Schyler B is a conventionally attractive woman in her 30s who exudes a down-home easy going affect, and whose smile and warmth invite you to want to get to know her better.

If you saw her on line selling skin care products, home appliances, or time shares for a Caribbean resort, you would be more likely to stop and take a listen, and hear what she has to say. If she moved to your neighborhood, you'd want to be the first on the block to invite her for dinner. After the dishes are put away and the kitchen is tidies up, you would turn to your partner--or wonder to yourself--"I hope she likes us"

Relatability, friendliness and warmth are key to making the sale, and to making connections. And this is especially important when the product is a tough sell, and where people are not necessarily looking for connection. Which is why Schyler, an integrated and binary trans woman is an especially compelling salesperson for transsexualism, and one of its most widely misunderstood features, the concept of autosexuality and autogynephilia

Schyler B. has publicly spoken in the recent past about her experiences with transitioning and life as an integrated trans woman, and in particular, her experience of growing up experiencing autosexual gynephilic arousal - a phenomenon often described as autogynephilia. This is the term coined by sexologists to describe natal males who develop arousal and attraction to the thought of being female, or by taking actions to take on the appearance of being female. This has been proposed as one of the major triggers for gender incongruence and dysphoria in natal males, though this is highly contested.

(Those more interested in the subject of autogynephilia can go watch our interview with psychologist Dr. James Morandini in Episode 8) https://youtu.be/XiJkGslk-zo

She speaks of the necessity of destigmatizing and normalizing the phenomenon of autosexuality, just as the gay community once did with same-sex attraction. She is also the former co-host of Dollcast, a no-longer-active project which also aimed to show a more normal and relatable side of transsexuality, and to differentiate trans women who transitioned to live integrated lives as women from those who are pursuing transition to stand apart from cisnormative society .

On this episode, we hear about Schyler's childhood and adolescence, her path to transition, her relationship to her partner before and during this process, as well as why she decided to go public despite having the ability to keep her history of transition private. We also discuss the concept of "pretty privilege" within the trans community, and on the role that appearance has in fostering relatability and respectability to people outside the trans experience.

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Yvette and Laura are back after a 3 week summer hiatus with a new episode featuring bioethicist Dr. Mori Gorin and philosopher Dr. Alex Byrne to discuss their latest paper "Trans Kids - Making Up Children", where they propose a theory about how the transgender child comes to be, and if this provides any insight on how we should be thinking about the rapid rise in trans identification and medicalization We also discuss their role in the authorship of the controversial HHS report, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices, and on the ethics of future research on trans adolescents We also learn about Byrne and Gorin's interest in the topic, and on the limits of free inquiry when evaluating vulnerable populations.

In this episode, we are joined by Autumn Rian Gilmore, better known as the Queen of Nuance (@autumnrain80) on Twitter/X Autumn medically and socially transitioned in her late teens to live as a woman, even going to far as to have an orchiectomy, before deciding to return to living to the male role where she spent the next twenty years Five years ago, in her early 40s, she decided to retransition again, and has been trying to make up for lost time. Here about her early childhood, why she decided to give up on her transition and become an anti-trans advocate, and how through the years, she continued to struggle with dysphoria. She describes how toxic dynamics within the trans community combined with extrinsic pressures to question her gender identity, and how she still sees those forces at play today. We hope you enjoy her fascinating story

Sage Jasper Love spent 5 years of her life in her 20s living as a trans man. She was on testosterone, underwent a bilateral mastectomy, and found a trans partner. Then a few years ago, she decided to return to living in the female role.

But distinctly from other commonly heard narratives, Sage has no regrets about her medical transition, and sees it as an important part of her identify development. Even while she awaits completion of her reconstructive breast surgery, and even as she has doubts about transition being offered to minors.

We wanted to talk to Sage to better understand why she maintains this outlook, why she refuses to politically campaign against trans people and their rights, and on whether her experience has anything to teach other young people considering undertaking a similar gender journey

Sage has a substack called Narrative Acts where she discusses her transition and detransition, including her essay "My Truth About Detransitioning", which was featured on The One Percent On this

Dr Emma Hilton is a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester, where her research has focused on developmental genetics and human genetic disease. She earned her PhD at the University of Warwick, studying early events in vertebrate embryonic development.

Hilton became a prominent public voice in debates over sex and gender after writing about the biological basis of sex differences in athletic performance. She is the co-author, with sports scientist Tommy Lundberg, of an influential review examining testosterone suppression and retained performance advantages in transgender women. Her position is that male puberty produces enduring advantages in strength, speed, power and body composition that hormone treatment cannot reliably eliminate, and that female sporting categories therefore need to be defined by sex rather than gender identity.

Beyond sport, Hilton is a co-founder and current chair of the board of trustees of Sex Matters, a UK advocacy organization that campaigns for biological sex to remain explicit in law, policy and language. Through that work, she has argued for female-only provisions in areas including changing rooms, healthcare, prisons and other settings where privacy, safety or fairness may be at issue. Her arguments have made her an influential and controversial figure in Britain’s gender debate, with supporters seeing her as a defender of women’s sex-based rights and critics regarding her advocacy as exclusionary toward transgender people.

In this episode, we focus on why sex matters in sport, and whether it should be the only thing that matters, especially in societies that may also value inclusion. We also explore Hilton’s broader worldview about sex and gender, the principles behind her advocacy and the implications of drawing sex-based boundaries in public life.

in this episode, we speak with developmental psychologist J. D. Haltigan about his controversial argument that transsexuality should be examined through the lens of psychopathology rather than treated solely as an identity

altigan’s academic work has focused on developmental psychopathology, personality, identity formation and the ways psychological symptoms can be shaped by social environments. More recently, he has applied these interests to the rapid rise in gender dysphoria, particularly among adolescents, asking whether social media, peer influence and changing cultural narratives have helped transform diffuse psychological distress into a gendered identity. We discuss whether transsexuality is itself a form of psychopathology, or whether it is better understood as a response to underlying problems involving personality, identity development, autism, trauma or emotional dysregulation.

Haltigan explains why he does not believe medical transition is an appropriate treatment, even when it appears to reduce distress, and argues that questions about transition cannot necessarily be settled by outcome studies alone. Laura argues that her successful transition demonstrates that even if you do consider transness to be psychopathologic, that transition can be one path by through which trans people can mitigate the impact of that psychopathology on their ability to function and thrive in the world.

The conversation also considers a deeper philosophical divide. Should transition be judged primarily by its consequences, including whether it improves quality of life, or are there moral and conceptual objections that remain even when an individual reports benefit? Finally, we explore what may be driving the extraordinary increase in gender dysphoria and how Haltigan’s earlier work on identity formation and social-media-mediated psychopathology shaped his understanding of the phenomenon.

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 too weak to determine whether these interventions improve outcomes for young people, make outcomes worse for some, or help certain groups while harming others. Others argue that continued access is necessary despite uncertainty, especially given the distress experienced by many adolescents with gender dysphoria.

Dr. Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist and science communicator who writes about evidence, public health, and how to interpret data. His Substack, Health Nerd, has more than 33,000 subscribers, and he has written extensively about pediatric gender medicine, including arguments in favour of continued access to care despite the limitations of the current evidence base.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why the evidence base for pediatric medical transition is so difficult to interpret

• What randomized trials, observational studies, and systematic reviews can and cannot answer

• Whether better data could resolve the debate

• How researchers should think about benefit, harm, regret, and uncertainty

• Why pediatric gender medicine has become so politically polarized

• Why data alone often fails to persuade people on either side of the issue

This is a conversation about evidence, uncertainty, values, and the limits of epidemiology in one of the most contested areas of medicine.

Guest: Dr. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz / Health Nerd

Show: Agree to Disagree About Gender

#PediatricGenderMedicine #GenderDysphoria #MedicalTransition #HealthNerd #Epidemiology #GenderMedicine #EvidenceBasedMedicine #AgreeToDisagreeAboutGender

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 season of women's football playing for the Connecticut Ambush of the American Women's Football League. Karleigh joins us to make her case about why trans women belong in women's sports at all levels. We discuss the implications of trans women's participation in contact vs. noncontact sports, competitive vs. recreational, and on the role sports can play in creating a sense of belonging for trans women Needless to say, this becomes a source of vigorous debate for Laura and especially Yvette who is firmly protective of women's sports being for biological women. This discussion gets lively and contentious, but remains civil throughout, as we continue to model how to have impactful conversations about controversies in the world of gender