Speaker 1: It. It could happen here. It's the podcast that's called it
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here. Things fall apart and put them back
Speaker 1: together again, etcetera, et cetera. We're slightly rushing this intro
Speaker 1: because Garrison had to leave in like ten minutes, not
Speaker 1: ten minutes. But yeah, yeah, so we've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time covering the sort of various aspects of the
Speaker 1: transgend aside we haven't The aspect of the angle we
Speaker 1: haven't covered that much is The New York Times. And
Speaker 1: partially that's my fault because if I every time I've
Speaker 1: tried to write something about New York Times, it's devolved
Speaker 1: into about seven hours and be reading every single time
Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote an article that was pro Hitler.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's difficult to be what you
Speaker 1: would describe is reasonably objective when you're talking about these
Speaker 1: people and not just start yelling about the Iraq War. However,
Speaker 1: coma other people have done a very very good job
Speaker 1: about this, and things have developed in the sort of
Speaker 1: world of the New York Times printing just incredibly bizarre
Speaker 1: transphobic articles and to talk about one of these things,
Speaker 1: and some developments on one of their stories. We are
Speaker 1: talking to Evan erk Hard of Assigned Media, who has
Speaker 1: published a very very good story about some real nonsense
Speaker 1: that The New York Times in their journalists have gotten
Speaker 1: up to. So Fa, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm always glad to talk
Speaker 2: about nonsense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been it's it's been a real time. Also
Speaker 1: here is Garrison. Yeah. So I guess, okay, I think
Speaker 1: the place to start with this is getting people caught
Speaker 1: up with the incredibly bizarre story of Jamie Reid. So
Speaker 1: I guess I wanted to start there. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about who Jamie Reid is and how
Speaker 1: the New York Times and a bunch of other very
Speaker 1: less reputable somehow newspaper has got involved with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean there are certainly reputable newspapers that
Speaker 2: have looked into the allegations of former gender clinic staff
Speaker 2: member in Saint Louis, Jamie Reid, and those organizations, including
Speaker 2: local papers, have found that her allegations didn't hold up.
Speaker 3: This was.
Speaker 2: Months ago, kind of the beginning of the year. I
Speaker 2: believe she kind of came forward with great fanfare and
Speaker 2: an alliance defending freedom lawyer and said that the gender
Speaker 2: clinic she once worked at was harming children. They weren't
Speaker 2: engaging in informed consent. They were pressuring parents to go
Speaker 2: along with these harmful treatments, horrifying stuff that if true,
Speaker 2: would be just a major major scandal if true, and
Speaker 2: the allegations all part pretty quickly. Numerous parents and patients
Speaker 2: came back, came, you know, forward saying this is nothing
Speaker 2: like what we've experienced. Some of that was pretty directly
Speaker 2: refuting things that she said, such as, you know, kids
Speaker 2: never got any therapy. They just saw a therapist for
Speaker 2: an hour and an undercanologist for an hour and were immediately.
Speaker 3: Approved for hormones.
Speaker 2: And so people came forward saying I did six months
Speaker 2: of therapy, I did nine months of therapy.
Speaker 1: I wish you could do that. Like no, like right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was very wild and very discredited. And
Speaker 2: then for some reason, apparently back in May, as En
Speaker 2: Graaschi of the New York Times started looking into this story,
Speaker 2: and she didn't find anything different. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look at her reporting, if anything, she found even more
Speaker 2: evidence that Jamie Reid is not accurate and not on
Speaker 2: the up and up. But the story that she came
Speaker 2: out with is really really weird.
Speaker 4: And I think the thing, the thing that that is
Speaker 4: the most at least before before the most recent round
Speaker 4: of incredibly bizarre stuff, The thing that's the most infuriating
Speaker 4: to me about the sort of Jamie Reid's story is.
Speaker 1: That the thing that had come out by the time
Speaker 1: The New York Times was writing about it was that
Speaker 1: it looked a lot like if you look at the
Speaker 1: stuff that Jamie Reid had been doing and people talking
Speaker 1: about their experiences with her, it looked like she was
Speaker 1: trying to sabotage kids getting healthcare because she personally didn't
Speaker 1: believe in it.
Speaker 2: I talked to a parent, a parent who was also
Speaker 2: talked to by The New York Times, who had really
Speaker 2: just wanted like an educational visit for her like eight
Speaker 2: year old, and Jamie Reid said, we can't do anything
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, we can only bring you in if
Speaker 2: your child is an adolescent ready to go on hormone therapy.
Speaker 2: And so after the allegations came out, this parent got
Speaker 2: in touch with the clinic Jamie Reid had left, and
Speaker 2: they were like, what are you talking about. We do
Speaker 2: educational appointments all the time.
Speaker 3: Come in.
Speaker 2: They spent you know, almost two hours talking to the
Speaker 2: family about the different you know, medical possibilities in the
Speaker 2: far future and just you know, trying to help educate
Speaker 2: the kid about their body and their options years and
Speaker 2: years before they never need anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is really infuriating because like the actual story
Speaker 1: here is that you know, even even clinics that are
Speaker 1: like trying to do the right thing wind up with
Speaker 1: just incredibly deranged CIS people who basically can at every
Speaker 1: point in the process act as a gatekeeper and decide
Speaker 1: that like you don't get to get treatments, and that's
Speaker 1: awful and is one of them. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: even even in place, even even in parts of the US,
Speaker 1: at clinics that are good, that is a thing that
Speaker 1: can just happen to you, is you get these sort
Speaker 1: of gatekeeper stuff. But instead of doing that, instead of
Speaker 1: again covering the story they had been handed about someone
Speaker 1: trying to keep kids from getting health care.
Speaker 3: They did this.
Speaker 1: They you know, this this turned into this like like
Speaker 1: full court press against Wait, Gary, you you're right.
Speaker 5: I closed my door because the air conditioner is way
Speaker 5: too loudly.
Speaker 3: There's cats.
Speaker 5: But now the cats start screaming at the door. But
Speaker 5: now I open the door, they and they don't want
Speaker 5: to come in. They're just like all the threshold, just
Speaker 5: like staring at me, like make a choice, come in
Speaker 5: on them out.
Speaker 3: And I believe we're leaving this in.
Speaker 1: This is great content.
Speaker 5: They're out, They're gone. They had their chance. They blew it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happens instead is this is this sort of
Speaker 1: like full court press with a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: starting in sort of conservative media and then moving into
Speaker 1: sort of liberal media, like using this story as an
Speaker 1: example of like why why we have to like stop
Speaker 1: like we have to shut down clinics and stuff while.
Speaker 5: Children's hospitals are getting bomb threats, yeah, constantly, mostly mostly
Speaker 5: due to kind of prodding by ghouls the Daily Wire
Speaker 5: who are hunting for clicks. And yeah, there's also a
Speaker 5: big part of this is like this tactic of attacking
Speaker 5: like healthcare centers and clinics proved to be a pretty
Speaker 5: good recipe to go viral. That's what the Daily Wire discovered.
Speaker 5: And that's something that New York Times certainly took notice
Speaker 5: of as well, is that, hey, this is this is
Speaker 5: a way to drive a lot of attention towards our website.
Speaker 5: That is just another another angle about this, this sort
Speaker 5: of thing, which also, like it leads to real world consequences,
Speaker 5: not just in terms of healthcare getting restricted, but also
Speaker 5: like threats of violence against doctors. The right has historically
Speaker 5: been completely willing to carry out acts of violence against
Speaker 5: healthcare workers and let alone you know, trying threatening to
Speaker 5: bomb a children's hospital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the exact allegations were, We're really devastating.
Speaker 3: For these families.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love to Heidi, who's you know, her
Speaker 2: daughter's personal medical history was misrepresented, shared with the world,
Speaker 2: shared in a million articles, and used to fuel gender
Speaker 2: firming care bands, you know, I mean that is like
Speaker 2: really damaging for a like seventeen eighteen year old who's
Speaker 2: just trying to like live her life in kind of
Speaker 2: a conservative town.
Speaker 1: Which also and this is an another aspect of this,
Speaker 1: is like she is sharing the private medical history of
Speaker 1: patients at a clinic, which you are not allowed to do.
Speaker 1: That is a which is very funny for people who
Speaker 1: rant about these all of these people all the time.
Speaker 3: Only we finally got one.
Speaker 1: We finally got an actual hippo violation.
Speaker 3: And uh yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think the Hippa thing has been I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: as Zingeration could have gotten that story, I feel, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's been really undercovered. My understanding is that
Speaker 2: healthcare workers are not supposed to have to share information
Speaker 2: that's identifiable to the patient. And we have a patient
Speaker 2: saying I can tell this was my story. And so
Speaker 2: again I'm not a lawyer, but I think that people
Speaker 2: have underestimated the extent to which real families could look
Speaker 2: at these allegations and say, this is me, twisted, distorted,
Speaker 2: used to hurt my family and other families like mine,
Speaker 2: And there's kind of no outrage about that. It's kind
Speaker 2: of this neglected backwater of this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, I mean, the thing it reminds
Speaker 1: me the most of is the is the original like
Speaker 1: vaccines cause autism story where you have someone who is
Speaker 1: incredibly politically motivated, who is incredibly unreliable, who's demlishrably unreliable,
Speaker 1: who is not someone who's you know, who's someone who
Speaker 1: in the field, Everyone's like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: This is complete nonsense, who like misrepresents and just straight
Speaker 1: up lies about about like about about their patients. And
Speaker 1: then also it turns out like has abused their patients,
Speaker 1: or in this case is not has abuse of patients,
Speaker 1: and in this case case like has successfully like stopped parents
Speaker 1: from being able to talk to the clinic about what
Speaker 1: the options for their kids are. But the media sort
Speaker 1: of doesn't care about that all. All they all they
Speaker 1: see is sort of this story and they they just
Speaker 1: sort of latch onto it, and then they spread all
Speaker 1: of this stuff and it's like, you know, it reminds
Speaker 1: it reminds me a lot of that where like, wait,
Speaker 1: we're still dealing with the consequences of just the completely
Speaker 1: fake bullshit about like vaccism, vaccines supposedly causing autism, which
Speaker 1: and again like that that's stuffing that never that never
Speaker 1: would have gotten mainstreamed if the media hadn't picked it
Speaker 1: up and ran with it. And yet you know, every
Speaker 1: single time one of these absolute like politically motivated frauds
Speaker 1: like gets up on the stands, like there there's the
Speaker 1: New York Times doing doing their article about it, and
Speaker 1: and like.
Speaker 5: This used to be like Glenn Beck's territory, who would
Speaker 5: like bring out like a chocobar didn make like a
Speaker 5: make like a crazy wall with you like yarn and
Speaker 5: string and now it's it actually has been relegated to
Speaker 5: the New York Times, the sort of the sort of
Speaker 5: coverage that they're doing over these types of like moral
Speaker 5: panics around healthcare. I think, like if if you look
Speaker 5: at like Fox News twenty years ago, this was the
Speaker 5: type of stuff that they did for a long time
Speaker 5: before it was actually a little bit too insane and
Speaker 5: they had to like fire Glenn Beck, and it's it's this.
Speaker 5: It's the same sort of stuff now that's propagated by
Speaker 5: people like The Daily Wire and then picked up on
Speaker 5: by even more kind of mainstream publications.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what's so insidious about this story
Speaker 2: in particular and some of the other New York Times
Speaker 2: stories is that they represent this as being their deep
Speaker 2: investigative journalism. They represent this as being the finest that
Speaker 2: the Times produces. And here is you know, the mother
Speaker 2: of a trans girl who went to the reporter and said,
Speaker 2: I can prove to you I have medical records, I
Speaker 2: have emails to prove to you that what is in
Speaker 2: this allegation is about my family and isn't true. The
Speaker 2: reporter takes that and kind of sticks it in at
Speaker 2: the end, you know, like that it's not lying, but
Speaker 2: it is so totally distorting the truth that it feels
Speaker 2: like lying.
Speaker 3: It feels worse than lying almost.
Speaker 5: Yeah, especially because there's like like thousands of people who
Speaker 5: will just read the headline. They're not going to scroll
Speaker 5: to the bottom of the thing and read a little
Speaker 5: disclaimer and be like haha, jakay lie.
Speaker 1: Not everything that's not good enough. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: this gets into the party. So you very recently talked
Speaker 1: to the mother of one of the girls who was
Speaker 1: you know, who who read has been lying about and.
Speaker 3: To three of the parents who who Zine had talked to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you discovered some very disturbing and incredibly bizarre
Speaker 1: stuff that a Zene was doing to get parents to
Speaker 1: stay in the story. After reads and like this was
Speaker 1: in your follow up story, after a bunch of people
Speaker 1: came out and were like, Hey, this is like not correct.
Speaker 1: This person has in fact been lying about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you could you go into what you found about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was truly truly bizarre. I mean I going
Speaker 2: in There were some parents that contacted me because they'd
Speaker 2: spoken to a Zene Grayishi and they were really upset
Speaker 2: about the story. And you know, I went into it
Speaker 2: thinking I'm going to do them a favor, I'm going
Speaker 2: to let them feel heard. They feel disappointed about the story.
Speaker 2: This kind of happens in journalism.
Speaker 3: I was not expecting what I got.
Speaker 2: So this parent had been very suspicious of a Zene
Speaker 2: because of Azine's previous writing about trans issues, and so
Speaker 2: I think she and her family kind of were very
Speaker 2: cautious and very savvy, and they said, we don't want
Speaker 2: to be part of a story that's going to be
Speaker 2: negative on this clinic that we feel saved our daughter's life.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm willing to talk to you, I'm
Speaker 2: willing to give you this information about this person who
Speaker 2: lied about our daughter's history, but if you're going to
Speaker 2: turn that into a hit piece on the clinic.
Speaker 3: We don't want to be part of it.
Speaker 2: And A Zene, you know, reassured her, calmed her fears,
Speaker 2: and so you know they were going forward but cautiously.
Speaker 2: And then this mother sees a zine at a courthouse
Speaker 2: where Jamie Reid was testifying about the allegations in Missouri
Speaker 2: and just sees the warm relationship between A Zene and
Speaker 2: Jamie Reid, and she thinks something isn't right here. I
Speaker 2: helped her catch this person in a lie. But they're all,
Speaker 2: you know, buddy, buddy, that seems weird. So she, you know,
Speaker 2: she first went up to Jamie Reid and confronted her.
Speaker 2: She said, I'm liver toxicity mom, and you know, she
Speaker 2: again noticed that Jamie Reid is kind of saying how
Speaker 2: can I help you? What do you want and like
Speaker 2: looking to a Zine like save me from this crazy person.
Speaker 2: And so that's when the mother said, we're out. We're
Speaker 2: not We're not going to be part of the story.
Speaker 2: And a Zene did not take that for answer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's nuts. She followed them to their car. As they're
Speaker 2: trying to leave, she stood in the car door so
Speaker 2: they couldn't drive away, saying, you know, please keep talking,
Speaker 2: to keep talking. You know, I need I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what she's saying, but like I need you in
Speaker 2: the story. And you know, the mom says, like, no, Zine,
Speaker 2: we're out. Could please step away from the car, and
Speaker 2: they drove away, and then Azine called them and called
Speaker 2: them and they picked up, and a Zine managed to
Speaker 2: convince them to let her come over to their hotel room.
Speaker 2: This is the night before the New York Times article published,
Speaker 2: and so now Heidi and her husband and Zene are
Speaker 2: in this hotel room and a Zene is going paragraph
Speaker 2: by paragraph telling her everything that's in the story, trying
Speaker 2: to convince her that it's not a hit piece on
Speaker 2: the clinic, and the family isn't buying it at all.
Speaker 2: The family is like, no, you're describing a hit piece
Speaker 2: on the clinic.
Speaker 3: Where Yeah, But.
Speaker 2: They're left with this horrible, horrible conundrum because if they
Speaker 2: actually pull out of the article, which as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, they really did have this agreement. Again,
Speaker 2: azine wouldn't talk to me, so like it's a little
Speaker 2: unclear what the agreement was or exactly what's going on here.
Speaker 2: But in the end they decided, you know, there's no
Speaker 2: evidence that this woman lied if we pull out of
Speaker 2: the story. So they felt that they had kind of
Speaker 2: no choice. Even though they felt completely betrayed, completely devastated
Speaker 2: that their story was going to be used in this way,
Speaker 2: they felt they had no choice but to stay in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then like the and the way that like
Speaker 1: it ends, the article like is is basically like the
Speaker 1: article is like completely supportive of Jamie Reid, even though
Speaker 1: again demolishrably in the article she is lying.
Speaker 3: Such a weird article.
Speaker 2: You find someone's lying, but you're still spending all of
Speaker 2: your words saying, well, so she's say she lied this
Speaker 2: one time, but she's basically credible.
Speaker 3: Just bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know, and the New York Times
Speaker 1: is response to this is like the piece you're referring
Speaker 1: to was rigorously a reporter and edited and thoughtful and
Speaker 1: sensitive to the moment. The Times stands behind his publication imberservely.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, yeah, of course, of course it meets
Speaker 1: the New York Times like incredibly demanding standards for journalism.
Speaker 1: These are the people who published like these are the
Speaker 1: people who published the yellow Cake Uranium story, like these
Speaker 1: people like these people have published things that like a
Speaker 1: a like these are these people have published off about
Speaker 1: the Iraq War that like British tabloids wouldn't publish. So like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's not I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: it's that surprising to me that, like the New York
Speaker 1: Times was like this passion editorial standards. But that's because again,
Speaker 1: the New York Times backed Hitler and like deliberately go
Speaker 1: forth the entire country. You're starting a war by straight
Speaker 1: up lying about a bunch of stuff they do was fake.
Speaker 2: Let me take a moment and say, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of reporters who work for the New York Times
Speaker 2: who do really great work, very very occasionally it's even
Speaker 2: about trans issues. But like it is certainly not a
Speaker 2: monolith of ridiculous nonsense. It's just all of the good
Speaker 2: work kind of camouflages the ridiculous nonsense and lets them
Speaker 2: get it through when they when they go on a tear,
Speaker 2: when they go on a crusade against you know, against someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it's it's they. I don't know,
Speaker 1: The New York Times, they they pick, they pick their
Speaker 1: moments to get incredibly ideological about this, and then they
Speaker 1: hide behind the more normal reporting they do in order
Speaker 1: to sort of like disguise the fact that again there's
Speaker 1: sort of this person knows that their sources lie, is
Speaker 1: demonstrably lying to them. I just I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the thing that was interesting to me about the
Speaker 1: story too, is that as zen As, someone who up
Speaker 1: until this point like seems to it like like from
Speaker 1: everything I had been aware of a zine from.
Speaker 2: Asinine did really good me too, reporting. I believe, yeah,
Speaker 2: science any commany.
Speaker 1: In astronomy, which I like. The thing I don't talk
Speaker 1: about enormously was that I did astronomy for a little bit.
Speaker 1: I didn't do very much astronomy, but there was a
Speaker 1: there was a small amount of time where I wanted
Speaker 1: to do astronomy, and so, like I knew a bunch
Speaker 1: of the people like in that scene a zine had
Speaker 1: a very very good rep there as like the person
Speaker 1: you could go to to talk about, like like to
Speaker 1: do a B two story, which makes it even more
Speaker 1: weird that, you know, I guess this is just I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm hesitant to just brush this off as
Speaker 1: sort of like trans brain where like some like a
Speaker 1: sister reporter starts covering trans stuff just completely loses their mind.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's a really startling and disturbing
Speaker 1: like shift from this person who had a very very
Speaker 1: good rep on yes, like as someone you could go
Speaker 1: to to, like her standing in someone's car door trying
Speaker 1: to stop a family from driving away because they want
Speaker 1: to because they don't want to be involved in a
Speaker 1: story where she's lying about them.
Speaker 5: Who could have thought that a radical feminist could be
Speaker 5: trans exclusionary.
Speaker 3: It's just crazy. People are complicated.
Speaker 2: It I think has to do with who she feels
Speaker 2: sympathy for, and women in science are maybe people that
Speaker 2: she feel sympathy for and who she or I have
Speaker 2: no idea what reason doesn't And like innocent parents of
Speaker 2: trans youth are apparently people she doesn't really have that
Speaker 2: empathy for, have.
Speaker 1: That ability to, or the kids themselves apparently.
Speaker 2: I mean, as a transperson, I never expect a reporter
Speaker 2: to for me. But these white parents, these middle class
Speaker 2: white parents, please, you must take them seriously.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: was the impact that this reporting has had on the
Speaker 1: broader So we we alluded to this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the way that right wing sort of right wing lawyers,
Speaker 1: like right wing politicians have been using like specifically this
Speaker 1: coverage and also sort of like the fear mongering around
Speaker 1: gender clinics as something they're using to support, like health
Speaker 1: to support healthcare bands on trans youth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jamie Read's allegations directly resulted in a ban on
Speaker 2: gender affirming care in Missouri. You know, there were families
Speaker 2: that were going to the legislature week after week, and
Speaker 2: we're keeping it at bay, and then these allegations came
Speaker 2: out and it fell apart and the caravan was passed.
Speaker 3: And you know, it would be.
Speaker 2: Bad enough if they found a bad clinic, but you know,
Speaker 2: there's nothing miraculous about doctors who treat trans people that
Speaker 2: makes them incapable of being an ethical you know, like
Speaker 2: it would have been devastating if it was the truth,
Speaker 2: but for it to have been, you know, all based
Speaker 2: on lies, is it's just a really tough blow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like you know, like I have friends there,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like it's bleak right now, and I
Speaker 1: think I've been really you know, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know why I would I expected these people to sort
Speaker 1: of like even remotely feel a single emotion about the
Speaker 1: fact that directly the stuff, the actions that they did
Speaker 1: led directly to a bunch of kids losing their healthcare.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's been no there's been no reckoning
Speaker 1: with this right as best I can tell, neither New
Speaker 1: York Times nor any of the journalists, involve, any of
Speaker 1: the editors, any publishers, none of the people seem to care
Speaker 1: at all about the fact that they're about their work
Speaker 1: directly is leading to the suffering and possibly death of children.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, like I I this is one
Speaker 1: of those things where like either either something about this
Speaker 1: changes and you know, we get to a point where
Speaker 1: it's unacceptable to sort of do this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: or we just you know, we wait for the next
Speaker 1: round of journalists to like find some absolute crank who
Speaker 1: they like dug out of some like Derain Superbub mc
Speaker 1: mansions somewhere to like push push another one of these stories.
Speaker 1: Because right now, like this is this is disappears to
Speaker 1: just be an established path that you can use to
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, like from from both ends. Right,
Speaker 1: it's the thing you can use as the journalist's advantage career,
Speaker 1: and is the thing you can use as like a
Speaker 1: crank to be suddenly on the talk show start going
Speaker 1: to get a bunch of money. It's just lying about
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, yep.
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, you try to inject some accountability,
Speaker 2: but you can't make people listen. Yeah, this is what
Speaker 2: I do every day, and I'm going to keep doing it.
Speaker 2: But I'm under no illusions that since people are necessarily
Speaker 2: going to start listening. It's just you got to put
Speaker 2: it out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, I guess two more things I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: about before we sort of wrap up. One is, Okay, so,
Speaker 1: on the off chance that there are SIS journalists listening
Speaker 1: to this, what kinds of things would you recommend to
Speaker 1: them to, like, to make to make sure you a
Speaker 1: don't fall down this rabbit hole and b to make
Speaker 1: sure that if you are attempting to write a story
Speaker 1: that is good, that you get things right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, the Trans Journalist Association recently published an updated style guide,
Speaker 2: which I would absolutely suggest people check out because it's
Speaker 2: much more in depth than anything that I can can say.
Speaker 2: But I think that the biggest pitfall people have is
Speaker 2: thinking that they understand more than they do so and
Speaker 2: I think that the kind of connected pitfall is just
Speaker 2: a where there's smoke, there's fire, like, well, there must
Speaker 2: be more to the skeptical side than there really is.
Speaker 2: So while I, you know, always try to butter journalists
Speaker 2: up by saying you can make up your own mind
Speaker 2: and you know, look at the evidence, like, really engage
Speaker 2: with trans people who are not just telling their stories,
Speaker 2: but who are science reporters themselves, like myself, really engage
Speaker 2: with experts who are not trans, but who understand this
Speaker 2: medical information and are representatives of a mainstream medical consensus,
Speaker 2: and really try to, you know, understand that the experts
Speaker 2: are experts for a reason, and the mainstream consensus is
Speaker 2: a mainstream consensus for a reason. And don't be so
Speaker 2: quick to just assume that a bunch of activists and
Speaker 2: cranks know something that everyone else is trying to keep
Speaker 2: from you, because that is a conspiratorial mindset that is
Speaker 2: below you as a mainstream cisgender journalist, and that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't be falling into with you know, masks or anti
Speaker 2: vacs or whatever. And it's just because trans people are
Speaker 2: marginalized that I think people are kind of falling for
Speaker 2: this crap and getting rolled.
Speaker 1: You are not ye conspiratorial thing. Yeah, well this is
Speaker 1: this is something. This is something I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about at length more in one day. The like sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand word thing that I've been writing about, the
Speaker 1: lab leak stuff is going to come out. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the god I have I have spent so
Speaker 1: many hours talking to epidemiologists. You have no idea, but
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know comes up there,
Speaker 1: and it comes up also just in general science. Conspiratism
Speaker 1: is if someone like people who actually do normal science
Speaker 1: do not start yelling about how they're being censored by
Speaker 1: the scientific establishment and like there's a giant conspiracy to
Speaker 1: stop them from talking about their work, even people who
Speaker 1: legitimately are being like actually screwed over by scientific establishment, right,
Speaker 1: people who have been abused, people you know, like people
Speaker 1: of color, people from marginalized backgrounds, who like I like,
Speaker 1: I know these people, right, I grew up with a
Speaker 1: bunch of these people. They don't talk like this about that.
Speaker 1: The only people who talk like this are absolute cranks.
Speaker 1: And it would be really great if journalists realized that
Speaker 1: actual scientists don't talk about science in a way where
Speaker 1: they're like, ah, the medical establishment is censoring me. Would
Speaker 1: I would love for that to happen. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical that it will happen because it's it's a
Speaker 1: great story.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows that there are times when the medical or
Speaker 2: when the medical or scientific establishment is wrong.
Speaker 3: You, as a lay journalist.
Speaker 2: Are probably not going to be able to tell I
Speaker 2: am sorry which times those are so slow? Your role
Speaker 2: don't envision Pulitzers and get grounded on you know what
Speaker 2: the basics are, instead of thinking that you kind of
Speaker 2: know better than the people who spend their lives researching.
Speaker 2: This is my entreaty to journalists who maybe don't realize
Speaker 2: how transphobia might be playing a role in there, wanting
Speaker 2: to believe certain things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess the last thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about, Uh, yeah, I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: about the trans Data Library because I'm very excited about this.
Speaker 1: This sounds rad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, a few months ago I started working,
Speaker 2: you know, with some other people in the trans community,
Speaker 2: most of whom are you know, staying anonymous on a
Speaker 2: resource to try and help people who you know, we're
Speaker 2: really envisioned people who are in good faith, but trans
Speaker 2: issues are not their main thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So like not someone not as.
Speaker 2: Ingoti, but maybe a Zingerati of five years ago, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, the person who is a journalist
Speaker 2: who wants to get the story right, but there's so
Speaker 2: much misinformation out there, There's so many groups with so
Speaker 2: many different names. They're very skilled sometimes as presenting themselves
Speaker 2: as you know, legitimate. So this is The Transdata Library
Speaker 2: upcoming hopefully by the end of the month, is going
Speaker 2: to be a kind.
Speaker 3: Of you know, Wikipedia for the user.
Speaker 2: Not Wikipedia and not like edible by the community, because
Speaker 2: that's very bad idea for trade stuff. A resource on
Speaker 2: what are these groups, who are these activists, what have
Speaker 2: they done in the past. It is intended as a
Speaker 2: journalistic resource, not an activist resource, which just means, you know,
Speaker 2: if someone is there isn't anyone like this. But if
Speaker 2: someone is a Nobel Prize winning scientist, we're not going
Speaker 2: to pretend they didn't, you know what I mean. If
Speaker 2: someone has legitimate potentials, you will find that out. If
Speaker 2: someone has said things that are discrediting, you'll find that out.
Speaker 2: But it isn't just a list of the most discrediting
Speaker 2: things someone has said. And we are going to, you know,
Speaker 2: directly try to get this out to journalists, local journalists,
Speaker 2: particularly people again who have decent coverage, not people who
Speaker 2: are you know, already on a tear and to democratic
Speaker 2: politicians who similarly are you know, sympathetic but might need
Speaker 2: an extra source of information.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it is, it is coming.
Speaker 2: I want people to be aware of it so that
Speaker 2: they can start spreading it and sharing it when it does,
Speaker 2: so that we can hopefully try to, you know, just
Speaker 2: get some basic information into the hands of people who
Speaker 2: I think desperately need it. They may not know that
Speaker 2: they desperately need it, but desperately need basic information on
Speaker 2: some of these groups and some of these bad actors.
Speaker 1: I think that's definitely a good thing because there is
Speaker 1: a lot of information out there on the connections between
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of right wing grifters who come
Speaker 1: out of the woodworks talking about this stuff, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're they're sort of demonstrable links to
Speaker 1: far right extremist groups, to the Proud Boys, to you know,
Speaker 1: sort of right wing think tanks. But that's stuff that like,
Speaker 1: the the subset of trans people who spend their time
Speaker 1: doing this are all very well aware of, but the
Speaker 1: reporters who are sort of venturing into the space for
Speaker 1: the first time don't know about it all. And yeah,
Speaker 1: having having a thing we can put into their laps
Speaker 1: being like, hey, this is these are all the people
Speaker 1: who are like getting paid by the Lions defending freedom
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to make.
Speaker 2: So the u r L is probably going to be
Speaker 2: trans Data Library dot org. It is a little broken
Speaker 2: right now, go to a sidemedia dot org. You know,
Speaker 2: follow me, follow my Twitter, follow my project, and watch
Speaker 2: that space for the trans Data Library because I'm hoping
Speaker 2: it can do some good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited for it. And yeah, do you have
Speaker 1: anything else you want to say before we close out?
Speaker 2: I think that's it for me. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for having me on. This was really fun.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, thanks for coming and thanks thanks for
Speaker 1: reporting on this story because lord knows, the rest of
Speaker 1: the media wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 3: That's why I started doing it.
Speaker 1: All right, this has been It can happen here. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter, Instagram, It happened here, pods
Speaker 1: and yeah, go into the world and be better about this.
Speaker 1: The New York Times, which is not an enormously high bar,
Speaker 1: but it's a bar they consistently failed across. So you
Speaker 1: too could be superor. Have superior journalistic ethics The New
Speaker 1: York Times.
Speaker 2: Ah, this is what I tell myself every day.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: Coolzonemedia dot com.
Speaker 1: Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could happen here, Updated monthly at Coolzonmedia dot
Speaker 1: com slash sources. Thanks for listening.