You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Róisín Michaux: [00:00:00] You can see why people with actual disorders of sexual development want nothing to do with these people. You know, because they're basically saying anyone is intersex. If the ultimate goal is to say there are not two sexes, there were not two types of bodies, there are all kinds of bodies and it's all on a spectrum.

And the proof that it's all on the spectrum is like, look at this. This person has da, da, da chromosomes and also has like a micro penis and blah blah. So that's supposed to be the proof that sexes aren't real, and that's very useful for the trans. Movement on an intellectual level. They want to disrupt the idea of the sex binary, but on a practical level for themselves.

They wanna be able to change their documents if they switch between genders, and they also want to be able to get the hormones on demand. The problem is that if you de pathologize intersex, which is their idea, then it's very difficult to march into the doctor and say, give me what I want 'cause I am intersex.

It's all political propaganda for the idea that sex is a spectrum. [00:01:00]

SKOT: You must be some kind of therapist

Stephanie Winn: today. My guest is Rosin Micha. She's an Irish writer based in Brussels, Belgium. She writes about women's rights and free speech in the context of the transgender movement. She's specifically interested in L-G-B-T-I-Q activism, activist relationship to European bureaucracies. The funding they receive. And how it is all led to deep anti-democratic policy capture.

Roe, welcome. Good to have you.

Róisín Michaux: Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

Stephanie Winn: So I've been following you for a while, but I reached out recently after this excellent article on your substack about intersex activism. And I always admire people who are able to keep track of the sort of details that you study as a journalist or those who study history and law.

'cause my brain has no ability to hold onto that information. And so there's a lot of really valuable context in this article that I'd like to talk to you about today. As I mentioned to you behind the scenes. And I will say to our [00:02:00] listeners now, I have a cold today. Again, I had a cold just like a month ago when I was talking to Anita Bartholomew, and uh, so you can hear that in my voice.

I'm gonna try to take a backseat and mute myself often. Um, so that's just a little bit of a context. So Rosin, it's so good to have you. Um, tell us about what inspired you to hone in on this issue of intersex activism as related to the transgender movement.

Róisín Michaux: There's a lot of money goes around for, um, various NGOs and projects in Brussels.

So the context in Europe is a little bit different, where it's very different from the context in the US in the sense that all these activist NGOs that you see in the US, they would get their money from philanthropists, uh, and foundations often. You do have government funding, you do have state funding paying for some of it.

Um, but in Europe, a lot of our NGOs that agitate for [00:03:00] LG BT IQ plus rights, uh, would be state funded. So they'd be getting money from the government or they'd be getting money from the supernational government that is the European Union, or they might get money from this other supernational government that we have called the Council of Europe.

So we've a whole bunch of stuff, bunch of different organizations that are all very much tied to the state, whereas the UK is very, or the us sorry, is very much, um. Rockefellers, MacArthurs Ford Foundation, uh, rich guys who we, we don't have a lot of those in, in Europe. So a lot of what, a lot of the blame for the crazy, uh, mania over of this type of activism over the last 20 years can be very directly tied to government policy.

Because once you have a government policy about a thing, then funding is made available for that thing. And I, I think, uh, it explains, it explains a lot of where the madness has come from. Because if, if you have a government policy that says, oh, [00:04:00] we're gonna, we have a new policy that we're going to improve the, the health and welfare of L-G-B-T-I-Q, that means there's money in there for the L, for the G, for the B, for the T, for the I and the Q.

So all these people come out of the, out of the walls looking for, looking for their bit of the pot, you know, so it's very, it's, it's quite simple how it happened in some ways and quite boring how this activism got so big. It's the same kind of model in the uk. Um, they, they have a lot of charities and they have a lot of charities that would get up money from the state as well.

So I noticed, obviously I've been looking into the LGBT part for a long time, but recently we started to get these organizations focused on intersex rights. And intersex is a funny one because it's, when you say intersex, people often think about castor, Sonia and sports, I think is that, that's maybe the first thing that comes into your mind.

Maybe when you think about [00:05:00] intersex or, I, I dunno if that's like, um, I find that if you're trying to talk to a, a normie about the trans issue and you get down to like the most basic facts, like human can't, humans can't change sex. Intersex is often a cudgel. Intersex is often the, the gi, the, the sort of slam dunk, well intersex people exist so.

I was interested first of all in, is that true? Are there all the turfs on Twitter will say, uh, everyone is either male or female. This is not true. Um, I, first of all, I wanted to know if that was true, but second of all, I wanted to know like, why was all this government money suddenly being spent on these intersex organizations?

Because suddenly we, the original one was called OII, which was anti-sex because it was started by a. Australian guy in France, I think. So it had a French name, and that was kind of the model of intersex organizing that was set up in all the different countries. So you have OII, [00:06:00] Germany, OI, I, Belgium, OII.

So you got all these little o iis pop up. They all have two or three people associated with them because as we know, uh, disorders of sexual development are very rare. So the question came up for me, first of all, why are all these o first of all, is this true that there's no such thing as, uh, you know, when people, when people use this gambit of intersex to disprove trans, is there any truth in it?

What I need to understand what I'm saying. Second of all, why are all these o these intersex organizations popping up everywhere if this thing is so rare? And third of all it, are we talking about people with disorders of sexual development? So I had all these questions, and my mission since I started getting into this was to just understand what's going on.

Like, I had a very, very humble goal at the very beginning was like, what's going on? You know, people are spending a lot of money on this. My government to spend a lot of money on this. Is it true? Is it is, is there some sort of, you know, fraud going on here? Because I, I don't see the benefit. I don't see that [00:07:00] people are getting, you know, things are going any better.

I actually see this active harm, so I want to understand like from very like basic level, what is this? And so I started looking into intersex and I discovered and if, if you want just the, the, the bottom line, it's all nonsense. Like it's pure nonsense. I suppose the most important takeaway for people to know is that there are a whole bunch of people who have disorders that they were born with that relate to the reproductive systems.

And then there are a whole other bunch of people who are queer theorists and they want to deconstruct sex and pretend sex isn't real and that it's on a spectrum and it's not. And they are two separate camps because you have a whole world of people of, with rare disorders who don't call themselves intersex at all.

And then you have a whole bunch of people who advocate for the idea of intersex. And they, they don't have any intersex conditions at all, but there's a teeny tiny overlap. And inside that overlap, there [00:08:00] are people with, with disorders of sexual development who wish to be queer. So this is, this is the teeny tiny of the Venn diagram.

This is the teeny tiny part. And I, I, I got, I asked perplexity AI to create this Venn diagram for me that says, people with reproductive problems, people who want queer theory to, to, to advocate for queer theory. Can you do the Venn diagram with the teeny tiny sliver in the middle. And that's what intersex activism is.

It's, and, and what I discovered was it's mostly XX females with something called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which causes them to produce excess, uh, androgens. So basically their, their girls were high tea to the point with they're all where they're often born with clitoris that are very big. Now, if you are a, if you are, if you've got con this CAH condition, you are much more likely to be a lesbian.

And you're much, much more likely than anyone else to have gender [00:09:00] dysphoria. So what we have here is the people who have one of these rare genetic disorders who also have the conditions or had the conditions when in development in the womb. That caused probably what led to gender dysphoria much later in life when they grew up.

So they grew up enough feeling very female. So that's sort of, when you look into all these organizations that, that get funding for intersex, now you'll find it's full of these girls. It's full of women who, I mean, some of them say it openly, some of them don't say it openly, but you can tell it's a kind of a morphology that you can sort of spot it because they're usually, uh, larger ladies, they, they take tea to become men, um, and they have a big chip on their shoulder often.

And this is crude, um, to say it, but. Because [00:10:00] a lot of them would've had their clitoris, which were too fallous, like paired down to make them look more like girls. So these girls grow up, feel male and are very resentful about what happened to their genitals. And they're right to be resentful because the model, which what I wrote about my article, the model that we were operating according to back then, and I'm talking about up until the two thousands, and it's all over now.

So that's another aspect of it. Um, those women w would have been what you might, you might go along with the hype and say they were butchered, they were mutilated at birth because they were trying to, the doctors were going along with John Money's, uh, ideas of, of what creates a healthy and normal human, which was match the genitals to whatever sex you want the kid to be.

And raise the kid, whatever kid, whatever way you want to be. So I dunno if that's too much, and I, and I've lost you now, but that's, that's sort of what, [00:11:00] what I found when I looked into intersex, what, what is this? I found that it was a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B. There were people with disorders of, of, of sexual development who also, for reasons very much linked to their disorder of sexual development, wanted to be queer and wanted to deconstruct sex.

And so that was very nice for the people who wanted to deconstruct sex, who have nothing, no congenital disorders or whatever. And there is an entire universe of people with these 30 to 40 named DSDs disorders of sexual development, who won't go near the word intersex, who don't consider themselves intersex, who don't agree with the aims of the intersex movement.

They're not people who ha who are intersex, they're people with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or they're people with. Complete androgen and sensitive and sensitivity syndrome, or the people with kleinfelter, you know, they don't call themselves intersex. They're like, I have a rare disease. This is what it's called.

And my support group is called Turner Syndrome Friends Association. You know, like, and they don't go anywhere near the intersex stuff. [00:12:00] And they sort of, there's no, from what I can tell on the outside, there's no big animosity between these groups. Because some of the kids in the group of, with the Klein Felder's, the Turner Syndrome, the CAH, the CIIS, they will identify as queer a lot of the time or some of the time.

So they, this, this has become, it's an identity. Intersex is an identity. It's not at all, uh, a medical condition. Uh. That's what I found.

Stephanie Winn: This is a really important piece of the puzzle. So I'm gonna link this for my long-term listeners to a few different angles that we've covered related issues from. So I've had James Lenahan on here to speak about his experience as someone with a disorder of sexual development.

And he's in that category that you described of people with, as they say, lived experience of DSDs disorder, sexual development, who want nothing to do with trans activism. And in his [00:13:00] case, he was actually quite angered to find out that anyone would inflict on a child a, a medically induced condition, like what he had suffered from.

So that's one angle. Um, you know, I've also spoken with Zach Elliot and Cynthia Bray, who do good work at the Paradox Institute, providing education on what is the myths versus facts surrounding things like disorders of sexual development. And then we've also interviewed here. AAN Heim and Travis Morrell to talk about the insurance fraud angle of things, where things are being mislabeled in the medical system to justify procedures that are illegal in some places like Texas, for example.

So now we're bringing in your perspective Roe, to round out that background information because there's this whole undercurrent of, like you said, the activism. I also recently posted something on ROGD repair, which I've scheduled to also [00:14:00] go out at some point on my substack, 'cause I'm starting to drip content on substack about PCOS.

So, um, I would say my understanding of intersex activism is much narrower than yours, and I understand that at the extremes they've tried to co-opt even conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome. Which doesn't make a woman any less female. It is a disorder of female, uh, reproductive and endocrine systems.

And ironically, uh, with PCOS, testosterone adds fuel to the fire. But PCOS, like CAAH, which you mentioned, is a condition in which females have higher androgen levels. And I know that you've said that you have some perspectives that even make you unpopular in the gender critical community. One of my perspectives that sometimes makes me unpopular in the gender critical community is that there could be a biological component for some of the people who claim gender dysphoria.

I just don't [00:15:00] think that the narrative and the treatment pathway that's being proposed is correct. But I think that for some of these girls, they do have conditions, like you said, that these girls with CAH are actually more likely to be gay and more likely to have gender dysphoria. I think we see something similar with PCOS.

Again, higher androgen levels, lower estrogen levels. We do know that we live in an environment with a lot of endocrine disrupting chemicals in our water supply and the food. And so all of these things do intersect. But I think what you really expose in this article is the agenda and that the activism to kind of co-opt medical conditions and use them to promote gender ideology and to break down some of those walls between fantasy and reality.

And then to push policies that threaten women and vulnerable people.

Róisín Michaux: Yeah, that's, um, it's a queer theory project as far as I can see. So it throws you off, first of all, [00:16:00] because when you look at their demands, the first demand is to end all surgeries, a moratorium on all surgeries and newborns. So you look into that and you say, sounds fair enough.

Particularly because if we go back a long time, I dunno if you read, uh, Alice Draggers. Galileo's little Finger. Have you ever read that book? So that's a really great book to understand. The beginning of intersex activism, which I don't even know if they called it intersex. I think the original organization was called Hermaphrodites with Attitudes.

Um, so this happened, maybe I'm gonna, I'm gonna get some of the maybe little details wrong, but this is the gist of it. It turned out that babies were being operated on, according to John Money's idea, that it was all nurture and no nature, uh, and that as long as you made the genitals of a baby resemble one or the other.

You can raise the child, the sex that matches their genitals. And it was very cruel and it had terrible outcomes. And we all know the story [00:17:00] of, uh, reamer, David Reamer, all that stuff. So, uh, Alice Dragger, uh, has, who doesn't have a DSD or anything like that, but she was a medical historian or something like that.

And she took on this, this idea, this very unethical practice. And she joined up with a woman who looks, she, when I first saw Bohan is her name, when I first looked at her, I was like, oh, she's one of those CAH girls. But actually she's not, she's an XX female who has like streak gonads, so she has some testicular tissue in inside her.

So she's one of these like o testicular DSD, which is what we used to call, I think, true hermaphrodite. So anyway, those two women got together and they said, right, we're going to, we're gonna write to the medical guys and we're gonna do protests. And, and this all star, this all kicked off, I think in the nineties, and I think.

Um, the, the very beginning of the story was actually that, uh, read and Foso Starlings article in a magazine. We said that, oh, well, there's more than two sexes. And she introduced this concept of [00:18:00] herms and mems and do, do you know any of that? Uh, maybe some of your listeners would be familiar with it, but Fosso studying was a woman who was study, was a biologist, and then she jumped into gender studies.

So she came, she brought this little bit of legitimacy about biology into her very silly gender studies department, and so she said, I think we need to move beyond the idea that there are males and females. I think there's herms, mems, and firms. She had five. And so this idea was nonsense, obviously, but it still gets, and she's the one who came up with the 1.7%.

By the way, she's the one who came up this crazy statistic in that article, and that was in, uh, American Science or Scientific. It wasn't Scientific American, I think it was, uh, American Science, something like that. I'm sorry, I, I don't know the name of it, but she published that. And this woman, BOLO Hong, who had had her clitoris.

Paired down as a child, read this article and said, oh my God. Uh, because Anfo was starting in the article, used hermaphrodites as they were still known, [00:19:00] uh, and this idea that of intersex people to demonstrate why there were more than two sexes. So Bohan said, oh my God. She, she, at some point, she was ready to kill herself.

She was devastated about what happened to her because she was in pain. You know, if you remove a baby's clitoris. At birth because it's like some of the, they, some of them look like phalluses. Um, you can really damage the nerves for life. And it's, it's, it's a really, really terrible thing to have to go through.

And especially back then, because all these people were born in the fifties and sixties and stuff. So this Boah home was very angry. Her and Alice Dragger got together and they decided to set up this organization where they were gonna do something about it. So they picketed, I think it was in 1993, they picketed the, uh, American Academy of Pediatrics or whatever.

So their, their target for their, for their score was the pediatric urologists. Pediatric surgeons who were operating on babies. Now, if it was a little baby girl who was born with a oversized clitoris, that looked [00:20:00] like a fall, it was obviously paired down the re The other big tragedy was that if it was a boy with a MicroPen or if it was a boy with ambiguous genitalia, they couldn't, the crass cliche is, it's easier to.

Dig a hold and build a pole. So they were saying, send this boy home and raise him as a girl and all we'll be fine. So these kids bohan with her terrible pain that she grew up with. And then these other boys who were told, you're a girl. And they weren't like, they had terrible, terrible time. 1996. Then I think Bohan had the world's first ever intersex meeting with a bunch of people who this had happened to.

And it's a very funny piece of footage and I would recommend putting it in your show notes for people to, to watch it. I can share it with you afterwards. It's footage of Bohan sitting on the grass, having a little picnic with a bunch of intersex people who, and some of whom had flown from across the country and one of 'em who had flown from New Zealand.

And what's remarkable about it is that almost all of them are CAH girls. They're girls who had clits that were too big, that were removed and even, and even a couple of girls whose [00:21:00] clits were not removed, but who just liked. The idea of being intersex, you know, so you can see that a lot of these girls got on into this identity and they were like, I really, really like this identity and these are my people.

And I never knew what was wrong with me. And then suddenly I heard the word intersex. And this is something that you'll hear a lot from activists, that for, I went from having somebody with, um, something, something reductase disorder, receptor uptake. No, no. So medical term to being intersex and having a community.

And it was very, very nice for a lot of these people. So, um, this was sort of the, the, the beginning of it all. And I say her name in the French Jane Bo Lauren, maybe, uh, she was, she went to San Francisco and she mixed up with a lot of these people who became famous then in the transsexual menace movement and the transgender movement.

So she sort of got all of her, [00:22:00] you know, uh. Identity issues mixed up with this burgeoning trans movement. And she, uh, she, she, she was the, the force behind this inter North American intersex associ isna in, uh, intersex Society of North America. She was the force plant isna as was, as was Alice Dragger. Um, then they, they picketed association meetings.

They picketed conferences. They got meetings eventually with the medical side, but then it all kind of fell apart because there were radicals who didn't think any surgery should ever be performed. And those radicals had never, were not doctors, they didn't know anything about, you know, they didn't know anything about anything.

Their line was, all genitals are normal. Queer genitals, essentially all bodies are, you know, if you're, if you're [00:23:00] born, if you're xx and you have a fallas, leave it alone. And that's queer, you know, and that's all well and good if you're in San Francisco and you're trying to queer everything. But if you're like conservative parents and you're, you have a daughter with essentially a penis, it's very difficult for them to see your point of view, you know?

So there was this sort of a, sort of a fight.

Stephanie Winn: Can I jump in here with some

Róisín Michaux: questions? Yes. Yes.

Stephanie Winn: So this isn't my area of expertise, and I don't spend time looking at pictures of deformed genitals. Um, one of the things I admire about you is I know that you go to some, uh, dark and disturbing places in order to do your research.

Um, I, I find myself wondering, and I wonder if the listeners are wandering along with me. Just how abnormal are these genitals that people are arguing on one [00:24:00] side, that they should be surgically altered shortly after birth? When I guess the, the thought that occurs to me as someone not particularly well-informed on this issue is why not just let the child grow up and make that decision as an adult?

Right. If there's something cosmetically, I, I don't know how much of this is a cosmetic versus a functional difference. Like

Róisín Michaux: that's the, that's the big question. Yeah,

Stephanie Winn: I, I mean, I, I, it seems like the, the cautious, sensible perspective to an uninformed person, and maybe there's a reason that, that it's not so, but I would think that rather than parents having to make such a tough call, if a girl has a large clitoris or a boy has a micro penis, like let that person grow up, provide age appropriate education to them about their body and how it's, you know, a, a girl body or a boy body, but a little different than average.

And then when they're of age to make a decision about whether they wanna medically alter that, [00:25:00] like let them in a way that's consistent with their sex, that just seems like the most sensible thing to me. That

Róisín Michaux: is,

Stephanie Winn: why are we the reason, why are we arguing, arguing about. Why are people talking about operating on babies?

Because I, I don't know. Is it like, let

Róisín Michaux: me explain. No, no. It's a very good question. Thank you. Please. It's a very good question. Thank you. So when people stopped being savages and dropped John Money's way of, of seeing the world, and when they realized the mistakes they'd made, and you know, the, the rumors of what happened to David Reamer and all, they were well known that that experiment had failed before it ever became really public.

The thing is then the activism became stop all surgeries. However, some surgeries are necessary for function. Some surgeries are purely cosmetic. Some surgeries are purely for function, but they will have cosmetic outcomes. And so a very good idea is hypos, and this is one of the ones that Alice Dragger talked about a lot.

So in Alice Draggers book. She found out that the reason why these little boys were having their penises operated on at birth [00:26:00] was because they're so hypospadias means that you're born with your urethra, your pee hole is in the wrong place. So let's imagine that's where it's supposed to be. Sometimes it's here and sometimes it's here and it means, and this was the way they sort of vulgarized it in the book.

Uh, and I say vulgarize in the French sense, as in make it, um, uh, uh, water dumbed it down as opposed to make it vulgar. But they dumbed it down by, by saying, all this came down to was, is a boy gonna be able to pee in the snow standing up? Is he gonna be able to stand up to pee? Is he gonna be able to write his name in the snow, uh, when he grows up?

No. And okay, well that's not worth, you know, that's, that, that was sort of, doctors were saying We wanna give him this normal boy's experience. We've been able to stand up to pee as opposed to changing society to say, some boy sit down to pee. And that's okay. So. Hypospadias in some cases it's very, very bad.

And I think it's called proximal hypospadias. And you really have to [00:27:00] operate on it in order for the P to come out. Um, and some of them are, you can just leave them as they are. And the, the consensus that came out, I think was around 2006 when everybody finally became more reasonable about this issue, was indeed, well, let's have multidisciplinary teams.

Let's make a decision altogether. So that's one of the criteria now in hospitals in the Western world at least, is like you have to have a multidisciplinary team for when these incidents come up. 'cause they, they're very rare. I asked my gynecologist. She does, she delivers like eight, 200 babies a year.

And she said she's never seen one. She's been doing this for 20 years. But they are rare. But they do happen. And now you have to have a multi, if you're a decent hospital, you'll have a multidisciplinary team where they make a decision. Is this this, is this functional? Or is it purely surgical? Are we doing it 'cause the parents are flipping out or are we doing it because he won't function otherwise?

And then they all have a big meeting. This is in the ideal world and this is in the new guidelines for, for how people should operate. So that's why it's very, very strange for activists who've never stepped foot inside of a maternity wards [00:28:00] or neonatal units and to say, no surgeries ever moratorium on surgeries.

And it's even weirder to get them in the UN and get the UN Human Rights Commission to make a declaration saying all intersex surgeries are torture because that's not the truth. It's, and then. That's the easy part to explain. The easy part to explain is that we don't do that anymore, um, except when it's necessary and we give time.

They, they wait until the patient gets a bit older and then they make a decision. I think the area where it gets really complicated is this, CAH girls. Because if you, if you're a little boy and you have to sit down to pee or you've got, if you've got some difference, that means you have to sit down to pee or whatever.

Um, this is, this is the real tricky one. Fine. There's lots of conditions where, I mean, the lots of DSDs, it's not even about ambiguous genitalia. It's not something till you discover much later at life. But [00:29:00] let's say there's like 10 of them that are, have to be dealt with in the neonatal period. Um, if a girl, if you say to, so the parents have to be involved in, in multidisciplinary decisions, and they ultimately get to make the decision if a girl is born with a penis.

The parents and the psychologists on the multidisciplinary teens are often worried that the presence of that fallous might have a psychologically damaging effect. That's the first thing.

Stephanie Winn: Sorry, hold on. When you say girl born with a penis, you mean a very large clitoris?

Róisín Michaux: Exactly.

Stephanie Winn: It's like a micro penis.

Okay.

Róisín Michaux: A fallous. It looks like a normalized penis.

Stephanie Winn: Really

Róisín Michaux: in many cases. Yeah. Yes. I didn't realize

Stephanie Winn: it could get that big.

Róisín Michaux: Yes, because, because the CAH is being ized in the womb. So you get, um, I'm not sure if they get a, the la so the, the tissue that is the labia is the tissue that will be the scrotum and the tissue that is the clitoris is the tissue that would've been the penis.

So it's all the same tissue. So she sort of gets the, the boy [00:30:00] bits and, and, and it looks very boyish in some cases. And there are even types of hypos, SPADs, which is the opposite, which is this MicroPen and a scrotum that looks like a labia. So you have little boys that look like little girls. But that's, I think, less of a big deal.

Um, then this is my understanding of it, and I also make no value judgements against these parents. 'cause I've, I've listened to both sides now, but some of the parents and the psychologists say the best thing about this, the best thing to do in these cases. We don't know because we don't have the clinical data, because we haven't got 20 years of finding out.

All we have is what happened during John Money's era and people coming into psychiatrists crying over being raised the wrong sex. We don't have much data on whether or not it's better uniquely in the case of C-A-H-X-X, whether or not it's better to operate early or to operate late, and, and sometimes they'll do it maybe at seven years [00:31:00] old or at 12 years old, so then they have more choice.

So that's all on the table. Those are all options, and those are all considered in a decent hospital. However, the earlier you do the operation, the more successful it is because the tissue is more. Better to work with. And also, uh, they don't remember it. So there's no trauma. So you ha, so here's the thing.

So when, imagine you have a daughter who's born in this situation and you know that the most, uh, human rightsy thing to do is to give her autonomy over the decision. And that's those tho that this practice, this has been in practice since 2006. So those kids are 20 now. Who were the, the first generation of kids who, who came afterwards?

So what I found was there were two completely different conversations. There were activists in the UN and Geneva in conference rooms saying, stop all surgeries ever, uh, who had never, ever stepped inside a surgical operating room. And then there [00:32:00] were the doctors who were saying, right, um, here's the situation.

The mother is, you know, the multidisciplinary thing. And I don't know. I've watched webinars, recent webinars of peto, ur, Euro, Petto, urogenital surgeons talking about the latest techniques for fixing X, Y, Z, and you can see that they're all like haunted by this torture label because they, they don't see that what they're doing is tortured.

They're not doing what John John money was doing. They're not doing what they were doing in the fifties. They're doing something very, very different. But it does sometimes involve operating for cosmetic reasons. Almost uniquely it sounds in the case of these XX girls with CAH. So what we need is we need another few years of data and enough numbers so that we can see, because this is, it's same with the trans thing.

We need to be able to see what are the outcomes, and we [00:33:00] have some early outcomes. That say that I don't remember it, I don't have any sensitivity issues and I am happy with it. And that's about 70%. But then you also have about 12% of people who say, I wish I had been given the choice. And I'm very sad that that happened to me.

So do we make a choice where we say we're based on the clinical data, based on the outcomes? It does seem that doing it early is the best choice. However, then those 12%, I guarantee you, they're gonna end up in NGOs and intersex NGOs saying I'm queer or I am a victim of this. Um, so that's sort of what's going on right now.

So you have two completely different tracks. Um, and the activists are getting places like the Council of Europe to call these doctors torturers. Now, when you look at an intersex organization's, uh, mission statement, the first, the top line demand is stop all surgeries. So I've just explained why that's maybe not, uh.[00:34:00]

You know, the, like the judges and stuff, they don't know the specificities. Like they, I have a feeling that these intersex activists are asking governments to put money into intersex activism. But the governments are then consulting with the doctors and the hospitals and the doctors and the hospitals are saying, please don't listen to those guys.

They're, and saying like, they, they've no nuanced, they're, you know, they're queer theorists. They're queer activists, they're trans activists. Um, so yeah, you have this situation where their top line demand is stop all surgeries, but they seem to have accepted that some surgeries are necessary, but they, but they u and the reason why they keep that as their top line is because it's a bait and switch.

Because they want you to think that they're there to protect babies when actually they're, because those operations are so rare. Every time you, if you ever see an activist group saying, I am a victim of intersex surgeries, they're all 50 years old. You know, there's nobody under the age. There's nobody who's, who's, [00:35:00] like, they tried to raise me as the opposite sex and I wasn't, blah, blah, blah.

Those days are over. It's like, it's like having a campaign against lobotomies. Like it, it seems like to me 'cause that that system doesn't exist anymore. Um, and even the people who do regret that they were operated on who are younger, they were still part of these multidisciplinary teams where they took into account karyotypes and, and all, and all the things and the situation at home.

And they spent a lot of time deliberating about it. And now in Germany, the German's got this really stringent intersex rule that says that you can't operate on a baby until you get a court. Uh, the courts have considered the case, so now you can take like up to eight weeks to get the decision. And in those eight weeks, the children could suffer because they could be functional, but also cosmetic type of surgeries.

So. The German doctors are very unhappy about it because that it has been, the decision has been taken outta their hands and then they have to go make their case to the courts. So it's kind of silly, [00:36:00] I think, because what does a court know about it? But all, all of that to say the top line demand is always about the surgery.

But that's just to really win because the real demand is, is sex is a spectrum. That's, that's the real demand, is, is queering, queering the sex binary using historical cases of maltreatment of babies.

Stephanie Winn: This is enlightening. So it sounds like there, there are a lot of medical professionals in agreement with what seems like that sensible approach that if the, uh, disorder of sexual development, if the abnormality is going to interfere with function, with quality of life, and it needs to be operated on sooner rather than later, otherwise.

Wait, let people make that choice for themselves. Um, but this whole medical issue has been co-opted by trans rights activists who many of whom do not have disorders of sexual development, like you're saying. There are, there are people who were born during the [00:37:00] era of the John Money Protocol, um, and they have their horror stories, like you said, the ones being raised as the opposite sex because, uh, their genitals were more easily made into something that resembled the sex.

They were not, and we know that's been disastrous, as you said, the David Reamer story and all of that. But aside from that, there's really like, this is a medical issue affecting a minority of families, and it's been co-opted by trans rights activists, including. Many people who don't have DSDs at all, but maybe want to identify as intersex and blur the lines and sort of capitalize on people's sympathies for families dealing with medical issues and make it their own.

Róisín Michaux: Yeah. And so what I've found is that in every organization you'll have one of these very classic butch [00:38:00] lesbian identifying, uh, I mean same sex attracted woman who is identifying as a man who's on testosterone, who's got a fuzzy beard, who's always round shaped for some reason, for whatever it is a test testosterone does to their bodies.

There's always one of them. And then there's always as well a other people who you know there, you might get one or two Turner syndrome, people who have genuine DSDs as well, but you'll always get an PHI man or a cross-dressing man who's claiming he's. The opposite sex, or sorry, he's intersex. And you'll also get some, uh, one, you know, people who have just weird things on their bodies.

Like, um, one of them claims that his mother, I think this might have been a lie 'cause he was trying to make up a story about why he was intersex, but he claimed to have hypos staus. Now bear in mind the hypos, staus again, is the urethra is just in the wrong place. [00:39:00] Now if the urethra is in the wrong place, it usually signifies that something genetic went wrong on the inside.

But ultimately your symptom is urethra in the wrong place. And the diagnosis and the prognosis and the diagnostic, or what's the word is, um, the treatment is to try and fix it. Um, so this guy was claiming he had hypos when he was born, and. Another person was saying, well, my foreskin was too tight and I had to have a little operation.

So having had the operation for UNT tightening the foreskin was a newborn surgery. So this guy was counting himself in the pot as well. Then there was the guy who had hypospadias who said his mother got it from taking Dexamethasone during pregnancy. And you're like, okay. So it what, I dunno if that was really, if that's counted in one of the DSDs or, um, and then other people are just like, there's [00:40:00] a, the, the guy who invented the intersex flag, Morgan Carpenter, an Australian guy.

He had no surgeries, no nothing, no problems, no anything. But then when he was an adult, he discovered he had some, it might, he might have discovered he was in fertile, for example. So he'd lived a normal life, looks like a normal guy. Goes to the doctor, find out, finds out he has this thing, and now suddenly he's the worldwide champion of intersex.

He has a normal life. It's not like he's got a disability or he's got, he's, uh, racialized. So he's got, you know, he's been treated a different way. Like, all these people are totally fine. He had no surgery when he was a baby. Okay? We can all on principle agree that it's bad to operate on babies if it's purely for cosmetic reasons or purely for not upsetting the, not upsetting the neighbors who come to see the baby and see that they have wear gentiles or whatever.

We can all agree on that in principle. First of all, that's not happening anymore. Second of all, all these people are counting themselves as intersex because it's an identity and also because there's money there. So if you can get what happens. To, to [00:41:00] people like you 50 years ago, um, to be designated as torture by the UNHC or of un un whatever it's called, office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.

Suddenly the money open, money opportunities open up for you. So you have all these people coming outta the woodwork like list and all these reasons why they, they deserve to be called intersex. So I was a bit cheeky and I, um, I've been writing to intersex organizations because the, the, the, the definition is difference.

So variations of sex characteristics and reproductive systems that are, that differ from the standards, male and female. So, I dunno if this is applies to you, but a lot of women have one breast bigger than the other. S our genitals don't always look like what they look like in porn. Uh, you know, we have excess body hair in various places, so I'm just sort of challenging them to say to me, I'm intersex.

Like, so I've been writing to [00:42:00] them and posting this in various places, um, and pretending to be concerned because I wonder, like, I have extremely, extremely small breasts. Am I intersex? And nobody really wants to, it's, it's, it's a bit like P-C-O-S-I find it, like the PCOS thing is just so strange. Um. I, because by their definition, not only am I intersex if I have really small breasts, or if I have, if, if I have excess hair here and there, like you see, you see guys saying, am I intersex?

'cause I've always packed on weight around here instead of there where a man packs it on. So am I intersex. And people will tell you, and people have told me intersex is a community of anyone who feels da, da dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So you can see why people with actual disorders of sexual development want nothing to do with these people.

You know, because they're basically saying anyone is intersex. Um, uh, I can't remember what your question was, but I, I, I dunno if I answered it, but [00:43:00] yeah, it's, there's all these chances because again, if the ultimate goal is to say there are not. Two type. There were not two sexes, there were not two types of bodies.

There are all kinds of bodies and it's all on a spectrum. And the proof that it's all on the spectrum is like, look at this. This person has da, da, da chromosomes and also has like a micro penis and blah blah. So that's supposed to be the proof that that sexes aren't real. And that's very useful for the trans movement.

So you have this bait and switch. We pretend it's about diseases, and then once we, we've hooked you in, we'll say, and this is what they really want. So ending surgeries is the top line, but what they really want is autonomy to choose for ourselves, our documents, what, whether it says MRF or X or NB common.

Uh, and we also want to be able to choose the hormonal treatments that we want. So that's their real goal. The real [00:44:00] goal is to, on an intellectual level, they want to disrupt the idea of the sex binary, but on a practical level for themselves, they wanna be able to change their documents if they switch between genders and they also want to be able to get the hormones on demand.

The problem is that if you de pathologize intersex, which is their idea, then it's very difficult to march into the doctor and say, give me what I want because I am intersex. You know, it's a little bit like the trans argument. So, um, it's all political propaganda for queer. The idea that sex is a spectrum, essentially.

Stephanie Winn: I hope this is shedding a light for parents in the audience who have been confounded when their kids have said to them that they think they have a disorder of sexual development, that they think they are intersex parents really get thrown for a loop when that happens. And you know, sometimes we do find.

That, like I said, you know, PCOS shows [00:45:00] up in trans-identified adolescent females, and again, that does mean that they do have higher androgen levels, and so it might make sense that they feel different on some level, and they're looking for a cultural narrative that fits that. And then we also see that that tends to overlap with autism as well.

Um, but, uh, there's the, the undercurrent is that, like you said, there's people like Anne Fausto Sterling trying to say that 1.7% of people are in this category. One more past interview I'll reference for listeners. I spoke with Leonard Sachs, who did excellent work to, uh, debunk and Fausto during Sterling's claim.

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Stephanie Winn: Let's move to the brain sex hypothesis. You addressed this in your article and that's also something that Leonard Sachs addresses as well because it, it seems like a big, sort of part of what's going on with the smoke and mirrors obscuring of truth in the so-called intersex movement is this brain sex hypothesis where on the one hand it's been a.

Proposed that people who say they're trans or say they have gender dysphoria, actually have a brain resembling that of the opposite sex. On the other hand, you, you shared a valuable perspective in your [00:47:00] article about, uh, where, where the activists go from wanting to perpetuate that idea to wanting it not investigated any further.

Róisín Michaux: So there was a time when the, a long time ago, the classic transgender person, which was called a transsexual back then was somebody, was a man who was utterly convinced that he had the brain of a woman inside the body of a man. And they were, they were very convinced of this. Now, this was before women started flocking to this idea in droves.

Um, and it was also, it was all, it was a, a very, very different time. Um. Yeah. Also, you had the people who were candidates for transition were not just these men who thought they were in the bodies of women who were heterosexual men, what we know as autogynephilia men, but you also had gay men who lived in a [00:48:00] very homophobic society and, you know, super flamboyantly femme and found it difficult to get by in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, whatever.

So there was a sort of a hope that a cause for these feelings would be found, um, because these men, these, these transsexuals, uh, I tried to set the best way to describe Autogynephilia transsexuals. So these are males who are attracted to themselves. They're attracted to the idea of themselves as women.

Um, they. They were convinced that one day the evidence would be, would turn up that they had in their brain, uh, that, that they could use this congenital brain sex different as an argument for why that they, why they should have, uh, I be recognized as women. Now again, the context in the US and the context in Europe is very different because in the US you don't have, um, I think it's on your driver's [00:49:00] license that has your, your sex on it.

And there was a no and wink system apparently back then where it was quite easy to get your, the documents that you wanted. Whereas in Europe, we have all these administrative bureaucratic systems. It's much more of a rigmarole to get recognized officially legally as the opposite sex and law. So it was a little bit more complicated.

So the European men wanted to be able to identify, they wanted the law to be changed so that they could be identified as the opposite sex for all purposes. One of their biggest allies in this fight was the team in the University of Amsterdam, the VUMC, which is the university state, whatever, the Royal University of Amsterdam Medical Center.

And these are the same people who ultimately came up with the Dutch protocol for kids. So. They were convinced, uh, and particularly Louis Goran, who's a, who's who, who graduated in 1974, I think, uh, in endocrinology. So his big lifetime obsession was androgens. He was into [00:50:00] hormones, and particularly he was obsessed with hormones on the brain and fetal development.

And he thought he was, he, he was convinced that his life work was to convince everyone that there's something going on in the brain that causes transsexualism. Um, which I don't doubt is true. Like more, more, I think it's probably more than likely true. But the research didn't get very far, and I might make some mistakes on this, and there are other people who know much more than I do about it.

But the research showed that yes, if you, if you took the brain of a man who claims to be woman and lived as a woman, quote unquote, and you examined it, you could indeed see that it had similarities to a woman's brain in certain ways. But what was never really made, uh, was never really shouted about at the time, was that these were actually same sex attracted men.

So this was, uh, basically gay men. Whose brains were examined, and it was found that these gay men had, in parts of their brain, similarities to women when the technology improved. And it looked like, [00:51:00] you know, they were putting men into scanning machines, or they were cutting their brains open after they had died and done auto autopsies and stuff.

And the real danger was that the men who are autogynephilia, they know they're autogynephilia, they know that they. Uh, have a sexual compulsion attached, even if it fades over time. I'm willing to accept as they say, that this compulsion fades over time. But autogynephilia men, it's very much a sexual, uh, it's very much a paraphilia, it's sexually driven.

Um, and I think that they were worried that, uh. The evidence, the clinical evidence was gonna be not in their favor because I think they were gonna go into those machines and they were not gonna come out being told, oh, you have a woman's brain. Because anyone who's seen an autogynephilia male, they're very manly.

They're manly men who have this thing. And the thing that they have is a paraphilia. So they're very standard issue men, but they do have something going on in their brain. I tru truly believe, I truly believe it causes them great distress. And I think that they were gonna disprove, um, the [00:52:00] theory that they have a woman in woman's brain in a man's body.

And I think they were gonna prove the theory that they have a sexual fetish or that's very sexually, uh, motivated. So Louis Goran was trying to prove to to the world that this was, um. That, that, that it was, he was gonna find the, the roots of the transgender transsexual brain, and he was probably gonna find it in early development in the womb.

Um, and the reason why I talked about that in an article about intersex is because Louis Gorran actually flew straight from graduation over to Baltimore to work with John Monnie's first transgender clinic, um, John Hopkins transgender clinic. And they worked together and they both had competing theories, although they never fell out over it.

John Money said, oh, any of this is due to nurture. And, uh, Louis Gorrin being a very Dutch, practical, pragmatic guy, said, no, absolutely not. I'm pretty sure it's androgen exposure in the womb. I think Louis Goen was probably right. So you've got these, [00:53:00] uh, you've got these, these, uh, Louis Louis comes back. He tries to, to do more research and to, to prove this brain sex hypothesis.

But the activists had. Had sort of dropped that idea. The activists had moved away from proving transsexualism. And I think the reason, the reason they gave for not wanting to do this research anymore or to promote that idea of the, of the transsexual brain or to, to, to draw attention to any of this brain research, I think it's because they were afraid of what it was gonna find.

But what they said on paper was, you shouldn't have to prove, uh, if I, I am what I say I am. And it was the human rights era was just getting off the ground. So it was kind of like autonomy and freedom to be who you are. Like the gay guys, you know what's, that's us. We're the same as them. That's all the same thing.

So they sort of veered away from this. And there was a funny meeting in Amsterdam in 1993, which was exactly when, uh, the intersex stuff was getting off the ground. Intersex activism was getting off the [00:54:00] ground in the US in Amsterdam. All these guys from the Dutch Gender Clinic were there sort of. Make it trying to make, establish the research base that could be presented to judges to give these men what they want.

By saying, look, look, here's the science. Give them tell they are women. Here's the science that proves it. And this was supposed to be the legal strategy, but the legal strategy changed around that time. And they said, no, we're not gonna go down that route. What we're gonna do instead is we're gonna say, you need to give us the papers that you need to recognize this as female, because it's the the human rights thing to do.

And that was a complete 180. And you'll notice that all of the court cases leading up to that point in Europe, uh, in front of these supernational legal bodies or whatever, they were all trying to prove a brain sex or a congenital abnormality or whatever. And that stopped, uh, from then on. After that, it was, um.

Self-determination. And actually, uh, what's just an interesting anecdote to, to drop [00:55:00] in here is that this self-determination language for self id, which you have less of in North America, but this self id self-determination was kind of pioneered by an Argentinian woman who were self is A-C-A-H-X-X-D-S-D woman who, her, her, who actually used the language of the Argentinians, who had been taken from their families.

Um, back in the days of the military, uh, military rule, people had been stolen from their families. And then there was a big huge campaign after the end of the Deta Junta to, to get these people to be able to figure out who you were. And to be able to determine who you were. And it became known as this auto determination, self-determination of who you are to find your family and find out who you real really were.

And she took that language 'cause she, she's from Argentina and they recognized that language would be very adaptable to the, be able to determine who you are in the trans self declaration effort. And so the very first [00:56:00] country in the world to pass the self ID law was Argentina. And one of the main people behind it was a CAH lesbian.

Uh, who. Pretend to be a man. So,

Stephanie Winn: so the queer activists have essentially succeeded in completely blurring the lines between legitimate medical issues and self-identity and the, the sort of human rights angle eventually took over. And your article, you detailed the history of pushback in Europe from the legal, uh, system against this idea that people should just have the right to declare themselves whatever they want and get legally binding documents to prove that.

But how did the activists eventually get the legal system to comply with their argument that it's essentially a human right to declare that you are, whatever you say you are, regardless of medical condition or not?

Róisín Michaux: I think it, on a global level, it was the dawn of a [00:57:00] human rights era. You know, there were a lot of things going on.

There was all this. You know, revolutions and decolonial stuff, and Nelson Mandela, I dunno, like this language of human rights and the right to determine your fate and your life and who you are, and individualism generally, I guess. But it's true that, so you go from having a system where the judge is saying, what is this?

I, I need someone to prove to me that this is real. I need more information about this. Um, maybe a good a, a good, uh, journey that illustrates this. Um, this, this change of hearts would be the story of our most famous, uh, transgender woman in Ireland, who is a, uh, a man called Donald Foy who asked to have his birther changed to female.

It's a long story, but the main gist of it is he asked to get his birther changed to female. And so he went to the court and said, I have a congenital disorder. And he, the judge wrote this [00:58:00] very long opinion about it saying, right. They got Louisie Goran to fly over from Amsterdam to give evidence in the court and stuff.

And at the end of it, the judge was like, right. What I thought I knew about Transsexualism was actually quite incomplete and actually wrong. In some cases, the judge associated with Paraphilia, because we all did back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, it was normal. The judge said, there's a lot of things I see I've, I've misunderstood and I've gotten it wrong, but still at the same time, I don't think as bad as I feel for you, as sympathetic as I feel for you.

I don't think we're gonna change a historical record of a birth 'cause that's not, you know, how these things work. And then there was a court case one in the uk, which was called Goodwin, which was exactly the same sort of case. The judge said, you know, we've been faffing around with this for long enough.

This keeps coming up. Essentially what it came down to was it keeps coming up and we keep batting it down and then it keeps coming up and we just sort of run out of arguments and then you get all this sort of incremental stuff. So in [00:59:00] France there was a court case where they decided this man could be a woman, um, based on this technical issue, and then there'd be another technical issue, and then the language suddenly enters the, enters the law.

You know, and it's interesting because there was a point where we were always talking about gender reassignment, and now we don't talk about gender reassignment anymore. We only talk about gender identity. Gender reassignment was the medical model. Um. I think it was just, you know, thi this Amsterdam meeting, the way it's described is, it's apparently a thing that happens every year.

So what they do is, or every couple of years, the judges all get together. Maybe it's an international thing, but this was particularly related to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights. They get together to talk about the issues that keep coming up, that they're gonna need to get the grip with.

You know, like right now they'll be talking about AI or deep fakes or, you know, people will be coming to them with cases and they'll have to say, right, this is coming and it's not, it's not receding, [01:00:00] so we're gonna have to figure out what we know about it, blah, blah, blah. So that Amsterdam meeting was exactly that about Transsexualism.

They had, they wanted to know what is this thing do? Is it medical or is it human rights? Or is it, what is it? You know? And so that led to this sort of change where they started to see it as like, look, what harm do they do to people? Um. All this stuff. And um, actually the way the laws changed in Europe was the, the case, the Goodwin case was won on the basis of right to private life.

And it was a, is a reflection of what happened in the US as well, because the case in the US about the gay couple who were having sex and they were caught by the police. Um, and that was called Lawrence v Texas. I think that was a privacy case. So when they went to court, they said it's a, he has a right to, long story short, he has a right to private life.

That was the basis upon which this cross-dressing guy won [01:01:00] his right to gender reassignment or his gender recognition certificate was a right to private life. The argument was you don't, it's a breach of my private rights for you to, um. FI can't remember you to out me or to, or to decide for me what my sex is or something like that.

So you see it snowballs a little bit. 'cause that was a privacy case and now you've, you know, a private, I need to keep who I am private. But now these guys have their dick and balls out in the gym with women and there's no privacy issue anymore. So the law is funny in that way. I've noticed in that it's all very, uh, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.

And then all of a sudden the precedent's being set before you know it, it's not like one day they said Right. Chose the gavel down like Judge Judy and says, that's it. From now on, it's a human rights thing. It's a gradual adding of this language. And um, you know, now in Europe it's uh, it's completely gone out of control.

Um, and all the, almost [01:02:00] half the countries have got self ID laws. It was a very gradual thing By the time we got to 2010. There was another big meeting, which I thought was really interesting, which was, uh, where sort of all the different types of trans got together to sort of decide can we all just stick ourselves in under the tea?

And that happened in Barcelona in 29 or 20 2009 or 2010. Um, and so there was a coalescing around the tea being all one thing, which is transgender or trans actually, because the transvestites, the travesties, the Unix, the Hydras, the, the Brazilians and the old school transsexuals from Norway and England, they all wanted something different.

But they sort of said, right, let's have this unifying thing that we want. Um, intersex kept being useful for them, especially, I mean, not the old school transsexuals, because they don't want anyone to think that there's a multiple [01:03:00] sexes and that we're all on a spectrum. They wanna be women. They know there's a binary, there's no, there's two of them and they wanna be the other one.

Whereas for trans mask types, you get a lot who are very interested in this idea of sexual fluidity because they sort of more likely to swap between identities, you know? So yeah, intersex is, but there's a very, there's a very dangerous thing about intersex organizing. I dunno if I've lost you now because there's a lot of information, but one of the things that I, I, and, and a friend noticed a few years ago that was very dangerous was this, so the top line demand of the trans activist is stop all infant surgeries, which does not match medical practice at all.

We've already talked about that. The second thing is, um, give us the right, give everyone the right to change their documents, to reflect who they are, you know, so self Id basically, and also give everyone the right to go to the doctor and get hormones to match their inner [01:04:00] sense of felt gender. And there's a very, very dangerous language in all of these proposals because it talks about this consent, exactly what you were talking about earlier, which was wait until people are old enough to consent.

Once a person is old enough to consent, some of them say seven years old, they have a bit of capacity. Some of them say 12, then they have a right to consent. Tell me what that reminds you of.

Stephanie Winn: Pedophilia.

Róisín Michaux: Well also, but puberty, dockers and cross-ex hormones.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah.

Róisín Michaux: So if you, if they can make the argument that.

A child who was born with a congenital abnormality of the reproductive system is old enough to make if, if you get that solidified in law, that, that those children are old enough at 12 to make a decision about [01:05:00] hormones, puberty, blockers, and that a 13, 14-year-old girl is old enough to make a decision about a mastectomy or that a 12-year-old boy is old enough to make a decision about, um, blockers, anti-androgens then has to apply to trans people.

So this is the real ulterior motive. And we spotted this

Stephanie Winn: game plan. Huh?

Róisín Michaux: That's the game plan. And, and, and, and so it serves, it's, yeah, it's really clever. It's so good. And, and one of the other disgusting things they do is they've lumped it in with female genital mutilation. So. You know, they're trying to get sympathy in all these ways.

They're trying to get sympathy for the John money, people who were all mutilated back in the day and all. And they're trying to get sympathy and collaborations with the FGM people and pretending it's all the same thing and it's all due to cis sexism, you know, all this kind of language. And ultimately what they want is carte blanche for kids to be able to choose what [01:06:00] hormones and interventions they want.

It's really, really. Dark.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it still feels wrong. I mean, when you were giving numbers like seven and 12, my spidey sense was going off. 'cause I'm thinking why is that the right age to make that decision? If the child has abnormal genitals but no functional issues, they're not in pain, they're not impaired, why not wait until they're in an adult to make decisions?

That sort of thing. But again, with, with, I think you laid it out brilliantly, how all these different pieces of the activism come together to blur the lines so that what should be a discussion of medical ethics in the treatment of legitimate medical conditions gets blurred. With this self id, I have a right to say what I am.

I have the right to demand that doctors enable me to make my body look more that way. What a mess

SKOT: Are you? A freethinking therapist looking for

Stephanie Winn: like-minded community? The Association for Mental Health [01:07:00] Professionals is a sanctuary for holistic critical thinking counselors and therapists who want to stand firm in our values and reclaim our profession.

From ideologues, A MHP offers its members a blog and podcast, monthly webinars, and an annual conference each fall in Texas Visit Association. For mental health professionals.org to join a growing number of like-minded therapists who want our profession back. Alright, now back to the show. So what have you learned about the funding aspect of all of this?

Róisín Michaux: So, uh, as I was saying earlier, it's the state in Europe, the, the, the, the government that gives a lot of the money for this sort of activities. Um, and because I am a kind of an activist now, I see how far a little bit of money can go. So you can, you can make something seem like a real thing, like a real big deal that everyone cares about and create a lot of noise about it and get a lot of emails sent to [01:08:00] lawmakers with a little bit of money.

And these organizations do not have a little bit of money. They have tons of money. So they are, we have a real issue. And again, I don't know to what extent this is applicable in North America, but. We have a real issue here that there is a very small number of extremists. Well, I say extremists, they just have very out there opinions about sex, about human sex and identity.

And they've been given 200,000 euro. Now, why are they given 200,000 euro? They're given 200,000 euro because the government has a strategy on L-G-B-T-I-Q or they have a strategy on let's say, um, uh, mental health or whatever. And so once you have those strategies, the funding pot becomes available. You know, we had this with climate for a few years.

Everyone's forgotten about climate. Now they don't care anymore. But when the, when the, the height of the climate hype [01:09:00] money was made available for climate NGOs, and this is my theory. The reason why everyone was freaking out and thought the world was about to end. Uh, I'm not saying that climate change isn't real.

I absolutely believe climate change is real. But the reason why it got so hysterical was because a lot of money was made available for funding opportunities for organizations. So organizations set themselves up uniquely to get access to this money. So if you've got a bit of a background in activism or NGOs or running the little associations or member networks or whatever, and you see, oh, there's, they're about to open 2 billion in funding and climate's in there, and women are in there and dah, dah, dah.

And so people line up, line up for the cash. And so if you have, like we have in all these European countries, an L-G-B-T-I-Q strategy, um, you just wait for the pot to become available and it's been available and it gets refreshed and topped up every few years. And so the reason why. You know, intersex activism, there was, there's a big campaign.

It's completely, it's a complete flop. It didn't work out, but there was a big [01:10:00] intersex campaign, uh, every year for the past few years where they tried to get cities to light up some famous monument Purple. 'cause purple is the color of intersex. And it worked for a few years, but I think people are just getting really, really tired of it.

But, so this year. I noticed that nobody, no, you're supposed to light up your monument purple and then send in photos and then the intersex activists will spread them all around and say, look and raise awareness, and blah, blah, blah. And it was a total flop this year. And I hope I had something to do with that because I've been exposing what nonsense it is.

But I think governments as well are saying, oh my God, we're really embarrassing myself with this stuff. But if they made available money for the I, which they did by having an I in L-G-B-T-I-Q, then what they're gonna have to do is give 200,000 to these inex people. Give money to that research project in Dublin City University or Trinity College Dublin for the intersex thing, you know?

And then suddenly you've got reams and reams of paper and backup and knowledge and research and things to present. And, oh, come to [01:11:00] our conference and talk about this. And you know, if you have like a few hundred euro, you set up your own organization, intersex, uh, rosins, intersex organization, and I've got suddenly.

Um, you know, I find myself invited to places and I'm the expert on this issue, and suddenly you create something out of nothing. And I know that when they, when Ilga Ilga is our L-G-B-T-Q task force, I dunno what it's called, your big one. You know, the UK has Stonewall, and in America you have, um, human rights campaign, maybe R one in Europe is Ilga.

And Ilga realized the, the rhetorical or the propaganda propagandistic potential of the intersex idea back in about 2008. So they went on the lookout to find intersex people who they could co-opt to bring them into the circle to help them queer everything. They couldn't find anyone. They found like two people.

It was really, really, really difficult. But now it's easier because it's an identity group that you can [01:12:00] identify into. And, um, so now they're, they're gathering people from everywhere. And the more people you have, the more money you get. And then the more money you get and the more. Projects you take on, then the more money you need.

And so this, the budgets go up every year and we're creating this thing outta nothing. And I cannot, cannot overemphasize this. Intersex is pure nonsense and they're getting more money and they're sitting on boards and they're consulted on this, and they're consulted on that. And largely they're just, they're, they do not represent the people who have disorders of sexual development.

Um, and those people, the money is being directed away from them. So the only place you'll find public funding for real DSD stuff is in the, you need to go to the medical research side. You need you, you don't go to the social funding pot and, and look at what they're doing over there. You need to go to the, the medical researchers and over there they have rare diseases, networks, orphan [01:13:00] diseases.

'cause all these would be considered orphan diseases or rare diseases 'cause they're so rare. So when you have a very rare disease, no medical, no pharmaceutical company wants to spend money making drugs for them because there's no market. 'cause you'll get. To a year in a country, you know what I mean? So there's no incentive for a pharmaceutical company to make drugs for these people.

So public health systems have to support the research into rare diseases and to support the development of drugs for rare diseases. Basically, the government has to pay for it because Merck and all, they're not gonna pay for it because they're not gonna have a market for it. So there are some projects that are looking into, you know, doing research on CAH or on PHA or on Kleinfelds or whatever.

Um, they get a, a, a a, a shadow of the money that the identity queries get. You know, and the ones who are on the side of the medical stuff, they do sometimes advocate for surgery because they've discovered after looking [01:14:00] into the data that there are better outcomes in some cases that are, might be cosmetic or might be functional or whatever.

So all of this money is being diverted away from people who actually need it. And I wonder if those people are very resentful, but I did find it difficult to get them to talk to me because it is so sensitive. And also, you know, I'm like, oh, this is nonsense. You know, I'm a bit, I talk about it in a bit of a trashy way, but, um, it was, it is, and I contacted Alice Dragger and I said to her, are you aware of the evidence coming outta Europe Now that shows that some people are actually maybe a little bit, um, happy with the fact that they were operated on their, their clit, mely, uh, as babies.

And she said, oh yeah, I'm sure you know, the, the medical associations have figured, found some people to say such a thing or whatever. So there's a lot of. There's a real problem. And then there's these queer theory, grifters just, you know, using that [01:15:00] real problem to promote queer theory, precepts and trans ideology.

You know, so it is a big, huge mess. And it's a, it's a little bit embarrassing when you see how much money, how much public money is going to it, because the public money is essentially going towards a communications campaign to prove that sex is not binary. Sex is a spectrum, and we have to understand our children are going into school and they're being told there's not two sexes.

There, there is a spectrum of sexes and everyone is dotted somewhere along that line of spectrum of sexes. Um, and the proof of that is intersex people. And, uh, if you want your child to understand anything about natural selection or sexual selection, or how the world actually works, you know, this foundational lie, kind of disrupt all that because it tells a lie about human nature and about, you know.

How, how things actually work and the government is, is, is paying for all this and it's an absolute scandal. So I find it like a, a deeply, deeply unethical, [01:16:00] um, practice. And I, one of my, my big dreams is to, to get their funding cut off because, you know, I saw Intersex Europe recently posted pictures of them setting up their brand new office.

'cause now they can, they can, they have money. They have public money, um, to have three or four new full-time staff and they bought themselves these very comfortable and very expensive gamer chairs instead of office chairs. And I was just looking at it, just thinking, and meanwhile there's people like desperate for research money for rare diseases.

It's just completely, completely upside down world.

Stephanie Winn: And these people aren't seeking treatments. They're actually trying to create a world in which people who don't have disorders of sexual development end up having. Iatrogenic intersex conditions. Yes. In other words, uh, administering cross-sex hormones to females, for instance, whether or not they had something like CAH or PCOS, again, they'd still be female, but you, [01:17:00] you give a girl like that enough testosterone while she is going to have a MicroPen now, isn't she?

And, and she's going to maybe look indistinguishable, uh, cosmetically from someone who was born with a condition that might have required some kind of treatment. So these activists are arguing for the opposite of treatment. They're, they're arguing to make healthy bodies sicker. And again, when you listen to people like James Lenahan, it's just so insulting to people with actual medical conditions.

Róisín Michaux: Yes. Mm-hmm. And there I did come across a lot of people who were very unhappy about, um, intersex activism. I, and maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I tried to get in touch with one of the biggest organizations in the UK advocating for people with disorders of sexual development is called Families of DSD or DSD families.

I think they didn't wanna talk to me either. And I can understand like, people just want to, you know, they would like a bit more money for research. They would like a bit of support. They'd like, you know, they, [01:18:00] they operate in a, in a, in a, in a, in a universe where parents are born and they're faced with this awful thing.

You know what seems really awful? Because they can't even call people and tell the people, oh, it's a girl, it's a boy, you know, in the hospital. It's, it's really, it throws them off. It's very distressing. And so it's, these are desperate people who go on the internet and look for help, you know? And so what they've get, they come to DSD families and DST families because there's so few of these cases.

DSD families also serves Irish people, but it was, I couldn't get any parents to talk to me, but I was very interested about how they, I wanted to know what they think about intersex organizing. But so I, because I couldn't get that information, what I was able to get was, um, on the website of a couple of these organizations, they put statements out about their feelings about the UK Supreme Court outcome, about the definition of woman.

Do you know about that? I guess, do you

Stephanie Winn: I had my force setter on to discuss that.

Róisín Michaux: Right. So, you know what happened that, um, it was [01:19:00] reaffirmed that woman means biological woman in the law. It wasn't, it wasn't decided. It was just clarified. And so I was very interested to know what the DSD families thought about this.

And because I had read in places and I had heard in interviews people saying, I am not a queer intersex person. I am female. I have this thing, you know, I have this rare genetic disorder, and I was surprised to find that they were very happy. These DSD organizations, umbrella organizations were very happy with the decision that we established once and for all, that this queer theory, nonsenses nonsense, and that men are men and women are women, and that it suited them fine, except when it came to one particular case.

And this really surprised me, and this is what this is, this is the most complicated intersex, uh, um, sit intersex profile. I think we, we can all agree is, is [01:20:00] tricky one for turfs. Um, the statement said we're, we're not pleased about, we're not pleased. Um, that what they call CAIS girls, uh, might be excluded from sports.

Based on their chromosomes or, or whatever. And it turns out that there were, I dunno if you know this, maybe one of your former guests spoke about it, but it turns out that there are people out there in the world who for all, for by looking at them, you think they're female, could look like me, could look like you, who are, who are actually boys who are completely insensitive to all the androgens in their body.

And so they look female. Everything about them is female except they're infertile. Um, and you wouldn't know that these were men and almost 100, they're 100% of them are gay, as in they're [01:21:00] attracted to men. So they're phenotypically female, they're straight, um, they're attracted to men. So Anrophilia, um, and.

The families of DSDs didn't want, didn't like the idea that these boys might ever be treated or these XY people might ever be treated by girls. And this is the real tricky one because I think, you know, turfs always say, uh, xy, then your man, and then that's it. But there's like these, these kids, you know, the decision has to be made when the child is born.

What are you gonna raise the child as? And, and, and, you know, I think you were probably gonna say very reasonably, like, you know, let, let's just figure, not be too crazy about it and don't be hysterical and let's see what the child wants. And that's, I think what, what the guidelines are. But these kids, um, are very, almost a hundred percent.

They're girls, you know, but they're not girls. And I'm [01:22:00] not sure, you'd have to ask someone else to know if there are any advantages that they have physically. You know, do they have, even though they're, they're, they, they are completely insensitive to androgens. Do they have some other advantages as a result of having the SRY gene, maybe a bigger heart or maybe a da da da.

Um, and so that was a funny one because these families are adamant that these boys be raised as girls. And I found that quite tricky myself personally, and if your listeners are interested in this, I'm going to send to you a link of a debate in Australia. It was a TV show with a very good journalist who had all the people who like to talk about, who are implicated by this issue in the audience.

So you had a woman who had her daughters. Large clitoris removed for cosmetic reasons. And she explained why. And then you had people who had had it done to them who didn't think it should have been done to them. And then you had the founder of the intersex movement and then you had mothers who made this decision once and everybody was represented.

And it was, it's an [01:23:00] extremely emotional piece of footage. It's about 20 or 30 minutes long, but if you wanna understand the issue, and you also had one of these CAIS girls, which is basically an ex y who looks female. Um, really, really interesting issue and much more complicated than the intersex activist make it seem.

And what's interesting though is the intersex activist was there, the guy who invented the intersex flag, Morgan Carpenter. And he wa he just, it's funny 'cause he was just sort of doing the be kind, be kind, be kind thing and, and don't, don't ever operate and, and take, accept you as who they are, you know?

So it, it showed the shallowness of the activism. The activists had a couple of slogans where everybody else had real life stories where they have to live day to day in the lives of, in these bodies, you know? So it's a very, very interesting, uh, clip. I would recommend that you watch it, but yeah. Um, that's my, my main thing is we need to stop giving these organizations money because they're propagating a lie and the money allows them to make noise that makes.[01:24:00]

The lie seemed legitimate and ever present, omnipresent and everywhere, and it gets mainstreamed into other issues. And it's just not true. And I think I, I'm triggered by the fact that it's just what they're talking about is nonsense. Um, and it's a Trojan horse for some very, very bad ideas.

Stephanie Winn: Just to be clear, in people with CAIS complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, you said they're xy, but again, they have that complete insensitivity to androgen, so they develop in a way that makes them, resemble us females.

Um, what type of gametes are their bodies organized to attempts to produce? Because I heard you say they're infertile, but do they produce, uh, sperm or eggs, or do they, um, are their bodies designed in a way to attempt at the production of either of those?

Róisín Michaux: So these kids have, uh, non-functioning gonads, uh, testes because they, the, the testosterone doesn't work on the testes they produce and.

So, and they, so here, [01:25:00] here's another aspect of intersex organ. One of the demands is, um, these girls, these kids don't know that they're not girls until they grow up and they don't get their periods. So this is not an at birth thing, unless of course we now do pin prick. I mean, you pill prick karyotyping. I think maybe, so probably people do know immediately that there's, uh, that these kids are what, what, what chromosomes they have.

But what used to happen in the past anyway was these kids would not get their periods and they would go to the doctor and the doctor would say, you have, uh, testes on your inside. And it'd be a big drama. And a big drama and like, oh my God, I'm actually intersex, or whatever. Or I'm actually CAIS and there's an increased risk of cancer.

When you have these inside your body, uh, don't ask me why, but it's something to do with hormones. At puberty or something goes wrong, something potentially could go wrong. And the risk of cancer is slightly is is not huge, but it like, let's say it's 10% or something, it's not [01:26:00] massive. And these boys, it's a bit like castor Nia.

Castor Nia had non-functioning gona, a non, uh, a testes on the inside and he was able to, um, father children. But I think the CAIS, they can't father children. Or maybe they can, I'm sorry, I'm getting confused with that.

Stephanie Winn: Well, it sounds like they're infertile males, like they're it, it

Róisín Michaux: sounds

Stephanie Winn: like bodies are de designed to produce sperm, but they don't produce functional sperm.

And that's different, I think from, I never know how to pronounce his name. Im kli. Ima Kif.

Róisín Michaux: Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Mm-hmm. Iman and Kif. Um, 'cause I think he had five alpha reductase deficiency. Yeah. Was that it? Five a RD, which sounds kind of similar in some ways, but that's a different condition. Right?

Róisín Michaux: It's a different condition.

Yeah. Um, because Iman KLI is very much sensitive to androgens. He's very much, all of his receptors are picking up that testosterone that's found on his body. [01:27:00] The thing with ca Yeah, he

Stephanie Winn: looks male.

Róisín Michaux: He looks male. 'cause he had everything. He just has, uh, undescended, testes, like everything is on the inside. He, he was born with female looking genitalia, so he probably got away until he was eight or nine.

And then people started to say, hold on a second. You're starting to look like a boy. Because the androgens are working with CIIS, their bodies are pumping with testosterone. It's just not sensitive to it. So they have all the testosterone that there's a problem with

Stephanie Winn: the cept, the receptors to the

Róisín Michaux: test.

Exactly. And so I think that's what the cancer causing thing is because you have this testosterone, you have increased, increased testosterone or whatever, and it's. Does something bad. And so the best thing to do, the precaution is to take out the, um, um, the precaution is to take it out. But this has become the one of the rallying cries of the intersex movement, which is, you operated on me when I wasn't, when I wasn't old enough to [01:28:00] consent.

And so if, and so this ties into the trans medical demands, I think as well, because if it's discovered. At seven years old that a kid has, um, has non-function gonads and should have them removed and gets them, gets surgery, the activists now say, oh, you shouldn't have done that to me. You had no right to perform that surgery on me and putting it in the same bucket as the old John money style operating on babies type of thing.

You should have waited until I was old enough to consent. What age is the OA is old enough to consent? And then they all have seemed to have settled on 12. So I think this settling on 12 for any kind of interventions matches up very neatly with 12 for trans, uh, interventions as well.

Stephanie Winn: Puberty blockers, letting kids choose their own sex and that that whole Yeah.

Idea. I mean, it seems like when you really look at the facts, there's such a huge distinction between families facing legitimate [01:29:00] medical differences and having to make tough decisions. And again, it just so, it seems so sensi sensible from an outside perspective. To say, well, you know, if, if there's a functional issue, a quality of life issue, operate as soon as required.

If there's not, let that person fully grow up, right, because, uh, you know, otherwise, what are you making the argument that that kid's gonna be sexually active as a teenager and, and should be worrying about the appearance of their genitals to someone else at the age of 12? I mean, yeah. So, gosh, these blurred lines are just so destructive, aren't they?

Róisín Michaux: I think it would be really good to actually talk to someone who has one of these conditions. Um. Because it's difficult for us to imagine what kind of effect it does have on your life. I think, you know, we might say, who cares? But I do, I do think that, you know, because one of the things that I read over and over again and the, these multidisciplinary [01:30:00] team, medical teams, is there is a concern that it's distressing for the kid's sense of identity to have this thing.

And also it does have implications in terms of, you know, if caregivers or babysitters see this and stuff. So I'm not saying, I'm not denying that it, you know, we, the early activists who were less extreme than the ones today, they said, you know, we need to change the world's attitudes to people who look different rather than surgically operate on the child.

And I agree with that. We're not in that situation of a family. Like I have two kids and both of them are extremely standard issue babies.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. Well then let me make this distinction. You have a good point there, right? Because none of us know what it's like to be a, a 12-year-old girl with, you know, a clitoris the size of a penis like that.

That's a unique experience, and you're right, it could impact identity and self-esteem and [01:31:00] things like that. But let's put it this way here, here's a clean distinction between the medical decisions, the tough calls that families need to make if they have a child with a disorder of sexual development versus the demands of trans activists that kids be able to go on puberty blockers at age 12.

Here's one distinction. Any procedures that that family would choose to pursue for their 12-year-old with a DSD do not impair that child's fertility if the fertility is already impaired. Then it's already impaired, right? If they are born with a condition where they're never going to be able to reproduce, then that's unfortunate, but it doesn't take away their chance at having a future family.

And I'm sure they wouldn't also recommend procedures that would impair other aspects of sexual functioning. Like when operating on a clitoris, which is something I haven't studied to the degree that you have, but obviously there's a lot of nerve endings there. And so for that surgery to be done [01:32:00] properly, it has to preserve as much sensation as possible, right?

So we're looking at things that alter a person's sexual and reproductive functioning and what's possible for their future versus things that preserve functioning and ideally enhance quality of life. And that to me feels like a pretty major distinction.

Róisín Michaux: I'm glad I don't have to make decisions about these things, is all I'll say.

Uh, because it, it does seem, it, it does seem really complicated, but I, I, I try to look at it in the, I try to find other conditions that are purely cosmetic that we do on newborns. Um, because if you take the language of the activists, they'll say things like, you know, we shouldn't all have to have standard issue X, Y, Z, or whatever.

But we do operate on kids that have way too big ears, ears that stick out like this. And we do operate on Clubfoot. So there's a di, there's [01:33:00] a, there's a, there's a disability rights argument to be made there as well, that operating on clove foot is trying to eradicate people who walk differently. Or cleft palate is a good one, I think, because, um, you know, you can get by in the world.

These are all there, there's a whole bunch of cosmetic procedures of, of procedures that are operated, done on young kids that are done in order to not have them bullied at school essentially, you know, and to make them feel normal and not have identity crises and stuff like that. But yeah, again, I don't think there would ever be an operation, uh, that would cause other problems.

You know, I dunno, it's bioethics, which is not my, my, my strong points. But it's funny because you'll find some, there's an interesting case where in, in a, in a, in a good hospital, you'll have a multidisciplinary team, [01:34:00] which has in it a urologist, pediatrician, psychologist, family support, a surgeon, and sometimes a gender clinic person.

And I found that hospital close to me has a guy who is on both the gender team. He's a surgeon, a pd, a genital surgeon, a genital ur urinal, urinary surgeon on the gender team. And he's also on the multidisciplinary team for intersex. So he goes into one meeting and it's tor, he's told by their actress friends, it's torture.

And he goes into another meeting and it's autonomy and freedom, you know, it's like he'll go, he'll go into the meeting with the gender people and it's like, oh, you're helping people be who they really are. And he go into the next meeting and it's like, it's butchery. So I find it, uh, I, I find it. Those, those two [01:35:00] worlds are trying to sort of figure out together, like, you know, you know, there's a lot of fallouts, there's been a lot of falling out in this world because.

One on one, the, the real trans activists want surgery, autonomy, blah, blah, blah. And the others are like, no, we want a statement from the UN calling this torture. You know, so they, they don't really agree with each other, but they both know that they need each other in a certain way. And this last year at the Pride Parade in Brussels, the, the founder of Belgian intersex organization, he was kicked out of the, he was kicked out of the parade by the gazes because he, he went up in his wheelchair at the front of the thing and was like, oh, I'm, uh, you know, intersex people are here and we're queer and nah, nah, nah.

And he got kicked outta the parade. So there's a lot of these in-fighting in between 'em because they're all trying to figure out ultimately what they want, what, what, how, what they want from each other, what they actually want, you know? And, and I mean, it's all very disorganized because it's all, it's all [01:36:00] trying to mesh identity with medicine.

And it's all very confusing. Um, and for your, the people who listen to your show, I think they'll, they'll, you know, one of the things that I come across a lot is that a lot of these kids feel very happy when they find an identity. You know, whether it's trans, trans mass, gender fluid, gender queer or intersex.

And, you know, a lot of the girls who are finding themselves having diagnosed with PCOS, um, they are, you know, a lot of the questions on Reddit are, do I qualify as having intersex because I have PCOS? And am I, am I intersex because I have this and they'll have some really weird genetic difference, or I have one thing that's longer than the other, or I've always had this or that, or, you know, there's, they're, they're constantly, it's a real magnet for young people looking for an identity.

And I think that, I think we've had enough of that. I think we need to sort of stop that, you know? Um. Sure. Don't operate [01:37:00] on babies if you don't have to. Sure. Don't stigmatize anyone for being different, all of that. But please stop pumping money into these organizations that are creating these niche identities.

Uh, for political reasons. It's so harmful.

Stephanie Winn: For what it's worth. One of my legs is longer than the other.

Róisín Michaux: How, um, how big is the difference?

Stephanie Winn: It's, uh. It's not noticeable to the average person, but if someone's like a chiropractor or they do body work or a yoga teacher, those are the people who note, they're like, Hey, your hips aren't quite the same.

Like, and it does affect me. You know, like it's a, I can't run. I mean, I have

Róisín Michaux: other reasons. You need to, you need to get a grant and set up an NGO and make a comms campaign. But this is the thing, if you follow the intersex logic to the letter, you'll find that we're all intersex. Like every single one of us is intersex.

And this is what upsets the people who have DSDs a lot. Because they're seeing all these chancellors coming in saying, oh, I am this and I'm that. And I'm that. And that's why I was saying I've sent a message to people saying, I have one [01:38:00] breast that's really much smaller than the other. I think I'm intersex.

And some of 'em are like, yeah, sure. Okay, welcome. You know, imagine how upsetting that would be for someone who has, who has literally like, is infertile, has to take corticosteroids for the rest of their lives, you know? So, um, I think it would be great if the people who actually have DSCs would come out and denounce these people and maybe help redirect the money in that way.

But I'm not sure, I'm sure there were too many, too many young people who are very happy with the intersex identity label because it gives them a group of people. And especially a lot of these people felt a lot different when they were younger because they did have this difference. So just, it's more harmful.

Let me add

Stephanie Winn: a final word for parents. Um, 'cause we have a lot of parents of RGD kids in the audience. Um, there, there is an issue I wanna highlight of, you know, I see a lot of. The daughters of the parents who come to me have PCOS.

Róisín Michaux: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Winn: And we know that that means that their androgen levels are higher. We know also that it means [01:39:00] that testosterone might even be even worse for them than the average girl.

Testosterone throws fuel on the fire, and that's why I have an article on this. On our OGD repair.

Róisín Michaux: Do you mean emotionally or physically? Both.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. Testosterone in terms of the mood, but also, you know, the frequency of painful cysts and

Róisín Michaux: Right.

Stephanie Winn: Things like that. But one distinction I wanna make is, and, and I, I kind of wanna make this, uh, disclaimer on almost any podcast episode I ever release, and I do say this periodically, there's a difference between being educated on the issue of trans activism.

And being educated on how to talk to your children about these issues. Because I have had parents before they started working with me, say things to their daughters like, well, if you have PCOS, then maybe you actually need estrogen, not testosterone and fair point. But if you've talked to hundreds of families [01:40:00] going through this sort of thing, you start to recognize the patterns and you can predict how the daughter's gonna react to that, which is badly.

No, I do not want estrogen. Right, because you're attacking her load-bearing delusion when you're suggesting that actually she's female and she needs to lean into that further. So I just wanna kind of put that little asterisk at the end of this conversation because my podcast, which, uh, this is right now, you must be some kind of therapist podcast.

I get to explore. Anything I think is interesting. We talk about the trans issue from many angles. I am blessed to have people like ROE sharing their expertise on this podcast, but I just wanna flag that if you're a parent navigating this in your home, ROGD repair is really where I teach you how to actually talk to your child about this issue because you cannot just.

Inform your child the same way that I as a podcaster with my guests help inform you. Right. It doesn't, it doesn't translate so neatly because we're dealing with a really complex beast psychologically here. So I just wanted to put that little caveat on thing. It's

Róisín Michaux: a different type of conversation. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: [01:41:00] Yeah. So. Ro, thank you so much for your time. I recognize that you've taken time away from your family and stayed up late to talk with me. No worries. Um, you're obviously so well informed on this issue and blown away, and I'm gonna have to pay more close attention to everything else you cover. Um, when you're in research mode, I know that you've mentioned on your substack that you are trying to get more paid subscribers so that you can actually do this work full time.

So I believe your substack is peaked. Do substack.com correct?

Róisín Michaux: That's it.

Stephanie Winn: Peaked, yes. Okay. Tell us where else people can find you.

Róisín Michaux: Um, I'm mostly on Twitter. Um, I, yeah, I'm mostly on Twitter. I'm way too much on Twitter, but mostly on, on my substack. Yes. So I've just, uh, finished up, uh, another regular job, so I'm gonna be doing my substack a lot more.

I'm gonna. Angle it more towards Europeans because there's a, there's a dearth of, uh, European news on what's happening with the gender clinics and stuff. So I'm gonna try and fill that gap, which is less interesting for people from North America. But my long form articles are where I write about things like intersex issues.[01:42:00]

And may I just add, may I just take a couple of seconds to add that a lot of the things I talked about are things that I find out anecdotally and through research and stuff. And I, I may get things wrong. And so please do let me know. You can send me an email or send, uh, ro mic show@gmail.com if, if I've said something that you think, uh, doesn't ring true in your experience and you'd like to talk about it.

'cause I'm very interested to hear, as I said at the top of the show, I'm, I've actually, the reason I do this, 'cause I wanna understand better. So, um, I may come to some conclusions that you, you might find off. So please do let me know if there's anything that, um, any feedback you have, I always like to hear it.

Stephanie Winn: What a wonderful invitation. Thank you so much for your commitment to journalistic integrity and to always learning and growing. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure.

Róisín Michaux: Thank you. Stephanie.

SKOT: Thank you for listening

Stephanie Winn: to you Must Be some kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice.

And of course, please [01:43:00] remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Rero for this awesome theme song, half Awake 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 Airman. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful [01:44:00] world.