Full disclosure: I don't follow trans issues much, so I have no clue who's right on these things.
All I know is that based on his social media behavior, Hobbes is one of the most pompous assholes I've ever seen. He's Exhibit A for what went wrong with left-leaning media in the social media world: to be a member in good standing, you have to judge, hector, yell, and dehumanize all day long online.
Years and years ago, I was looking for a new podcast and decided to give You're Wrong About a try. At the time, I had no idea who Michael Hobbes was and knew nothing about his Twitter antics. And I could barely get through more than a couple of episodes before swearing it off. Hobbes and his co-host Sarah Marshall were so incredibly, insufferably, off-puttingly smug about everything, it didn't even matter if I agreed with what they were saying; the show was unlistenable. I find it genuinely confusing, and honestly a little upsetting, that so many liberals think THAT is a good listen.
Liberals in the US are very much invested in the idea that THEY are the "reality-based community" who "fucking loves science" as opposed to, say, anyone who disagrees with them on ANYTHING else.
While I’m not a scientist, I have two degrees in science and my job in medicine involves routinely reading and interpreting quantitative studies.
There’s an excessive number of people with objectively less training in and interaction with science than I have who gush about how much they love science, but little “science is real” signs, tweet about “following the science,” and condescendingly lecture others on how “the science is settled.”
Being fond of science like a weird hobby-fad among a certain set and I find it quite off-putting.
Example of the actual weakness of "science:" Have a baby.
There is no more fundamental medical scenario, nor one more common experience throughout the history of humans--we've all been birthed, and births have happened billions upon billions upon billions of times.
And yet there is so much the medical community (scientists and practitioners of Science!) has zero-bupkus-nada idea about in delivering a baby. Sure, we've figured out a darn lot--a DARN lot--about it. But so much of this basic medical...thingy... is actually guesswork based on reasonable hunches, still.
The phenomenon is part-and-parcel of the politics-as-identity stuff that's swept over the US in the past decade or two. Republicans / the right are so very anti-science that pro-science turned into a social marker among liberals and progressives.
Pro-science, of course, means different things. For many it means yard signs. For others it means forming beliefs based on a best assessment of scientific evidence.
Exactly, and at least in the US it's more because of politically positioning themselves as being smarter than and morally superior to (their parents) Republican right-wing Christians, which must be what anyone who disagrees with them is than of any real love for science as science.
I was taken in by Sarah Marshall at first because she's so damned droll, but it didn't take me long long to discover that she and Hobbes are capable of breathtakingly high levels of intellectual dishonesty.
I had almost the exact same experience: stumbled across You're Wrong About, sounded interesting, didn't know who either of the hosts were. Their smugness was a constant record scratch for me and I stopped after a half dozen episodes.
Hi KW, I am gay and "Gender Affirming Care" is the gay conversion therapy from hell. Yes, Singal is scrupulous and correct.
BTW, you should follow Benjamin Ryan who has done incredible work on the Cass report and the extraordinary disinformation campaign by trans activists to discredit it....And example:
One thing I've never understood is the requirement to live the desired sex. I'm a women, but other than dealing with biological processes related to being a women, I'm not sure how someone 'lives as a woman'. My husband (a man) and I have very similar lives. Of course society sees me as a woman, so in some situations I'm treated differently to my husband, but that isn't my choice. It's not something that I can create or avoid in life.
As far as I can tell, 'living as a women' means having a feminine name (which of course not all women do - waves to Chris, Alex, and Pat) and wearing dresses and make up. All natal women are still women when not wearing dresses - or not wearing anything at all - and lots of men wear clothes that are very similar to dresses or skirts and wear make up. As far as I can tell, it all boils down to very 1950's stereotypes of the sexes.
Yeah as others have noted too there's this very weird, very rigid conception of gender roles in the trans activist community. Oh you were born male but you played with dolls once as a kid? YOU MUST BE A WOMAN!!!! It's really bizarre to see
If someone has to live as the other sex, it creates a barrier. People don’t like the barrier. But the barrier gives time to reconsider. It also gives a taste of what transition will be like. Trans people generally don’t pass. Upon transition, people will use the desired pronouns. But that’s a courtesy. They don’t actually see the transitioner as anything but their natal sex.
Interesting how, in general terms, we "get what is meant" by "living as a woman," but when you really get down to brass tacks and ask what that truly MEANS, turns out it's... wearing dresses and makeup?
And not being able to open pickle jars... I mean... seriously?
Interestingly, living as a women never means adopting the sometimes shitty aspects of life that are projected on to women - like being pushed out of a job after having kids or caring for older relatives or children. You never hear trans women feeling validated after being judged by the other parents at their kids school because they brought in store-bought good for the bake sale as they work full time and can't be asked to bake 48 cupcakes on a Tuesday night. The other parents are probably judging, but not about the cupcakes.
Also, they can't live as women as 99.9% of the time their male biology is obvious, so society still treats them as men. If people really saw them as women, no one in power would take them seriously.
I've often wondered about this: If you (a woman) came to me and told me you've discovered that you're actually a man.... what am I supposed to do about that?
Do you expect me to treat you differently--and in what way? Why tell me, then? What difference does it make for us? You want me to use a different pronoun (a piece of grammar almost always used to refer to you when you're not even around me)? It all seems so inconsequential, yet so much is made of this "gender exploration" and "gender identity" business.
But by all means, lop off healthy parts of your body and screw with your hormone system--I'll be glad to pay for that through my insurance costs and taxes. Huh?
The cackle I cackled when this popped up on my phone (because I’m petty).
In all seriousness, this was a great review and debunk of Hobbes. In a sane world, people like him wouldn’t need to be responded to at all because no one would take him seriously, but we don’t live in a sane world.
Caraballo (mentioned in this article) is a notorious liar. If Harvard had any integrity, they would fire him ASAP. He accused J.K. Rowling of ‘Holocaust Denial’. The charge had no basis in fact and she is entirely innocent (of that charge). Rivkah Brown (a journalist) has actually apologized for Tweeting this nonsense. Of course, Caraballo has a long and dishonorable record.
In all fairness, Rivkah Brown appears to live in the UK, where it is much easier to sue for liable than in the US - a practice JK Rowling seems to like to threaten. Reverse Carabello and Brown’s locations and the responses may be reversed as well.
Caraballo claimed that J.K. Rowling was guilty of ‘holocaust denial’. ‘Holocaust denial’ has a definition
From “Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion”
“Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust/Shoah did not take place.”
Of course, J.K. Rowling is entirely innocent and Caraballo is lying (again).
One thing I find so baffling about American progressives is that they're constantly gushing about Europe and how progressive it is, and no one owns guns, and healthcare is subsidised, and prisons are clean and well-furnished, and why can't we be more like Sweden?
Then gender-critical people quite reasonably point out that if you want the US to follow Europe's lead on so many political issues, why not youth gender-affirming care, when multiple European countries have independently decided to hit pause on it? And the response is lalala can't hear you.
Cass was polite, to the bad faith employees (not all) at the Tavistock and 6 of the 7 adult clinics who hid data from her. Even now some of these people are trying to use opt out privacy legislation to encourage patients to withhold anonymised data from Cass and other researchers. One of the basis of our NHS is that treatment is proved as the service uses our anonymised data in health research for the good of us all. These quacks need to be sacked by the NHS, they are breaking the bonds of the NHS that help us all.
I am writing too much here, and I take responsibility for that. My wife and I had careers in science and in being therapists. It hits deeply.
Having said that, I wish to add another perspective. Michael Hobbes is not trained as a scientist and is not trained in the helping professions. His experience is as a journalist.
What is the main difference between journalism and science? Here is our view: Journalists primarily rely on anecdotes, and opinions derived from anecdotes, and scientists primarily rely on data. To understand social science one needs to be comfortable with the law of large numbers---something that we as a species did not evolve to need to understand. It is foreign to most non-scientists. Cass's report makes wonderful use of integrating anecdotes into scientific findings, and that's what makes it such a joy to read.
Singal was also trained as a journalist. So what is the difference between him and Hobbes?
Answer: Singal has taught himself scientific thinking. He writes with the same cautions about "reality" that scientists do. He seeks out 'large data sets" (i.e., statistics and statistical reasoning).
That's how my wife and I, as scientists and practitioners, can read Singal and not go crazy with the awful reliance and overgeneralizations of anecdotes that Hobbes uses.
Trust people who rely on large data sets for their knowledge, not on anecdotes. Anecdotes are opinions masquerading as facts.
Journalism is in desperate need of science writers, which I believe Jesse has mentioned once or twice. People who understand the science and can communicate it well to readers.
Jesse maybe you can go back on the Majority Report to discuss these issues with the fair-minded hosts of that show!
Jokes aside I do think there is starting to be realization among leftists about just how much damage they've done to their own cause with the massive overreach on trans issues over the past 8 years. They probably won't admit to any mistakes, but I think you are starting to see a slow adjustment to something resembling sanity on these topics. It's why Hobbes and other grifters are so apoplectic about the Cass Report. They know the tide is starting to turn.
I think you are making an important point. Note the hysteria surrounding the rather partial shift in how the NYT covers transgender issues. Even 'asking questions' is not allowed according to Megan Phelps-Roper (author of "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling").
Hobbes et al. have long since painted themselves into a corner where ANY questioning MUST be borne out of bad faith and a desire for kids to commit suic*de. They have to work backward from that premise, then at the same time have to tout their "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook group membership.
It's going to be difficult over the next few years to watch this group of people that has identified so intensely as the smart ones and/or the good guys, that has so loudly condemned anyone who disagreed with them, and that has made themselves so ill from looking at their phones for 12 hours a day for the past decade...turn out to be so publicly, embarrassingly wrong. Good luck everyone!
Part of me wonders if there will be some strange equivalent to Jen Psaki trying to argue that "it's actually Republicans who want to defund the police"
Jesse - you need to consider adding a "listen to this article" element to your platform. This is such good information - but I'd imagine more people would be open to absorption if they could listen over reading. Keep up the good work.
As far as kids accessing hormones w/o parental consent or assessment, pls see the CBC (actually French-language Radio-Canada because obviously CBC is not going to report honestly on youth gender medicine) Enquête investigative journalism program, where a 14-year-old (actress hired for the investigation) was offered a prescription for testosterone nine minutes into her meeting with the clinician. After confirming that, yes, no parent or guardian was with her, and also that she had anorexia, but felt that her issue was she wanted to transition/be a boy.
French only, but maybe there’s a translation/English captioning feature. 36:23 for the segment with the private clinic.
Edit: just re-watched it, and what the girl says is that when she was 12 or 13 her parents took her to psychologist because of an eating disorder, but she watched a video of a trans person who said the problem wasn’t disordered eating but rather being trans, and so she realized that was her issue too.
Full disclosure: I don't follow trans issues much, so I have no clue who's right on these things.
All I know is that based on his social media behavior, Hobbes is one of the most pompous assholes I've ever seen. He's Exhibit A for what went wrong with left-leaning media in the social media world: to be a member in good standing, you have to judge, hector, yell, and dehumanize all day long online.
None of that for me, thanks.
Years and years ago, I was looking for a new podcast and decided to give You're Wrong About a try. At the time, I had no idea who Michael Hobbes was and knew nothing about his Twitter antics. And I could barely get through more than a couple of episodes before swearing it off. Hobbes and his co-host Sarah Marshall were so incredibly, insufferably, off-puttingly smug about everything, it didn't even matter if I agreed with what they were saying; the show was unlistenable. I find it genuinely confusing, and honestly a little upsetting, that so many liberals think THAT is a good listen.
Liberals in the US are very much invested in the idea that THEY are the "reality-based community" who "fucking loves science" as opposed to, say, anyone who disagrees with them on ANYTHING else.
While I’m not a scientist, I have two degrees in science and my job in medicine involves routinely reading and interpreting quantitative studies.
There’s an excessive number of people with objectively less training in and interaction with science than I have who gush about how much they love science, but little “science is real” signs, tweet about “following the science,” and condescendingly lecture others on how “the science is settled.”
Being fond of science like a weird hobby-fad among a certain set and I find it quite off-putting.
Example of the actual weakness of "science:" Have a baby.
There is no more fundamental medical scenario, nor one more common experience throughout the history of humans--we've all been birthed, and births have happened billions upon billions upon billions of times.
And yet there is so much the medical community (scientists and practitioners of Science!) has zero-bupkus-nada idea about in delivering a baby. Sure, we've figured out a darn lot--a DARN lot--about it. But so much of this basic medical...thingy... is actually guesswork based on reasonable hunches, still.
Call me when they've got childbirth figured out!
https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1777
lol exactly.
The phenomenon is part-and-parcel of the politics-as-identity stuff that's swept over the US in the past decade or two. Republicans / the right are so very anti-science that pro-science turned into a social marker among liberals and progressives.
Pro-science, of course, means different things. For many it means yard signs. For others it means forming beliefs based on a best assessment of scientific evidence.
Exactly, and at least in the US it's more because of politically positioning themselves as being smarter than and morally superior to (their parents) Republican right-wing Christians, which must be what anyone who disagrees with them is than of any real love for science as science.
I was taken in by Sarah Marshall at first because she's so damned droll, but it didn't take me long long to discover that she and Hobbes are capable of breathtakingly high levels of intellectual dishonesty.
Same
I had almost the exact same experience: stumbled across You're Wrong About, sounded interesting, didn't know who either of the hosts were. Their smugness was a constant record scratch for me and I stopped after a half dozen episodes.
Hi KW, I am gay and "Gender Affirming Care" is the gay conversion therapy from hell. Yes, Singal is scrupulous and correct.
BTW, you should follow Benjamin Ryan who has done incredible work on the Cass report and the extraordinary disinformation campaign by trans activists to discredit it....And example:
https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1779671152148857212
I wrote two Substacks of my own fact checking people about the Cass Review and youth gender medicine:
Activist-Blogger Erin Reed Can't Stop Telling Falsehoods About Gender Medicine https://benryan.substack.com/p/activist-blogger-erin-reed-cant-stop
The Cass Review Fact Check: It's Clear That Many People Never Bothered to Read The Report
https://benryan.substack.com/p/the-cass-review-fact-check-its-clear
Your work is calm, lucid and much appreciated, Benjamin.
That's very funny, because I'm a bundle of anxious nerves.
I think I'm good at faking it. People have often described me as calm, and I'm like, "Have you met me?"
Anyway, thanks very much! I take much inspiration from Jesse.
Oh I get the same comments. Little do they know I’m neither calm nor confident; I just have a flat affect. It comes in handy at times, though.
followed! Thanks for posting.
One thing I've never understood is the requirement to live the desired sex. I'm a women, but other than dealing with biological processes related to being a women, I'm not sure how someone 'lives as a woman'. My husband (a man) and I have very similar lives. Of course society sees me as a woman, so in some situations I'm treated differently to my husband, but that isn't my choice. It's not something that I can create or avoid in life.
As far as I can tell, 'living as a women' means having a feminine name (which of course not all women do - waves to Chris, Alex, and Pat) and wearing dresses and make up. All natal women are still women when not wearing dresses - or not wearing anything at all - and lots of men wear clothes that are very similar to dresses or skirts and wear make up. As far as I can tell, it all boils down to very 1950's stereotypes of the sexes.
Yeah as others have noted too there's this very weird, very rigid conception of gender roles in the trans activist community. Oh you were born male but you played with dolls once as a kid? YOU MUST BE A WOMAN!!!! It's really bizarre to see
If someone has to live as the other sex, it creates a barrier. People don’t like the barrier. But the barrier gives time to reconsider. It also gives a taste of what transition will be like. Trans people generally don’t pass. Upon transition, people will use the desired pronouns. But that’s a courtesy. They don’t actually see the transitioner as anything but their natal sex.
Interesting how, in general terms, we "get what is meant" by "living as a woman," but when you really get down to brass tacks and ask what that truly MEANS, turns out it's... wearing dresses and makeup?
And not being able to open pickle jars... I mean... seriously?
Interestingly, living as a women never means adopting the sometimes shitty aspects of life that are projected on to women - like being pushed out of a job after having kids or caring for older relatives or children. You never hear trans women feeling validated after being judged by the other parents at their kids school because they brought in store-bought good for the bake sale as they work full time and can't be asked to bake 48 cupcakes on a Tuesday night. The other parents are probably judging, but not about the cupcakes.
Also, they can't live as women as 99.9% of the time their male biology is obvious, so society still treats them as men. If people really saw them as women, no one in power would take them seriously.
I've often wondered about this: If you (a woman) came to me and told me you've discovered that you're actually a man.... what am I supposed to do about that?
Do you expect me to treat you differently--and in what way? Why tell me, then? What difference does it make for us? You want me to use a different pronoun (a piece of grammar almost always used to refer to you when you're not even around me)? It all seems so inconsequential, yet so much is made of this "gender exploration" and "gender identity" business.
But by all means, lop off healthy parts of your body and screw with your hormone system--I'll be glad to pay for that through my insurance costs and taxes. Huh?
The cackle I cackled when this popped up on my phone (because I’m petty).
In all seriousness, this was a great review and debunk of Hobbes. In a sane world, people like him wouldn’t need to be responded to at all because no one would take him seriously, but we don’t live in a sane world.
I posted a parade of Michael Hobbes' many other falsehoods about youth gender medicine in my tweet thread about Jesse's Substack on him: https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1783493483975639167
Caraballo (mentioned in this article) is a notorious liar. If Harvard had any integrity, they would fire him ASAP. He accused J.K. Rowling of ‘Holocaust Denial’. The charge had no basis in fact and she is entirely innocent (of that charge). Rivkah Brown (a journalist) has actually apologized for Tweeting this nonsense. Of course, Caraballo has a long and dishonorable record.
In all fairness, Rivkah Brown appears to live in the UK, where it is much easier to sue for liable than in the US - a practice JK Rowling seems to like to threaten. Reverse Carabello and Brown’s locations and the responses may be reversed as well.
Caraballo claimed that J.K. Rowling was guilty of ‘holocaust denial’. ‘Holocaust denial’ has a definition
From “Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion”
“Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust/Shoah did not take place.”
Of course, J.K. Rowling is entirely innocent and Caraballo is lying (again).
In libel (US and UK) truth is an iron-clad defense against libel. However. Rivkah Brown can't use that defense, because she repeated a lie.
One thing I find so baffling about American progressives is that they're constantly gushing about Europe and how progressive it is, and no one owns guns, and healthcare is subsidised, and prisons are clean and well-furnished, and why can't we be more like Sweden?
Then gender-critical people quite reasonably point out that if you want the US to follow Europe's lead on so many political issues, why not youth gender-affirming care, when multiple European countries have independently decided to hit pause on it? And the response is lalala can't hear you.
Cass was polite, to the bad faith employees (not all) at the Tavistock and 6 of the 7 adult clinics who hid data from her. Even now some of these people are trying to use opt out privacy legislation to encourage patients to withhold anonymised data from Cass and other researchers. One of the basis of our NHS is that treatment is proved as the service uses our anonymised data in health research for the good of us all. These quacks need to be sacked by the NHS, they are breaking the bonds of the NHS that help us all.
I am writing too much here, and I take responsibility for that. My wife and I had careers in science and in being therapists. It hits deeply.
Having said that, I wish to add another perspective. Michael Hobbes is not trained as a scientist and is not trained in the helping professions. His experience is as a journalist.
What is the main difference between journalism and science? Here is our view: Journalists primarily rely on anecdotes, and opinions derived from anecdotes, and scientists primarily rely on data. To understand social science one needs to be comfortable with the law of large numbers---something that we as a species did not evolve to need to understand. It is foreign to most non-scientists. Cass's report makes wonderful use of integrating anecdotes into scientific findings, and that's what makes it such a joy to read.
Singal was also trained as a journalist. So what is the difference between him and Hobbes?
Answer: Singal has taught himself scientific thinking. He writes with the same cautions about "reality" that scientists do. He seeks out 'large data sets" (i.e., statistics and statistical reasoning).
That's how my wife and I, as scientists and practitioners, can read Singal and not go crazy with the awful reliance and overgeneralizations of anecdotes that Hobbes uses.
Trust people who rely on large data sets for their knowledge, not on anecdotes. Anecdotes are opinions masquerading as facts.
Journalism is in desperate need of science writers, which I believe Jesse has mentioned once or twice. People who understand the science and can communicate it well to readers.
sadly, "desperate need of" =/= willing to offer salaried jobs for.
You didn’t write too much. I appreciate your comments.
Jesse maybe you can go back on the Majority Report to discuss these issues with the fair-minded hosts of that show!
Jokes aside I do think there is starting to be realization among leftists about just how much damage they've done to their own cause with the massive overreach on trans issues over the past 8 years. They probably won't admit to any mistakes, but I think you are starting to see a slow adjustment to something resembling sanity on these topics. It's why Hobbes and other grifters are so apoplectic about the Cass Report. They know the tide is starting to turn.
I think you are making an important point. Note the hysteria surrounding the rather partial shift in how the NYT covers transgender issues. Even 'asking questions' is not allowed according to Megan Phelps-Roper (author of "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling").
Hobbes et al. have long since painted themselves into a corner where ANY questioning MUST be borne out of bad faith and a desire for kids to commit suic*de. They have to work backward from that premise, then at the same time have to tout their "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook group membership.
It's going to be difficult over the next few years to watch this group of people that has identified so intensely as the smart ones and/or the good guys, that has so loudly condemned anyone who disagreed with them, and that has made themselves so ill from looking at their phones for 12 hours a day for the past decade...turn out to be so publicly, embarrassingly wrong. Good luck everyone!
Part of me wonders if there will be some strange equivalent to Jen Psaki trying to argue that "it's actually Republicans who want to defund the police"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/07/white-houses-slipshod-claim-that-republicans-are-defunding-police/
A+, no notes.
Jesse - you need to consider adding a "listen to this article" element to your platform. This is such good information - but I'd imagine more people would be open to absorption if they could listen over reading. Keep up the good work.
Good idea, except that many of his articles rely so much on screenshots, charts, etc., that they may not be very effective as audio.
But tell us how you really feel, Jesse
Mark Twain: "It's not what we don't know is the problem, but what we do know and just ain't so.”
Come on, it’s not like a Dead White Male ever wrote or said anything worth paying attention to.
As far as kids accessing hormones w/o parental consent or assessment, pls see the CBC (actually French-language Radio-Canada because obviously CBC is not going to report honestly on youth gender medicine) Enquête investigative journalism program, where a 14-year-old (actress hired for the investigation) was offered a prescription for testosterone nine minutes into her meeting with the clinician. After confirming that, yes, no parent or guardian was with her, and also that she had anorexia, but felt that her issue was she wanted to transition/be a boy.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/enquete/site/episodes/864008/episode-du-jeudi-29-fevrier-2024
French only, but maybe there’s a translation/English captioning feature. 36:23 for the segment with the private clinic.
Edit: just re-watched it, and what the girl says is that when she was 12 or 13 her parents took her to psychologist because of an eating disorder, but she watched a video of a trans person who said the problem wasn’t disordered eating but rather being trans, and so she realized that was her issue too.