Agree to Disagree About Gender

In this episode of Agree to Disagree About Gender , I speak with epidemiologist Dr. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, also known as Health Nerd, about pediatric gender medicine, medical transition for young people with gender dysphoria, and what the evidence can and cannot tell us. The quality of evidence around pediatric medical transition remains highly contested. Some argue that the existing research is...

Maia Poet joins us for Part 2 of our conversation about her theories of the interface between autism in natal females, the drive to transition and detransition, and how it informs her advocacy. We also discuss the evolution of her thinking on trans people, and her transition from a more adversarial to a more curious and collaborative approach Also, please check out Part 1 of our interview on our c...

Maia Poet spent 12 years of her adolescence and early adulthood believing she had a male brain in a female body, and eventually went on to live in the male social role amongst Orthodox Jews, Palestinian Muslims and secular Israelis for five years. It took living through two wars in the Middle East for Maia to begin the journey of questioning the conclusion she came to as a 12 year old, and eventua...

Karleigh Webb is a woman who wears a lot of hats on the field and off. She is a sports journalist with 33 years experience as a television sports reporter/anchor, producer and now as a contributing sportswriter to Outsports.com . She is also the a training coordinator and peer support operator for Trans Lifeline. Karleigh is also an avid cycling, runner, triathlete/duathlete and is in her fourth s...

Sasha Ayad is a license therapist who provides counselling to families where a child is transitioning or is experiencing gender distress. Her focus is on how parents can continue to be part of their child's life and avoid estrangement and promote reconcilement, even when they are not supportive of medical transition She joins Yvette and Laura on Agree to Disagree About Gender to have a heartfelt d...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Jonni Skinner, we focus on life after detransition: the challenges of re-integrating back into the male gender role after living for 8 years as a woman, staying positive despite facing hardships, his motivations to become an advocate for restricting access to medical interventions for minors, and on what his future might hold. Please take a moment to watch Part 1...

Jonni Skinner is a young man who spent 8 years of his adolescence and young adulthood living as a girl and young woman, before deciding to reclaim his identity as an effeminate gay man. He details how he came to believe that transition would be a better fit for his personality, his struggles with medicalization as a young person, and how he intends to face his future in his birth sex. Yvette and L...

Jamie Paul is a writer based in Greater Philadelphia, founder of American Dreaming, managing editor at Queer Majority, and contributing editor at Bi.org . His work has appeared in outlets including Quillette, Persuasion, Areo Magazine, and Gazeta do Povo. His recent focus has been on documenting what he perceives as the excesses of "wokism", and on how these excesses have undermined the status and...

Dr. Kinnon MacKinnon is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at York University in Toronto, and is one of the world's leading researchers on the phenomenon of decisional regret around gender transition, desistance from trans identification and detransition from medicalization . Dr MacKinnon''s research seeks to better characterize and understand the different factors that lead to regret and detra...

Zander Keig has seen a lot and changed a lot since he began his transition about 20 years ago. On this episode, we have an interesting discussion on what it means to be embrace masculinity, on his relationship with transness and queerness, and what's changed in the FTM community between his time in transition and today. We contrast the drive the both he and Laura shared, which was transitioning in...

Ray Alex Williams is one of the more contraversial and fascinating characters in the online gender world. For 8 years, he lived as "Rachel", a radical progressive trans activist , going as far as writing a book about arguing for the legitimacy of trans-feminine identities as women. In 2023, he publicly announced his detransition and embrace of Christianity, quickly becoming a bête-noir to the tran...

Julie Rei Goldstein is a long-transitioned trans woman and voice actress who survived attempts at conversion therapy as an adolescent, which informs her advocacy to preserve access to gender affirming care for youth today. She is also notable for her detailed journaling of the numerous lawsuits filed by detransitioners against their care providers, and provides a trans positive perspective on the...

Karleen Gribble is an Australian breastfeeding and infant-feeding researcher whose work sits at the intersection of public health, emergency preparedness, maternal-infant care, and policy. She is affiliated with Western Sydney University, where her research profile lists work on breastfeeding, infant and young child feeding in emergencies, child protection, adoption, and sex and gender identity Sh...

Dr. Quentin Van Meter is a pediatric endocrinologist who gained notoriety and national prominence as head of the American College of Pediatrics, a splinter group of pediatricians who split from the mainstream American Academy of Pediatrics originally over their endorsement of same-sex parents. During the 2010s, ACPeds, under Dr. Van Meter’s leadership, were one of the initial organizations to spea...

Jennifer Lahl is an experienced pediatric critical care nurse who is the founder of the The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, which advocates for caution and expresses concerns surrounding the use of assisted reproductive technologies including in-vitro fertilization, artificial wombs and surrogacy. She is a recognized authority, having numerous national and international media appearances...

In our 12th episode, Laura and Yvette bring on Dr. Melanie Crites Bachert (prounounced BUCK-ert), a pelvic reconstructive surgical specialist whose practice has been primarily centered on women's pelvic health, and on repairing congenital abnormalities of the kidneys and the bladder. However, in recent years, she has become more vocal about what she sees as the unacceptable high incidence of urina...

In our 11th episode, Laura and Yvette are joined by pediatric bioethicist Dr. Ian Wolfe, of the University of Minnesota. Dr. Wolfe believes that young people with gender dysphoria should be able to access care to medically facilitate a gender transition, and that there is a well-established ethical framework to support it. Dr. Wolfe shares his rebuttal to common concerns raised by gender critical...

In their second episode, Laura and Yvette have a heartfelt conversation about their concerns about pediatric medical transition. Laura is a trans woman who believes that access to medical transition can rescue some children from the horrors of dysphoria. Yvette has grave concerns about transition being a false promise of salvation from difficult and complicated childhoods. We have created this pod...

In their third episode, Laura and Yvette dig deep on Little vs Hecox, and West Virginia vs BPJ, two cases that will be argued in front of the Supreme Court today. Laura is a trans woman who believes that trans women should be allowed to play on teams with their female peers under certain conditions whereas Yvette believes women's team are the domain of biologic women. We also discuss the broader i...

In this week's episode, Laura and Yvette sit down with Dr. Alex Byrne, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT. His most recent book is Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions. In that book, he provides a philosophical underpinning on a narrow definition of "man" and "woman", as well as justification for discarding the concept of gender. He is also one of the 9 authors o...

Laura wants more data about the effectiveness of puberty blockers. Yvette has seen enough They disagree about most things, but they've agreed to talk about it In this episode, they do a comprehensive review of the recently launched UK Pathways Trial, which seeks to determine if puberty blockers have a role to play in the management of young people with gender incongruence. However, many question h...

In Episode 6. Laura and Yvette sit down with investigative reporter Ben Ryan to hear his perspectives on pediatric gender medicine, his coverage of the 1st medical malpractice trial where a regretful detransitioner prevailed against her care team, and his sympathies towards the trans community.

In Episode 7. Laura and Yvette sit down with former Virginia National Guard Black Hawk helicopter plot, aspiring comedian, and trans infuencer Jo Ellis to discuss the impact and rationale of the US trans military ban, how conservatism shapes her approach to trans-advocacy, and on the transformative power of dick jokes

In our tenth episode, Yvette and Laura debate what responsibilities, and in what circumstances, a stealth or private trans person should be obliged to disclose their history of transition. We are joined by Dilan Esper ( x.com/dilanesper ), a Los Angeles based lawyer who is trans supportive, but who has challenged the trans community on its stridency in its advocacy We discuss this thorny debate in...

On this episode, sexologist Dr. James Morandini talks about the concept of autogynephilia, how it relates (and doesn't relate) to the drive to transition, and what we can do to help people recognize it as non-pathological human variation in sexual practice.