The most interesting things I have come across with respect to this trans phenomenon (besides the books by Helen Joyce and Kathleen Stock):
Dr. Az Hakeem (a Welsh psychotherapist). He has extensive clinical experience working with trans-identified adults in the UK. He says that trans is an umbrella term under which he identifies 4 different groups:
Transsexuals (a small group): people who believe that they should be the other sex and they’re a small number of people
Transvestites: they know deep down that they’re not the other sex, but they get something out of cross-dressing, and you can divide them into the fetishistic transvestites and the non-fetishistic; the fetishistic transvestites don’t just get sexually aroused by cross-dressing but also by getting into female-only spaces
Autogynephiles (a very very small group): men who get sexually turned on by the idea of having female genitalia and breasts
ROGD kids [ROGD = rapid-onset gender dysphoria]: kids who suddenly come home from school and say “I’m trans or nonbinary,” and these are a youth subculture; there’s nothing psychologically pathological about them, they are just goth mark 5 [mark = version]; it’s a subculture, but because there’s no music attached (like it was with earlier youth subcultures, say, the punks), we don’t see it as that
Hakeem says that there are four main things with gender dysphoria: autism, homophobia, trauma (that leads to certain fetishes) and the subculture stuff.
You can find at least two long interviews with him on YouTube. He also has written 2 books about trans. About his second book, DETRANS: When transition is not the solution (2023, self-published) he said:
The second thing I strongly recommend:
Mia Hughes: From Hysteria to Gender Dysphoria: How Culture and Medicine Shape Mental Illness.
Classical Liberalism Seminar, Stanford University, October 24, 2024, 85 mins
The epidemic of gender dysphoria in historical context. Using Ian Hacking’s framework of the ecological niche of transient mental illnesses, Mia Hughes examines epidemics of fugue, hysteria, multiple personality disorder and trans.
The medieval conception was that the soul entered the body at the quickening – that is, when the mother could first feel the baby moving.
This is informative. But there is that 1st category from Dr. Hakeem pointed out by Keith, that there are people who claim to be transexual (and I would extrapolate that at least some are as honestly transexual as you will get). After all, we all know there are people who claim this of themselves, they go thru all the hormonal treatments and surgeries, and do their damndest to live as a member of the opposite biological sex for all their lives. That is what I’d call commitment. We can get ticked off by the agitators (including many buttinskies who are cis) who demand trans rights that cannot be logically, fairly, or safely given. But I think that there are those in the trans category that do not want to agitate and claim special rights. They just want to be quiet and boring and make the best of a very tough situation.
An analogy here is where people claim to be gay or bisexual. And yet there is now wide acceptance that they are telling the honest truth about themselves, and there is less commentary now about them being delusional or mentally ill.
+1
Agreed and well stated. I have read that gender dysphoria is more common among boys who have an older brother close in age. The mother’s body produces antibodies to androgens late in her pregnancy with the first boy, and these antibodies can hang around and affect the neuro-hormonal development of the second boy. This pretty well describes someone I know who was girl-identified since he was three years old, long before he had words for it, and who is now a surgically altered transwoman. It’s a real thing without an easy, painless solution.
That is a rather (to me) shocking description of a basis for these conditions. Never heard of it, but … maybe?
This is interesting. Do you know of any publications related to maternal anti-androgen antibodies? I would love to read.
Has no movement yet spoken up for different categories of individuals who believe themselves born in the wrong body? What about those who believe their real body to be that of Jesus Christ? Shouldn’t there be demands that these individuals always be referred to as “Son of God” in documents, journalism, law, and sports regulations? And then, of course, there are the kids who identify as trans-animals. The born-in-the-wrong-body arena is obviously larger than implied in conventional parlance these days.
Murray looked surprisingly ill at ease in the overtime segment and didn’t contribute much, which was disappointing. The discussion of his book doesn’t seem to be available any longer.
Regarding Trans: I mentioned above that there are at least 2 long interviews with Dr. Az Hakeem (a Welsh psychiatrist and psychotherapist with extensive clinical experience working with gender-dysphoric adults, more than 10 years) available on YouTube.
One is with Sasha Ayad and Stella O’Malley:
This interview is also available (for free) on this podcast’s substack WITH A FULL TRANSCRIPT.
https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/episode-193
The utter callous disregard for the children of parents who believe in the esoteric gender soul by that Senator is enraging.
The consequences of believing and enacting on a possible incorrect decision by the parents are catastrophic. Trust the parents is a ridiculous means to justify the sterilization and mutilation of children.
It is very disappointing that Bill Maher believes in the gendered soul claptrap. I do wish he would succinctly and rationally explain what a gendered identity really is. He and everyone else that supports the born in the wrong body ideology would fail. Reality always win.
BREAKING POINTS podcast: Watch Douglas Murray debate himself.
https://youtu.be/HLbVGMyGZ9A?si=5-KDn7PyvO5_Vbpi
Since Bill Maher’s recent dinner with President Trump at the White House, commenters have asserted that he simply doesn’t get the depths of Trump’s depravity, deceit, and foolishness.
I hear echoes. Those of us who lived largely normal lives in 2020-2021 just didn’t get the deadliness of the virus; those who raise children and drive gas-powered vehicles to soccer practice don’t get the existential threat of climate crisis; those who assess Putin’s Russia and its military capability realistically don’t get the specter of continental conquest; those who rejected the question “Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?” didn’t get the harms facing trans people; and that those who view gun-toting, flag-waving Trump supporters with amusement, empathy, and mild concern don’t get the existential threat to democracy.
Here’s what we do get: segments of the Democratic party are awash in anxiety and alarmism, with Republicans exhibiting parallel flaws. Both parties are caught in an emotional cycle of action-reaction. Online and media echo chambers combine with partisan-skewed primaries to amplify alarmist voices, obstructing the leadership needed today. Effective leadership in challenging times—especially in challenging times—requires calm, reason, prudence, and a degree of moderation. Can leaders still emerge in a democracy who do not “re-present” the anxieties and anger of their followers?
Why did YouTube take it down? Are they really that captured?
Probably copyright, not wokeness, in this case.
It’s disappointing to see that even Bill Maher doesn’t fully grasp the basic reality that sex is binary, as PCC have emphasized many times. Like many of us, Bill still hopes the American people will shift their vote. But when it comes to any general election, we have to be honest: it was the rejection of wokism that brought Trump to power by rallying the ‘silent majority.’ As long as Democrats continue to ignore this cultural backlash, their chances of winning remain slim.