The Social Contagion of Mental Disorders Through Social Media Platforms

But then the other thing that is scary about social media is, um, the social contagion of mental disorders. So we know, uh, we're aware now that a certain proportion of young girls who are identifying as gender dysphoric and attempting to become transgender. We're aware now that there is such a thing as rapid onset gender dysphoria.

Okay, so there's a book called "Discovery of the Unconscious," which is a great book by Henry Ellenberger. It's—I was given that book by a psychiatrist at the Douglas Hospital who was my supervisor, a French guy, Maurice Doncevic, a very distinguished psychiatrist, and he said this is the psychoanalytic bible: "Discovery of the Unconscious." The first—it's about that thick—and it covers Jung, Freud, Adler; it's a great book. But the first 300 pages is a history of pre-psychoanalytic thought, and part of that is a historical survey of contagion.

Right, and so the multiple personality disorder, for example, has cycled through about 300 years. And there are people who are temperamentally susceptible to such contagion. They're likely the same people who are relatively easily hypnotizable. Yeah, it's likely associated with high openness, by the way. Right? Okay, and you could also imagine that if you're high in openness, it's harder for you to catalyze and specify an identity, and you're more diverse in your inner life, maybe even your emotional life; and so, right?

And then there's confusion here too that we should talk about as psychologists. So sex and gender, you know, and I've been accused of just saying that those are identical, but I know they're not because there is a lot of personality variability on top of biological sex. And it isn't like it isn't a particularly rare woman who has essentially the same temperament as the average man. Sure, my suspicions are it's probably about one woman in 10. Now, it would depend on exactly how you made the cut-offs, you know, but I don't—if it's not 10, maybe it's 5. I don't care; it's somewhere in that range. And the same can be said for men.

And so it's perfectly possible for a boy to have a temperament that's more like a girl, but that does not mean that he's in the wrong body. That's the raw—like that's a pretty radical solution for a problem that's essentially a consequence of normal temperamental variability. And so there is some utility in separating out gender from sex, if you think of gender as personality, which I think is the appropriate way to think about it scientifically.

But I knew back when I got entangled in my first political conflict, I thought all this mucking about with gender categories is going to confuse and hurt way more people than it's going to help. And part of this is this problem of contagion of confusion. Yes, so all adolescents really need that. That's really what they need: is more confusion about sex and gender when they're 13. That's just perfect.

Yeah, it's freedom. Yes, like, yeah, freedom. Yeah, right? Yeah, and it wouldn't be—it wouldn't be an issue. I mean, there's nothing—androgyne has been around for hundreds, thousands of years. I mean, there's ancient sculptures of androgynous figures. I mean, ancient cultures understood androgyny, and there's plenty of historical precedent for the idea that androgynous personality is actually more of an ideal. There's lots of speculation in Christian mysticism about the androgyny of Christ.

Yeah, that's right. And you know, I—I'm not—I—I, when I was a teenager, I used to look up to androgynous celebrities. Like, well, David Bowie was a little bit before my time, but he was androgynous. I used to—and he was like, yeah, I mean, it wasn't—it was an ideal to emulate and to be. Tomboy was considered cool, but you would never consider medical intervention; you would never consider hormone treatment or modifying your body.

How about attempting to make a penis out of the musculature in your arm? You know, penises are actually quite complex; it's not that easy to take your arm and turn it into one. And certainly not without a tremendous amount of cost and trouble. And then, well, and then—and then let's just imagine that you were wrong and confused, just for a moment, you know.

And the contrary argument is, "Well, you better deal with this early." It's like, "Yeah, you really know that, do you? You're so bloody sure about that, are you?" Well, they can—the emotional blackmail that activists have used has been, you know, this argument that if kids don't get this early intervention, then they're at higher risk of suicide.

Well, we have absolutely no idea whether, um, you know, we don't—suicidal ideation or distress is not easily disentangled from confusion around your identity. It's not clear that it's simply transphobia or being trapped. No, no, it's clear that it's—not simple. First of all, as you just pointed out, it's actually unbelievably complicated.

So what do you—difficult things? Yep. Yeah, well there's a paper that's been recently published by Lisa Littman, who did the original exploratory research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, and she's gone and interviewed 100 detransitioners. She's a lot of—I think she just talked to Barry Weiss about that.

Okay, yeah. Well, her paper—well, she interviewed detransitioners, so people who have transitioned gender and who now regret it. And there's a couple of patterns that stand out. One pattern that stands out is that often people felt the need to transition after some trauma had happened to them. So they experienced the trauma, and then another pattern that stands out is that these individuals were sort of sold transgender transition as a solution to all of their problems.

Yeah, yeah, I think I read the paper. I think that one of the most common claims of the detransitioners was that they were tremendously ill-informed about the full consequences of their actions by the relevant medical professionals. And then we could also say it's certainly possible that the relevant medical professionals are too terrified to fully inform them.

Well, it's their job. I mean, yeah, I know; it's not an excuse, but it is, but it—but it's still worth noting because you can understand—I know what happened in Toronto to the world's lead researcher on transsexual transition in children. I mean, his life was torn into shreds, and he's an apolitical guy. He's just a researcher, and he's a good one as well.

Yeah, and so the fear—you know, you can say, "Well, you're a professional; it's your duty to stand up regardless of the fear," but when there's that much pressure, even people who stand up are going to be inclined to speak a lot less than they might otherwise.

Yeah, I had—I’ve had a press council complaint made against me before, an article I wrote for The Australian on transgender issues, and it wasn't upheld. But anytime a journalist in Australia wants to write about issues particularly to do with medical intervention and gender dysphoric kids, they are subject to complaints, press council complaints.

Well, and if you're an MD or a psychologist, if someone takes a complaint against you to your college, especially if that college has been increasingly dominated by activists, you are so screwed. Yeah, like I had one client just cause me just an unbelievable amount of misery. Well, because you can hijack the whole bureaucracy as a weapon.

Yeah, and so, yeah, yeah, and that's what these activists do, and they're very good at it, and they—you know, they only need to have a couple of successes under their belt, and they have a whole system for attacking people. Well, we have human rights commissions in Canada, which are a quasi-judicial entity with increasing power, and that's a perfect weapon for any activist who's motivated to use it.

And that—whoever the target of the human rights commission is, you can kiss five years of their life goodbye, and there's a high probability that they're going to be found guilty regardless of what they did. It's really—it's truly appalling, especially given that it's happening under the aegis, hypothetically, of human rights and the ability to give informed consent.

And this—this is just one—this is an example of how fanatics hijack institutions which you would have previously thought were fairly centrist and moderate. So it's, you know, this—this transgender activism issue is—is a perfect example because it's a tiny—like transgender activists are a minority of transgender people who are a tiny minority anyway, so it's just like the smallest number of people creating an extreme amount of havoc.

And it's—it's a perfect example of how this—how a tiny intolerant minority can basically dominate others using all of the—all of the new tools that we have today: social media, you know, bureaucratic complaints, mobbing, that type of thing.