You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 84. Leonard Sax.mp3
Dr. Leonard Sax: So I'm trans. Wow. Who knew? No, I'm not trans. I am a gender atypical male, which is fine. About 8% of males are gender atypical. About 20% of girls are gender atypical. That's part of the richness and complexity of the human experience. And the great irony of the transgender activism and of those organizations like the APA that they have co-opted is it's making rigid gender stereotypes. So if a girl wants to be combat infantry, if a boy likes macrame, oh, you must be trans. If you don't conform to the stereotypes, if you're a girl who doesn't like Barbie in pink, if you're a boy who doesn't like to hit, then you must be trans, and this is immensely harmful.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Leonard Sax to the podcast. Now, Dr. Leonard Sax is actually the first guest I've ever had of whom I can say I have read all four of his books. He has published four books for parents, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and The Collapse of Parenting, which was a New York Times bestseller. Dr. Sax is a board-certified family physician and PhD psychologist with more than 30 years of clinical experience. Over the past 22 years, he has visited more than 500 schools across the United States and worldwide, speaking to parents about many topics including social media, video games, and gender issues. He also leads workshops for teachers on gender-aware instructional strategies, on building a culture of respect, and on dealing with difficult parents. Dr. Sacks, your work has been very influential. I have recommended it to so many people and I'm really delighted to have you today. Malcolm, thank you.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Winn: So the first book of yours that I read was Why Gender Matters, and it's excellent. Very research-based, as all of your work is. And you tackle the question of, are male brains and female brains different? And do whatever differences exist have implications for things like child-rearing, parenting, and education. So let me just kind of start there because this is for some reason a highly contested issue in today's world. Are males and females different when it comes to our brains and behaviors?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Well, yeah, and they're different in a lot of ways that a lot of parents are not aware of. So, I mean, there's so many books on gender differences, but one thing that I think does set my book apart is that unlike any other popular book that I know of, I talk about hardwired sex differences in hearing, vision, and smell. It turns out that for many odors, women and girls have a sense of smell that's a lot better than boys and men. Well, how much better? Five times better? 10 times better? No, for some odors, it's 100,000 times more sensitive. So man and woman walk into, a story from my own practice, a family doctor, husband and wife in my practice, they go away on vacation in August, and it's warm in August, and they come back home after a two-week vacation, and they step into their kitchen, and the woman says, oh my goodness, something died, it rotted, I think I'm going to throw up, and the man says, I'll smell anything. And it turns out they both came in to see me over the next few days, and the woman says, my husband is some kind of farm animal, because the whole kitchen reeks like a pig carcass rotting on a pile of manure, and he claims he doesn't smell anything. And I said, you can't be angry with him. Any more than a sighted person can be angry with a blind person. He doesn't smell. And then the husband came in and he said, he said, my wife is a witch, except he didn't say witch. He used a different word. He said, she's going on and on. We got to hire. She wants me to hire some kind of contractor to rip open the wall to see if something died in there. And I do not smell anything. And I said, you can't argue with her any more than a blind person can argue with a sighted person. The smell is real. It's overpowering. It's intense. You don't smell it. And we now have very good research on this point, which I present in my book, Why Gender Matters. You know, there are some pastors out there that do premarital counseling when a young man, young woman going to get married. I think this should be part of it, you know, because I've seen a lot of marriages on the rocks. And, you know, if you only watch TV or look at social media, you would think that the most common reason marriages are on the rocks is because of adultery. I can tell you from the perspective of a family doctor, that's not true. That is not true. Most people are too busy and too tired for that kind of stuff. It's the miscommunication, the lack of respect for the other person's point of view that slowly grinds away at a marriage. And I think this is absolutely the kind of thing that parents need to understand about one another and about their kids. So another thing I talk about is sex differences in hearing. Turns out that girls and women have a sense of hearing that's more acute than boys and men. Girls and women hear better. than boys and men on average. And also I remind readers of something they probably do already know, which is that hearing diminishes as a function of age. children hear better than adults. So now imagine a 45-year-old father speaking to his 15-year-old daughter. Well, I don't have to imagine. I'm a family doctor. I was in this situation. I was talking to a 15-year-old girl in my own practice, and she said, you know, she said, my father's always shouting at me, and I don't like to be shouted at. So I go home, I go in my bedroom, I close the door, and I really come out as little as possible. So I bump into the father, a few days later, and I say, you know, Dad, your daughter confided in me that you are always shouting at her. And he said, Dr. Stacks, I never once shouted at that girl. You hear what I'm saying to you? And I said, yeah, OK. And I explained to him about sex differences in hearing, that females have more sensitive hearing than males do, and that children, teenagers, have more sensitive hearing than middle-aged people do. I said, the next time you talk to your daughter, whisper. I mean, not literally whisper, but lower your voice way down. And a few weeks later, I bumped into the daughter and she said, Oh my goodness. She said, my father can actually talk like a normal person. He was happy to make the accommodation. No one had ever told him. The lack of awareness of sex differences can drive a father and daughter apart. And I think it's very helpful for parents to hear about this. And again, one of the unusual things about my book, Why Gender Matters, I don't actually know of any other book written for a popular audience. There are scholarly papers on sex differences in hearing and sex differences in olfactory acuity. But to the best of my knowledge, my book is the only one that brings that research to an audience of people who are not PhDs.

Stephanie Winn: I love that you opened both your book and the podcast with this information about smell because it's so striking and I think it'll intuitively land as an aha moment for a lot of people. Now I have used this in my personal life because I am a woman who shares a house with three males and as you can imagine, It could create some difficulties over smell, especially when we have things like stinky little boy feet from boys who have been playing all day long. And so I've actually used information from your book in my house. I have said, hey, did you know that when firemen are being trained, they are informed that if a woman smells something and you do not, such as a gas leak, believe the woman? Right? So I'm teaching my fiancé to teach his son that you just have to believe a woman's sense of smell. And there are other household difficulties that are so common. So I'm also a marriage therapist. For instance, vision. It's my understanding from your book, and I'm not as clear on this point because I don't remember it as freshly, but is it correct that women have better peripheral vision than men?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Not quite. So in the book, I present this research, which we have a great many studies now. Well, first of all, the basic neuroscience. Neuroscientists have known now for nearly 40 years that there are two visual systems in the brains of all higher primates, human, chimpanzee, monkey. One visual system called the M or magnocellular system is looking for speed, direction, collision, change in direction. The other visual system, called the parvocellular visual system, is looking for color, detail, and texture. There's nothing new about that that's been established doctrine in neuroscience for 40 years. But 20 years ago, Gerian Alexander, based on her research, concluded that women have more resources in the parvocellular visual system, the system with color, detail, and texture, and men have more resources in the magnocellular visual system, the system that's looking for speed, direction, collision. And over the last 20 years, we've gotten a lot of research that provides strong support for Professor Alexander's hypothesis. So when a man and woman are looking at a landscape, they're actually seeing different things in their head. And one way to really understand these differences is to give children a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons and ask them to draw whatever you want. And I've had five studies in which researchers did that. One in the United States, one in England, one in South Africa, one in Japan, and one from Thailand. What happens when you give little kids, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years of age, a blank piece of paper, a box of crayons, and ask them to draw whatever they want? Girls draw people, pets, flowers, and trees, usually two, three, or four, arranged on a horizontal ground. The people have eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes. The girls use ten or more crayons with a predominance of red, orange, yellow, green, beige, and brown. Most boys, in each of these studies, more than 90% of boys are drawing something very different. More than 90% of boys are trying to draw a scene of action at a moment of change, like a monster eating an alien or a rocket smashing into a planet. Human figures, if present, are often stick figures, lacking eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes. And when I speak to teachers or parents, I show these pictures that the kids have done, and it's very dramatic. And again, the people recognize this. They realize, I've seen this before. And I show a Japanese girl in Japan, she's drawing people, pets, she's drawing actually three people and flowers on a horizontal ground and a girl from the United States. Race, ethnicity, nationality, language spoken at home have no impact on what kids draw when you give them a blank piece of paper and a box of crayons. But male and female have a huge impact. Girls everywhere draw people, pets, flowers and trees. Most boys don't. But some boys do. In each of these studies, about 8% of boys, about 1 in 12 boys, draw something very much like what the girls draw. They draw people, that's entreaties, on a horizontal ground. They're not drawing a scene of action. It turns out that boys who draw people, pets and trees have a lot in common with other boys who draw people, pets and trees. They're at least three times more likely than other boys to have allergies, asthma or eczema sufficiently severe toward ongoing consultation with a physician. They may be athletic, but they're not playing football or ice hockey. They're playing tennis, track or golf because they don't like to hit and they don't like to be hit. And they're much more likely, beginning in middle school, to become victims of bullying. Because the favorite game among middle school boys is one boy comes up to the other one and says, hey, how about I hit you as hard as I can, and you hit me as hard as you can. And this boy will say, but I don't want to hit you, and I don't want you to hit me. And he runs off and, boom, marks himself as a victim of bullying. Now, one more thing we have to say about this. I want you to imagine two boys, Brett and Michael. Brett is all boy, likes football, likes to hit. Michael doesn't like football, doesn't like to hit, would much rather color a picture of a flower. Brett, the football player, turns out to be gay. Michael, the artist, turns out to be straight. The binaries do not align. Gender is complicated. But just because gender is complicated doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It matters a lot. I often do this talk for teachers, elementary school teachers, because they've all had this experience. You want to encourage every child. And I show them the picture that the boy has drawn, and the teacher says, you know, what are you trying to draw here? And he explains he's trying to draw a car crash at the moment of collision. This car is being crushed between these two. And the teacher's like, come on, JC, no car crash. That's really violent. People are going to get killed or paralyzed. Look at Emily's picture. It's so nice with the flowers. No one's getting killed or paralyzed. There aren't even people in your cars. Your cars are all empty. Why do you have to draw something so violent? There's one thing girls and boys are equally good at at every age, and that's figuring out what the teacher likes. It doesn't take the boys very long to figure out they're doing it wrong. So I was in a second grade classroom and the teacher said, free time, you can do whatever you want. And some of the girls were sitting and coloring. One of the boys was running around the room making a buzzing noise. And I got in his way and I stopped. I said, how come you don't want to sit and draw? And he said, drawings for girls. Drawing is for girls. Where'd he get that idea? I'm sure the teacher never said drawing is for girls, but she might as well have, because by praising and understanding pictures that are all about color, detail, and texture, but not really getting the point of a picture that's all about action, she's unintentionally sending the message that drawing is for girls. The lack of awareness of gender differences has the unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Because this teacher, like most teachers, has received no formal instruction in sex differences in the kinds of picture that girls and boys want to draw, she got one more boy who's decided that drawing is for girls.

Stephanie Winn: I remember reading that, and I think some of your advice for parents or teachers was, think about the fact that this boy is probably trying to depict some kind of movement or action, and how could you encourage him, instead of saying, add more color, or where are… Yeah, and then draw like the movement lines or something like that. The part about color reminds me that I had this instructor in college who would give us handouts. It was some kind of math class. And he would say, ladies, this is the lavender handout. Boys, this is the purple handout. Ladies, this is the sage handout. Boys, this is the green handout.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Incidentally, we do have good research on that point. Girls and women are better at color naming than boys and men. One of my favorite studies on that that ties into what you just said was from Auburn University, Alabama, where they recruited college students, young men, young women, and showed them a series of slides, typical slides that had four different shades of green, lime green, jade, emerald, and lime green, jade, emerald, and mint green. And then underneath the four swaths of color was four different words of phrases. Lime green, mint green, jade, emerald. And you had to match the correct word to the correct shade of green. And the young men really struggled. They said, well, that's green, that's kind of light green, that's kind of dark green. Emerald, I'm sure that's some shade of green, but I'm not sure which one. Um, and then the thing that makes the study so interesting is that they interviewed every girl. They didn't interview the men, but they interviewed every young woman and did a questionnaire to figure out how girly are you? So one of the questions was like, how many, how many lipsticks do you own? What's your favorite free time activity? Um, uh, do you use makeup? Uh, what are your favorite clothes to wear? So they created this index of femininity. And some girls were very feminine and some girls were not at all feminine. And the very feminine, they called them the girly girls. The girly girls did extremely well, got all the colors right, nailed it. Sage, emerald, lime green, kelly green, they got them all right. And the researchers conjectured that the butch girls would do less well. And when I do this presentation, I used to, I no longer do, but I used to ask people, where do you think the butch girls, that's a term they use, the tomboys, where do you think they scored? This girl has never owned lipstick, has never owned makeup. Her favorite free time activity is wrestling hogs. Her favorite clothes are overalls and painter pants. She's never looked at Vogue or Cosmopolitan ever in her life. How well did she do? I used to ask people to raise their hand. Most people think the butch girls do in between the boys and the girly girls. They are mistaken. The butch girls get them all correct. They get everyone right. They score just as well as the girly girls. Butch girls are just as likely to understand sage, emerald, and lime green as girly girls. Well, how is this possible? This girl, as I said, her free time is wrestling hogs. She wears painter pants and overalls. She's never looked at Vogue or Cosmopolitan. How is it possible that she understands those words as well as a girly girl who loves to dress up in prom dresses and reads Cosmo? Well, researchers tell us that between two and six years of age, a child can learn the meaning of a word after hearing it just once. if it's salient, meaning it's interesting and obvious. So if a boy sees a rocket shooting up in the sky and he says, what's that? And you say, that's a rocket. He knows that's a rocket. He only has to hear that word once in four years. Girls have all those resources in the parvocellular visual system. to a girl. The difference between lime green and mint green is obvious. She'd only have to hear that word or phrase once in four years, and she knows that's lime green, that's mint green. Boys can learn the meaning of those words, but they have to hear them more often. They have to have more experience to acquire that color naming ability. So I love that Auburn University study that found no difference between butch girls and girly girls in color naming, but a huge difference between any girl and any boy, on average, in the ability to name colors. And again, I think this research on sex differences in the visual system helps us to understand why those male-female differences are so robust.

Stephanie Winn: So that leads into another thing that your book, Why Gender Matters, does really well, which is looking at those who are typical for their sex, or you could say stereotypical, and those who, in your book, you describe as atypical, which I really appreciate, by the way, because the word most commonly used in my circles and probably by a lot of listeners of this podcast is gender nonconforming. But as you point out very well in your book, nonconformity is a word that has a certain connotation to it, right? It's cool. It's not cool to be conformist, right? So then we're placing a value judgment. And typical versus atypical, you make the point that there's less of a value judgment in it. Right. There's there's no harm with being a girly girl or a tomboy. But let's not let's not sort of dress one of them up in the language of being nonconformist because then it's going to appeal to every teenager possibly at the expense of them discovering who they really are and whether they are actually girly or tomboyish at heart. So. So when it comes to children who are gender atypical. So for example earlier you mentioned the 8% of boys who are going to draw people, pets, flowers, and trees, and who will end up getting bullied, the sort of beta boys, for example, or the girls who like to wrestle in the mud. When it comes to children who are atypical, what are the ways in which they are more like the opposite sex? And what are the ways in which they are just as much like anyone else of their sex as anyone else, and, you know, with regard to the brain and behavior?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, so one workshop I lead for teachers is on boosting motivation. And we talk about team competitive formats. So one way to do team competitive formats is everybody, last name A through E is on Alpha Team, F through K is on Bravo Team, L through R is on Charlie Team, S through Z is on Delta Team. It turns out this works great for boys, and it works great for every boy, including the gender-atypical boy who draws people, pets, and trees. Boys love team competition, and they will buy into it. Justin and Jason may be best friends, but you put them on opposing teams, and Justin will happily run down the football field and knock down Jason. He might actually go out of his way to knock down Jason, the boy he knows, rather than the big boy he doesn't know. Boys love competing against their friends. And they're totally fine with that. But girls value friendship above team affiliation. And this is true whether they're gender typical or gender atypical to some degree. And I'll put in a caveat in just a moment. But so you try to do this at a co-ed school. You say, OK, let's have alpha team versus brava team. It doesn't work, because the girl will say, look, I don't even know the kids on my team. The only thing I have in common with them is the first letter of my last name starts with a G. I don't want to beat my best friend. I don't want to make her sad. So I hosted a conference on gender and education in Atlanta. And Dan Kinlan, the co-author of the book Raising Cain, attended that conference. And he and I had supper together. And he told me a story. He was coaching his daughter's softball team. It was a big game, a playoff game. And the other team was up to bat. They had bases loaded and one out. And he goes to the pitcher, not his daughter, another girl. He says, OK, there's bases loaded, one out. So the force play's got to be at home. If the ball comes to you, throw it right back to the catcher so they don't score a run, OK? Don't throw it to first base. And she nods. and she throws the ball. It's a little dribbler right up to the mound and the pitcher picks up the ball and throws it to first base and run scores. And Dr. Kinlan goes back out to the mound and says, okay, like what just happened? I just told you if the ball comes to you, don't throw to the catcher. Why did you throw it to the catcher? They scored a run. And she said, well, my best friend was on third base. I didn't want to throw her out. So I shared that story with high school girls and one high school girl said, that's totally disgusting. I'd ring that girl's neck. Most girls value friendship above team affiliation, and they'll throw the ball to first base rather than throwing out their best friend. But there are exceptions. older girls and girls who are athletes. So that high school varsity athlete, she may throw out her best friend at home base, but those are unusual. When I meet with teachers, I say, your mission is to motivate every girl. And team competitive formats of the kind I've just described won't work at a co-ed school because many, certainly the majority of the girls, don't want to beat their best friend. They want to be with their best friend against strangers. And if you put them on opposing teams, it's going to fizzle.

Stephanie Winn: Do you see advantages to single-sex schools?

Dr. Leonard Sax: All right. So single-sex schools are a tool. It's one tool that school leaders can use. And it creates an opportunity to do things differently. For example, I have, over the last 12 years, I have done eight days at the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy, which is a boys' public school in Dallas. Not a charter, a public school under the authority of the Dallas ISD. And they've accomplished great things. And they use that team competitive format that I just described. And it motivates every boy. And if you just Google my name and Barack Obama, male leadership, Dallas, you'll see an article I just wrote a few weeks ago. With some of the latest numbers from that school, more than 80% of that school, the kids at that school are from low-income families, qualify for free student lunches. But the school outperforms just about every other school in the district, as well as most of the private schools. The boys do extremely well. They're very motivated. It's a school that's created a culture where it's cool for a boy to be a gentleman and a scholar. And that's quite an accomplishment, because as I emphasize in my book, Boys Adrift, boys are now immersed in a culture, the culture of Drake and Bruno Mars, which is not at all about being a gentleman and a scholar. It's about using the F word, the N word, the A word, and being obnoxious and arrogant. My ball's bigger than yours, quoting from one of Drake's number one songs. I'm undoubtedly the hottest, and that's just me being modest, quoting again from Drake, who is, incidentally, the most popular artist in the world. He's had 67 songs reach the top 10 on the Billboard Top 100. Taylor Swift just has 40. 40 for Taylor Swift, 67 for Drake. But Taylor Swift is popular with a very wide range of audiences. Drake is popular with young men. So parents have no idea who he is. They don't even know who Drake is, many of the parents. Old people, by which I mean people over 40, they've never heard of him. Drake is huge in the lives of teenage boys, both white and black and Spanish-speaking. And so it is a challenge. to create a culture where it's cool, a school culture where it's cool for a boy to be a gentleman and a scholar. And I've got a workshop for schools called Creating a Culture of Respect. How do you build that culture when kids are coming from the world of Instagram and TikTok and the most popular YouTube videos in which the young male celebrities are, without exception, disrespectful and using profanity continually?

Stephanie Winn: Whether you've been a longtime listener of this podcast or you're new, odds are you know I'm deeply concerned about the gender ideology crisis affecting today's youth. What's often not talked about are the medical practitioners who are pushing this ideology on vulnerable people, or the doctors who are taking a stand against them to protect kids. Which is why I was so excited to find a group that's doing just that. It's called Do No Harm. They're fighting for patients and against identity politics. and they have information for everyone, whether you're in the medical field, a concerned parent, or just a thinker who wants to learn more. Visit DoNoHarmMedicine.org slash Some Therapist to learn more. That's DoNoHarmMedicine.org slash Some Therapist. So single sex schools are a tool, a tool that if we're being honest is increasingly would be increasingly difficult to create politically because the insistence that anyone is whatever they say they are. But supposing that you could structure an environment that's ideal for a boy and then you could structure an environment ideal for a girl. It sounds like one of the elements in the environment you would create for boys would be this friendly competition. So in your book, you talk about how boys actually strengthen relationships through friendly competition, whereas for girls, our ways of competing are they're covert rather than overt, they're social rather than physical. We don't like to hurt our friends, but when we do, it cuts deep and it's really hard to get over. So socially, we have those differences. But what are some other ways that you would structure an environment that would be more ideal for a boy versus an environment that would be more ideal for a girl?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Well, you know, when a school leader or a community wants to launch a single-sex program, that's great, and I'm happy to assist them, but that's very, very, very rare in the United States. And you don't need a single-sex format to boost achievement for boys. You need teachers who understand sex differences. And so, much more often, I'm working with schools to create a school that's boy-friendly without being unfriendly to girls. So again, in my book, Boys Adrift, I talk about this growing gender gap in academic achievement, where American boys are now doing much less well than their sisters within each demographic. You look at affluent white boys are now doing much worse compared to their sister. And that gender gap is actually larger than the gender gap you see among low-income boys of color compared to low-income girls of color. It's actually a bigger gender gap for affluent white kids than it is for low-income kids of color. But it's present in every demographic. The gender gap is present and enlarging. And this is something new. There's nothing hardwired about this. I attended public schools in Ohio, K-12. And I remember the honors assembly at my high school, my senior year, in 1977. It was all boys up on stage. The award for poetry went to a boy. The editor of the school newspaper was a boy. The editor of the yearbook was a boy. Now my high school still has an honors assembly, but it's all girls. Why did this happen? And why is this a problem? Are all questions that I address in my book, Boys Adrift, and what can we do about it? So I'll just give you a very concrete example. So I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. It's right off Lake Erie. We get a lot of snow, lake effect snow. And I remember in my public elementary school, Low Mound Elementary School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. During the winter months, we'd put on our coats for recess and lunch, and we'd go out on the playground and throw snowballs at each other. And the teachers would come out and join us, students against teachers. I remember Mr. Albers was a great shot. He'd get you right between the eye every time. Well, today, if two kids start throwing snowballs at each other on school property, a teacher is going to run and say, what are you guys doing? You don't have to do that. You got to wait till after school and go somewhere else. No throwing snowballs on school property. And the unattended message those boys get is, your kind is not welcome here. Boys doing things that boys have always done, pointing fingers at each other, saying, bang, bang, you're dead, throwing snowballs at each other, drawing pictures of weapons, now gets you in trouble. Well, there's a better way, which I share and which I have learned from my visits to all these schools. So I visited St. Andrews, which is a school just north of Toronto, Ontario. And they have a very simple rule. If you want to throw snowballs at each other, go to the football field. The football field's not on the way to anyone else. No one's inconvenienced by having snowballs being thrown on the football field. There's a basket of goggles on the entrance. You want to throw snowballs? Put on your goggles, go on the snowball field, and you're welcome to throw snowballs at each other as much as you like. The throwing of snowballs is out of bounds. everywhere on campus except on the football field where it's inbounds. Inbounds versus outbounds. And I learned that 20 years ago when I visited St. Andrews, and we've since deployed that at many schools in the United States. Now, some schools are so anxious about litigation, they have required that parents sign a waiver, indemnity, and kids are not allowed on the football field until they have a signed waiver, which is fine. I understand liability concerns. I'm a practicing physician. I understand the fear of getting sued. I get that. That's fine. But don't ban the throwing of snowballs. Make an accommodation. And another school, the PE instructor said, OK, we just had a big blizzard. So a week from Monday, we're going to have a snowball competition. Stay after school, we're going to put you in pairs. In each pair, you each get five chances to hit the target, which the B instructor has set up from this line, hit the target. And whoever has more advances, whoever doesn't sits down. At the end of the day, we have one grand champion. When you do that at a co-ed school, You'll find that about 80% of the kids who stay after to throw snowballs are boys, but 20% are girls, and some girls love to throw snowballs, and some boys don't. You can make the school friendly to boys without making it unfriendly to girls. And that's what my workshops for teachers are really about. I am no longer proselytizing for single-sex schools. I'm happy to help school leaders who want to establish that format. I've done it many times, and I think successfully. I give the example of the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy. which I helped to launch more than 10 years ago. I'm very proud of that. With an incredible founding principal, Nakia Douglas, who, of course, gets all the credit because he's amazing. But… And he deserves all the credit. He's an amazing school leader, Nakia Douglas. But… But yeah, we can do that format if school leaders want to, but much, much, much more often. The question is, okay, look, we're not going to be doing the single sex format anytime soon. Can we make the school friendly to boys without making it unfriendly to girls? Absolutely, you can't. And the example of the snowball throwing tournament is one example of many. where you can make the school friendly to boys without making it unfriendly to girls. And now that fourth grade boy who last week said school's a stupid waste of time, I hate school, now is asking permission to stay at school late to participate in the throwball snowing tournament. That's how you begin to change kids' attitudes.

Stephanie Winn: So one way is to create these clear delineations between inbounds and out of bounds. And you say in your book that boys handle that quite well, right? If you have clear rules, what's fair is fair, this is when you're in or out of the game, and so on and so forth, then boys can sort of structure themselves accordingly. Also, in YouBirth, you talk about how boys don't hear as well as girls. And so there have been boys misdiagnosed with ADHD when the real culprit was either they weren't sitting close enough to the teacher to hear her, or that there were lessons taking place in a way that might have been developmentally inappropriate for the boy's stage of growth. So you also talk about how boys and girls mature differently. Can you advise on that?

Dr. Leonard Sax: So one of the world's largest studies of brain development in children and adolescents conducted at the National Institutes of Health, over 3,000 kids followed year by year over time, beginning with three-year-olds. You find that girls reach full maturity by about 22 years of age. Boys don't reach full maturity in brain development until 30 years of age. That explains a lot, if you think about it. You'll sometimes hear people say, oh, human brains reach maturity at 26 years of age. A lot of people have heard that number, 26. Which is true, the average human reaches maturity and brain development at 26 years of age. It's true, but it's also meaningless, because with the exception of intersex individuals, you're either a male or a female, and females reach full maturity and brain development by 22 years of age, men not until 30 years of age. And Jay Gee, the lead investigator on that study, was at my invitation as speaker at our conference in Chicago years back, And he tried to make a joke out of this. He said, Hertz and Avis have the best neuroscientists. He asked us to imagine a 24-year-old male and compare in our minds with a 64-year-old male. Who has better eyesight? Who has better hearing? Who has faster reflexes? Well, in all those parameters, the 24-year-old enjoys a big advantage. But he said, Hertz and Avis, the car rental companies, will charge that 24-year-old a surcharge. often of hundreds of dollars, and in some cities at some times of year, notably Florida during spring break, they won't rent to him at all. Because Hertz and Avis understand that the 24-year-old is not a mature adult. He's still a boy, trying to impress the young woman sitting next to him by driving 110 miles an hour on a city street, not realizing that the young woman is not impressed. She's annoyed and she's terrified. Because he's still a boy. He's not a mature adult. So, yeah, and when I do this presentation for teachers, we look at the graph. It's more than two standard deviations of difference separating the average girl from the average boy. The average girl reaches the halfway point in brain development by about 11 years of age. The average boy, not until 15 years of age. How long can you sit still, be quiet, and pay attention? The average six-year-old boy can sit still, be quiet, and pay attention for about half as long as the average six-year-old girl. Even at age 15, the average 15-year-old can sit still, be quiet, and pay attention for only about 70% as long as the average 15-year-old girl. As one second grade teacher said to me, when that boy sits down, his brain shuts off. It's not unusual to find seven-year-old boys who absolutely have to stand, bounce up and down, and make buzzing noises in order to learn. It would be very unusual to find a 30-year-old man who has to stand, bounce up and down, and make buzzing noises in order to learn. Sex differences diminish as a function of age. A 30-year-old man can sit still, be quiet, and pay attention for just as long as a 22-year-old woman. Sex differences diminish as a function of age. But they're huge in childhood, and they're still enormous in adolescent. That 15-year-old boy may look like a young man, but his brain is only halfway there. He's got another 15 years to go.

Stephanie Winn: So all of this is making me think, what does this mean in terms of young people's romantic development? Because during adolescence, there is this huge gap. And then in early adulthood, you compare the maturity of a 22-year-old woman to a 30-year-old man. Now, many women do date men slightly older for precisely those reasons. But then when I think about the even, it seems like widening gulf between where girls are at and where boys are at, which is really depicted in the comparison of girls on the edge versus boys adrift. Because with girls on the edge, there is this dilemma of girls overperforming. They're anxious, but they're trying to be perfect and achieve everything and be all things to all people. And then with boys, there's this problem with motivation. where video games and pornography and things like that are providing even further hindrances. So it seems like during adolescence, there would be a huge gulf between where girls are at and where boys are at. And these boys are their peers. And these boys are exposing girls to messages about their dating and romantic prospects. And so if boys are influenced by pornography, then they're sexually harassing girls in ways that are intimidating girls about what it even means to be a woman in the eyes of men. I personally think and have many reasons to believe that this is part of what's driving many girls to identify as boys is because it feels so unsafe to be a girl. It means being objectified and harassed, but that's just one possible angle we could explore. So during that time of adolescence and young adulthood when we have these kind of already inborn differences between how boys and girls mature. And then you have these social and cultural factors widening that gap. What does all this mean for young people's romantic development? And this might be a ridiculous question, but who are you more worried about boys or girls right now? And why?

Dr. Leonard Sax: I'm worried about both. That's fair. And boys are having problems, girls are having problems, but they're having different problems, and we need to get a handle on that. But you mentioned pornography, and I think when I meet with parents and we do the Boys Adrift Talk, I'm now always mentioning this because a lot of parents don't understand how pervasive this is and what a problem it is and how it is interfering with boys' motivation to establish a romantic relationship. Because, you know, parents, people over 35 years of age, When they think about pornography, they're thinking about Playboy and Penthouse. They're thinking about an attractive woman in a provocative pose. And that's great, but that's not what the boys are looking at. That's not what pornography is as used today by the great majority of boys. And unfortunately, we have a lot of really troubling research on this. We don't have to guess. The majority of boys are looking at violent pornography. really abusive, violent pornography where women are choked, slapped, beaten. And we now find a growing proportion of teenage boys and young men who are choking their female partner. And the woman's like, what is wrong with you? Are you a psycho? And he's like, no, I thought women like this. because he's learning from pornography. And the pornography shows the woman enjoying being choked. And he'll say, you know, I saw this in porn. And the woman says, she's acting, she's pretending. Let's try choking you and see how you like it. I've heard from a 15-year-old girl who told me that her 16-year-old boyfriend is demanding anal sex. And she's like, yeah, let's try shoving something hard up your behind and see how you like it. He said, well, women love it. What makes you think that? Well, no, the porn videos. That's not real. That is not real. And the boys don't understand that what they're seeing in the porn, again, these are not adult men. These are 15-year-old boys. But the pornography is influencing and forming their expectations in a really disastrous way. And we now have all this research showing that pornography is interfering with boys' expectations, is changing boys' expectations, and a rise in erectile dysfunction. You know, as recently as 30 years ago, only about 4% of men at university reported erectile dysfunction, difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection, But now the studies, we're consistently seeing now one in three young men at university reporting rectal dysfunction. I personally am prescribing more Viagra for men under 30 than I have for men over 40. It is now very common to hear from a 20-year-old man who is unable to achieve or maintain an erection without some help from Viagra or something like that. And why is that? Well, all his ejaculatory experience 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years of age has come from masturbating over pornography. And now he's with a young woman who doesn't look like a porn star, and she's not wearing lingerie, and the salami does not stand up and salute. And there's other factors going on here. The decline in male hormone levels. Young men have testosterone levels about half what young men had 50 years ago. And again, I go into the reasons driving that in my book, Boys Adrift. So you have to empower, empower. parents to know what's going on and to limit, to govern and guide. So I talk about Canyon City, Colorado. So flying to Denver, drive down to Colorado Springs, make a right turn, go another half an hour, you come to Canyon City. Beautiful town, family town, churchgoers, close-knit community, great place to raise a family, everyone will tell you. Well, there was a scandal because it turned out that all the popular kids at Canyon City High School were exchanging obscene photos, boys and girls. All the popular kids were doing this, were sharing obscene photos. Well, in the state of Colorado, if you take a photo of your own genitalia at age 16 and share that with your 16 year old friend, you have produced and distributed child pornography, which under Colorado state law is a class three felony requiring you to register as a convicted sex offender for the next 20 years anywhere in the United States. It is not wiped clean when you turn 18. So now the prosecutor has to decide whether to charge these hundred-some kids with the Class 3 felony. Don't put your kid in that jeopardy. If any parent had installed parental monitoring software, they would have seen what was going on. Not one parent had installed parental monitoring software on their kid's device. If you're going to give your kid a smartphone, a phone that can take a photo and send a photo, then you must install on that phone. parental monitoring software and say, look, the app's going to be looking. If it sees anything inappropriate, I will see it before you even do anything with it. And if I see anything inappropriate, you lose the device indefinitely. This is your job as a parent. If you're going to give your kid a smartphone, you must install parental monitoring software and explain to your kid the consequences of not using this, abusing this.

Stephanie Winn: And on that note, I recommend the appendix in Dr. Miriam Grossman's book, Lost in Transnation. There's a whole section on parental monitoring software that goes over the pros and cons of each option currently available. You said a lot of really significant things there, Dr. Sex. So one thing that came to mind is that I did an interview with someone who left the sex industry, Andrea Hines, recently on this show. And she has said that out of all of her experience servicing sex buyers from age 18 to 90, whatever, it was the 20-something-year-old men that she could not stand the most because of this influence of pornography on their violence and aggression and what they expected. And I, too, in my role as a therapist have witnessed what you've talked about, where I've had multiple young women saying that during their, for some, their first sexual experience, for some even their first kiss, that a boy tried to choke them or pull off some of those things. And the girl that you described, the way that she talked back to him is a relatively well-adjusted girl who's been raised to believe in herself and stand up for herself, but I worry that A lot of young women are not so strong to say what the hell is wrong with you for trying that with me, but rather that they've been traumatized by this and it's deeply impacted their self-esteem and for many their ability to move forward in life.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, there's a lot of talk about young women leaning in. And when I do my workshop on this topic, I talk about empowering young women to walk out. And one story that has actually been really helpful in facilitating conversations with teenage girls about this is Cat Person, the New Yorker magazine. This is really the first short story to go viral on this topic. uh so it's written from the perspective of this young woman who is flirting with a somewhat older man like she's like 22 and he's like 30 and so they seem to get along and so they go back to his apartment and she realizes I don't really want to go through with this. He's not that appealing. And I, I would kind of like to leave, but she can't find the words. So she goes through with it and she has sex with this man and it's, and she consents. He asks and he says, it's fine. And she consents. But it's miserable and it is dehumanizing. And she kind of leaves her body and she's up on the ceiling looking at herself, tolerating him abusing her like she's a doll in one of his porn fantasies. And he's completely clueless. He just thinks she's having a great time. And he texts her afterwards, like, let's get together again. And she's like, no, get off me. I hate you. And you really have to make sure the head of school and everybody's on board if you're doing this at a Christian school, a Catholic school, which I have done, because you don't want the girl coming home and saying, hey, guess what we read today at advisory? Um, because it is, it is a description of explicit description of sex, but I think it's a really empowering story because this girl has no concept of her own dignity, of her own self-worth. She's in this culture where, hey, If you don't follow through, you're a tease, you're a bitch. You agreed, you consented, so now you have to follow through. That's just the rules. Empowering women to walk out, to say, no, I have a sense of my own dignity, my own self-worth, and I've changed my mind, and I don't want to. These are the conversations we need to have with young women to empower them, to help them to find their voice and push back against this immensely toxic culture of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion and WAP.

Stephanie Winn: and perhaps preparing them as well to face something I believe has been called the hot cold empathy gap that we can think one way when we're in a cool state when we're not in the heat of the moment we can think if I was ever in such and such a situation of course I would do blah de blah right that's the right thing what you know I have self-respect but it's another thing to be able to actually navigate the pressures in that moment, the adrenaline, the cortisol, the desire to people please, which is huge for girls. Now earlier you mentioned intersex though, and I wanted to make sure to circle back to that. I have, I've touched on disorders of sexual development a little bit on this show. I can't honestly remember because I know I interviewed Zach and Cynthia from the Paradox Institute and they do some good work on that. I can't remember if we talked about it though. I do intend to interview an expert on disorders of sexual development. But I wanted to clarify, since you are a doctor, because it's my understanding from the bit that I've studied this, that when it comes to disorders of sexual development, although there are many different conditions, some of them are chromosomal abnormalities, some of them are tissues, that everyone is, at the end of the day, male or female.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Well, not everyone. Okay. So Google the phrase, how common is intersex? Google the phrase, how common is intersex? And look at the top 10 listings. In those top 10 listings, you will find two numbers jumping out. One number is it's almost two in a hundred. 1.7% of humans are intersex. That's the number quoted by the Biden administration. That's the number quoted by the United Nations. But then in that top 10, you'll also find other answers which say, no, it's not 2 in 100. It's fewer than 2 in 10,000, a hundredfold difference. The 1.7%, almost 2 in 100, almost as common as red hair, as common as red hair. About 2 in 100 humans have red hair. Almost 2 in 100 humans are intersex. Therefore, intersex is as common as red hair. That's a very common trope you'll hear. And it goes back to a paper written by Anne Foster Sterling at Brown in the year 2000, in which she asserted that 1.7% of humans are intersex. That other figure, less than 2 in 10,000, comes from my paper titled, How Common is Intersex? Published by a peer-reviewed scholarly paper published by the Journal of Sex Research. And the subtitle is, A Response to Ann Fausto-Sterling. So when Anne Foster Sterling wrote her paper, it got tremendous coverage in the New York Times, the New England Journal of Medicine, which said, wow, this is really interesting. Two in a hundred people are neither male nor female or both male and female. Well, those reporters actually didn't read the paper. And when you read the paper, you'll find that she is using a definition of intersex, which is psychotic. It is utterly detached from reality. She says, anyone who doesn't meet the Aristotelian binary of being perfectly male or perfectly female, I'm going to call intersex. So for example, late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia, LOCAH, is a disorder of a particular enzyme, 21-beta-hydroxylase, which in women means that you're going to have an imbalance. You're going to have relatively more male hormone than a woman usually has. And those women typically struggle with bad acne, and they may struggle with infertility. But they are female. Every cell in their body is XX. They have a normal uterus, vagina. They conceive children. Sometimes they have a little difficulty conceiving children. And that's often when they discover that they have this 21-beta-hydroxylase enzyme issue. Because they go to the infertility doctor. They do some tests. They say, oh, you've got this condition. So here, we're going to use some special medicine to help fix that so that your periods will be regular and you will conceive normally, which the woman goes on to conceive normally. Uh, she regards herself as a woman. Her doctor regards her as a woman. She is a woman. She's a woman with a condition called late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia. So she has acne and she has a little difficulty conceiving. A child, Anne Fausto-Sterling of Brown, says, ah, she's intersex. She's not female. I'm going to classify her as intersex because she doesn't meet the Aristotelian binary of being perfectly female, therefore she's intersex. The true prevalence of late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia is about 1 in 1,000, according to most surveys. However, in certain populations, like the Inuit, the native people of far north Alaska and northwest territories, Inupiaq, et cetera. In that population, it's 1.5 in 100, much more common in those populations. She claims without warrant that the prevalence of this condition is 1.5 in 100, that 1.5 out of 100 people have late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia, And that's where she gets most of her 1.7% comes from that one condition, late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia. But she also includes other syndromes that have never been considered intersex, that she brands as intersex because she's trying to up the numbers, which was a flip for her, a flip-flop for her. In 1993, this same researcher, Ann Fausto-Sterling, said that intersex means male chromosomes, XY, with female genitalia. So, for example, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, which Julia Child had. Julia Child was an XY individual, had male chromosomes, but did not respond to male, so she appeared to be a woman. That's a true intersex condition. Julia Child had male chromosomes but female genitalia. That's intersex. Or male chromosomes, excuse me, female chromosomes, XX, with male genitalia. or ambiguous genitina. So, for example, an XXXY chimera, an individual who's an equal mix of XX and XY chromosomes, usually a fusion of fraternal twins at a very early stage, or we can talk about how you become an XXXY chimera. It gets a little complicated. Simultaneous fertilization with an X and a Y is one way that happens. An XXXY chimera, a true intersex individual, that particular anomaly, the XXXY chimera, about one in two million live births, extremely rare. When you add up all the true intersex individuals, like Julia Child and XXXY Chimera, you end up with fewer than 2 in 10,000 individuals, which was Anne Fausto-Sterling's definition in 1993. She changed it in 2000 to inflate the number from 2 in 10,000 to 2 in 100, and she did that for political reasons. If intersex is rare, fewer than 2 in 10,000 individuals, then we can recognize intersex as a rare pathology. Now, of course, these individuals deserve care and compassion, but we're not going to build our understanding of sexuality around a rare condition. Just slightly more common than Siamese twins, conjoined twins, what we used to call Siamese twins, A very rare condition, you know, you got two heads sharing one body, obviously needs care and compassion, but we're not going to build our theory of personality based on the understanding that you have two heads occupying one body. That's a very rare pathology. It is not a normal variation. But Anne Fausto-Sterling wanted to assert that intersex was a normal variation and not a rare pathology. And so she cooked the books. She changed the definition. and fooled most people. Most reporters don't read the scholarly papers, unfortunately. They look at the title and write their story. And that's certainly what happened at the New England Journal of Medicine. That's certainly what happened at the New York Times in this case. They didn't dig into this paper. So, intersex actually is real. There are humans who are both male and female. XXXY chimera being the most classic example, very rare, but it's real, it happens. But it is a very rare pathology. And for Look, fewer than two in 10,000. If you're a teacher and you teach 300 kids a year, you could teach a different cohort of kids every year for 20 years and never encounter a single intersex individual. For all practical purposes, every person you're going to encounter as a teacher, as a parent, is either male or female. Intersex is a very rare pathology. But the mainstream media, NPR, the Biden administration, and the United Nations have all bought the Anfalsto-Sterling Kool-Aid, and they are promoting a falsehood, namely the claim that two out of every hundred humans is intersex. It's not a true statement. and just google how common is intersex and you'll find multiple links to my article with that title and you can read the scholarly research that I cite there.

Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. I didn't know that about Julia Child. So with that particular condition, because I know there are many different things under the umbrella.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, that's called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, where you have a individual with XX chromosomes, female chromosomes, but their androgen receptor is not functioning. So, excuse me, they have XY chromosomes. This is an XY individual. I think I misspoke a moment ago, an XY individual, chromosomally male, but the androgen receptor is not functioning, so they're not responding in any way to testosterone. So they will typically be very tall, as Julia Child was. They will be male typical height, because height is determined chromosomally and not primarily hormonally. their genitalia will be female because in order for your genitalia to masculinize, you have to respond to testosterone and these people cannot. So you have an XY individual with female genitalia.

Stephanie Winn: When you say genitalia, are you talking about external? Because, so my understanding of, you know, cause I've, I've entered the whole intersex debate as a lay person and, and so maybe you can tell me where you agree or disagree with my understanding. is that ultimately what determines whether a person is male or female is which type of gamete their body is organized around the attempt to produce. Whether or not they successfully produce that gamete is another story, but so Julia Child's body, are we talking… Ovaries. Julia Child had ovaries.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Female, female.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, so it's bizarre to me to think that an XY individual whose body has a disorder that's not allowing them to respond to androgens would develop ovaries.

Dr. Leonard Sax: It's not a question of developing. The human default is female. You are female. you will have female genitalia unless you are exposed to testosterone and respond to testosterone. Every human, and indeed every higher mammal, the default is female for mammals across the board. And unless you respond to testosterone, we are, that uh, embryo at five weeks of age has that little ridge that can become, uh, uh, a, a, uh, a uterus and a vagina, or that little ridge that can become a penis. And if they've responded testosterone, they'll develop male genitalia. If they don't, The default for all humans is female, and you end up as a female. The most dramatic example, of course, is oevidotes. And if you've read this literature, you're familiar with 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone reductase deficiency. So in order to become, to have male genitalia at birth, you have to respond to testosterone, which means not only that you respond to testosterone, but you metabolize testosterone. with an enzyme called 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone reductase, which reduces… testosterone removes the oxygen at the 5-alpha carbon so that you have a hydrogen rather than a hydroxylase group. And that now creates activated testosterone, known as DHT, 5-alpha dihydrotestosterone. And it is the activated testosterone, the DHT, dihydrotestosterone, that binds to the antigen receptor and activates it so it can go into the nucleus and affect the transcription, the DNA. Well, it turns out that there is a condition. in Colombia, where kids don't have this enzyme. And as a result, this individual is XY chromosome, chromosomally male, but at birth has vagina, clitoris, normal appearing female genital. And these kids are raised as girls because they look like girls. They are girls. But then at puberty, something changes and the clitoris enlarges to become a penis. And, um, uh, the voice lowers and, uh, wavers, doges, eggs at 12 is, is the Spanish name because you discover that, oh, those, um, uh he's actually got testicles we didn't know this and we have a great deal of research on these individuals it turns out and so it turns out that for the secondary sexual characteristics to develop at puberty you don't need dihydrotestosterone you just need testosterone And these kids have plenty of testosterone, and so they masculinize and become men. These are girls who become men. And a wonderful fiction book depicting the life of such a individual called Midisex by Jeffrey Eugenides, very well researched. But this is a true intersex individual. We know a great deal about these men. As men, we know that they grow up to pursue male typical occupations. They become plumbers and carpenters. They don't become nannies or kindergarten teachers. And we also know they never get prostate cancer. And this attracted attention decades ago. It's like, whoa, these people, these these men never go bald. And they never get prostate cancer. Interesting. So baldness and prostate cancer are a function not of testosterone, but of 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone. Could we simulate this? Could we block that enzyme in adult men and thereby cure their baldness and decrease their risk of getting prostate cancer? And of course, the answer is yes, you can. and the drug companies developed a pill called finasteride, a chemical called finasteride that blocks this enzyme so that you don't get male pattern baldness and you don't get prostate enlargement. It doesn't protect against all forms of prostate cancer, but it protects against prostate enlargement and it is prescribed, I prescribe it for benign prostate hyperplasia and it certainly does decrease many kinds of prostate cancer. If you buy that bottle, There will be a warning label on it saying that women of reproductive age should not handle this pill, should not come anywhere near it, because we don't know what the dose is. We don't know how sensitive a woman's body is to it. But if a woman were to take finasteride while she is caring, an XY male fetus, it is possible that she would give birth to a wave of stelgia. She would give rise to a baby that appears female, has female genitalia, but is in fact chromosomally male and will transition to being male at puberty. 5-alpha-dihydrocystosterone reductase deficiency, a true intersex condition, very rare, found only in a few communities worldwide, most notably the community of Columbia, where it's fairly common, and they now know to be on their guard. If a child is born female, better wait until they're 12 to know for sure if this is a boy

Stephanie Winn: I have so many questions. I'll name the different ways my mind is going and you can pick which one you want to go. So one is when you talk about these unique populations, the huevatoches community in Colombia, you talk about also how there's higher rates of CAH in the Inuit population. Where my mind goes is why are these conditions higher in these populations? Is it genetic? Or is it a result of environmental pollutants, endocrine-disrupting chemicals in those communities?

Dr. Leonard Sax: No, I think we can say with confidence that this is genetic. Small populations with founder effects. So, for example, I earned my residency in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where there's a lot of Amish. Amish families in Lancaster County trace their ancestry to a very small founding colony of maybe 20 families hundreds of years ago, which is why there are some names like Stoltzfus, which are very, very common among the Amish of Lancaster County, because one of those founding families was named Stoltzfus. And we've got all kinds of researchers who've studied these diseases that the Amish of Lancaster County get. Because when you have a small population inbreeding within itself, you reinforce recessive genes and you get these conditions that are rare among humans generally are magnified in small populations with what the geneticists called founder effects. With a small founding population, you're going to magnify those otherwise rare recessive traits. And that seems to be the explanation of why this has happened in the Inuit of the Arctic and the population that I mentioned in Colombia. It's a founder effect. This was going on long before the endocrine disruptors that I talk about in my book, which is endocrine disruptors are really a phenomenon of just the past 50 years. But we were still just as long before that.

Stephanie Winn: OK, so in that case, if if this population in Colombia has been experiencing this for a long time, can you tell us a little bit more about. how that's impacted the culture and child rearing and what is life like for these individuals that grow up thinking they're girls and discover they're boys, but also in a social environment where it's known that girls might have this happen to them? Like, how does that impact the culture, child rearing, the individual's experience of life?

Dr. Leonard Sax: You know, I'm not sure that we have research going that deeply. What we do know is that these individuals as men do just fine. Uh, they don't seem to have any lasting trauma from being raised as girls, uh, for their first 12 years or so. And they are, uh, typical men. Uh, they like, they, they, uh, like to tinker with mechanical things, they don't like to talk about their feelings, and they adopt roles that are male typical for that culture.

Stephanie Winn: And we'll come back in a moment to men not liking to talk about their feelings because you have some interesting things to say about that. But first, back to the subject of people like Julia Child who have conditions where they have XY chromosomes and… True intersex individuals. So that raises the question of out of all the things that can be attributed to one's sex, which are determined by the chromosomes, which by the hormones and the sexual organ tissues. So I don't know much about Julia Child. I did watch a movie about her once years ago. But what kind of personality traits would you anticipate? And in what ways would someone with, let's say, male chromosomes but female genitalia be typical for the male sex versus typical for the female sex?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, well, I'm going to push back against that question because you use the phrase personality traits. Women can be aggressive. Men can be empathetic. I would reject any claim that there are male personality traits or female personality traits. I actually had a questionnaire in the first edition of Why Gender Matters, published by Doubleday back in 2005. The questionnaire is at the back of the book called How Masculine Are You and How Feminine Are You? Because indeed, there are some traits that are more masculine and some traits that are more feminine. So, for example, caring about what other people think is a feminine trait. And not caring what other people think and enjoying argument for the sake of argument is a masculine trait. And I remember I got a very angry email from a woman who said, your questionnaires are total BS because I'm a woman and I scored much higher on the masculine than I did on the feminine. So obviously you don't know what you're doing. Well, exchanging emails with this woman, it became very clear that the questionnaires were very accurate. She's a very masculine woman. She likes to argue for the sake of arguing. She doesn't care what other people think. But she is still female. And one of the points I'm really trying to make in Why Gender Matters is that we have to distinguish between sex and gender. Every human, 99.98% of humans, is either male or female. But as humans, we are all a mix of masculine and feminine. I've been married for 33 years, and in my marriage, I do all the grocery shopping. I just came from the grocery store, actually, to get back.

Stephanie Winn: Beyonce as well.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Uh, I do all the grocery shopping. I enjoy shopping for groceries. My wife hates to shop for groceries. Uh, she'll tell me what she needs, but she doesn't want to go get it. That's my job. Uh, she does the lawn mowing. She fixes the lawnmower. Uh, uh, and our screen door broke recently and she fixed the screen door. Um, she's very good with that kind of stuff and I'm not. Uh, so on many parameters, she's more masculine and I'm more feminine. And that's fine. We have gender. People used to think you were either masculine or feminine. One dimension. It's not one dimension. It's two dimensional. You can be very masculine or not. You can very feminine or not. You can be both, which is androgynous. You can be neither, which is undifferentiated. Part of becoming an adult who's comfortable in your own skin is figuring out where do I belong on that two dimensional plot of masculine and feminine. And that's okay. And the great irony of the transgender activism is that it's reinforcing gender stereotypes. So now if a girl says, I want to be combat inventory, people are saying, Oh, what are your preferred pronouns? You're going to transition to the male role. Or if a boy says, I love ballet and glitter. And macrame, I did macrame as a teenage boy. And I went to the yarn store and I did macrame. Today, people would be asking me, oh, are you transitioning to the female role? I'm a gender atypical boy. I always have been. I enjoyed macrame and glitter and dance as a child. I didn't like to hit or be hit. I'm a gender atypical male, but I'm male. I happen also to be straight, which is a separate issue. Not that there's anything wrong with that. So gender is complicated. But gender, masculine and feminine, are not the same as sex, male and female. And what's weird is that in recent years, the experts, the people who should know better, are deliberately confusing this point. So the American Psychological Association, in their official definition of transgender, says that You're transgender. If you don't conform, if your behavior doesn't conform to the sex that you were assigned at birth, then you are transgender. That's basically a quote from the American Psychological Association. And I'm confident of that because I've done this presentation now many times. Well, they know better. They know that that's false. That's not a true statement. My behavior. Enjoying food, shopping, cooking, glitter, macrame, not enjoying hitting and being hit, my behavior does not conform to my sex. So I'm trans. Wow, who knew? No, I'm not trans. I am a gender atypical male, which is fine. About 8% of males are gender atypical. About 20% of girls are gender atypical. And that's fine. That's part of the richness and complexity of the human experience. And the great irony of the transgender activism and of those organizations like the APA that they have co-opted is that it's making rigid gender stereotypes. So if a girl wants to be combat infantry, if a boy likes macrame, oh, you must be trans. If you don't conform to the stereotypes, if you're a girl who doesn't like Barbie in pink, if you're a boy who doesn't like to hit, then you must be trans, and this is immensely harmful.

Stephanie Winn: Well, and I agree with you there and would say that we're all mostly a mixture of typical for our sex in some ways and atypical for our sex in other ways. Like I'm very female typical in a lot of ways, but I'm more disagreeable than the average woman, but I still care what people think, which is kind of a setup. It's like a recipe for disaster. Because I'm oppositional, but I'm also sensitive. Now, I want to talk about trans issues, and maybe this connects, maybe it doesn't. Earlier, you mentioned men not liking to talk about their feelings. And that is a stereotype, right? So part of what you do so well in your books is sort of Lay out both sides that yes, we can talk about what is typical for males and females and how that is based in the brain. It's not just socialization. There is a biological basis for our differences and there's nothing wrong with being an outlier on some of the bell curves of how various traits are distributed in a population. So that being said, one of the stereotypes about men is that they don't like to talk about their feelings. And I think, if I recall correctly, I learned in your book that in women's brains, our language processing and emotion centers are actually closer in the brain, and that they're further apart in male brains. Is that right?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yes. You're referencing a study by Debra Irgiland-Todd, who at that time was at Harvard Medical School. And she was interested in the development of brain areas involved in emotion, and especially negative emotion. So there's a number of ways you can do this. You can read the child a sad story or a scary story while they're in the open MRI scanner, or you can show them a sad face or a scared face while they're in the open MRI scanner. It doesn't matter a lot how you do the study. The findings are robust. In the young child, five, six, seven years of age, the area of the brain that lights up in response to emotion is the amygdala. This is true in girls and it's true in boys. The amygdala is what neuroscientists call a phylogenetically ancient nucleus, which is a fancy way of saying it hasn't changed much in the course of evolution, looks pretty much the same in humans as it does in rats. And it makes very little connection with the talking part of the brain, the analytical parts of the brain, which we find up in frontal temporal and parietal cortex. And the brain research helps me to understand that what I observe in the classroom, And the first grade teacher says to her students, how'd that story make you feel? How might you feel if you were the child in that story? Most six year olds, whether girls or boys, will not be able to give an answer or they'll guess the answer they think they want the teacher to hear. And the brain research helps me understand why that is so. It is so because the area of the brain where the emotion is happening, down in the amygdala, doesn't communicate with the part of the brain that's doing the analysis and the talking, which is up in frontal dumbarone parietal cortex. But that changes in girls. By the time they're 13 years old, you see a very different pattern of brain activity in response to negative emotion. you see that the pattern, the activity has moved out of the amygdala and up into frontal temporal and parietal cortex, the same areas of the brain where the analysis and the talking happens. So again, that helps me to understand what I observe when the seventh grade teacher says, how'd that story make you feel? How much you feel if you were the girl in that story? This 13-year-old girl can give a very articulate answer. She can say, well, I personally was never in that situation, but my friend Melissa was in exactly that situation. Her best friend, the girl she thought was her best friend, totally betrayed her and went and sat with the evil girls who ate her. And so she was all by herself. She was like starting to cry. So I went and sat with her and everyone said, oh, look, Emily's sitting with Melissa. And my friends came and sat with me and we wouldn't sit with the evil girls and they wouldn't sit with us. she can go on and on. It's easy for her to be analytical about emotion. It's easy for her to be articulate about emotion. And the brain research shows us why that is so. It is so because by the time you've got a teenage girl, the area of the brain where the emotion is happening is up in frontal temporal and parietal cortex, the same areas of the brain where the analysis and the talking happens. Do we see a similar pattern of maturation amongst boys? We do not. The pattern of brain activity in the 17-year-old boy looks like the pattern of activity in the five-year-old boy. So it's not boy-friendly to require all the students to write an essay about how would you feel if. So I give an example of, again, a boy from my own practice, very bright boy, eighth grade. The assignment was to read Lord of the Flies. And you all remember Lord of the Flies. Boys get stranded on a desert island and they beat up on the fat boy, nicknamed Piggy, and eventually kill him by throwing him off a cliff. This boy read the book, loved the book, finished the book. He enjoyed it. We talked about it. He thought it was a great book. He refused to do the homework. Why don't you do the homework?" Mom said, it's totally stupid. Let's see it. So he gets out this crumpled piece of paper. Homework assignment reads as follows. Write at least 600 words in diary format from Piggy's perspective at a point in time about halfway through the book. Describe how you feel about how the other boys are treating you. Be sure to mention specific boys and specific events from the book. I was like, what's stupid about that? Seems very creative on the teacher's part. You can't easily download the answers on the internet. And he said, that's always stupid. And my mom said, why is it stupid? He said, look, I'm not some pathetic fat geek who can't even pick his own nose. If I was on that island, I'd smash that boy's face in myself. Asking teenage boys to write essays about how you might feel if you were the pathetic fat geek does not teach empathy. I've got a whole nother workshop on how you teach empathy to boys. It's got nothing to do with writing essays. On the contrary, what you end up with one more boy who's decided that school's for girls and school's stupid. If you must write a sentence in that format, make it, what would you do if you were picky? It sounds the same, but it's not the same. It's a very different question and it's much more boy-friendly question. What would you do if you were picky? So, yeah, there's a lot of truth to that stereotype. Many boys, many men are uncomfortable talking about their feelings. And the brain research helps us to understand why that is so. And many boys, many men would rather do rather than talk about their feelings, which is fine.

Stephanie Winn: You can now watch No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care. This medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation, is the definitive film on detransition. Stream the film now or purchase a DVD. Visit nowaybackfilm.com and use promo code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on Twitter at 2022affirmation or on Instagram at Affirmation Generation. So in a nutshell, because you said you have a whole workshop on how to teach empathy to boys, it sounds like one nugget of advice is the emphasis on action. What would you do? Any other pointers for how can we encourage boys to develop empathy and perspective taking skills in ways that are natural for boys?

Dr. Leonard Sax: So the Highland School is a co-ed school between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. And it's a co-ed school, but they understand that for this mission, for this mission, teaching empathy to boys, teaching boys to be men, they needed all boys led by men. So a church had been flooded in one of the hurricanes, and they didn't have money to fix it up. Insurance didn't cover wind-driven rain. There was a hole in the insurance coverage, and the church was sitting in this muck. And so you say, okay, who wants to volunteer? And you have an advisory for the boys, and you explain to the boys, being a man means using your strength in the service of others. Who wants to step up and be a man? And you challenge the boys. It's a Catholic school. They're very comfortable with this spiritual formation, as they call it. Who's going to step up and be a man? 30 boys volunteer. 30 boys, six men spent their spring break at this church. They had some professional assistants showing them, okay, this is how you protect yourself because the place is covered in mold. You've got your N95 mask. This was before the pandemic. Nobody knew what an N95 mask was, but that's what you need if you're going to clean up a mold infested, slime filled church. And I got great pictures. that these boys and the men shared with me, they had a great time. They had a great time. This is how you give boys a better understanding. This is how you create a culture of respect. Because boys want to be met. Boys want to be met. But what does that mean? You have to teach them. And if you don't teach them, look to the marketplace. And what they find there is Drake, Bruno Mars, and Eminem. Our culture now does a terrible job of offering healthy role models to boys. We basically don't. We offer them unhealthy role models. So now it's on the school and the community and the church to create healthy role models, to form boys, to be good men. You can do it, but you have to understand what the challenge is.

Stephanie Winn: That's excellent, thank you. So our episode will air shortly after an episode with a self-professed autogynephile who's written a 700-page book on auto-heterosexuality, as he calls it.

Dr. Leonard Sax: So you're talking about a man who has transitioned to the female role.

Stephanie Winn: Actually, no. And that's what's so interesting about him is that he recognizes that he is attracted to the idea of himself as a woman.

Dr. Leonard Sax: So he likes to wear pantyhose.

Stephanie Winn: Well, so you're getting into the question of how he defines it. And that's what I want to get into with you as well. I basically had a devil's advocate conversation with him. I created a lot of room for disagreement, friendly, constructive disagreement on this podcast. And he's not a man that's asking other people to call him a woman, which is part of what makes it possible for us to talk because he can talk very candidly about his own sense of his sexuality. But one of the things I asked him was, what does it mean to you to feel like a woman on the inside? What does this mean? Right? And he was defining it in fairly superficial terms with regard to things like style of dress. And then I said, well, you know, I'm sure you can imagine some people hearing this think that that sounds quite superficial to reduce womanhood to a style of dress. And so we had some back and forth on that issue. But I wasn't thoroughly satisfied with any particular definition that he gave of what it means to feel like there's a woman on the inside that he has this loving relationship with, right? And so what I want to ask you about then is your work on trans issues because in Why Gender Matters, I can't remember if it's like chapter 12, 13, something like that. 11. Chapter 11, okay.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, there's 12 chapters, the last four of which are on gender non-conforming, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex. And I think you're talking about chapter 11, where we talk about autogynephilia and transgender.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, so leading up to that, you have chapters dedicated to all the differences in our brains and behaviors between men and women. You start with these interesting facts about differences in our olfactory system, which we started this interview with, differences in Hearing, vision, and behavior, also sexual preferences. For example, not only whether a person is straight or gay, but preference for sexual novelty and the role that the visual system plays in a person's sexual excitability, things like that are very gendered. And so by the time you get around to your chapter on trans issues, you say, OK, there are people who say that they feel like they have a male brain and a female body or vice versa. What do their brains actually look like and what are their behaviors tell us? So I think that this is a great conversation to follow a conversation with a man who says that he does feel like there is this inner woman. However, I think maybe had difficulty getting that across to our listeners in a way that was very relatable to other women. So I just want to kind of give you the floor with regard to any of the issues you address in that chapter of your book. When people say they feel like they are the opposite sex, what are their brains and behaviors actually tell us?

Dr. Leonard Sax: So I recently consulted with a family. Parents are concerned. Their son, their teenage son, has announced that he is female and he wants to transition to the female role. And when I do such a consultation, I want to know everything I can about this kid. I want to see what kind of drawings. Do you have any drawings that he did when he was in kindergarten, first grade, second grade? What's his favorite free time activity? What turns out, this boy's drawings are all scenes of action, and collisions, and dragons, and monsters, and lasers, and guns, and black and white with no color. They're very typical, stereotypical boy's drawings of combat and action. And his favorite free time activity is mechanical engineering. He's great with making these little robots that go around and whack things. But he has what we used to call the transvestite fetish, a term that's fallen out of use. He is sexually aroused by putting on pantyhose and imagining that he's a woman. And this is very arousing to him and nothing else is. And he is convinced that because he feels this way, he's actually a woman trapped in the body of a man. He's not. He's actually a very typical male. who has, as I said, we used to call the transvestite fetish. We're now using this term autogynephilia, meaning that he likes the idea of imagining himself as a woman. If this boy gets his wish and is castrated and begins taking female hormones, he's not going to be happier. We have a great deal of research on this topic, the best research coming from Europe, where they have a very trans-friendly culture, but we know that these individuals are much more likely than other individuals 20 years down the road to be depressed and indeed to commit suicide. I suggested to him, I met both with his parents and with him, and I suggested, hey, you know what? I don't know if we're allowed to say this on your, on your podcast, but if you want to put on pantyhose and masturbate, that's fine. I'm not going to judge that. Okay. We have, I've got a whole nother talk about Christian sexuality. That's not what this kid is coming from. He's not a Christian. He has no interest in Christianity. He's struggling with this male female issue. I said, but you're, you're her mechanical engineer who loves combat. You are not a woman trapped in a man's body. You're a man, you're actually a pretty typical man who has what we used to call the transvestite fetish, what we now call autogynephilia. Don't cut your balls off. Don't start taking female hormone. That's really would be an unwise thing to do. Aside from the fact that you would then never be, I know you don't want to father kids now, but 20 years down the road, you might want to. And if you go down this path of chemical or surgical castration and female hormones, you're not going to be a father. The odds of you being a father are greatly reduced. You're going to still have that feeling being trapped in the wrong body because every cell in your body is XY. You have a man's brain. You have a man's eyes, ears, nose. You have a particular characteristic that we now call autogynephilia, that you're aroused by wearing pantyhose. That's fine. That's not a reason to cut your balls off. So I'm glad to hear that your previous guest is not transitioning. I think that's wise. Because the reality is for 99.98% of us, every cell in your body is male or female. You cannot, if you're a man, become a woman. You can cut your balls off and talk to start taking female hormone, but you're still a man. And we've got lots of research showing that you're not likely to feel a lot better. Uh, many such individuals who transition don't feel any better. Um, uh, And we are in a very peculiar place right now in this country where our quote leading institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association are pushing kids to transition because this boy likes glitter and macrame, this girl likes the idea of being combat infantry. So we're at a very awkward time because the leading organizations now endorse this, even though the research clearly states that it's wrong. The leading organizations are no longer guided by research, they're guided by ideology. And I wrote an article making that point. My article is titled, Politicizing Pediatrics, Criticizing the American Academy for Adopting a Position Based on Ideology Rather Than Evidence. And you can pull up that article online. Just Google my name, Leonard Sax, and Politicizing Pediatrics, available at no charge at the Public Discourse website. So, we've got a very awkward time right now. You know, I just spent two days at Santa Fe Christian, which is in Del Mar, California, Solana Beach, about half an hour north of San Diego. And a psychologist there told me that she has to whisper. So, you know, parents will say, my daughter wants to transition to the male role. And the psychologist does her assessment. And then she'll literally whisper to the parents, don't let her do it. She's a girly girl. She's caught up in this moment. But if you put that in the chart, if you put that on paper, if you put that in the electronic record, you can lose your license. Because the state of California licensing board is following the guidelines of the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which state that if this girl says she's a boy, then you have to transition her. You change the birth certificate from Emily to Justin. Emily never existed. And anyone who doesn't is a transphobe and a bigot. So we've got a very weird moment right now. And I had a similar conversation with a pediatrician in Roswell, Georgia, when I spoke there a few weeks ago. And she's also afraid of telling the parents, hey, don't let your kid transition. I said, look, you're not in California, you're in Georgia. your state licensing board is not going to strip you of your license because you're not following the AAP guidelines. You can, you need to find the courage to find your voice because you're in Georgia, which is a purple state, not a blue state. And I know, happen to know that the Georgia licensing authority is not going to strip you of your license just because you don't want this girl to undergo a bilateral mastectomy at 14 years of age and begin male hormones.

Stephanie Winn: Well, Dr. Sax, you're in good company on this show. And my listeners certainly agree with you. You may not be aware that as a therapist in Oregon, I suffered threats to my license last year. That's kind of my claim to fame. I talked about it with Helen Joyce on episode 11. And I'm going to have her back at some point next year to interview her because that episode, she was interviewing me, my whole story about people coming after me for my license. And that's why I stopped working with gender questioning youth. About half my clients are parents, like the ones who consult with you when they're worried about their kids. And so I would definitely encourage anyone who's interested in this to go ahead and read Why Gender Matters. And by the time you get to chapter 11, it's all very beautifully laid out. I'm not sure if you're aware, Dr. Sacks, it's very recent news and very grateful news. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now being sued by a detransitioner. You know about that.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, we'll have to see what happens. I'm hopeful that suit will be successful. What's encouraging about that suit is they're not just suing the doctor, they're suing the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is absolutely the right thing to do. Because the doctor can say, well, I'm just following the guidelines of the American Academy. But those guidelines were based in ideology, and the American Academy should be held responsible for making recommendations that contradicted the evidence in support of a particular ideology.

Stephanie Winn: And the APA should be next. The American Psychological Association is equally responsible. Now, before we run out of time, I have to ask you a question for my Locals community. But first, I'll just put in a plug for everything related to this topic. So for one, if you want to ask a question, listeners of any of my future guests, join my Locals community, only $8 a month, somekindoftherapist.locals.com. That's where I announce who my future guests are going to be, and we have a question for Dr. Sax. To people who are interested in the subject we were just discussing, definitely watch our film if you haven't already. No Way Back, The Reality of Gender Affirming Care. Use my promo code sometherapist for 20% off at nowaybacktofilm.com. And finally, I will mention that I am a senior fellow at Do No Harm. And if you are a therapist or medical professional looking for like-minded colleagues, that's a great organization to join. So just put in those plugs there real quick. But to our locals, community, 40-something has a question for you, and it very much follows up on everything we were just talking about, so it's kind of your opportunity for any last thoughts on this subject. She says, curious what Leonard Sax's theory may be on why gender-affirming parents are okay with potentially rendering their kids infertile through medicalization. While it's probably a quote-unquote good thing that these parents are not pushing their kids into giving them grandchildren, it seems like the push is now in the other direction, to not have grandkids at all.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Yeah, you know, there was a recent survey of American parents and asked them, what's most important to you for your kids? And number one for American parents was that the kids be financially independent, financially responsible, financially successful, earn a lot of money. That's the top priority now for American parents. having children was at the bottom. Only something like 20% of parents said it was important to them that their kids have kids, which is weird because it goes against everything we thought we learned from evolutionary biology, which is that humans want to have grandkids. But the culture has become so toxic that it has changed what parents want. And if you're a parent who listens to NPR, National Public Radio, and reads the New York Times, it's very easy to come to believe that, hey, look, Gender is just a social construct. It's not real. Judith Butler has taught us that gender is just something that people in power create. It's a creation of the heteronormative patriarchy to keep women down and enlighten people. Deconstruct the heteronormative binary. And believe me, I've argued this point with professors at the University of Texas, Austin, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and other leading institutions, and they're absolutely convinced. And so if that parent who believes this who says, look, the leading authorities at all these leading universities agree with Judith Butler, Cal Berkeley, that gender is just something we imagine and that enlightenment means deconstructing and problematizing gender. And my daughter says she's a boy, then great, you know, enlightened parents affirm that and help her to transition. And anyone who doesn't is either a Trump supporter or a bigot or both. So, yeah, I think I have a good understanding of where this is coming from, where well-educated people who love their kids are supporting their transition. And, again, one reason I wrote Why Gender Matters is for that parent who's like, well, maybe, but, you know, I'd like to learn more. I hope they will read the book and realize that, hey, what you heard on NPR and The New York Times and this domain is not accurate. is not grounded in evidence it's grounded in ideology here's the evidence and here's what you should do when your six-year-old boy says he's a girl uh why do you think you're a girl oh because you love ballet great we're gonna sign you up for ballet but you're gonna study ballet as a boy not as a girl you think you're a girl because you don't like to whack people with lightsabers that's fine you don't have to you can study ballet you're still a boy

Stephanie Winn: Well, Dr. Sax, again, thank you so much for your incredible work on this subject. Again, those four books, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and The Collapse of Parenting will all be not only in the show notes, but also in my bookshop at sometherapist.com slash bookshop. They have been already in my second section down, which is recommended reading for ROGD parents. But no, I will have the pleasure of adding them to the section right at the top. for guests on this show. It's been a pleasure having you. Where are all the places that people can find you besides your books?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Well, I hope you'll visit my website, LeonardSacks.com, L-E-O-N-A-R-D-S-A-X.com, where you'll see what I'm writing. You can sign up for my newsletter, ideally, which is free. And then you'll get advance notice of what I'm writing about. And also, next time I visit, I had to smile when you said Oregon, because I've done two visits now to Fruitland, Idaho, which is right on the Oregon border. Uh, it's Ontario, Oregon is the town right across the Snake River there. And, uh, the school leaders told me it's a real problem because the high school kids walk across the bridge to Oregon where there are marijuana dispensaries everywhere. And it's very easy for anyone walking in the shop who looks like a grownup To buy in fact the hotel they recommended is right next to a marijuana dispensary right there in in Ontario, Oregon But it's it's weird in Idaho being right on the Oregon border because the laws are very different between Idaho and Oregon

Stephanie Winn: Well, and people coming here, too, for our disastrous laws allowing kids to access hormones and surgeries and now to get abortions without parental knowledge or consent, which makes our sex trafficking just that much easier. Anyway, yes, Oregon needs all the help we can get. So your website is LeonardSacks.com. I think you're on X at Unfragile Kids. Is that right?

Dr. Leonard Sax: Not really. I mean, technically I am, but I don't, I don't do anything on Twitter and haven't for years. So yeah, I still have, I haven't closed my account, but, but, uh, no, I'm not on social media. Uh, I send out emails and I try to respond to emails, uh, but I don't really do social media.

Stephanie Winn: Got it. Okay. Well, thank you again so much for joining me, Dr. Sacks. It's been a pleasure.

Dr. Leonard Sax: Very good. Thanks very much.

Stephanie Winn: I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Parents, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.