You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Speaker 1 (00:00.118)
I do feel hopeful about it. I think it is so important to just stand up there and say schools should not be using the wrong sex pronouns and they should not be doing this intervention. There's a real power to just stigmatizing something. Even if people don't like the president, it matters to have a law saying that you're wrong. That first order says that the federal government is going to stop promoting gender ideology and its policy to promote biological reality. So that is what runs through all these orders that everyone in federal government is operating under now is that we need to

cut this down as much as possible. I think the most important thing, because we're in an emergency situation now, is to exercise power, and that's why it's happening. One thing that I think is gonna be really helpful from these orders is that in multiple places, they talk about investigations. They direct various government agencies to not only lay down the law and stomp their foot, but also to investigate what is going on in our culture. So, you one example is Investigate Big Pharma and their role in promoting these drugs to the public. You must be some kind of therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:56.142)
Hey there, just a quick note for my listeners before we start today's episode with Glenna Goldis. I've received so many questions and concerns from parents of trans-identified youth over the last few weeks about the new executive orders, what they mean for American families, what they don't mean, and perhaps most urgently of concern to many of you, how to talk to your kids about them. In case you somehow haven't heard me say this before, I do have a program.

for parents like you and it's called ROGD Repair. This program is designed to teach you how to communicate and how not to communicate, to improve your relationship with your trans identified child and bolster your chances of getting through to them with your concerns. So I thought I'd start off with this important information that Glenna Goldis has to share with us today.

about the facts of the executive orders, what's in them, what they mean for the future of this country, and what's left uncertain. Glenna's gonna help us straighten that all out. After we get the facts straight, if you still need help communicating with your kid about these executive orders, that is a whole other matter, because if communicating about the facts were enough to help families like you, then you wouldn't be in this mess. So the communication piece I do address in the course.

As of the time of my recording this note, I just finished preparing that lesson for members of ROGD Repair on how to communicate with trans-identified youth about the executive orders. So after you listen to my episode with Glenna today and get the facts straight, if you still need help communicating with your kid who might be a young adult about these issues and you're not already enrolled in the program, please check it out at rogdrepair.com. And you can use promo code sometherapist

2025, a checkout to take 50 % off your first month. Again, that's code SUMTHERAPIST 2025. All right, now on to today's conversation with Glenna about the recent executive orders and what they mean for this country. Today, I'm speaking with Glenna Gouldis. She is a lawyer based in New York with experience in government, fraud investigations, and domestic violence advocacy. She publishes a sub-stack newsletter called Bad Facts about the movement for so-called

Speaker 2 (03:14.51)
Trans Rights and she has legal expertise on the executive orders that everyone wants to know about. So I'm so grateful to have her expertise here on the podcast today to tell us exactly what these orders do and do not mean for the country. Glenna, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Stephanie.

So since Trump came into office, these executive orders have been coming out in rapid succession. Obviously, it's beyond the scope of this podcast to discuss all of them, but we do talk a lot about the gender issue here. So let's focus on those gender-related executive orders. Can you maybe just start us off with a list of which executive orders are about this topic?

There are five executive orders that are centered on gender. So the first one, Trump signed on day one of his presidency and that was defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government. That was a big one. It includes definitions of things like man and woman and other things you've never heard of before. And these definitions are cited in his later executive order. So it sets the foundation. It also addresses some issues specifically such as the workplace and prisons.

So that was number one. And since then, there have been four more. There's one specifically about what happens in schools, and it's about protecting kids from indoctrination is the term that's used in the order. And this one also touches on not just curriculum, but also social transitions at school, and takes a very hard line on those. And it talks about parental rights as well. And then we had the quote unquote gender, the mutilation one.

Speaker 1 (04:57.536)
is what is the gender medicine one is called. It's a, used the term chemical and surgical mutilation to describe the treatments that are given by these, you know, what we call gender doctors to minors, although it also includes 18 year olds in it. And so it's all about that subject and it covers that from every angle. There is an executive order related to the military and it restricts how transgender people, so-called transgender people could

participate in the military. And by the way, these orders do not use the term transgender. I mean, they do use in quotation marks sometimes, but it's not defined, it's not indulged in. And that's a very interesting rhetorical and legal choice that I think they made strategically. And so then finally, we have the fifth executive order, the fifth one so far. I should say we're talking on February 5th and there's new developments all the time in this space, but we just saw a new one drop and it is about women's and girls sports.

All right. people are, well, at least the people I'm paying attention to are feeling very hopeful about some of these executive orders. And what I'm really hoping to do today with you is clarify what these orders do and do not mean for the future of the country. Obviously, cultural change is happening on a different wavelength than legal change.

Gosh, where should we begin? And do you want to maybe pick one of these orders where we can break down what it does and doesn't mean?

We can start with that January 20th one, which starts out with definitions and then, like I said, goes into some other areas as well. So this was a very exciting order that he signed on day one. And it was exciting to me to see that he starts out with definitions because as a lawyer, I have been yelling and screaming about this for a long time now that, you know, the ACLU and those advocates, they cannot define the word sex or they don't want to in court. They cannot define the word gender.

Speaker 1 (06:55.486)
and they resolutely avoid doing those two things, even though they're the most important terms of their case, and they feast on the ambiguity. They are, like the reason they win in court as often as they do is because judges are confused and they're not properly analyzing the foundations of the ACLU's case. So by doing that, by defining sex on day one, Trump is calling their bluff. And in fact, he did that, he put the definitions in there, and of course they're good definitions. They say that,

You know, they're defined in the scientific way where based on the gametes that your body is kind of patterned to produce, that's what makes you male or female, man or woman. And these are the definitions we get from biologists. It doesn't get into all the nitty gritty about things like disorders of sex development. says the Department of Health and Human Services will do that later within the next couple of months. But it very clearly defines in terms of sex, in terms of biology, what sex is. And

that the ACLU, the democratic officials, none of them, even though they've called out Trump in general ways, even though they've kind of railed against these orders, even though some of them have filed big lawsuits already, none of them have challenged his definition of sex. The closest they've come to challenging it is having like the comms director at the ACLU call the definitions cramped. put that in quotation marks, cramped. That's what they say. And cramped does not mean wrong. It means it violated some artist's sensibility or something, but it's not wrong.

So going forward, this is going to be fantastic. The fact that he put it in the order means that all the lawyers who work in the federal government are going to be putting it in their briefs, and they're going to be challenging the ACLU and saying, hey, when you say sex, what do you mean? When you say gender identity, what do you mean? They're going to be going after this, which is what has generally not happened as much as it should have in the past. So I was very excited to see that in the order, just calling everyone's bluff. And it also has some nice argumentation in there. So it talks about gender identity.

quote, gender ideology and why it is, quote, unquote, internally inconsistent, which again, a lot of us out here have been screaming about, you don't have to be a lawyer to notice that is internally inconsistent. So now that's in an executive order, it's in the policy of the federal government. So it's very gratifying to all of us to see that out there. And again, to kind of challenge the other side to say, can you explain why you're not internally inconsistent? Can you challenge these sentences here, which seem to like, you know, just slice you apart in just a couple of lines and.

Speaker 1 (09:20.792)
So far they haven't. So that was that January 20th order. And then just for fun, it also goes into specific areas like prisons and the workplace and outlines how the federal government is going to act to finally get males out of women's prisons and how to clean up the workplace and make sure that any intimate spaces like changing rooms are segregated by sex, not by gender, that women and men can go and have their private spaces.

so that nobody is forced to use pronouns in the workplace, in a government workplace or subject to a government rule. So those are very exciting topics. Now that being said, they don't change everything overnight. We've already seen that two lawsuits were filed related to the prison order. So the day after this executive order was entered, the Bureau Prisons moved on it and they

segregated these trans-identified men, which we've heard from reporting, and told them, we're going to send you out to men's prison now. And some organizations were able to file lawsuits, and they got temporary restraining orders, which are these orders you can get on an emergency basis at the very beginning of a lawsuit. They do it without even having the other side appear, because it's an emergency. So they were able to secure those orders. They filed these lawsuits in

regions of the country where the court systems are the most biased in favor of ACLU arguments and they have a history of making kind of wacky rulings. So, you they're on very favorable terrain. The Trump administration has not had an opportunity to respond to them yet and they've gotten these orders in place that keep their clients in the women's prison for now. And so that will be a battle going forward. think ultimately they, you our side will prevail and, you know,

And we will be able to take the men out of the women's prison, but it will take litigation. It will take a rulemaking process, which takes a couple of years. And we can go into more of that if you want more details on the whole prison legal backdrop. But I just want to make the point that there's going to be some early setbacks, but then we should win a couple of years from now and hopefully have victories before then as well on a kind preliminary basis.

Speaker 2 (11:38.318)
Great. Well, this may be hopping around because I'm not sure, with the question I'm about to ask, I'm not sure how much of it falls under this executive order versus other ones versus outside of the domain. But I mean, you talk about this order restoring our right to have single sex spaces, and I'm wondering how far that goes. there's this other executive order about ending indoctrination in K-12 schooling.

In Oregon, it's in the state law that students at public schools, for instance, should be able to use the bathroom consistent with their so-called gender identity. so when it comes to bathrooms in public institutions, private institutions, gyms and sports facilities like

Where are the lines drawn where this executive order has to be immediately honored versus where there's some, I guess, conflict over whose jurisdiction it is?

Yeah, that's a really great question. And unfortunately, the answer is complicated. So there are different laws and sets of laws for the different areas. The school context, we're talking about Title IX, which the federal government administers. It's the same law that we talk about with sports. And that's administered by the Department of Education. We are on very strong ground there because the Biden administration put out some regulations that were bad last year.

pretty much every court, I haven't found one that said otherwise, every court said, no, you should not have issued these regulations. You didn't have the authority to do this because they, I mean, the crude way of putting it is they replaced sex with gender identity. The statute says sex. Biden said, no, no, it means gender identity. It was more complicated than that, but it's on the pass now. I'm going to, he replaced it with gender and various courts were preliminarily giving negative rulings. And then just last month we got the final one out of Kentucky, which said,

Speaker 1 (13:42.466)
we're vacating this nationwide because you did not have the authority to do that. So that means even, you know, that's kind of the wind that trumps back. He comes into office and that order had just come down. Now, obviously, the government is not going to appeal it. So it's done. And the Trump administration just kind of made this all official by coming out of the letter last week, a letter addressed to schools saying, we are not going to be following the Biden regulations because they were wiped out last month by a court.

You know, we're going to go back to the regulations that were in place before then, which had come from the first Trump administration, which says, you know, a girl is a girl and we're going to protect girls. And so that will be in place. Unfortunately, though, under Title IX, the statute never said that schools have to keep boys and girls in separate locker rooms. Everybody was just happy to do that voluntarily in the past for obvious reasons. So they didn't like seek to have it written into law.

So you don't have the statute being as clear as you'd want it to be. That said, I think the Trump administration is going to work on that. So far, they've moved against schools. They are investigating, for example, a school system in Denver where on one floor of the building, they had a boys' bathroom and then a quote unquote, all genders' bathroom and no girls' bathroom. So they were saying, okay, so you're entitling boys to their own space, but you're not entitling girls to them. So that's very interesting investigation. It's cool that they did it right away.

But I worry that they might be, you know, that's an area where they're on very firm grounds. But in other places, if some school wants to be crazy and only, which I think actually happens a lot, right, like in certain areas of the country, and they want to have only all genders bathrooms, that's not as obviously illegal as we might like it to be. I believe that the Trump administration, there's some language in here that hints that they might do more rulemaking of their own to make it clear.

that you have to interpret the statute to mean separate locker rooms for girls because using your common sense, if girls don't have their own locker room, then they're not going to want to change before gym class or change for a sport. Like that's scary. So it's like de facto discrimination to say you can't have your own locker room. And so we might see the Trump administration promulgating rules related to that. And again, it's a process that would take a couple of years probably.

Speaker 2 (15:58.766)
So if I understand what you're saying correctly, schools with very, let's say, far left administration in blue parts of the country, where there are lots of social justice activists and administrative positions and lots of trans identified students, might try to work their way around these regulations by labeling all spaces all gender.

Like all the bathrooms, all the locker rooms could just be renamed all gender and that would technically be in compliance with the way it's currently written.

think they might make that argument. And the Trump administration might argue that it's not in compliance, and that would be good, but the law is not as clear as we'd like it to be.

Speaker 2 (16:49.176)
So you're saying that we're hoping that there's going to be more work done on this front to actually clarify the rights of people who are not in denial about biological reality to have single sex spaces. And anyone who chooses to remain in denial can have some work around or accommodation that is maybe less accommodating of them. So I mean,

For example, I've heard all these stories of girls dehydrating themselves because they didn't want to go to the bathroom all day because they didn't want to share a bathroom with males. And in these instances, maybe the school said, well, we have this teacher's bathroom in the teacher lounge that you can use. That's a single stall. But it was the girls that had to go use it instead of the boy who says he's a girl, even if he's in the minority.

That is a really upsetting situation. it's one where it's borderline. And maybe we can hope that the administration investigates situations like that, where on paper it looks equal, like the same weird rules apply to everyone, but in practice, it's girls who are being hurt. Maybe we'll see investigations there. And I want to amend something I said earlier. I said in the past, they always had separate girls locker rooms because obvious, duh. Actually, that's not true. I shouldn't have said that. Girls had to actually really fight for their own spaces, especially in the sports context.

So in the early days of Title IX, schools were still flouting it and still just giving them inconvenient options for changing or, you can just go in the boys locker room later on in the day. I've heard from older women who are athletes in college who said they would have to walk across campus wearing a wet bathing suit because there was no place to change after their swim practice. So yeah, that's really important to point out. Feminists fought for that. They fought to have separate locker rooms. And then Obama and Biden especially came and they took it away.

Well, since one of the things that I find myself naturally inclined to ask about is how this plays out in the schools, I'm wondering if we can skip to the order called ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling. And can you tell us what that's about?

Speaker 1 (18:57.422)
Yeah, absolutely. that order, it addresses all sorts of issues related to school. And by the way, it also touches on another topic, so DEI and issues of how race is taught in school. So it was kind of broad in that sense. And some of it has to do with kind of curriculum and what is taught in school. And some of it has to do with social transition and particularly secret social transition, but not only that. So I think that your listeners are familiar with that, the idea that these schools are

facilitating, this is all goofy language, but you know, what they would say is that they're facilitating a social transition of a child from one gender to another gender, which means that they ask the child what pronouns they want, and then they use those pronouns, and they use whatever name the child wants, and on top of that, they may not tell the parents. And so this is, you know, as we've learned or I've learned, this is like a major psychological intervention on kids. It changes how they

look at themselves and the world, it can create a lot of stress for them, especially if the parents are not involved. It makes them more afraid of puberty because that's when the act is going to fall apart. So it's a really gigantic intervention and it's being carried out by teachers and other school professionals who don't have a therapist license or anything like that. So this order by Trump, it actually calls it out and it calls it unlicensed practice of medicine and said that the government is going to go after it.

So that is really exciting and I think that is, yeah, accurately describing the problem. And so it works by taking funds away from schools, they're withholding funds. And the question of funding and all that is a whole separate thing, but that's the mechanism. And I've heard that these schools on average tend to receive about 10 % of their funding from the federal government, which maybe doesn't sound like much, but if you went to just like any average public school in America, yeah, 10 % cut would be huge.

Like they're kind of living on the edge anyway. They don't have everything they need. So they don't want to lose, hopefully, they don't want to lose that 10%. And that is the social transition. And then the order also touches on, and again, that's even if the parent wants their kid to be transitioned, teacher still should not be doing it. And so I believe that the order touches that situation as well, not only secret transitions, but for the secret part, it also talks about parental rights and having the Department of Education come up with a plan for enforcing those. So.

Speaker 1 (21:23.118)
One example, and the Department of Education should have been enforcing these rules all along during the Biden administration, but we didn't see that. So one of the laws on point is called FERPA. And that is a law about student privacy. But as part of the keeping records private, it also says that parents have a right to see their kids' school records if the kid is under 18. So that law has been kind of lying dormant because it doesn't give parents the right to file a lawsuit on their own.

All they can do is file a complaint with the Department of Education and then it's up to the department whether to move on it. And so now we're getting signs from the executive order and from the officials who work there, they're saying that they do care about this issue and they will act on it and they will use their powers under FERPA, which was not being done before.

So tell us exactly what this practically means for parents who are currently in this situation or worried that they might find themselves in this situation where their child is being socially transitioned behind their back or without their permission at school. And I want to point out potentially with the assistance of a licensed mental health professional, because there are school-based counselors who are very, you

woke social justice warriors who believe this is just the best thing you can do for someone is affirm their gender identity. So potentially, you know, some licensed professionals involved here, but also teachers and students and administrators all colluding in the triangulation against the family and biological truth. Parents who are in the situation or worry that they could be, what recourse do they now have? What can they do?

So the official answer is filing a report to the Department of Education, and they can do that on their own. They can team up with other parents if they're having the same issue. And while that is a good idea, that's not all they have. They also will just have more leverage when they walk into a school. So I've heard that now, up until now, schools have been kind of very cocky about their transition programs. They think they are helping kids. They think if the parent objects and the parent is bad, so they will just blow off the parent and they'll feel very good about that.

Speaker 1 (23:36.884)
Now they're all being put on notice by this executive order, which I'm sure they're talking about. It's written in plain English so they can check it out themselves. And if the teachers don't care about it, the administrators will. They don't want to lose this funding. They don't want to be investigated by the federal government. That's a huge deal. So they will not be as confident in turning parents away. So you might be able to get them to table the way you couldn't before. And even though there's not a private right of action under FERPA,

There are possibly other ways lawyers can get involved. if you can afford a lawyer, if you have the option of just using a lawyer maybe like once or twice to talk to a school, then that will build your stature and make you more fearsome in the eyes of the school. And again, you'll be walking in now with the president behind you.

That really changes the power dynamics.

Yeah.

If I understand correctly, the fear that school administrators would have is the fear of losing that 10 % of their funding that comes from the federal government. Are there any sanctions besides that?

Speaker 1 (24:50.776)
they would fear just being investigated and singled out by the government. You because when you're under investigation, you, like, you might have to turn over your emails with your friends, you might have to turn over text messages, you could be interviewed by these lawyers from the federal government and other people can be interviewed and asked questions about you. Like, that's not an exciting prospect for, you most people. mean, there are probably some woke people who think it's undeciding. yeah, yeah.

So they just want to keep that at bay.

So let's take a different type of hypothetical situation. Now, these are the people that I'm not interacting with on a daily basis. Because the people we were just talking about, those are the ones I'm interacting with on daily basis, the parents who are legitimately worried about this stuff. But let's take that trans housing family, so to speak. Let's take the family where the parents are all gung ho on board about it, and they have teachers who just think that this is the best thing ever.

So in this system, hypothetically, let's say that the kid had a woke therapist who was more than happy to write a letter to the school recommending that the school participate in this mental health intervention of calling the child by their so-called preferred name and pronouns. In this situation, what could the government do?

So you're saying that there's like the licensed professional, the mental health professionals being pulled in.

Speaker 2 (26:22.024)
Yeah, well, because I'm saying that you're saying that the executive order calls out the unlicensed practice of medicine, right? And we know that for a long time now, there's been this exploitation and redefinition of the counseling profession, which is why I do what I do. That's how I ended up here as a mental health professional. And this exploitation and redefinition of the mental health profession where

You know, we are not doctors and we don't recommend medical treatments. We know our scope of practice with regard to any other thing. Now we do know how to recognize common signs of certain medical issues that can cause or be mistaken for mental health issues. And, you know, I've had my success stories in my career, like a time that I recognized signs of potential hyperthyroidism in a patient recommended she get her thyroid evaluated, turns out thyroid medication.

manic symptoms. you know, there are things like that, right? Similarly, you know, there are common nutrient deficiencies that can create symptoms of anxiety and depression, and we know when to say maybe you should talk to a doctor about that. We also know when to refer people to a psychiatrist. If they're requesting a prescription, we say, know what, I don't prescribe, but if you want to talk to someone who prescribes, here's someone who does.

So-called gender-affirming care is a rabid departure from the norm in which therapists step way outside of our scope of practice by recommending that people embark on this path of body modification. In some cases, it's our official recommendation as mental health professionals that plays a pivotal role in the process, like writing a letter recommending hormones and surgeries, for example. So I guess I'm just thinking hypothetically extending this way of doing things, right?

that if the executive order calls it the unlicensed practice of medicine for these, you know, know it all social justice warrior school administrators to socially transition a kid behind their parents' backs, what is the opposite extreme? What is the situation where the kid wants to trans, the parent thinks it's the best thing ever, the school thinks it's the best thing ever, and they have this therapist on board recommending saying, yeah, I recommend this medical treatment. This is what they need for their mental health.

Speaker 2 (28:44.406)
I mean, I don't know who would begin the investigation in that situation, but I'm just wondering about enforcement, particularly because you said even when the parent wants it, that doesn't mean the school should be doing it.

Right. the school could be subject to losing funds because of that. And there's also, and this comes up a lot in the orders where there's kind of an open-ended piece where it says, figure out a plan to deal with this issue. And so this particular order, it has some concrete points in it, but it also says, come up with a plan. And it says that the education department should work with state officials as well. So attorneys general. And that could have interesting outcomes because the state might have slightly different powers than the federal government has.

But again, that's just right now they're just at the planning stage. Like talk about this. This is a big problem. Figure out what we can do.

How hopeful do you feel about the overall impact of this particular order?

do feel hopeful about it. think it is so important to just stand up there and say schools should not be using the wrong sex pronouns and they should not be doing this intervention. Even though I know right now it probably hasn't sunk in popularly and, you know, all the liberals are digging their feet in. But there's a real power to just stigmatizing something, which is what you do when you make a rule about it at the federal level. Even if people don't like the president, it sinks in. It matters to have a law saying that you're wrong. So on that level, I'm hopeful.

Speaker 1 (30:09.102)
And this kind of has to do with my faith in law and the legal system. And maybe I'm too idealistic as a lawyer. that's my general feeling. There are, and like I said, this order has a few things going on. And one of it is curriculum and another is social transition. So I think that we're on solid ground on saying, like, stop the social transition or we'll take your money away. The curriculum stuff is, you know, I've just been looking and trying to research this. And apparently there are limits to how much the federal government can dictate curriculum.

So we might see some skirmishes with schools wanting to keep their gross books. I think you know what I'm talking about. And somewhat more structural LGBTQ books. yeah, stuff like that. So we'll see how that plays out in terms of curriculum. But I think it's so important to stand up and say that social transition is not OK. And we're going to stand behind parents. And we're going to figure out how to help parents as much as possible.

So that's confusing when it gets to the sex ed side of things, whether it be pornographic books in libraries or how they teach sex ed. It seems like there's kind of a loophole there.

Yeah, it's just, like, so the order doesn't go into that in too much detail and maybe it's because there are limitations. I'm not really sure. I think it'll be interesting to watch that piece play out. In any case, even if there were legal authority, there's the reality of there's like 7,000 billion schools in America and all these little small towns and the federal government can't possibly, you know, investigate all of them. So, you know, I think that we're going to see some goofy stuff continue in the curriculum.

What about the teachers who go by ZZems or pronouns?

Speaker 1 (31:54.062)
Oh, that's a good question. I I think that would count as indoctrinating kids and gender identity and put the funding at issue, I think. Yeah, let's look at that closely. And then that first order says that the federal government is going to stop promoting gender ideology and it's policy to promote biological reality. So that is what runs through all these orders. And that's kind of the overarching instruction.

that everyone in federal government is operating under now is that we need to cut this down as much as possible and kind of make whatever arguments need to be made within the bounds of the law to cut it down. And I would say if a teacher is demanding that students use wrong sex pronouns for them, then that's inculcating gender ideology in them.

And what about decoration? What about those schools where you walk in and the first thing you see is a giant trans flag?

Well, let's see. Is that, I mean, they definitely don't call out flags explicitly in these orders. It doesn't say, you know, no pink and blue stripes or anything like that. So that being said, I think you'll have administrators who are nervous because it's not clear where the boundaries are. And so, yeah, the teachers might want to hang their flag and then you'll have the principal saying, no, no, I don't want to risk an investigation and losing funds.

Okay, so just really kind of changes the tenor, but I will add that although this probably makes a lot of people feel relieved and hopeful about the direction things are going, unfortunately, the way that this sort of cultural shift will be received by a lot of people is confirmation of their existing paranoid worldview that there is this

Speaker 2 (33:36.92)
horribly oppressed minority that is just hated by a large sector of the American people and that we have a so-called literal Nazi running the government and that trans people are being genocided. That's the narrative and I think that that narrative is only intensifying for those who hold it right now. And so I imagine there will be various forms of backlash.

Yeah, I think in some ways there will be backlash. I think it's still worth it to, I think the most important thing because we're in an emergency situation now is to exercise power and that's what is happening. And I don't want to delay exercising power one minute just on the hope, like the blind hope that maybe it'll help persuade people because also I think likely it won't help persuade people if you put things in softer terms. But one thing that I think is gonna be really helpful from these orders is that in multiple places, they talk about investigations. They direct various government agencies to like not only

lay down the law and stomp their foot, but also to investigate what is going on in our culture. So, you one example is investigate big pharma and their role in promoting these drugs to the public and, you know, investigate schools. So I think that the investigations of these entities will be really helpful if we're able to have the government go through, carefully figure out what went on and then lay it out line by line, like year by year, what happened, pick it apart.

And again, I know some people think I'm too idealistic, but I absolutely believe that this is how the world works. Like I think there are things that my mind has changed because I've seen just out of the corner of my eye, like some investigation that's slowly spilling out in the newspaper. And then, you know, it makes me look at the whole issue differently. So, and I think that's true of like kind of the average person, maybe not like the most rabidly partisan person who only watches MSNBC. But I think the majority of the country does care about facts and

they will see things coming out of the administration that are just like really compelling stories. They'll be compelling because they're true. And I think people can't look away from truth. So I'm hopeful that the administration is able to pull off these investigations that kind of stick in people's minds even if they weren't expecting them to.

Speaker 2 (35:48.672)
I'm glad to hear you feel optimistic. Let's move on to protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation. That seems like one to feel optimistic about. But as I was saying to you before we started recording, I think it's easy to overestimate what this law or what this executive order actually means.

Yes, that's right. I think actually now is when we should talk about this issue of what sorts of funding the federal government can cut and what things maybe they're kind of stuck paying for even though they don't want to. And this is an emerging issue like right now. There been some early motions filed and lawsuits. So I'm just getting my head around it, but it seems like there's different categories of funding. so there are some categories, like if something is directed by Congress, if Congress specifically says like spends.

X amount of dollars on this program, then the federal government has to do that like the Congress told them to. there's a lot of funds where Congress just gives the funds in a very general way, it doesn't direct it. And so the administration decides how to spend the funds. And you can split those into different categories. So one is funds that they've already kind of entered into contracts to pay them out to people. Contracts, are they given grants?

And so, you they might've made this agreement a couple of years ago and it's still in place and it says once a year, the federal government is going to pay X amount of dollars. That is harder to get out of, but then you also have funding that hasn't started yet. Of course, you know, government always reviewing new grant applications and there the government is going to have more freedom to just say, we're changing our criteria. We're not going to fund this sort of project in the future. So you can keep that in mind because I know that there's been an early victory.

on the side of democratic officials fighting against the funding freeze like last week. So again, they got like this early stage order from a court that says Trump cannot just freeze all these funds that he'd already that were already guaranteed to certain payees. And so they are trumpeting that. I think they might be exaggerating the reach. Like, again, I need to look into this more. But, know, they're acting like Trump can never control any sort of money ever because the the court said no. And it does not say that the federal government has.

Speaker 1 (37:56.972)
a lot of control over what things they decide to fund in the future. And right now we have four years ahead of us where all these people have to worry about, how will I get new grants in the next four years? So there is a lot of control there the federal government has, but it is not absolute. And I bring that up because that is how they're trying to squash child gender medicine. And again, child is defined or, you know, pediatrics is defined as under 19 here. So a little different than what we're used to 18. I'm happy to have that extra year added.

And so it says that these institutions, include hospitals, university hospital systems, all kinds of really big places that do a lot of research, it says you won't be able to get grants from the NIH anymore if you do gender medicine for kids. And these places, some might get hundreds of millions of dollars from this sort of research grant. And it's what makes them so prestigious that they have all these grants. So huge deal for them to have that threatened.

Again, they might be able to keep receiving money that they're already guaranteed or contracted to receive from the past, but going forward, they have to worry about it. So that is the hammer being held over their head in the gender medicine context. And we have seen on one level that it's really effective because a lot of hospitals, including ones that have really made their name on this practice and acted really proud of it up until two seconds ago, they are now either quietly scrubbing their websites or they're saying, we're, you know, we're going to back out of this.

now or we're just going to give mental health affirming care for these kids. They're backing out of the hormones and surgeries and that is great. Now there is a lawsuit that was just filed I think yesterday. ACLU is on that. It's ACLU, Lambda Legal and two big commercial law firms, Hogan's Level and Jenner and Block, which I always name these law firms because I think it's so ridiculous that these commercial litigators are wading into this

cesspool that they know nothing about and they're doing it pro bono and they think they're saving the world but they're actually castrating gay kids. Anyway, they filed their lawsuit yesterday and they are, so they're representing kids and parents and they're also representing a medical association of doctors, GLMA, which I think at some point in history said for gay and lesbian medical association, but now they won't say the words gay and lesbian, LGBT, whatever. I find it interesting that their plaintiff A,

Speaker 1 (40:21.644)
because it kind of shows how the ACLU is really in bed with medical interests, as we've seen over the last several years, that often has these clients who are doctors and could afford their own lawyers, you would think. But also it's interesting to me that they don't have an actual hospital on the lawsuit. They don't have an actual, it's just this medical association and a very kind of partisan one at that. So I think that what we're seeing is that the medical institutions don't want to have this fight.

So, you know, they're having to turn to this totally, I don't know if it's captured or if it was always just an entirely fraudulent enterprise. I don't know. It was probably real at one point, GLMA, serving gay people, but now it's one of these trans activist organizations. So that's what they have representing the medical establishment and not an actual established medical institution. you know, they might get a quick order too that's in their favor, but it's just like in the prison context. I think that.

the further this case goes along, they will lose ground and they will not be able to hold up a trial. And they, it's interesting for me to read the lawsuit because I've been reading a lot of these lawsuits that are filed and I kind of know all the beats of the ACLU's like favorite song. And this is very similar to the ones in the past. Like I said, they're not responding to the most important part of Trump's order, which is like, here's what sex is. Do you agree or disagree? Like they're still just avoiding the term sex altogether, pretending it's the same thing as

quote, characteristics. If you have a beard, that means you have a character of maleness or whatever. They're still playing that game, but they've cut an element from the lawsuit, which is WPATH. And this happened in the prison lawsuits as well. So in the past, all these places loved to tout WPATH, this very august institution with its decades of expertise in transgender care. How could you ever defy WPATH?

And now they've dropped it. And we know why they dropped it. It's because last summer WPATH was exposed to the world as being fraudulent. And it's just a bunch of goobers lying about science in order to win lawsuits and appeased, government official, and all these things. they know WPATH is bad. You can tell because they caught it from the complaint. But they're still going forward. They're thinking maybe they can like

Speaker 1 (42:43.702)
eek by in the early press coverage with nobody talking with WPATH. Maybe they can get by at the temporary restraining order phase like they did in the prison context because no one's there to point out the WPATH thing. But eventually they will have to talk with WPATH in their lawsuit and it's going to kill them because it's been their backbone of their cases all along. So it's like they know they're doomed, I think, but they just want to keep the game going because they're funded and this is what they do.

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Mention some therapist to receive 20 % off your first month of service. Pods by net. Podcasting simplified. Let's talk about what this executive order means for families in a few different situations. So you already expressed that institutions will not be able to get the grants that they rely on from the NIH if they continue practicing so-called genormous and on kids.

Setting aside that issue, because I'm imagining that applies more to certain institutions than others, like big name universities, for example, are probably more reliant on research grants, right, than like, than other clinical settings. So thinking about a few different, so there's people on Medicaid. So that is something that connects to the federal government.

Speaker 1 (44:45.825)
Yeah, OK.

Speaker 2 (45:00.83)
Then there's TRICARE, the military insurance, and then there's private insurance. And then there's also families where a minor under 19 has the so-called support of their parents in pursuing hormones and surgeries and families where they do not have the parent support. In other words, the kind of parents that come to me looking for help.

So with all these different kind of permutations depending on the source of the insurance or funding and whether the parental consent is involved, where are the lines now drawn?

Yeah, so you're right. There are some places that are going to feel less threatened by this order. You know, we're hearing that smaller clinics that just don't conduct research, places that don't usually take insurance, you for families who are able to afford it, they're still going to be around. But I think it is so important to be targeting these really big institutions because when you look at how this has spread through the country and how it still continues to spread, it is by these prestigious institutions getting out there and they're not passive. You know, they go out there and seek new patients.

do trainings of teachers and therapists out in the community. They are, you know, it's like having a terrorist cell in your town or something, like it's bad. And so these entities, I think it will have an outsize effect to target the biggest, prestigious entities that do the most research, because those have been the biggest pests in all of this.

interesting.

Speaker 2 (46:32.934)
And setting those aside in terms of the practical implications for families with either let's say private insurance or they want to pay out of pocket. Can families get around these? What appear to be barriers at first glance?

Yeah, especially if they have money. so I think puberty blockers are very expensive. So maybe we could spare some kids at that age. You know, if you just can't find an insurance program that covers it. And by the way, this doesn't... Insurance is a whole other question. Like you say, some of it is TRICARE. That was cut actually by Congress recently. Congress passed a law saying that they can't fund the minor transition. So the military kids look pretty safe unless their parents are very wealthy.

especially at the puberty blocker stage, which is so expensive. What else? I mean, I think the hormones are pretty cheap, aren't they?

steroids being a strong.

and they can also be obtained on the black market.

Speaker 1 (47:37.442)
Yeah.

And there are services like Plume.

Oh my God, yeah. I'm hopeful that we can see investigations of places like Plume. Like I said, there are several places in these orders where the agency are supposed to be looking into the suppliers of these drugs and looking at their marketing and seeing whether they violated any laws. There's obvious potential consumer protection violations. I'm thinking that someplace like Plume might be low hanging fruit just having heard what they get up to.

What are some of the reactions you've seen so far to this executive order or interpretations of it?

So in my circles, I've seen as we already touched on the concern about like how will this be received and the rhetoric. And that's your department. Let's see, the military, I know that people are calling the military order a ban, but then I've had people pointing out to me that it's not a ban, that it really just kind of limits participation by individuals who want to engage in, like who want to be receiving the medical treatments, because the surgery, for example, will knock you out for months.

Speaker 2 (48:41.186)
Wait, hold on, we're skipping to the military one.

sorry, we hadn't talked about that yet.

No, that's okay. I mean, if you're ready to skip to that, I think the one protecting children is very top of mind for a lot of people. But if you want to go ahead and skip to the military one, maybe you could just kind of lay it out first.

Yeah, well, I'm trying to think if there's anything else I should say about the gender medicine. I think, I mean, are there any misconceptions you've seen? I tend to focus more on the lawyer speak and so my fee might not be representative.

Well, I mean, I think people who are in this fight are just so emotionally exhausted and ready to hear some good news. And so this seems like good news. And I think it can easily be misinterpreted as a nationwide ban on any so-called transition-related drugs or procedures for anyone under the age of 19. But it's not.

Speaker 2 (49:43.126)
a ban per se in the same way that that stuff has been outlawed in certain states, which are then again being taken into the Supreme Court with the ACLU and you know, blah, blah, blah, we know where it goes from there. But like US versus Scrumetti. Okay, so there's that kind of stuff, right? But then in terms of like, it just makes it harder. It makes it harder for some people under the age of 19.

to get hormones and surgeries, and it depends a lot on their personal circumstances. what about Medicaid? I have a lot of families where they have, let's say, an 18-year-old who's really keen to get on Medicaid and maybe has a friend coaching them through how to do that. Since Medicaid is government-related, does that mean that that won't be an option anymore?

Yeah, so that is explicitly laid out in the order that HHS shall, consistent with applicable law, take all appropriate actions to end it and says that Medicaid might be involved. Now, I just use the phrase consistent with applicable law. You see that a lot in the orders where this is as a responsible phrase to include. It means that these are not dictator orders. They're saying respect the law as it is. But it's also a little bit of a red flag for all of us. And you know what? There might be like

weird little regulations in the nooks and crannies that we can't change. And HHS and the lawyers at HHS are going to look into that right now and see exactly what we can and can't do. you know, there could be some negative surprises in the future where it's like, there's something we can't get around. And so we have to still pay for this. But clearly, it seems like the energy and the will is there to try to cut it out. And Medicaid is listed specifically.

And there's also, as we've heard in the gender medicine context, it seems like medical providers may be engaging in some fraud, for example, by saying that a girl who wants to be a boy has a hormone deficiency because she doesn't have all the same testosterone that an actual boy has. And so, you know, they'll falsify the records and make it look like she's a boy with a hormone deficiency and actually even like falsify her sex, it sounds like their allegations.

Speaker 2 (51:54.806)
Yeah, I'm really, really glad that you brought up insurance fraud. This is a big problem and I want to explain it from the standpoint of someone who has been an official provider of billable services using insurance. Now, I will stipulate I have a master's degree, plenty of clinical experience, I've worked with insurance for years, I'm a pretty smart person and I still don't understand insurance. It gives me a headache.

I, no matter how much time I spend studying insurance, I still, it's still just as obtuse as it ever was to me. That being said, I did for many years for my work, have to work with insurance. So I understood things like diagnosis codes and billing codes, which are, you know, form the backbone of the insurance billing practices. And there are regulations,

that are meant to ensure the fidelity of medical and mental health services. So for example, as a mental health provider, when someone comes in for their initial meeting, there's a billing code for doing an evaluation. And when you bill for that evaluation, there are certain things that you are telling the insurance company you did in that meeting, certain information that you tried to obtain about the patient.

then you have maybe a provisional diagnosis at first, maybe you clarify the diagnosis later, but there always has to be a diagnosis if you're gonna bill the insurance. A lot of people don't know this. A lot of people go to therapy having their insurance billed, never knowing they have a diagnosis. Now that diagnosis might be something like unspecified anxiety. It might be really vague, but it's something if your insurance is being billed, right? So the code has to match the amount of time that was spent with the patient.

Who was in the room? Was this individual therapy? Was it family therapy? Did you meet with, let's say, the patient's parent without them? Because then that's called family therapy without patient. So there's stuff about billing codes being accurate. Diagnosis codes have to be justified. Treatment plans have to match the diagnosis. So for example, you're not going to, if someone has that, let's say, so-called unspecified anxiety, which is a really big diagnosis,

Speaker 2 (54:06.616)
you're not gonna recommend intensive outpatient therapy. You're gonna recommend intensive outpatient therapy if someone, let's say, has a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and a history of a suicide attempt, which is a much more severe diagnosis. So, you know, that's a context in which I know about this stuff, right? The diagnosis codes and the billing codes. Now, it's well understood in the mental health scene that sometimes providers...

fudge or stretch things just a little bit, you know, like if you know you want to be able to keep seeing your patient and they don't really meet criteria. So you're supposed to be as accurate as you possibly can in that process. But, you know, that's why when you worked for a large company like it did before you had to attend all these trainings on insurance fraud to make sure you were not committing it. So that's the background that I just wanted to like

bring up for listeners to understand a little bit about how I know about insurance fraud. Now that being said, insurance fraud is when you lie about either of these two codes. What is the diagnosis? And then what are the services that you're providing? And are those services a match for that diagnosis? You're not going to prescribe chemotherapy for a bacterial infection, right? That doesn't match.

So in the world of so-called gender-affirming care, you just brought up this really important, again, loophole, because that's part of what I want to find out today, is like, what are the loopholes? What are the forms of backlash that we can expect? What are all the ways that some of these things could go wrong or the potential consequences? And one of those is that the people who believe in this stuff, who really believe that they're doing such good for the world by participating in so-called gender-affirming care,

they are just going to maybe feel more fired up and defiant than ever and in that spirit potentially feel justified in doing something that they might feel ethical qualms about in a different situation. Something like lying to an insurance company or lying to a patient or lying to the government about what exactly it is you're doing. So that's where the diagnosis gets stretched, right? That's where

Speaker 2 (56:24.106)
If you're not allowed to bill for gender-affirming hormone treatment, as it were, anymore, now you're billing as if this person has an endocrine disorder. And I've seen that on X, too. I've seen people posting about this made-up billing code of endocrine disorder in someone who either has no endocrine disorder or the only reason that they have an endocrine disorder is because they're on these damn drugs in the first place. So it's completely atrogenic in nature. So people do need to understand that this is happening. And as a lawyer, what can you tell us about...

any recourse with regard to insurance fraud.

I think that we're going to see finally some enforcement on that front. So first of all, I think there's probably a lot of bad stuff going on, including under categories that we're not even considering. Because when you look at an organization that is engaged in one sort of misconduct, that serious misconduct, they are often involved in other serious misconduct too, because they have a fundamentally rotten culture. I'll be investigating somebody for defrauding consumers, and I'll just realize like, they are really underpaying the women, sexually harassing them all the time. Like, they're just doing all this stuff.

Yeah, it's the same culture. So and also I've heard rumors about the gender affirming care thing, you know, I think that the more is going to come out in next couple of years. And what's interesting about these orders and just the fact that Trump is elected is that up until now, all the investigation of this potential issues, for example, Medicaid fraud has been carried out by the states and particularly red states, which tend to have, you know, the states have fewer resources than the federal government, but also like red states tend to have fewer, they have smaller governments, you know, because

They don't believe in government. we're talking about like these states with relatively stretched budgets trying to handle all this potential fraud. And now all of sudden the federal government is joining the game. Way more lawyers. And apparently the will to do something about it. So I think, mean, just from my own experience writing my blog, I've just found any time I turn over a rock, maybe like 90 % of the time when I turn over a rock, I find something amazing.

Speaker 1 (58:23.266)
Like this field is just so gross. There's so much bad behavior everywhere you look that I feel like once you just stick some lawyers in there who are like pretty smart, they work for the federal government, they have subpoena power, like they're gonna find something almost everywhere they look. And I this is extraordinary because I, even for my job, I do investigations and I always, you you kind of expect that a lot of your time, maybe most of your time will be spent going down roads that really don't turn into anything.

You find out there was a good reason that the company did XYZ thing, or it's not that big of a deal, or something, or you just kind of, your hypothesis was wrong. But when I'm doing an investigation just on the side for this gender stuff, I'm constantly hitting pay dirt. It's just, not like anything else I've ever investigated in my life. So I'm just very excited about the fact that all these lawyers for the federal government are going to start investigating with subpoena power, this thing that has been so easy to find fun stuff on just being myself on like late night on the internet.

Wow, okay, so from your very informed perspective, you actually feel quite hopeful about this.

Yeah, I think that every time they ask a question, like, I 90 % of the time that they ask a question, they're going to get an amazing answer back. Like, from the universe. Like, just like, they're gonna get like this tranche of documents. It's like, holy, my God. Look, every day. Like, it'll be amazing.

Very interesting. Well, you know what, where I'm starting to think about too is like, Trump has been talking to the presidents of our neighbors to the north and south and agreeing on these plans to secure our borders from fentanyl and trafficking and things like that. And I haven't looked into how that's going. I don't know the details. I just know that it's taking place. And it's like if...

Speaker 2 (01:00:00.768)
If we can focus on that issue, I wonder if there's the political will to look at this black market for hormones. It's very common. mean, between Plume, which is not even black market, just the out there in the open, There's, you know, what, a hundred bucks a month for so-called gender affirming care online with someone who's never even met you in person. There's that, right? And then there's just people just ordering these drugs and getting them for friends and things like that.

If we can stop the flow of fentanyl at the borders, we probably have the resources to stop the flow of these other life altering drugs.

I hope so. I'm not an expert on the medicine, but are some of the hormones that the males take, like just birth control pills? Is that accurate? I think they also have testosterone blockers though, and those sound like they're more expensive.

I mean, so, yeah, so like when a male is working with a doctor, a typical course of action would be to take spironolactone or similar testosterone suppressor for a couple months and then start estrogen. there's some combination of estrogen and progesterone. And with birth control, it's also estrogen and progesterone. I'm not sure about the ratios or doses, but I mean, yeah, it could probably be like a modification.

on birth. I mean, considering how easy it is for any, I'm just doing this math now, right? Like any woman could easily obtain a prescription for birth control pills and then turn around and give it away or sell it to her, her friend who she's an ally for, so to speak, in their language. So I'm sure some of that happens. It's not to say that it's the same like,

Speaker 2 (01:01:54.37)
dosing or timing that a so-called gender-affirming endocrinologist would recommend to that male, but I am sure it is happening.

Yeah. And I guess I should say, I don't believe any of what we're talking about is in the orders explicitly, but you know, but also we haven't seen what happens once the country has really made it difficult to access the drugs. So right now, maybe the black market is not as like prominent and elaborate as it could be in the future. Like right now, I mean, there are states with bans, but I guess people who are really intent on getting the drugs go to another state. But once that tightens up, maybe a black market will emerge that

does require a concerted focus or that does kind of command more attention.

It's definitely already there. I just, don't know how big it is. Yeah. Yeah. I have an interview coming out right after yours. I recorded it before this meeting with you, but one of your conditions for meeting with me was that we record and release within a short time period because like you say, things change so quickly. You want the episode to be relevant and current. So my interview that will come out right after this is with Shane Cole and he's a detransitioner who has a

pretty fascinating story and also very important story, I think, for any parent of young men to know about the impact of hypnosis, excuse me, hypnosis-y porn on young males and what it's doing to their brains. And so he shares about how he just got his estrogen on the black market. So it's just like one data point, one recent data point. But yeah, I don't know the nature and extent of it. Let's talk about...

Speaker 2 (01:03:37.452)
the military one and the women's sports one. So unless there's anything else you want to say to wrap up what we were just talking about.

we could address a female genital mutilation. know that, so female genital mutilation is brought up in the order about gender medicine. And that refers to a statute, a federal statute, there are also state statutes as well, which ban female genital mutilation, meaning like a cutting of the clitoris. it's, and you know, it seems to relate to ritual practices in other parts of the world, where this is done to young girls in order to, you know, it's, I don't know what to say about it.

something that we banned as a society. And that's why the law is on the books because of that history. And it's, you even though I described it as like some sort of ritual cutting, it's actually drafted broadly to cover pretty much anything you would do to a girl's genitals, anybody under 18. And so that's a crime and it's referenced in the genital, in the so-called mutilation executive order.

the attorney general is supposed to look into that and see whether that law should be applied. So I hear people on the other side just freaking out about that and saying like, that has nothing to do with gender affirming care. You're just totally making stuff up like to be inflammatory. no, there's a very real reason why that is in the order. And it's because any sort of genital surgery fits the definition of female genital mutilation and is illegal for minors.

Now, what I find interesting about this is, of course, they'll come back and say, well, that doesn't happen to minors. Nobody does that for minors. And that may be true. And the reason is that it is the only practice in WPATH that has an age limit on it, an age floor. Famously, WPATH cut all its age floors, but not for phalloplasty or genital surgery for girls. And I think the reason why they left that in there is because they know it's illegal. I mean, these guys had more legal advice than they had medical advice.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33.038)
So they know that not only is it illegal, but that the technical term for it is female genital mutilation. And in fact, if you do this to an adult, it's also female genital mutilation is just not a crime. So that is like a really ugly aspect of gender medicine that is kind of suppressed. But I think the other guys totally realized that it's applicable. And it raises questions about, yeah, what does make this different from this really horrible thing that we have criminalized? So that's why President Trump put it in the order. It's good that he put it in there and it was not just for show.

Okay, well a couple thoughts this brings to mind. One is testosterone also creates female genital mutilation. I'm not sure if it would fit the legal definition, but testosterone can permanently alter a woman's genitalia, including in very painful ways, as you well know. Just for anyone who's somehow hearing this for the first time, to name a few ways that testosterone modifies female's genitals, it causes enlargement of the clitoris, which can be quite painful.

It can cause chafing, for instance. And then it also changes the tissues of the vaginal canal and the lubrication in a way that can cause a lot of painful chafing and atrophy. It also can impact the bladder and the whole urogenital system. So I just needed to name that. I'm very curious whether you happen to know whether those chemically induced changes would happen to meet the definition for FGM.

I think the statute was designed for the surgical... Yeah, but that being said, this is an area where the order says, attorney general, sit down and figure this out and see what the laws apply to. So they could do some research and see whether it does apply to the testosterone context.

recall.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24.622)
Okay. One more thought then just to also add is would labiaplasty count as female genital mutilation? I've done interviews for those who haven't listened to every single episode of my show ever. I've done interviews with two people on this. So one was Simon Essler who made a documentary called Cut Daughters of the West.

I named that episode after him and his movie, and I think that's why it didn't get a lot of listens, but it's actually a really good deep dive into the plastic surgery industry and labiaplasty. So I definitely recommend checking that one out. It's from a while back. And then I also spoke with Jessica Penn on this podcast who had labiaplasty and is raising awareness about the damage that it does to young women. So those two interviews are very enlightening about this trend of women being made to feel by the...

cosmetic surgery industry that there's something wrong with the natural shape of their genitals and then thinking that they need surgery to make them look better. And many of these surgeries do result in permanent harm, including nerve damage. So I don't know if labiaplasty, it's probably already illegal, I would think, for minors in this country, but I don't actually know.

Yeah, I don't, there's not a lot of limitations on surgeries actually, but it might fit the definition of FGM because the FGM definition has like five parts to it and it lists all sorts of, you know, damage that can be done to the genitals.

Okay. Well, recovering a lot of important ground. Should we move on to the military one?

Speaker 1 (01:09:02.52)
Sure. So one of these orders is about, let me see what it's called. These have very exciting names. So this one is Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness. So as you can tell from the title, it's kind of the theme is, it's not inclusion. And there are other orders that we've heard about as well, of course, cutting DEI and things like this. So it sort of fits in with that theming of we don't care about inclusion and equity, we care about

merit and we want the best. then the spirit of this order is that trans-identified people have medical issues and psychological issues. I mean, they're diagnosed with gender dysphoria. And in particular, if they're getting surgeries, then that means they're going to be knocked out of commission for months on end, whether it's mastectomy or vaginoplasty, whatever. so that means they're...

not able to do their jobs while they're enlisted. so Biden had actually instituted regulations that gave exemptions for this sort of care. generally somebody would be barred from joining the military if they needed this much time out to get surgeries and whatnot. But that was modified to allow trans-identified people to get their surgeries and still belong to the military. So a big piece of this order is winding that back and just sort of

saying that the same rules apply to everyone. And it's been, and this one does have harsh rhetoric and it has been construed as like a quote unquote ban, which I'm not sure that it really is again. I mean, it talks about how it basically disparages people who identify, have like a gender identity that is different from their actual sex or people who asked to be addressed by pronouns that are, you know, don't match their sex. It disparages those people outright.

I don't know whether, I mean, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02.762)
So one question I would have for like a military lawyer is, if somebody identifies as trans, but they're not getting surgeries, like they're able to physically do their job in the military, are they kicked out? And I say that you need a specialist to answer that because, know, in the civilian world, people have First Amendment rights. So you can have all the, and freedom of religion. So you can have all kinds of beliefs about your sex and you're protected. But of course, the military, that's different. So I don't know what this is a ban. think it makes it

But what it does is it makes it a lot harder or impossible for somebody who's going to be getting a lot of surgery soon to belong to the military or to decide to embark on surgeries once they're already enlisted. And it also bars, you know, and it establishes sex segregated sleeping quarters and whatnot. you know, it says that males cannot sleep in women's bunk.

Right, and based on the first executive order that we talked about, so there would be the sex segregated space and also that person who identifies as trans could not count on the military to so-called respect their identity and call them by their chosen name and pronouns as part of their military service, right? They would be expected be there's definitely out. their sex. Yo, one thing I just want to flag.

Oh, sorry, just for listeners. just found that the name of the episode, it's episode number 70 from 2023. It's called Navy veteran and med student tells all how far his institutional capture gone in 2023 with Sarah. So this was an anonymous whistleblower who came on my podcast to describe an inside look at how much the military has actually been prioritizing, you know, sort of pandering to the pressure of trans rights activists at the expense of excellence. And it gives, think,

you know, the fact that I had this interview back in 2023 gives a good snapshot of what the problem has been that necessitated this type of executive order. And I mean, it's like, it's just, I mean, talk about luxury beliefs and first world problems that, that, the military, which is fundamentally it's, it's, it's T. Lowe's, if you will, is about

Speaker 2 (01:13:12.91)
keeping the people of a country safe. Now, whether you agree with the actions of a military, that's a different question. But if the fundamental purpose of something called a military is to keep the people of that country safe, then it just shows how far removed from reality we are and how, again, much of a luxury belief this is and how much of a first world problem it is that we've allowed any of these woke beliefs to get in the way of prioritizing

safety because when lives are on the line, it really is a matter of life and death. And something like, I mean, here's another interview I've done that's relevant to the subject, breast binding in a bomb shelter with Maya Poet, her experience of being in a war zone and questioning while bombs were going off and she was in his bomb shelter, like, would I be, would wearing this binder that is inhibiting my breathing and takes time to put on and take off

potentially inhibit me from being able to move quickly in a life and death situation.

Yeah, absolutely. This is an instance where I wish we had better media because I think this is being reported as a transgender ban. Perhaps the most edgy language is being quoted. But then when you drill down into it, you're saying, well, this is just kind of removing an exemption that was added a few years ago, which was creating a kind of a special category. mean, Americans don't really support special categories in general. We like having the same standards apply to everyone. So I think that if people understood this aspect of the order more,

then it would be sort of almost a consensus. But unfortunately, like I said, some media outlets are just calling it a ban and making it sound like, if you even have a thought in your head that you're the other sex, then you're kicked out immediately. And I don't see that exactly here.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01.312)
It's just, there's just such an obvious lack of pragmatic thinking. I saw people arguing about some like military code of some, some dress code that impacted what kind of manicures women were able to get. And I'm sitting here with my manicured nails in my comfortable first world existence where I'm a knowledge worker. I'm working from home, sitting comfortably talking on a computer. And that's how I make my living. I'm

fully aware that there is a vast difference between my experience and that of someone who has to use their body to work. And the love of my life is one of those people who works with his body. And you know what? He keeps his nails trimmed short because that's what he has to do for work. And the fact that people were arguing about whether women in the military should be able to have long, colorful nails, it's like, you're in the military.

I understand the desire to have pretty nails, but maybe you're in the wrong job. if gardening was a bigger priority in my life right now, you can bet I'd give up the pretty nails. And I've definitely gone through phases where gardening is a pretty big priority. So I just, the insanity is like next level when it comes to this military stuff, because it's like priorities people. We're talking about readiness to save lives.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25.23)
Yeah, and even if it's not as important as military service, I mean, as a lawyer, you have to wear a suit. And what's really amused me lately coming out of the transgender discourse, Chase Strangio, but someone else recently as well, just making this huge deal about the fact that when we were in law school, like in the 2000s, we were told, look, there are certain jobs where women should wear skirts. Like that, and when I say should, it's like, well, you know, if you're working for a judge, the judge will expect it. Like on one level, that's crazy and super sexist. On another level, like who cares?

And the reason they were saying that is because it's kind of specific to the lawyer context. So you want to show that you respect authority, because that's kind of what the law is, especially if you're a young person. And so it's about like, it's tied to all this tradition that isn't really about sex or trying to make women uncomfortable. Men have to wear uncomfortable things too, like ties. And it's been really amusing to me to see that trotted out recently as like this traumatizing event for women that they were told.

Like it's better to wear skirts a certain kind of interview when they were in law school. Just wear the skirt.

for those who are just listening on audio, like, Glenna's sitting here with short hair. Like, she's not, like, all, like, dolled up with, you know, she's not a fancy looking lady. So this is coming from someone who, who that might not be her personal preference either. But I think maybe we're just relating over the fact that we've gotten so, like, soft and cuddle, coddled that, like, everything has been rebranded this injustice rather than viewed in terms of practicality or tradition or etiquette.

Yeah, it only has all this meaning because you're giving it the meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04.184)
Like people were, they try to it as some kind of sexual harassment thing and it's like this girl can go below your knees, who cares?

Hmm. Anyhow, what else do need to know about the military one?

Well, to your point about how the military's been really co-opted and turned woke recently, so there is a line in this order, and much of this is underlined, so the secretary shall promptly issue directives for Department of Defense to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage. Do best achieve the policy. Yeah, so they're just going straight to the jugular of pronoun use, and I think that might wind up pulling in other policies as well or trainings.

And I have to highlight one more thing about the practicality of this, which is that we all have a sex recognition instinct. And those of us who are fortunate enough to grow up before transgender ideology took over the dominant culture got to, you know, our brains developed relatively intact with regard to just being able to have our sex recognition instinct as humans. And now, since the main thing I do professionally is talk to

concerned parents of trans identified youth about the details of their communication and relationships with those kids. That is literally how I spend my days. And so I know exactly what these kids say. And one thing that I heard earlier today from a family that I've heard many times before is the kids saying, well, how do you know that you're female? How do you know that you're male? How do you know that you're a man? How do you know when you meet someone, whether they're a man or a woman? Like these kids are asking these questions and it's total mental

Speaker 2 (01:19:41.442)
gymnastics and it reveals the extent of their own brainwashing. They're trying to corner their parents, but they're also kind of making you feel the confusion that they feel. And one of the techniques that I teach parents for how to respond to this is rather than reacting to it directly to zoom way out, find your empathy for the part of my language, but the mind fuckery of what they're going through and say, gosh, you know, it just sounds so hard.

to be a young person these days, because I grew up in the 70s or the 80s, or I grew up in Iran, or wherever this person's from. I grew up in this cultural context where it was never a question. It wasn't until I was 35, or whatever age, that I encountered this idea that a person could be anything other. And by then, I'd gone to have a life full of experiences where I never once questioned this. It doesn't mean I didn't have moments of hating being a girl.

or envying the boys or whatever. But the idea that I would ever question what I was, that was just, it was solid ground that I was standing on. And I just, it must be so hard growing up in a world where you question that all the time. So I kind of reframe it like for the parents.

But I also teach them in this way to demonstrate empathy and reframe it for the kids in a way that potentially in some cases might actually plant the seed of some growing awareness that I am psychologically abusing myself by questioning, by subjecting myself to the torture of constantly questioning whether the ground beneath my feet is shifting or not. Where I was going is that we have the sex recognition instinct.

And most of us who grew up in an earlier time didn't question, do I know that I know that that person's male? How do I know that I'm female? And the thing is, it slows you down. It slows you down so much to not be able to trust your instincts. And again, when it comes to the military, you're talking like milliseconds can make the difference between life and death. I wholeheartedly support.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54.828)
this kind of measure in the military because the last thing, like when you are in a life and death situation, the last thing you should be thinking about is trying to remember the pronouns of the person next to you.

Like you don't need that! That is friction, that's interference.

Yeah, I can't even imagine having to sit through these trainings because even though I've always worked in liberal places, I've just totally escaped the crazy trainings. Like my employers just have those things that you take online, those modules, and you click through them really fast. But then I hear these things, and I the military might be one of those environments, right, where they're really trying to rewire your brain.

Was there more you wanted to say about the military one? Because I think we still have one more to go, the women's sports one.

Yes. So just this afternoon, the president signed another executive order about protecting women's sports. Let me see. What is that called? Keeping men out of women's sports. So they keep getting blunter and blunter, I guess. And this perfect keeping the men out of women's sports. Yeah, see, I mean, these are plain English. Anybody can pick them up and read them and understand the policy of the US government. It's great. So we have this.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04.846)
As usual, there's like this nice preamble where it talks about why this is a problem. It says it's demeaning and unfair for women to be pitted against men. Yes, it is. And it denies them an equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports. And this roughly falls into, there's kind of two things going on here. And one of them is saying in schools, Title IX is going to be enforced to protect girls' sports. this part, like we knew this was coming. We knew the education department would do this.

go out there and if these leagues are letting boys win all the girls' trophies, then that is discriminatory. So investigate that and enforce that as necessary. The other piece is that it tries to get at other sports as well that are not taking place in school. Of course, the government doesn't have such direct authority in adult sports leagues, but they've really thought of some ideas to try to have influence there. And one of them is just, like in so many of the orders, kind

convening a task force, talking to the state attorney general and seeing what we can do next. There's also some intriguing specific points like, you know, if a man is trying to, from another country, is trying to come here to play a women's sport, he's not allowed to, so keep him out. So that was interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, okay. That's a bad reason to come to America. they're so-

I don't know how many of those there are, I never want to say that because then the advocates come back and they're like, actually that has happened 7,041 times so far. hey.

What's that website that lists them all? I think there's a couple. She won.org. He cheated. She won. Is he cheated and she won. Yeah, for anyone who actually wants to look at the statistics on how many medals and scholarships and prizes have been stolen from women.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52.94)
Yeah. And then you zoom out to all the women who were affected because they were in those leagues. And I believe I saw that Trump kind of cited some statistics today. So I think he was very clued in to that record keeping, maybe those websites. And that's now on the public record. That's great. So this also brings up the Olympics and it says, well, what is our angle on the Olympics? So again, know, don't have, America doesn't have direct power over what the Olympics do, but it says the secretary of state shall

use all appropriate and available measures to see that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events to promote fairness, safety, and so on. So, I mean, that's interesting because we just came off of an Olympic game where, you know, girls were beat up by these two guys in boxing. And so it's exciting to see that we're going to be trying to do what we can to protect our athletes and protect female athletes across the world going forward.

that's inspiring. And there was something else, we're kind of, is something about rescinding funds, you know, if we're supporting something abroad, then I think we're supposed to yank that if they are letting males compete against women.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03.15)
So that is exciting to see. I hadn't thought, I'm always surprised at how ambitious these orders are. And maybe that's just me coming in. was like, don't, you know, okay, the campaign is exciting, but I don't know what's going to happen. And so far it's, you know, it looks as though they are talking to every advocacy group in our gender critical space. It's saying, like, what can be done? And, you know, entertaining ideas that are touching on all sorts of things, that these orders are almost comprehensive in terms of.

Not comprehensive in terms of what they'll achieve. mean, I'm not saying that they'll fix everything. I'm saying they're comprehensive in the sense that it's hard to think of ways that the government could be even more aggressive than what is being contemplated in these orders. You know, if they were more aggressive, would actually be inappropriate. Yeah.

I have an idea and I guess this is my opportunity to say it and to ask my listeners to please get my idea to our administration. I would love to speak with anyone in our administration about what needs to be done about our field, my field. So I've yet to see an executive order addressing the topic of how these so-called conversion therapy bands have been weaponized to destroy the mental health field.

and to destroy young people's bodies. And I personally might not return to doing therapy until this is fixed. I have the luxury of saying that because my, know, starting this podcast completely changed my life trajectory. I didn't know it would. Now I have people from around the world contacting me for guidance and I can just provide educational guidance and that's how I make my living.

So not all therapists have the luxury to do what I'm doing and it's really tearing our field apart. I know so many therapists at their wits end. I am, as we speak, working on my first continuing education program for therapists to help with a small part of this. But the problem is, as I understand it, and Glenna, maybe you can actually explain how this worked because the details are very fuzzy to me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07.448)
But I know sometime during the Obama administration that the definition of conversion therapy was changed so that it went from sexual orientation change efforts to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts, SOGIECE. And so that was redefined federally, but then every state has its own laws against the so-called conversion practices.

You know, in Oregon, their so-called conversion practices are banned for under 18s. There was a bill that they were trying to pass to expand that law for everyone. I testified against it. That bill did not go through. I don't know what's happening with it currently, you know, but a lot of states have some kind of so-called conversion therapy ban in which

the abusive practices associated with so-called gay conversion therapy, which included things like electroconvulsive therapy. One of the abusive stories I heard involved a gay man being told to sniff dog poop while masturbating. We're talking like horribly abusive and discredited practices got lumped together with anything that can vaguely remotely be construed as the idea that a

therapist is so-called, you know, trying to change a person's gender identity and expression. So it's just created such a chilling environment for therapists to do their work. Therapists are already a pretty risk-averse bunch because they work so hard to get their licenses and they have the fear of God drilled into them in grad school about what can go wrong if you have a litigious client. So most therapists are not, don't feel comfortable taking that risk and they're avoiding helping people, which has created this dynamic where

there's no proper mental health treatment. Well, there's very limited proper mental health treatment for trans-identified young people. It's a serious problem. And I feel like with our government pumping out all these executive orders about all these other issues, and just like you said, this is what inspired me that you said that I wanted to chime in on, said, feels like they're talking to every special interest group in our gender critical scene. I'm like, please talk to me. Talk to the therapist.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31.608)
talk to the, as I call us, sanity specialists, those of us who are supposed to know the difference between sanity and insanity and help people stay sane, talk to us about what is impeding us from doing our jobs, because this woke DEI stuff is really getting in the way and no more, we don't see that any more of an extreme that when it comes to this SOGIECE thing.

So if anyone has listened to this and thought, wow, great idea Stephanie, the administration really needs to do something about this, please share this episode with people in the administration or people who know people in the administration. I would love an audience with them and I would love to connect them to other concerned mental health professionals. And we would love to help you draft some legislation or executive order or whatever it is that can actually.

start taking some corrective measures as to how mental health providers are allowed to provide services in this country. Sorry, Glenna, I had to throw that in there because I was in a sired in the moment, even though you weren't even done talking about the women's sports.

No, but now you got me thinking, I want to brainstorm what can be done because as you alluded to, is mostly the professions are generally regulated at the state level, not just therapy, but law and medicine and all that. And so at the state level is where you're seeing these bans on so-called conversion therapy. And as you say, they're combined with the gay conversion therapy thing, which is like, has much stronger basis. I mean, the trans conversion therapy is no basis whatsoever, is totally illegitimate, that whole concept. So they piggybacked their...

They got into law there. The federal government might have some role, like I guess, I'm wondering, I don't know exactly what you referred to with Obama defining it a certain way. Now I'm really curious, but I don't know if this had to do with like Medicaid, Medicare or something, but people really have to worry about what's going on at the state level. Now, one of the obvious attacks on these bans is that they violate first amendment rights. And so that argument has been made.

Speaker 1 (01:32:33.976)
I mean, the kind of scary thing about that is you might wind up wiping away the gay conversion therapy a la, right alongside trans, so-called conversion therapy. And so that makes some of us nervous. that being said, the anti-gay conversion therapy thing, feel like it's so, I mean, it does happen. I've seen your interview with Leigh and Eulery. so, I mean, so the gay conversion therapy thing, does happen, but I don't know if it's...

possible to get at it with these laws anyway, because they're happening in the context of these, like, either religions or cults and places where lot of other illegal stuff is going on too, and it's somehow...

Exactly. like I don't, I really, really highly doubt that there are licensed mental health professionals trying to do that sort of stuff. Now I have talked with licensed mental health professionals who have a strong like faith-based lens and who argue that therapists should have the freedom to talk with people who also have a faith-based lens who feel like their same sex attraction is unwanted according to their faith.

And that's something that I'm just agnostic on. like, that's not my issue. don't, I'm not a faith-based counselor and I'm also not a religious person struggling with same-sex attraction and in a way that feels uncomfortable for me. So, and it's just, I respect that there are therapists who feel like that's like the law is an overreach, but I think the things that we really need to protect people from are things that are just so obviously abusive on their surfaces.

that like, even if there was.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10.158)
The dog poo thing. They don't have to call it conversion therapy. just like, you're not allowed to- And the thing is like-

Yeah, and I mean, the thing is like there are already laws specifying what defines ethical psychotherapy and there are already measures for patients to submit complaints about bad therapists and patients submit their patients submit complaints about therapists who did a lot less bad stuff than that, you know, because the therapist made some comment about their lifestyle that they found offensive or and

And therapists are already very afraid of those complaints. do have, by the way, as a resource, somewhere on my blog, I have a post for detransitioners that is how to file a complaint against the gender-affirming therapist that you saw. Because I'm like, OK, if these systems exist to protect consumers of mental health services, then what have detransitioners got to lose by submitting anonymous complaints? Because you're not

deciding to go through the grueling process of filing a lawsuit, which a lot of people don't have the emotional stamina for, even if they do have the legal resources. You're not putting your name and face out there. This is an anonymous system designed to protect consumers in which you are giving your feedback to state licensing boards saying, this therapist affirmed my gender identity and in retrospect, I feel like that harmed me. And I think that these boards need to hear from people. So I'm like, hey, what have you got to lose?

You know, we might as well use these boards in this other way, since there are trans rights activists coming after people like me do these boards. Anyway, sorry, I'm taking over again. It's the end of the day, so my brain is like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:54.38)
No, that's really good point. Now I feel bad I said these were comprehensive. This is, of course, and we're talking about different therapist issues. So one is the conversion therapy bands and the other is bad therapists who should lose their licenses. And what role could the federal government have there? Yeah, being a lawyer, my brain is like, well, we need to fund lawyers to defend the therapist who could be a good therapist. And we need to, yeah.

No, that's a, honestly, Glenna, like that is a contribution you could make if you're ever inspired, given your connections to your colleagues. Like my colleagues are so afraid of losing their licenses or of just having to go through the process. Cause I share my story. I'm like, Hey, I didn't lose my license. I survived. You know, and a lot of my colleagues are like, good for you. I don't want to go through that. You know? Yeah. I'm like, I understand. I didn't want to go through it either.

So yeah, I I think it would really fortify my colleagues to know that there's some group of lawyers out there that's aware of this issue that's ready to come to our aid if we find ourselves in a situation. I think it would embolden a lot of therapists to take more risks.

That is a really inspiring idea. So one project I have now that is in its infancy is organizing lawyers. So we're called the Gender Critical Law Society. And I have several dozen lawyers and a Slack right now, and we're working on various projects. And these are projects specifically related to legal practice. So what goes on in the courtroom? Can the judge order you to use wrong sex pronouns? I think no, and I want to prove it using legal argument.

So organizing and organizing lawyers to help clients across the country is something that I really like to do. And of course, there are efforts already underway. There are different networks, kind of organized around specific issues. But the networks are great, but they're just too small. Like, we just need to be recruiting so many more lawyers, getting them off the sidelines. All these people, like, you in my social circles, I know so many people who are secret turfs.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02.04)
But especially people in private practice, they don't want to come off the sidelines. They live in liberal communities, and so they don't want to hold themselves out as gender critical lawyers who, for example, would represent therapists like you. And we just need to break down all the taboos so that they come out. And because I think that representing the therapists like we're talking about, I don't think it would be a big lift because the statutes are actually drafted in a way that I think would be impossible for one of these people to actually win a lawsuit against a therapist. They all have weasel words added to the end.

where it's like, this statute doesn't cover if they're exploring the gender versus trying to change the gender. And it just makes it vague enough that a plaintiff couldn't win a case. So I understand why the therapists are very leery of going near it and they don't want the trouble. But I also think of it as a lawyer, like, the plaintiff can't win. Like, these are doomed. So it might not be that much work for a lawyer to do pro bono, but we just need to raise awareness and get people interested in the project.

Hmm. know, it's like crazy that like one of the things therapists are afraid to do is provide factual information. Because I've talked to therapists, like I've looked at sanction lists to see if anyone was sanctioned over this issue and then contacted the few cases of people being sanctioned over this issue and heard like the thing that seemed to go wrong.

What do you

Speaker 2 (01:39:25.708)
was the therapist saying, there's someone in your life considering a gender transition procedure. Well, here are the facts. No, and then that person submits a complaint.

Again, nothing came of it, just like a slap on the wrist, you know? But anyway, I'm glad that we're, you know, that we're inspiring each other and that you are working on this. It's really good to know. The network that you're a part of, is that something that you currently can tell people where to look for it, or is it still information?

Yeah, it's information, I have, so we're on Twitter, but I haven't like officially launched. but if you are a, I'll give you a link because I'm recruiting lawyers and law students and I go on X of once in a while and I push out the message and I get more. So, I can give you that link. Yeah. Cause we want to build up. I my dream is to just have hundreds of lawyers across the country. I mean, we, we, we people in every, every County.

who just hold gender-critical beliefs and are willing to help.

That's awesome. I know there's like a database for conservative lawyers, but that's not necessarily going to be the right fit for, you I think it's helpful to have people specifically say gender critical. And there a lot of people who are gender critical who aren't particularly conservative with regard to anything else anyway. And sometimes it feels bad to only be given those options. It's like I'm either on board with the stuff or I'm conservative. Like what? So.

Speaker 2 (01:40:59.714)
That feels like a good place to leave things. I know we didn't cover that last one in too much depth, but it sounds like people hopeful overall about the Saving Women's Sports one. And you will send me those links, because we're going to push out this episode with the fastest turnaround time possible, which is coming out Monday. And we'll make sure that I have those links to include in the show notes along with your bio. Yeah, just any other lingering thoughts you want to share before we wrap up?

I'm so glad we had this conversation today and you made me think a lot about the therapist's legal issues. So maybe we can continue this in the future. I hope you get your executive order too. You guys deserve one.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your valuable work, Glenna.

Thank

Speaker 2 (01:42:10.294)
and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Aerman,

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.