Some Video Podcasts

Michael Biggs and Joseph Burgo on Video at YouTube -- Watch and Subscribe To My Channel There

Michael Biggs

No, it's fine. In Britain we’re fortunate that most of the pushback against transgenderism has come originally from left wing feminists, so older feminists from the second wave . There's no evangelical right. The cultural war is a very different phenomena than it is in America. That's partly why I resent that American students take my seminar and tell me I have to explain myself and so on. It annoys me that because of American imperialism, you don't understand that here, I'm on the side not of right-wing evangelical Christians, but left-wing lesbian feminists. But they bring their belief that everywhere is just America, and so they come to Britain, and they see me as sort of a Trumpite, a Trump supporter.

Wesley Yang

So they've done takeovers of your seminars?

Michael Biggs

There had been various kinds of exposés of my views run in the student newspaper. The biggest flashpoint was allegations a Twitter account that was viewed as transphobic that was linked to me. I was accused of running this account, and then the students in the same course a couple of years later said, “You have to explain yourself. What are your views? We need to know.”

Wesley Yang

Were you were running the Twitter account?

Michael Biggs 25:43

There was no official complaint. I said to them, “If you have evidence this was me, and if you think this account was transphobic, you should make a formal complaint.” And no one made a formal complaint. But I think what was interesting there is that there was a lot of vociferous speech from students about transphobia, and so on. Basically, a struggle session for two hours.

But then after the session, several students came to me and emailed me privately, saying either they supported me on the substance, or they said, “I don't know what's going on here, but you've got a right to whatever you think.” One of those either substantive or procedural agreements with me, but they would not do it in public. So there was an interesting asymmetry there.

The campaign against me was very much public. There was a petition circulated in the student rooms. A student would go from student to student and say, “Will, you sign this? Would you support trans people? Will you sign this petition to discipline [him] or sanction [him]?” So of course, it was hard for students not to. How do you not just sign that? Somebody was going to set up a petition to support me and was told, “Don't do that. It could be very bad for you to do that.”

Public opposition, but private support is an interesting asymmetry there.

Wesley Yang

Preference falsification. But you knew that your private support was robust.

Michael Biggs

It was probably about a 50/50, but the 50% who supported me, or at least didn't oppose me, were hidden. I kept telling people in my department, “Here's another email supporting me,” because otherwise they would not have known that.

Wesley Yang

Did your department and the administration contemplate investigating?

Michael Biggs

There was one meeting, but there wasn't really much of a case. I think the head of the department was very good and realized that this is not something they really wanted to engage in. As I said, there was no formal complaint. I think, robustly, we’re a department which is not particularly woke. We actually do quantitative positivistic empirical research. We don't do the kind of social justice-y research sociology is often associated with. From his point of view, there's a discussion, there's a debate. People have different views. That's part of living. Normal scientific discussion and deep political discussion.

Wesley Yang

Do you believe that your daughter fits the profile of the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, cohort? Female, no prior history of gender nonconformity, a variety of psychological comorbidities.

Joseph Burgo

I would not say that there was no evidence of gender nonconformity. She was a tomboy, and I had always assumed she was going to be a lesbian, which would have been fine. I don't have a problem with that. She struggled to find a place for herself and always felt like a bit of an outsider. She had a hard time making friends. I think she got radicalized by Tumblr. That's where she found trans. It gave her everything she’d always been looking for.

Wesley Yang

So there had been no real presaging. She just made a declaration that “I'm actually a guy”?

Joseph Burgo

She was doing tech theater at her high school, and when we went to a performance, we saw that she had her boy's name listed in the program.

Wesley Yang

You had no idea. And you said, “What's this name?”

Joseph Burgo

She gradually came out and said, “I'm trans,” and I handled it really badly.

Wesley Yang

What did you know about trans at that moment

Joseph Burgo

What I did know, and one of the reasons I had very strong feelings about this, is one of my first and longest cases was with a trans-identified young woman who I started seeing when she was 17. I worked with her for many years and really got an in depth understanding of what had happened with her feelings about her femininity. She had loaded all of her shame into her feminine body, particularly into her vagina, and wanted opt out of it, to escape from shame. I knew a fair bit about what might drive the desire to transition. I could see a lot of very similar issues in my daughter. She was struggling with some shame, some sense of being a misfit, an outsider, and she was looking to opt out of it. So I, told her, “You can't do that. There's no such thing as being born in the wrong body. There’s a biological reality. This isn’t true.” I did it pretty bluntly and insensitively.

Wesley Yang

When you say you handled it badly, you just instinctively said what you thought was true, which was maybe not the appropriate therapeutic response. As a therapist you know the appropriate response, but I guess with one's children, it's different.

Joseph Burgo

It all goes out the window.

Wesley Yang

What happens then?

Joseph Burgo

She had a violent reaction to taking testosterone. Female bodies are not equipped for these levels of testosterone. She really went off on her mother, went off on me, and over the next couple of years, cut us all off one by one until she had completely alienated herself from her family. She had an education trust that my father in-law had set up for all of the grandchildren, that she was able to access and use any way she wanted when she turned 21. She used it for top surgery and to live on for a couple of months. She had very bad mental health, and she ended up in crisis. She has had a rapprochement with her mom, because she really needs help.

Wesley Yang

At no point did you ever contemplate the idea that maybe she's really a boy.

Joseph Burgo

No, no one is born in the wrong body. How does that make sense? Why would biology do that? Why would evolution make people that way? It makes absolutely no sense.