“I believe this is a free country, and I think that people who have deep and profound dysphoric experiences of their own body should be free to identify as the opposite sex as adults. But I also think that know a lot of the interventions offered to trans identifying teenagers are going to be remembered as dangerous pseudoscience that did damage. If I say — if that’s my position and it is my position, do you feel like that position can coexist with basic American liberties for transgender Americans, or do you need to win? Like, do you need to have my position ruled out of bounds to feel like you’ve made America safe for trans- identifying youth. Well, I certainly don’t think your position should be ruled out of bounds. I don’t want you to not have the position that you have. That’s core to what you see and experience in the world. Well, no, but you’d like you’d like to talk me out of it, at least. Of course I would. But I also don’t think it’s — I mean, I guess, what does it mean to be out of bounds? I would like to persuade you. I think that and — I’m here. I’m an adult — my job is to talk to people who disagree with me. So I don’t feel profoundly threatened by it. I think it’s a matter of scale, too, because when you have hundreds of millions of dollars going into telling a story to the American people that 1 percent of the population is a threat, that does have an impact. That does make people feel unwelcome in the American promise. To feel like that every time there’s an election, the entirety of political ad spending will be spent on saying that we are a threat, that we need to not be part of the fabric of society. That is how it’s interpreted for a lot of people. And I understand that because we don’t have the capital to respond in any meaningful way to that type of ad spending. So I think part of what I experienced that people say is upsetting and dangerous at times, and alienating to young people is the magnitude. And I think a lot of us wish we could just be ignored, and that the amount of resources that have gone in to putting a spotlight on us is something that I think is greatly disproportionate and very harmful. And so that’s one thing. And then as to what are you saying, what you ask about your position and it being out of bounds, I do think that banning health care for minors, when it’s recommended by their doctors and consented to by their parents, and preventing us from getting more scientific information about it, I think that violates the Constitution. And I do think it’s harmful.
