Hi everybody it's Sam here thank you for watching so today I'm launching my new everyday pop-ups collection so some of you will be familiar with this so we actually first launched everyday pop-ups in December it sold so well we've decided to bring it back as a standalone dye and I'll explain and talk about that in more detail shortly but within this collection you have cute puppies, adorable kittens, there's coordinating dyes, you've got a stencil and a brand new paper pad as well and today we have a fantastic bundle offer on this whole collection and I'll link all of that in the description box below also in a few hours I will be live over on the craftstash facebook page and on craft world I'll be doing live demos and again we'll be looking at this collection in more detail so be sure to check that out and again those links will be shared in the description box below but now I'm going to turn the camera around and I'll show you this collection in more detail and I'll show you the samples that I've made as well. So this is everything in the latest kind of additions to the everyday pop-ups like I said it was extremely popular and it sold out so quickly so what we've done this time is the two main dyes we've actually bundled together and you can buy these on their own so what we found is lots of people were sharing amazing cards with the Christmas pop-ups but they were also using their own collections and they looked fantastic so with this here you'll be able to use this with your own pattern papers stamps, dyes whatever you already have so that's the six by six and the five by seven. I've also got a brand new paper pad so this is an eight by eight everyday pop-ups and you've just all of your kind of cat and dog themed papers you've got paw prints just some really different colors and they work really nicely as your backgrounds you get 24 sheets four of four of six designs so you've got your paw prints there you've got this one here with the cute little pooches on the front and you have this one here with the outline of your cats there's about four different poses there quite a subtle background but like I said it does look nice when you layer it up then with the the stamps and the dyes this one here I really like it's almost like they're asking a question they're putting their hand up but in this case they're putting their paws up and you could color them in as well if you want to add your own colors to it this one's my favorite I really like this one so you've got the dog and the cats there mixed with the hearts and then you also have this one here which you've got your fish scales or skeleton and you've got the bone there and then you've got little hearts and a paw print and then you're back to the beginning again so that's the paper pad there's also some stencils here which work really well with the stamp set so you've got a wood grain stencil and you've got this kind of basket weave but if you like your mixed media and you just like stencils then these are really nice ones to have in your stash and then the best bit favorite bit are these the stamp sets now these are heavily used because I've made all my samples with them so they're a little bit darker and you can see here these are stained but it doesn't you know damage the the stamp and they work perfectly but here we've got perky poochers so you've got this adorable puppy in the center you've got this lovely big grass trim which is great for lots of other cards as well so you'll see that probably getting used quite a lot this is a wood grain panel which will all make sense in a moment and then you've just got all these lovely little kind of toys you've got some really nice sentiments to my bona fide friend sorry to hear you're feeling rough have a poursome day and it's porty time you've also got the dog bowl you've got paw prints there as well really lovely stamp set thoroughly enjoyed using this one and then here is your cute kittens so you've got beautiful she's just adorable we just absolutely love her eyes she's just so pretty these here as soon as I saw them they made me think of a very famous sorting hat from a very famous wizards movie so all of you hp fans you'll know exactly what I mean there so if you have anybody but a couple of eyes and a mouth on there yeah you're good to go with a a wizard themed card this here is your basket weaves you can stamp it or you can stencil it this here's the trim for the basket and you've got your bowl this is a nice little sentiment you are one cool cat with the little ears and then again you've got your fish there you've got your yarn or your cotton your wool little ball little mouse and and you've got you've got hope you have the perfect day I'm not kitten it's your birthday and then happy birthday I do like a pun anyway so that's the stamps and then you have the coordinating dies now the dies not only will they cut out elements of the stamps but they also have the I guess the the sections to hide the dog and the cat behind so for the puppy or the dog you've got a big panel here which is your grass and then he will pop out from the grass and behind him will be his kennel or his little home and these dies and the wood grain will make the the kennel again you'll see that in the tutorials I'll be sharing very soon and then you've got the dies to cut the footprints out the bowl the toys and so on then for the cat this large rectangle is actually the base of the basket and you can use the stencils there to obviously maybe it's a wooden basket or a weave and then you've got the die there that will cut out that long stamp and also that is the that will stamp perfectly onto the top of this one here as well okay so they do match and then you've got the ones to cut it's oh I should have mentioned they're actually the blanket I'm too busy talking about it looks like a famous wizards hat but it's actually a blanket and you'll see it in a moment on the samples and again you've got the dies to cut some of the the toys there and the bowl so that's everything in the collection so let me show you the samples I've made okay so these are some of the samples I do have some doubles here because I've had to make doubles to send to her chanda and so I've got samples so yeah doing it remotely is kind of nice because I get to stay at home and I don't have to travel but you do have to make more so this one here you just pull the pull tab and up pops a little puppy wishing his mate a paulson birthday and you can see there the stamped little rosé and all the toys and everything and a pop glossy accents on their eyes and the nun and then you just open up the car this is five by seven and you've got your space to write your message there and then you just pop that down you can see the wood grain effect there and those panels and that's the triangular ones there so you've got like the sky this is just another version of that with a different arrangement so I've got the puppy at the bottom here to my bona fide friend and then all the toys around him and then this time I've got a slightly different coloured puppy so they're nice because they're pretty plain you can obviously if you want to personalize them then you can do so and then this one here I've used my party props and they work really well on the puppy and the kitten the bunting's from my own stash but this one here you'll see pops up from the grass and I've actually layered up another kind of just like the top of the grass so that this little puppy can kind of be playing in the grass there and he's like popping out like it's almost like he's saying where you been I've been looking for you you can see I've had lots of fun making these and then again that's a similar arrangement just slightly different coloured puppies there to show you how those look so that's what that does those of you that already have the pop-up dies you only need the additions because you already have the mechanism but it's a really nice fun card I do love this style also got this one here which just shows you how to use it on just like a standard top folding card and that's with the pattern papers in the background there and this one says sorry to hear you are feeling rough not lovely I think that's a really cute card okay so these are the kitten ones they're all slightly different this one here I've stamped the basket weave and then I've used my colour pencils and a blending solution it's given me quite a grungy style to the basket but I think it works really well these are those stamps and dies of that hat but it's actually the blanket you can see how that looks it's just kind of like coming over the edges of the basket I've used the little paw prints there just coloured those in got the little mouse we've got all your other bits here this gorgeous kitten and then this one pull the top and that pops their friend very very sweet and again that's a top folding six by six and this one here is that same card again but this time I've used white so I've got a white basket and I've just stamped it and then lightly coloured the stamped part of the basket there along with the trim and then I've not coloured the paw prints in so you don't have to and then again my friend pops up and then this one here I've got the two yeah these possibly are my favourite ones I just like how it looks so I've done the sentiment slightly different and then when you pull this one use pattern papers on the back you get three of them now this one reminds me of my Nan's cats so she's had three cats through my kind of you know life growing up and visiting her and stuff and the three of these are Meg, Sophie and BT and he was called BT or she we didn't actually know the sex because she had a broken towel now some of you would be like oh my gosh that's so sad but because Nan she was astray and she would come and visit my Nan and my Nan would start to feed her and did this for years years and years and the cat had a very nice life my Nan had a big garden or has a big garden and sometimes it would come in the house but she never really got to know its sex she couldn't really it was still pretty feral but it was very friendly but she couldn't really ever have it sit on her lap or anything like that so when I was making these cards I just thought to myself yeah this reminds me of the three cats my Nan had now BT was darker but I just wanted the contrast for the three of them there so we have Meg, Sophie and BT so Nan if you're watching this is a card for you and I just think the three of them there look so sweet together and then this was another one you can see them there so this is just the red basket you can see how easy you know you can change the colors and then I also just wanted to show you that you can obviously use this on the five by seven size so this one here you can just see I've just used the pattern paper and a plain square and she pops up really nicely from there so just some other examples on you know how you can really mix it up to create these really cute cards I hope you've enjoyed this mini launch or this kind of additions launch it's really really sweet I know lots of you are going to enjoy this one there's pretty much a there's a cat and a dog in you know every other household I think so I'm hoping this one's going to be where I've received so as always thank you for watching I'll link all of the product that I've used in the description box below and I'll be back very soon with the tutorials showing you how I've made these cards thanks for watching bye


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It sounds we pulled this ticket stub last mixer I'm feel I feel like I'm I feel like I'm in a simulation is is is is a We're having a matrix day the simulators a glitch in the simulation Devante Adams playoff ticket to 175 That was gonna be an auto is turn around backwards Raiders or not raiders ha ha backers interesting take interesting take Now I from what I've seen I think a little fine. I don't know why everyone's giving them I do not know how many box we ripped today. What's this five? Well, us yeah Yeah, no picket picket's gonna be good. He improved so much throughout the season bad offices here, too I would assume your PC and picket being a stealer.  That's kind of a maxi RLA flawless Maxi RPA from like flaws basketball. I don't know probably fine sold comps though I think 200k it's 200k sounds high to me. That's for sure Let's talk about logo man or something redemption rookie ticket RPS Debo Samuel. This is expired by about Year and a half Nine is that a pretty nice one? I sincerely hope they have that for you But it is tough to say with an expired redemption Chase Winovich Patriots on the playoff ticket rookie auto 23 or 49. I was shooting down balloons today All those football shaped heaps and Eagles balloons. I was shooting them all down I Thought about I thought about grabbing some of those from publics and bringing them in even the breaking studio Rookie logo man. Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't know. I honestly don't know Yeah Jerry Tillery on the rookie ticket auto Chargers 275 say Juan Barclay Giants Where's that make a we go? I was pretty nasty Ragtime all the fun things that AIC No, we had one listed and then said in fill up game. So we switch it up. What up Scott? How you doing man? Primarily, yeah, there are vet autos though. Hey Cole Hardman jr. On the rookie ticket auto on card for the chiefs Autos right here then Darnell Savage on the rookie ticket auto for the Packers These some players last couple Antoine Wesley Ravens rookie ticket auto and a Ben Benogu rookie ticket auto for the Colts Ben Benogu need Instagram What do you mean we have Instagram? 2021 two boxes I'm doing good man doing well had Burger King today. So, you know doing great Fantastic, it's everybody's favorite Super Bowl food Bonnie's gonna say wings. We get it. I like wings No, we do we have we didn't have a conversation at all Dylan stoner rookie ticket auto for the Raiders My favorite Super Bowl food is beer Then I prefer to eat Like popcorn popcorn all the time Rhonda more Pat Farramuth Pizza solid Wings are okay They got to be like good wings though. I feel like every I feel like having super parties.  I know I want those I want those homemade ones dude is easy Grilled with grilled wings are the best. I love real blings or Vegas style You have to have a bone in wings Yeah, otherwise just chicken nuggets chicken nuggets are fine, but Yeah, but like yeah four hundred points We're in the end Yeah, I'm gonna order a bunch of the Taco Bell wings for my Super Bowl party tomorrow since everybody wants wings Some of the Tyson frozen ones. Yeah, those are those will be real hit love wings Hey, I'm a big wingspan. My favorite of those Tyson's. I love those dude for being frozen Tyson chickens freestyle Mac Jones and Agi Harris Yeah, Ryan come on down man Shades throughout rookie ticket auto for the Lions. I'm gonna get whoppers. I'm gonna get the Taco Bell the Taco Bell wings I'm gonna get 7-Eleven pizza for everybody to Off you to family of five buying all those things. I'll spend 20 bucks be delicious Tom Brady look at that pretty cool Jersey, huh? 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Yeah, Quiddipay play-up ticket rookie auto to 99 for the Colts It's the second biggest food consumption day of the year behind Thanksgiving In the United States So, what's up, Ren? How you doing man? How people learn different language? That's awesome. They're actually the third rookie ticket auto for the Chargers I need to start watching breaks under the languages. I've learned a lot Unfortunately, you're only learning about Super Bowl foods. I apologize. I like to Gonna have my favorite favorite Super Bowl dish a Kale salad rookie ticket auto Rams Benz Geronik Kale salad I'm gonna have a Just some unsalted french fries no sauce And Ellerson Smith rookie ticket auto Giants All right, nothing huge in those either. We got a random to do for this these points. I will do a recap 400 Yeah, I'm just gonna make unseasoned tofu for all my guests two and one three times Trevor teams up top get some one two three Jaguars Jaguars I'm I like a lot of vegetables actually anyway Ellerson Smith Benz Geronik Larry Roundtree the third a quitty pay But a colt to 99 Diami Brown Javante Williams Sage Sarat Peyton Turner Dylan stoner Ben Bonogu Antoine Wesley Michael Hardman jr. Darnell Savage jr. Jerry Tillery Chase Winovich to 49 Niners expired redemption Debo Samuel rookie ticket RPS May still have that nine is like I said earlier. I wouldn't count on it, but there's a chance a Tickets to have Charles. Oh many a minute who are all many who 94 Texans and a Roddy Anderson for the Bengals We keep a roll. Thanks again, everybody


We here at Hit the Music are pining away for the good old days of the renegade outlaw promotion from South Philly Extreme championship wrestling and one aspect that made ECW so popular in the 1990s was that they used barely legally Perhaps actual music you heard in real life and correlated those songs with their wrestling characters that being said I'm Kevin Callis from Hit the Music and please don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell because As here are the top 10 edgiest ECW entrance themes Mirroring real life this song is how Tommy dreamer must feel after being suspended by impact wrestling and cancelled by society For his choice words defending Ric Flair's alleged sexual harassment during an episode of vice TV's dark side of the ring that documented the infamous plane ride from hell wwe transatlantic flight that saw intoxicated wrestlers brawl in mid-air and Reportedly harassed the flight attendants on board man in the box by Alice in chains Blended metal and grunge together to create a unique sound that differentiated the group from other Seattle based bands The innovator of violence was the heart and soul of ECW, but he might be boxed up in his house of hardcore for a while now Nobody and we mean nobody took a powerbomb through a flaming table wrapped in barbed wire better than balls Mahoney The ECW original who was rarely seen without his signature steel chair except for that period of time when he appeared in the WWE as Santa Claus Santa's evil brother from the South Pole and you back in EC dub balls paired Perfectly with Axel Rotten a similar hardcore wrestler and the duo became known as the hardcore chair Swinging freaks and speaking of perfect pairs Mahoney would come to the ring to the AC DC song big balls And he led the crowd in singing the chorus. I've got big balls He's got big balls, but we've got the biggest balls of them all Utilizing on the ECW crowds lust for blood and guts Jerome young Aka New Jack was the hardest of hardcore wrestlers over the course of a three decade career spent outside the wrestling mainstream New Jack's propensity for legitimate Unpredictable violence remained as real as the sport could get rather than achieving fame Jack became infamous for his actions like the mass transit incident and for throwing Vic Grimes off of a 40 foot Scaffold not being one to conform New Jack also became the first wrestler to have his entrance music play throughout his entire match Natural born killers by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre became the savage soundtrack as Jack rudely beat down his opponents with various unorthodox weapons Al Snow was a wrestling journeyman perhaps best known for his success in ECW when he developed a Schizophrenic character gimmick and randomly found a mannequin head on the streets of Philadelphia near the ECW arena He then began walking around and talking to the head and actually named the head Well head for whatever reason snow became hugely over which prompted crowds to chant We want head an intentional double entendre if there ever was one leading ECW management to buy in bulk and hand out These styrofoam mannequin heads at wrestling shows so the audience members could wave and shout in unison head Head head right in time to breathe by the prodigy snows raging electronic rock entrance music Raven was one of the most Significant creations to come out of ECW a gimmick that was one for the ages with the former Scotty Flamingo and Johnny Polo Developing a new persona of an angst ridden young man who looked like the embodiment of the grunge music movement Always touted as having a mind for the business the layers to Raven's Philosophical promos and his love for smashing his opponents with stop signs were both Instrumental to ECW becoming the sensation it became adding to his deep and dark demeanor was actually a rather upbeat rock song from the Californian punk group the offspring and their breakthrough single come out and play which is sometimes subtitled keep them separated Under the tutelage of his uncle and trainer the original chic Sabu is credited as a revolutionary in the business due to his work in ECW and Japan Nicknamed the homicidal suicidal Genocidal death defying maniac because of his mixed style of high-flying and hardcore wrestling Sabu would oftentimes sacrifice his own well-being just to win a match Originally adopting the jaws theme for his entrance until Harry slash and the slash tones created hookah blues The ethnic enough to get the point across but not like racist You know tune that makes you want a Arabian face buster your neighbor through a table utilizing an Arabic sounding hook on a Synthesized saxophone over a metal background. This is Sabu Originally used as the theme for the ECW faction known as the triple threat featuring the trio of Chris Benoit Dean Malenko and Shane Douglas the franchise wound up keeping deep purples perfect strangers for his entrance music after the others left for WCW in the fall of 1995 and it makes perfect sense to because deep purple is one of rock and rolls most enduring Institutions and we're not talking about any of those institutions where Dean Douglas used to work one of the true ECW backbones the franchise was a hell of a hand was great on the mic was one of the most hated heels of his day and without him There would have been no ECW of all the thousands of matches held throughout time The only thing memorable about the Sandman's run as a pro wrestler is that he hit his head with a beer can and Staggered his way through the ECW crowd to the electric sounds of Metallica's enter Sandman the most enthusiastic Crowd participation entrance music of all time the singing of Enter Sandman was an attraction unto itself Sure, the same man was there with his can of bud in Singapore cane But as soon as his music ended the fun was all but over perhaps no other entrance theme was as imperative To a wrestler's career and yet this iconic theme was still the right fit for the scrappy underground promotion Beat me if you can survive if I'd let you the human suplex machine known as Taz made Competitors twice his size Question their decision to enter the squared circle with those menacing words the no-nonsense tough guy for the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York Fans revered Taz for his explosive arsenal of MMA offense long before mixed martial arts reached Prominence clad in his trademark orange and black Taz was the most miserable man on the planet and when kisses war machine began to play The mood in the ECW arena suddenly changed as if a thunderstorm was about to break out when Taz Stucked his way to the ring and choked out everyone in his way ECW was the personification of the overlap between fans of metal and the emerging brand of hardcore wrestling that populated the late 1990s with Rob van Damme you had someone who blended the inherent showmanship of wrestling with a realism That was lacking elsewhere plus his hard-hitting albeit laid-back stoner Slash rock star persona was encapsulated by using a cover of the band Pantera's walk for his entrance theme with its antagonistic vocals chugging guitar riffs and pounding drums walk as our number one edgiest ECW theme was a relentless introduction to the frantic Unpredictable style that the whole effing show cultivated in ECW and gave him an attitude that was tailor-made for their rabid fan base So what do you think did we get this list right or wrong leave a comment down below with your thoughts And don't forget to give this video a massive thumbs up if you enjoyed it and go on and share the video with one Of your friends who you think might also like it because it really helps our channel grow and reach new people Also, if you haven't already please consider subscribing for weekly wrestling theme song content And don't forget to follow us on social media, and we'll see you next time now hit the music


So what does it mean to be a woman? Is there a fundamental biological script that we are overriding, or merely social expectations that we are shunning? Well, there is a God-awful confusion between sex and gender. Sex, we used to think of sex, we used to believe that sex is biologically determined by something called gametes, certain type of sex cells. We've honestly and firmly and sincerely believed until well into the 1960s that sex is exclusively determined by gametes, in a sexual differentiation process during the pregnancy, and that people are born either men or women, either male or female, I'm sorry.  Today we know a lot more, and we know that about 2% of people are born with an indeterminate sex. We also know that hormonal cascades, hormonal developments in later life can absolutely change one's sexuality and psychosexuality, to the point that one has gender dysphoria, which is a bad name, a bad label, it should have been sex dysphoria. So we know that someone can be born as a man, but having been exposed to certain hormones in the womb and later on in life, etc., etc., he can definitely feel that he's a female, he's born male, but he can feel that he's a female and vice versa. So there is the concept of sex fluidity. Regrettably it is hyped beyond measure, but it does exist. I also see nothing wrong in adolescents experimenting with sexual identities.  Now this sexual identity can be punch sexuality, can be bisexuality, it doesn't have to be male or female. We have about, I think, 8 or 9 sexual identities nowadays, which are recognized and recognizable and documented in literature for thousands of years, by the way. So I don't see anything wrong in an adolescent experimenting. Actually, adolescents had always experimented with homoeroticism and homosexuality. Even in the 1940s, even in the 1920s, even in the 19th century, people, when boys were growing up, they were experimenting with homosexuality. It was a well-known documented phenomenon. So people experiment as adolescents and then they settle on a single, usually lifelong identity and there is type constancy after that.  And in adolescence, it might even be a good idea to encourage people to explore the whole range until they can conveniently and safely and comfortably settle into a single sex kind of role. So this is sex. While sex in something like 90% of the cases is determined at birth and is stable across the lifespan, gender is a completely different thing. Now remember, sex is male-female.   Sexual reproduction is the favorite strategy in nature. If we ignore, for example, protozoa and microbes and so on, if we talk about evolved complex organisms, sexual reproduction is by far the favorite strategy of nature.  So this is sex. And one could say pretty safely that sex is fixed. At the margins, there are people who are fluid and they can transition from one sex to another, but sex is a pretty fixed thing. Not so gender. Sex is male-female. Gender is men-women. Men-women is a social-cultural construct.  It so happens that people with vaginas were assigned the gender of women and people with penises were assigned the gender of men. But there is no biological foundation to decide that a specific gender role should forever be assigned to someone with a specific set of genitalia, or that a specific gender role should be universal across all periods of history in all societies, all cultures and all geographic regions. Actually, this is counterfactual. It's not true. Gender roles, there are like thousands of gender roles throughout history in various cultures, societies, periods, etc. Gender roles are inverted in northern Albania, which is a highly traditionalist and conservative country. There are women there who are considered to be men and treated as men. Gender roles are inverted in many, many tribes in Africa, in Latin America, in the Amazon, etc., etc. Many primitive early societies had inverted gender roles, including passages in the Bible. Gender is not a fixed thing. Gender is a social convention, essentially, and the outcome of upbringing. To start with, as Butler had noted, gender is performative. It's a performance. Gender is what men do, how they act, including in sex. Gender is what women do, how they act, their choices, including in sex. So sex underlies gender and kind of integrates with it in some way, but as a performance. When people grow up, they are being consistently told, girls don't do this, boys don't do this. This is the way you should behave, to be a man, to grow up and be a man. This is the set of actions, choices, decisions, body language, etc., that you should adopt. It's a stereotype, it's a role, and people are brought up to perform these roles. So gender is performative. Gender is also the outcome of socialization. Society wants us to perform specific roles. For example, there was a period in human history where society valued children very much, especially, for example, during the colonial times, when they needed surplus population to take over colonialism. So during that period, 17th, 18th, and 19th century, women were encouraged to stay at home, reproduce, and raise children. Society needed it. Men were encouraged to be disposed of and laden, aggressive, and so on, because society needed soldiers. Societal needs shape and determine gender roles. Today, for example, society needs women to be promiscuous. They need them to not have committed relationship. Society needs women to not have committed relationship. Society needs women to postpone, delay marriage, and not have children. Why? Because society wants women to be, to integrate in the workforce, to integrate in the workforce, and to become consumers. The overriding need of society today is to equate gender roles, to create a unique gender, where everyone, regardless of genitalia, is a consumer and a producer. Now, children get in the way of this. Family, families, marriages, committed relationships, intimacy, they get in the way of profits, and income, and consumption, and production, which are the ultimate values. They are the gods of today. They are the idols of today, money, the bottom line, profits. So these are the values of today. So gender roles today had shifted to reflect these social preferences. Similarly, gender roles reflect dominance, submission. Men are supposed to be dominant. Women are supposed to be submissive. Now, everyone in the monastery will tell you this is a natural and biological way of things. That's utter, unmitigated nonsense. In numerous species, it is the female who is super dominant, and the male who is submissive. There's nothing in nature that preordains this. Nothing in the biology of men and women determines who will be dominant and who will be submissive. Yes, men have higher muscle mass. They have more muscles. Women, by the way, are better adapted to post-modern society and its exigencies and demands. But men for a very long time, during the agricultural and early industrial revolution, men had leveraged their muscles to dominate society and exert control over women, subdu, subjugate, and submit them. But this is a historical accident. Had we started with the industrial revolution or the information revolution in ancient Babylon, we would have had a matriarchy. Men would have been nothing. They wouldn't be dominant. They would be submissive. And indeed, in many societies throughout history, there were matriarchies. Women were in control. They were dominant. In quite a few societies to this very day, women married multiple men.  And about half of all children are raised in single parent households, majority of which are women.  Then there is the issue of gendered personality. We are taught to become gendered. Part of our identity formation is our gender. It's not like you're an accountant.   So gender, masculine, feminine is an integral part of your identity, unlike, for example, your profession or your academic accomplishments or degrees or whatever.  These are jobs. These are absolute jobs. We are taught that these are the only jobs that are part of our identity. If you later become a PhD, that's not part of your identity. If you become an accountant, that's not part of your identity. But if you are training to be a man, that's part of your identity. If you are about to become a mother, that is part of your identity. We took a set of jobs, a set of employment opportunities, a set of, and we made them, we made them a part of our identity. And they are not. They should not be.  Now you may feel comfortable being a man or a woman. No problem with that. But just try to not feel comfortable and you will see the societal backlash against, for example, transgender transsexual people.  Even though a gender is total fiction. It's a job. And finally, there's the issue of boys and girls.  Children, regardless of their genitalia, are raised by women. Now that creates, that creates an asymmetry in the way boys and girls are raised. Naturally, naturally women have more affinity to girls, even if they don't admit it, even if they are totally infatuated with their boys rather than their girls. It's still, studies have shown that women raise girls differently to the way that they raise boys. For example, they are much more emotionally open and empathetic with their girl children than they are with their boy children. Gradually boys are learned to separate from the mother, not only in a good way, but in some ways, in some dysfunctional ways, in some not so good ways. They learn, for example, boys learn, for example, that to express one's emotions is unmanly. Now men today are softer, they're more effeminate. In other words, they had adopted some elements of the feminine gender role. But still they're very averse to expressing emotions, crying in public, admitting to vulnerabilities. They're much more averse than women. There is a mountain of studies of this. And why are they averse? Because that's the way they had been brought up by their mothers. The mother broadcasts to the boy, to the boy child, the mother broadcasts, I'm much closer emotionally to my girl than to you. And the boy takes this on board and he understands that he shouldn't burden his mother and impose on her his emotions. Because she reserves her emotions to the girl, not to him as a boy. Now this has been documented and observed and actually it constitutes one of the arguments in modern feminism. And theoretically the presence of a male, the presence of a father should balance this, but he doesn't. He doesn't because women monopolize the formative years, zero to six, absolutely monopolize. Psychodynamically the father has an extremely limited function before the age of six. And this is the critical age where we get all the messages that tell us how to be, who to be. So our identity formation, these are the critical years. We become who we are. We have identity diffusion well into age 21. But the figments, the elements of our identity, we acquire these in the first formative years where mommy is in charge to the exclusion of daddy.  Even if they are loved and adored and admired, they're loved and adored and admired in a way different to girls. It could well be one of the main reasons for the current gender wars and the problems between men and women. This is my commentary on the questions. I wish to thank my client for raising them. I hope I provoked your thoughts as she had provoked mine. Thank you for listening. Men, women, males and females. During this forced vacation from my YouTube channel, what else can I contemplate but gender dysphoria, transgenders. And today we are going to discuss two topics, much shunned, much censored, much feared, much suppressed. The first one is the phenomenon of transgenderism. Is it a form of social contagion? Also, we are going to touch upon narcissism and how it may be connected to transgender phenomena. But first and foremost, is it communicable? Is it, as some conservative thinkers say, and some scholars, is society a social pressure, pure pressure? Is this a vector of transmission, so to speak, of transgender inclinations? That's the first question. And the second question is detransitioning. How widespread is it? And what does it teach us about the transgender phenomenon? First of all, before we proceed, I've been saying repeatedly in numerous videos, there is a huge difference between sex and gender. Sex is a sign that birth, and it's usually based on visible genitalia. It's a sign by the delivery in doctor. Gender is learned. It's acculturated. It's socialized. It's performative. That's why we call it gender role. People with specific sex organs, secondary or primary, can choose a gender which is non-conforming, a gender which does not conform to their genitalia or other sex parts. So gender and sex are two totally different issues. And here starts the major confusion. Gender dysphoria is actually very often about sex, not about gender, or not only about gender.  But it's called gender dysphoria. It's been called gender dysphoria for like forever, for decades. And this created God-awful confusion. Both sexuality and gender are fluid. Even sex itself, which is supposedly a biological determinant, even that is fluid. It can be changed. But gender definitely is fluid. Gender roles. Sexual orientation is fluid, and very often changes over the lifespan. So there's a lot of fluidity and plasticity built into sexuality, gender, and even sex. And the confusion is so massive that we all stumble in the dark, talking at cross purposes, not being able to communicate meaningfully. And whenever communication fails us, whenever language breaks down, emotions erupt, especially negative affectivity, emotions such as anger, fear of the unknown. So today, I'm going to do my little best to contribute to throwing sunlight on some of the more convoluted and dark alleys of this debate, if you can call it debate. It's more like a skirmish or a squirrel. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism, Revisited and Former and Current Professor of Psychology and Finance. Having dispensed with this, let's delve right in. Moira Shilaji, I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. Moira Shilaji is the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, AAP. And she released no fewer than two statements, one on August 22nd last year, 2022. This statement was published in the Wall Street Journal of All Places. The other statement followed three days later on the 25th of August, 2022, and it was in the form of an AAP daily briefing. Presumably she was just trying to clarify the Wall Street Journal widely misunderstood statement that she had released. She was trying to clear the air because the debate has become vicious and pernicious and poisonous and aggressive to the point of violence and very often spilled into violence. And a lot of the debate revolves around the question or the issue of, is gender dysphoria a clinical entity? Is it a real thing? Is it a true condition similar, let's say, to cancer or tuberculosis or schizophrenia? Is it a disorder? Or is it just a choice? Is it a lifestyle or is it dictated by biology? And what's the contribution of biology? What about society and culture? How do gender roles interact with underlying biological sex and how do the two put together create sexuality? None of these questions, believe it or not, have clear answers. So she referred to two papers and the two papers dealt with a very, very difficult, ornery question. Can gender dysphoria be learned? Is it mimicked? Is it the outcome of exposure to other gender dysphoric individuals? It's as if gender dysphoria was some kind of epidemic, contagion with an infectious agent, a pathogen. So the two papers were published, the first one was published in 2018. At the time there was a health expert working in Brown University and they hypothesized, they proposed the existence of a condition called rapid onset gender dysphoria, ROGD. The lead author, a woman, described rapid onset gender dysphoria as a social contagion, or at least one of the reasons for ROGD was supposed to have been social contagion. When the paper was published, it ignited a firestorm. There was criticism from every segment of the population, not the list of which from the transgender community. And of course immediately the paper was withdrawn and suppressed and censored and eliminated and burned at the stake and shredded, which is what many of you would like to do to me. Okay Shoshanim, was this paper published in 2018, was it supported by any research? The truth is not really, and the even bigger truth is, there's no research about transgender issues. The topic is so sensitive, is so politically incorrect or politically correct depending on which side of the walk movements you are, that academics stay away, they shy away from it. We don't have any data as to transgender phenomena, including surgical interventions, gender affirming care, nothing, we know nothing about any of this. We haven't followed up on people, we don't have outcomes, we don't have analysis, absolutely nothing. And that's because some of the findings may unsettle the transgender community, or may unsettle the conservative wing of the intellectual life in the United States, which is increasingly more vociferous and may I say unduly aggressive. Four years later, 2022, there was a second paper published in the August issue of Pediatrics. The authors of the paper attempted to test the hypothesis of rapid onset gender dysphoria. And more specifically, they tried to ascertain or to measure the possible social contagion. Now just to remind you, social contagion simply means if you're exposed to gender dysphoric people, you're more likely to become gender dysphoric yourself. This is the vector of social contagion. Now we have many, many phenomena which involve social contagion. Mob psychology is an example, the behavior of crowds. In many, many cases, we communicate behaviors to individuals via collectives, or via social structures and social institutions, including peers, for example. So 2022, the study was published. And it was more substantial than the 2018 paper. They checked the birth ratios between 2017 and 2019, the birth ratios of transgender diverse individuals to female sex at birth individuals. And the idea was to see if there is a decrease or an increase in adolescents who self-identify as transgender diverse. In short, they established a benchmark, how many people were assigned female sex at birth, and then they followed up on these people trying to see how many of them outed and declared themselves to be transgender diverse, how many adolescents identified as such. So the first thing they found, which is not surprising at all, is that people who identify as transgender or transgender diverse, they're subject to bullying, victimization, and the suicidality among these people, among these youth, is much higher when compared with cisgender peers. That came as no surprise to anyone. The authors concluded that actually their findings were, and I'm quoting, incongruent, incongruent, not supportive of the ROGD hypothesis. In other words, their findings did not show any social contagion. And the reasoning behind this was it is so difficult to be transgender.  The price is so high that it's very unlikely that you will try to emulate or imitate someone who is gender dysphoric. On the very contrary, you will try to keep away. So this was the 2022 conclusion. So what can we make of these two studies, which seem to contradict each other? There is a general perception that there is an increase in prevalence of gender dysphoria. And this may be not entirely true. Perhaps the prevalence and incidence haven't changed, but what has changed is that people are more compassionate, more educated and more accepting. So it is less challenging to out yourself, to come out and acknowledge and admit and confess that your gender dysphoric, especially in youth among the young people. So are we, is the debate over? Can we now say safely that there is no social contagion? The transgender community and population, they feel very threatened by this idea of social contagion. Because if there is social contagion, and if it is considerable, then the whole transgender issue is nothing but a fad. It's a fashion. It's not real. It's not a clinical entity. It doesn't reflect any biological or psychological, true, veritable, verifiable processes. If on the other hand social contagion is very minimal, if at all, then we are talking about a real phenomenon. And unfortunately, there are no answers. We don't know. The samples are too small. The methodology is questioned and academics are afraid. They're terrified. They don't dare to touch this issue. We must study this. Because if gender dysphoria is social contagion, especially among peer-sensitive adolescents, in other lessons we know that peers are the main socialization agents.   Peers have a huge role in gender formation, gender role formation and sexual identity. If there is social contagion, we can put a stop to it. And we should even put a stop to it. If, however, social contagion is minimal, one, two percent of the cases, then we should revert to the opposite pole. We should afford and we should provide gender-affirming care. We should help youth to transition because then transgender is a real phenomenon. And here's the breaking news. We don't know yet scientifically if gender dysphoria is a real thing. We have no studies, no rigorous studies at least, which support either side of the debate conclusively. And that is a shame and a disgrace in 2022. In the meantime, because there's such a paucity of studies, such a dearth of data, everyone and his dog has a stake in the debate. Psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysts, medical doctors, transgender, their families, their friends, conservatives and liberals. Everyone is throwing his or her head into the ring and it's a melee. It's a mess. It's a wrestling match rather than an informed medical debate because it boils down to a medical issue. It involves not only the mind, it involves the body. We find, for example, a month ago, February 15, we find a series of announcements by Italian psychoanalysts and they oppose the use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria. The debate started in January when the Italian Psychoanalytic Society issued a call to the Ministry of Health signed by the president, the president, Thanopoulos. Great name. I don't know what he's doing in Italy. Okay. So the document expressed, I quote, great concern about the use of drugs that block pubertal development of minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria. And then there was a list of warnings based on the idea that, and I'm quoting again, the ongoing trial circumvent careful scientific evaluation. And the document calls for rigorous discussion. I can't agree more. I fully agree. I agree with all these things. There's no serious scientific study of the issue and we need to become serious about it and we need to go rigorous. So what do we base today? What do we base our diagnosis on? There's no real science. There are no major studies. There are no big samples. There's no follow-up on what is happening to individuals having transition. What do we base all this on? Well, believe it or not, we base it on claims. People come and say that the agenda dysphoric and that's where it begins and that's where it ends. There's no way to carefully and critically evaluate social identity in progress. The document says, only a minority of children who state that they do not identify with the agenda confirm this statement after puberty. Suspending or preventing psychosexual development while waiting for the maturation and definition of the child's stable identity is in contradiction with the fact that this development is a central factor in the process of identity definition. That's a very convoluted and long way of saying children have no clue as to what their gender or sex is. End of story and quite true. We acquire this determinants of identity only in mid-adolescence, not earlier. So children can't make these decisions and can't report truthfully about their inner states because these inner states are in flux. They're not stable. They're not firm and they're definitely not lifelong. The statement by the Italian Psychoanalytic Society continued, even when the declared gender dysphoria in pre-puberty age is confirmed during adolescence, the developmental arrest won't result in a body that is different from a sexual point of view from the original one. The sexual development of the body, even when it contradicts the internal orientation, allows an erotic fulfillment that a blocked or manipulated body does not offer. So here it's more debatable. Many transgender people report that they're pretty happy with the new bodies they have. And this biological determinism, you're born with genitalia and the genitalia determine your gender and how you function in society and basically your fate. That belongs in the 1930s and 1940s. There's no place in post-modern society on the one hand. So it's not true to say that once gender orientation becomes clear to the individual in adolescence, transitioning to a different kind of body would be unsatisfactory. That's not true. That's not supported by anything. And the overwhelming vast majority of transgender people report exactly the opposite. And so a large number of professional social societies in Italy countermanded the letter of the Psychoanalytic Society and they published an open letter. So Italian Society of Endocrinology, the Italian Society of Pediatrics, so pediatric endocrinology, diabetology, andrology, sexology, pediatric psychiatry, national observatory of gender identity. Most of a host of societies and associations spring to the rescue kind of. And they confronted the Psychoanalytic Society and that included the Society of Psychiatry, National Order of Psychologists, et cetera, et cetera. And so they said the text describes the treatment with hypothalamic blockers in adolescence with gender dysphoria as an experimental treatment. But it is not. In fact, the therapy is approved in many countries in the world, Italy included. And there are very favorable opinions by bioethics committees all over the world. And so these Italian societies and associations of professionals, they wrote, such medical treatment is reserved for carefully selected cases following multidisciplinary and personalized evaluation. We agree that the scientific data available to date confirm the gender identity reaches stability only at pubertal age during adolescence and not in pre-pubertal age or in childhood. Therefore, as widely documented in international recommendations, hypothalamic blockers can be prescribed only when puberty is already underway, which is the way it should be all over the world, including in the United States. Transgender adolescents are very vulnerable. They have much higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicide risk, distress. It's a conflict between one's feeling of oneself, one's experience of oneself, and one's body in a way the body is perceived as a strange or alien or even as a traitor, there's a sense of betrayal sometimes. And these associations continued in their open letter to say, follow-up studies show that treatment with puberty blockers can significantly reduce behavioral and emotional problems and reduce suicidal risk as well as improve overall psychological functioning in adolescence. And so there's a debate not only in the United States, even in a way more traditional society like Italy. The psychoanalytic society of Italy is right in saying the following. I'm quoting, There are no rigorous carefully collected and independently controlled data, nor studies on the difference in terms of suicide between allegedly transgender kids who take the drug and those who do not. Dysphoria often coexist with mental disorders such as depression, eating disorders, or autism spectrum disorders. We need a differential diagnosis, but few people deal with it. That is the core of the problem. The problem is there is a surge of adolescents including sometimes children who claim that they don't feel gender-wise. There is a discrepancy between their gender roles as assigned by society mainly and their sex as determined by their genitalia at birth. And they would like to transition to create conformity, to create a strong association or correlation between equipment and its use or change the equipment, change the genitalia and other sex organs and so on and so forth in order to reach such a conformity. But so the problem is not this. There is clearly a phenomenon. The problem is we don't know enough. We have no information. We have no data about anything. Literally about anything. Is it socially communicable? What's the influence of peers? We never conducted a study with a control group. How about are there any biological determinants that can be identified? I don't know, hormones, something. Is there a correlation? Is there intergenerational transmission, for example? What's the effect of puberty blockers? There's no follow-up. Can you believe this? There's no follow-up that I'm aware of as to what happens to transgender people having undergone interventions and treatments. And so this debate is not going to end until we bravely tackle the issues that I've mentioned without fear and without censorship. And one of the main issues we need to study is something called detransitioning. Detransitioning is when transgender people regret the decisions they've made. Now if you dare to mention the word detransition or the word regret, meaning on any of the forums of transgender people, you will be castigated, chastised, drawn and quartered, burned, and your ashes spread on all five oceans of the globe. These words are taboo, forbidden, verboten, nichts, don't say them. It's as if there's no such thing. Transgender people essentially deny that there is such a thing. And the academic cohort that is, dare I say, financially invested in the transgender industry because it became a cottage industry. This academic cohort equally denies detransitioning, the very existence of detransitioning. But the truth is detransitioning exists. And there is a huge debate because there are no studies. Whether detransitioning constitutes 2% of the transgender population or is it closer to 35%? I refer you to studies by Dr. Kenan McKinnon. So transgender people, let's be clear. The majority of transgender people are happy, content and egocintonic with their decisions. But there are transgender people who have undergone interventions and treatments including surgical treatments and regret it and are unhappy about it. This phenomenon is real. It exists. People who have detransitioned or regret their decision to transition, they don't dare to speak out. They feel ashamed. They don't want to endanger the transgender community by providing weapons and arguments to the opposite side, to the conservative camp. So they keep mum, they keep quiet.  They feel that they've made the wrong decision and no one likes to own up to making wrong decisions. And so it's as if you're not allowed to speak about these experiences. People who detransition deserve the same supportive care as young people who wish to transition. Detransitioning can even happen because gender identity is fluid. I keep telling you, it's all in flux. And so we need to be compassionate about these people and we need to study them. Because studying detransition can shed light on the mechanics and the dynamics and the etiology of transitioning. In short, if we study why people regret transitioning, we're going to learn a lot about transitioning. The decision making that goes into transitioning, the emotions, the cognitions, the causation, what causes transitioning, the connectivity to gender and or sex, et cetera, et cetera. I think detransitioning is a rare opportunity to learn the truth about gender dysphoria, transgender phenomena, and so on and so forth. I don't think they should be shunned. Detransitioning is rare. They're not absolute figures, but many authorities say that it's something like 2%. And so these cases are perceived to be isolated and dangerous to the transgender community.  Like you're not supposed to study because there's a campaign going on. There's an agenda here. There's a battle, a war, and you don't ask questions. You don't cast doubts when a war is going on.  And that is, of course, very wrong. It's very wrong. Gender-affirming care is a necessity in my view only in late adolescence. Detransitioning is also a necessity. We need to be tolerant of a two-way street. Never mind how slack the traffic is either way. We need to allow people to make choices even after they have made choices. Transitioning shouldn't be a dead end, an irreversible course of action. Transitioning should never be irrevocable. And so we need to study this. And the shocking truth is, I know you're not going to believe me, but the shocking truth is, there are no large-scale studies tracking people who receive gender care as adolescents. None. There are no studies that ask adolescents who transition. Are you satisfied with your treatment now that you're much older? You receive gender-affirming care when you were 13 and then you went through interventions in your 20s and now that you're in your 40s, are you happy with it? Are you satisfied? Have you done the right thing? No one. They've been a series of studies and they had severe limitations. Some of them focused on people who received treatment as adults, not adolescents. Some followed patients for a short period of time. Others lost track of like 80% of the patients and so on and so forth. McKinnon says there's a real need for more long-term studies that track patients for five years or longer. Many detransitioners talk about feeling good during the first few years of the transition and after that they may experience regret. Dutch researchers reported the results of a study which supposedly is the biggest study ever. It was a study of transgender youths and they reviewed prescription drug records and so on. The Dutch found that 704 out of 720 adolescents who started on puberty blockers before taking hormones continued with the treatment after four years. 16 discontinued. So this sits well with the 2% rule, only 2% regret the decision. This also would indicate that we are not dealing with social contagion. If 98% of youth who transitioned and were treated received gender-affirming care were treated with puberty blockers and so on. If 98% of them are happy with their decisions, satisfied, continued treatment after four years, that couldn't be merely pure pressure or social contagion that reflects some real need, some real urgent desire to transition. And so regret is rare. No one says it's not rare, but even rare phenomena teaches a lot about the rule. Even small minorities edify us about the dynamics of majorities. So we need to study this. Dr. Malian van der Loes, which was the lead author of this study, she says it's important to have evidence-based medicine instead of expert opinion or just opinion at all. And she's right. Science is not about opinions. Science is reliable evidence. Frequencies, tests, control groups, what the heck is going on? How can such a much disputed, most hotly disputed area, ethical debate in modern life, ethical dilemma remain so virgin in terms of scientific studies? And they say we cannot, there's a clinical psychologist, Edwards Leeper, and he says we cannot carry on in this field that involves permanently changing young people's bodies if we don't fully understand what we are doing and learn from those we fail. We need to take responsibility as a medical and mental health community to see all the outcomes. Part of the problem is that de-transitioning is ill-defined, like many other things in sexuality, in the study of sexuality. De-transitioning for those who transition socially may be another changing name, preferred pronouns, dress, other forms of identity expression. So that's de-transitioning. For those who receive medical treatment, de-transitioning typically includes halting hormone therapy. So not all people who stop treatment, for example, report that they regret transition. So this is a complex phenomenon de-transitioning. We have to separate the emotional side from the executive side, decisions to stop receiving treatment from the social side. Some people just stop receiving hormone therapy when they've achieved certain physical changes with which they're comfortable. They go midway. Some are unhappy with the side effects of hormones. Some are unable to cope with long-standing social stigma and discrimination and so on and so forth. We need to go deep and first and foremost we need to create terminology, a dictionary common to everyone. We don't have an argument in physics about what is energy or what is a black hole. It should be the same here. There shouldn't be arguments about what is gender, what is dysphoria, what is de-transitioning. For example, patients who had their ovaries or testes removed no longer produce hormones that match the gender assigned at birth. And so what's happening with these people? We know that they have a medical price and so on and so forth. How do they perceive this medical price, side effects and so on? Are they angry? Are they happy? Is it worth it and so on? Early van den Buusche, an author of a study in Germany, says many respondents describe experiences of outright rejection from the LGBT plus spaces due to the decision to transition or to de-transition. So this intolerance should stop. On the one hand, the transgender community must open itself up and allow diversity and allow different voices to interact. On the other hand, science should take gender dysphoria a lot more seriously and study the phenomenon time and again, rigorously, until we finally can tell the world and the adolescents who seek our help.  What is this entity that we are dealing with, clinical, biological, social, peer pressure? What? And what would happen to them statistically? Should they choose different courses of treatment? I know no other field in medicine so neglected, so infantile and so primitive after 40 years. It's a shame. Time to move on. Welcome back and thank you for joining us. This part of the show is where we look at mental health matters and all things to do with psychology. Stay with me because I'm just going to read out something that came out in the census. The transgender and non-binary people have been counted for the very first time in the 220-year history of the census for England and Wales. It revealed that 262,000 people identify as a gender different to their sex registered at birth.  The charity Stonewall, which has long called for the inclusion of gender and sexual identity questions, described the results as an historic step. Canada has also recorded similar figures. Now, a lot of people, I have to say it's, I don't include myself in this, but a lot of people will be asking why is LGBTQ plus why is it so prominent? Why do we keep hearing about it? I've heard people on this station and callers into many other stations say, why do they seem to be so many LGBTQ or transgender or why is this such a thing at the moment? Well, one reason is because people feel that they can talk about it more easily. That's not to say there aren't significant barriers and discriminations, but that's one issue. Is there anything else into the equation? Well, this is a question of my next guess, I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to have. I know he got a huge response last time he was on the show from Israel. Dr. Sam Vaknin, a professor of clinical psychology. Sam, welcome back. I mean, our last talk, I can't tell you how interesting was. Love it. Love it. So, gender wars and the emergence of a uni gender. As I said, I mean, so many people are saying, why is this a thing? What's going on? What is your take on this? This is part of a historical process. The two world wars created a shortage of males. And then capitalism has transitioned into a paradigm of eternal growth, constant growth, continuous growth, which required the introduction of women into the workforce and also as consumers. Of course, we only have 24 hours a day. And if you spend your time at the workplace and then spend even more of your time consuming, then you have less time left for family, intimacy, marriage, and so on so forth. And there has been a tectonic shift in the way genders interact and team up to reproduce and to perpetuate the species. This is one of the greatest revolutions in human history in my view. And the outcome was the emergence of what I call the uni gender. The uni gender is a sex genderless person, someone who identifies less with social constructs such as gender stereotypical male or stereotypical female and identify much more, for example, with a career or with a lifestyle or with a sexual preference or orientation, rather than with gender gender was an organizing principle. Gender is performative. It's a social construct. It's actually a script. It's a form of acting. And so now we have different other scripts. So studies by Lisa Wade and many other scholars are showing that women are defining themselves as masculine, while men didn't complete the transition from masculine to feminine. This is a very old distilled revolution. Women have become men, but men have remained men. End result, we haven't seen the end. So let me when you say that when you say that that's taking it away from the social construct of what a man does and who he is and what have you because before up until recently. We had all sorts of, as you say, a script for what men were identifying by what they did their jobs, their roles in the family, etc. and likewise with women. With the erosion of that with both sexes having, you know, with a lot of crossover. If you take yourself away from those constructs from those definitions like a man puts out the rubbish and doesn't what have you. You then become what floating between the two, because what I find is interesting in many African societies before colonialism before invasion and all this before slavery, because the tribe had to work together to get the harvest in. They couldn't, you know, one lot do one thing and one lot do another. Everyone had to work together. The constructs of of male and female that we have in the West that we recognize. They weren't like that. And so you had many quote unquote genderless people that you looked at and you couldn't I readily identify as being a male or a female because people enveloped both sides just to just so the tribe could exist. Then along comes faith and religion and what have you and says no men do this women do that. But it's something that existed centuries or you know hundreds of years ago. And you're saying now it's it's coming back if you like it's coming to the West. Yes, what's happening now is not that the genders are exchanging scripts. It's not a swapping of scripts. It's a conversion. Not on a single gender and the gender is masculine. Everyone is becoming masculine, regardless of genitalia. Now, the construct of gender had emerged originally when people began to create surplus wealth. So when we started to do capitalism and prior to industrialism and prior to urbanism, we had hunter gatherer societies. When we started when we transitioned to agriculture, following the agriculture revolution, we started to generate surpluses, surpluses accumulated as wealth, and you needed to you needed to transmit this wealth from one to the next.  And to do to accomplish this certainty, you needed to imprison women, essentially to imprison women to sequestered. And this is when gender gender roles emerged, culminating in the Victorian era. And of course, the emphasis is is not so much on reproduction. There are numerous mechanisms for transmitting wealth. Everything is contractual scripts of fluid sex is fluid, etc, etc. So there's no need for the old constructs, such as family, such as marriage marriage that declined by 50%. That's 50% from 1990. And one of the institutions we're getting rid of is gender. However, it is very unfortunate that we have converged on a single gender that is toxic. Both women and men. Why? Why is it toxic? Because women have adopted a male role model, which is psychopathic, narcissistic, aggressive, bullying, disempathic. Women did not adopt a male role model, which is hardworking, altruistic, empathic, loving, compassionate, caring and protective.  And men are doing the same. So we have a toxic convergence. The uni gender is toxic. So why is that? Why is that? Is it because it's still seen as all of those negative values that you talk the narcissistic one, the aggressive ones are still seen as the tools of power? Is it because being male or being seen as being more male or having more quote unquote male qualities is seen as the path to having power and control? Men have not become more feminine. Men have remained stereotypically masculine, almost a caricature of masculinity. Women have transitioned to toxic masculinity rather than men. Men have remained stuck there. So we have a situation where everyone agrees that values such as ambition, callousness, ruthlessness, suppression of empathy, competitiveness, and so on and so forth, everyone agrees now. Men and women alike agree that this should be the guiding light. This should be the northern star of one's life. Today, two and a half times more people say that they would prefer a career to a relationship lifelong. 38% of people in the United States are lifelong singles by decision. So we have created a masculine world which is a caricature of what real healthy masculinity is. And then we have adhered to it male and female alike. And this is the unigender. It's a toxic, sick, pathological construct. Now what about gay men then? A lot of people would say that, and it's a generalization I know because, you know, but a lot of people would see very gay of you like very camp men. Let's say camp because, you know, you could be camp and not gay, but very camp men as having what we see as female qualities. Or is that just the guys? Is that a caricature of female qualities? Many women would tell you that the best thing that could happen is having a gay friend.  Because sexual assault is on the rise. Sexual practices are heavily influenced by pornography. And these practices have entered the daily sexual practice of the vast majority of young people under age 35. Sex today is a ritualized form of extreme aggression. There's nothing there anymore. Really? I mean, there are people like Andrew Tate. I don't know if you've heard about that influence as Andrew Tate. And then there's the incel, you know, the whole incel movement as well, which is women hating, feminine quality hating, if you like, and promotes violence against women and what have you. But I mean, many of us would see that as something that's fringe. But let's just come back to the previous point that when with gay or very camp men, then where do they lie in all of this? Do they not have more quote unquote feminine qualities or is that a guy's feminine and feminine and masculine, as I said, social constructs. So of course, a guy can be feminine.  Femininity is simply a set a list of traits and behaviors which denote, for example, enhanced empathy, caring and connectivity, rather than aggression and competitiveness, which are stereotypically masculine.   Sex in general is becoming way more aggressive. For example, the incidence of choking on sexual dates has quintupled in the past 10 years alone.  So there's an orgasm gap. Women experience orgasm six times less than men in most sexual encounters, which are not committed, which are not in committed relationships and so on and so forth. Sorry, Sam, just because we're talking in a day, we've got to be slightly less graphic. But do you think that's because of the rise of, and you mentioned pornography, and we talked on this show about many young people learning about sex through pornography. But coming back to the role of the roles of men and women and what you're saying about women becoming more, you know, taking up the negative qualities of being masculine. Is that the way you see it? That's the way it's going to go. That's the way it is. Is it a fad? Is it a tide? Or is it this is what's happening to humanity that we'll see more and more and more? It's interesting that I'm just thinking of apparently there are more when it comes to actually, and that's another issue about people who say I'm not born the sex that I am, if you like, and having, you know, changing their gender through surgery and what have you. There's quite a big increase. I know there is a big increase in women, at least if they don't go the whole way, but having their breasts removed.  Because you may have the operation one, have you, but then your status, everything changes so much.  Is this the way it's always going to be? Is this the beginning of a tide, or is it a trend? No, I think that's the way it's going to be. And I think this way is going to be for several reasons. One, women, men have, men have walked away. Men going their own way. Men have walked away.  They refuse to form families. They refuse to engage in relationships and so on and so forth. In the absence of men, women have to be men. They have to fend off for themselves. They have to work hard. They have to make money. They have to attain financial independence. And they can't trust men to be there for them as they used to. This is point number one, point number two. Capitalism and the technologies, various technologies, encourage women and men to be atomized. They encourage them to be self-sufficient, to need no one and to interact with no one. Because there's a very simple trade-off.   Capitalism today is built on an unsustainable paradigm. It's built on the paradigm of eternal growth. And so for capitalistic societies to grow eternally, they need to generate consumption all the time. They need to interpolate you. They need to brainwash into consumption.  You consume in order to reduce or control anxiety. And this is precisely what capitalism wants, the current iteration of capitalism. So everyone is encouraged to live alone, to consume Netflix, to consume online, to not interact with other people because it takes away from profit. Everything is bottom-line oriented. And of course women play the game because it's the only game in town. And the irony is, this is a male game. It's not a female game.   This is more of a male- There's a lot there, Sam. This is- I'm sorry, I'm just like, whoa, there's a lot, there's a lot there. And I'm sure, I mean, I'd love to discuss it even further. I know there's a lot there, a lot there.  And I'd love to go into it further. And indeed we must on another show, but unfortunately have run out of time. But wow, lots to think about. Sam, that's why I love talking with you because it makes smoke come out of people's ears and go away and consider things and at least think things through.  And why have you, but at least we've made you think if that doesn't make you think nothing will. Dr. Sam Vacnin there on why he thinks that we've all come to one sex and it's not just about sex, it's about society, it's about consumerism and a whole lot of other things. Wow, lots to think about there. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back to your phone calls and messages of which there have been lots back in a moment.


This is going to be fascinating. This is the Gardner Boot from Harald Boots, arguably Australia's oldest boot company. It's a Chelsea boot, but take a look at the outsole and take a look at this leather flap. It ain't no RM Williams. Keep watching and I'll tell you about the fascinating history of Harald Boots and the innovation used in this boot. G'day, how you going? If you're new here, my name is Tech and welcome everybody to Boot Lossophy. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this country I live and work on are the widget people of the Noongar Language Group. As I said at the beginning, this is the Gardner Boot from the Harald Boot Company, a little-known bootmaker based in Ivanhoe East and outer suburb northeast of the city of Melbourne in Victoria. If you're used to RM Williams' or Chelsea work boots like Blundstones and Redbacks as your only Australian boots, you'll be surprised to know that Harald Boots have been operating in Australia since 1912, but it's arguably Australia's oldest bootmaking company because of the Harald family history, which I'll tell you about in a minute. But first let's take a look at the design and style of this Gardner Boot from the company. As you can see it's a Chelsea boot, but it has an innovative characteristic in that it has these protective leather flaps that cover the elastic goreng panels. Apart from that it's a sleek Chelsea, emphasised by it being a whole cut Chelsea, meaning that it's made of only one piece of leather with only one seam up the back. Not easy to make and I'll tell you about that. The sleekness is reflected in the shape of the toe box around an almond shaped toe as well as the leather flaps that guides the eye in one line around the break of the goreng panels. The leather protective panels are secured by a strap that goes around the Achilles heel and it velcos on tight. It's otherwise a standard six inch high Chelsea boot with a standard block heel. The sleekness is partial to it being worn as a dressed up casual boot, but being a Chelsea with their riding and work boot history in Australia is easily capable of being worn out in the paddock or on horseback especially in this distressed slightly oily leather. As a result it goes well with jeans and t-shirts and also with chinos and a business shirt in a classic Aussie relaxed outfit off the farm and you can add a sports coat if you want to venture into the city for business. In this distressed brown it matches any earth colour like tans and browns, greys and black jeans and obviously denim. Let's talk a bit more about the Harold Boot Company which has a really interesting history. According to the company the family's boot making routes go back to England to the 1400s. I guess they made leather boots for knights because that's Richard II, Henry IV that sort of time in England, time of the Crusades and at least Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They say that in the 1700s the family then started to employ 40 boot makers in workshops and then at the start of the industrial revolution gathered them together into an industrialised factory. In 1912 they sent Frederick Harold off to Australia to source better hides and start a factory to make them and then send them back to England. Like many boot making companies Harold Boots expanded in World War I and then further in World War II. Between the wars they first produced an elastic-sided work boot from a style that they say they made in England. You should know by now, I mention it every time I do a review of a Chelsea boot, you should know by now that the elastic-sided boot was invented by Joseph Sparks Hall for Queen Victoria in 1837 as a comfortable slip-on walking and riding boot. After that it became a smart riding boot for the Chelsea set that was in hers and her son's time as regents and then it was carried out to the colonies as a riding and work boot. It wasn't until the 1960s when the Beatles and other pop groups started wearing Cuban-heeled Winklepicker versions of them that they became popular as fashion items and really cemented the Chelsea boot name. Harold Boots continued from the post-war years with some success but as gradually manufacturing in Australia declined began to also decline itself. By the late 1980s the company was bought out from Frederick's grandson Ian but I believe Ian Harold continued to run the factory until his passing. In 2013 production moved to Vietnam after a majority of their workers retired at all at about the same time. This is the problem of small artisan companies that can't find a constant refresh of new workers to learn the trade. I believe the same sort of thing is happening in the Pacific Northwest of the US especially after Covid. Today they are a small volume bootmaker well known in Victoria and up the East Coast but not so well known elsewhere. Today they make some of the Boots in Melbourne and others in Vietnam. I was told by a viewer that you can tell from the logo on the outsole. If it's a square logo then it's made in Vietnam. If it's a round logo then it's made in Australia. When Ian Harold ran the factory he was known as Ian Harold the Bootman and known for his innovative design and construction of their boots. This gardener boot shows some of those tweaks and we can go through them next. Let's start from the bottom and work our way up. The construction method is one that I've never heard of that the company calls a fair stitch welt. The way I understand it the uppers are cemented to a leather insole that has a poron layer that's laminated into it. Then a cork filling is put on and a carbon fiber and fiberglass shank is inserted into the cork layer. The shank is inserted between the heel and the ball of the foot to provide arch support under the gap there and also to provide torsional stability on rough ground or going up ladders. Inside the boot the midsole is cemented and Blake stitched through the insole to the uppers. This connects securely the uppers the insole and the midsole. The insole and midsole are described as oak tanned butt leather. Translation I think that means oak tanned bends leather so tough. After the midsole is Blake stitched on the rubber outsole is then cemented onto the midsole and then brass wire screws that you can see here are screwed through to the outsole through the midsole through the cork filling and into the insole. Then the midsole I think by then acting as a welt on the outside edge because I can't see a third layer of a separate welt. The midsole is then stitched through to the outsole around 270 degrees which you can see here. I think it's for strength and durability and to create a little bit of a sleek line. The heel is then laminated to the sole and then it's internally nailed. The nails at the heels are described as hardened buttress nails whatever those are but they sound strong. I assume that means that they go into the heel and somehow clinch to hold on. You know I've never heard of the fair stitch welt method of construction before but it sounds and it feels extremely hardy. If you want to know more about the different popular methods of construction that doesn't include fair stitch you can check out the video here. The construction makes this boot I think good value which I'll discuss when I get to the end of the video. The outsole itself is actually made of a rubber and cork composite and you can see the cork embedded in there. It's about 8 millimeters under the ball of the foot and about 5 millimeters under the arch and the heel. The heel itself is a block of the same rubber cork compound and is about 20 millimeters thick on top of the outsole layer. I can tell you that the outsole is grippy and it's really shock absorbing especially with that poron layer also on the inside without feeling squishy. Inside the boot they finish it off with a heel to arch sock liner that's also lined with poron. As I said earlier it's a whole cut Chelsea meaning that it's made of one piece of leather molded over the last to shape and then stitched with one seam at the back. RM Williams do whole cuts as well and this is of the same quality in manufacture I think if it's not quite the same quality of leathers used. The uppers are made from a two and a half millimeter thick Australian sourced bull hide from the meat industry. I don't know where it's tanned but I think it would be in Australia before being shipped out to Vietnam. It's a distressed slightly oily leather feel supple but sturdy at the same time. The boot is fully lined with a one millimeter thick not especially soft but soft enough leather. The internal heel counter is eight mils of compressed leather and feel stiff giving a lot of stability and support. The toe box is stiffened and I'm guessing that's a solastic thermoplastic because it has some given it. The goring panels are double weaved water resistant elastic fabric actually takes a lot to expand them to get your foot in. Then there's this eye catcher this leather panel that protects both goring panels around them. They're simply panels of leather cut to shape with a strap that reaches around the back secures both panels tightly and then velcros the panels together. I find this piece of innovation attractive but also I'll bet they're great in the paddock in tall grass or mud or riding horses and scraping the sides of the boot against leather saddle straps. As with all Aussie Chelsea boots it is topped by two pull loops made from a tough woven cloth and bearing the Ian Harrow name and Melbourne Australia. Now to leather care. This is a casual boot and it's in an oily distressed leather. There's a really light pull up to it so it's not a boot to be polished unlike some of RM's models. I would normally look to the boot maker to see what they say about boot care but their website is silent about it so what would I do? I'd stick to brushing it regularly to remove dirt and grit before they build up and to remove the interior oils around and if muddy just wipe it with a damp rag. If it's really dirty I'd have no hesitation in using saddle soap to give it a really good clean. From time to time maybe a couple of times a year or more depending on how you use them. I'd condition it with something like BIC 4 or a greasy conditioner like RM Williams' Leather Conditioner. Oakwood's Leather Conditioner which is an Aussie product I think will also work. I probably would not use Venetian shoe cream because of its higher wax content which I think could leave an inappropriate shine behind it. And now let's take a look at sizing. These run true to size. By that I mean that they should be in your true size as measured on a brand device. They also use UK sizing which is like Weiberg one number down from US numbers so using me as the example I measure a US 8 and a half on the brand device. That equates to a UK 7 and a half. In US boots I wear mostly an 8 because the usual half size down from my brand measurement convention works or you know a UK 7. However these are true to size so I wear my 7 and a half or US 8 and a half which is my true size. In that size they fit well. The last or that mould on which they build the boot is well designed to give enough grip at the heel and at the waist but widens at the ball of the foot. And despite the almond shaped toes they are quite rounded and so look I don't feel any squeeze at all either on the pinky side or on the big toe side of the boot. It actually feels quite anatomical when my foot's in it. As for comfort despite the seemingly thick complex construction method of the sole and the sturdy bull hide itself there was no break-in. Two days after I got the boots I took them as my only boot on a three-hour plane trip to broom to a wedding and spent a long weekend in them with no discomfort at all at any time. Comfort wise they have a very shock absorbing build with the rubber cork outsole and the poron laminated that's laminated to the insole. The fit is good also which means comfort all around. Finally the value on their website they're listed at $495 including GST and a recommended retail price of $577 including GST. Now these are Australian dollars and I have no idea why their quoted price is different from the recommended retail price. If any retailers are out there watching this maybe they can tell me maybe one of them is the wholesale. I bought them for 325 Aussie dollars from an Aussie website called Everything Australian and I will leave a link to that website below. It is worth mentioning my experience with them. When I ordered these from Everything Australian they sell a wide variety of boots and workwear clothing. I also bought another pair of boots Baxter boots another lesser known Aussie brand that I'll bring to you next week. As soon as I placed my order I got an email from their sales department Duane who suggested to me that I might want a bigger size in the Baxter boots. After a very helpful email conversation I changed my order and I'll tell you about that next week. I was really impressed by their level of service and cruising their website I'm also impressed by their prices on other brands. So my value opinion is based on the 325 Australian dollar price. My thoughts outstanding value at that price even if these are not made in Australia. Frankly top value probably because they're not made in Australia. Yet the lower price doesn't affect what I can see of its quality. You already heard me talk about how sturdily they are made and I can't see any strange faults in the construction. The stitching is good and making a whole cut boot is not easy. Think of it you have to cut a piece of flat leather and then last it into a three-dimensional shape without allowing the leather to either slacken in places or over tighten at any stage of the construction. Yes I think these are definitely worth that price. So in summary if you can get a pair of these boots I really would give them a try. I have no relationship or sponsorship from them but I got them because I was intrigued. They're a lesser known Australian boot brand and in my interview with the podiatrist Anthony Cox a few weeks ago he held up a pair of Harrell boots so I really wanted to see what they were like. I am not disappointed. They're made overseas but quality control and workmanship are good. The materials are good. The construction seems stellar. The design and aesthetics are attractive. I really like them. I believe they sell them in some UK stores but I'm not sure of anywhere else. If you're in the US you may have to contact everything Australian. Email Dwayne at sales at everythingaustralian.com.au and tell him I was impressed by his help. I've not been as impressed by a pair of boots at this price for a long time. Anyway I hope you like this review. If you're interested in a long-term review of these boots in a year or so let me know in the comments below and I'll put that on my list. Otherwise click on like if you like this video. That will help me and I appreciate it if you would. Also if you're not subscribed I don't know why you're not. Click on the subscribe button and keep up to date when I upload more boot reviews every week. Until next time take care and I'll see you again soon.