Aaron Rodgers and Joe Rogan spout harmful, transphobic nonsense on recent podcast episode

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and podcast host Joe Rogan spouted lies and half-truths about transgender youth on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, claiming that doctors and “woke” liberals are talking kids into transitioning just to make money.

“I don’t see why they’re so hell-bent on going after the kids,” Rodgers said, adding, “There’s huge money in it.”

“I think it’s money, and it’s also waving the flag of woke,” Rogan said.

He and Rodgers claimed young people’s brains are not sufficiently developed for them to make life-altering decisions, and Rogan asserted that interviewers are using trick questions to make it appear there’s widespread support for young people to transition genders.

Of people who support gender-affirming procedures for youth, Rogan said, “You might as well be a Scientologist, you might as well be a Moonie, it’s the same thing, it’s the same sort of religious-like thinking that exists in all sorts of groups of people that we call cults.” But no one wants to call “leftists” a cult, he said.

Joe Rogan w/Aaron Rodgers - Transgendersyoutu.be

Rogan also suggested that transition regret is common — which it is not. “Even the f------ New York Times wrote a major story about detransitioners. … Their lives are ruined, their bodies are ruined, they can’t have children anymore, they lost their breasts, they lost their penis, it’s in-f------g-sanity.”

Actually, studies have indicated that transition regret is extremely rare. And certain aspects of transition are not relevant when young people are being discussed — doctors do not recommend genital surgery for people under 18, for instance. Also, some treatments that affect fertility are reversible, so trans people can and do have children.

And the Times piece, an opinion column by conservative writer Pamela Paul, has been widely criticized.

It is “filled with factual errors and unfounded assumptions about transgender care and the lived experiences of transgender people,” according to Advocate contributor Erin Reed. “Although the article is presented as a piece on detransitioners, the interviews serve as vehicles through which Paul packages inaccuracies and disinformation with faulty citations and claims that are not supported by the evidence she presents.”

Joe Rogan & Aaron Rodgers Discuss detransitioners: "their lives are ruined their bodies ruined."www.youtube.com

In Slate, epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz noted the many studies that have shown the rarity of transition regret and pointed out that not everyone who regrets some aspect of their transition or ceases some treatment is a detransitioner.

“Ultimately, the question of what proportion of kids or adults regret their transition is only important to a select group: the people who want to transition, and their clinicians,” Meyerowitz-Katz wrote. “At worst, the rate of regret is still better than other treatments which don’t require national debates over their use, which really begs the question of why anyone who isn’t directly involved with the treatment of transgender people is even weighing in on the topic at all.”

Rogan and Rodgers also spent some time saying asexual people shouldn’t be included in the LGBTQ+ community and wondering what it means to be two-spirit. They further claimed that trans-inclusive laws and policies for restroom and locker room use are facilitating child molestation (not true) and that someday pedophiles, or “minor-attracted people,” will be considered a marginalized group worthy of protection from discrimination — a trope that’s been used for years to argue against LGBTQ+ equality, and no, it hasn’t happened. And they theorized that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, are laughing at the U.S. over its acceptance of trans people.

Pictured, from left: Rodgers and Rogan