Parallax Academy # 16 - Transgender Narratives - Beyond The Culture War

With Rachel Hayden, Adriana Forte, Aydan Connor - Hosted by Andrew Sweeny

A deep and revealing conversation about different aspects of the transgender experience—Ayden and Rachel, both having transitioned, share their experiences and reasons for transitioning as adults. We also discuss the dangers of the polarising debate on transgenderism on both sides of the culture war. Some surprising and necessary insights.

Rachel Hayden met with her own gender crisis several years ago. Finding the dogma of "trans ideology" insufficient and problematic, she turned to scientists and thinkers on the liminal web for guidance, eventually developing an aspirational model of gender transition for herself. She has become increasingly fascinated by gender over time, and has spoken publicly with many others on the subject, including John Vervaeke, Gregg Henriques, and Alexander Bard. Her interest has recently turned toward healthy models of gender for non-trans people, and she is following the work of such thinkers as Bard, Fanny Norlin, and co-presenter Adriana Forte-Naili to enrich her understanding in this regard.

Aydan Connor is a Transman who currently works as a craft beer brewer. He has been slowly entering the conversations in the liminal web space after finding John Vervaeke’s Meaning Crisis work through his interview on Jordan Peterson’s podcast. In contrast to the superficial biological essentialist trans debate happening in the anti-woke circles surrounding Jordan Peterson, Aydan quickly discovered John Vervaeke’s interview with Rachel Hayden, which demonstrated a rich and nuanced interest in the psychology and cognitive science of sex and gender, and most importantly, acknowledged the brain as part of our biology. Aydan has been in regular conversation with Rachel, and now also with Adriana, and is increasingly urgent and invested in finding a way to deepen our conversations about gender and sex, with the hope that we can reverse the current trend of scapegoating trans people.

Adriana Forte Naili is a coach and facilitator but she currently spends a lot of her time speaking about the cyclical nature of the female body. Experiencing the double bind of appreciating her cyclical nature and feeling stifled by Modernity’s pressures and expectations, she dove deeply into the question; “how do I show up as a cyclical being in a world that imagines itself linear?”  This inquiry has led her into many rabbit holes, including deep explorations of our social constructs and the ways they shape our bodies, our psyches, our relationships and the systems that we create. She has become increasingly active in the “Liminal Web” having conversations with a meta thinkers, futurists  and philosophers in an attempt to awaken us from our “linear” daze. She sees both Rachel Hayden and Aydan Connor as friends and colleagues in this journey of bringing nuance to the “gender” conversation. 

You can find out more about her work and vision at: 
(https://finelinefullcircle.substack.com/,  https://www.youtube.com/@finelinefullcircle/videos) and https://www.fullyhuman.net.au/