Talk show host Laura Ingraham speaks during CPAC 2019. The American Conservative Union hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss conservative agenda. Alex Wong/Getty
If you listened to The Laura Ingraham Podcast on Wednesday, you might be tempted to believe that the greatest threat to humans is the possibility of trans people creating a new species.
That’s when her discussion of misandry, or the pervasive hatred of men and boys, and the supposed perils of eliminating binary gender quickly turned into science fiction. Her guest, Dr. Paul Nathanson of McGill University, seemed to conflate transgender identity with transhumanism, a school of thought that suggests humans can transform themselves as a species using technology.
“I think that the trans people have taken it one step further because by abandoning gender altogether, not simply rewriting it,” Nathanson said, “they’re basically trying to use social engineering to create a new species.” He noted that the new species would be part human, part machine.
Nathanson then explained that he questioned his gender identity when he was a child but grew up to be a cisgender gay man. “I don’t look down on people who are confused about who they are,” he said. “I just think that the solution that many are choosing, to either mutilate their bodies in one way or another in order to effect a cosmetic change—because you can’t change your chromosomes, you can only change outward appearance—I think that solution is a misguided one.”
Ingraham then derided parents who allowed their children to undergo hormone therapy, referencing a “horrifying” situation in Washington state in which a child was allegedly taken from her mother because the mother had not consented for the child to receive hormone treatment.
“They are truly taking our children from us,” Ingraham said. “This is child abuse.”
