Loading summary
Transcript20 lines
- [00:00]
A
Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads go to libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.
- [01:00]
B
Foreign. Goes to war against Iran and the EU goes to war against conversion therapy. We'll discuss both things here on the Compact podcast. I'm joined by Ashley Frawley and Jeff Schulenberger and we have special guest Steven Adubato joining us later in the podcast. So Jeff, are you feeling that wartime fever, have you rallied to the flag?
- [01:39]
C
Definitely not. So I think in a way the most interesting, which has sort of been a theme of mine in recent months, I said this about Venezuela as well. There is something kind of fascinating about the lack of an attempt at concerted propaganda on behalf of these efforts. You know, clearly there is a kind of propaganda, but it's entirely directed at. Well, I mean, I would say even when speaking to the right wing base of maga, there's a deep incoherence and it's not quite the incoherence of the famous Bush era kettle logic which I wrote about in relation to Venezuela a couple months ago, this Zizek analysis of the incoherent, inconsistent logic of the rationales for war offered in Iraq. What we have here is, I think at least in that case there was an effort to construct a narrative. And okay, you could point out the ways that that narrative was internally inconsistent. But what's interesting here is the, the fact that there's not even any effort, as far as I can tell, to create a cohesive narrative explaining what's going on or why this is happening. And so that's, you know, whatever else you might say about the Bush era wars, you know, they were clearly stitched together by a kind of, you know, to use a little bit of theory jargon, sort of master signifier that, you know, this was about making America safe. And obviously the reason that this narrative construction was, was possible was in part that it was prompted by the 911 attacks. And so you could tell this story about the need to exert strength in the world in order to keep up, keep the American homeland safe from all of these dangers that menaced it. And that was, by all accounts at least a successful storytelling effort. While, you know, for several years while it lasted, these wars were generally popular in their first overwhelming in the case of Afghanistan, certainly overwhelmingly popular. In the case of Iraq, which is more controversial, it's still garnered significant majority support. So what's interesting to me here is just the lack of effort to construct a kind of propagandistic narrative. And so people have been talking about, okay, there's supposed to be this rally around the flag effect. That used to be something that was measured often in polls. You know, clearly the, the aftermath of 911 and the two post 911 wars offered clear illustrations of this. And there are sort of smaller examples of it. You know, the, you know, the first Bush presidency, the invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, you know, so these were clear, measurable effects in the polls, but they were undergirded by the fact that there was an attempt to construct a clear narrative and to prepare the public, as I remember living through the year to two leading up to the invasion of Iraq. And you could observe that there was a clear effort to construct and reinforce this narrative. There are all kinds of famous examples we could point to. And so what's really odd here, I think, is the sort of apathy about this very fundamental aspect of sort of modern political propaganda, which is that when you commit the country to a massive undertaking, there has to be a sort. You use the resources of the states to create a propagandistic narrative that rallies the country around this effort. And so the, the weird kind of inability to tell an even slightly coherent story about what the goals are, what's going on here is very, very striking. And, you know, I think you could say it says something about the fragmentation of the public sphere. You know, maybe there just aren't the channels that would make it possible to construct such a narrative anymore. That said, you know, I think you could compare this to, you know, we didn't go to war, the US didn't go to war in Ukraine, but did commit significant resources to supporting that war under, under Biden. And I would say there was at least more of a kind of clear propaganda effort to, you know, manufacture consent around this, you know, that we need to support Ukraine, we need to, you know, throw our resources behind defending the sovereignty and freedom of the Ukrainian people from this tyrannical invader. And there was a kind of bipartisan consensus in favor of this effort for at least a year or two. And obviously that sort of gradually faded, of course, relatedly to what I'm talking about. Now the war in Ukraine continues to plug along. The US Is still committing resources to it, but nobody really talks about it very much except occasionally when something relevant happens. So, yeah, I think there is something interesting about that aspect of it that, that the lack of, I mean, there is a kind of propagandizing, but it seems very narrowly targeted and, you know, targeted largely to kind of preaching to the choir rather than trying to rally a broader swath of the American people behind this effort. And so that the kind of death of war propaganda, the disappearance of war propaganda is kind of a bizarre phenomenon that again, I think we could talk about in relation to the fracturing of the media landscape, the fracturing of the public sphere. What are the channels, what are the media by which you attempt to construct and reinforce these narratives at this point. But it is kind of fascinating and then even to see, I was just looking at something about the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's conservative media empire. Interestingly, there you have a kind of fracturing within the Daily Wire. There isn't a part that Matt Walsh has been very skeptical and saying skeptical things and in fact pointing out some of the things that I'm saying that there isn't really an effort. Walsh had a post about how there's not even an effort to tell a coherent story about this. Shapiro himself, the boss of the operation, is very strongly in favor of it. And then I think the other big pundit in that world, Michael Knowles, is kind of somewhere in between the two. And you know, interestingly, this was also the, the former employer of Candace Owens, who is now, you know, way off the deep end as a kind of bizarro conspiracy theorist. So I mean, what's interesting is that even within the kind of right wing media landscape, you see this. It's a kind of fractalization of the media landscape where you see the fragmentation ramify at every level, that even within a sort of generally pro maga right wing outlet like the Daily Wire, there you see the same fracturing and fragmentation that you see across the public sphere as a whole. So it's a very strange thing to behold, and particularly because the basic facts of continuing to carry out wars, you know, sort of kinetic warfare in familiar ways, continues to be the case. You know, I, I wrote about this in relation to a couple times in relation to the, the Middle east conflict that, you know, spiraled out of the October 7 attacks and Israel's response to them in relation to this famous Baudrilla, you know, Jean Baudrillard's the Gulf War has not taken place, which I do think retains a kind of relevance that people can go back and read what I wrote, Baudrillard in Gaza back in late 2023. But it does also kind of need an updating in part because he was still writing at a time when you could construe the media. There being a kind of centralized media apparatus that generated a kind of onslaught of propagandistic coverage that constructed a more or less cohesive narrative. And clearly we've left that world. We're in this bizarre kind of fractalized media landscape. And I wrote about that in relation to the Gaza situation. You know, what's interesting is that this does not actually disable the ability of states to carry out massive military campaigns. In other words, the, the collapse of the kind of propagandistic possibilities of the prior media dispensation has not made it, you know, states continue to carry out extremely deadly and effective military campaigns. So there's an odd kind of separation of these two things that might have been conceived of as, as, you know, the clearly, like the George W. Bush administration perceived a strong necessity to spend, you know, over a year kind of preparing the public mind for the invasion of Iraq. And it just now seems kind of bizarre, like apparently, you know, maybe that was totally unnecessary, you could have just done it and, or, or maybe, you know, the nature of that media landscape was simply different. But I just have so many questions about this. I don't really have a new theory of the situation, but it is just a striking contrast.
- [12:32]
D
Maybe that was the tail end of where you needed to, or perceived that there was a need to attempt some kind of narrative coherence. And from what I recall, I mean, I was just a teenager, but I remember just how cynically people took it, like, oh yeah, they hate our freedom. Hahaha. Like it was very kind of cynically received. And I don't. And it was, you know, there was very much an awareness that this was narrative making. It wasn't, you know, and, and commentators would openly talk about like, well, they're trying to frame it in this way. Do you think it's going to work, John? Well, I don't know. We'll see how this pans out. You know, it was quite clear that this was sort of myth making. But I mean, now we're in a period where even if you attempted this, institutions don't have, I mean, to the extent that they had it in the past, but I mean, let's talk 30, 40, 50 years ago. Institutions have far less trust. Media authority, as you said, is, is extremely fractured. And there isn't this kind of shared identity or even a, even a shared kind of political identity or constituency that you could clearly talk to like Trump can talk to his MAGA base. And that's, that's pretty much it. You can't really talk to like a, a clear group of libertarians or communists or socialists or liberals or something like that. I mean, even within those groups of, to the extent that they exist, there's a lot of fracturing, tends to be very identity based. And so why, why even bother trying to build this grand war narrative when it's simply not going to work? It makes a lot more sense to simply talk to your base and give what is essentially a populous gloss to the same kind of technocratic, managerial approach to modern warfare. So I mentioned last week this kind of, this kind of like managerial populism that Trump represents. You. Modern war isn't, it doesn't even have to pretend to be ideological. It's, you know, nakedly. We've talked about this many times in the pod, like it's made. It's, it tends to be nakedly about, you know, energy flows. This will create jobs, supply chains, regional balance of power. You know, Trump's not going to say we're fighting for our freedom. He's going to be quite bear in this kind of, well, they can't have nukes. They respect strength. We're going to hit them hard. No more endless wars. You know, this kind of populist rhetoric for a substance that is essentially managerial. And that's where we are now. Just this kind of like, I am not doing this for any greater good. I'm doing this for supply chains. I'm doing this for stability in the area. I opened this corridor, not in this particular conflict, but I opened this corridor and for trade. And that's great. You know, the west doesn't believe in itself. There isn't any narrative that's going to bring everybody together to fight an ideological war. It's. We are at last forced to face with sober senses our real conditions, I think. So, you know, it would never work. And so what are you going to do? Talk to your base. That's it. And be, be populist about it.
- [15:46]
B
Yeah. The Trump base is this complex organism in a way. Jeff described where at least in terms of the online influencers, you have some who are more hawkish, you have others who are restrainers of some kind. And Politico had a good story by the writer Ian Ward on just the reaction of right wing foreign policy restrainers to this move. And they've been very forthright in describing it as a setback for the Review. Emma Ashford, who has written for Compact and is one of the sharpest restrained voices, pointed out that, you know, Trump's bombing of nuclear sites in Iran last June and also his successful extraction of Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela kind of have put restrainers on the back foot because it seems that Trump is successful restrainers really did a full court press against the June nuclear attacks. You know, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, others lobbied very hard against that. Trump proceeded with it. Carlson, you know, predicted thousands of deaths if we struck Iran's nuclear sites. He also said that world war was very likely to ensue along with rampant inflation and $30 gasoline. That also did not happen. And these predictions were kind of aimed narrowly at what would happen. And as a direct result of these nuclear strikes, they weren't a kind of broad assessment of, well, what would happen if we were pulled into a full on war with Iran many months later. And yeah, maybe we're heading now toward some of those predictions coming true. The Straits of Hormuz are effectively blocked now, so we'll see where energy prices go. But really the effect at the time was that of the boy who cried wolf. And of course, in the story of the boy who cried wolf, a wolf does eventually come, right? I mean, let's keep that in mind. But the lesson of it is that if you issue these dire warnings and say this thing is happening and nothing happens and then Venezuela rolls around and once again you say, oh, this is a bad idea, Trump does it. And I think he was fantastically pleased with that. Trump, as I wrote for Compact, Trump has always had hawkish instincts and he has freely mixed those with his more peace loving instincts. The way I put it in the piece is that his opposition to forever wars is not that they involve bloodshed, it's that they don't end in clear victory. I think Trump does want to minimize bloodshed. He doesn't want to see lives lost. He probably, I mean, I would say he, he doesn't have a, he doesn't seem to have any more zest for war than other presidents, recent presidents have had, and maybe even less. But he also is very eager to call for interventions as long as it can Be spectacular and somehow work to the U.S. s advantage. I mean, Jeff, you've tweeted, I think, very fairly, kind of calling into question the idea that, okay, well, we're just going to kind of bomb Iran. We're not going to go in. It's just an aerial campaign, and so that will somehow be good. And you've pointed out that this is a bit like the Libya model, right? Well, at the time, Trump actually supported Obama's bombing of Libya. So it's, I think it's a fair parallel for you to invoke. And it's also, you know, it's not hugely reassuring because it isn't like, it isn't that clear that the Don Row doctrine excludes the Libya intervention. You know, on the contrary, that's something that the man behind the Donvaro doctrine really supported. At the time, though he seemed to have some criticisms for Obama. He vaguely believed that Libya should somehow pay for this. You know, as, as, as per usual, you know, he, he felt it kind of wasn't working out sufficiently to our advantage. He wanted to bomb them, but to have them pay for it. So, yeah, the restraint is increasingly sidelined and I think discredited in the administration. It may quickly see its stature rise. If this goes badly, that could happen. Trump is mercurial. Trump is willing to attack one way than the other, so maybe he'll turn again in that strange direction. But right now, they're very, they're very much on the back foot, very much on the outs, it seems. And, you know, we're. We're maybe bringing freedom to Iran, maybe just stopping their nuclear weapons. And lots, lots of debate, too, about whether this is a kind of free war of choice or whether we were forced into it by Israel.
- [21:42]
D
Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. They're specifically talking to their fragmented base. On the one hand, Rubio was kind of hinting that Israel had forced their hand, that they knew that Israel was going to attack, and so they preempted it to lower American casualties, something like that. And then on the other hand, you know, Vance says, well, the President acted decisively. He, he decided to take action when he knew that they were on the brink of a nuclear weapon. So they're kind of trying to have it both ways, hinting that, oh, well, it might have been Israel, but also he acted decisively.
- [22:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, them being on the brink of nuclear weapon, many have pointed this out, is a problematic argument because the point of the June bombing was to keep them from being on the Brink, I think there are, there are other accountings of why this was expedient in terms of, you know, Iranian arms buildup, in terms of Rubio's comments about we had to do this because Israel was going in and then our bases were going to be bombed. I mean, it's not helpful for those of us. And here I'm really referring to myself and Michael Tracy, who have been insisting that this is Trump's war and not just Israel's war. It's not really helpful to our case when Rubio says something like that. But I'm sticking to my guns. I mean, we have been massing troops and ships in the region for many weeks. There's been a kind of clear buildup. There was this whole dance of negotiation, maybe sincere at some level, but apparently with the goal of exhausting the diplomatic option to better justify a military option. So notwithstanding the administration's messaging, and there, I take it, Rubio was trying to explain why there is a kind of specific causes belly at exactly this moment. Despite that, I'm sticking to my guns. I'm saying that Donald Trump, who spent more than four decades expressing his desire to invade Iran and who has been massing ships and troops near Iran, was not just suddenly and against his will and against his better judgment, tricked into it by the devious Bibi Netanyahu. So I'm sticking to my guns. I'm standing strong. I trust Michael Tracy is going to do the same.
- [24:29]
C
Well, this also connects to the Epstein controversy, in which you and, and Michael have both weighed in extensively. Because I think part of what that does is because, okay, let's assume that Rubio was telling the truth. Let's assume that, you know, the US Was somehow, you know, had its arm twisted into doing this. That doesn't really answer any questions because it still raises the question of why this much more powerful country was willing to, you know, do let itself be chain ganged, as one article put it, into engaging in this effort. And so the Epstein, you know, myth or, or saga provides a kind a supposed explanation of this, which is as we, we don't need to get into it, but, you know, which is sort of bizarre because it's like, well, how
- [25:23]
B
much time do we have?
- [25:25]
C
So, you know, if it's like, if, you know, was BB Sort of like, well, you know, if, if you don't do this war with me, we're gonna release the, I don't know, the P tape. Maybe the P tape really exists, but it was actually Epstein who made it or something. Yeah, it was Actually, it was actually
- [25:43]
B
an Israeli, not a Russian.
- [25:46]
C
But I don't know, it's like, we're gonna. We're gonna release the P. Tape. Okay? We don't need to get into why, but I just don't think that works. So my point here is that we have to understand how the US Is Being or how and why the US a much larger, more powerful, wealthier country, is being drawn into this effort by this relatively small country, you know, which. Which receives aid from it. And, you know, my. My answer would be it. It has to do with this kind of broader drift of American power that, in other words, America is this, you know, massive, incredibly powerful empire that can still do things like this. This operation, like the operation of Venezuela, you know, with incredible precision and force. And the thing is, like, this was never in doubt. You know, this is something I find most enraging about some of the. The people who are getting so excited about this, because it's like, no, I mean, the whole point of Vietnam was that we were really good at blowing things up back then, too. We. We had the best military technology in the world. We could do all sorts of incredible things, and yet we couldn't solve the political problem. The problem was political. It was not about military capacity. So the point is, we've had this military capacity for a very long time. And, you know, the point is that this is kind of just this. This thing that's sitting around. And I mean, this is like a. It's a pretty primitive explanation in a sense, but it's this thing that's sitting around. And if you're president, it's something you can actually do just by saying a few words. And suddenly some, you know, operation like this, or like the operation in Libya that led to Gaddafi being killed under Obama or many other examples we could cite, like, this can be done. And therefore it's something that as a president, you're sort of structurally, in various ways, pushed towards doing. And so this is why again, almost, you know, every president has been an interventionist of some to. To some degree or another in the past 70 years. And, you know, the. The reason for this is just that you have this massive apparatus at your disposal. You know, Congress sucks and can't do stuff. You're stymied and blocked in all kinds of other ways. But here's this incredibly powerful apparatus you can wield on the global stage. And so, you know, it just isn't. It isn't. It isn't that. Let's say that again, The. The story of, like, well, Israel kind of was like, we're going to do this, so you might want to get involved, too, because it's going to affect you. Okay, fine. But the point is that I think if you have this whole apparatus at your disposal and there are all kinds of incentives towards using it, if you are a president, then, you know, when you encounter others who have some kind of. And, and I think we could say this about Ukraine in some respects as well, that, that Ukraine had a very compelling, you know, Ukraine under Zelensky had a very compelling vision of what US Power could be and, and sort of military strength could be marshaled towards, which was, you know, defending the sovereignty and freedom of this country from a foreign invader. And so it isn't. It just, it just isn't that surprising that this apparatus, which is, you know, incredibly powerful, but also doesn't have a clear defining vision, you know, ever since the end of the Cold War, informing the directions in which it should be used, you know, that it can sort of be corralled by whatever the sort of cause du jour on the global stage is. And I don't know, this just doesn't seem, I think it's in some ways just a kind of simple explanation that, that would account for why not just Trump in this, you know, relatively extreme case of like, decapitating a sovereign country's government, which, you know, again, it strikes me as a much more, you know, that's, that's much more in line with the kind of Israeli mo of how, how Israel has behaved for many decades. You know, these kinds of decapitation strikes. And, and so, to that extent, you know, I, I think we have been sort of pulled into a war that is ultimately an Israeli war. But I think that is also symptomatic of the fact, you know, not that we are sort of in hock to Israel any more than we were in hock to Ukraine. It's just that we have this apparatus and when some kind of seemingly compelling mission presents itself, it's like, oh, if you're president, you get to just do this spectacular stuff and assert your power and efficacy on the global stage.
- [31:16]
B
So, Ashley, the European Union is monitoring the situation in the Middle east and addressing the scourge of conversion therapy. Stephen Adubato, our assistant editor, is joining us for this segment. But, Ashley, first, can you just kind of lay out why exactly the EU is taking up this burning question?
- [31:44]
D
Well, the EU wouldn't be taking up this supposedly burning question without the ngo. Without. I don't know. It's. It's hands up the backsides of these NGO puppets, kind of lobbying for things that they always. That they want anyway. Yeah, I mean that they're. They want these kind of easy wins. It sounds nice. Now, legislating at the European level is another question, but making these kinds of big statements about like anti conversion therapy, it's. It's wonderful optics. So there was a hearing yesterday for this European citizens initiative which was fronted by a group called Against Conversion Therapy, which is just a group made essentially by ilga, an NGO that is extremely influential at the European level and gets a ton of funding from Europe to basically lobby for LGBTIQ issues and towards the present, like very much sort of trans issues. So this European citizens initiative is basically like a petition. If it gets more than a million signatures, then the EU has to respond. So they did, they have this hearing and they kind of lay out what they want and the EU is meant to listen. And it was just the most nauseating thing I've ever had to sit through, where they just took it as this opportunity to sit there and be like, I am an even greater defender of trans rights. No, of gay rights. No, sir, I am a greater defender of gay rights. And it's terrible. And the way they're talking about it, you'd think we're living in like 1950s or God knows, even before this, like, and where there are insane asylums all over the place, electroshocking gay people. And we just didn't notice, Just didn't notice. And now finally the good, the great and the good at the EU level are telling us, no, this is wrong and you mustn't do this. So there was this sort of extremely poor survey that was put out a while back and the results have been pushed quite hard by Ilga, by these sort of LGBTIQ lobby groups and just absolutely parroted all over the place that a huge number of gay and trans people exper. Are experiencing conversion therapies or conversion practices. One in something like one in four gay people and almost half of trans people. But what exactly was a conversion practice? Well, you are led to believe it is things like weird religious camps that you send kids to and where they pray away the gay or electroshock therapy, as the headlines of the. The news covering this said. But actually if you looked at the survey, it was things like verbal abuse not being accepted. Well, verbal abuse and language and, and things like that. And medical, actual medical practices. Less than 1% reported that. So what exactly is a conversion practice? Well, the people who are young people in particular have been Told for a very long time that not affirming your gender identity is akin to a conversion practice. So if you go to therapy and the therapist does anything other than affirm, then that is a form of conversion therapy. And so what is happening, and this is the. The important thing to understand what is happening is they are putting this front that there is this horrible epidemic of gay conversion therapy and it's torture and it must be outlawed. And most people are like, oh, yeah, wow, that's still going on. Geez, of course we should outlaw that. When in actual fact, what is being outlawed, what is being bundled in with this is the outline or the potential outline of anything other than affirmation for trans people. And that is extremely worrying in terms of therapists who want to do talking therapies that explore the potential reasons behind someone's sudden desire to, quote, unquote, change genders. It is extremely worrying for parental authority, the ability to work through issues as a family. Throughout this hearing, it was. It was very disturbing the way they kept saying, well, we can't stop parents from talking to children, but we can. So, you know, they were thinking like, gosh, we'd really like to stop parents from talking to children, but we can't do that. So what we can do is ensure that conversion practices, broadly defined, are illegal. And if you don't affirm your child. And they even slipped. It slipped accidentally, every now, every now and then, saying, well, what constitutes torture? Any denial of rights. What constitutes torture? The suppression of gender identity. In other words, wearing or buying for your child clothes that are appropriate to their gender or whatever it might be, not affirming the gender identity and allowing this person, your child, to live as the opposite sex. Anything other than affirmation, essentially. So this is very, very worrying. And it's basically Denton's Iglio 101. If you remember, there was a report put out by Denton's law firm in Iglio. Iglio is the youth version of this sort of extremely powerful transgender trans, LGBTIQ headline lobby group that is really powerful in terms of trans issues, where they explicitly said, how do you have success in law? How have countries have. How have countries had success in getting these kinds of policies like gender, self ID and so on? And they say, bundle your. The policies that you want in with more popular legislation. They. They explicitly say that tie your campaign to a more popular reform. And they give the examples of Ireland and Denmark and Norway where changes to the law were put through at the same time as things like gay marriage. And they say this provided A, quote, veil of protection where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained difficult to win public support for. So they're doing it again. They're bundling in a very expansive desire to control people's speech, to control the way that interactions are had with trans people, institutions and medical practice and so on, which is very much not an EU competency. But they're hiding behind gay rights language. And they. And judging by the way that that hearing went, I mean, there was almost no pushback. And the only pushback came from the patriots who were like, okay, but like, what if a friend was like, maybe you should just try to live with your feelings? Would that be considered conversion therapy? And then started going on about religious freedom and blah, blah, blah. So, so the, the activists were able to just wave this away and say, well, religious freedom doesn't give you the freedom to torture someone. Forgetting that torture is already illegal. And what they mean by torture is like, language that people don't like or not affirming identity. And then this activist went on to say, and being a friend, you know, if it's coming from a place of love, then that's different. But being a friend means that you reaffirm the person. Okay, so we're just gonna, like, legislate on what friendship is like. This is like utterly, utterly nuts. And the people in the EU in the room for this hearing, they clapped. They clapped when the person said, being a friend means that you reaffirm. There were so many moments of utter ridiculous stupidity. I could, I honestly couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And anyway, so this is ex, this is just one initiative. I mean, it's, it's unworkable. And the, the legislators were like, okay, well, we're here to listen. And they were. And they use it as an opportunity to get applause and, and talk about how much they love gay people. But the extent that this is actually going to affect policy might take years, I don't know. But they have to say by 18th of March, they said they have to come back and make a statement at the EU level in terms of whether or not they're willing to legislate. And I, I cannot. Oh, yeah, and there was all this like, well, the Trump administration is actually what's behind this, and they're putting all this money to create this fake culture war. Actually, nobody is against gender identity. It's just all these weird right wingers from America and we have to do this before they find out kind of thing. So, you know, let it Be on your radar. This is happening. They're trying to use conversion therapy as a smoke screen for controlling speech, for controlling the, the health care that so called trans people get. And basically making it very, very difficult to have anything other than an affirmation only approach in therapy, therapeutic practice in families and so on, you know, Sorry, last thing to say. At one point someone, someone asked like, well, what are the numbers? Like? And the activist did the most activist thing ever and said, well, well, what does it matter what the numbers are? Because one victim is too many. Oh yes, everyone get your activist bingo card. One victim is too many. And you bang your fist on the table and everybody claps. Well, what about detransitioners? How many detransitioners are too many? You know, repeatedly people say, oh, it's a small number, it's just a small number. Who cares about them? It's not, they weren't really trans to begin with. Oh, so suddenly one victim isn't too many, is it? Hundreds aren't even too many for you. We won't hear anything about them. But this is what happens when you have an affirmation only approach. People are going to professionals, expecting them to know what they're talking about, to affirm you truly are trans. And the professionals are sitting there going, my hands are tied. If you say you are, then you are. And they're like, well, if you say I am, then I am. And nobody's taking responsibility for this until these young, often young women grow up, realize what they've done and the consequences of what they've done, and nobody cares. What about them? What about them? One victim too many. Apparently not.
- [41:51]
E
Yeah, so, I mean, the thing with conversion therapy, it's like, I think we have to look at the fact that first of all, like, as a psychological practice. Yeah. Like it is suspect just because the methodology is frankly just unprofessional. And yeah, like you see some of these, some of these outlandish programs where they're like, you know, the therapist is like holding the patient in order to hear, to heal the, the father wound or whatever it is.
- [42:18]
C
I don't know.
- [42:19]
E
I've heard some like wild stories about these things to recover people's gender identity or in like broken sexuality. So, yeah, like, psychologically it's suspect. The bigger issue for me is that, yeah, like there's the, the kind of standard narrative of the kid growing up with the conservative religious parents. They force the kid into it to try to fix him. Which. Yeah, like if you're gonna force someone into any kind of therapy, it's not gonna work because they're not entering into it freely. But that's for the people who do choose to do it. Like, my issue is that first of all, like, to do conversion therapy, you're already presuming that sexual orientation actually exists as a real identity. Like, it's. And if we look at, I don't know, like, if we look at Foucault, obviously it's. It's a very recent kind of social construct that. I don't know, I mean, I tend to think it's something that's fluid, like, that's not as fixed as we think it is. So to go into it thinking, like, okay, I'm going to change this identity, which isn't even that real, is suspect to me. But that being said, I mean, what Ashley was saying before about, like, okay, well, what actually constitutes conversion therapy? So, yeah, like, you have these actual programs, a lot of which are, are insane and outlandish. But what about the person who wants to work through the. The fact that, yeah, like, a lot of their same sex attraction is rooted in a parent wound. That's a very common thing. Like, you don't need to be a Freudian to believe that. So. And I don't know, like, I, I published the piece with us last year with people who, whose sex orient, quote, unquote, sexual orientation changed not through the, not through the. By going through conversion therapy, but due to other factors. And several of the people said that it was because of therapy, not conversion therapy, that they saw that their sexual desires did start to change in some way. And what was interesting about those people that. Who like, found that they experienced change through therapy. It's part of it was because, again, like, they weren't trying to force something. Like they weren't trying to like, fix their quote, unquote identity, but also, again, like, it was more like Ashley was saying, exploring, like, what are the origins of my desire? Like, how is it rooted in certain unresolved complexes that I have that I, that I could possibly resolve. And the thing is, like, a lot of those people who went to therapy with those questions found that they were getting shot down time and time again. Because I think, you know, like, the psychological establishment has made a taboo to even ask the question. So again, like, putting aside the extreme of I want to fix myself, I want to like, change my sexual orientation, just to ask, like, why am I primarily attracted to the same sex? Might there be something blocking me from being drawn to the opposite sex? Like, it's become this Forbidden thing that people, you know, psychologists are afraid of losing their license over if they give in to that. But anyway, so no, like some of these people did find therapists who did help them explore those aspects of, you know, their, their, their psyche. They did experience some change. But again, like, it was just interesting seeing with those people that I interviewed that like, they didn't have this agenda. Like, they weren't trying to create a project out of fixing themselves. And again, like, as Ashley was saying, I think this is a very, like, this notion of like identity being something fixed, but also this idea that I can change my identity through, you know, using certain methods, through a certain effort. Like it's a, like we're thinking in a very American paradigm. Like, I don't know, like this idea that sexuality isn't something that's fluid, that can, that can change in response to different stimuli, different factors in life. I don't know, like, ultimately I think is very limiting. And what's ironic about it at the end of the day is that, I don't know, like I, you see, you often hear of, I don't know, when I was in college, there were a lot of girls who were clearly heterosexual but who went through these bisexual phases. And they would be applauded for experimenting, for like trying out with women. Like, it was very open minded, very progressive of them to try to be bi. Whereas if you have a gay guy who's like, oh, I think I might want to try with girls, maybe, maybe I'll like it. They get shouted down because it's like, oh, you're denying your true self. You're, you know, you're, you're lying to who you really are and you're lying to these women. So I think like there's this kind of horseshoe between like the, the, the, I guess like the progressive double standard of like, okay, pro bi women but anti gay men trying to experiment because again, their identity is fixed. But also with conversion therapy, it's the, this, it's predicated on the same idea that identity is something fixed, that like, again, it's, it's a part of who you are. So anyway, I'm pro, I'm pro bisexual responsiveness. I'm pro fluidity. I think we need to get rid of these categories because they don't, they're not real at the end of the day.
- [47:29]
D
So it's a really helpful reminder to me that especially, see, this is what I think how a lot of these campaigners kind of frame things is because this kind of thing actually does exist. In places in the United States they're like, oh, you know, the weird Americans and the Bible belts. Like that's kind of what they're pointing to. And I, you just remind me, well, that does exist and whatever I think about because, and it's important to say that because when they tried, when activists tried to get this legislation passed in a number of different countries, the legislators there naturally asked, well, like, is this actually happening? And they were like, yeah, over in that city over there, there's weird electroshock therapy going on. And the medical practitioners in that city were like, what? No, if that was happening, it would require training equipment, like it could not fly under the radar. We would know. But they're like, they kind of point vaguely, you know, in that direction of things happening. And I, and I think the actual existence of advertising for like specific camps and so on mainly often in the United States allows them to, to make these kinds of claims. But it is, there isn't any evidence that this is happening, particularly to trans people on a wide scale in, in Europe. And they're relying on very broad, vague definitions, things like harsh language and harassment as forms of quote, unquote, conversion practices. But regardless of what I think of whether, you know, even if it was the case that there were like actually gay conversion therapies widely around, what they tried to try to say is like, well, you know, some people do. Well, what people defending this would say is that people do consent, which is what you've said, sometimes people consent to these sorts of things. And then the activists say, well, can you really consent if, if there's like social pressure to conform to sex stereotypes, blah, blah, blah. And it's funny because they see pressure to, you know, social pressure only when it goes in the direction that they don't. Like, they never think about like all of the arguments about social contagion and social pressure and like the fact that homosexuality is not really, in fact, heterosexuality is not really in fashion for lots of people. They, they don't see it in that sense. And, and therefore the danger of affirmation only approaches for trans people is not really seen. But I started saying a second ago, regardless of what I think, I don't think that these kinds of practices should be outlawed, should be outlawed because then you're not really able to differentiate between well meaning practices and more coercive things that are, that might hurt people. It's true. But we cannot outlaw everything that might hurt people because then you have the secondary effect, like not everything that is harmful should be illegal. And I think a lot of people have lost that distinction because the secondary effect is that you've cast this hugely broad net and you are intentionally, I think including a ton of things in there that are. Might actually be very helpful to people might prevent a lot of harm down the, down the road. These are not easy kinds of questions. So the existence of some vague harm that you can sort of point to somewhere does not allow. Give you like a. A magic wand to sort of wave it away and pretend like there's no ill effect. You're going to create even worse harms by affirming people, particularly young people, and then setting them on a lifelong medical path that they may regret. That is not reversible.
- [50:57]
E
Yeah. And I mean, again, it's like, I know people who went through a really bad kind of conversion therapy and it destroyed their lives. And I'm sorry that that happened. But again, to your point, Ashley, to say okay, because that happens, we should just get rid of it wholesale, like, completely throw it out the window. It's like, okay, this is ridiculous because again, it's a normal thing to go to therapy and want to explore the origins of whatever, I don't know, whatever is going on in your life. So, like, it's just. It shows how compromised the psychological establishment has become. But in the case of, with trans, with transitioning, like, the whole narrative of, like, okay, I'm born this way and I should accept myself as I am. Like, you see how this ideology starts breaking down? Because, okay, like, I'm born this way, I'm gay, I have to affirm myself, okay, I'm born as a man, but I feel like a woman. No, you should accept yourself who is yourself. It's like, whoever those, the powers that be say that I am. Like, that's how you see, again, with this issue of the legality, it comes down to a matter of who's in power. Like, whoever's in power gets to decide the narrative of my identity, which, you know, like, this is the bigger picture issue here that I think needs to be addressed.
- [52:11]
B
Thanks to Steven. Thanks, Ashley. Thank you, Jeff. And for more or go to compactmag.com subscribe.