Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast.

This is John Herschauer, associate editor at City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is Leor Sopier. Leor is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute,

where he researches education and medical policy, particularly as they relate to pediatric gender

medicine. He writes frequently for City Journal and has been published in several other publications,

including the Wall Street Journal, Tablet, and the Hill. He's also testified before legislative

health committees in several states. Today, we're going to be discussing his recent essay from our

winter issue of City Journal, Gender Medicine on the Ropes, which chronicles the increasing

pushback against medical sex change

treatments. Lior, thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for having me on, John.

So your piece, of course, is titled Gender Medicine on the Ropes, and that reflects a really

remarkable development. I mean, gender ideology went from being the sort of thing you only

heard about in college seminars

to infiltrating public elementary schools in almost every facet of public life in America.

And so before you delve into your reporting and the potential demise of transgenderism,

I wonder if you could sketch for us the rise of gender ideology in the United States.

Sort of how did we get here?

That's a great question, and it's a very complicated one to answer, but in very broad strokes,

some of this originated in the academy, in parts of the academy that, you know, are known for

critical theory, but also for sexology, sex-related research, research on sex development, and of course the legal

academy. In the United States, in particular, the law has been a very powerful and influential instrument

...