Heretics: the gender debate, with Andrew Gold

Andrew Gold's podcast covers people he considers to be heretics, and I was invited on as one of them. The conversation was wide-ranging, sometimes combative, and Andrew put to me a series of claims about trans identity, surgery, regret, children, bathrooms, and whether any of it is real. I answered them at the time, and this page sets out what was put to me, why each claim sounds plausible to some people, and what is actually true.

The argument underneath most of these questions is the same one: that trans identity is a confusion, a fashion, a mental illness, or a fiction, and that the people around trans people, doctors, parents, activists, are either deceived or deceiving. It is a coherent worldview, and Andrew holds it honestly. It is also wrong, and I said so.

I went on the show to do exactly that, and I think the conversation was worth having. What follows is the fuller version of the answers, with the space to explain properly what the recording could not always carry.