Speaker 1: Alone media.
Speaker 2: It could happen here. It's it could happen here. The
Speaker 2: podcasts that is about. I don't know how everyone hates
Speaker 2: trans people and how this has become a sort of
Speaker 2: cross partisan thing. I'm your host, Bio Wong. We are
Speaker 2: we have been doing. Oh god, I don't even know
Speaker 2: what sort of number of RNC episodes are going to
Speaker 2: have come out before this thing before you hear this episode.
Speaker 2: But we are once again turning away from their republic
Speaker 2: from the sort of chaos and despair of the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: to turn it towards the chaos and despair of the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. Yeah, we're gonna specifically be talking about a
Speaker 2: series of what I think we're kind of high profile
Speaker 2: fights in trans circles over sort of the administration very
Speaker 2: publicly starting to write off trans kids. I don't think
Speaker 2: it got that much news attention because as as you
Speaker 2: may have noticed, it is. Yeah, a lot of this
Speaker 2: is by very specifically Biden administration stuff. We are recording
Speaker 2: the Sunday Warning the morning of the twenty first. There
Speaker 2: is a real chance that by the end of the
Speaker 2: day Biden is no longer the nominee. So we'll get
Speaker 2: into that a little bit, but as of right now,
Speaker 2: he's still the guy and he is fucking us. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: with you to talk about this is Karin Green, who
Speaker 2: we have had on the show before. Is a trans
Speaker 2: policy expert of many organizations and much experience, and yeah,
Speaker 2: welcome back on this. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks to having a mea. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 3: fun to come back on to talk more about this,
Speaker 3: because the timing of when you had me on last
Speaker 3: time was pretty much just before a montha four he
Speaker 3: went public with this new stuff we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the last time we were talking about this,
Speaker 2: it was largely about stuff that was kind of like
Speaker 2: plausibly deniable for the administration. It was a lot of
Speaker 2: sort of stuff buried in bureaucratic medutia. Whether or not
Speaker 2: any of that stuff even exists anymore given recent Supreme
Speaker 2: Court rulings that have effectively annihilated the administrative state, who knows.
Speaker 2: But now having had the Supreme Court get their ability
Speaker 2: to do this sort of non plausibly, they have full
Speaker 2: lot gone on the record against trans kids. So I
Speaker 2: guess I want to start there. Can can you sort
Speaker 2: of explain what happened with this New York Times story
Speaker 2: that kind of kicked this whole saga off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so kind of the context is, I'm a trans
Speaker 3: policy analyst. It's what I do. Unfortunately, are not that
Speaker 3: many of us in the country, and all those of us,
Speaker 3: many of us are still employed in the movement organizations,
Speaker 3: so they can't talk about this stuff humbly. But so
Speaker 3: he's been putting out the regulations that the Biden administration
Speaker 3: has been putting out are not good regulations for trans people, right,
Speaker 3: But it's hard to help people understand that they're transphobic
Speaker 3: because it's a five hundred page regulation and so you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of wonky, a little weird. And if there
Speaker 3: is comms like the Biden administration and the orgs have
Speaker 3: been putting out calling him pro trans and all this stuff,
Speaker 3: there's a big barrier to overcome there with a wonky
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But what happened a couple of days
Speaker 3: after the debate, which I'm sure everyone saw, or if
Speaker 3: you didn't want didn't watch it live, you realized in
Speaker 3: a horror that you now had to watch it to
Speaker 3: understand what this country is going through. They there was
Speaker 3: some initial reporting around how the w PATH Standards of
Speaker 3: Care Version eight came out. So WPATH is the World
Speaker 3: Professional Association for transter or Health. It's either last year
Speaker 3: or the year before they updated the Standards of Care
Speaker 3: seven to Standards of Care eight. This is a little background, sorry,
Speaker 3: And at the time there was discussion among WPATH members,
Speaker 3: doctors and kind of policy people to some degree about
Speaker 3: whether mentioning kind of rough ages for what time, what
Speaker 3: age people tend to start certain treatments like purity blockers, hormones,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, what kind of normal normal age
Speaker 3: ranges those things happening. We know from years and years
Speaker 3: of advocacy and work and activism is that if some
Speaker 3: write something like those things down, even if they present
Speaker 3: it as a kind of loose guideline or this is
Speaker 3: where things typically fall, policymakers will write that stuff into
Speaker 3: law and rig and take what is supposed to give
Speaker 3: doctors and patients, you know, room to figure out what
Speaker 3: works best for them, and make it a very strict regime.
Speaker 3: And so transactivists did not want ages in the WPATH
Speaker 3: sock eight for that reason. And in the one and
Speaker 3: only instance of pro trans advocacy that I'm aware of
Speaker 3: her ever engaging in it. Rachel Levine in AHHS kind
Speaker 3: of advocated with w Path not to include those age
Speaker 3: ranges in it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Levine, by the way, is like the o WT A
Speaker 2: health secretary. I think, Yeah, she's like the only trans Like.
Speaker 3: She's the highest ranked trans like you know, White House
Speaker 3: official ever.
Speaker 2: By like an order of magnitude. She's like, she's like
Speaker 2: the only transperson, like openly transperson possibly in history to
Speaker 2: ever like get to a position where she has some authority,
Speaker 2: and she doesn't use it ever except this one time.
Speaker 3: It's a bit disappointment too. I was her biggest fan
Speaker 3: in the world because she passed. She wrote Pennsylvania's Narkann
Speaker 3: Standing Order, and I based my law in Louisiana legalizing
Speaker 3: Narkhann and our subsequent standing order on hers. So I
Speaker 3: thought it was really cool that Transforms had done this
Speaker 3: in both places, and I really really was a big
Speaker 3: And then she just crickets nothing. It's all this terrible
Speaker 3: stuff happens. So that's the context in which The New
Speaker 3: York Times was reporting they somebody had gotten, like some
Speaker 3: bad guys had gotten some of the emails between Levin
Speaker 3: and w Path and we're like trying to make it
Speaker 3: into a scandal, right, and they and the bad guys
Speaker 3: misrepresented kind of what the issue and discussion was about. Right,
Speaker 3: So we discussed what it was, but the way that
Speaker 3: they would present it as, oh, you know, w Path
Speaker 3: was trying to limit treatments to kids being old enough
Speaker 3: of a certain age, which is not what they were doing.
Speaker 3: And they were trying to present Levine as trying to
Speaker 3: get rid of those so that five year olds could
Speaker 3: have surgery or whatever. It's so, you know, just very
Speaker 3: very insincere. But so the media was kind of reporting
Speaker 3: just on that because they love muck breaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and partially the other thing we should mention it
Speaker 2: is it was really it was extremely hard to figure
Speaker 2: out what was going on for the issue reporting because
Speaker 2: the New York Times, instead of employing trans journalists, they
Speaker 2: employed transphobic journalists. And the thing about transherbic journalists, they
Speaker 2: don't fucking understand policy at all. They're like, they're absolute
Speaker 2: fucking clouds. These people have no idea what the fuck
Speaker 2: they're talking about, and so you know, when they're trying
Speaker 2: to write a story that's about like leaked technical policy documents,
Speaker 2: they have no fucking idea what they're doing, and the
Speaker 2: reporting is gibberish. It's like I was trying to understand it.
Speaker 2: And this is a real issue because the only source
Speaker 2: we had was this document of this New York Times
Speaker 2: writer who like couldn't like the New York Times writer
Speaker 2: who like couldn't find the back of their hand with
Speaker 2: a map right trying to like write out these skinned emails.
Speaker 3: I'm convinced SIS people don't even understand that they don't
Speaker 3: know what they're talking about, because I think they just
Speaker 3: inherently feel like, oh, I have a gender, therefore I
Speaker 3: know everything about gender idea.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, and like I I I, and
Speaker 2: it's this is like mostly kind of like fine ish.
Speaker 2: But the problem is when you have you know, when
Speaker 2: you have CIS journalists who don't know anything about trans
Speaker 2: like people at all, who in a lot of places
Speaker 2: don't think trans people exist, trying to write these policy things.
Speaker 2: It's they they have nothing.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so it wasn't presented super clearly, and so
Speaker 3: other people had questions, some justified, some based on misunder
Speaker 3: that misunderstanding, some not. But anyway, there was additional kind
Speaker 3: of back and forth between the media and the White House,
Speaker 3: they were asking about it, and in that the White
Speaker 3: House at one point told them that they opposed surgery
Speaker 3: for transgender youth. And then, obviously that is, at least publicly,
Speaker 3: that is a new position for the President who has
Speaker 3: has been called not by me but by other people,
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred percent pro trans super great ally
Speaker 3: his entire administration. I disagree with that, but other people
Speaker 3: have been saying that for a long time. And so
Speaker 3: that took a lot of people by surprise and was
Speaker 3: a big kind of kurf lefvel. And so that's kind
Speaker 3: of the jumping off point for where we're going here.
Speaker 3: And so that happened. That came out on a Friday
Speaker 3: in the New York Times that the White House opposed
Speaker 3: surgery for trans miners, and nobody talked like. There were
Speaker 3: no responses from the orgs, There was no additional reporting,
Speaker 3: no follow up from the White House that Friday, not
Speaker 3: that Saturday, not that Sunday, although that Sunday Sunday evening,
Speaker 3: the heads of three national large National LGBTQ Advocacy orgs, HRC,
Speaker 3: Family Equality Council, and National LGBTQ Task Force went on
Speaker 3: all three together an MSNBC show. The host I don't
Speaker 3: remember his name, but he has an MSNBC show, writes
Speaker 3: for Washington Post and then also contributes to PBS News Hour, Right.
Speaker 3: And so none of these three people that we pay
Speaker 3: to advocate for us or this journalist brought up this
Speaker 3: very fresh, very pertinent, very relevant New White House position.
Speaker 3: They just talked about like how important it is to
Speaker 3: vote and how much fun they had at pride parades
Speaker 3: instead of garbage, right, And so it was very weird
Speaker 3: to me that these three people who represent LGBT obviousy
Speaker 3: organizations would not immediately vocally condemn that kind of anti transtance.
Speaker 3: And it also blew my mind that this journalist must
Speaker 3: be like allergic to scoops or something like why yeah,
Speaker 3: why wouldn't you like that's your chance right there?
Speaker 2: I mean I I genuine And you think the journalists
Speaker 2: didn't know because like this stuff didn't break out of
Speaker 2: like a very small sort of like transphere by this point, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it's in the New York Times.
Speaker 2: You're given like but like like nobody cares about like people.
Speaker 2: People don't care about us like you. You would think
Speaker 2: that these people would know but like, I genuinely don't
Speaker 2: even know if this person had any idea what was happening,
Speaker 2: because I trust journalists to write about trans people about
Speaker 2: as much as I trust myself to be able to
Speaker 2: bench for us a car.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, So that came and went Sunday evening, Nope,
Speaker 3: And I was going insane the whole time, right, because
Speaker 3: for me, as a trans policy analyst, you know, I've
Speaker 3: been I've noticed and been and been calling Biden's transphobic
Speaker 3: REGs and executive words and stuff problematic and transphobic since
Speaker 3: I first noticed it and picked up on it, which
Speaker 3: was you know, two or three years ago now. And
Speaker 3: so for me, it was a very kind of complicated
Speaker 3: feeling of Okay, now, at least other people don't have
Speaker 3: to take my word about the rags. There's something they
Speaker 3: can look at and see it themselves. But I was
Speaker 3: also you know, completely threw off my sleep schedule. I
Speaker 3: was bouncing off the walls, going and see and trying
Speaker 3: to you know, or organize responses. And so the first org,
Speaker 3: actually I think I believe it was HRC, issued a
Speaker 3: statement Monday night, and it was a decent statement. I
Speaker 3: might have critiques of them whatever, and then the rest
Speaker 3: of the orgs kind of didn't issue statements until Tuesday evening,
Speaker 3: and so that Tuesday also the White House issued a
Speaker 3: statement that to clarify their position, and the statement actually
Speaker 3: made it worse. So what the statement said was that
Speaker 3: they do oppose surgery for transgender youth. So they reiterated that,
Speaker 3: and then it went on to say, however, we continue
Speaker 3: to support gender affirming care for youth, such as mental
Speaker 3: health care. Period. I mean, it wasn't it was a
Speaker 3: common the THEA said other but they didn't list other
Speaker 3: things that they supported, right, So, like the only thing
Speaker 3: they put in the list that they supported was mental
Speaker 3: health care, which to a policy person, again, you're not
Speaker 3: sneaking those things past me. If you're talking about trans
Speaker 3: healthcare and the only thing that you say that you
Speaker 3: support is mental health care, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned, right,
Speaker 3: because if you're pro trans and you support trans access
Speaker 3: to healthcare, it is not complicated or hard or controversial
Speaker 3: for you to say, yeah, you know, I support trans
Speaker 3: people and their access to health care. They should have
Speaker 3: access to therapy, hormones, pubity blockers, surgery, whatever they need,
Speaker 3: like it's not complex there, right, But they didn't do that,
Speaker 3: And so to me that felt even worse than kind
Speaker 3: of the initial position, because it signaled to me that
Speaker 3: there's likely we're likely kind of losing them on not
Speaker 3: just surgery, it's all this other stuff. And so two
Speaker 3: hours later that statement was updated, revised, and it took
Speaker 3: out saying they support mental health care and was changed
Speaker 3: to say we support gender affirming care like a continuum
Speaker 3: of care and used the words continuum of care instead
Speaker 3: of mental health care. Now that doesn't that feels like
Speaker 3: tripling down to me, because the problem was that it
Speaker 3: was very overt what you left out, and you had
Speaker 3: the opportunity to go back and fix it, and then
Speaker 3: you continued. You just made new words that very overtly
Speaker 3: leave out the kind of things that we would need
Speaker 3: reassurance about. Right, And so that's kind of where things
Speaker 3: were at at that point.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we're gonna let's let's leave it there for
Speaker 2: a seconds. You turn to the people who are funding
Speaker 2: us talking about this, which is the I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: the noble product products and services. I cannot promise their
Speaker 2: nobility at all, but the products and service system support
Speaker 2: this podcast here they are. Yeah, and we are back.
Speaker 2: And there's one other thing I want to mention before
Speaker 2: we sort of get into where this went, which is
Speaker 2: part of the fear that was going on, is that
Speaker 2: at the same time as this is all happening, Labor
Speaker 2: has taken power in the UK, and the Labor government
Speaker 2: they're fucking okay, what what what can what? What can
Speaker 2: I say about the about West streeting? That won't get
Speaker 2: me impaled across They're militantly transphobic piece of shit. I
Speaker 2: think it's like their health secretary now, yes, yeah, masters
Speaker 2: over there, don't forget Yeah, yeah, they're ministers came out
Speaker 2: and said we're going to ban all children from getting
Speaker 2: puberty blockers.
Speaker 3: Not just on the NHS but.
Speaker 2: All private healthcare everyone. Yeah. And this is a this
Speaker 2: is an absolutely sort of terrifying step. It is going
Speaker 2: to get a lot of kids killed. Want to reiterate, Yeah,
Speaker 2: already already has there's a whole scandal over there about
Speaker 2: like about the number of.
Speaker 3: Trus The Good Law Project has you know, done the
Speaker 3: research into like NHS minutes and all this stuff, and
Speaker 3: as thinks that there have been sixteen suicide since this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I also want to there's like a
Speaker 2: sort of debunking thing that's going on. That was from
Speaker 2: data that like that that the party released. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: there weren't actually that many suicides. And the thing you
Speaker 2: have to understand about those numbers is that those numbers
Speaker 2: don't count people on waitlists, and the waitlists are not
Speaker 2: the only place that people die, but they kill a
Speaker 2: lot of people. So I want to sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got to get that sort of context in which
Speaker 2: is we're in this position.
Speaker 3: Not justreting right the farmers and then there are a
Speaker 3: whole lot have very vocally transphobic labor impis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and that you know, that's there's a lot
Speaker 2: of fear that the Democratic Party can sort of take
Speaker 2: this even more extreme path than the sort of stuff
Speaker 2: we've been saying. And you know, I'm going to include
Speaker 2: the standard thing about puberty blockers, which is we give
Speaker 2: these we give puberty blockers to like literal like five
Speaker 2: year old CIS children. They're fine, it's complete, like they're
Speaker 2: completely safe. There's no there's no downside.
Speaker 3: Apparently blockers only have dangerous terrifying side effects used, and
Speaker 3: they can tell when they're in a trans body and
Speaker 3: it's the spot. Yeah, I only do the bad things.
Speaker 3: We've created the trands specific bio weapon like you know,
Speaker 3: so like that this all of this stuff is safe,
Speaker 3: and it's not only safe, it saves lives, like the
Speaker 3: difference between you know, like any transperson can tell you,
Speaker 3: the difference between being on your hormones and being off
Speaker 3: your hormones is night and day. It is the difference
Speaker 3: between being alive and not being alive. Like it is
Speaker 3: the difference between having sort of like a stable like
Speaker 3: stable interiority and feeling like you don't exist every fucking day.
Speaker 3: So we're not just talking about being on your right hormones,
Speaker 3: but in this case, we're also talking about preventing being
Speaker 3: on the wrong hormones right, which can be even more experciated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's terrible, like yeah, and so there's there's this
Speaker 2: real fear that what we're seeing here is a pivot
Speaker 2: to UK style stuff. And one of the things I
Speaker 2: do in the UK that was specifically worrying about that
Speaker 2: language about mental health care is one of the big
Speaker 2: turf tactics is pushing this thing where we go, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to have this, like you know, we're going
Speaker 2: to give you mental health care. We're going to like
Speaker 2: help you figure out what your gender is. Is they
Speaker 2: call it like exploratory care. This is conversion therapy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what they are talking about. And you know, seeing
Speaker 2: the White House suddenly pivot to this language that is
Speaker 2: like effectively identical to again the UK thing where they're
Speaker 2: like we're going to give these conscivers therapy was terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then so I think that the space between
Speaker 3: that Friday with the New York Times article and then
Speaker 3: the Tuesday with that clarification, I think the fact that
Speaker 3: the orgs were so quiet and didn't offer any pushback
Speaker 3: and didn't organize community to demand better to ban their
Speaker 3: retract it like, I think that that's what gave them
Speaker 3: the room to essentially double and triple down in that
Speaker 3: statement on Tuesday. And so that coincided, unfortunately with a
Speaker 3: couple other anti transdevelopments and the Democratic Party in a
Speaker 3: way that I find very worrying, especially when taken kind
Speaker 3: of as a constellation. Right, So that same week, the
Speaker 3: Senate Armed Services Committee, So the NDAA is a large
Speaker 3: military funding bill. It's the National Events Authorization Act, and
Speaker 3: the House has been passing versions with lots of transphobic
Speaker 3: riders in them, and then for the last couple of
Speaker 3: years the Senate has been taking those out and passing
Speaker 3: a clean version, and then ultimately it's a clean version
Speaker 3: of that gets enactive. Last year, I was very, very
Speaker 3: worried that we would lose on that and that it
Speaker 3: would go through with the writers and the implications here.
Speaker 3: So the DoD Department of Defense funds healthcare for the
Speaker 3: VA and trycare. I think there's one other smaller program
Speaker 3: kind of similar that's a different name and effort, but
Speaker 3: largely VA and tricare so for active service members and
Speaker 3: their families and veterans, which is I think I last
Speaker 3: read like ten million people or something. And so if
Speaker 3: they cut off public funding for trans healthcare through those programs,
Speaker 3: a whole lot of people are going to lose it,
Speaker 3: and we're going to very quickly wind up in a
Speaker 3: situation like abortion is with the High Amendment, where no
Speaker 3: public money can be used on our healthcare. And so
Speaker 3: that week, at the same time, the Senate Armed Services
Speaker 3: Committee had their version of the NDAA and commit Joe
Speaker 3: Manchin voted with Republicans to attach to these transphobic writers
Speaker 3: to it. And then it was everyone in the committee
Speaker 3: except for three people. I believe it was Warren, one
Speaker 3: other Democrat, and then I think possibly one Republican who
Speaker 3: voted against it. But all the other Democrats on the
Speaker 3: committee voted to pass it out of committee with those
Speaker 3: transphobic riders, which is terrifying. Yeah, and Senator Kelly has
Speaker 3: introduced a floor amendment to take those out, but whether
Speaker 3: his mimite even makes it to the floor, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And what the vote looks like that like on that,
Speaker 3: I don't know. So I'm really worried that the NBA
Speaker 3: will pass with these riders in it, and then subsequent
Speaker 3: spending bills for other departments will as well. And then
Speaker 3: simultaneously there's the third thing. Over Biden's term, there have
Speaker 3: been over he's had over two hundred of his judicial
Speaker 3: nominees that he's offered up and over his whole term,
Speaker 3: not a single time has a Democrat opposed one of
Speaker 3: his judicial nominees. But that week us Off actually opposed
Speaker 3: one of his judicial nominees over the fact that she
Speaker 3: had sent a trans woman to women's prison, so specifically
Speaker 3: a transphobic reason for objecting, and so she didn't be
Speaker 3: denominated and that's the first time that has happened over
Speaker 3: Biden's term from what I read, And so there are
Speaker 3: just lots of these signals that kind of back me
Speaker 3: up in my feeling that the support that you know,
Speaker 3: everyone has been pretending that the Democratic Party has for
Speaker 3: trans people. I mean, I read their eggs, so I
Speaker 3: know better, but it is not. It is an illusion, right,
Speaker 3: and when it shatters, it's going to come apart really fast,
Speaker 3: and people are going to be really surprised by it
Speaker 3: because our organizations have not been kind of educating people
Speaker 3: along the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to we're going to come back and
Speaker 2: talk more about this, and we're also going to come
Speaker 2: back very specifically to the transom in women's prisons thing,
Speaker 2: because I really truly do not think since people understand
Speaker 2: how fucking bad that is. Yeah, we're gonna come back
Speaker 2: to that after these ads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I wanted to specifically highlight the prisons thing
Speaker 2: in the context of you know, okay, so there's a
Speaker 2: chance by the time this comes out that bite is.
Speaker 3: No longer than on me your lips to God's tears.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The issue with this is that the strongest possibility
Speaker 2: for replacing Cana is Kamala Harris. And you know, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna ask you to explain Kamala Harris's record on trans
Speaker 2: women in fucking prisons because it is appalling.
Speaker 3: Because I can never escape these ship libs. I actually
Speaker 3: worked at TLC while we were suing the slain Chelsea, Yeah,
Speaker 3: transgender lossoner Tilse. We had to sue the State of
Speaker 3: California for incarcerated trans people to be able to access
Speaker 3: healthcare that they deserved, and Kamala Harris, as the age
Speaker 3: of the State of California, defended the state's position that
Speaker 3: they did not they did have a right to health care.
Speaker 3: We won, she lost. But so she is not someone
Speaker 3: that I can ever trust with trans lives, right, especially
Speaker 3: because there have been other issues, I think marijuana most recently,
Speaker 3: where she has tried to kind of trumpet that she
Speaker 3: has used her discretion and not prosecuted certain things or whatever, right,
Speaker 3: And that doesn't help me at all, right, because it
Speaker 3: shows you know you have prosecutor you know you have
Speaker 3: discretion in what cases you take and what you defend
Speaker 3: and all this stuff, and you used it to prevent
Speaker 3: trans people from getting healthcare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to allo specifically talk about the
Speaker 2: part about this judge sending a transfer into a women's prison,
Speaker 2: which is the thing that you should do, because this
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing that has to be opposed
Speaker 2: at all costs, because you know, prison is violent enough
Speaker 2: for everyone, it is even worse for us. And the
Speaker 2: fact that Democrats are like, you know, it looks like
Speaker 2: we're seeing the sort of tide break on this and
Speaker 2: especially specifically on this issue, where the consequences are so
Speaker 2: dire it is extremely bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I kind of had the suspicion that
Speaker 3: there was a deal struck on the NDAA that Democrats
Speaker 3: and this is solely me speculating, right, I have no
Speaker 3: insider information about this, speculating that the Democrats kind of
Speaker 3: accepted a deal on the NDA that there would be
Speaker 3: some level of anti trans writers that they would accept
Speaker 3: and into the enacted law, and that after making that deal,
Speaker 3: the White House felt they could kind of move to
Speaker 3: the right publicly on trans people, because you know, it
Speaker 3: would be in the news from the NBA passing that
Speaker 3: they could start kind of preparing people for that by
Speaker 3: kind of making a public and kind of moving to
Speaker 3: the right word there, right, So that's kind of what
Speaker 3: I suspect maybe happened. I don't know, but it is.
Speaker 3: It doesn't vode well for us, especially because you know,
Speaker 3: so the the White House's position has already been cited
Speaker 3: in at least one judicial opinion yep, and then was
Speaker 3: also recently cited yes the day before yesterday or not now, yeah, Friday, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it was Friday in New Hampshire as justification
Speaker 3: from Governor Sunu for signing their surgery VAM there. And
Speaker 3: so these things have immediate consequences even before they show
Speaker 3: up in executive branch policy. And this is why I
Speaker 3: have been very convinced ever since kind of I read
Speaker 3: the policy tea leaves and the executive orders and rags
Speaker 3: and kind of identified that we were dealing with the
Speaker 3: functioning a hostile executive branch. I've been trying. I tried
Speaker 3: as hard as I could to get movement leadership to
Speaker 3: switch from a kiss ass framework to a take names framework, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: but they just they haven't done it. So the community
Speaker 3: just doesn't. It's going to feel like whiplash, I think
Speaker 3: for a lot of folks who aren't kind of deep
Speaker 3: into this stuff. And then don't follow me on Twitter
Speaker 3: to see me yelling about five hundred page regulations. But
Speaker 3: it makes me worried that, you know, the leadership is
Speaker 3: not advocating for trans people appropriately, and I think that
Speaker 3: if this is demonstrating that they're not, they don't have
Speaker 3: leverage or they're not willing to bring a leverage to
Speaker 3: bear on whoever. The not many is when it's not Biden, right, Like,
Speaker 3: they're not setting the movement up to have strong footing
Speaker 3: to hold people accountable to trans equality kind of on
Speaker 3: the campaign trail, and that's really scary looking at labor,
Speaker 3: especially as kind of a blueprint.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna be talking of God, Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: be talking about Sean o'brien'soking dog shit weird fascist turn
Speaker 2: later with some teamsters. Well hopefully, well we'll see, well,
Speaker 2: see'll see appens this episode. But yeah, yeah, it's very bad.
Speaker 2: But also it's not We're not in a position yet
Speaker 2: where this is inevitable, right right, Like it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to happen, And the way that it gets this gets
Speaker 2: stopped from happening is by us organizing and us fighting
Speaker 2: and us putting pressure on these people to fucking do
Speaker 2: this because you know and like this, this is this,
Speaker 2: this has always been the thing. Like these people unfortunately
Speaker 2: they do need us, right, they hate it, but you
Speaker 2: know these like the Democratic Party needs us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We got to see last month during Pride month,
Speaker 3: they all show up at Pride parades. Yes, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: it's like y'all actually don't belong here? Why why are
Speaker 3: you fuck off? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it's like you know, they like they they they
Speaker 2: they have been successfully sort of like feasting off of
Speaker 2: the movement that we build for decades now. And it
Speaker 2: is you know, if they're going to fucking if they're
Speaker 2: going to fucking eat our corpses, it is, it is,
Speaker 2: it is. It is absolutely time for them to fucking
Speaker 2: try to defend us. And the only way that's going
Speaker 2: to happen is if we we actually start mobilizing it,
Speaker 2: we start putting pressure on these people to like not
Speaker 2: fucking back down and write us off for dead.
Speaker 3: But the way that the national organizations have been moving, right,
Speaker 3: like the positive press and the praise that they've given
Speaker 3: deepen Biden's shittiest actions and inactions on trans people actively
Speaker 3: stimy's community organizing. Right, Yeah, because if I have to
Speaker 3: explain a five hundred page regulation to show people that
Speaker 3: Biden's transphobic that and they're just like no, but look,
Speaker 3: this HRC statement says it's actually great policy. It's a
Speaker 3: big barrier to overcome or community organizing there, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and you know, the the other sort of
Speaker 2: issue here, right, is that the Republican Party is I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know if hurling towards is even the right word,
Speaker 2: but they are. They are very, very very close to
Speaker 2: what is effectively like banning transfer from public life and
Speaker 2: their eventual goal of wiping us out right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, if there's no actual force to oppose that,
Speaker 2: because all of these sort of national organizations are busy
Speaker 2: sort of kissing ass instead of actually fighting, we are
Speaker 2: in deep trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think and I think we are. I
Speaker 3: think we are in deep trouble. But like you said,
Speaker 3: it is not a done deal yet, right. I was
Speaker 3: actually heartened. I was very I was terrified. So Zoe
Speaker 3: Zoe's ephyort the trans representative state representative from Montana. After
Speaker 3: the draft bad Title nine regulation came out, she organized
Speaker 3: an open letter from fourteen out of sixteen out trans
Speaker 3: and non binary state electeds against it. They released it
Speaker 3: a couple of days after all of the orgs put
Speaker 3: out their praise were they're praising statements, and they looked
Speaker 3: really dumb. So she actually organized another open letter of
Speaker 3: out trans and non binary state legislators against this. It
Speaker 3: wasn't the you know, the full compliment because it was
Speaker 3: over a weekend, really scrambly, but just like the title
Speaker 3: nine one, Dana Carome and Sarah McBride did not sign it.
Speaker 2: Why can you explain who that is, by the way,
Speaker 2: for the audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Dana Carome is a trans state representative from Virginia,
Speaker 3: and then Sarah McBride is an out trans legislator from
Speaker 3: Biden's home state of Delaware. And the McBride's are actually
Speaker 3: family friends with the Bidens, and Joe Biden actually wrote
Speaker 3: the forward to Sarah McBride's memoirs, autobiography whatever you call it, right,
Speaker 3: But she's also a Zionist and she is a kind
Speaker 3: of centrist, center right Democrat who you know, as I've
Speaker 3: talked to people, my understanding is that she didn't sign
Speaker 3: on to the title nine letter because she has you know,
Speaker 3: rising star and the Democratic Party aspirations. She's probably going
Speaker 3: to be the first trans congress person soon. I hate it,
Speaker 3: And so I was extremely concerned that Sarah McBride, who
Speaker 3: you know, because of those ties and because she's probably
Speaker 3: going to be in Congress soon, is the most kind
Speaker 3: of politically powerful trans person in the country. I was
Speaker 3: extremely worried that she was going to join the mind
Speaker 3: administration on this. So I agro posted the ship posts
Speaker 3: that are for several days and thankfully she she did
Speaker 3: condemn it and kind.
Speaker 2: Of bullying work. Yeah, right, go at.
Speaker 3: I was seriously concerned about that because you know, just
Speaker 3: these the forces, this anti transit humanization campaign is so
Speaker 3: powerful and so strong at this point that a lot
Speaker 3: of people are making the calculation that if they want
Speaker 3: to advance in politics, they got a multuous you know.
Speaker 3: And I don't think highly I and don't think highly
Speaker 3: enough of Sarah to have been confident that she wouldn't
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's you know, that's also one
Speaker 2: of the really hard parts about this is, like you,
Speaker 2: I don't know, as much as there is sort of
Speaker 2: intercommunity solidarity among trans people, you can't even trust your
Speaker 2: own people when they take power right right, And you know,
Speaker 2: this isn't to say, like this is one of the
Speaker 2: rare times where like I think there are like there's
Speaker 2: some legislators who do good stuff, like Zoey's effort has
Speaker 2: been doing great, But you have to keep the pressure
Speaker 2: on everyone, no matter who they are about it, where
Speaker 2: they come from, you have to you have to keep
Speaker 2: pressuring them, because.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's my experience as now does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you don't, we're going to get We're going
Speaker 2: to get left behind and left to die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so like one of the one of the
Speaker 3: ways that this has been so dismaying for me, right,
Speaker 3: is that trans people don't have any or any national
Speaker 3: organization that advocates for them full throatedly, principally in a
Speaker 3: trans maximalist kind of unapologetic way. Right. It's always all
Speaker 3: of the orgs, all the LGBTQ orgs and the Transpacific orgs,
Speaker 3: which is kind of what I'm getting to all kind
Speaker 3: of take this very centrist tech or they have over
Speaker 3: the last several years with Biden. They were all kind
Speaker 3: of a lot happier to be radical when Trump was president,
Speaker 3: but no longer. Right, Yeah, And my my main issue
Speaker 3: is even if you are you know, a rich DC
Speaker 3: strategist who leads who runs these movement orgs like you
Speaker 3: know they are, And you believe, even you believe that
Speaker 3: the balance between kind of strident, principled advocacy and lobbying,
Speaker 3: blazer tightened up moderated advocacy is way further in the
Speaker 3: moderated direction than I do. Even if you believe that,
Speaker 3: you still understand the need for some group with a
Speaker 3: voice to articulate the trans maximalist position, to articulate the
Speaker 3: standards by which you know politicians are going to be
Speaker 3: measured if they're going to be considered pro trans. And
Speaker 3: what we have not seen is the trans specific organization,
Speaker 3: so specifically National Center for transgener Quality and CT and
Speaker 3: Transferred Legal Education Defense Fund till Death. They recently merged
Speaker 3: into Advocates for Equality, which is abbreviated a for te
Speaker 3: don't ask, don't ask, But like, why let the LGBT,
Speaker 3: let HRC do the centrist bullshit, let them put out
Speaker 3: milk toast statements, let them praise politicians who don't fully
Speaker 3: support us. Right, but we need at least one organization
Speaker 3: representing trans people to lay out the full case to
Speaker 3: present kind of our actual policy needs. And be the
Speaker 3: rubric by which everyone else can be measured. And also
Speaker 3: just for community education, so we know, so the community
Speaker 3: knows without you know, people like organizers, people like me
Speaker 3: trying to overcome these huge, these huge walls to get
Speaker 3: people to understand what's going on, can see what's being
Speaker 3: done to us, know what we deserve in terms of policy,
Speaker 3: and then measure what is actually being done for us
Speaker 3: against that bar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one of the other frustrating aspects
Speaker 2: of this, this is something that you talk about a lot,
Speaker 2: is that the people who do the work in these organizations, right,
Speaker 2: you're sort of like, you know, your sort of staffers
Speaker 2: or researchers to people on the on the sort of
Speaker 2: bottom of the pyramid you make all this stuff function.
Speaker 2: They don't get a say in how these you know,
Speaker 2: and how how these fucking orgers put these things out.
Speaker 3: No, most of them are radical anarchists and communists like
Speaker 3: I am, right, They they really really want to do
Speaker 3: what we need to be done, and it's just you know,
Speaker 3: comes down from on high that that's not what they're doing.
Speaker 3: And I know that I am not the only trans
Speaker 3: national ORG staffer who has been silenced by the White
Speaker 3: House or the White House reached out directly to my bosses.
Speaker 3: I think I mentioned it the last time I was
Speaker 3: on Yeah. But I know that's happened to my colleagues,
Speaker 3: friends at other organizations. And I know that I have
Speaker 3: a lot of privileges that that a lot of people don't,
Speaker 3: So I can kind of get fired or I could
Speaker 3: I not maybe couldn't afford it anymore, get fired for
Speaker 3: my principles. And I don't, you know, I don't, I
Speaker 3: don't judge, you know, my my comrades and colleagues horstal
Speaker 3: kind of doing the best they can. But I'm really
Speaker 3: really scared with with leadership and the way that they
Speaker 3: have not recognized kind of the situation they've gotten us into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the thing I want to close
Speaker 2: on is what do you think are effective things that
Speaker 2: people can do sort of now right? And people who
Speaker 2: aren't in the top of these power structures. Although if
Speaker 2: you're for some reason you're the head of one of
Speaker 2: these orgs and you're listening to this, what the fuck
Speaker 2: are you doing? Please do better? But yeah, what what? What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: What kinds of things can people do on top of
Speaker 2: sort of just like community education and yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean, I I think the real thing
Speaker 3: that I mean I've encourage you to do this on
Speaker 3: Twitter as well, is if you see one of these
Speaker 3: national organizations fall short of one hundred percent and advocating
Speaker 3: for a transit, if you see them equivocate about you know,
Speaker 3: maybe banning surgery isn't that bad because it's not super common,
Speaker 3: or maybe it's okay not to demand that Biden, you know,
Speaker 3: explicitly say that he supports you know, these these parts
Speaker 3: of these components of our healthcare before calling him one
Speaker 3: hundred percent pro trans on healthcare. You know that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. If you see them fall short of that,
Speaker 3: you know, don't trust them anymore, don't donate to them anymore.
Speaker 3: Take that money, attention, time, and energy, and turn it
Speaker 3: to mutual aid efforts, to local organizing efforts to supporting
Speaker 3: trans people in Red states. Campaign for Southerner Quality just
Speaker 3: expanded their their practical support program to be not just
Speaker 3: a subset of Red states that they will help transuth
Speaker 3: in families in, but all Red states that are that
Speaker 3: are facing healthcare bands and similar anti trans measures. Support
Speaker 3: that fund right, go look at and if you don't
Speaker 3: know of a of a local trans group or a
Speaker 3: state trans group near you doing good work. You can
Speaker 3: go to TRANSSICE funding projects kind of grantee map. They're
Speaker 3: really low barrier only grant to translate groups and you
Speaker 3: can see what those groups are doing and you can
Speaker 3: hook up with them or donate to them. But I
Speaker 3: think that the biggest thing is not I mean, we
Speaker 3: Lord knows we need money, we're all poor as shit, yeah,
Speaker 3: but mainly but mostly honestly, what I think we need
Speaker 3: is we need vocal, visible support. We need assist people
Speaker 3: not to remain silent or passive when they hear or
Speaker 3: see transphobia, or when they hear or see someone equivocating
Speaker 3: on well maybe you know, maybe kids aren't old enough
Speaker 3: to know their trands. Like if you're that's the sounds
Speaker 3: in saying actual trans people, right, but you know it
Speaker 3: can take this people, right. And so if you are
Speaker 3: a SIS ally, being an ally is an action, right,
Speaker 3: and we need that now more than ever as the
Speaker 3: stakes of the risks of being attached to us supporting
Speaker 3: us grow higher, right, Like we need principal allies to
Speaker 3: stand with us. And so if you can do that
Speaker 3: in your daily life, you can be a trans advocate
Speaker 3: in your kind of routine. We desperately need that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's a good I know that
Speaker 2: that that's a good sort of rallying cry. It's like
Speaker 2: all you know, and this has always substantively been one
Speaker 2: of the big issues with being trans is that we
Speaker 2: are one percent of the population right now. Right That's
Speaker 2: probably gonna rise in future, but right now are sort
Speaker 2: of distributed, pauled like our distributed impacts on politics. You know,
Speaker 2: we have an outsized impact of politics, but for one
Speaker 2: percent of the population, we can't fight ninety nine per population, right,
Speaker 2: So we need we need your help, and we need
Speaker 2: you know, we need not just sort of milk toast
Speaker 2: lip service. We need to actually fight.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We need people in your life to know you
Speaker 3: know that you are fully pro trans and that means
Speaker 3: that you kind of learned maybe how to talk about
Speaker 3: trans healthcare to educate other folks who won't know as much,
Speaker 3: or you are able to develop and kind of share
Speaker 3: a personal story about how you learned about trans people
Speaker 3: and uh and became you know, an outlying right. So
Speaker 3: learning how to do that work I think is super important.
Speaker 2: So this is this spinna can happen here Krinn, Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. Like I said
Speaker 3: that timing of the last show, Yeah, very smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we I have I have a weird knack for
Speaker 2: tiding this stuff correctly for mostly for worse. But you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this spindic can happen here. You can find us in
Speaker 2: the places and yeah, go support the trans people in
Speaker 2: your life because the Lord knows they need it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can follow me. Yeah, so I'm crankering,
Speaker 3: I share, they pronounce, and I'm at gay Narcan on Twitter.
Speaker 3: You can find me there for hot trans policy takes
Speaker 3: that are not moderated by centrist calm staff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't find me on Twitter, absolutely not.
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