Abigail Shrier & Sex And Gender In America
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All right, boys and girls, we are back with another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can subscribe to all the Fox News podcasts at foxnewspodcast.com. I hope that you will rate and review this one as well as subscribe to it and recommend it to your friends because, frankly, we're a new show and we're trying to grow the audience.

Today, I have an interview with someone who is at the center of the conversation about sex and gender in America. Abigail Schreier is an author, attorney, and journalist. She has degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and Yale. She's also the author of Irreversible Damage, the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which was one of the best books of 2020 by The Economist.

Schreier is a bold voice on these issues, and she's had to deal with the consequences of taking a prominent and controversial position, something that wasn't controversial until what it seems like was five minutes ago.

She wrote in the Wall Street Journal back in June of last year about the struggles that she experienced in advocating for her book, writing, if you write a book celebrating troubled teenage girls suddenly coming out as transgender in friend groups, pursuing a regimen of cross-sex hormones and surgeries, Amazon will happily promote it. But if you write a book that points out the risks of this gender journey, Amazon wants nothing to do with you.

This is the lesson my publisher, Regnery, learned last week when Amazon informed it that Regnery wouldn't be permitted to run a sponsored ad for my book, Irreversible Damage. Amazon's stated reason for barring the ad, a simple picture of my book's cover, was this. It contains elements that may not be appropriate for all audiences, which may include ad copybook content that infers or claims to diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation.

In fact, she writes, the book has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Building on the work of Brown University public health researcher Lisa Littman, Irreversible Damage argues that transgender identification among teen girls has become a social contagion. Girls who might have encouraged each other in bulimia, anorexia, or cutting are today deciding they have gender dysphoria, pushing for hormones and surgeries, and easily obtaining them.

The numbers are startling. In the nearly 100-year diagnostic history of gender dysphoria, severe discomfort in one's biological sex, the disorder first appeared in early childhood, ages 2 to 4, in overwhelmingly afflicted boys. Today, teen girls with no history of childhood dysphoria are suddenly the leading demographic.

From 2016 to 2017, the number of gender surgeries on girls and women in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological females accounting for 70% of all gender surgeries.

Part of the reason this has become an epidemic among teen girls, she writes, is that unlike bulimia or anorexia, our culture celebrates girls who medically transition and denigrates or cancels all who point out that this can be a mode of self-harm. Abigail Schreier testified this past week in front of the U.S. Congress about the Equality Act.

something that would enshrine in law, many different things that are raising questions across this spectrum of policy. She said in part, if S three 93, that's the equality act merely proposed to extend employment and public housing rights to gay and transgender Americans, I would be supporting this bill instead of testifying against it. I'm here today because the bill does much more and no one who wrote it appears to have thoughtfully considered what it would mean for women and girls. Okay.

The legislation, as Schreier says it, has nothing to do with transgender people and everything to do with opportunistic self-identification by violent male felons who will take advantage of instances such as when the Washington Correctional Center for Women allowed prisoners to live in certain facilities based on their gender identities, resulting in the rape of at least one female. If you pass this bill, she warned, you can expect hundreds more victims like this one.

I have probably interviewed more transgender Americans than any person in this room, she said, and I can honestly say that accepting political activists, most do not want to obliterate women's rights and safe spaces. Most would never think of stealing women's scholarships by forcing young women into demoralizing contests with male bodies.

But gender ideology, which is at the heart of this bill, is misogyny in progressive clothing. Gender ideology tells women and girls that they are not entitled to their fear or their sense of unfairness as their protective spaces are eliminated. Abigail Schreier is at the center of this discussion, which is one of the most controversial culture war elements of our moment. It was a pleasure to talk to her. Coming up, we'll hear from our guest, Abigail Schreier.

Reporting live from under my blanket, I'm Susan Curtis with Dunkin' at Home. Breaking news, pumpkin spice iced and hot coffees are back. I'll pass it to Mr. Curtis with his blanket for the full story. That is so right, Susan. You know, it's never too early to get in a spicy mood. I'm talking cinnamony goodness that's so tasty, people don't want to leave their blankets either. Back to you. No, back to you. All you. The home with Dunkin' Pumpkin Spice is where you want to be.

Abigail Schreier, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. Thanks for having me on. I want to ask you about a number of different issues that are obviously at the center of American life at the moment. Some issues that really rile people up, that are controversial, that are frankly batted around and used to both cancel people and to really alter a lot of different American institutions.

But before I ask you about those, I just want to ask you about your own willingness to engage on these issues. This is something that clearly is an area where engaging really leads to backlash. Did you have to wrestle with the idea of talking about all of these different subjects, knowing that the consequences for even just expressing your viewpoint, even if it's widely held, could be really negative for you and for those that you care about?

I mean, yes, everyone sort of has to wrestle with it a little bit. You know, it's funny. I've always been kind of a truth teller, which I don't know how to explain that, except that it's kind of my personality and it gets me into all kinds of trouble socially. Things that, you know, if I was the kid in high school, all my girlfriends would be like, you can't say that, you know, and

I wouldn't know which thing I had said that they had provoked that response. But so I've always kind of had that personality. Does that mean that I don't enjoy being provocative? I don't I don't I certainly don't seek that out, but I'm interested in things. I'm interested in American life and American culture and where we're going. And.

I was really interested when, you know, when a reader wrote to me about what her daughter was going through and had suddenly identified as transgender with her friends and how it ripped her family apart and how her daughter wasn't doing well. You know, at first I tried to pass it on to someone and no one would take it up. And I,

You know, it's one of those things that I was interested. I mean, I don't, I'm not squeamish about it. I was just curious and it didn't affect me personally. So, you know, there are certain issues that I think, you know, affect me more personally and I can't be detached about them and I don't really enjoy writing about those things, but

But the things that I can be more detached about, I enjoy writing about because I think I can sort of bring something to the topic without getting too caught up in it. So I guess that's how I ended up here. I know a lot of people.

are close to or have their own children going through experiences right now where they feel pressure to define themselves at a very early age. And what that really looks like in a lot of times is that tomboyish girls are being forced into making a decision about whether they are trans or not, often at very, very early ages.

I know that that's concerning not just to people who share my own political views, but to people who are on the left. I'm curious how many people have reached out to you as you've been writing and speaking openly about these issues and expressed concern about that type of thing in their life.

Right. So most of the people who reach out to me are politically liberal. They watch their kids go through it. And they were sort of the most sure that this was wrong because they they sort of looked inside themselves and they said, listen, I've supported gay marriage forever and way before it was illegal. And I know I'm an ally. I went to every pride parade, but this doesn't seem right for my daughter. So I know I'm not a bigot.

But I also think they had the hardest time with it because they really identify being liberal with being a good person. And they tell me they're politically homeless now. They always use that term. I'm politically homeless. I don't feel like my party has any idea what it's doing or whatever. And on this issue and, um,

And I think it's really disorienting for a lot of them because, you know, because they feel like I know I'm a good person. I'm supposed to be a Democrat, but nobody in the Democratic Party wants to talk about this or has any sympathy for what I've been going through. This has ripped my family apart. And remember that, like, if your kid comes out as gay, there's no irreversible harm that occurs there.

But your kid comes out as trans and the first pressure is, you know, when do I transition? When do I get filled with these hormones that nobody knows the long-term effects of? When do I remove my breasts? It's really scary if you care about your kid and, you know, most people do. Yeah.

Why is it that the established order of conversation around this is so incapable of talking openly about the fact that the ramifications of the kinds of treatment you're talking about

life changing elements to them, things that can't be reversed with current technology and that could ultimately render someone sterile or render them incapable of having children in the future. The kind of decisions that I think most people would give pause to being made at very young ages. And that

to me, just really is a conversation that doesn't seem to be happening except in center right media around all of this. Why is there such a lockdown on conversation about this when the health ramifications are so significant? So I think a lot of a lot of reasons. One reason is, of course, you know, the left a certain sort of convinced everyone and convinced Republicans, too, that you are a bigot if you ever question any of this.

OK, and they certainly convinced everyone on the left and even liberals that you if you ever ask questions, asking question is violence. Asking question is hate. All the things that we used to value as Americans in a free society and, you know,

you know, it's just about asking questions and they won't do it. They think you can't do it. There's also, we've also been convinced of this notion of immutability. It got written into, you know, so many Supreme Court decisions. And the idea was that you're worthy of civil rights protection if your traits are immutable.

I don't know that the Supreme Court jurisprudence should have gone down this road. I don't know if that if the in an effort to protect civil rights, it had to latch itself. You know, the jurisprudence had to latch on to immutability, but they did. So then they had to in order to sort of get the benefits of the civil rights protection, trans activists decided we had to claim this is immutable, even though it makes no sense, because we know that, you know, they even say you can be gender fluid.

But but people have it in their minds that they can never question an immutable trait. And oh, my God, what if this is one? What if this is like race? What if this is like being gay? So there's that. And then I have to own up to something, which is that I do think and I have found by talking to conservatives and.

and Republicans on this issue, that they have their own certain barriers to talking about this sensibly. And one of the barriers, I think, is that one, they have a certain squeamishness, like do whatever you want, this is crazy.

but just stay away from me kind of thing. And the problem with that is, you know, our country is changing dramatically. We're getting these changes rammed through by the hard left. And if you don't take the time to just put your pants on and examine them and understand them,

then you're allowing our country to change because of them. So I don't care how squeamish you are about them. You kind of have to be a big boy and figure out what's going on so that we can, you know, before the entire country gets changed around us. And that means, you know, extending a certain amount of compassion and understanding to people who live very differently from you and asking yourself, are you being bigoted or are you just asking questions? When was the first time someone called you a TERF?

Oh, gosh, I don't even know. It's been it's been it's constant. You know, it doesn't bother me. I mean, that's that's probably the nicest word I get called, to be honest. You know, my kids has unfortunately learned a lot of bad words during the course of this.

Yeah, it's, you know, I've met so many wonderful people through this experience. People whose politics may differ from mine, but are just just absolutely wonderful people who are, you know, also committed to truth and inquiry. And I just I have come to see the dividing lines differently in America. I really think that.

that to me, the most important dividing line is are you committed to truth and evidence and asking questions and open discussion? And are you not? And to me, that's that's the most important fault line to me. You testified this week in front of the U.S. Congress concerning the Equality Act. Tell us a little bit about that piece of legislation and your own concerns about it. Sure. So I'm a lawyer. I had written about it. The Equality Act

is really a wolf in sheep's clothing. I mean, it pretends to be the civil rights legislation that extends public housing and, sorry, public accommodation and employment rights to gay and transgender Americans. But it sneaks in this extremely radical gender ideology, which says that anyone who

And remember, there could be hundreds of gender identities at any time gets to be considered in under the law as that identity. So you and all you have to do is declare it. It's based on self-identification. So if a man in prison declares, actually, I'm a woman, he doesn't need to make a single change. He gets to transfer into the women's prison. And if a senior in high school, you know, a great athlete, but maybe not great enough, a male athlete, he gets to transfer into the women's prison.

decides, you know what, I could use one of those college scholarships. He can say, sure, call me she and her. And he's entitled to compete, go out for the girls team and take a female's college scholarship, athletic scholarship. So it's a very, very radical piece of legislation. And once again, it's one of those things where good people, they don't want to, good American

Americans don't want to say I'm against, you know, employment rights for gay and transgender Americans. None of us would want to. So they they use they use people's good, good nature against them. I think, you know, there is that element of this that is kind of underlying so many of our discussions that people won't really recognize or speak about within the media, which is that the overwhelming majority of Americans overwhelming agree with you

They agree with what you are saying about the dangers of having men able to compete in women's sports. They agree with you about their concerns about people transitioning at such a young age.

Poll after poll shows us that. And yet the way that the media frames this narrative, it is always a situation where your views are essentially the minority, that they are viewed as extreme and out of step with the dominant majority of the viewpoints that are held out in media and in our political discussion.

Is this a situation where the media is intentionally trying to gaslight the country on this issue? What do you think the reason is for why that frame is in the way that it is? Because certainly that was not the case when it came to debates about things like gay marriage, where even if there was a clear majority of the media that agreed with it, it's not like they pretended the opposition to it didn't exist.

You know, there's, you know, Barry Weiss pointed this out in her now famous resignation letter, you know, and tweet storm about leaving the Times. And I think this is absolutely right. There's a generational fault line in America that can't be ignored.

I have found that I can get along with and find common cause with almost anyone in Gen X. I was born in 1978 and maybe older millennials, but the young woke generation, and this includes a lot of people in the media, is so dogmatic. It doesn't matter what profession they enter, whether they take a Hippocratic oath, they don't care. They care about advancing their political agenda. They are evidence-proof. And this is true of people in the media. I mean, the amount of

I have to tell you, when I wrote my book, which examined the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls and looked at the hypothesis that this was a social contagion, I never expected to get this much confirmation this fast.

But literally in the last year, I have seen not only academic studies that came out that confirmed it, but the High Court of Justice in England reviewed all the medical protocols we have in America. Talk to some of the same doctors I had talked to in my book. They had them brought in to testify and they were horrified by the protocols. They think they were hasty. They pointed out that the alarming spike in teenage girls, a lot of these girls were

probably don't have gender dysphoria. They don't seem to have real gender dysphoria. So I could never imagine writing a book and getting as much confirmation as I got. And yet I'm constantly portrayed online and in the media as having some sort of fringe view. I don't have a fringe view. My view is just that these things should be questioned. And if that's fringe for the American media, that sort of tells you where we are.

It's an interesting development because it certainly is on the minds of lots of parents across the country as this third rail, as this thing that they can't touch or can't talk about. Yet at the same time-

I am of the view that all it takes to radicalize someone politically is for them to raise a daughter. I have a daughter to see her succeed, to see her prevail within competitive sport and then reach a stage in her senior year where all of that gets ripped away by someone who just decides that they're going to compete suddenly in a way that they never have before.

To me, that's so clearly unfair. It's so clearly something that that Americans would rebel against.

And yet, again, the dominant forces in media, in Hollywood and elsewhere are of one mind on this subject. And to me, I feel like that's actually a situation where they're being their own worst enemy because they're acting as if they don't have to convince people of something. They're just trying to force it down their throats. And I wonder if you feel that way or if you feel like that that approach to media

dominance when it comes to messaging is something that might benefit them. You know, I'm really split. I'm really of two minds because I think I have...

a better understanding. I do feel like I've ended up sort of a canary in the coal mine about a lot of the tech censorship. And I can tell you it is, I mean, I can't go into all details about it, but I can tell you it's horrifying. I wake up every day afraid I'm going to be deleted in a very real sense, not just from Amazon, but from all kinds of aspects of life. I mean, it is probably the thing that I'm most afraid of.

So I think that their ability to bully everyone, all they have to do is bully a handful of companies and they've accomplished a lot. So I that said, I mean, you're right that, you know, you should be able to, you know, look, people, you know, love my book. They are very positive. I

I think that, you know, if you read my book, if you're open to it, you might not agree with it. Although most people do, because all I do is point out the risks. But but you certainly change your mind about some of these things. But these these activists are so evidence proof. And I do think part of the problem is what you said about having a daughter. Young people are not having children.

It's a big deal because these activists will say to me and they often say these people, you know, these parents who claim their daughters identified out of nowhere. You know, they they don't they don't really know their kid. They just show they don't know their kid. And you want to say to them, wow, you have no idea how many hours go into this. Don't know their kid. Do you know what this woman did for her children? Do you know what this father did? Do you have any idea how many hours it takes?

You know how much heartache, you know, it's just how many triumphs. I mean, you are like, you spend your whole raising these kids on the edge of your seat, not sure what you're doing right or wrong, but studying them and reviewing your mistakes over and over. And then some guy who sees your daughter for 45 minutes session once he, he sure he knows she's meant to be transgender. I mean, it's preposterous. I,

You know, I'm curious about the reaction that you get for your reporting and writing from the left. It's interesting to me, for instance, that there are things like the Equality Act

that with Democrat voters, many of them across the country knew what was in it. Many would have huge objections to it. And we know that just from looking at poll numbers on specific issues, especially we know about the concerns among many selections of the Democratic cohort when it comes to children and trans issues.

Why do you think that that has sort of been squelched on the left? And what do you actually hear from your Democrat friends, from people within the left about their own thoughts about this? Well, you're right that nobody knew what was in it. And I think I mean, ultimately, that's why I went to Washington. I was invited there.

I knew there were other people who could go, but I just thought, I know how to do this. I know how to make the argument. I'm a lawyer. I can do it. And I just wasn't sure it would get done if I didn't go. Because I thought...

you know, what's the line about the, you know, the best are lack all conviction and the worst, you know, worst are full of passionate intensity. And that feels like how we're living, you know, and some people who are so well-intentioned who, who know something very dark is going on and have noticed they, they somehow need to put everything, they have to push their own agenda forward.

You know, they're like, I want everyone to vote Republican or I want everyone to be religious. And I want everybody to see that, you know, the religious way is the way of it. I didn't have an agenda and I really thought we shouldn't push an agenda on this. We should just expose what this law really means and leave it up to good Americans to be horrified.

And and and that's sort of my general approach in journalism is just to try to sort of unpack what's actually going on and just trust reasonable people to understand that. And, you know, a lot of people reach out to me and they're Democrats and they they agree. They feel like they can't speak up. But when you when you let them know what's actually in the law, I mean, come on, they don't believe in women's rights, you know?

What has the response been to your reporting and writing about Planned Parenthood and their interest in the trans cash cow kind of, you know, ongoing medicalization of treatment and that type of thing?

So, you know, a lot of people wanted to like use it to bash Planned Parenthood because they thought, oh, I hate Planned Parenthood. Look, they're evil. And I didn't have that agenda. I didn't have that agenda because I just don't have an overarching desire to advance conservatism, to advance my own values, to advance. I really just wanted to let people know what was going on at Planned Parenthood because, you know, this whole.

The fixation on abortion by both sides has really deformed a lot of our ability to talk. And I just thought, you know, do people even realize girls aren't getting pregnant? They're not having abortions. I mean, the abortion rates have plummeted.

That's not that's not the thing to worry about in a way. It doesn't mean, you know, you should give up all your feelings on abortion one way or the other. But I just mean that I thought people ought to know. And and I have to tell you that on the left, the amount of love.

The lying and covering up that's going on is astounding. I mean, I have been hung up on by local Congress people here in California when I call up and I ask, you know, listen, I know we're opening all these clinics, these public school clinic health clinics run by Planned Parenthood now across Los Angeles County. Are you going to be offering testosterone? They hang up on me.

Well, I thought they were saving lives, right? They say they're saving lives. So why aren't they proud of it? You know, this seems like a this seems like an issue that's going to be only more prevalent as it spreads from places like L.A. across the country. Do you think that that's going to result in political backlash?

Yeah, the problem with backlash is you can never predict what direction it's going to go in. So I'm not looking forward to any political backlash on this. I'm actually highly concerned about backlash. I don't want it to keep going because you're going to get more and more entrenched interests. We're already seeing that. I mean, doctors who are removing the breasts of 13-year-olds, which we have in California, with parental consent, if they are...

if they are shown and a lot of this research now, um, the, the head of the clinic, um, sorry, the, the, the person who wrote the Dutch study, which was the Dutch protocol became the, um,

for our putting girls on puberty blockers and then transferring them to cross-sex hormones. And that author basically recanted to some degree. The author said, listen, I never meant it for this population. And this explosion of teen girls is not what I had in mind for it.

If they're confronted with this, some of the doctors, and there are so many, you know, they're in deep trouble. So I think that the more vested interests you have in transitioning kids, as many as you can, as fast as you can, the more money that's made, the sort of more explosive this whole thing will be when it finally bursts. You have a Substack newsletter? I do. Okay. The...

I have been predicting for a couple of months now that Substack was doomed by the fact that there are so many contrarian voices on it. And sure enough, in the last two months or so, The New York Times, The Washington Post, several other places have published things critical of the idea of these newsletters.

Someone who has come under a lot of fire this week was Jesse Single, who obviously is somebody who has written about these subjects as well, including a cover piece of The Atlantic that I am sure that they wish that they had never run. But in in terms of the consequences for people taking contrarian views to the, you know, masked media,

corporate media on these subjects, there does seem to be this this kind of push that basically says this is dangerous speech. This is something that is going to lead to violence against trans people or things along those lines.

When you talk about being deleted by the tech establishment, how far do you think it's really going to go? As someone who had to fight for your own book when it came to Amazon, you know, do you think that this is going to be something that becomes all encompassing? And if so, what are the options that you have in mind for where you can go?

You know, I wish I had a game plan. I don't I can't say that I do, but I think it's going to go very, very far. Because one of the things that people underestimate, I believe, is they underestimate how beholden to these companies we all are, which means all those brave people you think are so brave secretly. They're they're they're shifting. They're moving because they don't want to be kicked off Amazon.

So your agent, your publisher, your, you know, you name it, your, you know, anybody who works for you, your lawyer, right?

They are they are getting really nervous and they don't want to lose access to Gmail and they don't want to lose all their family photos on Facebook. I mean, I've talked to I've interviewed people who've been canceled where they lost. You know, Facebook shut them off because they did something controversial and not even, you know, in some cases it was an accident and whatnot. And Facebook shut down their account. And those were the only pictures they had of their mother, who is now passed away.

So this is what Americans are facing. OK, it's terrifying. It's absolutely as terrifying as the government arresting you, as having these companies shut you off.

So people are, however brave they seem, everyone is quietly inching to one side because they're afraid. And I think we need actual, I mean, I think we need some government pushback on a lot of these things because otherwise we're in so much trouble in this country. Well, I personally am in favor of, and we'll eventually do an episode on this, but I personally think that antitrust should be used more aggressively against some of these companies. But one of the things that I think

struggle to deal with is as as

as convenient as all these things are, we're kind of inviting this type of treatment. I mean, the irony of this situation is that if you talked about, you know, government having video and audio access to your home and the ability to listen to everything you were saying, people would rebel. And yet they're perfectly happy with having Amazon have exactly that, you know, in so many homes across the country. And again,

And that to me is really disturbing. At the beginning of last year, when the lockdowns were happening and we're speaking basically a year after they all started,

I had a conversation with a friend of mine, Camille Foster, who is one of the hosts of the fifth column. And he was concerned about the possibility of rebellion, of armed insurrection, of people getting guns and doing things to fight back against these lockdowns. And I told him at the time that my concern was the opposite, that Americans would be proven to be too docile to go along with everything that the government demanded that they do without ever questioning it.

Do you think this is a situation when it comes to all of these trans issues that the governmental approach will be viewed as unquestionable and moral just by default because it's the decision that the authorities have made when it comes to something like Title IX, when it comes to any of these other policies that this current administration or future ones are pushing?

That's right. The home of the brave is turning into sheep. We're just becoming a bunch of sheep. I mean, I can't believe it. I mean, look, I keep talking. I keep talking for one reason. So they notice when I'm gone.

I mean, if they take me off, at least people will notice because I'm always talking. I'm always writing. And I don't know what else to do. But that's sort of my been my strategy. I am the Michael Scott paper company. I just keep going. And I don't know, you know, what else do I do? I don't have, you know, some major operation. I'm just me. And I just think that like, you know, Jody Shaw's doing the same thing at Smith. Like, you know, you just have to keep going because they are shutting out the lights around us.

And it's going to get very scary. I cannot believe the things that Americans have gone along with thus far. You know, from, you know, even the mask mandates on children. We have become so evidence proof children, even when they were showing that children were not spreading this thing. I mean, we don't care about evidence. We don't ask questions. We just take orders. What happened to us? Yeah.

What is the right way to motivate people who share your views, but don't have a platform necessarily to speak out on this, particularly given that you

you know, again, that this is, it is a majority position. It is not something that is a minority position, but it also carries heavy penalties for expression for individuals, you know, within their workplace, within their communities and the like. What is the best way to motivate American citizens to stand up and raise these issues within their school context, within the context of local debates and within their neighborhood and communities and the like?

I think a few things, some organizations that are forming are wonderful. I was invited to the advisory board affair, which I think, you know, is a good organization that stands up against, you know, things like the, you know, so-called anti-racism, the new neo-racism. But you just got to keep talking because the more you talk and the more reasonable you sound, the more people are less afraid to say, I agree with her.

And you just have to, wherever you are in your workplace, start talking while you still can.

Because they're shutting people off of all kinds of social media for the dumbest and, you know, so-called infractions. I mean, I've been doxxed. Let me tell you, like, they don't care. They do not care. You report, you report the doxxing and they say, oh, that doesn't violate our terms of service, which is a lie. These are these these big tech companies are completely unaccountable. There is nothing the individual can do.

I mean, I have never felt like we had less liberty to speak up in America. So we just have to keep going. And I want to I just want to check that thing that you're just talking about there.

They play total Calvin ball with their rules. You know, it's really it's whatever they want on whatever day that they want it. And they'll find a way to say that you violated the rules. They won't explain it or they'll go in the opposite direction and they'll say, oh, this doesn't this clear violation of our rules doesn't violate it because of the target in question. And I honestly think, look, as a as a libertarian, this frustrates me because I

my it's what it's really revealed is that I, I always assumed that the profit motive would be the primary motive of these corporations. And if it was, I'd be totally okay with it. Greed is good. Like, like pursue the, the, you know, the mass approach of, of trying to have every customer. But now we've reached a point where it's like,

Republicans buy sneakers too, but should they? It's like a whole attitude, a changed attitude towards the consumer that seems to me very dangerous and un-American. I don't know how we get out of that though. I don't know how it changes. I don't know how we do either, but I do say that I... I'll tell you what I'm most disturbed by. When individuals feel like, oh, well...

I mean, it's OK to silence her. I don't like her views. And you're seeing a lot of that. And what they don't understand is, listen, the more provocative people out there. I mean, there's so many people I think, oh, did she really have to go that far? I mean, I think that all the time, especially about the more provocative people. But at least I'm at least aware that they that even the provocateurs are fighting to keep the Overton window open.

And all the other forces are narrowing and narrowing it. So you have to embrace people who are saying things even you don't like. I mean, that used to be the American way.

And I think we just have to make a big deal about that, about embracing people, even who say things we don't like, even when we don't, you know, we can't stand them personally. It's so important. And not enough people are speaking up. And I think especially liberals should speak up on this. I really do. It really feels like we lost people.

We lost the bipartisan nature of the appreciation for free speech. And it seemed to happen so rapidly that it really amazed me. It became this type of monopartisan thing. And

I think that it's really disturbing and it also tends to lend itself to the narcissistic element of our moment where, you know, people, everything is about your own truth and your own self-actualization as opposed to, you know, objective truth and what the, what the actual facts are and, and having some humility about your place within the human experience and,

That, to me, is just such a it's a difficult development because it can't be solved with a piece of legislation. It can't be changed by politicians. What needs to change about our culture to move away from this, given that so many of the elements of it of our moment, particularly social media, seem to be fueling it? I think we need to let go of some of the shame.

I think what happens is it's like, you know, people were making this, you know, under Trump, they were saying, you know, instead of critical race theory, we should have, you know, and I think Trump even said something about this or put out an executive order about this. We should have pro-American teaching in schools.

And everyone rushed to say, oh, that's just indoctrination in the reverse. Well, I'm sorry. Are we supposed to view American America like a foreigner would? Do you view your wife or husband like a foreigner would? That's my country. I want to be a little prejudiced in its favor. Right. Why wouldn't I want my kids to be taught the best of America? Right.

and put a precedence on that. I don't mean some sort of indoctrination camp where they're forced to recite things over and over, but why wouldn't we put our best foot forward when we're introducing our country and its history, which is wonderful to our children? Do you think I teach my kids about religion that way? I just say, well, this is what some people think, but good luck if you agree. And we're supposed to put this all forward in a neutral way?

And we were so shamed out of that. Patriotic education is a great idea, but we were so shamed out of that by the intelligentsia. Oh, that's just indoctrination in the reverse. Well, why? Let's have a conversation. Is that so bad? Is it so bad to be partial to our country? They've forgotten the face of their fathers. They've forgotten Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the floor of the UN saying, am I ashamed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? No, find me its equal.

And that's something that you used to have in terms of a principle on the left. You know, this idea that like, you know, yes, we can argue about the nature of domestic policy or what we want tax rates to be or the level of entitlements and what they ought to look like. But we are still going to wear the flag pen. We still believe in the country. And I think, unfortunately, we've reached a point now where the forces on the left advocating for critical race theory and the like

that basically view the United States as being this irredeemable racist form of experience, they've really won the argument among the intelligentsia. And while even the vast majority, I think, of Democrats would not agree with them, they're the ones who control the narrative of the moment. How can we push back against that in a way that is responsible, but also kind of

people permission to come along gently, to move away from it organically. Because I think that this is so, the conversation around this is so toxic that it's,

it really does render kind of a denialism on one side of saying, you know, like the United States is perfect and it's never done anything wrong. And it's been redeemed by the civil war and, and, and the, and the civil rights act or something like that versus a perspective that says, no, this is just a story of darkness and woe and subjugation and genocide.

Well, I actually think with people, it sometimes comes down to the practical of I can't stand, I can't have my colleagues hate me. I can't have, I can't lose my job. I can't lose face on Facebook. Those are all my friends. So I think sometimes it's good to show them what the worst is and how it's not so bad. I mean, you know, you know, I had to make this, I've had this conversation so many times with my husband because we had to decide at different times, well, what are we going to do? Like,

Like, what if my kids can't get into any colleges, you know, any of the fancy colleges that we went to? What's, is that so terrible? What do I do? And the, and I think the ultimate answer is I care about what they know, but the, what these colleges have come to represent is so evil. I mean, I have heard horror stories from parents about the stuff going on in the Ivy league to completely scramble kids' brains. And they are not the same kids who emerge. And,

And do I want that? I mean, do I want a broken child? Do you know how many parents have said to me, I wish I could take the money back. I can't believe I ever cared about getting my kid into this institution. My wife went to Columbia and I've told her I have, I am totally opposed to our daughter going to any of the Ivies and, and every, I feel bad because I feel like there's like bad news about Columbia that comes out every couple of weeks. You know, they're having this graduation now that's like split by race and income level and,

It's insane. Yeah. And so, but yes, you're completely right. Again, though, these are the institutions that are supposed to be the highest thing, the goal that people, you know, to have the pride of sending your kid to Harvard or Yale or Princeton or something like that. You know, that's something that people used to aspire to. And now it does seem like the people that are going through that process, they're coming out with their brains completely scrambled. Is this just a consequence of

people who believe in the country not investing enough weight into the importance of these institutions?

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that, but I think that's right. I think conservatives and, you know, maybe libertarians, too, although I don't know as many libertarians, but I think conservatives and libertarians are. But I think they they they kind of really actually don't want to get involved in other people's lives. So they've kind of said, well, that's your your.

Your institution, your, you know, your issue, this whole trans thing is not my business. I'm just going to stay out of it. And unfortunately, that means the people who have been on the vanguard of pushing back, sometimes they have no idea what they're talking about.

Like you actually have to know something to get involved in what's harming children, what isn't, you know, what's actually going on here. And you have to be kind of open-minded to it. And you can't just be, you know, there with your bugle and your streamers, you know, crusading against it or whatever. And it's just not effective. And I've seen that a lot on the right, a lot of like triumphalism, but it doesn't go anywhere. How...

you know, you have to sort of engage. You got to get your hands dirty. And I think I think that's what you're saying about the institutions like you. You have to go. You have to walk in the door and find out what's going on in order to fix things. You talked about speaking with your husband about this.

What has the personal aspect of this past year plus been for you in terms of your family life, in terms of your personal life? Have you lost friends over this? Do you have...

kind of a strong support group around you that, that has sustained you through this? You know, of course, yes. I mean, sort of yes to all the above. I, I, um, it's, it's sort of been a complicated year, but I don't think I could have done anything differently. I mean, the, the thing that I worry about most, my kids are in religious school, so they, they aren't so affected by

by it. And it's, you know, fairly conservative environment. So we wanted a traditional environment for them. We wanted a place where the kids still said the Pledge of Allegiance and that sort of thing. And so they're in this, you know, religious school. And so they've been a little insulated from some of the craziest parts of life today. And, and

the torrent of criticism they would otherwise get. But obviously, like, you know, like anybody in my position, I'm not acknowledged by my high school, you know, like that kind of thing. Like you don't, you know, but, you know, I said to my husband really early on, like, this country is going down the tubes. What do we do? Like, are we and and we talked about it and he said, I think we stay and fight.

And I think I've kind of carried that with me. Like I thought when there was all these, you know, attacks on Jews in New York, I was traveling, this was before COVID, I was traveling to, my boys wear yarmulkes and I was traveling to DC and I said to my husband for the first time, should I take them off? And he said, this is America, we don't hide in America. And he said,

And he really was insistent and, you know, he would never put our kids in danger, but he really felt like if you give into them, it's going to get worse. This isn't Europe. It's America. And I, I think, you know, for us, I think that's just been the answer. That type of bravery has to come from somewhere where, what do you, what do you seek out? What do you read? What do you listen to that helps bolster you? Oh, wow. Um,

Gosh, I don't know. I don't, you know, there's certain things, you know, historically that really resonate. I mean, you know, I have a picture of Golda Meir up in my office. You know, I sort of, I've always admired people who fought with everything they had. But I also just...

I'm just not someone who's insincere. And I remember I was there in law school where we cared about free speech. I still remember that. I still remember when we were all taught that what someone's skin color was wasn't important. I remember that, you know, and now I'm supposed to forget it all. I remember, you know, learning about Women's History Month. And now I'm supposed to be told that, you know, men are women and I'm supposed to go along with that. It just I just can't lie.

And for whatever that's worth, I can't do it. So, you know, that certainly has caused me problems in life. But I guess in journalism, it turns out to be something of an asset.

You might fight and you might lose, but first you're going to fight. I think so. I mean, my mom has always been a fighter. She just always has in every aspect of life. She was a fighter and she was a trial attorney for many, many years. And I've just seen her fight and I've seen opposing counsel mess with her and she just fights on. So I think I think I've always had that in the back of my head is the picture of what you do.

Abigail Schreier, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Oh, thank you. Take care. So I hope that you learned a lot from that discussion. I certainly did. And I appreciate Abigail for being so forthright in her answers. I wanted to take an opportunity to recommend a piece that I read this past week that's on a totally unrelated prospect. It's called How the West Lost COVID. And it's in New York Magazine. It's by David Wallace Wells. It

It has a number of different aspects that I would question about it, but I do think that there's a certain passage in it that ought to be on the minds of a lot of different people. This was something that I had witnessed actually, but forgotten about that he recounts in the course of this article. On February 11th, a month before Ryan's press conference, Anthony Fauci, Nancy Messonnier and Ron Klain, that's now chief of staff, Ron Klain at the White House,

had taken the stage at an Aspen Institute panel on the novel coronavirus led by the superstar infectious disease journalist Helen Branswell. Several times, Fauci repeated that he believed the virus was low risk, later clarifying that it was important to communicate to the public that it was low risk in part to protect his own credibility and the credibility of the public health establishment. To this day, I do not understand why, Branswell recently wrote.

A few days after the panel, Fauci described the risk of the coronavirus to Americans as minuscule. This was a time when the U.S. public health infrastructure, assuming or even pretending to assume a war footing, might have made a meaningful difference. But at every opportunity, Fauci was counseling the opposite, calm in the face of the storm.

On February 15th, he told an interviewer that the flu was a bigger threat to Americans. For another month, he was still advising against masks. It wasn't just Fauci, whom the upstart leftist magazine The Drift recently mocked as Dr. Doolittle and what likely won't be the last reconsideration of the sainted physician.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a cable news hero in the spring, has already come in for reconsideration and his self-aggrandizing pandemic memoir is unintentionally revealing. Most of all, he said, I was concerned about public panic, Cuomo writes, reflecting on the need to socialize the notion of a shutdown, ideally slowly rather than simply imposing it. Panic is the real enemy, he adds.

The coronavirus may not prove Cuomo's ultimate political undoing, but his formulation may nevertheless provide the most fitting epitaph for the entire Western response, that disruption was scarier and less tolerable than disease. By American standards, Cuomo did move quickly, putting his state in lockdown just 20 days after the first confirmed case, three times faster than Washington State or California. But he waited for cases to arrive on his doorstep to act, and even then, his first instinct was to reassure rather than disrupt.

And that he was far from an outlier through the winter. The guidance from America's public health establishment was clear beam to the public through columns and op eds like those in the New York Times warning. Beware the pandemic panic. And in the Washington Post arguing we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus.

Other headlines from the time, we should deescalate the war on the coronavirus from Wired. Coronavirus is scary, but the flu is deadlier, more widespread from USA Today. The flu is a far bigger threat to most people in the US than the Wuhan coronavirus from Business Insider. Before flu comparisons became a talking point of the pandemic denier right, they were the reassuring focus of the establishmentarian left. Perhaps this short-sighted

And self-interested president would never have moved more quickly or more emphatically in response to a different kind of warning. But governors might have and mayors and the public at large.

It's important, I think, to reconsider the different ways that the media botched the early coverage of this coronavirus story. And as much as they and Dr. Fauci would like to sweep their early comments and opinions under the rug, the fact is that they had a immediate ramification on the way that politicians dealt with this crisis. That's something that we ought to consider, we ought to remember, and that we ought to

think about the next time that a story along these lines is being dismissed by the media as merely a sign of anti-Asian American or some kind of racist fomenting. In fact, had we been more alert...

Had we been more responsible, I think that we would have responded quicker and Americans would have done so organically themselves as opposed to having to deal with it through the course of our political system, which, as we must remember, is run by idiots.

I'm Ben Domenech. You've been listening to another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast. Thank you for listening to it. I hope that you will subscribe via the Fox News Podcast Network, via iTunes, wherever you download your podcasts. And we will be back next week with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.

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