Can Democrats Admit They Were Wrong On Gender? with Lisa Selin Davis

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After years of institutional groupthink and policy whiplash, what have we actually learned—and what are we still not allowed to ask? Lisa Selin Davis returns to discuss the evidence (and non-evidence) around youth gender medicine, talk about the ongoing taboo and confusion around AGP (autogynephilia), and consider how to hold two truths at once: some people report thriving post-transition while others were clearly harmed.

In this episode, we discuss / talk about:

How “don’t question it” became a default and why that stalled real inquiry
What the evidence actually says (and doesn’t) about pediatric interventions
Thriving vs. harm: talking about real outcomes without slogans
Gender clinics closing under political pressure—who might be quietly relieved, and why
AGP: why it’s still taboo and how that affects research and discourse
The NFL cheerleader controversy and what it revealed about intellectual consistency
“Stopping” vs. “ending”: Lisa’s framework for irreversible choices and life after medicalization

About the guest
Lisa Selin Davis is the author of two novels and two nonfiction books, with a forthcoming book on the culture of trans kids and gender identity. She writes the Substack BROADview.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, just jumping in here with a really quick note about this interview. It was recorded on August 21st. It's with Lisa Sullen Davis, and we talk about her work, having to do with the new gender movement, various policies that have gone or are going into effect around these issues. On August 27th, of course, there was a horrific shooting in
0:24.2	Minneapolis at a Catholic school. The shooter was pretty quickly found to have had some kind
0:30.1	of trans identification. I had to record a bunch of episodes ahead of time, so it might seem a little
0:36.4	bit weird to be hearing
0:37.8	this conversation with no mention of that incident. That's why on August 28th, I did a live
0:44.9	stream with Ben Appel about the Minneapolis situation specifically. So if you're interested
0:52.2	in hearing that, I will link to it in the show notes.
0:55.3	I had to do it in my car because I got stuck in Los Angeles. But nonetheless, it's a great
1:01.7	conversation, as is this one with Lisa Sullen Davis. Enjoy.
1:07.1	Ultimately, what happened was that we made it impossible to object, that we made objection,
1:13.7	questioning skepticism into a kind of blasphemy, especially the way social media and social justice
1:21.1	commingled to narrow us down to the oppressor and the oppressed and good or bad, black and white.
1:30.6	In order to understand this issue, as I said in the beginning, you would have to say every
1:36.5	democratic institution was wrong. And then you would have to also say the words that are absolutely impossible in this environment for a liberal
1:51.6	to say, which are the Republicans are right about this.
1:59.1	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest is writer and journalist Lisa Selman Davis. She has joined me several times over the past five years to talk about one of our favorite topics around here and one of the most fraught issues of our time. I would say probably the most fraught, that is pediatric
2:18.8	gender medicine. When this podcast launched in 2020, very few people outside a small circle of
2:25.3	specialists and parents even knew what gender affirming care meant. Now, even though a lot of people
2:32.1	still don't know exactly what that means, the lawsuits are
2:35.4	coming fast and furious, clinics are closing, and a lot of stuff is happening. And yet,
2:42.2	the conversation remains incredibly polarized and often not as complex as it really should be. That is why Lisa's work is so important. She has been
2:55.0	covering this subject rigorously and with just incredible respect for nuance and detail. She has a
	...

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