This week I did a simulcast episode with Damir and Shadi that will also air on their own podcast, Wisdom of Crowds. We discussed and debated the resilience of American democracy in this fraught time — with some sharp disagreements. (You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to two excerpts from my long conversation with Damir and Shadi — on Trump’s missed opportunities to become a dictator; and on the current dangers of authoritarianism — head to our YouTube page.)Looking back at our popular episode with Dana Beyer, a reader writes:I learned so much from this conversation. The information about how a trans individual can be created due to pre-natal pharmacological interference was extremely useful. Beyer’s point that we’re introducing all sorts of endocrine disrupters into the gestational process is really important. We’re imposing all sorts of problems on fetuses that cause lifelong suffering (another example is learning disabilities). This needs to be considered seriously.On a personal note, I would have liked a bit more discussion of the David Reimer case and John Calapinto’s book about Reimer, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as A Girl — which is a different matter, though aligned of course. It’s also a cautionary tale about therapeutic arrogance and its horrific consequences.Another reader:Regarding your guest post by Katie (I’m a huge fan and a BARpod subscriber) and your convo with Dana, it’s so refreshing to hear an honest conversation about the limits of trans ideology and how it relates to how trans people view themselves and the world. I am trans myself, but only at the very beginnings of my journey (okay maybe a bit further than the beginning), and a major stumbling block for me has been my dissent from the dominant narratives of transness:Identifying as a womanBorn in the wrong bodyTrans women are biological womenTrans women have always been womenThose narratives (while surely helpful for some) just strike me as unscientific or grossly essentialist. If you “identify as a woman” and what you identify with is clothes, social roles or behaviors, what does that mean for biological women who don’t identify with those things? How can I as a trans person stake a greater or equal claim to womanhood based on those things?For me, gender is inextricably related to sex; it is how humans signal sex to prospective mates. As a trans person, desire to physically transition requires a belief in the binary in order for that desire to make sense. If the binary isn’t real, what’s the need to change? It’s simply dishonest for me to deny I am biologically male and experience dysphoria since that is exactly what I am. Asking 99 percent of the populace to change its metaphysical understanding of sex and gender to accommodate a very small minority is crazy when there’s no need to do so to ensure trans people are treated with dignity and respect.Another reader touches on a super controversial topic: I attended a panel discussion in 2015, the 40th and final year of the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. It was a panel of detransitioners. Many openly discussed transitioning to avoid the onslaught of unwanted male attention (for many before they were able to understand it, buffer themselves from it, or reject it). Abigail Shrier discusses this, explaining that many of the “transmen” she interviewed had no real desire to be cis men, as much as a desire to not be read as women. They saw being read as male in the public sphere as a way to escape the sexualized response to their existence. Many had already lived through sexual trauma, assault, rape.Another trans reader:There are so many great things in your conversation with Dana Beyer that make this something I want to share with other people in my life who maybe don’t entirely understand “the trans issue”, or conflate it with the whole non-b