Joe Rogan: When did society forget that kids 'should not make life-changing choices' like gender surgery?
'It seems crazy to force everyone to go along with what was called gender dysphoria up until very recently,' Rogan observed
Podcaster Joe Rogan and Canadian professor Gad Saad spoke about how transgender ideology has radically changed society and medical practice in a matter of years, especially when children are involved.
Many commentators have marveled in recent years at how the American medical establishment is far less hesitant to recommend gender-altering medical procedures that are entirely irreversible, a fact Saad noted on Wednesday’s episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.
While both hosts noted they don’t disagree with transgenderism themselves, they marveled at how society as a whole is forced to agree with it.
"I think both you and I are very socially liberal. I don’t care one way or the other about what transgender people do," Saad noted to Rogan. "That doesn’t mean that I have to accept the fact that a guy with a penis can call themselves a girl and I have to just say ‘Amen.’"
Rogan observed, "It seems crazy to force everyone to go along with what was called gender dysphoria up until very recently. There was a psychological condition they would talk about, an issue that people had."
Saad expressed wonder at how the caution and hesitation of medical professionals to move forward with sex change surgeries is long gone.
"In the past, when you wanted to have a sex change operation, the number of steps that you had to go through before you were accepted for sex change reassignment was quite assiduous, and it made perfect sense because it’s something you can’t undo," Saad recalled, noting that now a "five-year old" can pursue such a path "and you’re not allowed to question it," adding such a practice is "insane."
Rogan noted that transgender ideology has impacted children in modern times because "there’s a lot of people that I know that will say their child is LGBTQ because their child calls themselves nonbinary. I’ve seen this happen before where people – they wave it like a flag – that its this amazing thing that they have a queer child."
The host noted another common scenario where "they’re identifying as it because the identity thing is very new and when you give kids an opportunity to distinguish themselves from other people – there are a lot of things that people do that with."
Rogan then noted that according to a study in New Jersey, "There’s a 4,000% increase in kids who call themselves nonbinary."
He then asked, "At what point in time do we examine whether or not social pressures are playing a part of this?"
Saad recalled that researcher Lisa Littman’s work describing the rise of rapid onset gender dysphoria as a "social contagion."
Rogan in turn recounted that as he also discussed the issue with journalist Abigail Shrier on his podcast, noting that "there’s so many particularly young, autistic girls that dive into this."
The host then expressed shock at how much society has changed on this issue, to the point that people who once would be hesitant to allow a child to get a tattoo now advocate their access to life-altering surgeries.
"Especially when it comes to encouraging surgery, encouraging it for really young people. When did we stop believing that young people are impressionable? When did we stop believing that young people should not make life-changing choices when they’re really young?" He asked. "Because they don’t know what the f--- is going on. We’ve always said that with tattoos, we’ve always said that with body modifications."
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Saad suggested that progressives in particular are often hypocritical on this issue, because they would argue that a legal child who is nearly 18 should not be tried for crimes as an adult due to ongoing brain development, yet they will strangely claim, "a 4-year-old is perfectly capable of saying ‘I am in the opposite body’ and shut up, don’t question it."
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