Laura often quips: "Looks don't matter, except when they do, which is nearly always".

We all have a sense that people who are conventionally attractive catch more breaks then people who are plain, and this is likely more true for women than for men. But how much does this matter for trans women, who are more likely than natal women (and non-trans men) to be unemployed and in poverty.

Taryn Eames, a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Toronto, sought to find out why. Are trans women less employable, or are they being discriminated against by employers? And how is this effected by their passability -- their ability to be interpreted as though they were natally female.

To analyze if this was due to hiring discrimination, she sent out 10000 fake resumes to potential employers across Germany, The only details that they changes was that in some, the employee revealed a trans history, and in some, the employee was presumed to be a natal female.

In addition, in half the resumes she included a picture that appeared classily female, and in the other half, the picture was masculinized to look trans. She discovered that employers gave a positive response 9% less often if the employee revealed a trans history but "passed" as female, but 32% less often if she did not pass, showing that trans women who do not pass are significantly penalized when job hunting.

With Yvette away sick, Laura and Taryn discuss this research, try to tease out differences between attractiveness and passability and discuss if this is a problem that can (or should be) remedied.

Few arguments in the debate over transgender healthcare carry more emotional weight than suicide. Parents hear alarming accounts of what might happen if their child does not transition. Advocates describe gender-affirming care as lifesaving. Critics argue that the evidence cannot sustain that claim, and some have labelled the entire narrative a “suicide myth.”

But what, exactly, is supposed to be the myth? That young people with gender dysphoria experience serious distress? That they face an elevated risk of suicide? That medical transition reduces that risk? Or that parents are routinely being pressured into treatment through frightening predictions about their children’s survival? These are different questions, requiring different kinds of evidence. Rejecting an exaggerated claim does not establish that the underlying concern is imaginary. Equally, taking that concern seriously does not establish that a particular treatment prevents deaths.

oining us today is Dr. Tyler Black, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, suicidologist, and clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. His work includes caring for young people in psychiatric crisis and examining how suicide evidence is interpreted and communicated.

Dr. Black has also launched pediatricsuicides.ca, which is a open-access data source for global suicide statistics, covering 138 countries from 1952 to the present day. Today, we’re asking: “Is the Suicide Myth Also a Myth?” What do we know, what remains uncertain, and what should families hear?

So begins one of the more provocative essays to emerge from the trans debate in recent weeks, and today we’re joined by its author, Cassie Pritchard

Cassie Pritchard begins with what can sound like a striking concession: that securing the rights of trans women may not require persuading everyone that trans women are, in every meaningful sense, women. That challenges one of the central assumptions of modern trans advocacy. But it also raises a difficult question: can the rights, protections, and accommodations trans women have gained be sustained if we no longer expect the broader public to accept that underlying claim?

Cassie Pritchard is a writer, labor organizer, democratic socialist, and trans woman whose work explores politics, labor, and the changing debate over transgender rights. A former Starbucks barista and union organizer in Los Angeles, she has written for The New York Times and The Argument and publishes her own Substack, The Cassandra Problem. In her recent essay, “I Don’t Need You to Believe I’m a Woman,”

Cassie argues that trans advocacy should move away from demanding agreement over the meaning of sex and gender and instead build broader coalitions around pluralism, individual liberty, tolerance, and material protections for trans people.