#132 James Esses: Is Gender Ideology Harming Children?

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James Esses is a psychotherapist and former Childline volunteer who was expelled from his degree and blacklisted by his profession for opposing gender ideology. He now works with young people suffering from gender dysphoria and is one of the UK’s most articulate defenders of reality, safeguarding and children’s rights.

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• Transcript

  Peter McCormack

  I don't think we've made a show in detail covering the trends topic. We've covered it in various shows. We've talked about it with various people, but never kind of in detail. What's your lucky day? Well, I've got, look, I've got loads of questions, quite an empathetic individual on certain topics, and it's just not something I I know enough about, and you know a lot more than me. So I've got a lot of questions, where are we right now? And with this topic, because it feels like nature is healing in certain areas, with what's happened with the International Olympic Committee and certain things. But I suspect this is a topic where there are sinister things that happen in the background that we're not really aware of.

  James Esses

  Well, quite right. I mean, people thought that when the Supreme Court, you know the highest court in the land, ruled that sex means biological sex, that was it right that this stuff was going to disappear and society would go back to a state of equilibrium. And we're many months on now from that judgment, and nothing could be further from the truth. It's business as usual as far as the trans agenda is going, children still been indoctrinated in schools, still receiving dangerous cross sex hormones, been put on waiting lists for surgical mutilation. Men are still accessing female toilets. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it's as bad as it ever was. More people are talking about it now, but the issue still remains the exact same.

  Peter McCormack

  More people can openly talk about it now as well. Yes, I think, I think at least we've crossed into that area where people can break cover, who are public, who are not necessarily getting canceled for it. Now, not everybody.

  James Esses

  Well, you say that, and I have to be careful about revealing confidential material, but I get contacted all the time by people who are still being threatened or actually canceled from their jobs for speaking out about these things. In fact, I spoke to somebody recently who was fired because she dared to put some stickers on a locker, saying what a woman was. So yes, it's slightly safer and there's a bit more strength in numbers, but people are still losing the jobs and livelihoods over this stuff, over saying what a woman is. I mean, you know, in 2025

  Peter McCormack

  you have trans patients, you have people you deal with. So as a topic, this isn't going to go away. There are always going to be people of all ages who feel like maybe they're in the wrong body. We had when I was younger. We just We had people cross dressing. That was a thing publicly as well. But it's not going to go away. So how as a society are we meant to understand this topic and deal with it.

  James Esses

  Well, mental ill health will never completely disappear, but I do think

  Peter McCormack

  so you consider this a mental condition 100% okay, yes.

  James Esses

  And I think part of the problem is that it's been now characterized as an identity, as a choice. You know, children have been taught in schools that we've all got this innate gender identity within us, and you can pick whatever you like, and it can change from even hour to hour or minute to minute. Whereas I'm saying and actually this is classified as a mental health condition, and we don't treat mental health conditions by affirming the delusion that the person believes in we engage in exploration and trying to bring a person back to a state of reality, because you can't choose your sex. Sex is binary and immutable. That's just the end of it. And some people say, well, it's not very kind to say. That. But actually, as a psychotherapist, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and affirming people's delusions is not kind at all. So I think that's only part of it, though, right? Because we've had, as I said, schools indoctrinating children. We've had big corporations pushing this in their advertising, a lot of people profiting off this as well, and so that's why I think you've seen a spike in the numbers of children coming out and saying they're trans. It's not because this was hidden in them all along, and now they feel safe enough to come out. It's because now it's seen as a kind of an option for some it's actually a bit of a trend and a fad.

  Peter McCormack

  Well, I took my daughter to a emo concert. Wouldn't see a band called pierce the veil. We both like there were a lot of trans kids there. It's kind of obvious. You can tell, not in every scenario, and maybe I would have picked wrong, but it seemed like there were a lot of trans kids there. And we also went to the Download Festival, and there were a lot of trans kids at the Download Festival. It seems like this is a bit of a safe place within the heavy metal emo world for kids who are identifying as trans. And so what I wanted to ask you really then is, what is your approach when you have a patient is probably going to be very different from maybe who Ben Leo interviewed, which we saw on GV news today.

  Unknown Speaker

  Yes, Dr Helen Webber Lee,

  James Esses

  I mean, the fact that she can even use the title Doctor, I think, is an utter disgrace. I mean, she's been poisoning the minds and bodies of children for years. But is

  Peter McCormack

  there a central, kind of medical thesis for this? And I'm pretty sure if I've got arthritis in my shoulder, there's different ways this can be treated. And I'm pretty sure if I had some form of psychosis, there's certain approved ways to treat it, and heart it all different conditions. Is there a centrally agreed from the NHS, way of treating this?

  James Esses

  Well, unfortunately, not. I mean, this is part of the problem, because under the NHS, and we saw this in the Tavistock clinic, you know, children were being given puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, then put on waiting lists for surgical interventions. Whereas my view and the view of many of my colleagues, and the view that came from the independently commissioned caste review that the government put out a couple of years ago is that explorative therapy and simply the passage of time is how this issue resolves itself, because in the vast majority of children who have gender dysphoria, if they simply Wait a few years it will pass because, I mean, puberty is an uncomfortable time for many. I'm sure we can both think back to that. Yeah, I think particularly so for young girls, but for young boys as well, right? And I'm sure there were points in our puberty and that of our classmates that if we were told her, there's a silver bullet here, don't worry, you don't have to go through that puberty. Now, some might have taken it, but you grow through it, you overcome it, as we do with everything in life, and you move on. So this was traditionally called watchful waiting. That's what parents were simply advised to do. Do nothing, and it will, in all likelihood, resolve itself. But now we've got this medicalization of completely normal and natural feelings. And I say this to my clients who say to me that they hate their bodies, and I'm dealing with teenagers here, 1314, 15 year olds, I say to them, okay, well, you could go down a route of taking hormones for the rest of your life, which could leave you with serious physiological health conditions, and then you could go and get some parts of your body surgically amputated. Yeah, that's one option, or there is another option, which is that you and I work together to explore where these feelings have come from, and see if we can get you to place where you can accept yourself as you are. That's my model, and it's the same model I use for any other form of mental ill health or dissatisfaction in one's life or one's body.

  Peter McCormack

  So what is success for you when you are treating somebody well?

  James Esses

  I view transitioning as a form of self harm. Okay, so I don't view it any differently, actually, to a client who comes to me and says they're cutting the wrists. So do I want my clients going down irreversible medical Pathways because they're unhappy in the bodies? No, I don't. But equally, it's not my decision. I'm not there to tell them what to do, either. I'm not there to exert pressure on them. I'm simply there to explore, empathize, look at what the options are, try and get to the bottom of what's going on. You know? So for me, if one of these teenagers can finish therapy with me and say, Actually, I'm more accepting of myself and my body. I mean, that's that's all I can really ask for, and it doesn't need to be perfection either. We've all got insecurities. You know? I don't need my clients to be waking up in the morning looking at themselves in the mirror and thinking, God, I'm beautiful. Do you know we don't, we don't need that. But actually, children have been taught these days that if there's the slightest imperfection, we've got a pill or surgical procedure for that, there's an overlap with the plastic surgery that plastic surgery industry, because I have clients who come and hate the bodies, not because they think they're in the wrong sex, but because they just think they're ugly, because human beings are insecure, by our very nature.

  Peter McCormack

  Yeah, do you? Do you lose patients along the way who you cannot convince you may go to seek treatment elsewhere.

  James Esses

  Well, here's the thing, because a lot of my teenage patients are referred to me by their parents, because the parents are concerned they don't know where else to turn to. And some of these teenagers Google me beforehand and form a view that I'm there to try and stop them from being what they want to be. And some of them have, in our first session, accused me, for example, of being a conversion therapist, which I'm not. And I don't work with those clients for obvious reasons. You know, I only work with people who want to work with me.

  Peter McCormack

  Yeah. God. What a tricky subject. So with everything you know now, let me ask you this differently, are there any other conditions where the options appear to be almost political?

  James Esses

  No, because generally we have a safeguarding first approach in terms of medical interventions, in terms of the legal position. So for example, there is a mental health condition called body integrity identity disorder, and this is where people have a desire to have one of their limbs or a part of the body removed. People literally say that I feel like my right leg doesn't belong to me, I wanted to be amputated. And you know what we don't do in the NHS? We don't go and cut it off. What we do is give those people therapy because they're not well. Similarly forms of eating disorder. You know, a client might come and say to me, I think I'm really fat. I need to lose weight. The treatment on the NHS is not liposuction, it's therapy. Again, this is the only mental health condition that we treat through irreversible medicalization and surgery.

  Peter McCormack

  How have we got to this point then? Because we've normalized it. Is it cowardice? That's

  James Esses

  part of it. There are a lot of cowards. Out there who don't want to put their head above the parapet. But equally, there's a big profit to be spun on this. I mean, if you look on some of the websites of the private clinics offering these gender affirmation procedures in the UK, I mean, they're charging a hell of a lot of money. What kind of what kind of money are we talking about? 1000s upon 1000s for procedures. The consultations alone run into the many hundreds. And because NHS waiting times for gender clinics have been so long, they can capitalize on that anyway. So there's a lot of money to be made. I think there's a lot of evil people out there. We spoke about Helen Webber Lee, yeah.

  Peter McCormack

  Okay, so there we go. Consultation. 250, follow up.

  Unknown Speaker

  125, little cheek enhancement. There just 9000 pounds, yeah,

  Peter McCormack

  facial feminization. Oh, so, I mean, I just thought of the other things, like the removal of the breasts, the removal of other things, 31 grand for that gender, penile scrotal. What is a penile scrotal? Flat technique is that removal of the penis and yes, 31,000 have that remove. Collovaginoplasty. 34,000 is that Pope? Is that the next thing? Or is it an alternative? Is that having a vagina that is making a kind of a vision general surgery varies depending on individual needs. Clitoroplasty, cosmetic Jesus, that's up, yeah. So a patient could be worth 10s of 1000s of pounds.

  Unknown Speaker

  And these people are sales salesmen.

  Peter McCormack

  How do you think about this? With regards to adults?

  James Esses

  I'm against it, which is controversial among some, and I generally believe in freedom of autonomy, but again, I don't want to allow state sanctioned harm. So actually, I'm working on a paper at the moment which is going to be proposing criminalization of all sex reassignment surgery, including for adults. Okay, yeah, that's a big step. It is but we do that for other things. For example, female genital mutilation is a criminal offense, equally, forms of extreme body modification. I don't know if you saw in the news couple of months. Ago, but this chap who's cutting off people's ears and things like that, yeah, on their request, yeah, he's been jailed. And because we don't allow that type of body modification, and yet, we currently allow people to have their genitals or breasts amputated, that makes no sense to me. It's not legally coherent,

  Peter McCormack

  but you don't, but you don't see a difference between a child and an adult on this issue at all?

  James Esses

  Well, I do see an issue in the sense that children are generally more vulnerable, and the kind of things being offered to children, puberty blockers, cross sex elements and all the rest of it means that before they're even at an age in which they can vote in an election, they may already be sterilized. So there is a difference in that respect. But generally speaking, no, because, as I said at the beginning, I view this as a mental illness. So it doesn't really matter to me whether you're a child or an adult. People should not have the capacity. People do not have the capacity, and people should not be allowed to consent to having healthy parts of

  Peter McCormack

  their body amputated. Well, we try and protect our children in a number of ways, voting when they're old enough, smoking, vaping, drinking, gambling, we encourage them. I think it's you have to say in school till you're 18 now. But on the Ben Leo interview, he asked about the age of puberty blockers. And she said, Well, when puberty starts. And he said, What so nine, and she said even eight, so an eight year old can be given puberty blockers. It seems a bit fucking insane. I find this whole thing insane.

  James Esses

  Oh, it's completely fucking insane. And I'm dealing with this day in, day out, and I still can't believe that we as a society have done this. An eight year old can't even open a bank account, they can't even have a Facebook account, and yet they can put themselves on a pathway towards sterilization. I mean, this, for me, is the most disgraceful thing in the Western world. have pubesie blockers, then you can have cross x hormone, so that's going to be testosterone or estrogen, Although you can be put on the waiting list, okay, children can go on the waiting list for that, but it's we've seen from the research that it tends to be a slippery slope. Anyway, you started the path. Yes, the vast majority of children that go on puberty blockers go on to take cross sex hormones. So this bullshit saying, Oh, it's not harmful. It just gives that child a time to think. It's very rare for a child to go back on that.

  Peter McCormack

  Okay, let's work through this. So firstly, puberty blockers, what damage do they do?

  James Esses

  Well, there's the physiological element, and then there's the kind of social and cultural element. I mean, you know, in its most obvious form, that child is not going through puberty, right? So while all of its classmates are growing up and going through the changes, the puberty brings vocal changes, height changes, all the rest of that. This that kid is kind of like trapped in a stays of limbo, almost. And if you progress straight from puberty blockers to cross sex hormones, then you will be sterilized. Because, again, as Webber Lee pointed out, you mean you can go on this stuff before you've even hit puberty.

  Peter McCormack

  So if you start on the puberty blockers about what age? So you start on the puberty blockers at, say, 10. What age might you be put on cross sex hormones

  James Esses

  in your mid teens, usually, but there's no, there's no hard and fast rule with that. And there are private clinics now offering this to young kids. I think generally it's probably around the age of 16, but it can be younger as well, and those essentially cement this in place, because you're going to then go through all of the changes, physiologically speaking, that the other sex is meant to go through, but that can bring with it serious health issues. For example, you know, testosterone in large quantities, not it's not very good for people, particularly if they're not the body doesn't naturally produce it. So there's been research to show that girls who are put on testosterone have a much higher rate, for example, of heart problems, heart attacks, and there's issues for men taking estrogen as well. So these things are not without risk. And all the while, it's affirming to this person that they are on some journey towards becoming the other sex, which we know is not true, because it's not possible to change your sex.

  Peter McCormack

  So the journey of affirmation itself is just a very dangerous journey. And if they've started that journey for them, I guess within their there's a time in the future they've put a birthday, or an 18th birthday, where they can consider the surgery. And if you're able to ban the surgeries for adults, then perhaps a large number of these won't start that journey.

  James Esses

  Well, I hope so. And I was campaigning do. For a number of years, along with many others, to try and ban puberty blockers, which the government technically did, but now there's going to be a clinical trial of puberty blockers, in which potentially unlimited numbers of children can sign up to this trial and B test subjects, yeah, guinea pigs. Even though the government themselves said this is an exact quote, that there is an unacceptable safety risk with puberty blockers. I'm ready with the legal team to take a judicial review as soon as this is announced formally and commissioned, because enough children have suffered as is. I mean, the thought that any more children, under the guise of a clinical trial, will be put on this pathway is sickening and here's how they'd look if humans vanished. because the future depends on it.

  Peter McCormack

  How did you end up here? Because this is not how your career started.

  James Esses

  No, I envisage an easy life, to be honest. Well, I was, I was in the civil service, actually, up until a few years ago, and working in law and crime and justice. But I started volunteering at Childline, which is the Helpline at the NSPCC, and I decided that's what I wanted to do. So I thought, Okay, I'll swap career. And I started to train as a psychotherapist. But during this time, this is now going back five, six years ago, I started to see more and more of this trans related business. I started have more children come through to me on the Childline phones telling me they were trans. So I started to read up on this. I very quickly became extremely concerned. I found a group of like minded trainee and qualified therapists who shared my concerns, and we started to try and mount a bit of a pushback from the therapeutic profession, which has kind of allowed much of this to happen. And that led to my own cancelation. I was, I was kicked off my course, my master's degree. I was, I was kind of excommunicated from the therapeutic community. Had to fight litigation for a number of years. Why? What was their reason to kick you off? They said that I brought them into disrepute because I put out a petition to the government asking them not to go ahead with this ban on conversion therapy, because that would essentially prevent myself and my colleagues from doing anything other than affirming these children into transitioning.

  Unknown Speaker

  They brought themselves into disrepute.

  James Esses

  Yeah, I didn't even have a hearing. They expelled me over an email, which they only do. I looked in their policies afterwards. They do that if someone's been accused, for example, of sexually assaulting a colleague on campus or defrauding the university. But my petition was deemed serious enough to warrant summary expulsion. So I just received an email one day, and that was it. My email address isn't blocked, and I never had another piece of correspondence with them again.

  Peter McCormack

  Was that? Was it legal for them to do that?

  James Esses

  Well, I took them to the employment tribunal on the grounds of discrimination against my beliefs, and they settled out, of course, quite rightly, because I think they would have gotten spanked very badly if we'd gone all the way. So I got a statement out of them apologizing, saying it should never have happened and all the rest of it. But I suspect if we'd gone all the way, the ruling would have gone against them. But no, they can't do that. I mean, they literally kicked me out because they didn't like my beliefs.

  Peter McCormack

  But that's a large professional cost you've had to pay, and I'm sure financially, that became very difficult, and a lot of social pressure has come with that. Well, I've certainly made a lot of enemies and lost a lot of friends,

  James Esses

  because we live in this world of kind of hashtag Be kind, you know. And some people there, some people there, some people I used to know and used to be good friends with. Don't think I'm a particularly nice person now, because I refuse to go along with this nonsense. But I don't. I mean, that's the price I've got to pay, ultimately, cost wise. I mean, I was very lucky to be able to crowdfund my litigation, just members of the public, 1000s of them, donating, so that, you know, I'll be forever grateful for that. But no, I couldn't have afforded it by my afforded it by myself, and it's made entering the therapy profession and setting up my own practice far more difficult. And you know, people can contact me via my website, but I'm forever getting quasi death threats and abuse and people trying to book, you know, fake sessions and troll me and. So this is, this is the world I'm living in now, and it's a shame, like I just wanted to keep my head down, ultimately, and get the qualification start practicing. But actually, this issue was far too important to do nothing about.

  Peter McCormack

  So going back to the state of where we are at the moment with this, are we kind of in a weird Limbo in that it kind of feels like things have shifted back to a bit more of a kind of rational space where, yes, we can discuss this publicly. It's a little bit easier, more known, famous people have broken cover and not supported this nonsense. But is the government? Is the government essentially trying to walk a tightrope with this, when really they should be taking a very firm position with this. Are they trying to make a political decision rather than an ethical decision?

  James Esses

  Well, up until, I think only a few months ago, our prime minister thought a woman could have a penis, so that tells you the state of play of British politics at the moment. Does he still think that? Has he changed his mind? I mean, he changes his mind like the wind blows. So God knows what he thinks, but I'd say, I'd say he probably still thinks what he always did, but now he's just trying to play a strategic game. But you see this come out in other members of the cabinet. I mean, I mean, I sent someone along to do an undercover recording of Wes streeting speaking at a kind of health conference. And he was there throwing about all the jargon, trans woman and trans man. And he was saying he's, he's really wanting the puberty blocker trial to move on even quicker. And I don't trust them as far as I could throw them. And so we need a government that is actually going to do something serious about this, like what we saw Donald Trump doing when he came in and, you know, some of the executive orders that he put out. I mean, that is what we need here in the United Kingdom, but we're a long way off that.

  Peter McCormack

  Is there anyone politically that is kind of ringing this bell? I know Liz truss has

  James Esses

  some in the Conservative Party have been very good about it, including Kemi Badenoch. I collaborated with her a number of years ago on this issue, and she's been consistent throughout in terms of championing, well, women's rights, but also child safeguarding. And a number of others in the Conservative Party have too reform. A lot of their figures are also seemingly doing the same.

  Peter McCormack

  So it's only going to come from a conservative, right leaning government.

  James Esses

  Yes, because Zach Polanski, we know what he thinks. He's a lunatic. He is a lunatic. And I think I sent him a message recently offering him some free therapy, actually, because I would really like to have him as my patient, but yeah, Polanski, Ed Davey, much the same. He, he believes that you can change sex, and there's no issue with that. So yeah, it's always going to have to come, unfortunately, from the right wing.

  Peter McCormack

  I wonder if, I wonder if they really believe these ideas, or they fear not publicly supporting these ideas, costs and votes. I suspect it's more the latter. I mean, there is

  James Esses

  a lot of social pressure to conform to this stuff, right? Because maybe less so these days. But terms like transphobe, they get turf. These things stick, and nobody wants to be publicly shamed in that way, and a few very high profile people have been badly burned in the past when they did try and speak out against this. So yeah, I think some of them don't want to be labeled. I mean, it's not dissimilar to the whole piece around being labeled as a racist. These days, if you talk about immigration, it's the same thing, and people have taken kind of cowardly decisions off the back of that.

  Peter McCormack

  I think it's slightly different, yeah, because I'm a conservative and I've been called a racist and a fascist and far right, and I'm like, I would defend it and say why I'm not if I got called a transphobe, I just almost laugh. What are you on about? You talking about?

  James Esses

  I hear that. But as said, I mean, a lot of people have lost a lot for being labeled as a transphobe. So I look, I would try and laugh it off as well and view it as lunacy. But things travel so fast these days, and the way social media is and that pile on that someone can experience. And you know, that's why a lot of people, a lot of kind of big voices still on social media speaking out against gender ideology, still do so behind a pseudonym, that people are still afraid to speak out

  Peter McCormack

  on this. Yeah, and I think, I think it's, it's a lot more difficult if you're in the world of media, music, you know, acting, this is certain professions. I think it's a lot more difficult to maybe talk about this the way you will, even if you believe it, because it's a, certainly a left leaning industry, these tend to be left leaning industries. But I think there's very little excuse. If you're a politician or if you're working, especially if you're working in the medical profession, you should understand you. What it is you're contributing to here. I thought your point when you discussed any teachers promoting this should be struck off, and any doctors enabling medical intervention should be jailed. And I guess the question is, do we need to go very hard against this as a society, fully reject it, not entertain the debate with any of the activists and start prosecuting and punishing people in a position of power that have had this, have supported this, yes, crazy world. And is that even possible?

  James Esses

  I think we should. I think, I think we have to, actually, people need to pay for the harm that's been caused to these children. You know, most people might only read on this issue in the newspaper, whatever, but I'm seeing day in day out, the damage that this does. You know, I hear stories of boys and girls and people in the young in their early 20s, who were promised that this was going to be the answer to all their problems. I mean, there's one individual in particular, a D transitioner, who woke up after had his penis removed, and he said instantaneously he felt regret and he couldn't believe, and he said he couldn't believe what he had done to himself, but actually, in my mind, it's what other people allowed him to do to himself, and I can't even imagine the physical and emotional turmoil that someone like that will have to go through for the rest of their days. Our medical profession exists to do no harm, and they've been actively propagating harm. So on that basis, the individuals who have been engaging with this, performing these surgeries, prescribing these hormones, must be punished.

  Peter McCormack

  And then that would mean a lot of people we would lose from the profession, potentially.

  James Esses

  I don't care. Yeah, I really don't care. How can you trust a doctor's ethics if they're willing to go along with this? Same for the teachers. I mean, a teacher's job is to teach impartially, not to indoctrinate their pupils. But again, I get sent things day in, day out, of non binary teachers coming in, male teachers, but who identify as non binary coming in, wearing dresses, demanding that the class don't call them Mr. But call them mix MX. This is literally like CO opting children into their fantasy or fetish, and it flies in the face of what education is meant to be. I mean, parents used to be able to trust that their kids could go to school and have a decent education. They don't trust it anymore. More and more parents I speak to are homeschooling their kids because they do not trust that they're not going to be fed ideology every day.

  Peter McCormack

  Well, there's indoctrination at all levels in schools now, yeah. We saw about Orion publish Orion schools were teaching kids Reform Party of fascists, which is, obviously, that's not impartial teaching. I don't know, man, when I sent my kids to school is older now, but I kind of wanted them to teach them about dinosaurs and weather systems and fractions, not, uh, gender ideology. I did was it, did they do it at school with you at all? Con, it didn't And I happened, I know it happened with my daughter, because they had, she came home once and said, We can only say person with a penis. And they have got a dei officer. And I was like, What the fuck are we doing here? How we what? Where's it all come from? And so far, like, how's it happened so quick?

  James Esses

  Well, that's the thing. And I do have to take my hat off to these organizations and individuals have been pushing this stuff because they played it very well, like Stonewall, for example. I mean, it's incredible. And for me, it's how it's embedded itself into the language. You know, I often say to people, if you go to a bar and the menu has a drinks list and it says a G and blank, you know what that letter is going to be, right? Or if you go to a sandwich shop and it's a BL blank when we know what we're guessing. Now, if I say LGB blank, there's not a person out there in this country that can't add that letter on right? This stuff's been burned into our brains. We can't even to say LGB and then not add the T at the end. Seems almost bizarre.

  Peter McCormack

  You must be a bigot, correct?

  James Esses

  So this is how it's wormed its way into our heads. It's this normalization, as I said. And so when you see magazines listing in the top most 100 influential women, biological men, or when you I mean, I went to the play. I went to the opera the other week, and they have Emperor Nero. This is meant to be factual. Emperor Nero being played by a non binary female character. All of this stuff is done with the aim of normalizing these things, and it has become normalized because there were a lot of people watching that who didn't seem to bat an eyelid. But I took issue with it because I just thought, you know, what are we doing here? And am I supposed to in order to be a decent person? Am I meant to pretend that this female is male because you want me to, well that their name, their pronouns and their bio on the cast list puts out that they're not.

  Unknown Speaker

  That's not who they're playing on stage. No, but this individual,

  James Esses

  this individual was cast because they present themselves as male. It wasn't, it wasn't a female playing a male role. It was, here's a man, because they identify as a man, and so they're suitable to play the role. But yes, of course. I mean, with that, I mean, that's a whole nother issue, you know, and whether white people should play black characters and vice versa. And, you know, there's a debate to be had on that as well.

  Peter McCormack

  Well, it depends who the character is. I think you could have a black James Bond. It doesn't bother me. If Idris Elba became bond, I'm not going to be bothered. But if Leonardo DiCaprio plays Martin Luther Martin Luther King, yeah, or, I don't know, Timothy Chalamet plays Gandhi, it's just not going to work. I think there's certain historical figures you kind of need to keep to race in history, but there's certain ones you don't need to but there was a, there was a TV series on Netflix I watched recently. I can't remember his name. You'll probably know what it was. The lead character was a trans character playing a trans character. You'll probably be asked to find it on Netflix Eve. It's about a place they would send troubled kids to forest pines, as it was a lead character who was trans, playing a trans character not hiding, playing the trans character in a relationship, wayward, yet with a woman. And yeah, I went with us. Okay, whatever. I watch it with my girlfriend. Then they gave us the sex scene. And I was like, So firstly, we had a couple of tops off scenes, so got us used to top surgery. You could see there was top surgery, the nipples looked vastly different. It was a bit weird, but it gave us a sex scene. Hold on a second. You're trying to show us how sex changes in these relationships. And I was just like, this is just for the sake of it.

  James Esses

  Oh, it's completely gratuitous. And I've forgotten this man's name identifies a woman now, actor, actress who was there on TV. I think it was Channel Four, playing the keyboard with his penis. I don't know if you remember this is from a year or two, you'll definitely be able to find that one, if you look it up, if you look at keyboard playing penis, you'll find that it's quite impressive, really.

  Peter McCormack

  How good are you? A play you do chopsticks with your fingers? What's What? What? Because that's one penis against

  James Esses

  eight fingers and two thumbs. Yeah, to be honest, I didn't look that closely so I can, did you listen, though? Yes, as an art form, it's extremely impressive. Yeah, you will be able to find it pretty. You might need

  Peter McCormack

  your VPN. Yes, we seem to have gone look in my in my most generous mind, there are some people, some men, who want to dress as women, and there are women who feel like they're boys and Tom boys. You get us one? No, who cares? I don't really care. Okay, God wants to come to work in a dress and says to me, I just in the arm care. I really don't care about that. Doesn't bother me in the slightest. But what I do care about is it being like get if you get that clip up from that three minutes 30 of this Ben Leo interview, this is where I just thought, this is just getting a little bit nuts.

  Unknown Speaker

  If you put your headphones on, guys, oh, we need our headphones on. I'll explain it to the listeners in a minute.

  Peter McCormack

  So look, I don't care what you want to wear, but did you care about this idea that is, if we normalize this, what we're going to be saying? How is biology going to change at school? How are we going to change biology lessons? What age do we start with biology? Is it seven or eight. It's confusing. It's given options that weren't previously on the table for kids, and then it's potentially putting them on this path where they want affirmation, they want to go down a road of changing their gender, and I don't know why we don't know why we're doing this.

  Unknown Speaker

  I just I don't understand it.

  Peter McCormack

  Probably get canceled for even saying that on this. But I just don't understand how we've got to this world. It seems insane.

  James Esses

  It is. We've completely as adults in society, completely abdicated our responsibilities towards children. It's all on us as adults. Yes. The other issue, of course, is that children who go down this path often end up being the ones, the kind of activist of the future. End up CO opting other children into it, you know? And that's that's the thing as well, because I can have empathy and sympathy for these children and what they've been put through in the way in which they've been indoctrinated. But as soon as they start coming for other kids, as soon as they sign up to work or volunteer for one of these kind of Trans activist charities and start pushing this nonsense on children all of a sudden, they're an enemy, as far as I'm concerned, because they are going on and inflicting harm on more children. You know, I'm really terrified, for example, of the kind of leaders of tomorrow, political leaders, right? Because we seem to have rolled back and regained some sense in society. But the future politicians and the kids rolling out of Oxbridge now, for example, or finishing up school, they've spent years and years being indoctrinated in this stuff, so they're going to be the ones propagating it in the future. And I'm really quite worried that we're going to start regressing back even further to your point about what's going on in schools. This stretches also beyond gender identity. It stretches into the realms of sexuality as well, right? Because now there's a whole host of sexualities that you can choose from, including asexual. More and more kids coming out as asexual. And again, once you've told yourself something enough times, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So you've got more and more got more and more kids now are saying they don't want sex, they don't want romantic relationships, and they're happy as they are because they identify as asexual there's asexual activists going around.

  Peter McCormack

  Asexual activists, yes, are these just losers who can't get laid? They want everyone else to have their misery.

  James Esses

  Well, actually, there is. There is an activist called Yasmin Benoit, and she is a lingerie model asexual activist, which you might think is somewhat of a of a misnomer, but it's true. She goes around offering sessions in schools teaching about how she discovered that she was asexual. So I think that's also really quite worrying. And there's many other sexualities on top of that as well. Is there any

  Peter McCormack

  correlation to the growth and access to pornography with this 100% Yeah, because it does. You know what? I was not supportive of the online safety bill, but I've also, I'm concerned about raising kids on hardcore pornography, rather than then kids having a curious interest, maybe when they were my age, where this wasn't available. You know, there was maybe page three in the summer. They saw some boobs here and there, and they excited that they wanted to finally get with a girl and be with a girl, to kids who, prior to their first experience real sexual experiences, have seen hardcore pornography. And I'm wondering how that distorts the mind,

  James Esses

  not completely, particularly because children have neuroplasticity, that's what it's called. And so your brain can essentially become hard wired into this way of viewing the world, viewing sexual relationships and all the rest of this, and, yes, having pornography, any pornography, but particularly kind of hardcore pornography, at your fingertips for free at any moment of the day. I mean, that's that's caused chaos. I mean, that's damaged a hell of a loss of children, you know, even for my generation, for whom, as you say, it was a mag. Zine, or whatever. Or, you know, you had to pay, I don't know, 10 P to, like, download a single mm multimedia message. Remember those? Or the 10 Minute preview hit midnight. I mean, oh yes, some of those TV channels, yeah. I mean, you know which? I think, look, teenage boys have always been interested in this stuff for obvious reason, in one form or another. But thank But thankfully, it was difficult to get hold of. It wasn't at your fingertips, and it was just a lot more tame and timid. Anyway, you didn't

  Peter McCormack

  get to go to bed with complete access to every single porno film that's ever been made. No from your bedroom late at night when you're pressing on to bed exactly, watch

  James Esses

  whatever you want. But even then, it's still addictive, right? There are a lot of people, my generation, of older generations, addicted to this stuff, and that was in a very hands off approach. So now you've got at your beck and call, and again, I see this part of my therapeutic practice and my therapy work more broadly, but there's people who are people out there watching hours and hours of pornography every single day, and this is completely hardwiring their brains and actually making it far less likely they're ever going to actually find fulfilling sexual experiences, fulfilling romantic experiences as well. So I it's kind of the perfect storm social media as well as a part to play in all of this, because I think young people are becoming more and more self obsessed and engaging in more and more navel gazing, and that's part of the problem, right? Because now it's cool and trendy, as we're saying earlier, to have an identity and to have a different sexuality. Because who wants to be straight? Who wants to be cisgender? Boring, right? I mean, I'm straight, white man, I'm as boring as they come. God, you're so boring. Tell me about it. Seriously. There was a I've put this out on X before. There was a worksheet in a primary school and has a list of all the different gender identities and sexualities in primary school, primary school. And it's all the multicolored flags. And then there's boxes for cisgender and straight, and it's just white. It's just the white back of the page. I mean, what kid is going to look at that? Look at that and say, I fancy being that? So, yeah, it's, it's, it's trendy, and kids are, I mean, human beings are self obsessed by nature, unfortunately. But I think we're developing a lot of narcissists as well, right? If you have a conversation out with a young person, often they will actually introduce themselves with this whole themselves with this whole list of different identifiers. You know, you know, I'm a I'm a non binary pansexual with ADHD, and

  Peter McCormack

  I've seen this where you will see left wing protests, and someone will turn up with a camera and ask them questions. How do you identify? And it's this strange list of options. Sometimes I've not heard of Yeah, and

  James Esses

  then you'll have your pronoun circles, and everyone goes around and shares their pronouns and all the rest of it. But you know, as I mean going back to what you were saying, were saying earlier about taking your kids like an emo concert, whatever, like, there's always fads and trends, right? And teenagers like to do things that are seen as rebellious as well, particularly if it gives them one up over the adults. I mean, gender ideology is kind of perfect in this sense, because you can, as a child, say to your parents, I know you thought I was your son. Actually, I'm your daughter. And by the way, the name you gave to me, that's my dead name, right? That doesn't apply to me anymore, and you must use the pronouns that I say you have to use, otherwise you are transphobe. I mean, these are children wielding power over their parents.

  Peter McCormack

  fuck it out. I think we're gonna look back at this period of history and go what like the multiple experiments we've ran on our children, from technology to education to medical procedures. I mean, the education piece we didn't have sex ed when I was at school. Wasn't even a subject. There was no sex ed. We covered, uh. That part of it in biology, we had the book, we had the different parts of the body, and we all had a giggle and a laugh, and we learned about the different parts of the body and reproduction. That was it? It was a very small part you had sex ed, didn't you? Or was it called PSA? used condom. Yeah, it seems like it's something they've grown more and more in schools. But I've always thought, hold on, this is something that your parents can teach. Your parents can like, we can teach this at home, like, I can tell Connor, like, if you ever choose to have sex, condo you should use condo. I can teach that to my kids, right? I don't need some faceless person. I don't know who they are, what their identity and pronouns are. Teaching my children about sex education. A lot of

  James Esses

  parents would agree with you. I think some parents are actually, unfortunately, still too afraid to have those kind of conversations. I think some of them view it as easier for the schools to do it, which is surprising, given we're living an age of sex positivity and all that. But I think, but you're right, this is something that should be a conversation between a parent and a child.

  Peter McCormack

  By the way, my parents didn't teach me anything. I've never spoken about, I never spoke about sex with my parents ever. You still figured it out.

  James Esses

  Yeah, I think. But we've this. This touches on another point, which is the kind of coddling that we're engaging in, right, infantilizing children, creation of safe spaces, etc, rooms that children go to in school if they become overwhelmed, not because they've got some sort of kind of neurological issue, but because, if they're just a bit stressed, they need to go to kind of equivalent of like a padded cell in a prison or something. So children these days, and they've got all the jargon, all the buzzwords, you know, feeling depressed, feeling anxious, often engaging a lot of hyper ability. That's not to say the kids aren't struggling. It's tough being at kids. It's tough being a teenager. I work with a lot of them, but we coddle it too much, and then we don't develop resilience, and that then stays with a person into adulthood. But even in universities now, you have to have safe spaces. You have to make sure that people are given proper allowances if they suffer from exam stress or whatever. There was a person in my psychotherapy course who was an adult who said that they got they were too afraid to speak in front of groups, so they were given an exemption from doing some of the course requirements.

  Peter McCormack

  But weren't I mean, I think I'm a bit older than you, but I'm pretty sure when we were younger, we were told to face this. You got to face these challenges. You got to face your fear. You got to get up there and talk in front

  James Esses

  of somebody that is literally the antidote for anxiety. I again, I do this part of my practice. It's called exposure therapy. If someone is avoiding something, that's a good sign that what they need to do is actually find a way to expose themselves to it, gradually and perhaps with the support of somebody else, you know, someone who's got a fear of flying. If they don't go on an airplane for 20 years and then step foot on Orion air, step foot on a Ryan airplane, they're going to be bloody terrified, not just because it's Ryan air, but because they've not been on one in so long. But it's the same thing with any of these other anxieties or avoidant strategies they're developing. But we live in this age now, in which we pander to people too much, and that's where the pronouns and all that stuff comes into it, right? Because words are violence, yeah, and people can say they don't feel safe, not because they actually think you're going to physically hurt them, but because your words have hurt them or offended them. And I think we've done children a great disservice by coddling them rather than trying to instill a sense of resilience in them. And I, again, I work with all of my teenage clients in this way, and some of them don't want to hear it right. Some of them want me to spend all my time telling them that they're a victim and how tough life is. And I certainly do empathize with my clients when they've been through something difficult, because life can be tough, but like I said earlier, you have to be cruel to be kind sometimes. And human beings thrive when they can be resilient, because life is going to throw shit in your direction. That's one of the only certainties in life, right? So coddling people and trying to wrap them up in cotton wool will never end Well,

  Peter McCormack

  is it Jonathan Haidt who wrote the coddling of the American mind?

  James Esses

  Yeah, it's a great book, worrying, but a great book,

  Peter McCormack

  but that's exactly what we're talking about here. Is this wrapping kids up in cotton war and keeping them safe from every potential danger, not learning any resilience. But ultimately, this can lead to more mental health issues, right? Do?

  James Esses

  A lot of children just don't, they don't know how to actually be in the world. They don't even have to look after themselves. I'm not saying that. You know, parents should be leaving their eight year old at home alone, or they go after the movies or whatever, but you know, there comes a point at which you have to allow your children to grow up, and it will be a bit scary for parents as well, right, to actually give them that responsibility, but they have to, you know, you have to take a few risks in life with this stuff, but kids these days don't know how to look after themselves, and it's not setting them up very well for future life. And you know, I've seen, for example, that parents these days are less and less likely to let their kids even go out and play in the streets, for example, like with the local neighborhood kids. And that's not because, in reality, we're living in more dangerous times than we were before. I mean, there are certain dangers now that maybe weren't as prevalent in the past, but actually it's more just people have this fear, this feeling of unsafety, but that sets a tone for the rest of that child's life. You know, you

  Peter McCormack

  well, it's weird, because there's, there's all this fear of kind of physical danger, but a complete acceptance of emotional danger or, you know, Grace. Okay, so we won't let kids out. You can't go out late at night, or you can't go out on your own. And, you know, I understand where it comes from, but at the same time, it's like, here's a super computer that has access to any kind of violence, sexual information that you want, and I'm going to send you to school where, as a child, you're going to be talking about kinks. So with sexually liberating these children in every possible way, we're completely liberating within terms of their gender and their pronouns, but we're worried about them running around the neighborhood. It's like a complete it's kind of weird, isn't it?

  James Esses

  It is weird. And again, that's because the people pushing this stuff don't see these things as dangers. They see these as welcome things, right? Because this is all part of identity. It's why you've got drag queens reading to kindergarten children.

  Unknown Speaker

  Well, I even find the whole

  Peter McCormack

  pride events a bit fucking odd in that, you know, as a kid, if you wanted to get a porno mag, it was like, there at the top shelf, it's difficult to get to, like pornography was difficult to get access to, and what you did in your bedroom was kept into your house. And then you see a pride event where kids are there, and there's like guys with pig masks on being walked with a lead on all fours. We're exposing people's sexual kinks in a very public way and celebrated it in front of families. It's a bit weird. It is. And by the way, and I'm the weirdo for saying it's weird,

  James Esses

  I call it perversion, which is a strong word, but I think that's exactly what it is. And it all falls under this LGBTQ plus umbrella that plus at the end, is the most dangerous bit of it all, because it encompasses anything you can make up. Yes, and that includes, and I've seen people argue for this. That includes bestiality, right? I thought that was illegal. Well, it is illegal, but there's still. I've seen therapist groups trying to say that we should normalize this and we shouldn't shame people who what. Yeah, we shouldn't shame people. If you heard this term, don't Yuck, someone's yum. That's, that's the newest jargon. Look, look.

  Peter McCormack

  People have their different things. They like, right? I like Pacey English women. That's my thing. I do. Connor, you like you're Latino women, don't you like have some people like brunettes and blondes and some, like, skinny, some like, get all that, and, you know, and maybe some guys, like, guy went to school, we'd love to Asian girls. That's cool. Like, you have your thing. But I think we can have red lines, okay, yeah, like, yeah, one in two fuck a dog. Or watch someone fuck a dog. We can have a red line there, surely society, we can say, shagging your pets is a bit much, you would have thought, so, wouldn't you? That, to me, is that's, is this the same world of people who referred to pedophiles as minor attractor people? Correct? Yeah, complete fucking nonsense, right?

  James Esses

  Course, again, it's also, it's normalized forms of depravity.

  Unknown Speaker

  Con, you sound like you're about to challenge us

  James Esses

  It's, it's, it has been an inversion. Actually, it used to be a lot more men now it's a lot more girls and girls of younger ages as well. And is there a are for those for whom they're more. Kind of persistent, often autism. In fact, I think all of my teenage clients at the moment who say they're trans are on the spectrum. And so autism is one of the kind of CO one of the core comorbidities that exists alongside this, because people with autism often engage in things like kind of black or white thinking. Take things very literally. So if they're told, Well, this is how boys are, and this is how girls are, and they don't describe to that, they can convince themselves they were actually born in the wrong body. But yes, you can get historic trauma, sexual abuse, internalized homophobia. A lot of these kids are actually just gay, but they grow up with a mindset that it's better for me to be trans and straight rather than be gay, and if they're left alone, they'll actually describe to be gay adults. So there's a whole host of comorbidities that are present alongside this.

  Peter McCormack

  I did note down one of your tweets, which I did want to ask you about I work with children who identify as trans. The girls hate being female because they think the society views them as weak or vulnerable. The boys hate being male because they feel pressure to be strong and tough. Children being irreversibly harmed because of stereotypes. I found that last you got it. I thought that last line was quite interesting, yeah.

  Unknown Speaker

  But what I wanted to ask you is,

  Peter McCormack

  are you saying that this the stereotypes we have for male and female are dangerous, yes.

  Unknown Speaker

  That's quite progressive. That's yeah.

  James Esses

  Well, the funny is, after I posted this, I had a load of people saying that I was pushing a Tran, the trans agenda. And the it was, it was bizarre. I and I said to those people, you need to go back and look at my timeline. This is

  Peter McCormack

  the one that didn't make sense to me when I was like, Hold on, I'm confused here.

  James Esses

  Yeah, there are differences. There are fundamental differences between men and women. Yeah, but if you grow up in a society in which there is still this expectation that men always need to be tough or strong and not show vulnerability or emotion that is going to have a detriment, detrimental impact on kids. You know, I speak to teenage boys who identifying as girls, and they tell me that the thing they like most about the thought of being a girl is that there's less pressure on them and less expectation for them to succeed, to be strong. Some of these boys are more sliced, let's say, than some of their peers. Yeah, not as tall, not as broad. They're having a tough time of it because they're getting bullied. They're being told you're not you're not man enough. So that type of thing is destructive, and then it's no wonder that a young boy is liking the idea of being a young girl, because it means that it's not his fault, and it just means that there was this explanation all along, and actually, maybe he was secretly a girl all along. And same for girls. I mean, there's a lot of shit that young girls and women have to go through as well in society, and so a lot of it is based around stereotypes that women are kind of inherently weaker and vulnerable, and yes, there are physiological differences between men and women, but I think that some of these narratives are what is getting into these young people's heads again. I mean, I'm that this isn't just something I've made up. This is based on conversations I've had with my clients.

  Unknown Speaker

  Oh no, I don't doubt that. I

  Peter McCormack

  don't doubt that in the slightest, but it did confuse me, because I was it's like, okay, so what? What do we do with that? If that is true, what do we do with that? Because are we meant to teach young boys to be strong and resilient, but except maybe not all of them are, and allow them also to be vulnerable, because there are also other people who think that we've essentially feminized men too much. We've kind of beat out, beat out of boys, that they can be tough and strong and they have to be like, there's a there's a real split in society on this,

  James Esses

  I want to do away with this narrative that men or women have to be a certain thing. I want to stop vilifying forms of femininity or masculinity. You know,

  Peter McCormack

  do you think we I don't. I'm not sure we do. I think we have moved on from that, because I'm sure Connor, you're at school, you probably had lads who weren't the big, strong lads, right? But you just kind of accept it, don't you?

  James Esses

  and you're kind of screwed both ways here, right? Yes, the if the other end of the scale is that you're engaging in toxic masculinity, right? But the point is that femininity and masculinity has been looked through this microscope and been analyzed by all of society, and so for a young person growing up now, I'm not surprised. There's young girls who don't want to be girls and young boys who don't want to be boys, right? Because it's not a good place to be. You're being judged and criticized and analyzed, no matter what you kind of do there in that space. So I think, no, I don't think stereotyping is the is the sole cause, because stereotypes have always existed, and some stereotypes are actually based in reality as well, but it's the overarching narrative that we're giving to these kids and a combination of stereotypes, plus now the ability to go on medication and have then have surgery. I think that's a toxic combination, ultimately,

  Peter McCormack

  aren't some of these stereotypes inherent to our gender, yes, some, some, yeah,

  Unknown Speaker

  yes. I just don't understand what you're meant to do with that.

  James Esses

  pretty much. I mean, you know, let's say I've got a teenage boy come to me and says he wants to be a girl. I'll ask him, okay, what are the things you don't like about yourself? What is it about being a girl that appeals to you? And he'll say to me, Well, girls, I don't like body hair, and I don't like wearing this, you know, a suit and tie in school every day. And I like to hang out with girls more often, and I like to do ballet, just examples, right? I will turn around and say, well, you should be able to do all of those things as a male. You don't need to change your sex to do those things. Okay? You don't like your body hair. I mean, we do have answers for that don't require you going under the surgeon's knife. Yeah. So I just think we need to stop putting so much pressure around the way that men and women are expected to be in society, because this stuff still exists. But I also that doesn't mean shaming people for being masculine or feminine. I mean basically, I think we should recognize the differences between men and women that exist on a biological, physiological level, even a psychological level, but we also need to acknowledge that people won't always want to fit into that bucket, so to speak. But that doesn't need to be changing your sex and trying to transition out of who you are and having surgery or taking in hormones, right? People should generally be able to live and let live without going through that process. And I think if a lot of these younger people were taught that message, then, okay, they might have some quirks and some idiosyncrasies, but they're going to be safe and they're not going to be at risk of irreversible harm. So that's that's the position that I take on it. Ultimately, I don't know if that clears it up for you. I I can see why people were confused by that, particularly because it's not the narrative I'm usually putting out.

  Peter McCormack

  Well, I think it was the it was the term, the stereotypes are, here we go, children being irreversibly harmed because of stereotypes. And I was just like, huh, because we're talking about this, it's the opposite side of the harm here. There's the harm of we're talking about the heart the physical harm of transitioning, but we're also talking about, I guess, the mental anguish of stereotypes. And both are a form of harm. We're talking about

  James Esses

  correct because every single one of my teenage clients who think they're trans are fully bought into stereotypes, and in fact, that's the justification in their head for why they want to transition and why they were born in the wrong body. If they were able to let go those stereotypes or say to themselves, actually, rather than go along with these stereotypes, I'm going to challenge them, and I'm going to live my life. I want to live anyway they wouldn't

  Peter McCormack

  even be speaking to me. But isn't that so? Because stereotypes exist for a reason, right? Like there's stereotypical jobs that a man will do and a stereo stereotypical jobs that a woman will do, but you will get acceptance to the rule is it? Is it less about the stereotypes themselves existed and more about teaching that you don't have to conform to the stereotype?

  James Esses

  Yes, I think that's and perhaps that would have been a slightly better way of putting it. But yes, it's this notion that there are exceptions to the rule, yeah, but these things are still very deeply ingrained, right? Like, I mean. Example I gave, let's say of like a boy wanting to hang out with the girls and do ballet. But you might think, Oh, well, we had Billy Elliott, and so that's just normalized all of this, but it hasn't happened, right? I don't know, but I'd still say that a young boy in school who's doing ballet and hanging out with the girls is probably going

  Peter McCormack

  to get a bit of bullying, and I think that's probably more pressure from the other boys and the parents, yeah, like, I know if, look, I love my son, if he'd come to me and said, Dad, I I want to do ballet, I would 100% supported him. There's, there's no world where I don't support him do whatever he wants to do. But in school, that's where the real pressure exists. I worry about schools a lot. Yeah, if I could go back, I would seriously consider homeschooling my kids. We've had a We've an interesting week or so with the BBC whereby they obviously did something stupid with power. I still understand how they thought they would get away with it, and I've had to apologize and rightly been questioned. And we found out off the back of that there are activist groups within the BBC, and we've seen a large number of people come out and defend the BBC. And it's there's definitely a political split on that, not entirely, not like most subjects, there have been conservatives coming out and defending the BBC and but there's a lot of people from the left who've been defending the BBC as well. But I thought was very interesting. I don't think someone on the BBC does the interview Ben Leo just did for GB news. I don't think there's any world where that happens. And therefore, for you have the mainstream media perpetuated this situation? I mean, I think the answer is yes. So how bad have the media been with this?

  James Esses

  Completely complicit, actually have ensured that this stuff spreads across society, like we were talking about earlier, and kind of a form of like contagion across society. The fact that BBC, for so many years, using female pronouns to refer to male rapists, is shocking. I mean, that flies in the face of journalistic integrity, as far as I'm concerned. And we saw recently, I don't know if you saw that. Martin Croxall, you know the BBC presenter, yes.

  Peter McCormack

  Have you seen this con where she refused to read, she read the She corrected the teleprompter. Yes, the teleprompter

  James Esses

  was quoting someone else as having saying pregnant people. And she then paused for a split second, and then said, Women, yes, with a kind of right smile, right smile. There was a certain look. And then moved on anyway, there were loads of complaints into the BBC, and they've kind of, well, they seem to have found against her and said that it was inappropriate. What she did

  Peter McCormack

  they can there were complaints against her. Yeah, I think there was a lot of support for her as well. It was a

  James Esses

  hell of a lot of support for her, and the vast majority of the country would be behind her. But again, you've got a few loud voices. Then the BBC ultimately said that what she did fell kind of below the standards that are expected of the presenters, where what she was doing was actually just stating a matter of fact, you know, so but, and then this is the same outfit as I said, that uses female prominent describe rapists, and go on to see BBs, right? Some of the stuff they're putting out there to kids again, on sexuality and gender identity is utterly shocking. I put out a clip of this the other day from a BBC documentary about Bill Cosby and the interviewer, non binary.

  Unknown Speaker

  Oh, my God, I saw this. Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ.

  Peter McCormack

  What is this? Where is this? Create a sex positive world where someone is able to pay a conscious woman to come and be drugged for a fetish for having sex with unconscious people. Like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, this is nuts. Did you see this? Connor? This is ABS. This was on the BBC,

  James Esses

  yeah, in a documentary about an abuser Cosby.

  Unknown Speaker

  She's been an apologist.

  James Esses

  Yeah, well, she's, it's not even apologist. She wants to. She likes the idea. She thinks it's healthy for a society to be able to have women who can be paid to be essentially raped.

  Peter McCormack

  You got it, you found it. Which one is it? Let me just remind myself, yeah, it's not a good advert for health. If we act I'm pretty sure you could go to a prostitute and, say, pretend to be unconscious. For me, I don't think we need a society that says we need to be sex positive and accept every single kink and find a scenario for somebody to act out every single kink, because I think there are dangerous kinks personally.

  James Esses

  But isn't that just the most bizarre thing that we're talking about a sexual abuser? I. This person's response is, we need more sex positivity. That's what we're lacking. Yeah, I mean, it's so utterly backwards, but she is non binary and obese, and

  Peter McCormack

  she looked exactly how I expected her to look, if you'd have told me about this before, soon she looked exactly how I expected her to look, just

  James Esses

  and that clip, you know that documentary is put out a few years ago. When I first posted the clip, it went viral. There were various papers reporting on it. BBC defended it, actually, and that clip is still up. And crucially, it went unchallenged, right? If they had, then someone come on next and maybe challenge that. But no, this was just put in there as if this is the way that society should go. So that's the type of thing that the BBC have been complicit in. So that's why, that's why I think

  Peter McCormack

  it's rotten to the core. Yeah, yeah, oh god, okay. Can we talk about the de transition of wave? Yeah, because I find this fascinating as a subject, how big a wave is this? How big a movement is this?

  Unknown Speaker

  The truth is, we don't know. Okay, because, I

  James Esses

  mean, think about it, right for most people, if they have taken any step to transition, whether socially or medically, and then they regress it, they're going to be pretty badly burned by that. They're already going to be a bit messed up. And so it's quite unlikely they're going to want to kind of stick their head above the parapet again and say, Oh, by the way, guys, I got it wrong. But some have, some have and those are, and there's some very brave individuals who've been willing to come out and share their story on it, but generally, most people who detransition will just do so without telling many people, without chasing it to the world when you de transition,

  Peter McCormack

  my expectation is you can change your certain amount of your physical appearance back, the things you can choose with your hair, and maybe if you've grown a beard, and you can no longer have the beard And the clothes you wear, you can choose to represent yourself as the gender you were born with, right? But my assumption is some things. I mean, you can't de transition if you've had your breast Well, maybe you can. I mean, you could have breast augmentation, I guess. I think it's gonna be a lot harder for a man to return after maybe he's removed his penis and genitals, right? Like, what are the what are the things that you can't de transition?

  James Esses

  Well, I mean what you just said there about breasts. I've actually seen that argument put forward by various trans activists who say, well, it's not actually that high risk procedure, because if they regret it, they can always just have plastic surgery, but they will look mutilated, also the silicone. Yeah, they will cease to have any actual function.

  Peter McCormack

  Yes, they won't be able to produce milk if they had children. Can they still have can you de transition to still have children? Or can you become infertile from the process?

  James Esses

  Yes, that depends, but many will be infertile. There's no coming back from that. But the fertile ones won't be able to produce breast milk. Breast milk for the child. It depends on the journey, so to speak, that individual has gone on. But yes, some of the effects of these cross sex hormones are permanent, and so you will never be able to go back to the baseline that you were at before. And yes, with surgery, obviously, if you've had party of you've had parts of your body removed, you're not getting the back and so de transitioning is a bit of a misnomer in that sense, right? Because you can, the only person I would say, who can ever truly de transition is someone who's only socially transitioned. I changed the name and what their clothes are, as you said, yeah. So it's a bit of a misnomer, but there's more and more people doing it, unsurprisingly, because this is this isn't the proper treatment for mental health condition. So it's unsurprising that a lot of people are regretting it. But again, part of the problem we have with the Tavistock and other clinics around the world has not been decent enough follow ups. They perform the surgery, and then they say, good luck to you, essentially, so we don't really know how many of these patients are actually doing years down the line.

  Peter McCormack

  We is Tavistock still operational?

  James Esses

  No, the Tavistock was closed down. Okay, that was one of the recommendations from Dr Hilary Cass. But we're now setting up various gender clinics around the country, which are still under development. And I and I saw before that some of the individuals who worked in the Tavistock have been involved. Been involved in terms of setting up these new gender clinics, which is obviously extremely worrying. I mean, I don't think we should be having any gender clinics at all. We need to stop singling this out, as if this is some sort of different presentation to anything else. It's a mental health condition. It should be treated as any other mental health condition is. You don't need a special. Find a gender clinic to deal with it. So that's not good.

  Peter McCormack

  What do we learn? What have we learned from those who have attempted, let's call it attempt to de transition, because you can't fully detract what have we learned from them?

  James Esses

  We've learned just how easy it was for them to go down that path in the first place, very little safeguards. And they say to me, they wish that the therapist had actually said to them, are you sure you want to do this? Because most of the therapists were fully on board and affirming the new identity and encouraging them and saying, you know this will be life changing for you. So very little roadblocks to actually getting what they wanted. And that's the thing, right? Because kids and teenagers, when they want something, they feel something, they really want it, and they will say whatever they can to persuade you that they want it. And we know, like teenagers, hormone fueled and all the rest of it can become convinced of things that they later in adulthood, regress. I'm sure that's the same for all of us to some extent. Yeah, I probably just group it in with Yes, just by class. some extent, yes and that and that is kind of the problem, because it kind of got pathologized to the point that you get the diagnosis, then you get the treatment and the surgery for it. So yes, I do agree with you on that, but I would rather it be pathologized and seen as an identity, but the term gender dysphoria, I mean, even that term actually as a psychiatric diagnosis has been watered down by the various psychiatric bodies. And there's some in some leading figures in the psychiatric world, who actually want to do away with it all together, not because they don't, because they see it as someone's innate identity. They don't see it as the them being mentally ill. Yes, I would probably want it under a general umbrella of just dysphoria, right? Because people hate all sorts of things about themselves, personality and body. So yes, I don't think we should keep singling this out. This is the problem. We put so much focus on it now that word trans and this notion of coming out is so much I mean, this is all part of the drama, of the celebration, yeah, the joy, the trans joy, and the pride again, what kid isn't going to want to be celebrated and be told you should be proud of yourself. Some of these kids probably never been told by a parent or a teacher before that they had anything to be proud of, but now you can just come out say you've changed your pronouns, and all of a sudden people have to celebrate you. I mean, that's quite enticing,

  Peter McCormack

  isn't it? Do you think there's a deeper cultural problem here? Is this reflective of a deeper cultural problem in society?

  James Esses

  Yes, and I'm working on a book proposal at the moment called the victim virus, which is me. I mean, I may not be particularly popular as and when it comes out, because essentially diagnosing swathes of British society with this new condition that I've developed. But essentially, I think we are indulging victimhood, and we are enabling and facilitating what is called, in the business, cognitive distortions, right, projection, splitting, catastrophizing, perversion, regression, all of these things, far from saying actually, these are things that need to be looked at and treated. We're actually actively enabling them now. So we whether it's climate catastrophizing, you know, and activists lying down in front of ambulances and being cheered on for it, or whether it's people prejudicing white students in this country because they're wise and giving a leg up to people who aren't wise, and they do so under the umbrella of being anti racist, even though what they're doing is actually racist, we're facilitating all of this. So yes, I think there is a greater problem in society, and I think it's mostly surrounded about this notion of victimhood,

  Peter McCormack

  because rather than building kids up, we're now giving them reasons to not be built up,

  James Esses

  because it's much easier to be a victim and to blame everyone else for your problems, right? And that you can carry that through with you all your life, and that really does keep people stuck. I've spoken to some black people, for example, who were told by other black people that whether or not they think of themselves as victims, they are by virtue of the fact that they are black. I mean, how aggressive is that? So victimhood is currency that is traded these days, and mental and the mental professions have a hell of a lot to do with that, right? I mean, I used to think that everyone could do with having a therapist. I genuinely believe that, because. All who couldn't benefit from having a conversation about life's problems, but now I think therapists have done a huge amount of damage, actually, and I've changed my view overall on therapy. I think, of course, it still can be beneficial, but there's a lot of dangerous therapists out there. There's a lot of over labeling, over diagnosing and playing to this kind of victim status, and I think we need to start building up resilience, particularly in our children, and not allowing themselves to be viewed as a diagnosis of one form or another.

  Peter McCormack

  It's, it's, it feels like we have experts at everything who have to find a problem in everything and then a cure. It reminds me of when I go to the US and you see the TV ads, because we don't have ads here for medicines and pills and yeah, and you go in the US, and there seems to be every kind of conditions I've never even heard of, and they're advertising cures. There's there's money to be made in this. And it feels I don't know this. I just don't know how we've got here, and parents don't know what to do, because the kids have too much power, lack of a parental authority,

  James Esses

  partly also they'll have other people in their ear. I'm sure, you know, if they've got a hyperactive young son saying, oh, you know, if you had him tested for ADHD, I mean, the diagnoses of things like, ADHD, I mean, shot up, right? And that isn't because it doesn't exist or there aren't some kids out there who do need medication, let's say, to actually help them function and cope in the world. But a lot of the time we're pathologizing completely normal behavior. I mean, it's quite well known that young boys could be a little bit boisterous.

  Peter McCormack

  I definitely would have been diagnosed. ADHD, as a kid, my parents would have told you that if it existed, it wasn't a thing. I was just hyperactive.

  James Esses

  This is the thing. And I hear this on the trans stuff. A lot of people I speak to now are, let's say gay adults. Say, if I was a teenager these days, I would have been transitioned. So by the medical profession, offering these silver bullets to people who are just going through life and, you know, with its ups and downs, and being told, here's the answer for that, and you've got a condition and here's the treatment for it, that's that's wreaked havoc on people. So there's, there's far too much pathologizing generally. And as you said earlier, there's far too much kind of pandering as well. Life is tough, I think so my clients may find it frustrating, but I spend a lot of my time with my clients talking about acceptance, because I think they come to me and expect me to be able to wave a magic wand and make everything all good for them. But actually, life can be pretty shit. I mean, we know that, right, and people can suffer from the worst of fortune and luck, even if they've been the most decent to people that is life, and sometimes you actually have to accept what you've been given and be grateful in the small ways that you can be

  Peter McCormack

  and learning to bounce back from adversity creates a more resilient or can create a more resilient person.

  James Esses

  I mean, the most successful people out there will tell you that they only succeeded after multiple failures.

  Peter McCormack

  Well, if you go and raise money from a Silicon Valley VC, they want to know about your failures, not your successes. I mean, they want to know both. But they do, they will ask you, where have you failed, and what did you learn?

  James Esses

  Exactly, how dull would life be if there was no such thing as failure, if there was no such thing as even negative emotions? I mean, some people, some of my clients, say to me, they'd like clients, say to me they'd love to just feel happy all the time. I mean, I think how dreadful, honestly, there is something powerful and human about negative emotions and negative experiences. It is part of life, and if you don't experience some of them on your journey, then I know that you've lived life properly. No.

  Peter McCormack

  So what's the what's the end game here? James, what? What would you see? What would success be for you?

  James Esses

  Well, the trans stuff is just one issue out of many, but as an as an ideology, it needs to be eradicated. Needs to be eradicated from our schools, from our medical profession, and I do not want any route for children or adults be able to mutilate their bodies. And I don't know how we're going to get there, because, as I said, if the supreme court judgment doesn't make a damn bit of difference, then what can you do? Ultimately, that's, again, partly why I think heads need to roll and people need to be punished, right? We need to start holding people accountable for what's accountable for what's happened. That's why I want to see criminalization of some of these things. I mean, we need to have new legislation in this country. You know, we've still got the gender recognition Act, which puts forward this notion that you can change your gender legally in some way. And we need to get rid of that as well. We need to get rid of this entire notion of gender identity because it's actively harming children.

  Unknown Speaker

  But I don't know,

  Peter McCormack

  like, how big a mountain is this to climb? What are you up against? It?

  James Esses

  Honestly, it may be insurmountable. I mean, I'm not going to stop, and I know many others won't. Too, but it may be insurmountable, because it's just been too normalized, and it's not localized either. This is across the western world. Even Trump, with his executive orders, has been hamstrung in many ways in trying to push forward some of these. And Webber Lee, who we showed up earlier, is over now, setting up our clinic in US states through various loopholes. So if Trump can't stop it, you know who can. So it's going to take a kind of societal wide effort, ultimately.

  Peter McCormack

  But if you do, there are going to be people against you, pushing hard against you. To do this. There is this seems like a rather aggressive activist community. For this particular subject. They feel very aggressive.

  James Esses

  I'm getting death threats, death wishes all the time. It's part of the reason I currently only see clients online. Actually, I think it'll be too risky, genuinely, you know, some of my family members are scared if I go and speak conferences or things. So there is, there is a lot of anger from the other side, and they're certainly willing to weaponize violence. The government, at the moment, is still wanting to push forward with this ban on conversion therapy. They've promised this, and if they do that, there is a chance that myself and other therapists who don't automatically affirm a client in their chosen gender identity could actually be prosecuted.

  Unknown Speaker

  So I don't know what the next few years looks like. What are the shoots of hope you see then

  James Esses

  transparency, right? The fact, as you said earlier, we're having the conversations. It's out there.

  Unknown Speaker

  People are becoming braver.

  James Esses

  We have seen small wins, right? Well, actually, it's not fair for me to say small wins. We had some big wins, right? Like we've seen with the Olympics and in sports, like we've seen with the supreme court judgment, which is still a, you know, a stellar judgment at the end of the day, like with, at least for now, the ban on puberty blockers. So we've had many wins, but it so I don't want to, I don't want to negate that, but I just think we've got a bumpy road ahead, really. And I'd like to be able to turn my attention to some of the other issues that are going on in society from a psychological perspective, because there's a hell of a hell of a lot of them. But for me, this just stands out head and shoulders above all the other issues going on, because I cannot think of anything else in which our leaders and our professionals have been so complicit in harming so many vulnerable children.

  Peter McCormack

  And numbers wise, how many children are we talking about here?

  Unknown Speaker

  I know one is too many, but

  James Esses

  who knows that there are the children who aren't able to get puberty blockers and hormones legally. There are various black market routes to getting this stuff as well.

  Peter McCormack

  That must that's must be frightening you, because that must be considerably more dangerous,

  James Esses

  of course. And many parents have only found out actually, because they've discovered that their children, their child's been purchasing things online or whatever. But again, you don't even know who they can turn to. I mean, I also got excommunicated from Childline, where I said I was volunteering as a counselor, because they didn't like what my advocacy either. And I've become very concerned about Childline, which is meant to be there to safeguard children. It's called, you know, it's called the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I now call it the National Society. Call it the National Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Children, because children go on at speed to a counselor there, or write in the message boards, and I've seen conversations in which they've been actively encouraging or advising children on how to young girls, how to bind their breasts, for example, so parents don't know where to turn. There's danger for kids, really, everywhere and particularly in the online space. I know this is all very depressing. I wish I had a more hopeful message. I do believe, ultimately, that common sense will win out, and because I think there's a majority that are aligned with our way of thinking?

  Peter McCormack

  No, I agree. I think there is. I just think it's been hard to talk about it. I mean, even doing this, we know what's going to happen when we put this out. We know what's going to happen in the comments. I know there's going to be certain people, because I share every episode say on Facebook, there's certain people who are immediately going to hate it. They're immediately going to criticize me for doing it. They're going to criticize me to criticize me for talking to you. They're going to criticize you. I know that, but you can have this conversation in public. It's a lot easier to do that now than it was, say, a year, two years ago. I mean, we had it with our foot. We've got a we own a football team, and we have a women's side. There was a period in time where, if you. Were a trans woman, you could play for a women's side, and the conditions from the FA were that you must, I think it's you must have done one hormone test in the last year, and below a certain you'll know probably better than me, a certain marker. And we had a game that was coming up where a goalkeeper was meant to be a six foot four goalkeeper was meant to be played against us. I've got that slightly incorrect. I apologize, but we know it was coming, and we knew, we know the risks and the dangers and also that it was unfair. Look, it didn't make any sense. You weren't going to get any girls playing women's football who are going to speak up against this, because there was a social pressure to support this. This was cowardice from the Football Association, complete and utter cowardice. I tried to talk to people about it. We wanted to, I wanted to kind of remember. I wanted us to come out as a team and say, we're going to ban trans women from our side, and we'll refuse to play against any team that has one going around and surveying and trying to talk to people about it quietly. People agreed with me, but they weren't willing to publicly support it. There was a fear, this climate of fear everywhere, that if you spoke against us, you were a bigot, you weren't caring, you weren't a nice person. But we can have that conversation now, but for a couple of reasons, people like yourself, people like JK Rowling, have been very helpful. I think judgments that have come in the Supreme Court helps. I think, I think ultimately, we need the politicians to be the ones to create the correct boundaries. So it makes it a conversation that's easier to have personally, and not just those, the kind of sporting authorities as well.

  James Esses

  Look, I agree. The fact we're even here having this conversation, I think, is a good sign. It's a lot more difficult to cancel someone these days. I mean, there's and there's a lot of people that will jump to your support if you are canceled. You know, yeah, organizations like the Free Speech union, yes on this and other issues have been an absolute godsend, right? So there is a fight back going on. It may take a little bit longer than we first thought, and that's just because of how deeply embedded and ingrained these ideologies became in society, but I do think that human sensibility can ultimately win out. We've got facts, we've got reality on our side ultimately, so I don't know. I hope that you and I will have a conversation a few years down the line, and we'll have turned a corner on this once and for all, we'll be on the next subject.

  Peter McCormack

  Thank you. Thank you for doing this work and coming to talk to us about it. Appreciate that. Yeah, and good luck with it. I think you've you're on a noble mission. I think you're doing the right thing. Yeah? So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone for listening. We will see you soon. You you.