← Digital Social Hour
Digital Social Hour
How Alternative Media Saved Free Speech in America | Josh Seiter DSH #1194
00:39:40
Discover how alternative media became a lifeline for free speech in America! 🗽🎙️ In this explosive episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, special guest Josh shares his eye-opening journey, including his viral six-month social...
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- [00:00]
A
Telling me a lie. And I don't want to be part of this movement anymore. And that's when I kind of just left the left. And I would identify as a libertarian, but, you know, it is what it is. I can't get. I can't be okay with being told. I need to agree with lies or indulge lies. I just can't do that.
- [00:27]
B
All right, guys, got Josh here all the way from Chicago. Thanks for making it out today, my man.
- [00:31]
A
Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
- [00:33]
B
Coming off a five month social experiment made the headlines. Joe Rogan was just talking about it. Congrats on all the pr, man.
- [00:39]
A
Thank you. I appreciate it, man. That means a lot.
- [00:41]
B
Yeah. Did you expect it to blow up like it did?
- [00:45]
A
Yes and no. I knew it was probably going to make some headlines just because I had been on the Bachelorette and I've been in the news before, and the topic is so polarizing. Gender ideology is probably one of the biggest topics for sociopolitical issues going on right now. So I thought it was going to make a splash, but I didn't think it was going to make quite the splash it made with the number of people talking about it. I wasn't expecting Megyn Kelly to be talking about it, Michael Knowles, and a lot of the people that ended up commentating on what I did. So that part was unexpected. I thought it was going to be more just people on social media discussing this and discussing wider issues related to it. But I was kind of shocked how it made it into, like, the mainstream media a little bit.
- [01:30]
B
I feel that now. Making it to Rogan, super crazy.
- [01:33]
A
Yeah. So that's kind of top of the hill. Yeah.
- [01:35]
B
For people that don't know about the experiment, could you explain what you did?
- [01:38]
A
Yeah. So in May of last year, I announced that I was transgender and I was going to transition. And. And I was now a woman named Jay. I was no longer Josh. And for six months, I put on dresses, makeup, and lipstick, and I made videos every day on Instagram documenting my journey as a woman. And I wanted to see what people's reaction was going to be to it. And there was a lot of people that said, we support you. You are a valid woman. There's a lot of people that said, you're still a man. You need to shave more, and then you'd be a woman, or if you just do your makeup better, then you'd be a valid trans woman. And so I did that for six months. And then in October, I announced on Alex Stein's show primetime with Alex Stein that it was all a social experiment to kind of expose why gender ideology is pernicious. And that at the end of the day, we're all just men in makeup and lipstick. We're not women. There's no magical transformative power to saying I'm trans. And the medical guidelines are creating a problem by allowing people to self identify into women's spaces who aren't women.
- [02:54]
B
I love that. Was six months always the plan or were you planning on doing it longer?
- [02:58]
A
Six months was always the plan. I wanted to keep it short enough to keep people engaged. I didn't want to go too long where I lost interest or people kind of moved on to other things. So me and the people that came up, I came up with this idea with kind of thought six months would be about the perfect time.
- [03:14]
B
Which community's reactions were you surprised with that either supported or did not support it?
- [03:19]
A
You know, I was surprised because a lot of conservative women were commenting on my posts and saying, you know, we support you no matter what you are. We're Trump supporters. We don't care. As long as you don't go after kids, we don't care what anyone does. And so I was surprised by that. The kids was definite. People were very passionate when it came to children. As long as you don't try to recruit children into this cult, we don't care what you do. We never have, we never will. And so I thought that was interesting and I thought that was a good point, that most people really don't care what adults in America do. They're just going to get really mad when you start trying to recruit kids into something.
- [04:01]
B
Facts. And that was the issue with the trans movement. I think a lot of people had was they were teaching it to kids basically in schools.
- [04:07]
A
Yeah. No one cares if a man wants to dress up as a woman and call himself anything he wants. He can call himself a new name, he can say he's non binary, gender fluid, a trans woman, no one cares. But when you start having Drake story hour with 5 year olds, when you start creating books that are being marketed in Target and curriculum in schools to kids that are between the ages of 5 and 10, there's going to be problems. When you start bringing kids to drag shows, people are gonna be upset about that. And so I think teaching kids, if you wanna believe a lie, that's fine, but don't tell kids a lie and tell them that's the truth. And don't talk to little kids about things that aren't appropriate. And I think gender identity and transitioning and human body parts, those are not appropriate topics for little kids, especially when they're in school. They should be learning the basics a hundred percent.
- [05:02]
B
Yeah. Kids was the big one and I feel like sports was probably secondary.
- [05:05]
A
A lot of people hated that sports one. That's huge. It's. There are biological realities and differences between the sexes. And so when you, lots of times there are high school boys teams that beat professional women's teams because there are sex based differences and realities in this world. So when you start allowing biological men to compete in women's sports, there's an unfair advantage and it's going to lead to a lot of the problems that we see happening now. And why people didn't see that, see the writing on the wall with that and thought it would be a good idea to let men into women's sports. I don't know. Witnessing the backlash now, I think in the consequences of those poor decisions.
- [05:43]
B
Yeah. Especially in fighting sports.
- [05:45]
A
Boxing, there's Fallon is a male fighter that does mma, fights against women and routinely hurts them. Fallon, Fox. There's been, you know, Leah Thomas routinely crushes women in swimming. There's so many examples of it. There's a volleyball player, I believe at USC that is hurting women whenever they spike the ball because their wingspan is different and they're used to playing on courts with, with higher nets. So there's a lot of problems and dangers and health issues that are involved when you let men compete in combat sports and other sports with women.
- [06:19]
B
Yeah. Trump just put an end to that though, right? He signed an executive order, I believe.
- [06:23]
A
Trump did. Yeah. So he declared there's only two genders. Two sexes. A lot of times those terms get conflated with each other. But he said, whatever you want to call it, there's only two of them. And we're getting rid of trans people in the military. We're getting rid of men and women's sports and we're getting read. Just yesterday he announced there's no more castration or chemical mutilation of children. We're not going to be putting them on puberty blockers or giving them surgeries. So I think these are all positive steps in the right direction. I love establishing boundaries between the two sexes because there should be boundaries.
- [06:57]
B
Yeah. It's crazy that that's in order, man, that there's only two genders.
- [07:01]
A
The fact that Trump even had to say that is an indictment, I think, on how shallow the intellectual waters have become and how far we've kind of Fallen on a society that it took Donald Trump, a reality star, to bring reality back to us and let us know, hey, we're kind of living in a clown world now. We need to realize some simple truths. And it took Donald Trump telling us that as president for a lot of people to understand it.
- [07:25]
B
So nuts, man. I had a girlfriend in high school and her, I guess her brother was trans. I don't know what to call it, but he just didn't seem happy, man, because you're taking all these pills, it's like really messing with your head, I feel like.
- [07:36]
A
Yeah. And the problem is a lot of these people that are trans have pre existing mental health conditions. And so they're just exacerbated when you start injecting chemicals into your body. And I believe a lot of these people are brainwashed. I think that they are dealing with anxiety and depression and other related mental health issues. They feel like they don't have a purpose or meaning. And they find a purpose and meaning in this community that celebrates them and says, everyone else needs to celebrate you. And so I think it's very alluring, but I think it's very dangerous. And I think a lot of people that are predisposed to mental health issues fall into this kind of cult community and it just creates more problems for them. So it's really sad to see, but it's good that we're taking steps to protect kids from going down that path, right?
- [08:21]
B
Well, some people theorize that if you're trans, you have mental health issues, right?
- [08:24]
A
Well, even under the DSM 5, it's categorized not as a mental illness, but as a disorder. So even in the DSM 5, they're categorizing it as a thought disorder. So they're saying, you know, unequivocally, something's wrong with you if you have this. But unlike body dysmorphia, which is also a thought disorder, with body dysmorphia, it's fallacious thinking about your body. You have thoughts about your body that are not accurate. Well, the same is true for gender dysphoria. You're having thoughts about your body. I'm born in the wrong body that aren't accurate. But with body dysmorphia, we treat it with correcting the fallacious thinking. With gender dysphoria, we indulge the fallacious thinking and we entertain it and we encourage it. And so I just think it's egregious that we treat body dysmorphia, anorexia, bulimia, and schizophrenia. By correcting the faulty thinking involved in it. But when it comes to gender dysphoria, we encourage the delusions. And I think that's medically negligent, and I think it's egregious. We should treat gender dysphoria like we treat any other thought disorder, and that's by correcting it.
- [09:30]
B
Absolutely. Now, I know you spent some time on tv. Did you see this kind of movement making its way towards Hollywood? I just watched the new Squid Game and there was a trans person on that show.
- [09:39]
A
Yeah. And in addition to Squid Games, I know there's a movie that just came out, I think Emily Perez, that is about. All about. It's a trans musical, basically, about gender surgeries. And so, you know, Hollywood has always been weird. You know, they call it Holly weird for a reason. So I think that's kind of the epicenter of a lot of this. And I see the most deluded statements being made by people in Hollywood. I just saw Selena Gomez crying because a bunch of illegal migrants, a lot of them criminals and pedos, are being deported and she's sobbing on camera before she deleted it.
- [10:14]
B
Right.
- [10:15]
A
And so I think Hollywood, I think they're so diluted and so detached from the aver, average common person that a lot of this negative, pernicious thinking kind of takes root there. So I think it's definitely already poisoned a lot of the movies we see, even kids shows, are being infiltrated by trans cult. I see a lot of propaganda in kids shows. And even in the early 90s, my parents were seeing propaganda being targeted at kids through television and in schools. And so me and my brothers, we were all homeschooled our whole life. My parents yanked my brothers out of public school because of the books they were being given and homeschooled us for the rest of our lives until college.
- [10:57]
B
Wow.
- [10:57]
A
So this stuff hasn't only infiltrated Hollywood, it's infiltrated schools, it's infiltrated books and curriculum. And so I just think it's really dangerous.
- [11:06]
B
I feel like back then, like. Like you're Talking about the 90s and 2000s, it was a little more hidden than it is now. I feel like now it's just blatant.
- [11:12]
A
Yeah. So it was more hidden 30 years ago. They were trying, you know, you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. So it was no, we just want to educate people that if you're gay or bisexual, that's ok. And that's kind of how it started off. And then it was, we want people to know that if they want to identify as a different gender, that's okay. And then it turned into, now you need to celebrate these people. Now you need to affirm what they're saying. Even if it's wrong now you can't ever speak out against it. And so very quickly, it kind of just became this cultish thing where no one was allowed to speak out against it. And so I think it's come a long ways and not in a good way. It's very tyrannical, it's very dictator, and it's very anti free speech.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah, I agree.
- [11:58]
A
And I don't think it's right. And I think they're trying to have a monopoly on speech and not let people who have different views hold those different views. And that's not okay. If you want to be gay or bisexual or trans, you can be those things, but other people are allowed to have opinions about it that disagree with you. That is what freedom is. That's what America is. Difference of opinion, open dialogue, discussion. And we've seen those things stifled over the years. And especially, as you said more recently, it's becoming more and more blatant. You had the tech crackdown where Mark Zuckerberg just told Joe Rogan that he had Biden people calling him and screaming at him to take down factual, accurate things on Facebook.
- [12:43]
B
Right.
- [12:44]
A
That just kind of shows how far it's come, the crackdown on free speech. And it's become very Orwellian. It's almost like we're living in 1984, where you can't say the truth and words have all lost their meaning and everything's relative and up is down and down is up, and if anyone speaks out against it, they're automatically banished somewhere. That's kind of the world I felt like we were living in. And I feel like that's slowly changing now that Donald Trump is the president. I feel like we're. We. We have more room for free speech.
- [13:17]
B
Right. When I was in public school, I felt like I didn't have free speech, honestly, really, every time I wanted to speak out, I would get punished, you know, if I questioned the teachers.
- [13:26]
A
Really. Were there certain topics that just.
- [13:29]
B
I mean, not really. Just like anytime you questioned it, there was backlash. Like the teacher's word was just valid. Like they were right in every single circumstance.
- [13:37]
A
Well, and what's interesting is the left in the 90s really stood for diversity of opinions. They stood for, you know, minority viewpoints and kind of this ide that we weren't one homogeneous society. There was a lot of diversity within it. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone should be allowed to give it. Fast forward 30 years now, the left stands for the opposite. The left stands for the orthodoxy. The left stands for there is one narrative, and you cannot disagree with it. We don't want to listen to minority viewpoints. And if you have a problem with what we're saying, then we'll banish you and we're going to silence you. And it's so interesting how they've kind of have changed from being these vocal proponents of diversity of opinion and free speech to trying to stifle free speech. And so I would say the left no longer stands for diversity of opinion. They no longer stand for minority viewpoints. They've actually become the moral police that they used to castigate in the 90s. They used to always castigate the religious right for being moral police. And they tell the religious right, don't push your morality onto us. Well, now the left's doing that. They're pushing their morality onto everybody.
- [14:46]
B
Right.
- [14:46]
A
So it's just kind of interesting how they've switched.
- [14:48]
B
Yeah. Because they have a lot of control over the news stations and the public education system. Right.
- [14:52]
A
Yeah.
- [14:52]
B
All the colleges.
- [14:53]
A
Yep. You know, in higher education, the leftist beliefs and leftist professors is kind of the norm and the same in the mainstream media. And so kind of one place where the left doesn't have a stranglehold is podcasting and, you know, talk shows and things like that. So I think it's those challenges to the dominant narrative that were responsible for the public kind of opening their eyes, because the mainstream media could no longer brainwash us like they were before.
- [15:23]
B
Agreed. Yeah. Alternative media was a game changer this past election.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah. Joe Rogan interviewing Donald Trump was a seminal moment in the election. I think X was instrumental in people getting the truth, because the mainstream media will just lie and they'll lie to you and gaslight you with a strict, straight face. But when you have alternative media, they can, you know, expose it and say, these people are lying, and we'll show you how. And X is really good at revealing the lies that the mainstream media was peddling. And so I think that was really instrumental in opening people's eyes and. And getting people to vote for. For Donald Trump. I mean, they came out in record numbers. Blacks, Latinos. There were counties that hadn't voted red since 1890 that were voting for Donald Trump.
- [16:08]
B
Yeah.
- [16:09]
A
And I think alternative media did a good job of kind of countering that were being told by the mainstream media.
- [16:14]
B
I don't think he would have won without it, to be honest.
- [16:16]
A
No, it would have been hard because the mainstream media has it out for Donald Trump. I mean, everything that anytime I turn on CNN or msnbc, they're just railing against him. Usually it's about how what he did was offensive. It's not really on the merits of anything Donald Trump's doing or policy positions. They just don't like how he goes about things. And I think if the mainstream media still had a stranglehold on information, then Kamala Harris would have got elected.
- [16:41]
B
Yeah.
- [16:41]
A
So I think. I think alternative media did a good job in kind of getting rid of that stranglehold.
- [16:46]
B
I feel like he's done more in his first week than Biden did in four years.
- [16:50]
A
I feel like Trump has fixed in his first week so many things that Biden destroyed in four years of being president. It. There's just so much that it seems so obvious now. Hey, don't let 11 million people break into our country illegally. Hey, why don't we vet the people that are moving into our neighborhoods that came across the border? These people should be, you know, held accountable somehow for their actions. And they weren't. That wasn't being done under Biden. And so these seems like common sense things that should have been done a long time ago. And for some reason, it took Donald Trump to. To do these things, even saying, you know, we're not going to mutilate children anymore. We're not going to chemically castrate children. Children can't consent. They're minors, so we're not going to mutilate their bodies. Why did it take a declaration from Donald Trump to get that done? And why was Biden allowing it? So every time Donald Trump does something, I mean, you know, I'm glad he's doing it, but it also is an indictment on how poorly the Biden administration was doing. And the fact that they were just letting people flood into our country, creating higher crime, creating national security risks. It was really egregious and detestable. And so I think it would have been more of the same under Kamala Harris.
- [18:09]
B
Biden might be the worst president of all time, people are saying.
- [18:13]
A
I think Biden honestly is senile. I think he has dementia. Something is not right with his head. He never used to talk like that. It's not a stutter. That's disingenuous. And people say, oh, he has a stutter. He literally mumbles and can't walk. Makes no sense. Lost his train of thought. And that was evident in the election. And I Think that's why he, you know, eventually stepped down. But I think Biden was one of the worst presidents in history. But I think he was a pawn and I think he was a pawn for the woke cult and I think he was just implementing policies that the woke cult wanted him to and that the radical left wanted him to. And I think that's why they loved him and why they wanted him to keep running. So I think he was the worst president, but I think he was just a pawn in kind of a bigger scheme that is this, you know, this kind of woke culture.
- [19:01]
B
100. Have you always been conservative?
- [19:03]
A
No, I wasn't always conservative. I was raised in a conservative Christian household. My mother is ethnically and culturally Jewish, but she was a born again Christian, as was my father. And we were homeschooled, me and my two brothers, our whole lives. So we grew up in this conservative Christian home. But then I went off to college and I studied sociology and political science at a very liberal four year college. Which one University of Illinois, Champaign, Urbana. And so after studying there, I started reading Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, a lot of very left leaning intellectuals. And so I became much more liberal in my thinking. And then in law school it remained the same. I ended up going to law school in Chicago and getting my juris doctor and that was also a very liberal school of thought. And then it was about seven years later, in my early 30s, that I started to come back around and kind of see the cancer that wokeism is. And I said, this stuff isn't good for society. It's encouraging obesity, it's encouraging us to be victims, it's telling us we're incapable. It's destroying our society. I don't like this. And if that means I'm conservative or I'm a right winger, I don't care. All I know is I know a lie when I see it and they're telling me a lie. And I don't want to be part of this movement anymore. And that's when I kind of just left the left. And I would identify as a libertarian, but you know, it is what it is. I can't get. I can't be okay with being told. I need to agree with lies or indulge lies. I just can't do that.
- [20:42]
B
Yeah, you got to be careful with these echo chambers and bubbles people are living in where they only consume one side.
- [20:47]
A
Yeah, I think it's important that we have free debate and dialogue. And that's why I did my social experiment and the trans hoax because nobody was talking about the fact that there are literally men competing in women's sports. And we are being gaslit into believing that they're women. They're not women. They're men in makeup competing in women's sports. And I thought we should at least be able to question the fact that a man can self identify into women's bathrooms and can self identify into women's sports. I think we should have a conversation about that. And I think most people agree. And so that's why I did what I did to start a conversation. And I think it did start a conversation. And that conversation still going now. I look every day I refresh my feed and there's thousands of new comments.
- [21:31]
B
Wow.
- [21:31]
A
Hundreds of thousands of new views on all my videos that I posted. So I think it started a dialogue and I think that's a good, healthy thing. I think we need more open dialogue in America, more free speech in America. And I think people should understand that it's okay to disagree. And I think we need more of that. We don't always need to talk to people. Like you said in an echo chamber, actually, the best thing we can do is talk to people that have views that are different than us. Not only can we maybe come to some kind of a consensus and some kind of meeting of the minds, but we can realize I don't need to hate this person just because they have a different view than me.
- [22:06]
B
Yeah, that's why I love podcasts. I love debates. I love X because they call it ratioing. But you'll see the post and then someone will get more likes on the comment and it's like a debate. But it's cool because you got both perspectives.
- [22:17]
A
Yeah, X definitely encourages free speech. And the thing with the media is it's a one way street. It's just the mainstream media media, it's just them lecturing you, it's just them preaching at you. With social media, as you said, it actually encourages a conversation by highlighting certain comments and people are allowed to respond. You can't do that with the mainstream media. And I think that's why people are going to alternative media. And I hope Trump even allows alternative media into the White House press briefing room. I think that.
- [22:48]
B
Look what they announced yesterday, right? They just announced applications for that for alternative media. So I applied. We'll see if I'll be at the White House.
- [22:54]
A
Dude, I hope you're there.
- [22:55]
B
It's always been a bucket list goal of mine. That's a historic building.
- [22:57]
A
You know, I think you being there would be more productive than a propaganda machine like CNN being there. I mean, at least I think what you do is you have conversations. I think you actually elucidate issues. You, you know, actually crystallize things that are going on. I don't think the mainstream media does any of that. They have a narrative that they're going to spin, and it doesn't matter what's going on or what the facts are. They're just going to spew out propaganda. And so I hope you get your press credential.
- [23:25]
B
If you're watching this, guys, please, please approve me. But, yeah, the, the, they're just looking for gotcha moments. So when they're at the White House, they're like, oh, how can I screw over Trump right now? You know, with a question.
- [23:34]
A
Yeah, I don't think the mainstream media cares about the truth. Journalists whole job is finding the truth. That's literally what they're supposed to be doing. And they don't do that anymore. They're not unbiased, they're not objective. If they were, then when there's a man playing in women's sports, the media would say a man just competed in a female sport. They never say that. They will either call them a trans woman or a woman, but that's a lie. And you're a journalist, so do your job. And journalism's no longer about doing their job. It's about being basically Democratic apparatchiks and working for the woke mob and trying to brainwash the society so that they can accomplish the goals they want to accomplish. And I don't. I think that should be the job of activists. I don't think that should be the job of journalists. They should just, just report things unbiasedly and they should try to get at the truth of issues.
- [24:31]
B
Absolutely. Do you think Trump putting an end to di will help businesses?
- [24:35]
A
I think Trump putting end to DI will help businesses because the most competent person's going to get the job. We're no longer going to be boiling everyone down to their sexual identity and their skin color. There's just something so noxious and offensive about that. I have two gay uncles. The last thing that they want to be known as in the last way they would identify is their sexual orientation or their skin color. They want to be known as that. They want to be known by their work, by their merit, by what they've done, by their cv. And so I think it will be a good thing for businesses and for humanity. It's just so insulting to bean count people based on how they identify and what their skin color is. I. I absolutely hate that. And I thought it was bad in the 90s when they had affirmative action, but it's even worse now because now if you're non binary, that counts as something. If you're gender fluid, or you could probably even identify as transracial, and that would count for something. I mean, it's so ridiculous. And so I just think it's a poison. I think it's a cancer. And I think it's good that Donald Trump got rid of it. And we need to go back to just judging people and hiring people based off the work they can do in their competence.
- [25:47]
B
Absolutely. I know you went to law school. When I'm hiring a lawyer, I want the best lawyer. I don't care what they look like. Look like?
- [25:52]
A
Yeah. When someone's hiring a lawyer, they don't care if they're gender fluid, queer and black. They just want a good lawyer. And I think that's how modern society should be. It's just we judge people based on their character. I mean, I know it's cliche, but that's what Martin Luther King Jr. Wanted. He wanted everyone to just be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, and I'm sure not their gender identity or anything else or their sexual orientation. And so I really hope we go back to that society. And I feel like. Like we're more of a colorblind society before all of this woke stuff. This woke stuff has only made us more conscious of race, more conscious of. Of things we shouldn't be conscious of. The. This identity politics that the left plays has only created more divisions and more acrimony. And so that's why I think it's good that we're getting rid of it. If you truly want to get rid of racial divisions in acrimony, stop talking about it obsessively.
- [26:54]
B
Right.
- [26:55]
A
And that's all the left does is obsessively harp on and talk about people's skin color and sexual orientation and gender identity. If you really want us to be a colorblind society, stop obsessively talking about it.
- [27:09]
B
Yeah, they love it, man. I'm a football fan. When Notre Dame made the finals, they asked the coach, how does it feel like being the first black coach? And he was, like, shocked she even.
- [27:17]
A
Asked that, and he was having no parts of it. I saw that interview. And they've also tried to do it with the Celtics head coach.
- [27:23]
B
Yeah.
- [27:24]
A
And there's a couple other college coaches I've Seen ESPN trying to pigeonhole into that. And again, it's just so insulting. They go up to this coach that has just won a championship, and they're asking the. Basically telling the coach, you're nothing but a black man. Talk to him like he's a human being. And I feel like nobody, at least from the left, they don't see people as human beings. The left sees people as, what kind of box does that person check off? And I just think that's a horrible way to look at a human being, is, oh, you check off this racial box and this gender box. Just look at him as another human.
- [28:01]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Want to talk about some of your beefs, man? You got a couple? Yeah, you and someone I've had on the show, actually. So Xavier DeRusso, you've been going at it with him. What happened there?
- [28:11]
A
Yeah, so Xavier was very critical of my social experiment, and he went on Megyn Kelly and was kind of trashing me. And, you know, I thought all intelligent Eurodite people would understand what I was doing, but apparently Xavier couldn't understand it or comprehend it. And so I just thought that was interesting for someone that portrays himself as extremely intelligent, that he wouldn't understand what was going on, that I was clearly making a mockery of gender ideology. And so I kind of took it personal that we're supposed to be on the same side, yet he was trashing me on, you know, a very public show with Megyn Kelly.
- [28:45]
B
That's one of the biggest shows.
- [28:46]
A
One of the biggest shows. And so, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Xavier Year.
- [28:50]
B
Hopefully you two can mend it, you know.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah, I'd love to have a debate with him. So if he ever wants to spar, we can definitely.
- [28:55]
B
I'll set it up. So what was he saying? Like, he just didn't like the way you went about it, or.
- [28:59]
A
Well, he tried to claim that he had some inside knowledge of what I was doing. And he also made some disparaging remarks just about me in general and suggested I wasn't very intelligent. And again, I was just surprised because, you know, it's like, come on, dude, you know what I'm doing. Clearly making a mockery of this movement. You should be down with that. So many other people understood what was going on. Amber Rose reached out to me. She knew what was going on. A bunch of other people. But Heather McDonald, a famous comedian, she reached out to me. But, yeah, so, you know, it's not like a huge deal or whatever, but I'd love to sit down with him and have a little debate. I think that would be productive.
- [29:39]
B
Yeah. Were you still mid experiment or was it afterwards?
- [29:42]
A
It was mid experiment. And he also made comments at the beginning of my experiment. He'd also comment on some of my posts. So I made a post about Palestine and he made some derogatory comments on there.
- [29:54]
B
Oh, I bet he did on that one.
- [29:56]
A
Yep. Because I know he's super pro Israel, which is funny because I'm actually Jewish.
- [30:00]
B
Right.
- [30:00]
A
And my grandmother was born in Israel. So to have Xavier trying to lecture me about that, I thought was interesting. So, yeah, Xavier, wherever you are, let's have a debate.
- [30:10]
B
Let's do it. There's a lot of people I notice on the conservative side that are pro Israel. Israel.
- [30:15]
A
Yeah. I feel like most people on the right tend to be pro Israel. And, you know, most people on the left I feel like are anti Semites. I see a lot of anti Semitic comments from people on the left. And there's also a lot of hate that is perpetuated against Asians.
- [30:31]
B
Yeah.
- [30:32]
A
And Jews by black people in New York. And the left never wants to talk about that. And even, you know, Korean people. A vast majority of the attacks on Korean people in New York are from black people. And the left will never say anything about that. There's just obviously certain things they won't talk about or acknowledge. But yeah, I think there's a lot of anti Semitism on the left. And of course they'll say it's because there's this apartheid system in Israel and Israel is this hegemonic military state and things like that. But I think a lot of people on the left are just straight up anti Semitic, which is rich because they try to portray themselves. Obviously is these people that aren't racist or xenophobic, but I think they're the most racist and xenophobic people among us.
- [31:18]
B
I've seen it on X a lot, the anti Semitic stuff.
- [31:20]
A
Yeah.
- [31:20]
B
They always go off their apac.
- [31:22]
A
Yeah. And I mean, X is. You'll see everything on X in X sometimes is almost too toxic, even for me.
- [31:31]
B
I'll agree with that.
- [31:32]
A
So I try to actually lay off X. And I spend a lot more time on Instagram. I think Instagram sometimes can lead to healthier, more productive conversations. X. Sometimes it just goes down a rabbit hole and it's hard for me. And especially the. There's just a lot of anger on X. I still think it's a good thing. I don't think we should get rid of it. I don't Want to shut it down because I'm not a snowflake leftist. But for me it's just not my favorite platform to be on.
- [32:03]
B
What changes would you recommend for X?
- [32:06]
A
Oh, for X, I think even more fact checking would be good. With the rise of AI, there's just a lot of AI things and deep fake things going around on X. And I think that actually is dangerous to free speech. I think that actually can lead to negative things. And so I think stuff like that there needs to be some kind of checks and balances in place for that.
- [32:33]
B
Because their current system now is a group of people have to decide on the fact checking. Right.
- [32:37]
A
It's community. Community, which is actually what Meta is moving to. Community. Right. But I think Meta had far too much fact checking, which Mark Zuckerberg just admitted to Joe Rogan. They were saying things were false when in fact things were true. And they were deleting content that said factually correct stuff. And again, it came out that that was because of the Biden administration that was suppressing free speech.
- [33:02]
B
Yeah. It'd have to be a really advanced fact checking system because sometimes AI is wrong too.
- [33:06]
A
Yeah. And actually with Deep, is it Deep Seek AI that just came out from China, it's actually. It refuses to give factually correct answers. Whoa. So even I can lie to us and have problems.
- [33:19]
B
I didn't know that. I saw that that stock blew up or something. Right. Nvidia Crash.
- [33:23]
A
Yes. If you ask about Uyghur Muslims or anything about slave labor, anything. Deep Seek AI will not answer. It will give false or it may give false information about it.
- [33:33]
B
These AIs can be infiltrated. That's the thing.
- [33:35]
A
Absolutely. It's all about who designed it.
- [33:37]
B
Right. And polls from like certain topics from certain websites and articles that could be fake. So it's not a perfect system yet.
- [33:43]
A
Exactly. It's relying on something that was created by humans. These articles that are written by journalists, which we've already talked about, journalists oftentimes are prone to lying or misrepresenting information and AI is just drawing from these human made things. So AI, I guess at its base is kind of a flawed system.
- [34:02]
B
Yeah. I have mixed feelings on AI. I know Elon's really scared about about it, but at the same time I do see the value in using AI.
- [34:08]
A
I think AI is going to be great for society on a whole. I think it's a disruptor, it's going to change society. It's going to put a lot of people out of work, but it's going to Create new jobs too. Just like with the car or the television or the iPhone or anything throughout history, there's going to be a lot of job loss involved, but there's going to be even more job creation. So I guess it just depends kind of where you sit on that aisle. But I think overall it'll be a net benefit to society.
- [34:37]
B
I agree. Now, I know you've done a lot of odd jobs. I did want to bring up the male stripping days, man.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, I was a male stripper in my last third year of law school. My last year of law school, I joined a male, male strip group in Chicago. And so I started headlining that show actually within just a few months of joining. And very quickly I went from a law student to a law student that was moonlighting as a stripper on the weekends. And I was headlining the show in downtown Chicago in this mail review. And so I ended up touring America and stripping for the six years.
- [35:09]
B
Holy crap.
- [35:10]
A
Yeah, so I saw a lot of crazy stuff in that time.
- [35:13]
B
I bet you did. And that's such a different lifestyle than lawyer. So I'm just fascinated, like so extreme.
- [35:17]
A
I think that's why I chose it. So by my last year of law school, I was just so tired of law. It's just such a dry topic. It wasn't stimulating to me and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't want to sit in an office researching case law for 12 hours a day. That just wasn't appealing to me. And I think when I got my first taste of dancing, the money and being on stage and hundreds of screaming women, I thought why would I continue with law when I can just strip full time? So I finished out law school, I got my juris doctor. But then I started dancing full time and did it for the next six years.
- [35:49]
B
Got it. So the money was pretty good in male stripping.
- [35:51]
A
The money was good. It was easy money. Now you're only dancing usually Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday. You can also do private parties. So you could pick up five or six birthday and bachelorette parties also. So, you know, on a good weekend I might do six to eight shows. In six to eight shows I'm making a few thousand dollars each one. No altogether. So a few hundred bucks at each one. Maybe three to six hundred dollars at each show. They're an hour and a half long. So, you know, for 25 year old guy taking off his shirt to make a few grand a weekend stripping off his clothes to women, it was like the best job on the planet. Until it wasn't.
- [36:32]
B
So what Made you get out of that.
- [36:34]
A
At the end, I just felt like a dancing monkey. I felt like a circus act. It's come here, take your clothes off. Dance for us. Here's your money. Go away.
- [36:46]
B
Right?
- [36:46]
A
There's something just dehumanizing and demeaning about it that I didn't feel in the beginning. And I think that was all just in my head. It's dehumanizing from the get go. But I felt very empowered when I became a male dancer in the beginning. But by the end of it, I really did just feel like this degree rated circus act. And it was like, no, I don't want to take my clothes off and dance around with a smile on my face for $300.
- [37:14]
B
Right.
- [37:15]
A
I want to do something different. I want to do something substantive. I want to do something productive. And so I think it was just. It had been six years and it was just time to move on to something new. I don't have any hard feelings about it. I'm very grateful for was fun while it lasted. It was just like a lot of jobs, it was just time to move on.
- [37:35]
B
Yeah. I'm sure you got invited to some.
- [37:36]
A
Interesting parties and place was crazy, man. I mean, there was women, mothers, and mothers that were like, I want you to be with me and my daughter. She's in college. I want you to be with me and her. At the same time, there was just sisters. There was just so many crazy. I mean, you saw. It's just like Magic Mike.
- [37:59]
B
Wow. So that movie's kind of accurate.
- [38:00]
A
Magic Mike is extremely accurate.
- [38:02]
B
Really?
- [38:03]
A
Yeah. The way it paints everything from. From the venues you're at to the camaraderie backstage, to the acts themselves, to the emotions involved. It did a good job of depicting what it's like to be a male woman.
- [38:17]
B
Loved that movie. Even my mom was watching. I'm like, I'm not coming with you to this.
- [38:21]
A
Yeah. You know what's funny? I actually watched that movie the same week I was hired as a male stripper.
- [38:27]
B
Really?
- [38:27]
A
It came out the Same Week in 2012.
- [38:31]
B
So that kind of inspired you to go all in then?
- [38:32]
A
It inspired me. And it also gave us a artificial boom that didn't exist before then because Magic Mike had just come out. So every single show he did for the next few years was sold out. That movie.
- [38:44]
B
Wow. Well done, man. Well, dude, it's been cool. What are your next projects?
- [38:48]
A
So, you know what I have coming up is just to keep talking about these issues. I been going on podcasts. I was just on Tim Cast I was just on Alex Stein show, so I just want to keep up the conversation going about these are important topics that affect us and our kids. I think the direction of the country is more important now than it's ever been, and so I just want to keep having conversations about these issues. So, you know, the dream is one day have my own podcast, but until then, I want to just keep talking to people on their podcasts about things and coming on shows like yours.
- [39:23]
B
I love it, man. I'll help you launch your show when you're ready. You might have to move out of Chicago, though.
- [39:27]
A
I'm happy it's about 50, 13 degrees there now.
- [39:30]
B
Screw that. So check them out, guys. We'll link his social media below. See you next time.