So we're all going to be back in another four hours to start commenting?
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 8:40 AM on August 14 [4 favorites]

Five, actually.

I'm a little concerned on the whole "I ruined my life for this" angle. I get hyper-focused too, but I also know I have to eat.
posted by alex_skazat at 8:56 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Just a reminder for everyone that you're not required to watch this five-hour video and you're not required to leave a comment.

If you don't watch the five-hour video, it's actually preferable if you don't leave a comment.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:16 AM on August 14 [37 favorites]

I don't usually comment on the length of videos, but given the nature of the subject matter...could we hear a little more about what this actually is?
posted by mittens at 9:24 AM on August 14 [4 favorites]

2.5h if you run it on double-speed and keep an eye on the subtitles, probably less if you can figure out how to pop the transcript out into its own window instead of a tiny little frame in the youtube page. I tried cutting and pasting it into pastebin but it broke and vanished from my clipboard history and I'm not gonna spend another five minutes dragging my pointer along that tiny little frame.
posted by egypturnash at 9:32 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

here's a pastebin of the whole transcript, you'll have to login as "gumpo" with a password of "gumpogumpogumpo" because Pastebin complained that it contained words that could only be included in private pastes.
posted by egypturnash at 9:40 AM on August 14 [8 favorites]

...could we hear a little more about what this actually is?

I'm currently three hours in, starting and stopping every now and then. It's essentially a long, deep dive into the history of anti-trans "research," starting from Hannah Barnes' screed "Time to Think" and going back to the primary sources, to explain how scientifically bankrupt (and often incredibly creepy) the entire enterprise has been. I think it's similar in a lot of ways to HBomberguy's detailed look at anti-vax studies and campaigners.

I think other people have done shorter videos/essays that also cover the way that the anti-trans movement rests on foundations of tissue paper, such as Contrapoints and of course Julia Serano. So I wouldn't say this is an essential watch. But there is some value in someone just methodically working back through the TERF bibliography and pointing out how bad it is. At least a couple of times, he's found some stuff that's shockingly dumb (and was new to me).
posted by Four String Riot at 9:43 AM on August 14 [28 favorites]

I love transcripts of long videos, thank you!

I know that the full force of a video can't necessarily be condensed, but with some of these super-long videos that come out, I wonder if the creators would ever want to also create an excerpt of their favorite or the most critical bits. That might get people into watching the whole thing, for starters, and it would get some traction for their main points.
posted by Frowner at 9:44 AM on August 14 [5 favorites]

I'm a little concerned on the whole "I ruined my life for this" angle.

this is parasocial, bud
posted by sickos haha yes dot jpg at 9:48 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

FYI, the creator has gotten a lot of support after the release, so he is not flailing. In a Patreon post he says that he's very happy with its reception, he's getting a little bit of money out of it, and he's been accepted to university for sociology.

this is parasocial, bud

I think that's a bit glib. Someone ruining their life for years to put out a video on a topic that, as Four String Riot points out, others have already covered, is a warning sign that the content itself may be off base or that we are in a sense bystanders at an accident with no way to help. It's quite natural to be concerned when someone says something like that. And I really don't think expressing concern the way alex_skazat crosses over into problematic parasocial commentary.

And we have our first derail!!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:53 AM on August 14 [13 favorites]

I think it's going to be a bit longer than 5 hours. I'm going to need some breaks, I think. Partly for the ergonomics, partly because it includes listening, incidentally, to a lot of awful people being awful, for a good cause, but still....
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:00 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Jasper posted a transcript.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:07 AM on August 14 [11 favorites]

if MeFi is a community then it behooves us all to note details like this: Youtuber JasperDasper has spent the last two years on a sprawling, incredible five-hour video

a member of the community saw something, they think it's incredible, and they are sharing it

people are free to comment on any number of things, I just wonder that it's necessary to do so
posted by Didymus at 10:16 AM on August 14 [7 favorites]

I¡¯m only an hour in. But 47:58 is the setup for a quality quote.
posted by rubatan at 10:35 AM on August 14

I get the knee-jerk ¡°boo, long video!¡± reactions, but the creator has helpfully included timestamps in the description with chapter links, so if the subject is something you¡¯re looking to engage with it¡¯s really not a huge commitment to watch at least part of the introduction and then skip to the conclusion to see if the rest is something you want to engage with on a deeper level.

That¡¯s how I personally approached it, and with that overview and a partial sampling from the rest of the video, a large portion of the video is a very deep dive into the ¡°science¡± weaponized by anti-trans crusaders with the ultimate reveal that (Spoiler Alert!) none of it is valid. His broad strokes conclusion is basically that if you don¡¯t like trans people, it¡¯s for one of the following reasons: you financially benefit from doing so (directly or indirectly), you¡¯re misinformed (but hopefully redeemable), you¡¯re a hateful bigot, or you probably need therapy. (He does not say so in the video, but obviously many of those can overlap.)

I probably won¡¯t end up watching the whole thing, but it¡¯s a worthwhile effort and deserving of an audience.
posted by kyleg at 10:38 AM on August 14 [10 favorites]

Thanks for this link, i'm going to watch. Just here to say that I was a 'boo long video' about a 4 hr dive into Andor, because it's SW, and if you don't get Andor maybe 4 more hours won't really help, but this....this topic might be under-served by a 5 hr video. again, thanks!
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:58 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Downloaded, thank you.
posted by flabdablet at 11:29 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

My very first thought was "I'm pretty sure Transphobes exist"; like "debunking Bigfoot" would disprove the existence of Bigfoot. But that was cleared up in the first minute. ~299 more to go!
posted by NotAYakk at 11:55 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

I was balking at the five hour video aspect, but after watching the first few minutes, good points are being brought up that makes me want to watch more.

The beginning question is basic, but pointed: How and why did society become so anti-trans. It's decent question worth diving into.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:34 PM on August 14 [6 favorites]

It's so sad, yet so utterly predictable that almost no one is engaging with the content, and instead shitting on the length of the video.

That too is transphobia.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 2:53 PM on August 14 [5 favorites]

I am trans, and I don't have time to engage with the length of this video. (I probably don't have the emotional fortitude to engage with the content either, but that's beside the point.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:00 PM on August 14 [11 favorites]

I usually avoid YouTube links, but.
. Holy fuck
THANK YOU, mhoye, for posting this. I would never have found it organically, but I've already blasted it out to my people.

Most of this is not new to me, but having it all in deep detail in one place is just great. Painful, yes. Infuriating, yes. But also a great collection of evidence against taking the anti-trans shit seriously, at all, even for five minutes.

I'm not even done watching - I've still an hour to go.
posted by Vigilant at 3:02 PM on August 14 [4 favorites]

Long video. Listened to the whole thing while reading the transcript, and skipped ahead to stay in sync and speed things up. Worth it, if you've got the time to spare.
posted by skoosh at 3:46 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Very well researched and well worth the watch based on what I've seen so far (1h30mins) I'm going to catch the rest over the next few days. Thanks for posting it :)
posted by foleypt at 3:52 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Only a half hour in and already learning stuff I didn't know (the antisemitism! because of course that's in there!). Thanks for sharing this; I look forward to seeing where it goes.
posted by oc-to-po-des at 6:37 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

I read the linked transcript, it took me about half an hour. Absolutely harrowing. And yes, some stuff I already knew, but to see it all together and all the connections... If you don't have time to watch the video, it's totally worth reading the transcript.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:58 PM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Full disclosure: I'm only 15 minutes in so far.

Regarding the "I ruined my life for this" framing: it's made clear up front that this video was a personal journey of understanding and acceptance and the author changing his mind dramatically. This is not so much "I ruined my life" as "I gave up material opportunities for two years in a quest to know more and be a better person".

I feel like this framing has strong potential, in the same way that the hbomberguy video on vaccines front-loads with "Let's just look at Wakefield's famous paper and read it literally!" and only then starts unpacking. So he starts with younger, more credulous JasperDasper reading Hannah Barnes and asking "Wow, if it's that bad, how did this happen?", and cuts quickly to two years later saying "Oh it's even worse, but in the opposite direction. I Was Wrong."

Mad respect for someone running a channel with only a tenth of the subscribers required for a plaque to spend this much energy admitting this and getting to the bottom of it all.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:16 AM on August 15 [8 favorites]

Thank you for posting this. I'm about 2.5 hours in (just wanted to check it out for later, can't stop watching). "I knew it was bad, but not this bad". I work in healthcare. I meet many trans people. I should know this long ago.
posted by Beak at 7:51 AM on August 15 [1 favorite]

Wow this comment section is so insanely toxic. Why are you all always sniping at each other?

MetaFilter is the only Internet forum I post where almost all comments on a post are critical except the ones accusing the critics of privilege. What does this earn you emotionally? This complete unwillingness to extend anyone any grace?
posted by lorddogbotherer at 8:38 AM on August 15 [15 favorites]

Pissing and moaning does seem to have become the standard response to linking pretty much any video longer than five minutes.

This is noticeably worse in 2025 than it was in 2020. I blame mobile phones; folks these days seem actually affronted by being offered stuff to look at and listen to that might require any degree of planning to find the time for. How dare you even suggest that I might want to look at something that's not convenient? Have you no consideration?

We're clearly in the stupidest timeline, there are loads of people who have already been so ground down by that as to have stopped resisting it, and we stick the rude fingers up at the great and powerful god of Instant Gratification at our peril.
posted by flabdablet at 8:56 AM on August 15 [3 favorites]

Pissing and moaning does seem to have become the standard response to linking pretty much any video longer than five minutes.

There are literally TWO comments saying this is too long and/or too emotional for them to watch. The other comments are all about being at some midpoint and engaging as such, which seems utterly reasonable, or saying they had initial resistance but it's worth it.

The pissing and moaning about the long format is NOT IN THE THREAD WITH US.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:26 AM on August 15 [3 favorites]

Full Disclosure: I'm only 1h15m into the video now, and kind of posting moment-in-time perspectives on it as I go.

One of the important points where JasperDasper intersects hard with the subject of the book and the topic at hand is when he discloses to the audience that he is autistic. It's the part where he can step forward and explain exactly how his personal experience leads him to understand the specific mechanisms by which the pathology around autism can be used to belittle and disempower these children.

It's a section of the video where he says very little, speaks frankly, speaks volumes, and then refuses to elaborate further with a bit of a twinkle in his eye. Really powerful stuff, and I think this is one reason why he's a good messenger for this story so far.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:16 AM on August 15 [8 favorites]

I don't care about what you said, but I'm going to spend a good amount of time talking about how you said it wrong. Anyway. Long video is long, but there are linked chapters in the video description. You can always watch a bit, pause, and come back later.

I'm working my way through. What strikes me is how much of the "research" is politically motivated junk science, done by evil charlatans and connected to bullshit organizations with deliberately deceptive names. It reminds me of the Discovery Institute and the teaching of evolution.
posted by surlyben at 11:01 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

In the interest of re-railing. I enjoyed:

¡°But Jasper! Have you given a slight piece of thought to sex differences in sports?

I don't give a shit about sports, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about sports, I don't care.

These are real human beings we are talking about.

I don't care about sports, I don't care, I don't care.¡±

Which won¡¯t satisfy bigots, but made me and a friend happy.

I also learned that Havelock Ellis called transness ¡°sexo-esthetic inversion,¡± which sounds like something Dr Who would say or maybe Data.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:12 PM on August 15 [11 favorites]

when they are calling out transphobia

(The deletion would make sense from a "try to be respectful and lower the noise level" perspective. It does not make sense from a "calling out transphobia" perspective.)
posted by mittens at 2:07 PM on August 15 [4 favorites]

Thank you mhoye for posting this. I haven't watched the video but I have read the transcript. I am autistic and cis, but like with an asterix on the latter. I experimented a bit more with gender presentation in early adulthood, a bit less now in middle-age, but the people who would bully me and people like me into gender conformity--they are not acting for our benefit whatever they may claim.
posted by mscibing at 2:42 PM on August 15 [4 favorites]

Thanks to the mods for keeping this thread constructive.

I'm nearly four hours into the video, and it's gone through some rough material. Each story could have been a video all their own, but at that point it would have been removed from the context of the anti-trans project under analysis, and would have suffered context collapse in the reactions. I think I understand why you need to get through three hours of setup before hearing it.

The one thing about the delivery that I think is something I wouldn't do is that JasperDasper affects a sort of Essex accent for all of the anti-Trans British papers he reads from, but not from e.g. the Royal College of General Practitioners when reading out their reaction against the Cass Review, or the trans patient's testimony about her traumatic experience with Withers. I think it's impressive that he can even attempt this in a language that is not his native one, but that would come across as classist if an English presenter did this.

I'm worried he's doing something worse with Hakeem's accent, which could detract from the argument.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:33 PM on August 15

I really, really appreciate the transcript being provided. I was a little nervous at first--a little creeping feeling that a well-meaning person was about to be Blithely Wrong About Gender--but I scrolled ahead to get to the good stuff. This topic needs archaeology. Any billionaire-funded astroturf campaign is going to workshop ideas to make them sound as natural as possible, and it's crucial to show that effort, to untangle it. (One example that came to mind is the Helen Joyce-Jennifer Bilek antisemitism connection--Jasper doesn't appear to mention it, at least that I can tell in the section of the transcript about Joyce's book, but Joyce distanced herself from Bilek as a way to maintain her niche as a "common sense" commentator without embarrassing ideological baggage...the second-most important part of a propaganda movement is its flexibility.)

It's going to take days to work through it but it's kind of exciting--there are so many dots that need to be connected, and I'm anxious to see how he does it.
posted by mittens at 3:58 PM on August 15 [4 favorites]

An hour and 17 in or so, they drop in music from the early 2010s game Fez.

A squirrel moment in this mega video. Carrying on
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:45 PM on August 15

I have since watched the whole video, but I was most heartened by some of the trans people who left YouTube comments about how comforting the video was. I know this video has gotten some "ain't nobody got time for that" comments, but as a fellow cis autistic like the creator, I was willing to "let the man cook." I can testify that my consciousness on trans issues has definitely been raised from being in autistic spaces where interacting with trans people is relatively common, but I still felt I learned more information by watching the video. The material on Kenneth Zucker and his connections & how the very creation of the concept of "gender identity disorder" in the DSM has transphobic assumptions baked into it was eye-opening to me even if it is old hat to others.
posted by jonp72 at 9:06 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

It¡¯s a good, solid work. I ended up reading the transcript, because the visuals didn¡¯t matter that much, and I don¡¯t want to hear the voices, necessarily. As Four String Riot notes above, this has been covered before by more ¡°qualified¡± commented (e.g., Julia Serano, whose work you probably should be following if this is at all interesting), but it¡¯s also a really interesting for a cis man, who (if I¡¯m following correctly), wasn¡¯t terribly invested in trans issues, who dug a little into the anti-trans claims and found a huge cave of shit, circulating through the incestuous pipes of a relatively small number of ¡°researchers,¡± often poorly credentialed, who are pushing an agenda and ideology rather than medical opinions. JasperDasper¡¯s angry incredulousness at the cruelty and lack of care is a breath of fresh air. Bonus points for the connections to dodgy therapists, extremely questionable treatment of children, broad homophobia, and, of course, actual Nazis.

It¡¯s a hard read/watch. There¡¯s a lot of ugly and upsetting stuff here, but Jasper is pretty good at identifying chapters that people might want to skip. Thanks, mhoye, for posting, and the people who linked to transcripts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:10 AM on August 16 [6 favorites]

The length of this video also appears to be necessary because of Brandolini's law a.k.a. the bullshit asymmetry principle: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. I suppose one reason that autists and bullshitters are like oil and water ice that Brandolini's law does not deter a sufficiently committed autist.
posted by jonp72 at 9:10 AM on August 16 [6 favorites]

I finished the video last night, and I think that the credulity he displayed at the beginning of the film was likely just Good Acting. It really seems like he used the book almost immediately as a springboard to draw the Big Graph of the few dozen key players in the anti-trans movement, neo-nazis and heritage foundation fascists and all.

I think there are a lot of good parallels to the hbomberguy vaccines/autism video, and I think that was deliberate. The exposure of certain "Protect The Chiiildren" agitators as people who engaged in acts we could only describe as "child abuse" is a strong connecting point between the two pieces, as is the "There's only a few of these activists and they have surprising influence and persistence given that they're not that good at their jobs." angle.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:15 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

I work with youth experiencing homelessness, and trans people are hugely over-represented in the system because of a number of things - but family conflict tops the list.

The video section describing parents' perceptions of "sudden onset gender dysphoria" is such a helpful observation for our work.

The video is superb and JasperDasper has done an incredible job. I plan to share this with our whole team but hope to start with resources that include lived experience. ( https://www.appliedtransstudies.org/ ).
posted by j_hecks_be at 5:06 AM on August 17 [7 favorites]

Comprehensive job.

Would have been better had he managed to avoid lapsing into Stupid Yokel Voice while quoting some of the more redolent lumps of self-serving poor-me horseshit from the anti-trans rabble, though to be fair I doubt I'd have been able to avoid doing so in his place. Suffering Christ those people are stupid.
posted by flabdablet at 12:29 PM on August 17 [3 favorites]

Suffering Christ those people are stupid.

I¡¯m not sure stupid is the right word. Those in various sorts of clinical practice probably aren¡¯t. I do think they are people who care far more about their careers, reputations, bigotries, and cash flows than they do about people in or out of their direct care. The thing that Jasper does that¡¯s impressive is to show how the ¡°intellectual¡± and medical underpinnings of the anti-trans agenda are not only incoherent but based on the shoddy work of a fairly small number of people who all link to each other continually.

The thing not said is that the largest mass of the audience for this stuff only interacts with it superficially, so it¡¯s not like the shoddy underpinnings even really need to be disguised or shored up. It¡¯s just 10 minutes of skimming, then ¡°bigotry ¡®supported,¡¯ let¡¯s move on to legislation.¡± That¡¯s a kind of stupidity, although I expect it¡¯s more a mercenary laziness, which I think is worse.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:46 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]

The stupidity I'm referring to isn't an intellectual deficiency, it's a moral one. It's about doing exactly what Jasper talks about early on: being wrong and being utterly unwilling to conduct the self-scrutiny that would be required to avoid staying so. Mercenary laziness or religiosity or just plain obnoxiousness might well be propping it up, but mostly it's about social contagion, i.e. the exact phenomenon that these DARVO assholes think they're so astute for being able to identify in everybody but themselves. Shoddy work from a small community of shitheads all agreeing with each other is the right wing noise machine's entire business model and absolutely par for the course.

Bonhoeffer:

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.
...
Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
...
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

posted by flabdablet at 8:37 PM on August 17 [5 favorites]