Gurwinder speaks to us about how social media plays with our sense of time, and explains how it actually changes our experience of time itself. He is interested in how we are fooled, particularly in the digital age, and how easily we participate in our own confusion. Our cognitive biases, the status games we play, the impact of tribal thinking, and the strange ways intelligent people end up believing things that don’t stand up to scrutiny are all examined by Gurwinder.

The devil is often in the detail in today’s bewildering, fast-paced world and Gurwinder gets into the nitty-gritty of what’s actually going on. He traces the structure of social media and describes it as a kind of maze; a constant stream with no shape. Social media is a virtual place where you can’t hold onto anything because it’s all nebulous.

The conversation lifts all sorts of concepts that borrow from older ideas such as casino design, supermarket layouts and the Gruen effect, and shows how these have been translated into digital form. We discuss how we are nudged, interrupted, and relentlessly pulled back in by social media. Our attention is split between two worlds and we increasingly feel settled in neither.

Gurwinder shines a light on concepts that benefit from further examination - the “30-minute ick factor”, that moment when you realise time has gone and you can’t account for it, is one of them. We tend to assume that we enjoy time that passes quickly, and so we assume that we are enjoying social media when in fact we aren’t, not as much as we think we are anyway. The system is set up so that you don’t fully regret time spent online and the very thing that takes your time also softens your resistance to losing it.

Perhaps more worryingly, our contemporary lifestyle leads us to believe we are thinking clearly, but most of the time we are reacting. We think we are forming beliefs, but often we are defending positions that have been shaped by the content we have been fed by algorithms that are set up to keep us online. We think we are choosing our beliefs, but most of us are being shaped by digital media that cares only that we stay online.

Towards the end of the discussion Gurwinder talks about some steps he has taken to curb these online forces. Following our conversation I did a massive cull of who I was following on Twitter (please accept my apologies if I unfollowed you, my rule of thumb was to unfollow anyone I didn’t know, no offence intended!). This was a direct consequence of listening to Gurwinder speak. He pointed out that it is important that we carefully curate our social media experiences, that we follow selectively and choose our content carefully. In this way, if we follow more positive content, we will see more positive content.

Inspired by all this, I went from following roughly 2500 and brought it down to nearly 1000. However, this conversation was recorded a couple of months ago and I see now it has slipped right back up and I now follow nearly 1500. That’s social media for you. Again and again and again, we try to set rules in motion, we try to manage the algorithms, but they pull us back in. I’m an enthusiast by nature and if someone makes a great point on social media I tend to cheerfully follow them, not realising that the consequence of this behaviour is that my mind becomes addled by too much content. It’s high time I do another cull!

Mia and I really enjoyed speaking with Gurwinder and we highly recommend not only that you listen yourself, but that you share it with others who have been taken over by the digital beast.

Watch our conversation here:

Wes was born to Korean-American parents who had fled the Korean War. He grew up in New Jersey and later studied history at Rutgers University. He first came to wider attention in 2008 with an essay in n+1 examining Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. Since then, his writing has focused largely on American culture.

In 2018, Wes published his first book, The Souls of Yellow Folk, a collection of essays that was widely recognised, including by The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post.

In 2019, Wes introduced the term “successor ideology” to describe a developing strand of contemporary left-wing thought in the United States centred on identity, intersectionality, and social justice. In his view, this framework does not extend traditional liberalism but displaces it, replacing commitments to free speech, pluralism, and open inquiry with a more moralised and conformity-driven culture. He argues that it carries a coercive edge, presenting itself as progressive humanism while narrowing the space for dissent. The idea gained traction, with some commentators linking it to a broader erosion of liberal norms.

Wes’s pinned post from 2022 on his X account always makes me smile:

In our discussion, Wes outlines the political shift that has accompanied a wider cultural reordering. Institutions that once saw themselves as truth-seeking now often behave as though their role is to shield the public from offence and affirm a particular moral framework. Within that framework, dissent is treated as harm.

Wes’s analysis of America shows how this culture operates through a loose set of beliefs that have replaced older liberal norms. Although presented as progressive and compassionate, it runs on shame, pressure, reputational risk, and a narrowing of acceptable views. These norms are not enforced through law, they are enforced socially, through institutions, media, and professional consequences.

Wes is compelling because of his complexity. He doesn’t fall into conspiracy or caricature, he understands this culture as the result of people adapting to incentives in their professional lives. Over time, what started as a set of ideas has become the environment we live in. This is the water we are swimming in.

Wes highlights how the language of gender identity did not emerge in isolation; it travelled through these same institutional pathways, moving rapidly through schools, professional bodies, media, and healthcare systems. Once embedded, it has become difficult to question without significant social cost. There was no strong evidence base underpinning these set of beliefs, nor a broad public demand. Yet once a critical mass of institutions adopted the framework, others followed. People followed it because they presumed the decision-makers knew better than they did. They also fell into line because of a sense of reputational fear and risk management.

Wes is also attentive to the psychological dimension. He explores the impact of reframing disagreement as harm, and how it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to tolerate ambiguity. The stakes feel higher now when saying, “I disagree.” The phrase “Oh sorry, I made a mistake” somehow feels more loaded than it once did. People retreat into safer, more performative positions, and language has become more sanitised and less satisfying.

And now we have this strange dynamic where, just like before the Berlin Wall fell and during the collapse of communism under Gorbachev, many people privately express uncertainty or concern, yet publicly conform. Over time, this gap between private doubt and public compliance had widened and created a culture that feels more certain than it actually is. It’s little wonder that many of us often feel destabilised and distressed.

What happens to a culture when people stop saying what they actually think? Carl Jung tells us “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”

Watch our conversation with Wes here:

Yet everything Jasmin said was true. She isn’t incendiary. She speaks with clarity, composure, and conviction about her life, her values, and her understanding of women’s rights.

The daughter of an Italian mother and an Arabian father, Jasmin Faulk’s early experiences of oppressive gender norms in her childhood home of Saudi Arabia made her keenly aware of the salience of sex differences.

In this interview, Jasmin tells her story of growing up as a girl in a repressive Islamic society. Even though her family were quite progressive, Jasmin explains how she concealed the start of her periods in an effort to delay the time when she would have to start wearing the hijab, a full body covering women are obliged to put on under Islamic modesty laws. Sexist double standards were everywhere, and Jasmin describes feeling trapped by laws and customs that made her dependent on a male guardian’s permission to do everything, from leaving the house to travelling abroad.

When she finally ‘escaped’, fleeing Saudi Arabia for America in 1999, she embraced the liberal values she found in the USA. Naturally curious about different experiences, she welcomed the culture of free speech, tolerance of difference and the freedom to question ideas. She spoke out about women’s rights, drawing on her own experiences to highlight the challenges faced by women in authoritarian Islamic societies.

During the COVID pandemic, Jasmin became aware of a tone shift. Always instinctively respectful of transgender identities, she slowly became aware of the dogmatic mantra that “transwomen ARE women”. When she politely tried to question this idea, she was met with overwhelming hostility and a culture of ‘no debate’ that was completely at odds with her values. In this interview, she explains how feminists in Western societies have lost sight of the sex based differences that are the basis of women’s oppression in many non-Western society.

Visit Jasmin Faulk’s website

Follow Jasmin Faulk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasmin.faulk/

Visit Jasmin Faulk’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jasmin-faulk

Read Jasmin Faulk’s book, The Last Sandstorm: A Memoir

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Lionel pointed out that this is an over-simplification, and that from 1924 to 1965, the United States sharply restricted immigration through quota laws that favoured certain European countries, allowing only limited and highly selective entry rather than fully closing its doors. This seems a very important and under-acknowledged point. Arguably, what is known as American culture, as shaped in the 1950s and 1960s, is a direct result of this policy?

The conversation moved to something more fundamental. What has happened to the left? Why does it feel so different when all three of us once felt at home there? Did the left leave us, or did we leave the left? This shift in left wing politics is best illustrated by Colin Wright’s () famous illustration.

Weirdly, political positions no longer stand alone. Now it’s all package-deal politics, where if you buy one, you get the rest thrown in. If you believe that the medicalisation of identities is inappropriate, it is immediately assumed that you also hold certain positions on vastly different issues such as immigration, surrogacy, and climate change. And, in a swerve that seems very far from Karl Marx’s manifesto, all of these issues now belong to the left.

But the new left in the twenty-first century has little in common with the old left of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. So much so that it should be called something else - perhaps the identitarian or postmodern left?

The twentieth century left centred on reality – work, pay, support for the vulnerable, social cohesion and solidarity. Class politics were debated in terms of labour and responsibility. Immigration only became a clear left versus right issue from the 1980s onwards. Before that, both sides often supported restrictions, but for different reasons. Back then, there was room for disagreement and there was room for trade-offs.

Now the twenty-first century left has swapped class for identity, and everything has changed. The focus is centred around that newly sacred word, identity, and everything is subjective – our personal sense of self trumps everything else.

These days tribalism, collective agreement, belonging, and signalling that you are one of the good guys are more important than equality and fairness. Being seen as progressive and practising extreme tolerance, where anything goes, is what matters most.

Of course, any discussion of left-wing politics today soon turns to cancel culture. According to Lionel, there is a nastiness underlying cancel culture that should be addressed:

The emotions that they espouse and the emotions that they express are perfectly opposite because they pretend to be so compassionate and caring… Whereas the truth is what they exude is hostility, aggression, loathing… The whole cancel culture thing, it’s about going for people. It’s about destroying people. It is a kind of hunting ethos. It is predatory.

While the ultra-left present themselves as compassionate, they often behave in a cruel and punitive manner. The language of care has been weaponised and paired with a determination to create an out-group to contrast with the in-group. Group behaviour is managed with shaming tactics reminiscent of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the bad old days.

A direct consequence is the death of the concept of civilised disagreement. Today, disagreement is viewed as a personal attack on the person you are disagreeing with and a signal to the world that the person you disagree with is somehow immoral. It is all very medieval. The idea that you might be a perfectly good person offering a completely different perspective is dismissed as naivety.

This being Beyond Gender, of course we also spoke about the trans issue. Lionel described how she had noticed that young people on the cusp of adulthood seem to turn toward a trans identity at precisely the moment they are about to step into adult life. “It serves as sort of an excuse for not stepping into their adulthood,” she said.

Transition pretends to offer something that looks like progress but functions as a kind of arrest, a way of pausing development rather than moving through it. Instead of moving forward into work, relationships, and responsibility, attention shifts to a project that looks like achievement but is, in her words, “a false version of achievement.” It is compelling because it is measurable and culturally affirmed. The trans identity is elevated and admired. Trans people are presumed to be brave.

Lionel pointed out parallels with immigrants. The current framing, she suggested, flattens reality. “In the progressive mind they are flawless. They never commit crimes. They yearn to pay taxes.” Immigrants are no longer understood as people in all their complexity, with the full range of human behaviour that implies, but as symbols of purity. They are idealised as pure beings. Yet the truth is that people are more complicated, more contradictory, and often more difficult.

Our conversation with Lionel tried to confront the truth of 21st-century politics with courage and sensitivity. Now that there have now been actual killings in the US, we can no longer allow ourselves to yield to the dreadful polarisation that has befallen American politics, and increasingly the wider Western world.

We hope that our willingness to ask questions without already knowing the acceptable answer will be thought-provoking. It might feel very 1990s to think something through without immediately locating yourself within a tribe, yet it feels important to defend the right to be unsure, complex, contradictory, and everything else that makes us flawed and fallible human beings.

Watch the episode here:

Dr Lenihan was raised in County Clare, a part of rural Ireland famous for its rich cultural heritage. His father was a professional storyteller and an expert in Irish folklore, and Dr Lenihan grew up taking pride in what he now calls the ‘old Ireland’. He describes the powerful sense of Irish national identity, community and tradition that he believes is collapsing in the ‘new Ireland’ of today.

After specialising in online extremism, Dr Lenihan wrote an essay about left-wing extremist group Antifa for Quillette in 2017. Titled “It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders”, the essay exposed mainstream media bias in coverage of Antifa activities. Dr Lenihan’s essay showed that some journalists were open advocates for the extremist group, and that their content was correspondingly biased in their favour. In 2021, his findings were re-confirmed by publication in a peer reviewed journal. The article caused a savage backlash, with editor-in-chief Claire Lehman stating that it caused more controversy than any other piece published by Quillette.

In his book, Vandalising Ireland, Dr Lenihan identifies similar forces at play in the development of the modern Irish political landscape. In this interview, he explains how the rapid decline of the Irish Catholic church left a void in social services that was eagerly filled by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs, in receipt of massive government funding and wielding huge political influence, promote a highly politicised vision of left-wing ‘social justice’ that is routinely at odds with the views of ordinary Irish voters.

Dr Lenihan gives immigration as a prime example of this dynamic. While Irish voters consistently identify immigration as an issue of concern, no mainstream Irish political party represents their views. In fact, as Dr Lenihan explains, the incestuous alliance between NGOs, political parties and media outlets combine to stifle the expression of opposing views on immigration. Dr Lenihan describes the tragic murder of Ashling Murphy as “the moment that radicalised me”. A primary school teacher and expert in traditional Irish music, Murphy was brutally murdered by a Slovakian immigrant in 2022. Dr Lenihan explains how media coverage of the murder ignored the role of immigration entirely, focusing instead on a ‘social justice’ narrative about the supposed ‘misogyny’ of white Irish men.

Dr. Eoin Lenihan

• Follow Eoin on X: https://x.com/EoinLenihan

• Visit Eoin’s website: https://www.eoinlenihan.net/

• Vandalising Ireland: How the Government, NGOs, Academia and the Media Are Engineering a New Globalist Ireland: https://amzn.eu/d/00Sdwnqb

• “It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders.” (Quillette. 2017): https://quillette.com/2019/05/29/its-not-your-imagination-the-journalists-writing-about-antifa-are-often-their-cheerleaders/

• “A classification of Antifa Twitter accounts based on social network mapping and linguistic analysis.” (Social Network Analysis and Mining. 2021): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-021-00847-8

• Eddie Lenihan’s Tell me a Story podcast about Irish folklore: https://www.youtube.com/@tellmeastorypodcastwithedd7774/videos

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On the 18^th of March we’ll be interviewing Pear Joseph on the podcast.

Pear describes himself as a “Proudly and happily gender non-conforming gay man”. But if he’d been born just a few years later, it might not have turned out that way.

As a very feminine little boy, Pear loved dresses and the colour pink. He couldn’t help noticing that he was different to his male peers and one day, when he was six years old, he told his mum that he thought he was a girl in a boy’s body. He was taken to therapy where, fortunately, he wasn’t ‘affirmed’ in this belief. Like so many gender non-conforming children, he grew up to be a happily same sex attracted adult.

Pear now speaks up for gender non-conforming kids, highlighting the unique challenges faced by feminine boys and men in a culture that routinely medicalises those who don’t conform to sex stereotypes. He volunteers with the LGB Courage Coalition, testifying in support of legislation to limit child medical transition.

Follow Pear Joseph on X: https://x.com/thepearjoseph

Follow Pear Joseph on Subtack: https://substack.com/@pearjoseph

Visit the LGB Courage Coalition Substack:

Courage Coalition

Lesbian, gay, bisexual adults concerned with pediatric gender medicine and the censorship of dissent. We won't be silenced.

By LGB Courage Coalition

What should we ask Pear Joseph? Leave your questions in the comments.

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Soren is an ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum and a consultant and researcher focusing on the intersection of digital technology and identity. In this episode, Soren explains how growing up ‘chronically online’ influenced her adoption of a transgender identity and the way social media algorithms locked her into a self-reinforcing feedback loop of content that glamourised transition.

Soren detransitioned not long after she had a double mastectomy at the age of 18. She describes the striking contrast between the disembodied life she’d lived online and the immediacy of the physical pain caused by surgical complications. She explains the ‘pebbles in a barrel’ effect of cumulative questioning that eventually led her to detransition, including the realisation that being female does not have to mean conforming to feminine stereotypes.

She talks about the need to show gender distressed young people that there are multiple ways to understand themselves, rather than presenting medical transition as the only option. For Soren, life beyond transition has meant getting comfortable with discomfort and recognising uncertainty as a part of the learning process. She explains how learning more about human development, identity formation and evolution has given her new frameworks for understanding her experience.

She also expands on her thesis, Scroll, Click, Become: Why Social Media Demands Psychosocial Scrutiny, in which she draws on the developmental theories of Erik Erikson and James Marcia to show how social media impacts identity formation. Theories of development are explored in chapter three of the Gender Framework and you can read a free preview of the chapter here. You can also watch Soren presenting her thesis findings in her talk at the Genspect Bigger Picture Conference in Albuquerque last year:

Soren Aldaco

• Follow Soren on X: https://x.com/SorenAldaco

• Visit Soren’s website: https://www.sorenaldaco.com/

• Read Soren’s thesis, Scroll, Click, Become: Why Social Media Deserves Psychosocial Scrutiny: https://www.sorenaldaco.com/thesis

• Soren’s story covered in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/what-i-suffered-being-transgender-3d0c891d?gaa_at=

Other References

• The Gender Framework: A Comprehensive Evidence-Based Guide for Professionals and Families. (Stella O’Malley et al. 2026): https://genspect.org/resources/the-gender-framework/

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. (Jonathan Haidt. 2024): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036

• iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood, and What That Means for the Rest of Us (Jean Twenge. 2018): https://amzn.eu/d/0e0xZ2i0

• Childhood and society. (Erik Erikson. 1950): https://amzn.eu/d/02fkhyzX

• Identity and the life cycle: Selected papers. (Erik Erikson. 1959): https://amzn.eu/d/028NbDfT

• Identity: Youth and crisis. Erik Eriskon. 1968): https://amzn.eu/d/0aIYjIPM

• “Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status.” James E. Marcia. 1966. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3, no. 5.

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When her son’s primary school opened a consultation on a new anti-bullying policy, Niamh was concerned by what she saw. Rooted in the Bí Cineálta (‘Be Kind’) procedures developed by the Irish Department of Education, the policy treated bullying as a matter of identity, positioning some forms of bullying as worse than others. Particular groups of children, including those believed to have ‘gender identities’, were singled out as more deserving of protection.

At public meetings about the policy, Niamh rejected the idea that bullying should be addressed through an identity based hierarchy, rather than by taking a zero tolerance approach to all forms of abuse. She explained that her family did not believe in the concept of gender identity, and that the policy therefore conflicted with her values and beliefs as a parent.

The principle that “the parent is the primary educator of the child” is meant to be at the heart of the Irish education system. Nonetheless, Niamh was astonished when her concerns were dismissed and ignored by her son’s school. Teachers insisted that they were just ‘being kind’ and the policy was passed without amendment.

Niamh began to trace the organisations and institutions embedding gender ideology in schools, powerful LGBT lobby groups using what’s called the ‘Denton’s Strategy’. The Denton’s Strategy uses apparently uncontroversial policies on things like bullying, Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE), or reading lists as a smokescreen to embed contested concepts like gender identity across the school system. Niamh explains how this strategy goes all the way to the top, impacting not just individual schools or local councils, but national and even international legislative systems. The European Union itself is pushing gender identity ideology onto unwilling parents and children.

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

Niamh Regan

• Follow Niamh Regan on X: https://x.com/NiamhLanes/

Other References

• “The document that reveals the remarkable tactics of trans lobbyists.” (James Kirkup. The Spectator. 2019): https://spectator.com/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/

• “Bí Cineálta Procedures to Prevent and Address Bullying Behaviour for Primary and Post-Primary Schools”: https://oide.ie/post-primary-news/bi-cinealta/

• Irish National LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Strategy II 2024-2028: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/campaigns/national-lgbtiq-inclusion-strategy-ii-2024-2028/

• Commentary on the Welsh Trans Inclusion Toolkit: https://www.transgendertrend.com/the-vale-of-glamorgan-transgender-inclusion-schools-toolkit/

• “Untying the Welsh Gender Knot: Will the Welsh Government Follow Cass?” (Ben Sears. Genspect. 2024): https://genspect.org/untying-the-welsh-gender-knot-will-the-welsh-government-follow-cass/

• Bully-Proof Kids: Practical Tools to Help Your Child to Grow Up Confident, Resilient and Strong. (Stella O’Malley. 2017): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bully-Proof-Kids-Practical-Confident-Resilient/dp/0717175421

• Beir Bua Education: https://www.beirbuaeducation.ie/

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This week we’re busy recording Beyond Gender interviews with some truly amazing upcoming guests! Drop your questions for any of them in the comments section below.

Lionel Shriver

First up is best selling author and journalist Lionel Shriver. Lionel is a Spectator columnist and the author of numerous books, including the award-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin and her latest volume, A Better Life. Described as “A gleeful satire on the immigration debate”, A Better Life tackles progressive shibboleths about immigration with incisive wit and precision.

Soren Aldaco

Soren Aldaco is a detransitioned woman, a graduate researcher and Ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum. Drawing on her own experiences, Soren’s work has focused on digital identities, disembodiment in the age of social media and the way algorithms exploit our social instincts.

Dr Kristopher Kaliebe

Finally, we’ll be joined by Dr Kris Kaliebe. Kris is Professor of Psychiatry at University of South Florida. As a psychiatrist and educator, he explores how social media and cultural pressures are impacting young people’s mental health. He has been as an expert witness in a number of legal cases related to gender.

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

What should we ask Lionel Shriver, Soren Aldaco and Dr Kris Kaliebe? Leave your questions in the comments.

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On the 3^rd March, we’ll be interviewing Thea Sewell, co-founder of the Cambridge University Society of Women.

Thea hadn’t given much thought to gender identity ideology before she arrived at university. As a lesbian, she thought it was important to stand up for the LGBT community and took it for granted that that meant defending trans rights too. All that changed when she heard Julie Bindel and Helen Joyce speaking at an event about the conflict between gender identity ideology and sex based rights.

Thea began reading around the subject, starting with Material Girls by Kathleen Stock and Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce. Cautiously, she began sharing her concerns with friends.

The backlash was instantaneous. Fellow students branded her a bigot simply for owning books by Joyce and Stock. As Thea put it, “I was told that buying books written by bigots was morally equivalent to being one.” Some friends publicly denounced her as a transphobe, while others said they couldn’t risk being seen with her in public. The word ‘TERF’ was scratched into her dormitory door.

Astonished by the censorious attitude of her peers, Thea co-founded the Cambridge University Society of Women with her fellow students Maeve Halligan and Serena Worley. The Society is a single sex space where intellectual curiosity and rigorous debate are welcome. Thea says:

“The society has been one of the most intellectually and personally rewarding parts of my time at Cambridge. The conversations are serious, curious and alive. Women argue, disagree, change their minds and sharpen one another’s thinking. Far from narrowing my world, speaking openly has expanded it.”

Follow Thea Sewell on X: https://x.com/theasewell05

Read more about Thea’s story: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/0d4fdfe1ce95faab

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

What should we ask Thea Sewell? Leave your questions in the comments.

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Peter was initially supportive when his sister began identifying as non-binary in her late teens. Wellington is a progressive city and Peter had trans identified friends and acquaintances. He’d never given much thought to trans ideology.

That all changed when his sister began taking testosterone in 2024. Peter started looking into the effects of cross sex hormones and was shocked when he discovered the testimony of detransitioners. Recognising aspects of his sister’s experience in their stories, Peter tried to share what he had learned with her. Sadly, she refused to engage with his concerns and Peter felt obliged to respect her wishes in order to preserve their relationship.

Even so, he couldn’t forget the stories of life altering regret he’d read on forums like the r/detrans Subreddit. Determined to raise awareness of transition regret, he decided to use his software engineering skills to build the first AI chatbot devoted exclusively to detransition. Using a Chinese large language model called Kimi AI to aggregate the experiences of detransitioners recorded on sites like r/detrans and YouTube, Peter has created an invaluable resource for people seeking to understand gender and identity.

Detrans.AI has been a labour of love, with Peter willingly pouring his own time and money into the project simply to bring attention to the experiences of detransitioners. Please donate to support his work and help keep this vital knowledge base alive.

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

Peter James Steven

• Peter James Steven on X: https://x.com/pjamessteven

• Detrans.AI: https://detrans.ai/en

• Donate to support Detrans.AI: https://detrans.ai/en/donate

• “Inside Detrans.AI: The Tool Revealing Why People Leave Trans Identity.” (Stephanie Winn – Some Kind of Therapist Podcast. 2025):

Other References

• Visit r/detrans: https://www.reddit.com/r/detrans/

Subscribe now

On the 25^th February, we’ll be interviewing Dr Anders Sørensen. Anders is a Danish clinical psychologist specializing in psychiatric drug withdrawal and tapering, and the author of Crossing Zero: The Art and Science of Coming Off — and Staying off — Psychiatric Drugs.

Anders is one of a growing number of mental health professionals working to debunk common misconceptions about the causes of mental health problems. His work challenges both the debunked ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of mental illness, and the assumption that psychiatric drugs are the most effective way to manage distressing feelings.

He has devoted his career to raising awareness of the devastating withdrawal symptoms that can be caused by commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs like antidepressants. Although studies find that almost 60% of patients will experience withdrawal symptoms on discontinuing antidepressants, patients are not typically informed about the risk of antidepressant withdrawal effects at the point of prescription. Taken in combination with the poor efficacy shown by drugs like antidepressants, this points to a failure of informed consent much like that seen in gender medicine.

Anders’ work focuses on helping patients to taper their drugs safely, in a way that minimises withdrawal symptoms. His book explores attention training techniques that can help people to tolerate both the distressing feelings caused by withdrawal and the emotional distress that may have lead someone to seek out psychiatric drugs in the first place. Drop your questions for Anders in the comments below!

Follow Anders on Substack:

Crossing Zero

Clinical psychologist | PhD in psychiatry Helping people come off psychiatric medication safely Making sense of distress without pathologizing

By Dr Anders Sørensen

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

What should we ask Dr Anders Sørensen? Leave your questions in the comments.

Leave a comment

Ellie describes how her once bubbly, vivacious daughter became anxious and depressed after she was brutally bullied at school. Seeking an explanation for why she was targeted by bullies, Maya sought refuge in a series of mental health identities she discovered online. Her self-diagnoses of ADHD, OCD and borderline personality disorder were swiftly affirmed and medicalised by mental health professionals, but Ellie describes how her daughter continued to withdraw from her loving family, retreating into an online world.

Like many parents of struggling teens, Ellie and her husband were relieved that Maya seemed to find some relief from her troubles in a community of friends on Discord. When Maya adopted a non-binary identity, cutting her hair and asking to be called by a gender neutral name and pronouns, her parents tried to accommodate her wishes, despite the challenges of de-gendering the Ukrainian language the family spoke at home.

Little did they know that Maya was being groomed online, coached to view her loving parents as transphobic. When Ellie and her husband refused her request for testosterone, Maya reported them to CPS for ‘emotional abuse’. They were deemed ‘culturally unfit’ parents and Maya was dramatically removed from their custody by a CPS agent accompanied by no less than eight police cars. Ellie has since discovered that the advice of the online groomers had been facilitated by Maya’s school, with adults and professionals triangulating with their child to cast the family as abusive.

Ellie is still fighting to regain custody of her daughter, who has been placed in a ‘glitter family’ foster home where she shares a bedroom with a biological boy.

*Names have been changed

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

Ellie

• Follow Ellie on Substack:

Ukrainian Mother's Fight for Her Daughter

My personal Substack

By Ukrainian Mom

• Ukranian Heart Torn Apart. PITT Parents. 2026.

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In this conversation, Andrew describes attending the Turning Point USA event at UC Berkeley after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, where he appeared on a panel with Rob Schneider, Peter Boghossian, and Frank Turek. He talks about the contrast between the civil discussion inside the auditorium and the violent protests outside, and why the public celebration of Kirk’s murder shook his assumptions about human nature.

Andrew lays out the central argument of The End of Woke: that authoritarianism is the default of humanity and wokeness is only its latest manifestation. He pushes back on framing the culture war as left versus right, discusses the psychology of belief perseverance, and explains what he calls the “Omphalos moment,” after the Victorian naturalist Philip Gosse, who invented an elaborate theory to reconcile his faith with the fossil record rather than abandon it. The conversation also covers Shakespeare authorship conspiracy theories, the Brandenburg test for incitement, the “fire in a crowded theater” myth, and why Andrew believes education is the only real path out of the culture war.

Andrew Doyle

• Andrew Doyle on X: https://x.com/andrewdoyle_com

• Andrew Doyle on Substack:

Andrew Doyle

Reflections on politics, culture and the arts

• The End of Woke (Constable, 2025): https://www.amazon.com/End-Woke-Culture-Expect-Counter-Revolution/dp/1408723964

• Free Speech and Why It Matters (Constable, 2021): https://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Why-Matters/dp/034913538X

Other References

• Andrew Doyle, “The evil of political violence”:

Andrew Doyle

The evil of political violence

The cowardly murder of Charlie Kirk marks a moment of huge significance. We still lack details about the killer or his motives, but one truth is clear. Years of indulging political violence have led us here. In any civilised society, ‘political violence’ ought to be an oxymoron…

Read more

7 months ago · 672 likes · 28 comments · Andrew Doyle

• UC Berkeley Turning Point event and protests (Berkeleyside): https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/11/10/turning-point-usa-uc-berkeley-zellerbach-hall

• Andrew Doyle’s Shakespeare lectures on Peterson Academy: https://petersonacademy.com/instructors/andrew-doyle

• Brandenburg v. Ohio, the incitement test (Cornell Law): https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

• Schenck v. United States, “fire in a crowded theater” (Oyez): https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/249us47

• Anthony Greenwald, “The Totalitarian Ego” (1980): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-24373-001

• Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (1907): https://www.amazon.com/Father-Son-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199539111

• Shakespeare authorship question (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust): https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/shakespeare-authorship-question/

In this conversation ahead of Detransition Awareness Day (Thursday, March 12), Airiel describes growing up in California’s Central Valley in what he calls a chaotic home life involving abuse, addiction, and mental illness. He talks about how his gender dysphoria crystallized during childhood, his path to medical transition in the mid-2000s, and the years of homelessness that followed. He discusses the colovaginoplasty in detail, including how it was sold to him and what came after. He also explains how Peter Boghossian’s street epistemology work and a reexamination of his childhood led to what he calls a cascade of clarity.

Airiel also talks about his girlfriend, who he met two weeks before he flew to Thailand and who has been with him for over twelve years through his detransition. Both plan to attend the Life Beyond Transition summit in Washington, DC this Detrans Awareness Day.

Detransition Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Washington, DC
The largest gathering of detransitioners ever held. Tickets and livestream available at: genspect.org/detrans-awareness-day-2026.

Airiel D Salvatore

• Airiel D Salvatore on X: https://x.com/Sackless_Jack

• Airiel D. Salvatore on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Sackless_Jack

• Airiel D. Salvatore on Substack: https://substack.com/@sacklessjack

• Airiel’s essay (shared by Peter Boghossian): https://substack.com/home/post/p-176366413

Other References

• Peter Boghossian on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drpeterboghossian

• Transition Justice:

https://www.transitionjustice.org/

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: https://www.newharbinger.com/9781626251700/adult-children-of-emotionally-immature-parents/

McCrea’s central argument, which he walks through in the conversation, is that the current level of gay rights is unprecedented and not guaranteed to last. The movement, he believes, has bought into an “end of history” assumption that progress only moves in one direction. Gay rights, in his telling, were never an independent achievement but a side effect of the straight sexual revolution. He compares the situation to Estonian independence. Estonians fought hard, but Estonia was never going to be free unless the USSR collapsed. Rather than consolidating those gains, the movement expanded its demands. He sees the shift from LGB to LGBTQ+ as a major misstep, turning what was a request for a modest tweak into a demand to rewrite all norms around sex, family, and gender on an ongoing basis.

The book opens with a story McCrea tells in detail here. At thirteen, he was working as a ball boy at a charity tennis event in Dublin when the French player Henri Leconte publicly mocked him for appearing effeminate, getting the crowd to laugh along. The next day, the liberal Irish Times reported it as a good-natured event. The shift in attitude since then has been fast, but McCrea argues it is fragile. London is now the most anti-gay region of the UK, according to research by the Theos think tank, which McCrea links to demographic change. He references Olivier Roy’s work on second-generation immigrants and religious identity, and Sarfraz Manzoor’s book They.

The conversation covers what McCrea sees as the movement’s reluctance to be honest about gay male sexual culture. He brings up the 2022 mpox outbreak and draws on Tony Judt’s argument about how accumulated small lies eventually discredit the larger cause. He references Larry Kramer’s novel Faggots, Thomas Nagel’s writing on privacy, and Louise Perry’s work on sex and gender differences.

McCrea discusses why he believes the gay rights claim and the trans rights claim are fundamentally different. The gay claim, he says, is a claim to be left alone, while the trans claim is a claim to recognition.

References:

Ronan McCrea

• UCL Faculty Profile: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/30955-ronan-mccrea

• Ronan McCrea on X: https://x.com/ronanmccrea

• The End of the Gay Rights Revolution (Polity Books): https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-end-of-the-gay-rights-revolution-how-hubris-and-overreach-threaten-gay-freedom--9781509569991

Books & Works Referenced

• They by Sarfraz Manzoor: https://www.amazon.com/They-Muslims-Non-Muslims-Wrong-About/dp/1472266838

• Holy Ignorance by Olivier Roy: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/holy-ignorance/

• Faggots by Larry Kramer: https://groveatlantic.com/book/faggots/

• Past Imperfect by Tony Judt: https://nyupress.org/9780814743560/past-imperfect/

• “Concealment and Exposure” by Thomas Nagel: https://philpapers.org/rec/NAGCAE-4

• The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-case-against-the-sexual-revolution--9781509549986

Other References

• Theos Think Tank, “Religious London: Faith in a Global City” report: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/cmsfiles/Religious-London-FINAL-REPORT-24.06.2020.pdf

• Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), Supreme Court opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf

James Lindsay was originally made known for the Grievance Studies Affair. Between 2017 and 2018, Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose submitted twenty hoax papers to academic journals in fields such as gender studies and feminist philosophy. Seven papers were accepted and four were published before the project was exposed. One paper, examining rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks, was later recognised as exemplary scholarship during the journal’s 25th anniversary celebrations. The project led Lindsay and Pluckrose to co-author Cynical Theories, which examines the ideological foundations of these academic fields.

In this conversation, Lindsay traces how he went from the New Atheism movement to becoming what others called “the Rosetta Stone for woke,” someone who could translate and explain the ideology to a mainstream audience. He describes watching Boghossian face anonymous complaints at Portland State University's diversity office and thinking, "this has institutional power."

He breaks down what he means by “critical constructivism,” the worldview he believes underlies woke ideology, and how he sees it shaping education and policy, including what he argues are the ideological roots of Social Emotional Learning (SEL).

Lindsay also discusses his concept of the “Woke Right,” his term for what he sees as similar patterns of identity politics and cancel culture on the political right. Using the term in late 2024 led to his cancellation from conservative spaces. He talks about his December 2024 hoax, in which he rewrote the Communist Manifesto and got it published in a Christian nationalist publication.

The episode closes with James reflecting on his friendship with Charlie Kirk and Charlie’s assassination in September 2025. That night, James published an essay titled “Catharsis or Civilization,” urging people to channel their anger into building rather than breaking.

Resources and References:

James Lindsay & New Discourses

• New Discourses:

  https://newdiscourses.com/

• James Lindsay on X: https://x.com/conceptualjames

Grievance Studies Affair

• Authors’ reveal article, Areo Magazine (2018): https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

• Dog Park paper (retracted): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1513216

• Joe Rogan Experience #1191:

• Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay:

  https://cynicaltheories.com/

The Woke Right & December 2024 Hoax

• James’s reveal: https://newdiscourses.com/2024/12/a-communist-manifesto-for-christian-nationalists-testing-the-woke-right/

• Original hoax article, American Reformer: https://americanreformer.org/2024/11/the-liberal-consensus-and-the-new-christian-right/

Social Emotional Learning

• CASEL history of SEL: https://casel.org/about-us/our-history/

Charlie Kirk

• “Catharsis or Civilization” by James Lindsay: https://newdiscourses.com/2025/09/catharsis-or-civilization-a-statement-from-our-founder-on-the-life-of-charlie-kirk/

Tucker Carlson / Nick Fuentes Controversy

• PBS NewsHour: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/tucker-carlsons-interview-with-antisemite-nick-fuentes-exposes-rift-among-republicans

Peter Boghossian

• Resignation letter from Portland State (2021): https://peterboghossian.com/my-resignation-letter

In 2018 he created Titania McGrath, a satirical Twitter account parodying a “radical intersectionalist poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed peaceful protest.” The account has over 700,000 followers and has been suspended four times.

Andrew has written several books, including Free Speech and Why It Matters, The New Puritans, and The End of Woke. He is also the author, under the Titania McGrath persona, of the satirical books Woke: A Guide to Social Justice and My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism. He relocated to Arizona in 2024 to work with Rob Schneider’s production company No Apologies Media and is writing a sitcom with Graham Linehan.

He has argued that “those who advocate for gender identity ideology are fundamentally opposed to gay rights“ and has described so-called “gender-affirming care” as “the new gay conversion therapy.”

Andrew spoke at Genspect’s Bigger Picture 2024 conference in Lisbon and appeared in conversation with Stella:

What should we ask Andrew Doyle? Leave your questions in the comments.

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The Countess is named after Countess Markievicz, the Irish revolutionary who fought in the 1916 Easter Rising and became the first female minister in a modern democracy. Laoise chose the name because she felt the Countess’s vision for Ireland had not been realised. The organisation’s full original name was “The Countess Didn’t Fight For This.”

In five years, The Countess has won several campaigns. They stopped the Department of Education’s plan to replace single-sex toilets with mixed-sex facilities in all new and refurbished schools. They blocked an attempt to remove the word “woman” from maternity legislation. Laoise drafted legislation to separate prison placement from gender recognition certificates, which has passed its first stage.

Laoise and her team campaigned to stop the Irish government collapsing the meaning of marriage and protections for stay-at-home moms in the Irish Constitution and they won by a landslide 73.9% the largest defeat of a constitutional amendment in the history of the state. You can check out Laoise’s interview on Tucker Carlson about the campaign.

In this episode, Laoise talks about how she went down the rabbit hole after the 2018 Pride protest and Sadiq Khan’s response. She explains how her academic background studying Chomsky’s manufacturing consent and media coverage of the Troubles in Ireland (a period of conflict that began in the late 1960s and ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998) prepared her for this work. She draws a direct line between Ireland’s treatment of women in the Mother and Baby Homes and today’s policy of placing men in women’s prisons. She discusses the challenges of running an advocacy organisation, the Irish tendency toward conformity, and Brendan Behan’s observation that “the first item on the agenda is the split.” Laoise also talks about the Women’s Coalition on Immigration, a new initiative she recently launched under The Countess umbrella.

Resources and References:

The Countess

• The Countess website

• The Countess on X

• Laoise de Brún on X

Countess Markievicz

• Lissadell House – Countess Markievicz

Laoise de Brún interviewed by Tucker Carlson

• Interview on Irish referendums and motherhood vs parenthood

2018 Lesbian Protest at London Pride

• Get The L Out organiser interview, Feminist Current (2018)

Cotton Ceiling

• FiLiA explainer

Gender Recognition Act 2015 (Ireland)

• Full text, Irish Statute Book

Manufacturing Consent

• Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Mother and Baby Homes

• Final Report of the Commission of Investigation

Irish Penal Reform Trust

• Irish Penal Reform Trust

The Best Catholics in the World

• The Best Catholics in the World by Derek Scally

Women’s Coalition on Immigration

• Launch coverage, Gript (December 2025)

• Report (PDF)

From her earliest memories, Ajay was gender non-conforming. She hated dresses and loved her riding jodhpurs because she could wear a collar and tie with them. Her birth name was Amanda Jane, but she refused to answer to it, insisting on AJ instead and changing it legally to Ajay at eighteen. As a child, she stuffed socks down her trousers and still dreams of having a penis.

Ajay has never medically transitioned but says she certainly would have if the option had existed when she was young. For most of her life, she has wanted a mastectomy. Only in the last couple of years has she decided she probably won’t have one, though she’s still “not completely 100 certain about it.”

In this episode, Ajay talks about what it means to her to be a butch lesbian, and how her early life may have shaped her relationship with her body and her sexuality. She reflects on butch and femme dynamics, stone butch identity, and compulsory heterosexuality, and shares her view that women seem more sexually fluid than men. Ajay also discusses what she perceives as growing pressure on gender non-conforming lesbians in recent years, and why she believes many older butch women would have transitioned if it had been possible.

Resources and References:

Butch Lesbian Identity

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993) - free PDF available on author’s website

• Always Endangered, Never Extinct: Exploring Contemporary Butch Lesbian Identity in the UK (2019)

Compulsory Heterosexuality

• Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)

Sex and Gender

• Colin Wright, The Sex Binary: What It Is and Why It Matters, Genspect Bigger Picture Conference (2024)

• Murdock and Provost, Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Ethnology (1973)

Boarding School Syndrome

• Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child by Joy Schaverien (2015)

Attachment and Early Separation

• The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Developmental Psychology (1992)

• The Effects of Psychosocial Deprivation on Attachment, PMC

Support

• Beyond Trans (Stella’s online support groups for people who detransition or regret medical transition, where she heard perspectives like Ajay’s).