Vaush Vs Dr. Tomas Bogardus | Are Trans-Women Women? | Debate Podcast

[Music] explosions to the rain going out in [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] dancing in the street there's nothing left to eat we're on our winning streak [Music] hey everybody tonight we're debating whether or not trans women are women and we're starting right now with vasha's opening statement thanks so much for being with us bosh the floor is all yours hello uh i'm vosh okay so there are two basic arguments here first of all the idea of sex and gender being distinct uh uh categories they obviously are i don't think anybody just believes this there are obviously things that we refer to which are in the purview of the experience of being a man and a woman which are not defined biologically whether it be light blue and pink being distinguished gendered colors the clothing that we wear the way we style our hair these are things which are not derivative of our biology they are derivative of social standards which change you can look at other parts of the world in which they're different you can look at different points in time within our own country and they are different there's no getting around that it's not like biology is changing rapidly year to year as the fashions do if if people don't like you know the idea of gender and sex being separate that we can simply say that when i refer to gender i'm referring to some other separate category that is not sex but describes social differences um that tend to be associated with sexual ones and once you have that you know nailed down the following argument is one of utility uh we construct definitions we do it to serve our own purposes as humans the only reason definitions exist is because they serve us we are their masters and if i believe as is the case by the way of many medical and psychiatric institutions if we believe that the uh definition of woman uh being one tied entirely to sexual differentiation is arbitrary inconsistent and harmful um and that there is a better a more utility serving definition one to use say by self-identification then that is the one that i will use i have no interest whatsoever in abiding by some harmful arbitrary standard out of a need to stick to tradition when there's a perfectly serviceable and better one that makes people more happy and hurts nobody lying right there and that is why i say prescriptively that trans women are women and descriptively they have been treated as women uh historically in our society uh in varying extents throughout history depending on the culture and time period it's a complicated business but we can get there you gotta thank you very much for that opening bosch and if it's your first time here at modern day debate want to let you know folks we're a neutral platform hosting debates panels and discussions on virtually every topic want to let you know we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from and i'm going to kick it over to dr book artist for his opening as well want to remind you the speaker's views are their own so the speakers are not speaking on behalf of any institution that they are affiliated with or have been affiliated with and dr thomas bogardus is an associate professor of philosophy he earned his phd from the university of texas and works in the areas of epistemology philosophy of mind and philosophy of gender you can find his publications on his website by googling googling his name and both guests are linked in the description right now with that dr dr bulgars thanks for being with us the floor is all yours for opening as well all right can i share my screen okay um so everybody can see that yeah yep okay um so if you're unable to see this for some reason you should know that the slides are available at tinyurl.com modern day debate june the month of june and there's no spaces or capitals in there okay i'm just going to start my timer right now so um the topic of our conversation today is um this sentence trans women are women whether trans women or women and what i want to try to do is explain why this is such a persistent philosophical question i started thinking about this about six or seven years ago and so i'm going to share some of the things i've learned in that time and try to convey to you the the landscape of the debate as i see it um in a way that i hope will be useful and interesting no matter what your views are on this topic and to try to explain why it's a persistent philosophical question um specifically what i'm going to do is try to show how on six common interpretations of this sentence trans women are women including five that vosh has explored and endorsed the sentence turns out not to be true so um just a quick i think obvious clarification i think it's pretty obvious to everyone that when people say trans women are women what they mean is all trans women are women not just some so i think that's the question under under consideration whether all trans women are women now to see whether that's true or false to evaluate whether that's true or false i think we would have to get clear on what it means to be a woman we'd have to think about the meaning of that word woman in order to see whether it's true that all trans women are women and so now i'm going to consider those views i promised a second ago the first view is what we might call a biological view according to which women are adult human females now i think this is the sort of traditional historical ordinary sense of the word this is what the word ordinarily means there are a few reasons to think that we can talk about these in the discussion period if you'd like first of all there's words for other species that we use for the adult males and the adult females of those species and it would be pretty surprising if we didn't have similar words for the adult males and adult females of our species this is the definition that virtually all dictionaries give of course dictionaries aren't infallible they make mistakes but the fact that this is what dictionaries say is some evidence that this is the way the word is ordinarily used um but most importantly i think the strongest bit of evidence is that um as far as i can tell virtually all trans-inclusive philosophers agree that this is the ordinary use of the word that doesn't mean they recommend it but they acknowledge and concede that this is what people ordinarily mean i'm not sure whether vash agrees he said some things that sound like he might disagree um just a few days ago he said um there's so much arbitrarity with how these terms get posed i don't think that a biologically prescriptivist attitude towards gender is the historically correct one so possibly bosh disagrees with this but as i said a lot of trans-inclusive philosophers agree that this is the way the word is used in dominant mainstream contexts so here are some quotations i'll let you read those on your own but robin dembrov marie mikola sally haslinger jennifer sull these are all philosophers working very much from a trans-inclusive direction simone de beauvoir seems to use the word in this ordinary biological way as well again that's not to me they recommend this definition a lot of these philosophers think that this is a problem and we need to change it because when you think about the question whether all trans women are women if being a woman requires being biologically female then these philosophers think it's going to turn out that not all trans women are women in fact none are and they consider that to be a problem here's a quotation from catherine jenkins saying as much saying that if you fail to respect the gender identifications of trans people that's a serious harm and i think vosh would agree that that is a problem um back in 2021 he said if someone makes an argument that a person isn't a woman when they claim to be a woman i would say that's transphobic and then here's another quotation saying something similar i'll let you read okay so as i say a lot of philosophers wish to move away from this view of what it means to be a woman and one alternative that they've explored is what we might call a social role view according to which uh to be a woman is to be someone who functions or behaves or is treated a certain way socially um now sometimes vosh seems to endorse this sort of view um here's an example from back in march so he says i am a gender abolitionist so i don't want these designations at all but as long as they exist these designations men and women we're talking about social roles um and again just a few days ago so he says given how arbitrary these definitions are i think one where we acknowledge that man and woman as we refer to it generally is a social trend something which refers to social roles and attitudes not biology that's probably the one that hurts the fewest fewest people okay so that's the social role view and now the question before us is does this sentence come out as true or false on the social worldview will it be true that all trans women are women well to figure that out we'd have to know exactly what social role we're talking about what is the social role that is taken to be definitive of womanhood and turns out it's pretty hard to say what social role we're talking about exactly given as vosh said in his opening statement all the variation across time and culture it's hard to say what social role is had in common by all and only women throughout time and place but even if you found one and said there that's the social role that's definitive of being a woman there's a problem because there's no guarantee that all trans women will play that role wolf will occupy that position in society catherine jenkins again a trans-inclusive philosopher criticizes the social worldview on those grounds saying there could there may well be and there easily could be and there may in fact be trans individuals who do not present as women and so are not treated as women don't play this role don't occupy this position in society or there could be um trans individuals who do present as women but aren't read as women or aren't taken seriously or aren't treated as women in which case they won't occupy the right position in society in order to count as a woman on this social role view so my sense of the state of play and the current philosophical debate is um philosophers have moved away from the social role view because um it turns out false that all trans women are women on this view um and at least in the popular culture and even in the philosophical literature the view that's sort of rising to prominence is a self-id view i think that's um coming to be the most popular view as i said at least at the popular level so on this view um we're told to be a woman is to be someone who identifies as a woman and i won't be the first to notice that oh well here's a quotation from bosh endorsing that by the way okay but i won't be the first to notice that it looks like there's a threat of circularity here we were asked what or we asked what a woman is and the definition used the word woman when defining the term but it may be that there's no actual circularity here if the word woman in the definition means something else than um the meaning we're supposed to get from this definition so let me give you one example here's something vosh said he said if you want you can say a woman is a person who would like to internally and externally adhere to the social roles and expectations associated with a woman or at the very least the social archetype so again threat of circularity because we're using the word women there but suppose we meant woman in the ordinary sense adult human females just suppose that's what was meant um so it's not the very same sense to be defined it's another sense well the problem is that many women won't want that many women don't wish to adhere to the social roles and expectations associated with being an adult human female as catherine jenkins has pointed out a lot of women flout traditional gender norms by catherine jenkins says for example not shaving legs elizabeth barnes another trans-inclusive philosopher points out that there might be some women with cognitive disabilities such that they lack the ability to have this desire to conceptualize this desire to want to adhere to these social roles and um more relevant for our purposes it could easily turn out that some trans women might not like to adhere to these social roles or these expectations um for example some trans women who say they don't owe you femininity um so the first point was just if this definition is not circular then whatever the word woman means in the definition it's going to turn out that not all trans women are women what if it is circular what if we're told no to be a woman is to identify as a woman in the very same sense to be defined so vash is not so sure that there's a problem here back in may he said my definition of gender which is just a woman as someone who identifies as one people complain about it being circular but i don't think that matters so i think it does matter for at least two reasons i'll try to explain one is that a circular definition can't convey any meaning it can't actually tell you what the word means but secondly even if the word has a meaning it didn't get it from this definition but suppose it has a meaning the statement that to be a woman is to identify as a woman has to be false it's necessarily false so i'll explain these two in turn so one problem is that circular definitions can't convey meaning here's one way to see that or being told is that someone is a woman if and only if she identifies as a woman but now suppose we ask well what does it mean what does woman mean there in the definition what are you identifying as when you identify as a woman on this alternative we're being told the very same sense to be defined so what you're identifying as is someone who identifies as a woman that's what you're identifying as because that's what a woman is but notice woman shows up again in the definition and so suppose we do another round of recursion and now the definition says to be a woman is to be someone who identifies as someone who identifies as someone who identifies as and you see that this will just keep going will never eliminate the circularity it goes on forever we've got this infinite descent and there's this irredeemable void there in the definition which means that the definition never expresses any proposition it never actually tells you what the word means it just keeps promising you a meaning if you just do one more recursion but you never get there so that's one way to see why circular definitions are deficient here's another way it's sort of a little sillier but suppose i tell you that you know people collect baseball cards and pogs i don't really know what a pog is um i collect blargs and suppose you wonder what a blarg is and i define it for you in a circular way i say look a blarg is just anything that has this really cool feature it's a blarg so clearly that's a circular definition now if you really think that there's no problem with circular definitions then you should be able to find me a blarg especially if i give you a hint that there's one in the room with you now and i offer you 50 if you could just find that blog and bring it to me so if there's nothing wrong with circular definitions you should be able to find a blark you should be in a position to know what a blog is but obviously you're not in that position you can't find this blog because the definition was circular so that's another way to see why circular definitions are deficient okay but suppose that somehow the word woman got meaning independently maybe by pointing or ostension that's a way that we define words commonly i think still even if the word does have a meaning the claim that to be a woman is to identify as a woman someone's a woman if and only if she identifies as a woman that has to be false and here's why um on this view on this proposal if that phrase being a woman refers to anything then we're told it refers to a very interesting characteristic a very interesting feature it's a feature that someone has if and only if she identifies as having it there's this tight connection between having the feature being a woman and identifying as having the future identifying as a woman but if you think about it i think you'll realize that there simply is no feature like that there's no characteristic that you could have if and only if you identify as having it there's no way you could be if and only if you identify as being that way just think about ordinary features like um being funny or being tall or being rich or something like that it's one thing to be rich it's something else to identify as being rich you could be rich without identifying as being rich you could identify as being rich without actually being rich and so on and this just holds generally for every feature any property you choose any feature you choose and so what that means what one and two entail here is on this view the phrase being a woman doesn't refer to anything because there's no feature that answers to this definition there's no such thing and so um a kind of surprising result is on this view it looks like there are no women and there are no trans women therefore and for our purposes what follows is um it's false that all trans women are women or at least it's not true um in fact it looks like men are because there are no women at all okay um here's a couple other views i think those are sort of the big three but here are some other views that have been discussed by vosh one is gender abolition on this view ideally there are no genders so ideally women don't exist here's vosh expressing that sort of view i think gender is a destructive concept he says so eventually i want it gone sally haslinger trans-inclusive philosopher at mit says something similar she adopted a social role view she thought to be a womanist to be oppressed so she says a main um part of the project of feminism is to eliminate women which sounds kind of surprising um but that was her view so um i think we can at least agree that on this view if you ask um how things should be ideally um they would say ideally uh there are no women at all and they would say ideally there are no trans women so that's a kind of surprising implication of that view here's another one which i think vosh might want to defend today he says um in his opening statements that he says prescriptively trans women are women so that's another view that i've heard expressed in his videos um on this view when you say trans women or women um what you're actually doing is giving a kind of command or prescription you're saying you should speak and act as though trans women or women is literally true you should speak and act as though trans women or women is literally true and if you ask why is vosh said in his opening statement it's justified by utility by good consequences by benefits um so here's a statement of vash sort of expressing that so he says what people mean when they say they're women is woman is a social category i'd like to be a part of i want to think of myself as as part of it and be thought of as part of it tally may betray a trans philosopher says something similar in trans-inclusive and queer communities gender presentation indicates how you want to be treated so if you think that we should treat people how they want to be treated then when you say trans women or women what you might be communicating is we should treat people how they want to be treated we should treat trans women how they want to be treated okay and again it's justified by utility so i'll just point out with respect to the prescriptive claim whether this is something we should do something that doesn't seem to enter into everybody's moral calculations is whether or not what we're saying is true and 60 seconds left 60 seconds left okay and given what i've said so far it looks like this statement trans women are women is uh literally not true and so we can at least agree on that if we asked this prescriptivist view strictly speaking literally are all trans women women i think given what we've said the view has to agree with has to say no okay let's see if i can fit this in i ran out of space on my slide but sometimes vosh seems to be a nihilist or an anti-realist about gender sometimes he says gender concepts are arbitrary social designations and in reality there are no men no women etc here's a quotation from bosch back in 2019 saying all categories are socially constructed they don't exist in nature we built them so if you hold that view and then you ask well really literally are all trans women women i think the view has to say no in reality no okay so i tried to show that the statement trans women are women is not true on every view we've looked at including five from bosch thank you for your attention thank you very much for that opening and with that we're going to jump into open conversation want to say folks thrilled to let you know we have a lot of upcoming debates you don't want to miss them so for example just confirm today at the bottom right of your screen whether or not it is okay for kids to go to drag queen shows with you betcha vosh and alex stein next tuesday you don't want to miss it hit that subscribe button so you don't miss it and with that we're going to jump into open conversation thanks so much gentlemen the floor is all yours all right i'm sure that you won't mind after that if i take a moment to respond to your premises as i have plenty to say as we as we it seems we both do so the issue i have here is that every um i feel as though you've misrepresented some of my views and definitions here and what's more all of these views are incoherent the the construct i often find is that people treat the biological view as though because it's the traditionally accepted one it's the coherent one but in reality it's nothing but there's a reason why nature the arguably one of the most respected scientific journals in the history of the species has been putting out article after op-ed about how um the idea that sex and gender are the same or that gender should be considered an extension of a biological category is a historical a scientific and just false and the reason for that is because what you obfuscate when you refer to the biological sex version of gender is the literal millennia of arguments and inconsistencies over what exactly it means to draw that line of course for most of humans history we have no idea what chromosomes or even hormone washes are so only recently has a full understanding of the actual things that differentiate biological males and females even known to us but even leaving that aside long-standing have been the practices of intersex people having their genitals mutilated by doctors who want to get them cleanly fit in one category another biologically male or biologically female often to the psychological detriment of those people because those doctors are trying to force people into a binary construct that just doesn't work and the existence of intersex people at all simply destroys the concept of a sex-based gender because a binary is just that a binary you can't have a system that you claim is coherent when it's like well 99 of people fit to it well 99 of people leaves out millions and what are those millions then aberrant counter examples no the system never functioned and it never made that much sense and it never survived scrutiny by the way it's not as though medieval french peasants were undergoing significant sociological analysis of the concept of the social construction of sex they didn't have sociology back then it's a fairly modern construction when it comes to what we talk about like with the prescription of gender and all statements of definition are prescriptive by the way because we do create these definitions we didn't unearth them in stone tablets written by god you know we had to make efforts to understand them um what we're really doing is trying to find what serves us best now there is meaningful utility and understanding the difference between a biological male and a biological female there are categorical differences that are worth respecting in a biological sense but that doesn't encompass the wide variety of social differences between most men and most women that are largely socially ascribed so when you have this dissonance here where so much of what it means to be a man isn't actually what it means to be biologically male in both the modern world and throughout history in many cultures there are differences between those two things we have an issue what is a consistent rigorous 100 percent of the time effective applicable mode of gender what works the answer is nothing it simply doesn't it's a stupid concept and we really shouldn't be respecting it much as a social construct at all as long as people do respect it we should go by the definitions that hurt people the least that is after all why we build our definitions to serve human utility and to that effect uh you call it the self-id view the prescriptive view i don't think is inconsistent but i stand by this what we mean when we say woman a woman is a person who chooses to adhere to a broad constructed collection of values aesthetics forms roles and perspectives that we consider to be a part of what it means to be a woman there is no consistency here and you'll never find it no more than you could find consistency in the definition of what it means to be cool you know find me a fine line on that point in the room where the cool you know the cool protons are or the cool radiation it just it's not present and you'll never find it um but still we have very strong ideas about what it means to be cool and we argue but the arguments are for a purpose because finding out who's cool what's really cool is socially useful as is whatever definition we arrive at which hurts the smallest number of people um concerning gender and that is why i believe trans women are women because all definitional statements are necessarily prescriptive and as long as we are dealing with a system that is fundamentally constructively absurd we should at least refer to it in ways that harm people um in the uh to the least possible extent okay um so you started that by saying you were going to respond to my premises but i'm struggling to see how any of this responded to any premise of any argument i gave so let's go through some of the things you said um you said all of these views are incoherent you said there's no coherent concept of gender is that is that right did i get you right there you will not find me a definition of gender that is 100 percent consistent and all-encompassing and has no flaws in it there are no such things you'll see it can't be found so there's no consistent definition of gender so no matter who i asked if i asked anybody what is a woman no matter what they say um you think there's going to be some sort of impossibility or contradiction or inconsistency you will always be able to find a whole or an exception whether they take a biological or a self id a social role or an abolitionist perspective there will always be well gender abolition is a prescription not a description of current gender states but no matter what a person's definition of a woman is there is always going to be something you can pin them on okay so then it sounds like your view entails there are no women because there's no true definition of woman no not at all there are plenty of social constructions that i think have meaning and serve utility even if there are no consistencies to it i think cool people exist but i don't think i could ever find a single definition of cool that is perfectly delineates in all cat like categories and situations between cool and uncool people okay so you said the concepts are incoherent and inconsistent but i think what you just mean is perhaps vague so allow for borderline cases or difficult to articulate i think maybe that's what you mean when you say all definitions are incoherent and inconsistent all definitions of gender anyway i think what you mean is they allow for borderline cases they'll be vague in various ways um and what was the second thing i said vague in various ways and hard to articulate difficult to articulate it'll be hard to come up with or express or verbalize a definition that includes everyone who should be included and excludes everyone who should be excluded so that's the view i guess i would agree with that yeah definitions are hard to come by typically and most of them especially in biology are vague and admit of borderline cases but nevertheless they may be true um there may be true definitions even if they're difficult to express or articulate you gave the example one of your arguments against the biological definition of uh woman was that we didn't know about chromosomes many years ago well first of all i don't think biological sex is defined in terms of chromosomes um but let's just use the example of water maybe we could agree that water is h2o um that was true even before we knew about chemistry that was the definition of water before anybody knew anything about chemistry before we knew about h2o back when aristotle thought water was just an element nevertheless it was true i'm sorry this isn't true that water has not always been h2o yeah all you have to do is cross the mexican border and over there it's aqua that's h2o not water aqua means water aqua is water so actually it's not aqua right and we're referring to terms and definitions here no i'm referring to water the stuff that fills lakes and rivers i'm not talking about the world many things filled lakes and rivers okay um do you honestly not know what i mean when i talk about water or you just eat a little bit i think you you made a mistake before you began that argument which is that you said just because people didn't always know something it doesn't mean that it can't be true but that can't be the case when we're talking about definitions things that are true have constructed premises that lead necessarily to an outcome a resolution but a definition is something applied presuppositionally you can say for example that the light the the spectrum of light that we see the visible spectrum of light is something that exists outside of our perception and that is certainly true but how we perceive it is not existentially correct and what's more the definition between red orange and yellow is not something that you can find proven um anywhere uh in the real world we have to arrive at arbitrary distinctions um so that's that's i'll just ask you guys do you do you not think water is h2o but i think we've come up with a term to describe what we refer to as water there are of course other cultures i agree with you we came up with a term to talk about water that term is water and we came up with terms to talk about hydrogen and oxygen but what's here here's a sentence water is h2o you know what those terms mean now think about what idea is expressed by the words what's the thought that's expressed we could express it in many different languages now think about the thought that's expressed by that sentence that's true isn't it the thought that is expressed by the sentences water is h2o what do you think and it was long before we got here long before humans got here water has always been h2o well ice of course is also h2o but water is defined as within a given you know ice is also water it's not liquid water yeah but colloquially people refer to ice as ice and water as water and whether or not they're going to use either of those definitions is going to come down to context and what about heavy water 2h2o or diterium oxide which is referred to as water and is in fact a type of water and isotope um but it's not in fact h2o there's an extra hydrogen atom holding on there making the substance denser so if this is taking me back to chemistry class but um did you say deuterium is that right is that heavy water yeah if that's just an isotope is it an isotope of oxygen that makes that if that's an isotope it's still oxygen and it's still h2o and that is still h2o that's still it is a different chemical compound than water certainly if people wanted to refer to it as a different type of thing not water but let's say they chose the term waterium i don't know if scientists come up with wacky names if they wanted to come up with a term like that to describe it they would have a significant taxonomical distinction to refer to a different molecular composition but we refer to it as water you might say it's trans water a bit of a difference but fundamentally very similar okay so you're resisting me on the claim that water is h2o um let me try a different one how about resisting you on definitional prescriptivism i think that we have i'm not prescribing any definitions i'm just saying water is h2o true or false and it sounds like you're reluctant to say true no i'm not i agree i agree that water and we we refer to h2o's water colloquially yeah of course i'm fine the water is h2o and it was h2o long before humans came along another example wasn't a concept back then i know but nevertheless water was there actually water's never been a concept um water's always been a molecule we have a concept of water but the concept is not itself water but our understanding of it and the differentiations that we make when we distinguish it from things like heavy water these are socially constructed after all you just said it's still fundamentally water but we're talking about a different molecular shape now that's because you've arbitrarily branched these two within a category that because there's a relationship between them but that's a social phenomenon the universe doesn't give a [ __ ] whether you refer to heavy water as water or some other you know molecule entirely it's utterly indifferent to your perception of reality but we still choose to prescribe and that i think a lot of people when it comes down to definitional games you know they start doing this well these things are these things and you know we have a lot of power over that some animals are different species but we distinguish what makes something a different species the taxonomy for what refers to species differentiation we made that up we didn't it we we invented it we didn't discover it yeah so i agree with you that species are um the distinction between species is less clear than distinctions we would find in physics and chemistry so that's why no surprise i'm focusing on physics and chemistry how do we feel about the claim that gold is atomic number 79 do you would you agree with that are you skeptical of that too i i think that's how we refer to it as sure i'll take your word but i don't have the the the the periodic table memorized yeah well um i'm benefiting from the fact that this is a bit of a commonly used philosophical example so that's really why i know that um but yeah gold that term in english refers to a certain element that has 79 protons it's atomic number 79. so gold has been around for a long time long before the word gold came on the scene gold cold gold predates the word gold so yeah this is just supposed to be an example of a definition that's true and we went down a rabbit hole a little bit what do you mean by true if if we had taken another definition if we had created another definition to say gold and the term gold referred to a collection of uh of elements so let's say gold and lead and the term gold was something people used to refer to both that definition would be as true as the one we used today for gold they would have simply made the choice to include two different elements in their definition just as you've included standard water and the isotope of heavy water in the definition of water that's just a definitional game as long as they distinguish between the two subcategories of gold and iron with their respective atomic weights the singular term like how we have terms for metals um we have terms for uh for the um the uh the gases the inert gases help me out you know more than me the um talk about the noble gases noble gases yes we invented those distinctions the terms yes because the distinctions are only meaningful when we notice them the universe doesn't care whether or not we think there's something meaningful or significant about noble gases versus the other stuff there is a different oh so we saw the differences the differences were there the differences are real and then we came along and decided you know what we're going to name these differences we're going to assign some names to these different um elements agreed yeah okay now i'm trying to remember why why we started down this rabbit hole um i didn't get very far through the things you said oh it's i just the first thing i brought up was you had said all these views are incoherent but then we kind of clarified that what you meant was any any of the popular views of women that have been proposed are vague and difficult to articulate and then i guess i was just trying to point out that a definition might exist and be true even if it hasn't been articulated um so like rewind before humans came on the scene i would have thought water was h2o even before anyone was around to name water or to realize its chemical essence so i was just disagreeing with that point about how definitions work i don't think definitions properly understood are linguistic entities i think there are facts out there in the world but anyway i have to challenge that there are facts in the world but definitions are categorically linguistic we create them because we identify differences and things that we see in the world the facts of the world there are many the the spectrum of light that we consider to be blue contains within an infinite range of potential blue values but we don't have an infinite number of names to describe them there may be a set number of facts in the world but the categories we use to separate those facts are entirely up to us and our perceptions so another example of this would be like in terms of gender prescription there are cultures historically that have had third genders for a long time often the third gender is a biologically male um a gender class that adopts roles that are much more similar to the biologically female there are non-human animals that do this as well you know it's it's not it's not unique to us um and in that case there's a separate category and maybe they felt clearly they felt that the categorical difference between these more feminized biological males and the regular biological males was something worth distinguishing in a in a gender-oriented taxonomical sense but that's not any more right or wrong than what we do they just see different meaningful differences and apply different terms so you can't make these objective arguments about terms terms may refer to the facts of the world but we draw the borders the land on earth might be uh you know um objective but the borders of the nations that we build over them those we rule on on paper we just have to be you know considerate of human need when we're describing what here we actually want to build yeah okay gosh there was a there's a lot i disagree with in there but i'm trying to be um trying to be selective or efficient with our time here um maybe let me just ask you this um it sounded like in your response to me you raised some objections to um the biological view that i expressed that women are adult human females and you brought up um well you thought you said you know we haven't always known about chromosomes again i don't think that chromosomes figure into the definition of biological sex you also mentioned intersex people so it sounded like you were trying to argue against the the reality of males and females but then at other times you say you know there are other cultures that have a third gender that are biologically male and i think you might agree that there are animals that are biologically male and biologically female so i guess just let me let me get clear on your view do you think that there are males and females of course out there in the world i believe it's bimodal there are males and females and most people will fall pretty solidly on either end of the spectrum but i do feel there are a significant number of people who are closer to the middle in terms of intersex expression oh well if you also think that there are adults in humans then um what exactly is wrong with the definition that women women are adult human females you believe in adults you believe in humans and you believe in females is it just you think there are counter examples to this definition is that the problem my belief in the value of a definition it should be said first is not determined by its consistency there are consistent definitions that are still morally wrong for example um the nazis grouped humans into taxonomical categories which at times were consistent usually because they were very blunt and lacking in nuance they were just monstrous and unnecessary they were suitable to the nazis in a political sense because they allowed for the dehumanization of large groups of people but i don't think we review them in retrospect based on their consistency like oh well they say any of the descendants of the 12 tribes of israel are subhuman ah well that's easy to find out with the 23andme of course not so i just i'm not saying you're doing that i'm only saying that my concern here first and foremost is not one of consistency even if the biological model was perfectly consistent i would oppose it but it's not um because chromosomal abnormalities are all it takes to throw this up for a loop especially because when you transition you know you do change your sex to an extent not entirely but certainly there are categories of sex that are altered when you have chromosomes of a certain designation it determines the hormone washes that you receive both during puberty and um in the womb and that determines the shape your body takes the genitalia you form the ways in which your body developed but if you have a trans woman who took puberty blockers before she hit puberty then transitioned medically you a person who is let's say a doctor would not call them a biological male in terms of the risk of breast cancer prostate cancer a wide variety of bone and heart related conditions this is not a person who'd be going to the doctor and saying yep i'm a male and the doctor would go yep your problems are male problems it just it just it wouldn't so if that's the case you know where does that line fall what about people who have the xxy chromosomal abnormality or people whose y chromosome doesn't sufficiently inhibit the development of the x chromosomal female hormones they receive these categories are not called for and that's why traditionally doctors have just cut off the aberrant genitalia of intersex people or try to force people into roles that best made them through the binary it just doesn't always work okay yes um i have watched some of your videos and i've heard your views on biological sex and um i think it's a commonly held view i love sex what biological sex consistent um i think it is based on a misunderstanding i don't think that biological sex um is defined in terms of chromosomes or genitals or hormone levels and you can see that by just considering the full range of the plant and animal kingdom and how the sexes are realized across the plant and animal kingdom and

You'll see that there's no, no facts about genitals figuring the definition. Nothing about hormones, nothing about chromosomes. So we can talk about that a little more if you'd like and try to get clear on what biological sex really is. But I just wanted to quickly point out that, um, in my opening statement, what I argued was on all these proposals, it turns out that not all trans women are women. On every proposal, it is false that all trans women are women. So I disagree. I'm not really in a position that I need to defend the biological view. If you want to beat up on it and criticize it and reject it, okay. All I said was, if this is what woman means, then not all trans women are women. And I guess we agree on that. But I thought it would have been more pressing, given your views, to try to defend the charges that all those other proposals also entail that not all trans women are women. And as far as I can tell, you haven't tried to do that yet. So the prescriptive view, would you like to talk about biological sex, or should we move on to something a little more relevant?

Uh, well, the biological sex thing, if, if it's something you feel the need to defend, we can. I assume this is your, you, you're the belief, of course, that a woman is defined by biology. Um, if you are asking me what does the word ordinarily mean, then I think those, um, trans-inclusive philosophers that I quoted are correct. That is what the word ordinarily means. I think not asking what it ordinarily means, what do you think it means? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a woman? Well, I, if you were to ask me what does it mean to be a computer or a television or, I'm just pointing at things in the room, I would take that question to be asking what do those words ordinarily mean. I don't have my own private language. I communicate, I communicate using a public language that we all share. And so if you ask me what a word means, I would, I mean, and I didn't know, I might check the dictionary to see what this word means. It's entirely informed by tradition. You're, you're aware, of course, of the fact that the majority of Americans today believe in accepting the identity of trans people by a slim margin. In 20 years, my view will be more popular than yours. Will you switch over then? Are you going to defer entirely to what you see in the dictionary? Then it would no longer be true that that's what the word ordinarily means. So, okay, well, then sure, then that's fine by me. If we're to hear, if we're here to make prescriptions, then sure. Um, I haven't made any prescriptions. You defer to the descriptions of others. All definitions are fought for, from the, from the definition of soil in the books of geologists to the definition of skyscraper in the book of civil engineers. Everything is fought for. And I will fight for the definition.

Um, the prescriptive view that trans women are women, um, because there is harm and inconsistency present in other definitions. Um, can you, can you tell me what the definition is that you defend?

Sure. I think that woman, like the concept of woman, is an arbitrary and vague collection of aesthetics, values, roles, uh, a bunch of social constructions that are typically tied to sex, uh, that just sort of float in the public conscious. They vary depending on where you are. What a woman is expected to be in the Bible Belt South is very different from what they're expected to be in, like, Seattle or whatever.

Hold on a second. So when you said in the Bible Belt South, there's something that a woman is expected to be, can you tell me who it is that's expected to be this way? What did women mean in that sentence?

Whoever they would consider to be a woman, which overwhelmingly would be biologically female people.

Whoever they would consider to be a woman. Um, and what did women mean there when you said, like, well, let's check who they would consider to be a woman?

What did I already said? Biologically female. You don't need to prompt it. I already said it. Biologically female.

Yes. Oh, adult human females, you mean?

Well, we are talking about adult humans. I, I assume.

Okay. So you're saying what woman means is it's this collection of aesthetics, rules, and perspectives that are associated with women. And by women, you mean adult human females?

Yes. Typically the role of woman in a social construct is one which is tied to sex, but that doesn't mean that it's prescriptively tied to sex. Or to give another example, uh, you're going to see types of music preferences which are heavily associated with people's racial groups or nationalities, but that doesn't mean that there's an inherent, uh, prescriptive association there. Only that circumstantially these arbitrary associations came to be. Or to put it another way, the type of music that you're going to hear in Thailand hit, like, number one charts is pretty different what you're going to hear, like, number one charting over here in America. But that doesn't mean that people over there are biologically inclined to that music as opposed to ours. It's due to proximate bias. People in that area of the world listen to that music because that's the music they have. And because that's the music they have, they pass it down to other people who are around who happen to be people in that part of the world. And likewise, you know, you have an example here of woman, a sort of broad definition that we do prescribe to biological females. But that's precisely my argument. See, I'm a, a libertarian here in the classical sense. I don't believe it's right to impart roles and responsibilities onto a person based on their birth genitalia. It's very weird to me. I'm not looking for an end to sex. Biological sex is always going to be a category we have to deal with, you know, for the foreseeable future at least. What I'm against is the idea that some arbitrary hormone wash you received while in the womb should decide a massive category of expectations and behaviors that are assigned to you afterwards. And that's what I'm talking about prescriptively. I don't think we should be saddled with that. True identity should be self-ascribed, which in this case, I believe they are.

So this sounds like a view that I, that was expressed in one of the quotations I provided in my slides. It sounds like you're giving voice to a social role view, according to which to be a woman is to, as you said in that quotation, um, want to internally and externally adhere to a certain set, a certain set of aesthetics, rules, perspectives, etc. That's what it is to be a woman. Um, to want to or to actually occupy, um, a certain social role or a certain social position or, listen, it's associated with women.

I don't think it makes you a woman, though.

Oh, but I had asked you what your definition of woman is. What makes someone a woman? That's, I thought you had answered that, but now we're going to get a different answer.

These go into what woman is. The concept of woman, in my prescriptive view, is simply a person who prefers to be associated with that broad range of archetypes. Any person who prefers to be associated.

Right. Yeah. That's the social worldview. So what do you make of my argument that on that definition, not all trans women will be women?

No, they would pref, they want to be associated with that broad range of archetypes. But that doesn't mean that their identity is dependent on fulfilling those roles.

Well, not all trans women, not all trans women will want to be associated with those aesthetics and rules and perspectives or whatever. But they are nonetheless, by choosing to refer to themselves as women.

What if you ask them, do you, do you want to adhere to these expectations and roles and so on? I would have thought it's totally possible and probably actual for some trans women to say, no thanks. I mean, some women, some women say no thanks, right? Some cis women.

Um, so then won't it follow then on this view that you're expressing that not all trans women are women?

No, because they still subscribe to the archetype. The archetype merely contains the collection of social values that we associate with women. There are cis and trans women who, for example, want to be women, but fervently reject elements of what women are expected to be. But this doesn't make them any less of women. I'm only saying they've still chosen to associate themselves with that archetype, much as I choose to associate myself with the archetype of being a man. And there are roles associated with being a man that I'm not interested in adopting or fulfilling.

Okay. So there's this archetype, archetypal woman. And I guess if I'd asked you what this archetypal woman, archetypal woman is, you would say, where's a dress and wears pink?

No, no. What would you say?

It's a collection of categories. I don't think there could be one archetypal woman because there are so many.

I was worried it was going to be really viciously stereotypical.

No, no. There, there can't be one woman because these concepts are arbitrary and stupid. For example.

Well, when you say transgender and subscribe to the archetype, what is the archetype?

The archetype is defined by its name and all we tied to it. To give you an example, a woman, a stereotypical woman can be a very maternal, motherly, kind, gentle person. But they can also be like a Jersey Shore, Jersey Shore like bratty, mall-hopping, selfish type. Now, those are two archetypes of woman and femininity that are completely contradictory. You can't simultaneously be calm, caring, and motherly while also being, you know, selfish [ __ ] and like, you know, money-grubbing. Those don't fit. But nonetheless, they're both considered archetypes of femininity. So it's about associating yourself with the collection of categories rather than representing the singular archetype of those categories.

Okay. So you had said a woman is anyone who subscribes to the archetype of woman. And then when I said, what is this archetype? You said, is it, is it defined by the name woman?

I guess the collection of all we associate with it.

Yeah. And we associate many things with woman. Very few of which, I think, have to do with biology. There's a whole lot of social crap on top that you kind of layer there. You know, um, there was another quotation I didn't include where you said something like this, and a way to avoid the circularity worry with a self-id version of self-id definition of woman is to say that a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman and then mention the word, don't use the word, just mention the word, anyone who's willing to say things like, I am a woman. Anyone who's willing to, um, attribute that word to themselves. So then you avoid the circularity worry. But I got it. I zooped. I zooped around.

Well, as I said in my opening statement, if this definition isn't circular, then whatever you, whatever the definition means, it's going to exclude some trans women. And here's how it's going to work. In this case, this, this definition you just provided is going to make it so that being a woman is an English-speaking affair. So there are no women outside of the English-speaking world. You would have to be familiar with the word woman attributed to yourself. And so an implication is there are no non-English speaking women. And there were no women before English came along.

I find those to be pretty implausible implications. I think that the category of woman didn't really exist in the form that it does as much as six months ago, let alone throughout all of human history. You know, the, the archetype I'm referring to, this broad collection of tropes and categories that I refer to as like the woman that we, that women associate themselves with. You're right, it may not exist to people who don't speak English. But by the time they learn, there will be a different one. And it's different in every culture, in every neighborhood, in every society, at every point in time. It will constantly shift. I don't think there's an objective definition here. But if you're looking for some truly exclusionary stuff, I would agree that any person who was raised by wolves in the forest and had never come into contact with human society could not be described as having a gender. I think their gender would have to be a, some kind of, uh, recursive, it would have to be like a product of their engagement with social roles and expectations that they would have to develop, even if you could easily identify their sex. But that's the only case I think where a human has no contact with gender roles because they're pretty ubiquitous all over.

Oh, we've got to jump into the Q&A shortly. So maybe, oh goodness, morning, time flies when we have fun. Okay, well, let me just respond quickly to a couple things you said. You said, um, it seemed like you were willing to concede that the category of women didn't exist six months ago.

You said, not this category. Yeah. So then it sounds like you agree with me that your view does entail there are no women outside of English-speaking contexts. And in fact, you might even agree there were no women eight months ago. Um, so these are, these are surprising implications to say the least.

With respect, wait, if I may, with respect, not to get into linguistic traps here, because the concept changes. That doesn't mean that there weren't equivalents across time, culture, and society. German have a concept of Frau, you know, the Spanish of Muha, whatever the [ __ ] the Spanish term for for woman is, you know. Um, I don't literally mean the arc of the concept, you know, the, the social collection popped into existence here. But you're right, because depending on what word you use to refer to women, whatever word you have for that, it's going to be a different collection.

Who would you be referring to there? You said, whatever word you used to refer to women.

Who would you be referring to there?

Well, anyone. Any, any, no matter what word you use to refer to women as an archetype, as that will inform to an extent what you imagine women to be. And this is self-evidently true. Go to India. They don't have the word woman for woman, but they have very different expectations of what it means to be a woman over there than we do over here. Massively so. And they have a lot of women there, despite the fact that the word woman doesn't exist.

Um, yeah, I agree with you. Wait, with, with respect, I feel like I don't know if how you're interpreting what I'm saying here. They don't use the term woman. They have, I don't know what the Indian term for woman is.

Well, they have one, but yeah. Well, some of them do speak English, but. Right. When I say the term doesn't exist outside the definition of woman, what I'm saying is that it is a multi-faceted gem that changes with time. And we see it from different facets depending on where we are. And what we are. What a woman is is so different to, like, a southern conservative bell than it is to a progressive living New York City. In fact, there's such different concepts in terms of the social roles involved that we, they, they're practically two different genders, honest to God. Um, that's all I'm referring to. So I'm not literally saying that the archetype, the range of concepts popped up into existence six months ago and exclusively exists in English. I'm only saying it's so multivariate, so arbitrary, so meaningless that there are a million variants of it right now, and there were a million more yesterday.

This might be a decent time to jump into the Q&A. I know that you've got another round in the chamber ready to fire.

I love, I love talking with you. Yeah. Sorry, both of you guys. I know you do, but I do want to jump into these because folks, I got to tell you too, I tried to spam the chat and let you know we can't take any more questions. We've gotten a ton of questions and we have a limited time for the Q&A. These are both busy guys. We want to get them out of here at a decent time. So we're going to jump into it right now. Thanks very much.

Elusive Viper says, can you identify someone whose favorite color is red without identifying quote-unquote red as your favorite color? Was this a question for me?

Yeah, they hadn't specified in this one. Can you repeat the question?

Can you identify someone?

Can you identify someone whose favorite color is red without identifying red as your favorite color?

Without identifying red as your favorite color? Without identifying?

Oh, I think this is supposed to be a counter-example to my claim that there's no feature such that you have it if and only if you identify as having it. And maybe what this person is asking is, isn't this an example, having the feature of your favorite color is red, or you, as they put it, identify your favorite color is red? Okay, so suppose we're thinking of that feature, having red as a favorite color. Is that going to be necessarily co-extensive with identifying as having red as a favorite color? So no, I don't think, I don't think so. I think that's going to be another example, just like being rich and being funny and being taller, whatever. Um, it is possible for your favorite color to be red and not know that your favorite color is red and not identify as having the favorite colors of and as having a favorite color of, um, I don't even know how to finish that sentence, and not identify in that way. Here's an example of how that could be, um, suppose you're just new to colors. You, you were colorblind from birth, but a surgery was performed and now you're seeing colors for the first time. But it's just color splotches on the wall, and you don't know which color is which, but you know that one's your favorite. So your favorite color is red, but you don't know that this color is red. You don't identify as having a favorite color as red. So that would be an example to show how those two could come apart.

Can I just butt in really quick and say, um, I meant to start the debate in a more sort of irenic way and say something nice about Vosh, but then we just got straight into the, straight into the definition stuff. I wanted to say that, um, when I first got this invitation, I mean, I didn't know about this corner of YouTube or Twitch or wherever I am right now. I didn't know about it. Um, but after watching a lot of videos in this corner of the internet, um, I was really heartened and encouraged by the sort of thing that Vosh has engaged in, you know, debating and exchanging arguments, evaluating arguments, giving objections. Sometimes, you know, a middle-aged person like me worries about kids these days, and how they're not really interested in arguments or evidence anymore. So I was just happy to see that there's this community thriving again on, I don't even really know what Twitch is, but if that's where it is, good for you, and I'm happy you're doing it. Um, and I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. Wanted to say that before time ran out.

I'll respond when I get a question. Then you got it. This one coming in from Sphincter of Doom. I think this is for you, Vosh. They say, intersex people are still one of two sexes because sex is defined in humans as to what gametes are produced, and every human, every has only produced at most one of two gametes for reproduction.

Um, so yeah, that's just not true. You can look at any biological journal if you want. Um, the funny thing is, is that like the definition keeps receding as it keeps getting proven wrong. Like at first it was like genitalia, but that doesn't correspond perfectly to biological sex. And then it was chromosomes, and that doesn't correspond either because there are chromosomal abnormalities that correspond with like intersex. And then it's like gametes. You know, it's like, and they keep running back and running back, money back. Eventually, like people who are super harped in this argument are going to settle on a definition of sex that has absolutely no utility. You know, like their definition of sex is going to be like, okay, here, we finally found something consistent. There are only one of two possible outcomes, whether or not like the, the, the half-life decay of this atom spun left or spun right in the, in the exact moment the cell was fertilized, and that's the one thing that determines sex. And it's like, okay, at this point, like what are you talking about? Shut the [ __ ] up. Um, yeah, that's just not true. Um, but like they can believe whatever they want about biological sex, um, because like at the end of the day, the, the, the biological argument of this has been more or less settled, you know. All the major biological journals are talking about the ambiguity of sex and how it's bimodal and so on. So I feel like at this point, there are people far more qualified than I to make that argument about how much variance there is. And to follow, uh, to follow up on that, I enjoyed talking with you very much, Thomas. Dr. Bogardus, I should say. I'm sorry.

You can call me Thomas. Thomas. I'm so used to talking to YouTubers. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's wonderful to, um, uh, to speak with with people with a higher education, especially once you take my argument seriously enough to quote me in your PowerPoint presentations. Uh, no, it's been a delight. Thank you for being on here.

Next up from Brenton Langle, a long-time friend of the channel, says, H2O is a symbol. Dr. Bogardus, I think that you are confusing the symbol for the real thing it refers to. All symbols and definitions are flawed, as if they weren't, they would be the thing itself and not the symbol. All right.

Was that, that wasn't really a question, though, correct? That's true. Um, so the claim was, H2O is a symbol. So, um, I mean, speaking verbally, it's hard to make a use-mention distinction. But if the person meant, quote, H2O is a symbol, well, yeah, I agree. You mean like that symbol H2O? Yeah, that's a symbol. But if you meant H2O, like the thing that's in this bottle, no, that's not a symbol. That's a molecule that we drink. And we're not drinking symbols. So, yeah, I think that the confusion there is just between using the, the term H2O and mentioning the term. Um, so we use the term when we say, you know, there's H2O in that lake over there. We mention the term when we say H2O features the letter H or something. Say, I, I guess I don't disagree with what the person said, as long as the person meant mentioning H2O, it's a symbol. Yeah, I agree.

Water has five letters. Yeah. With quotation marks, water has five letters. Yes. Water has five letters. No, water doesn't have any letters at all. The stuff that we drink doesn't have any letters at all. Um, that's a pretty basic distinction, but I think it's important to recognize and appreciate.

All right, you got it. Signature of Doom strikes again says, heavy water isn't an extra hydrogen, it's an extra neutron in the hydrogen. It's still H2O. Yes.

Okay, so I think I got that wrong. If I said it was an isotope of oxygen, that makes it, is it deuterium? Did we say that? So it's an isotope of hydrogen. It's an isotope of hydrogen. So I guess it's one proton and one neutron, is that right? Whatever. Still H2O, though. Um, yeah, well, I guess I, I guess I need to wait until it's appropriate to respond to the biological sex stuff. Um, so maybe I'll get a question about that. I'll just hold tight.

You got it. This one from Sid Dave says, I can answer that question. Let's see. No, they are not. No matter how many surgeries. Let's see. Okay, that's not as the Brenton Langley. There's your question. Says, H2O is not water in the same sense that the pipe and Rene Magritte's, let me know if I'm saying that wrong, Treachery of Images is not a pipe. You are falling for the treachery of concepts.

Yeah, right. So I think they're referring to that painting of a pipe and then it says, this is not a pipe. Yeah, it's a painting. It's not a pipe. So it's, it's doing the equivalent of mentioning a pipe, but there's no actual pipe there. Um, so I think this is the same as, uh, the last sort of statement I got when I was told H2O is a symbol, not a molecule. Yeah, H2O is a symbol, but H2O, the stuff in lakes and rivers, is not a symbol. This is just a difference between word and object. Um, but I can assure you, I appreciate that distinction and I, I hope we all do.

You got it. This one from David Crackle says, if ice can be water, why can't a trans woman be a woman?

Oh, wow. If ice can be water, which it can be, I think it is water because it's H2O. Why can't a trans woman be a woman? I assume that question's for me. Well, ice is water because, um, come to find out, it's the same stuff that liquid water is. It's all the same stuff, just in different phases. It's all H2O. It's the same thing, just in different arrangements. That's why ice is water. It's not liquid water, it's solid water. Okay. So now the question is, is a trans woman a woman? Well, that would depend on what woman means. And then we'd have to check, um, whatever woman means, is it the case that being a trans woman guarantees that you're a woman in that sense? And I think the reason, as I said, this is such a persistent philosophical puzzle, is it turns out that, um, on all the views that are sort of being discussed in the literature, the answer is no. It doesn't turn out that all trans women are women, whatever woman means. It's going to be possible for someone to identify as a woman while being assigned male at birth, but not meet that definition of woman.

Yeah. This one for Vosh, made by Jim Bob, says, if the term woman is a construct, doesn't that mean quote, trans women are women, isn't actually true and is just a construct itself? Something being a construct and being true aren't mutually exclusive.

Most things that we say when we're referring to interpersonal interactions are only true in a constructed sense, but I still think that they're true. You know, um, otherwise, I mean, what does it mean for a person to be tall? You know, there's no set definition of what percentage or what like how many orders of magnitude above the average height of a given type of person, a given type of area, like there's no, just because something's constructed doesn't mean it's not true. You know, you can say a person seven feet tall and be true as hell to that, but finding a concrete definition, a non-constructed definition of tall is not something you're going to be able to do. Um, yeah, so there's nothing wrong with something being socially constructed. I just think we should be aware of how much power we have to rearrange these terms as we see fit. That's not playing God, that's what we've always done. We've always done that forever. It's all we can do. We made language, you know. Um, I just think that we should use it responsibly.

You got it. Signature of Doom strikes again. This one for you, Vosh, says, sex is the reproductive condition of an organism. In humans, this is achieved via gametes, and there are only two gametes in humans that leads to reproduction. Chromosomal aneuploidy, which meaning whether there's a lack of chromosome or an extra chromosome compared to usual, is irrelevant. They say, so keep switching up the definition of what sex is. It was all chromosome years ago.

No, again, like the biological community has made its mark on this. The idea that sex is purely binary and not bimodal is just not something taken seriously in, um, in, in studies to this effect. So it's, it seems quite silly. Look, again, like even if you could, even if you could, like, 100% male, female differentiate, it wouldn't change any of my prescriptions. You could make it, you know, so flatly and unchangeably biologically male and female with nothing in between, and I would still say what I say. It's not really relevant to my arguments. It's only the fact that you're wrong gives credit to the argument that the biological, uh, differentiation is inconsistent at best and quite harmful, uh, as well. Um, you know, also, who's talking about gametes? Like, like anyone looks at a person's gametes when they're trying to gender a person? Come on. That's always been the silliest argument, right? They start going back before first was what genitals are, like, do you have tits or not, or what your hair looks like. And then it goes further and further in, you know. Um, I'm telling you, it's going to be the half-life, the radioactive decay, that that spin that you're going to get, and that'll, that'll determine it. We'll just judge our, we'll decide whether people wear suits or dresses based on that spin.

Made by Jim Bob says, Vosh, can someone with Benjamin Button disease, if you guys, namely like aging backwards, claim an age inconsistent with birth date but consistent with their apparent biological age?

I don't entirely know what that means. But if the art, if this is a question of like being trans-age or whatever, keep in mind we're talking about magic here. I mean, you would have a person who's like, what, five years old, but has every imaginable, you know, um, trait associated with an 85-year-old or something. I have no, I, you know, I gotta tell you, I don't know how the legal system or the philosophical community would handle the existence of such a person. Um, you know, I, I imagine if they had the knowledge and wisdom and experience of an 80-year-old, even if they were only five years old, they would probably be treated as like an 80-year-old because they're like, they look and act like one. I don't really know that, you know, you get when that happens. Okay, you can try to stump me.

You got it. This one coming in from Raymond Ryder, appreciate it, says, Vosh, is it the case that you're engaging in an ameliorative project when you mentioned normative standards for definitions? Isn't this just shifting the subject?

I love to ameliorate the, the conjugated definition of the, of the superlative. Wait, what was it? I can't tell if that was, if that was a real question, if it was making fun of how I talked, which either way, fair. I could, I could explain it if you want.

That was a sort of question from the photo. Was that actual question? Whenever I hear the word ameliorate, I've seen people making fun of me because I use that word the way most people use, um's, you know. Wait, can you, wait, James, can you repeat it? I just need to hear it again. I'll take it more seriously. It's a technical term from the literature. I'd be happy to just tell you what it means if you want.

No, I know what it means. I just wasn't listening to the question because I assumed I was listening for like, funny. I was thinking of funny jokes that I could say in response. They said, Vosh seems to be engaging in an ameliorative project when he mentioned normative standards for definitions. Isn't this shifting the subject?

Um, no, I don't think there are any types of other arguments that you can make when it comes to definitions. I think that at the end of the day, even when you're making descriptive arguments about definitions, you're ultimately making the prescriptive statement that we should adhere to the commonly accepted descriptive, uh, descriptive statement. I don't think there's any way around that. After all, these are things that we construct. I mean, we all, you know, it's, it's a little bit like, um, like slavery, right? You know, like people make arguments for and against it, or at least they used to. Well, they still do, but they did more in the past. You know, but if a person's only statement on the subject is, slavery exists for X reasons, even though that would be a descriptive argument, if that was all they contributed to the discussion, it would still serve the role of a soft prescriptive argument in favor of the institution. Because when something exists and has the capacity to be changed, and acceptance of and passive defense of the purpose of such a system is considered to be, um, a kind of soft prescriptive argument for it. So of course, yeah, I'm not saying this all slavery. I'm just saying, you know, it's, uh, you got it. It's been known to happen.

Doctor, regardless, are you saying that in the, like, specifically the word ameliorative is a concept or term from the philosophy of gender?

Information, iterative ameliorative inquiry is a little phrase that has a very specific meaning in this, um, philosophy of gender literature. Yes.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you want me to tell you what I'm curious?

Okay. Yeah. It's just, um, it's sometimes called, um, conceptual engineering. And it's the project I described when I said, like, hey, we've got this biological definition. Even trans-inclusive philosophers agree that's what the word has traditionally historically meant. But then when I said, like, they don't, they don't like that. They don't recommend it. They think that we should use the word woman to express a different concept. And when they're deciding which concept to express with the word woman, they call this, this is ameliorative inquiry. It's a kind of inquiry or attempt at coming up with an analysis that is meant to make the world a better place, to ameliorate injustices. And so there are explicitly moral inputs into the project. They're asking their, so they're asking themselves, what concept would do the most good in the world? And so I think Vosh is engaged in this sort of project. But yeah, it is a technical term from the literature. So the worry is, by doing that, by self-consciously using an old word to express a new concept, you're just, you're changing the subject. So feminism was about the cause of women, adult human females. But now we're just using the word woman and expressing a new concept, maybe the social worldview or the self-id view or something like that. And so we're not talking about women anymore. We're talking about something else. We've changed the subject. So this is a common worry about the whole conceptual engineering project. We'll just be changing the subject. But I think that's just, for what it's worth, I think that's the least serious worry. I think that the more serious worry is all the definitions that have been proposed are trans-exclusive.

You got it. And this one from Mr. Sasaki says, Dr. Bogardus, what is your own definition though of a woman? And by your own logic, it can't be cultural, nor social, nor plastic, nor prescriptive, nor plastic. Oh, well, nor descriptive.

Um, so again, if you just ask me, what is my definition? I would say, I don't speak like a little private language. Um, I speak a language shared by a community. And so I think the question is just, what does this word ordinarily mean? Um, what has it meant for the history of feminism up until at least the second wave? What did it mean? And again, trans-inclusive philosophers agree, ordinarily, historically, traditionally, it's meant adult human female. And I'm just going to use this opportunity to say what it is to be female or what it is to be male. So I agree that if you ask people, what is biological sex, or what is it to be male, or what is it to be female, you'll often get from ordinary people answers in terms of genitals or chromosomes, or maybe hormone levels, or maybe like stereotypes. Um, I don't know if you watched that Matt Walsh documentary, but he asks people, you know, what is it to be a woman, and you get these sorts of definitions in terms of genitals, stereotypes, and so on. But as we briefly discussed during our little back and forth, if you accept that sexual reproduction occurs across the animal and plant kingdom and has been going on for a very long time, longer than Saturn has had, has had rings, it turns out longer than Polaris, the North Star, has existed. This is a very old sort of strategy that organisms have used to reproduce. You'll realize that genitals are not required. I'm told, I haven't actually checked, but I'm told that a lot of male birds just lack external genitals entirely. There's no particular sort of chromosome structure that you need in order to be male or female. If you just think about how plants do it, it's super complicated. Think about how a platypus does it, it's very, very different from how we do it. Hormone levels aren't required. You don't need any sort of particular hormone level. My understanding is the most basic organism that reproduces sexually is something called, I think it's pronounced Placozoa or something, a Placozoa, and it's only a couple thousand cells. But what makes it the sort of organism that has males and females is some of them produce sperm, some of them produce eggs. That's all that biologists have ever meant by male and female. Now, I agree that ordinary people have been confused about what it means to be male and female, and sometimes they're confused by a sort of chauvinism about our own species. But if you just think about what biologists mean when they study other organisms, when they say of a flowering plant, here are the male parts and here are the female parts, they are talking about gametes. And when they say males produce sperm, females produce ova, they mean the same sort of thing that they would mean if they said hearts pump blood, kidneys filter waste. They mean when functioning properly. This may be interfered with due to age, disease, injury, etc. But when functioning properly, that's what happens.

Wait, I, I have to jump in briefly. How can you, how can you defer to traditional definitions when using one that you have to correct the majority of people on? The majority of humans, when asked what it means to be a man or a woman, are not going to give the definition you just provided. They're like, the common definition was the one you were referring to earlier, the traditional one, the one you use in, in light of a or an absence of a prescriptive one. But now you're making a prescriptive statement that maybe one in a thousand humans would even get in the ballpark of. And you can't even defer to scientific definitions either, because the science on this matter, if you go to American Scientific or Nature.com, don't agree with you. You're deferring to a definition which is neither scientifically accepted nor commonly accepted. So why earlier were you talking about how you just defer to the commonly accepted one and you said that you don't want to weigh in on this topic as to what it means because you know, you just go with what's commonly accepted? That's not the case at all. It's not commonly accepted. What it means to be a woman is literally one of the most hotly discussed topics today. It's hugely contentious. I mean, that's like somebody asked you what honor means and you're like, well, I go by the historical definition of honor. But there is no single historical definition of honor, certainly not one used today. It varies massively. It feels like you're trying to assume the legitimacy of the common definition when the one you use is used neither commonly nor specifically by scientists.

Okay, this is a good point, Vosh, and this really brings up something that we disagree very deeply about. Namely, I think when you use the word definition, what you really mean is like the conception that people have in their minds when they use a word. So if I were to ask someone, what does male mean? They might say XY chromosomes or something like that. And you say, that's their definition. But I don't think that's right. I don't think that's the right use of the word definition. I would have thought that you don't look towards their conceptions, the sort of associations they have in their mind when they use a word, and you don't even look at the way people use words because it's possible for a word to be systematically misused. What you should look at is what the word actually refers to. It might be commonly misused, and people might have mistaken conceptions about what it is. But the true definition, the real definition.

So you just, the word for the divine definition, like all the people are wrong. The science.

Well, we do, we do investigations. Let me give an example. If you had asked Aristotle, what is water? He would have, he might have given you his conception, and he would have said something like, it's an element, although he would have said it in Greek. Um, yeah, and it might have been possible, yeah, it's probably possible that some people have systematically misused the word water if they were unwilling to attribute it to ice. But here's how we figured out what water is. We did some chemistry and we investigated the lakes and the rivers and the ice, and we found out, oh wow, turns out water is not an element, it's a molecule, it's H2O. We did something similar with biological sex. I mean, Aristotle was aware of this phenomenon, but he was not aware of the gametes involved. We have discovered the scientific essence of biological maleness and biological femaleness through scientific investment.

There's no such thing as a scientific essence. You can discover facts of the world, but the categories that you apply on top of those facts are something that we have to make decisions about. So you.

Oh boy. So a lot just happened there. So when I described that biological view, I did claim this is what the word ordinarily means. I might have said this is the way it's ordinarily used, and I think that's right. I don't think it's being ordinarily misused. Um, but if I were going to state the claim as precisely as possible, I would say this is what the word ordinarily means. And when I say that, I don't mean to say this is what people ordinarily have in mind when they express the word, because obviously they don't. If you ask ordinary people, what is a woman? They're like, this is something Socrates discovered. You know, you ask people about ordinary terms, and they're at a loss to articulate a definition. So when I say this is what the word ordinarily means, I don't mean this is what people have in mind when they use the word. I don't even mean necessarily this is the way the word is ordinarily used, because again, use is at best an imperfect guide to meaning. What I mean is this is what the word, um, refers to as it's ordinarily used. I don't think it's misused. This is what the word refers to.

How do you decide what it refers to?

So the same way we did with water. Aristotle was interested in the same sort of stuff that we were interested in. We have different words for it. He thought it was an element. We have discovered through scientific investigation its molecule, and now we know water is H2O. We did that through scientific investigation. We did something similar with biological sex. I mean, Aristotle was aware of this phenomenon, but he was not aware of the gametes involved. We have discovered the scientific essence of biological maleness and biological femaleness through scientific investment.

I'm sorry, it's just being a little pedantic there. Inference is something that people do. Implication is something propositions do. Don't worry about it. Um, so I guess you're referring to the fact that I said ordinarily the meaning of the word woman is adult human female. That's the meaning. My issue is that it feels like earlier you were taking a non-prescriptive tone where you were just referring to commonly accepted definitions, which only work if you're thinking about like modern history, the West, because when you brought out there are plenty of counter-examples. But then when it comes to like, okay, what do I believe? Then you have a hyper-specific definition and you justify the validity of that definition by saying that it differs not from utility, not from common acceptance, not from popular use, but rather from it being a true definition, which seems like, like an ontological distinction that you're receiving from God. But I'm afraid I'm not hearing the voices in my head. I don't know what that means.

Yeah. Oh boy. So when I described that biological view, I did claim this is what the word ordinarily means. I might have said this is the way it's ordinarily used, and I think that's right. I don't think it's being ordinarily misused. Um, but if I were going to state the claim as precisely as possible, I would say this is what the word ordinarily means. And when I say that, I don't mean to say this is what people ordinarily have in mind when they express the word, because obviously they don't. If you ask ordinary people, what is a woman? They're like, this is something Socrates discovered. You know, you ask people about ordinary terms, and they're at a loss to articulate a definition. So when I say this is what the word ordinarily means, I don't mean this is what people have in mind when they use the word. I don't even mean necessarily this is the way the word is ordinarily used, because again, use is at best an imperfect guide to meaning. What I mean is this is what the word, um, refers to as it's ordinarily used. I don't think it's misused. This is what the word refers to.

How do you decide what it refers to?

So the same way we did with water. Aristotle was interested in the same sort of stuff that we were interested in. We have different words for it. He thought it was an element. We have discovered through scientific investigation its molecule, and now we know water is H2O. We did that through scientific investigation. We did something similar with biological sex. I mean, Aristotle was aware of this phenomenon, but he was not aware of the gametes involved. We have discovered the scientific essence of biological maleness and biological femaleness through scientific investment.

I'm sorry, it's just being a little pedantic there. Inference is something that people do. Implication is something propositions do. Don't worry about it. Um, so I guess you're referring to the fact that I said ordinarily the meaning of the word woman is adult human female. That's the meaning. My issue is that it feels like earlier you were taking a non-prescriptive tone where you were just referring to commonly accepted definitions, which only work if you're thinking about like modern history, the West, because when you brought out there are plenty of counter-examples. But then when it comes to like, okay, what do I believe? Then you have a hyper-specific definition and you justify the validity of that definition by saying that it differs not from utility, not from common acceptance, not from popular use, but rather from it being a true definition, which seems like, like an ontological distinction that you're receiving from God. But I'm afraid I'm not hearing the voices in my head. I don't know what that means.

Yeah. Oh boy. So when I described that biological view, I did claim this is what the word ordinarily means. I might have said this is the way it's ordinarily used, and I think that's right. I don't think it's being ordinarily misused. Um, but if I were going to state the claim as precisely as possible, I would say this is what the word ordinarily means. And when I say that, I don't mean to say this is what people ordinarily have in mind when they express the word, because obviously they don't. If you ask ordinary people, what is a woman? They're like, this is something Socrates discovered. You know, you ask people about ordinary terms, and they're at a loss to articulate a definition. So when I say this is what the word ordinarily means, I don't mean this is what people have in mind when they use the word. I don't even mean necessarily this is the way the word is ordinarily used, because again, use is at best an imperfect guide to meaning. What I mean is this is what the word, um, refers to as it's ordinarily used. I don't think it's misused. This is what the word refers to.

How do you decide what it refers to?

So the same way we did with water. Aristotle was interested in the same sort of stuff that we were interested in. We have different words for it. He thought it was an element. We have discovered through scientific investigation its molecule, and now we know water is H2O. We did that through scientific investigation. We did something similar with biological sex. I mean, Aristotle was aware of this phenomenon, but he was not aware of the gametes involved. We have discovered the scientific essence of biological maleness and biological femaleness through scientific investment.

can look at water and determine consistently that you know h2o. this number of hydrogen and oxygen atoms because that's an observable fact of the universe. but as soon as you start to draw lines between things and assign names to those different categories, you are engaging in arbitrary speculation, ones which can only be defined through the utility served by doing so.

all of this differentiation that we talk about, the only reason we distinguish between males and females is because we feel it provides us some utility. but when we talk about what we're referring to on a fundamental level, the fact of the matter is when it comes to sex, there's a ton of variants, not just in our own species but others. it's not just chromosomes, there are sex characteristics that vary tremendously even within cis people, and there's no hard line when we look at those things. and i don't think there's a perfect track record of assigning that like categorization onto gender either. in fact, i know for a fact there isn't, because there are cultures with third genders. so i, i don't know what you mean by the true essence here, but i don't feel as though this, this mode of investigation gives us a better understanding of what it means to be a woman.

so when i said, um, we've discovered this, the scientific essence of water, what i meant was h2o. we've discovered the essence of gold, which is atomic number 79. this is something we've discovered through chemical investigation. um, that's all that's necessary to be gold. it's to be atomic number 79. of course, the greeks were aware of gold. um, humans throughout time and place have been aware of gold. they weren't aware of what it is essentially. chemistry disclosed that to us. that's what i meant by scientific essence. and i think biologists did something similar with biological sex. there were sort of crude theories about how sexual reproduction is accomplished back in the early days of science. we have since discovered facts about sperm and eggs, and that was a discovery of the scientific aspects.

how to categorize them? like the fact that we consider isotopes to still be a member of that element. and if an isotope has one extra neutron, we consider that to be a member of the same element, but just a different isotope of it. but if we wanted to, we could have simply said, oh, that's just another element. it's another element with a separate name that has a separate molecular structure. and they would have pointed at it and gone, ah, yeah, well, that's, you know, obviously it's very similar to this other element, but as you can see, there's an extra neutron, so it can't possibly be the same, you know, as this previous one. um, but that's what i mean. like, like discovering facts of the world is not the same as taxonomy. it's not the same as categorization.

i want to give dr. bogardus the last word just because the question was originally for him. and then we've got one last question for the q&a before we wrap up. i kind of forgot what the original question was at this point. um, i guess i'll just, i don't really want the last word to be about noble gases, but, um, here we go. um, i guess i just deny that when we're investigating the world, our primary interest when we like decide, you know, what words should we introduce, what distinction should we make, i don't think our primary interest is utility. rather, we're interested in the truth. like if it had somehow turned out that not distinguishing between the noble gases had somehow benefited humanity, like if we had learned that, you know, if we just stick with aristotle's view, or we've just got these five elements, humans will be much better off, scientists wouldn't have done it. they wouldn't have cared. they just wanted to know the truth. and they saw these distinctions between the noble gases and they were like, let's introduce some terms to name what's already there. i think that's what we did in physics and chemistry, and, um, in biology.

this one. so what? sorry, what's that? james, go ahead and interrupt. nah, that was, that's probably as good a time as any to stop. we'll jump in with this last question, and then i want to remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. so if you have not heard enough, if you're like, i want to hear more, i want to learn more about their views, you certainly can by clicking on those links in the description box below. and here is that question. brandon hansen asks, bosh, can a person who has male genitalia, x y chromosomes, has absolutely no values/archetypes that has ever been associated with any vague definition of women, but takes the name of woman, are they? yes, though i have to say, i have no idea what a human would have to be in order for their behavior, personality to have no overlap with any of the many incompatible, incoherent, and self-contradictory values we associate with what it means to be a woman. they would have to be remarkable. i'm trying to think of like, a, like a male actor. like, even dwayne the rock johnson acts like kindly and charitable sometimes, you know? every time he smiles. well, smiling is considered a feminine characteristic. so, yeah, i don't know. you, you would have to find a brick, you know, like a proper brick. but, you know, god, god bless her, you know, transitioning saved her. you got it.

and with that, want to say folks, we really do appreciate our guests. as i mentioned, you can find their links down below in the description box. that includes if you're listening at the podcast, because we put our guest links in the description box there too. so i want to say one last thank you. it's been a true pleasure for this very cordial, stimulating conversation. vosh and dr. bogardus, it's been a true pleasure. thank you. thank you both. it's been a tremendous pleasure. thank you very much. 100. stick around, folks. i'll be right back with a post-credit scene letting you know about upcoming debates that you don't want to miss. with that, thanks so much. one last time to our guests, and i'll be right back in just a moment.

[music]

[music]

wow, ladies and gentlemen. oh, two seconds. let me just adjust this in here. bear with me. don't worry, i'm still here. you can see my eyes at least. my dear friends, want to say we are thrilled about this debate. it was a total blast. we really do appreciate our guests, for real. the guests are the lifeblood of the channel. and so if you ever wonder if sometimes you're like, james, you know, sometimes you, uh, you know, sometimes you, uh, give someone a, a crude verbal lashing in the live chat if they're dissing one of the speakers hard enough, we understand. it's the internet. so people are going to play rough. that's okay. but once in a while, you know, you'll, i'll say, hey, you know, take it easy. let's not go nuts here. is we do want to say, we hope you respect our guests. we really do. i respect them. i appreciate them. they're coming on here because they just love to debate. seriously. we, we really do appreciate it. and it's a fun time. i always tell them before we go live. i always say, you guys, this puts me in such a good mood. and it really does. like, i really enjoy getting to do this. and that's why we want to make our guests feel welcome because we appreciate them. and so 99.9% of you do a fantastic job of that. i appreciate it so much. so i don't want to just call out the people that are sometimes a little bit over the top. i understand that, you know, passions run wild. and, you know, it's all water under the bridge. we all forget it. but at the same time, i also want to acknowledge, like i said, 99% of you, thank you so much for being pleasant and being reasonable. we appreciate you. and good to see you in the old live chat. i want to say hello to you, nikki. good to see you again. eileen. not caring. glad to have you here. peter zotty. happy to have you with us. odin all farther. glad you're with us. jade mako. happy to have you here. greg jordan. glad you're with us. s d s k l k j d l s s k d d. kind of like sl. thanks so much for being with us. we're glad you're here. joe gravy. glad you are here. and my dear friends, if you did not know, we do have a podcast. did you know that? i'm serious. i'm not making this up. i have been told by so many people because i, i've told you the story many, many times. when i first put episodes on the podcast, which it was about, it was almost exactly, i'm not exaggerating, it was about exactly two years ago. i was like, are people gonna use this? i, i don't know. i was like, i was like, and i felt like an idiot for the longest time because for like two months, it was like, really very few downloads. i was like, i don't know if people are gonna go for this. but now it's been growing so fast. it's up to like an average of 2,400 downloads per debate. if i remember right. no, it's 2,500, which is really fast, i guess, in the podcast world. that's really so people are apparently finding it useful. it's ad-free. so like, we don't make a dime off of the podcast. it's ad-free. so if you're ever on youtube and you're like, these ads. zero on the podcast. do you believe me? not for real. people tell me though. i'm encouraged because they'll say, like, i listened to it. bob, you know, he told me. he said, he's like, you know, james, i, this is my best sideshow nav impression. bob, you know, james, i, uh, yeah, i go to the beach and i'm in my speedo and i'm listening to modern day debate podcasts. i don't know. that's my best. i'm sorry, bob. but i have encouraged. yeah, a lot of people, not just bob at the beach in a speedo, but also people have told me, yeah, what I'm exercising, you know, I go for a jog, I listen to the podcast. it's nice. and, you know, I listen to it on my commute. I don't have to use my wi-fi because I can, or I should say, don't have to use my data because I just download it at home or at the public library, wherever it is. I download it on my phone and then as I commute, I can go for several hours and I've got several debates downloaded, ready to play without using any data because, hey, why not? you know, save on your data. you know, jgmptw, glad to have you here. thanks for dropping in. jeremy wong, we're glad you're here. mr. e, happy to have you back. rockin woodworks, good to see you again. excuse me. butt, glad you are here. says, hmm, passions running wild. it's not what I meant to you, sicko. just lace, thanks for coming by. oh, yes, two, three, says, I always love your post of eight chat. connecting with your audience. thanks for saying that. oh, yes, three, that really means a lot. and I enjoy this. seriously. not only do I enjoy the debates, but I do enjoy the post debates. you can say the post-credit scene. f4 tv, thanks for being here. says, good debate. they were pretty articulate. I agree. they were very articulate. and we really do, like I said, they're linked below. we really do appreciate our guests. it's fun. I love modern day debate. I've told you before, I see myself doing this for the rest of my life. like, I enjoy it that much. like, I just, I'm like, this is fun. it's just like a new way of life. we've done it for about three and a half years. a little bit more than that. we started in September of, was it 2018? it was. yeah, that's crazy. so we're going on four years. we're pretty close. and that's amazing. isn't that amazing? that's so long. but it's just, it's been fun. like, I, I kind of see it now as, like I said, it's just, I just, the way I do life. it's not like, so you can notice, like, we always work on having, whenever a debate happens, we always want to make sure that there's at least one other debate being promoted or, you know, on the page that people can say, okay, there's a future one too, to consider. one of them is at the bottom right of your screen. do you see this? look, I'm pointing to it right now. see that? vosh and alex stein. this is going to be another big one. another fun one. you don't want to miss it. on whether or not it's okay for kids to go to drag queen shows. you don't want to miss it, folks. if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button. and if you also have been living in a cave on mars with your fingers in your ears, we've got to tell you about this other debate. actually, i just put this one up today. so if you haven't heard about it, don't beat yourself up. this one is going to be a juicy one. whether or not there is a respectable version of whether or not christianity is intellectually respectable. that was the exact title that they had agreed on. is dan barker and dr. randall rouser. we've, we're thrilled. dr. rouser, we've had on before. it's always a good time. he's had some great debates with us. it's been a lot of fun to listen to him. and it's also, it's a, we have not had dan barker. you guys probably, i don't know if you know who dan barker is, but dan barker's been around for a long time. he's literally engaged in hundreds of debates. and he's a strong debater. he is a very tough debater. so you don't want to miss that one, for real. you guys, like, this is going to be a really good debate. and we're, you could say that in terms of modern day people. like, i actually looked because i can, in the creator studio, i can look for what people are searching for who watch modern day debate. and one of the most common search phrases was dan barker debates. no joke. and so i was like, i was like, that's right. it's like we haven't had dan barker on. like, what are we doing? so that's going to be a good one. mr. saxakeet, thanks for your super chat. coming in late. says, i appreciate you, james. you do good work and have an awesome project here. hope you're well. dog, thanks so much for that support. seriously, it means a lot. and our project here is, we absolutely are determined to provide a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field. we want it to be fair. and that's something i think everybody agrees with. whether you be politically left, politically right, christian, atheist, or one of the many strange creatures in between. we know that you agree that value, namely fairness, that everybody gets their fair shot, is important. and that's something that we can all get behind. and we appreciate that you guys have gotten behind modern day debate. you guys have supported us so much. and we appreciate that. seriously, it's been so exciting to see the channel grow. not because, like, oh, I'm a numbers person. it's not like that at all. it's because we think of it as channel growth rather than being like a notch on the belt. is influenced in a positive way on youtube and the social media world. namely, that everybody, people are getting a fair shot in the debate world. because i, i will tell you, i used to debate myself. like, i used to go on debate channels. you can see there's also some old debates of me. one, couple of them even in person back when we first started modern day debate. i love debating. i actually enjoy it, to be honest, more than moderating. but i love moderating. and i'm kind of surprised. it's like, well, you know, like, not there aren't a lot of people that are willing to moderate and just do it like as their, their thing. and i'm kind of like, ah, it's like, well, i enjoy it. like, it's true. like, not as much as debating. debating is kind of therapeutic. you get so into it. it's almost like you could forget where you are. you can forget all your problems. it really is like, you kind of experience this flow, as psychologists call it, where time just kind of disappears. it fades away in the background. and you're really, it's fun. but i also do love moderating. and the reason that i say that, though, is because we are excited about this vision. namely, like i said, it's for us a big deal. we're excited about the channel growing because we see it as, hey, we are bringing that vision into reality. namely, like i said, giving everybody a fair shot. and we want to make the world a better. we want to make the world a better place. do you know what I mean? so for example, we did on Saturday. I think it was Saturday. I'm a little bit off today. I'm like, I think I thought I slept fine last night, but I don't think I slept as well as I thought because I'm like, I've been having trouble today, like remembering what day, what day it is and stuff. but I've got to tell you, that's been pretty bad. but I got to tell you this on Saturday, we hosted this debate, which by the way, was like, it was big. I knew it was going to be big, but I, it was like, he's even bigger than I expected. this was between destiny and, uh, his partner, adam, something by partner, amy, debate partner, and they were against jackson hinkle and infrared. it was a big debate. so that one actually has been cruising in terms of it got picked up a little bit by the algorithm. it was like, oh, like, I think it's like, it's, uh, I mean, glad people enjoyed it. and it also raised a significant amount of money for the domestic violence action center. which for us, like I said, that's important to us. we want to do at least one monthly charity stream where we're making a positive difference in the world. where there is a non-partisan charity, such as like, we, I think we've done it before for diabetes research. we've done it before for alzheimer's research. we've done it for creutzfeldt-jakob disease. and we'll do it for other diseases as well. we've also done it for, you know, for orphans, for the worldwide orphans, as the organization. and we always pick a, a charity that has a very high charity watchdog rating. and the reason is, we want to be sure that, you know, whoever we're donating to is that the funds are actually used for what they say that they're going to use them for. and that there's transparency at the organization. and so that's something that I think we all agree on as well. you know, that if we are helping orphans throughout the world, like that's a good thing. and so that's important to us. we really do care about that. and want to say thanks so much for supporting us as we work on that vision. other super chats that I didn't read during the debate because they were just weird. we always want more meaningful questions, but these I appreciate too. that's why I'm going to read them now. woody woodpecker, thanks so much for your super chat. super sticker, I should say, of a banana. I appreciate that. thank you. and thanks for your support, woody. I know, I know that's the thing too. I know in the live chat, we talked about this before, woody. and I'm glad you brought it up. is that sometimes the live chat gets to be, we don't want it to be all sorted out, right? so we do want, we like, I said, we don't want people to be too. there's like, there's a fine line of like, yeah, we know, you know, sometimes people are going to insult the guests. we don't really, we don't want that obviously. but we know it's like, it's the internet. we don't want to, you know, like the, the guests are strong. they're not gonna, you know, cry in their cornflakes over someone calling them, you know, a dummy or something. like, they don't, they don't care. and they've got thick skin. but nonetheless, you know, we do appreciate them. so we want to stick up for them. and likewise, it's like, at the same time, you know, as we talked about, woody, we don't want this chat to be where people feel like they're walking on eggshells, right? we want people to feel like they can say, you know, we want to feel like they have freedom. and that's, that makes it fun, right? is it, you know, you feel like you've got freedom. so I agree with you. we're working on that and finding that fine balance. always, you know, always a work in progress here at modern day debate. we'll admit. I'll be the first to admit. we have things that we can improve on. and we're working on them. and we are getting better. and we're excited about the future. lawson harrison says, thanks for the content, james. just got here. what is the current cope level in chat? that's funny. well, all credit to the guests for the content, which is amazing content. thanks to the guests. this one coming in from coding jesus says, this debate made me want dr. bogardus to be my professor. appreciate that. thanks for your, your positivity toward the guests. and we always like that when we get to say to a guest, you know, you got a fan out there. brenton langell says, let's see. I don't want to read it when it's a challenge to the guests that they're not able to respond to. but I want to see. brenton, if you're still listening, we appreciate your questions. uh, let's see. this, there's, I think there's another. oh, thanks. know your realms is not asking a question, just showing some love. thanks for that. seriously, we appreciate that. and I hope you're doing all right, friend. I know it's been a hard time. so I hope you're all right. seriously. and let's see. albert katstein, glad to have you here. channel 14 news, glad to see you. jimmy lacari says, you are appreciated, james. thank you for having us and for having these debates. even if some are nonsensical. that's what makes freedom of speech great. thank you. I appreciate it. I agree. it's fun. yeah, I mean, like, so shoot me if I like to, you know, a little flat earth debate once in a while. like, it's a, you know, it's kooky. and we like the, the bigfoot debates once in a while. those are actually one of my favorite topics. no joke. bigfoot. I think the classic one that I like the most is still, does god exist? that's a fun topic. I think that in terms of political, this is a fun topic because it got into philosophy. I think this is a, this is a fun topic tonight. and albert katstein, thanks for your heart. zerubbabel squared, thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old live chat. 33 done, thanks for your support of the channel through your channel membership. we do have channel membership, folks. if you want to support the channel, that's one way to do it. they're as cheap as 1.99 for real. so I mean, if you, if you do it, 1.99 and you're like, let's say theoretically, you tried it and you're like, oh, and I forgot to, let's say you're like, ah, you know, I'm just going to try for a month and then you're like, I forgot to turn it off. and you're like, ah, charged me again. it's like, well, it's 1.99. you get the sweet emojis. which let me tell you, I mean, the pleasure that you can get from calling somebody a soy boy, like I'm about to do in the live chat, is, uh, I'm putting diesel or unleaded. is a soy boy. the pleasure that you can get from using those emoticons to mock others in chat, it's worth the 1.99. trust me. but want to say thanks for your support. jimmy licari, as well as grosspattat, good to see you again. al solmo, good to see you again. make it simple, thanks for coming by. we hope you are doing well. christine irvin, glad you are here. we hope that you are doing well. mr. e, thanks for your kind word. says, please pray for me. let god send me a coherent christian that's actually read the bible. I don't know what that means, but we hope you're well. and, uh, happy to pray for you. and andres castanos. I don't know if you mean like to date them or to debate them, but anyway, andres castanos, thanks for coming by. we are glad you were here. as well as anybody in chat that I haven't gotten to say hi to. the strong prevail, glad you're here. why to ronnie, thanks for your kind words. says, james is an ace moderator. I appreciate it. and, you know, it's true. I'll admit, our moderating here is, some people would say, hey, you know, it's pretty, you know, you let the debaters like get away with murder. and that's true. we do. but the reason is, one, is that debaters don't want to have the moderator breathing down their neck, controlling the conversation. now, I'm not saying that every other channel that doesn't moderate like us, because it's true, we're kind of like lightly mod. we like people to have their autonomy. we want them to have their freedom. and so we don't jump in too often. and that's what you should know. if you had in some way, somehow not noticed that is, we like to kind of let people as guests have their freedom. we like to let people in the chat have their freedom. and there are ways we can improve that. we'll be honest. but nonetheless, that's important to us. and some people are like, nope, I want more moderation. and it's like, it's all right. we don't hold it against you. we understand. and the reason is, is because here's one reason. if there are other debate channels, we're actually happy to see them grow. like, we have no grudge or anything. we're not the first debate channel. I, I doubt will be the last debate channel. even though, like I said, I plan on doing this like for the rest of my life. so like, conservative estimate, I mean, who knows? I guess theoretically, I get hit by a bus tomorrow. but, you know, I do plan on doing it for the long run. and if I ever, you know, if something happens to me where I couldn't do it or something, I would probably, I would be pumped to pass it on to somebody else to keep it going. because I just love the vision. I love the purpose. that it's kind of a symbol. this isn't my channel. it's not like the james coons debate show. and not to say that there's anything wrong. if you had, like, you know, like dylan, dylan burns has the hippy dippy, uh, podcast or show. and I'm not trying to knock that at all. like, we get along well with dylan. so like, dylan's helped us a lot in terms of a channel. like, we've, we've gotten to host some cool people that dylan knows in those collab events, like shoe on head and stuff. who, it was like, wow, this is really cool. like, because, you know, we were pumped to host people like shoe and others. and the corn on the cob guy, jake. I like, like. but the point is this, it's a symbol, really. like, modern day debate is, it's like, it's not really a james. it's not like an individual channel. like, it's a symbol. it's like an organization or something. and it is truly, like, whenever I talk to people about modern day debate, I tell them, I'm like, yeah, you know, we're working on this. and we're doing this. and they're like, oh, it's like, you make it sound like it's a team. and I'm like, and they're like, is it like, do you have like employees? and it's like, well, it's not like really employees. like, we've got like people that just kind of like come in. well, in the most obvious sense, the speakers, like, they just love to debate. and they come on freely, you know, they're just like, hey, yeah, sure, it sounds fun. that's an example of where it's like, it's, it's community effort. it's totally a community effort. and we also rely on you, as an example, for the q&a. it couldn't, we couldn't have a q&a if there weren't questions. for real. makes sense, right? so you guys ask questions. that contributes. like, you guys, in a way, your community support, it helps. absolutely. and then, yeah, I've got to tell you, when we've done like those crowd funds, so we can do in-person debates, you guys have helped support that way. you guys have helped support because we usually, for those crowd funds, we throw in a big chunk to get the crowd fund going. and that, you know, funded by super chats. and so when we do that, and we were able to cover speaker's flights, like we did in January. we had our first two-day conference, a debate conference for two days. that's a kind of a big thing, you know, like two days is, it's like, wow, that's kind of a real conference. and so like, a long one. but kind of long compared to a one day. but the point is this, it's a community effort. we've got people, the mods, like sideshow nav, is the head mod. he handles all things mod. so like, if people email me about a moderator question, like the chat moderators in the live chat, I'll be like, you know, we gotta ask bob. it's out of my hands. like, I just trust him with everything because it's just hard for me to like, handle all that when there's already, I'm already like, so far, I'm so behind on emails. and I'm sorry if you're waiting on an email response. I really, I am sorry. I've been meaning to, but it's just hard to get to. andres castano says, hey, james, you should get r raw and t-jump to debate cliff and stuart again. that'd be fun. I'm open to it. I can ask. maybe this summer. stewart has actually just confirmed that he'll be coming on this friday for a tag team debate. by the way, it's not going to be his father, cliff, as his partner, though. it's going to be cinematic psychology. she's her first time here. and she seems to be interested in psychology. she's actually an agnostic. so he's, he's partnering with an agnostic. that makes it interesting because it's like, usually it's two theists against two atheists. this time it's two atheists against an agnostic and a theist teamed up. so that'll be up soon. I'll get that. make it simple says, james, you were born for this. thanks for your kind word. seriously, it really is fun. like, I love doing this. and then dawn starring said, you should be in a debate on this channel. I, I have been before. there, if you look me up. one of my favorites was in person. it was at mankato state, minnesota state, uh, university against august berkshire. an old friend. uh, it was a, in-person debate too. and it was like, the editing was really good. like, you should see it. so if you guys haven't seen that, can I, can I plug my own debate? let me show you guys this. let me put it in chat. okay. where is this? that's as funny as I. like, google my name in, in a modern database. or, uh, I'm like, seeing these videos that I was like, oh, I didn't even know there's these videos were made about me. and they're flattering. well, not all of them, but some of most of them. but that's okay. you know, like, you can't please everybody. that's one thing I believe. but, uh, let me find this. I gotta find this. it doesn't look like me at all. wow. that professor dave debate. professor dave against kent hovind. won that thumbnail was killer, man. that was a good thumbnail. I'm like, man, that was one of my best. I love that thumbnail. holy smokes. but also, sorry, I'm bragging. I'm usually not good at thumbnails. that's why I'm so excited about that. and then, but let me find this. darn it all. I've got to find this. but yeah, we're excited. you guys, if you didn't know it, this debate with vosh and alex stein, I think that is going to be ginormous. that's going to be next tuesday. you guys, seriously, it's going to be awesome. you do not want to miss that. it's going to be epic. so you don't want to miss it. let me just find this really quick. two seconds. I got distracted. I was reading. I was let me hold on. I'm going to show you that in just a second. oyez says, interesting how abraham lincoln is a neutral moderator. thank you very much. appreciate that. and perfect one says, dan barker is deceptively unassuming. he is a very good debater. he is really good. researcher says, james, can you debate me? I'm open to debating in the future. but the topics that I'd want to debate now are different. so now I would like to debate, and no offense, probably not you, because you haven't pissed me off. but I want a debate. so when people are like, uh, modern-day debate is so immoral for hosting this topic or that person, I want to hold. I want to debate on the topic of deplatforming. so that would be fun. that's really fun. but yeah, and, you know, there's different ways of debating. and it's a whole spectrum. there's like, you can debate in the sense of, you know, winning people over where they're kind of like, oh, a humble person, I like that. and then you can, in the more tribalistic way, to especially appease your own base, you can debate in the more straightforward, frankly, more vicious, extremely confident, like pushing it like to the point where it's like inappropriate. as your own, your base will love you for it. but the other side isn't necessarily going to be won over. but hannah anderson, I see there in the live chat. thanks for your support. says, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and push the notification bell. thanks for coming to today's debate. modern day debate appreciates you. and we do appreciate you, folks. bean bang, thanks for coming by. says, can you bring on dr. hugh ross more often? we should. that would be cool. I'm open to that. and I think he's been pretty busy. I think he's actually retiring. did you see that? he's handing over, this kind of, dr. fuzrana will now be at the helm of the ship. so it's, namely, like reasonable reasons to believe is going to be led by fuzzrana. so pretty cool. fuzz has been on here before too. and we, we like both of those guys. we love dr. zweirink as well. and martin kirik, thanks for coming by. I see you there in the live chat. and let's see here. yeah, sorry, I got distracted. let me find this. my name, my last name is james. have you ever changed your mind from listening to these debates? I've changed my mind on arguments. I haven't particularly changed my mind on, like, moving from, like, let's say, politically left to the right or right to the left. like, I'm kind of like, politically, I think you guys know I've talked about it. kind of like, kind of in the more, in the middle. political stuff. I'm like, not as decided. I am. you guys know that I, in terms of my metaphysics, where I stand, I think. but jamie lacari says, are you appreciated? or you are appreciated, james. thank you for your kind words. and then let me get you guys that link, though. you guys, because, yeah, congrats to fuzz rana, indeed. like, that's a pretty big deal. amer akkak, thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old live chat. wonderful world, thanks for coming by. know your realm, thanks for your kind words. very charismatic. I don't know if you're talking about about me or about one of the people I mentioned, but in either case, I appreciate your positivity. because that's one thing I, I do love. is like, you guys are really positive. you guys are really supportive. thank you so much. I'm just, I'm always like, wow, there's so many people that are super supportive of this vision, this endeavor, this goal that we're passionately pursuing. casim free thugger, thanks for coming by. we're glad you're here. and then let me find you. or let me find, uh, andrey said, I meant debate. let me find this. oh, you meant to someone to debate. I, I have to give you the most friendly, gentle, kind of pushback is that, are, are you sure that you're one of those types of people that would concede there are reasonable people on the other side? I only say that because I'm not trying to come down on you. I'm not trying to be mean or anything like that. but like, the one thing I do see on this channel, there's like a spectrum. there are some people who are on the middle and they're like, yeah, I can concede. a lot of people out there that disagree with me, they're reasonable, they're intelligent, you know, they're sophisticated, they're coherent, blah, blah. and then there are some who are like, no, none of them are on the opposite side of the spectrum. and then, you know, and then there's all shades of gray in between, right? it's like, all these gradations of how charitable you are to the other side. you may be of the type, and I don't know for sure, I only, you know, but you may be of the type that like, is like, no, I don't think any of them are rational. I can tell you that. I, let's see. I don't know. it just might. you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not saying it's the case. I'm just saying, is it, is it the case? rigged election 2020, thanks for coming by. glad you're here. I will probably get demonetized for even reading your name, but, uh, that's funny. and, uh, let's see. excuse me. but thanks for coming by, as well as xx wlzx. have you thought about the amber heard versus johnny depp topic? yes, we have. we tried to set it up, but it fell through last week. might happen this saturday, but I don't know. alex is hurt a doe, thanks for coming by. I see you there. mr. e, good to have you. leandro ramirez says, debate owen measurement to deplatforming. you'll be surprised. thanks for that idea. we've, uh, somebody I've wanted to have on and we just haven't had on yet. but let me get you that chat. that debate. I've gotta, like I said, I'm not joking. you guys, you guys, my hair in this looks ridiculous, but I'll show you. oh, yeah, yeah, like I made this thumbnail too. yeah, always have to say, sorry. oh, man, I just, what was with my hair? why was I doing that? but, uh, let me show you guys this. this is the olden days, you guys. if you want to see me. so this is no joke. I'm gonna put this in the live chat. this, this was me. how many years ago was this? uh, this was in 2014. so eight years ago. eight years ago. whoa. you guys check that out. I'm pinning this to the top of the chat. so because you guys might be wondering, you're like, oh, james, have you debated before? that was one of my, I think that was my second in-person, maybe third. I think it was my third in-person debate with good old august berkshire. and august is a good friend. and so, yeah, I liked august a lot. yeah, I was like, my facial hair. I had kind of like the designer beard going on. that was kind of a beard. I don't know. it was weird. I think I thought that was a beard back then, but it's not a beard like this. like, I like this beard a lot more. but yeah, the funny thing is, I, I think I used to think of that as beard. what was my hair though? if you guys are watching this, this link that I just put in the chat of myself, I'm like, what is going on? like, why do I look, why did I have it like coming out at the front and all weird like that? and that was just strange. but that was a fun debate. yeah, and august, like I said, I, it's like, august is, I just kind of, I always loved his, his easy-going style. and he's just, he's fun. like, he's just kind of has this kind of dry sense of humor. I just always liked, uh, and, you know, I, I still see him post on facebook. and I just, I just, yeah, I like him. but anyway, derpenheimer, glad you're here. she says, what a coward. who's a coward? rigged election 2020 says, thanks for holding these debates. my pleasure. we appreciate that. dante's guide, good to see you. says, hey, what's up, guys? glad you're here, dante's guide. and yeah, it also, like I said, I really can't believe that was me. so what was I? I was just a spring chicken. I think I might, I almost look older now because I'm not as fat as I was then. I'm not, I mean, I wasn't that fat, but anyway. let's see. hannah anderson says, wow, that was a while ago. the hair. yeah, I know. I'm like, oh, that was weird. why? I guess that was cool back then, guys. I'm a boomer. but let me, uh, let's see. theo says, james, have you ever thought about debating someone yourself on this channel? I have. no joke. there are old debates of me debating like jared and t jump. and trying to remember some of the other people that I had debated. there were probably like, maybe three or four different people that had debated on this channel in the remote style. so it was, it was not in person because this. and they're from just a few years ago. the one that I posted from 2014, I'm like, holy smokes, I can't believe it's been almost 10 years. but yeah, I loved, yeah, debating is fun. but want to say thank you guys for all of your support. I hope you guys have a great rest of your night. it's getting late here. I should get ready for bed soon. I've got to wash off this lotion. it's very, it's got a powerful scent. it's almost pungent. it's very strong. and I have to wash this off before I go to bed. so I want to say thanks, guys, for your support. seriously, you guys make this fun. you know, it was so hard for me to go. but, uh, yeah, I am not joking that we've got a lot of epic debates coming up. as I mentioned, this one, I'm excited for. both this one on the bottom right that we were showing with dan barker and randall rouser, as well as this one that you can now see in the bottom right of your screen. vosh and alex stein. you don't want to miss that. dave gar says, I missed the arnold schwarzenegger soundboard. I also missed this debate. watch it later. that's funny. dave gar. diesel or unleaded. did you see, hear that? we used to, as a joke, we used to like have a soundboard that I would sometimes hit the button for. and I can still do it. it's pretty fun. like, I, the truth is, like, arnold soundboard, I, I think it's super fun. but I would do it. and then, but eventually, we got to the point where, like, uh, at least if I was using it during the debates, it just didn't seem super professional. so I stopped doing it. but we can do it in the post-credits scene. that's for sure. absolutely. yeah, let me find this. that soundboard's pretty slow. it takes like 8,000 years for the sound to come out. so let me find a quicker, quicker one. realm of darkness is always. you can always count on them for a good soundboard. but let's see. thanks for your kind words. nikki says, blessings, james. appreciate that. thanks so much. martin kirik says, hello. and let's see here. thanks for your kind words. coffee mom says, no, you hang up first. I know. it is just like that. and hello, cutie pie. then yes, this is so. look what we have here. this is so fun. I want to know what's going on. and I want to know right now. diesel or unleaded. I don't know if you're listening to this, but yes, we can play this game. wake up. wake up. come on. wake up. this is fun. but let me see here. excuse me. I have a few more questions. if you don't mind. I need to speak to my wife. where is she? don't call anybody. I'll call you back. yummy. look, god's stomach. here it comes. you should not drink and bake. oh, yeah. this is fun. I've always, you guys, I don't know if you know. I'm not kidding. well, yeah, it was cringe if it was during the debate, but it's not cringe if it's during the post-credits scene, then it's fun. but yeah, I, I thought it was hilarious. and the, but yeah, but yeah, so, oh, yeah, says, you need a jesse lee peterson one. let me find it. don't worry. there is one out there. you guys have heard that one too. jesse of the peterson soundboard. there, there certainly is. let me just play this because I'm having fun here. I'm just enjoying myself. is this it? no, that, that can't be it. amazing. are you a beta male? interested. [music] at your interesting. do you know right from wrong? amazing stuff. express yourself. I am an oreo cookie. white on the inside, black on the outside. I'm black. I'm white. a mug. I'm down. isn't that amazing? because he's a white man. a [ __ ] maker. do you love black people? so that's great. I have a base. take something that's going to be offensive. uh, but I have to say it, though. ah, let's do it another time. I'm kind of tired. I want to say thank you, guys. uh, let's see. I, I can't just introduce it and then not say it. I'll tell you. chris patek, good to see you in the live chat. mr. e, glad you were here as well as c d. thanks for coming by. and gregory abuja, here, abuja keon, thanks for coming by. says, where's get to the japa? yeah, that's strangely. it's not always as available as you'd think on those soundboards. and then stupid [ __ ] energy says, amazing. thanks for your support. appreciate that. and yeah, let's see. dave garc says, wow, that got a bit personal. what was it that I said? I can't remember. oh, my base take. nah, yeah, we'll save it for next time. you guys can ask me next time, like, james, what was your take that was going to offend everybody? so want to say thanks, everybody. I hope you guys are having a great rest of your night. it's getting late here. I should get ready for bed soon. I've got to wash off this lotion. it's very, it's got a powerful scent. it's almost pungent. it's very strong. and I have to wash this off before I go to bed. so I want to say thanks, guys, for your support. seriously, you guys make this fun. you know, it was so hard for me to go. but, uh, yeah, I am not joking that we've got a lot of epic debates coming up. as I mentioned, this one, I'm excited for. both this one on the bottom right that we were showing with dan barker and randall rouser, as well as this one that you can now see in the bottom right of your screen. vosh and alex stein. you don't want to miss that. dave garc, thanks for your super chat. says, have a coffee on me. thanks, brother. I appreciate that. seriously, that means a lot. that is amazing. so thank you, guys. I hope you have a great rest of your night. it's always fun. and we'll catch you on the next one. we have one for this friday. I have, I have to get the event up. but yeah, we do have one for this friday. maybe for this saturday. but for sure for next tuesday, we've got vosh, as I mentioned, coming back with alex stein. and then wednesday, we've got, uh, oh, we got monday. we got dan barker and randall rouser. that's going to be good. and man, we got a lot of cool stuff. so thanks, guys, for your support. we're excited about the future. our future is bright. we're going to do big things. this is only the beginning of our story here at modern day debate. so thank you, guys. join us while we are small. we are only just beginning right now. so thanks, everybody. and we'll see you at the next one. take care. amazing. are you being a male? amazing. vader. and so get it off your chest. I absolutely appreciate it. president trump. that's great. father messiah. can you imagine? you're on the air, sir. an evil woman. there's no proof of that. black as the ace of spades. what am I lying about? she is a lesbian. all this work, sir. how are you rebuilding the man? mamma mia.